Pinning Them Down: Accountability in Government and Corporations

Even after the recent Downing Street Scandals and bean-spilling by Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson remains PM. After multiple allegations of cronyism, lying, dodgy loans and his then fiancé Cary Simons plucking someone from the crosshairs of an enquiry because she was best friends with him, plus a story about her dog taking up the PM’s time, he hangs on. As Hasit Shah at Quartz rightly bemoans, “These days, it’s difficult to [self] sabotage a political career.”

Meantime, though Matt Hancock was the principle target of Cummings’s sniper fire, there is a good chance that he too will wiggle free, at least long enough for him to finish his important task of wrecking the NHS and killing people through practiced incompetence.

And it is not just Boris and Matt, or even just UK MPs and peers. This kind of Teflon politics infects corporations and institutions, extending its ironically non-stick tentacles globally to every country and every government. Politicians and the wealthy may well frequently find themselves confronted with allegations of serious wrong doing, yet in proportionate comparison to the general population it is only rarely, exceedingly rarely, for allegations to stick and a conviction to result, perhaps with a deserved spell of prison time.

How do we explain the disparity, ceteris paribus, between the conversion rate of allegation-to-criminal conviction among the ruling and wealth elite on the one hand, and the conversion rate among the general population on the other? In other words, after accounting for possible factors (for example, political motivation for levelling a false allegation), would we not expect that within any sector of society roughly the same percentage of allegations would result in successful conviction? To maintain otherwise would beg an even bigger question; why are this lot more moral than that lot? A very apt question to ask about ruling and wealth elites, who seem strangely immune to this kind of social accounting.

That could be the subject of fruitful social science research, but we do not need to go that far here.

It is enough to note the utterly obvious: where convictions have resulted it has been when solid evidence was available. This raises another obvious question: is conviction among ruling elites only scarce because solid evidence is scarce, and not because they are somehow more moral? Less given to lying, cheating, fiddling expenses, cronyism and so on. (Which on Plato’s “logic of Cephalus” they should be, since they are supposedly buffered by wealth and privilege from the desperations that might even drive otherwise good, ordinary men to crime. [1])

It is almost certain that this is the case. Had a camera been rolling at the time when Cummings claims Boris said “let the bodies pile up!” the matter would have been open and shut in a jiffy, and Boris either booted out equally as fast, or his position strengthened depending on what the evidence showed. [2]

The problem then is not so much lack of accountability, which is the usual lament. What there is a lack of are records that provide the evidence that underpins accountability. In today’s modern parlance this translates into a lack of surveillance. We speak of cameras, microphones, and hell, even umpire-style observers strategically placed along corridors, and in ministerial and corporate offices as well as Cabinet and boardrooms. Such mechanisms would provide critical data when it came down to one honourable gentleman’s word against another, though the downside is we would be deprived of the theatre witnessed these last few days.

Likely we should install all three, so that if cameras and microphones malfunction or are tampered with we have the human back up; and, vice versa, should the human temporarily stop working or fall asleep we can rely on the tech backup. Naturally, when it comes to genuine matters of security such as a nuclear war for example, the human observers (sitting on comfy chairs during, say, 2 hour shifts, and wearing something like a Black Rod outfit to distinguish them) would be sworn to secrecy… or else. And when we were confronted with the kind of disputes and word jousting we have seen during the spectacular dust-up between Cummings and his former pal and meal-ticket to power, Boris, the umpires would nonchalantly rise and give evidence that would swiftly either condemn or exonerate.

Such care to make sure that everything is not only clear but clearly remembered would pay untold dividends. It would save tax payers huge sums, save lives in some cases, and also free up ministerial energies and focus – the latter already in short supply – for important stuff such as actually fighting a pandemic rather than arguing about it.

Agreeing to tight, blanket surveillance of our beloved rulers would of course be a pre-requisite of running for office, and so no one would be pressured into it. They would acquiesce in the knowledge that it would provide a near failsafe method for nailing down data that could be useful during an enquiry into misconduct that could potentially have disastrous effects. Though a few might still get away, it would not be anywhere near the mass dodging of public scrutiny that we see now.

We should all be in favour of surveillance. It is a very decent and patriotic thing to ascent to. Only so far it is probably the wrong people who have been publicly surveilled: the ordinary folk who at most pick pockets, park in the wrong place, perhaps hit each other over the head on a Saturday night, and OK, occasionally shoot each other.

None of that kind of petty misconduct is going to drastically affect the course of a nation. But Matt Hancock, who single handed may have helped the coronavirus kill 10s of thousands more than it would have done alone, is still in his job even whilst these gruesome allegations hang over him. At the very least he should take a holiday whilst it is being sorted out, since if it is true, he may yet kill 10s of thousands more before we get to the bottom of it.

Lights, action and roll the cameras.

1. “The great blessing of riches, I do not say to every man, but to a good man, is, that he has had no occasion to deceive or to defraud others.” Cephalus, Plato’s Republic.
2. There are countless other scandals that have erupted, even just considering the period in which technology for good surveillance already abounded. From the banal and apparently trivial (e.g., Andrew Mitchell’s Plebgate and Priti Patel bullying civil servants) to the potentially genocidal (Tony Blair’s part in the war on Iraq.) We are probably talking hundreds of instances in which public money and time might have been saved and redirected at issues of substance, to say nothing of lives saved.

Updated 23 August 2021

Critical Theory and the Benefits of Clicking Around

Most everyone who has a PC and uses the internet has clicked around simply for the hell of it. Whilst we might answer that we had nothing better to do, which is a reasonable answer, it is more difficult to answer why we let ourselves do it, especially when we have more useful things to do. And because we usually have more useful things to do, we often end up feeling guilty.

This phenomenon is not limited to clicking around in your computer HD or the internet for no apparent reason, and this brief note might have been more prosaically titled “The Benefits of Fucking Around in General”, as such benefits as I am about to highlight are not limited to computer tech. They extend to all areas of life, from listlessly poking around in cupboards and draws all the way to throwing an ice cube into hot oil to see what happens (not in any way recommended as the scientific benefits and/or entertainment value might be outweighed by serious injury).

What drives such urges is of course idle curiosity, emphasis on the idle. One assumes that idle curiosity differs from curiosity in its pure form (a by now well recognised evolutionary endowment that brings positive benefits) in that it grips us not for any obvious or immediate practical reason, such as wondering whether moving your furniture around might give you more space, but simply for something to do to pass the time. Or perhaps to avoid doing something that requires more effort and appears daunting, otherwise known as procrastinating.

Perhaps the brain needs to maintain some level of activity above keeping us breathing, in order to maintain our readiness for action. So, paradoxically, in order not to itself idle along and risk dulling its capacities or being caught unawares, it instead causes us to idle along doing something… anything. That is, the brain keeps its sentinel and practical capacities honed by keeping us busy.

This may partly explain why there is higher mortality among couch potatoes who passively watch sitcoms than among people who go for long walks and idly marvel and wonder at varieties of trees and wildlife and so on. It’s not just the physical exercise that keeps them trim, in shape, and therefore better prepared for fight or flight – and as a (possible) side consequence, in for a longer live; no, their brains are also kept honed through wonder, awe and delight at Nature. Or something. It is no coincidence that some of the greatest scientific insights and many of the classics among literary works have apparently come after long walks, and, I am arguing here, even procrastination of the type common to those who have cupboards and computers and so on.

What then are the benefits of idle curiosity and procrastination, otherwise termed fucking around?*

There are in fact two benefits as far as my limited scientific research over coffee and an internet connection uncovers. First, there is, possibly, the above mental fitness advantage of keeping us honed and ready to tackle serious problems that might come our way. To get an appreciation of this, picture a couch potato trying to out smart a lion or add up a supermarket receipt on the one hand; and a frequent brisk walker or mountaineer who regularly estimates the local population of eagles or wonders why the sky is blue or how the Sun functions, on the other.

And second, there is the everyday practical and ultimately beneficial effect of discovering something useful or delightful in the recesses of a draw, cupboard, your PC, the Internet or indeed the world. The benefits may come through increased convenience or measurable profit, anything from discovering something that makes a task easier (a particularly well designed soup ladle in a forgotten draw for example, or that your internet plan includes SMS and phone calls when previously you thought it did not), to perhaps a Van Goch (let us dream a little) stashed in the attic, or more realistically, an expensive tool that you needed, regarding which you can now save money.

The point here of course is not all these useful outcomes but the feeling of guilt we experience when idling and the vulnerabilities that come with it. Why, if there are all these munificent benefits to fucking around, do we often feel bad about it?

That will not be discussed here more than to recall the saying that “the devil makes work for idle hands”, thus once again uncovering religion as the culprit, perhaps as tool in the service of the real villains: those who would put others to work for their own gain, for whom idleness is up there alongside fornication and other sins that would otherwise endow the sinner (i.e., the worker) with both liberty and health. (This is my nod, and that’s all for now, towards critical theory).

* The benefits of idle curiosity do not stop at the happenchance discovery of long forgotten possessions in cupboards or useful information on the internet. Perhaps the greatest benefit is accessing new situations and people that we would never entertain if always doing something “purposeful” or prescribed by society.

As the authors of a book on evolutionary critical theory state, it may be that “… through idle curiosity… one may encounter people with different ‘habits of thought’ or find oneself in novel situations.” (Evolutionary Critical Theory and Its Role in Public Affairs
Charles Federick Abel, Arthur Jay Sementell, Routledge, 2004 ). All with the attendant benefits of new “knowledge and coping behaviours”, skills useful in navigating the world and all gained, often quite enjoyably, from fucking around.

Major Hair Loss and General Decline: the Battle Against Aging

The field of Senescence research is alive, well and growing fast. In a nutshell it seeks to understand and counter age-related decline by tackling the processes of aging at the cellular level. Though the science is still someway off from stopping and eventually reversing age-related decline and the many diseases that accompany it, that day is clearly in sight.

One very likely effect of anti-aging therapies would of course be extension in life-span. It is surprising then that many people view the whole endeavour unfavourably, arguing that aging is natural, and to tinker with it would somehow change our natures or make us monsters. Some argue from the perspective that there is a certain grace to growing old… erm… gracefully, whilst at the other extreme there is a sense it is almost blasphemous to think we might be like gods. But most researchers counter these objections by sensibly pointing out that they are not necessarily trying to extend life-span. That indeed, as molecular biologist Judith Campisi at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in California puts it, “it’s extending years of healthy life that might be on the horizon”, and not extending absolute years of life.

Principally, researchers are trying to find ways to eliminate degenerative diseases not simply because they kill us before our time, which is just one outcome, but because they also cause great debilitation and reduction of quality in life whilst we are being delivered to death’s door.

Explained like this it does seem to render the objections both mute and perplexing, as is this not what medicine and hospitals are for? They not only nurse us back to health and make us feel better, they do it by treating the diseases that naturally strike us down and may end our life, many if not most of which are age-related.

Perhaps so far the function of medicine has not specifically been to extend our lives beyond their natural span, and was mostly content with alleviating suffering and perhaps helping us reach the natural span seemingly allotted to us. But in a very real sense, we have nonetheless had “anti-aging” therapies for as long as there has been a concept of medicine and treatment. In other words, for millennia. and that should surely count as interfering with nature, as naturally without them in many cases we would die. So if we argue that treatments that go beyond alleviation of suffering and which actually extend our natural span is unwise and interfering with Nature, then why not consider treatments for alleviation as being unwise and interfering in the natural order of things? Why not just accept our lot when we get sick, and happily sail off into the night when our time is up?

A debate on the pros and cons of longevity is fitting matter for cheery discussion over dinner and wine and it will not be discussed here. Except to say that funnily enough, the only time when one is not worried about death is when doing something to hasten it, such as when feasting and merry making.

Shockingly Stupid

Though the research and the future possibility of rejuvenation – already demonstrated in some laboratory animal test subjects – is fascinating, even more fascinating is humanity’s consummate skill in shortening life. Humans seem to bear an overall, breath-taking indifference to the fact that they still kill each other – for land, resources or over various gods – as well as an astonishing inability to do the maths. If you sum the resources expended in fighting over resources, the tally sheet would likely make any accountant dismally shake his head. (Lives of course are expendable and so we won’t let that particular summation further detains us).

The point is, even if the sheet somehow balances out and it makes economic sense to carry out the insanity of burning fossil fuels in military hardware in order to seize control of fossil fuels, for example, overall the world consumes vast resources that could otherwise make life cheerier for all (healthcare, food, wine and long debates over life and death), if not actually delaying the onset of aging by diverting these resources into senescence research. That is, aside from shooting each other, we are also shooting ourselves in the foot, potentates and war mongers included.

To sum it up in a nutshell, senescence research is neither against nature nor is it science fiction. And how fast it develops is not nearly as much a question of science and morality as it is of money and attitude.

So whilst we have scientists trying to make life cheerier and disease free, with the feasible promise of longer lives for those who want it, there are those others, whom by now all sensible people are quite tired of, taking life, whilst throwing money and resources down the drain (witness the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021). Or rather in their pockets, via arms manufacture and defense contracts. Money and resources that could be used to fight Major Hair Loss and General Decline rather than each other.

Updated 22 August 2021

How to Beat Capitalism with its own Carrot

Here I share the raw insight into how carrots make capitalism work and look bad all at the same time.

In a nutshell, the whole edifice of the capitalist system rests on carrots, with all the embarrassing implications this brings with it.

The kernel of insight in this observation – which I have to admit also works as an insult, playful as it is – is that we shouldn’t need to be profit-driven in order to produce marvellous things and contribute to society. That at bottom, we don’t need a big carrot dangled before us to make us do our best and produce good, either for ourselves or society at large. Not in our enlightened age. Yet the unduly high pay of many public sector jobs is often justified with reference to the private sector, arguing that it is the only way to attract talent into the public sphere else it would defect to the private. Company CEOs and bankers on the other hand, feel no such compulsion to justify their worth (in contrast to conservative politicians and civil servants in the public sector), as the world is there to be exploited, and capitalism has instilled in them from birth that it’s OK to be greedy while you are ripping the heart out of society. This was embarrassingly highlighted by Prime Minister Boris Johnson when he claimed greed gave us the Covid vaccine. Or to give it a tone softer than the PM’s admission of greed, the sole and truthful justification for the Capitalist system is profit and personal gain, moderated by a supposed enlightened self-interest that drives industry and the economy, and by which the world goes round… of sorts.

Such a motive however nicely put is not simply mistaken; it is, I argue, also embarrassing.

If the unsustainability not to mention insanity of continued profiteering, also termed “growth”, under capitalism fails to awaken us to the necessity of replacing it, hopefully the image of the capitalist as no more than a donkey pulling a cart as he tries to reach the carrot will; helping open our eyes to exactly who it is we are dealing with. Plainly put, assess, beautiful and strong without doubt, yet pulling us along the road of calamity in the pursuit of what they claim is good for all, which also happens to fit nicely with what they want for themselves. A nice big juicy carrot.

We speak (at a first level) of a handful of banks, multinational corporations and private individuals – Gates, Soros, Musk, Bezos, Buffett, Branson, Murdoch, little Zuckerberg, etc., and also (at the second level) quite a few mules who languish in relative poverty at the multi-million dollar level, those not quite up to the illustrious carrot-reach of the uber-billionaire asses.

So at last, a modern day use for a quote from poor, troubled Nietzsche [1]: Adventavit asinus, pulcher et fortissimus and full of carrots.

All of the above multinational and individual holders of wealth can, perhaps, take note of MacKenzie Scott, to whom Jeff Bezos was once husband. Scott at least recognises that the fortune accumulated by her and Bezos when married effectively represents exploitation and profiting from the inequalities of society. To address this injustice with regard to her share of the accumulated fortune with Bezos (which initially totalled $57 billion at divorce), Scott along with others is “attempting to give away a fortune that was enabled by systems in need of change. In this effort, we are governed by a humbling belief that it would be better if disproportionate wealth were not concentrated in a small number of hands, and that the solutions are best designed and implemented by others.”[2]

We should wait and see what comes of this. But it looks at least to be on the right track for now, and may possibly also be an argument for having women on top.

1. “Here comes a donkey, beautiful and strong”, Fredrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
2. The Guardian, Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott gives away $2.7bn to hundreds of charities

Updated 22 August 2021

La Brutta Figura

An Italian institution that is unique among the people of Earth.

Fare una brutta figura – (literally “to make an ugly figure”) is best translated by the English phrase “to cut a bad image” in public, or perhaps being “caught with your pants down“. Every Italian lives in mortal fear of this terrible social stigma, and from childhood they are taught it is the worst thing that could ever happen to them. If you “make” a brutta figura (“hai fatto una brutta figura”) it means that you’ve made a complete ass of yourself in public or among friends, perhaps even among family, and there is usually no way of redeeming yourself save perhaps by a dual to the death.

The spectrum of behaviour and social comportment that can earn you a brutta figura is wide and varied. It includes benign social clangers – such as wearing clashing colours or the wrong shoes – but also more serious lapses such as failing to return a favour or not turning up at someone’s funeral. Or as I once did, serving a sweet prosecco before, rather than after, a meal.

Obviously a variety of faux pas are found and frowned upon in other cultures, but the unique aspect of Italian society is that to get labelled with the graceless epithet of “brutta figura” it requires only one offence. After that, you will have a jolly time trying to shake it off.

However, the real problem with the brutta figura is not that it is, in itself, such a bad thing. One could live with that, especially if you are British (because we are, after all, quite above that sort of thing). No, it is the threat of earning yourself a brutta figura that is the terrible price to pay for being an Italian model citizen. The mere threat of cutting a bad figure has the effect of dumbing you down, of dampening and supressing your otherwise spontaneous and carefree nature, and for anyone who values their individuality greatly, that is indeed a terrible price.

It is this broader, oppressive nature of the phenomenon that makes the brutta figura so insidious to social life in Italy. What is perhaps worst of all in this regard however, is the damage it does to the character of the individual who succumbs to the pressure of the threat. The individual, oppressed by the fear of making una brutta figura, spends most of his life trying to avoid it, and in the process misses out on living his life to the fullest. Instead of living it the way he would have wanted to live it, he ends up living it the way others would appear to want him to live it. Thus, instead of waring your favourite, most comfortable and most loved pair of shoes (simply to go and buy bread), if you want to cut a good figure (even with the baker) you have to wear if not the latest fashion, then at least a pair that looks as if it’s never been worn before!

Of course, again, we have elements of the same phenomenon throughout all other cultures and societies. To an extent, everyone is self-conscious of their public image, and to a degree this is both necessary and good. Otherwise, society would be an awful place to live in indeed. People would behave in any manner that suited them and wear all manner of offensive clothing, such that it would be quite unpleasant to keep their company. But the difference in the case of Italian society is that while these norms are a natural part of the fabric of any society, in Italy the social merit of abiding by them has been exaggerated and blown out of all proportion. This basically means that rather than giving an individual a chance to show themselves as they are (within the bounds of a reasonable social self-awareness) what you see is the rigid stamp of over-the-top social convention. The result is often dull, uninspiring encounters because of the constant fear of saying the “wrong things”, or of behaving the “wrong way”.

Even the manner in which individuals move is carefully choreographed. Again, having social mores is not the problem. The problem arises when flouting them – even innocently – is severely censured out of all proportion to the crime, and further is taken as a definitive judgement on the character of an individual; rather than, say, simply putting it down to their views on the importance of immaculate footwear for all occasions.

The interesting question to ask is why is this the case. Why does the institution of the brutta figura exist in such exaggerated form in Italy, and why does it have such a strong hold, to the point that it is in effect a social sledgehammer?

First, it is important to note that the phenomenon appears to vary depending on geographical location, seemingly much stronger in the provinces and also in the south of the country. Which gives a hint as to why it is more of a stigma in Italy as a whole than in most other cultures. Essentially, Italy is still very much a provincial society even in the cities, with most people still retaining strong links to the countryside. Many city folk own land and property in the many small villages surrounding the urban areas they have migrated to for work, frequently with extended family still living in those villages who they visit often. Though the moral values of country folk tend to be conservative, their everyday comportment is not centred around dressing well or observing refined though morally neutral practices. They are rough and gruff, often unfriendly to outsiders and aside from church and special occasions, unconcerned with appearance. In the city, the attempt to distance oneself from such coarseness shows itself in the buttoned-up approach to public social comportment of the city dweller, only a generation or two away and still probably with strong links to the countryside. Among city dwellers there is an exaggerated emphasis on fine clothes and in particular immaculate shoes, because only peasants would wear anything else. Generally there is a need for the city dwellers to observe protocol on matters that for other cultures would not register on the Richter scale of social gracelessness (eating as you walk along for example, probably something peasants do all the time).

This, of course, is a very loose and unscientific assessment – it does not immediately explain why drinking a cappuccino after midday might draw a raised eyebrow for example – though the analysis does, after a fashion, stand up to personal experience of many foreigners living in Italy.

How to tell if you have “made” a brutta figura, and why Italians love telling you

Unfortunately the only way is from the reaction of others.
If you say or do something that merits a brutta figura, you will soon find out by the way others change their behaviour towards you. In societies where the brutta figura has been tamed, the reaction of others is usually subtle or even absent altogether when one drops a clanger or commits a social howler. Advanced folk, who are above showing others precisely what asses they are, will usually overlook social ineptitude, or simply not bother with those people evermore if they are excessively graceless. But Italians want you to know that you have committed the equivalent of wearing your underpants on the outside, and will go out of their way to bring it to your attention! that is why the bruta figura is alive and thriving in Italy. It is, in a somewhat crude and unsophisticated way, a means of raising oneself higher by discrediting others on matters that are of absolutely no importance.

The comfort one can draw is that only those who themselves suffer from a severe mental poverty would deign to apply such methods of obtaining elevated social status, and that the peasant out in the countryside, though poor and course, shows himself to be richer and more sovereign than his refined urban kin.

As with many other posts on Italy, the author remains in hiding.

Murphy’s Law, Entropy, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics

Only entropy comes easy – Anton Chekov

In a quaint BBC Radio 4 short, comedian Robin Ince (co-presenter Infinite Monkey Cage) provides an entertaining insight into Murphy’s Law. After a review of Murphy’s Law (and a brief mention of Sod and his law), Ince tells of an equation that purportedly actually computes the probability of something going wrong, which shall not detain us here as it is of no interest.

As a reminder, Murphy’s Law boldly states that: “if something can go wrong, it will.”

There was, however, sadly no mention in the program of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and entropy, which one would think should have something to do with things going “right” or “wrong”. Entropy can be thought of as a measure of disorder, and the Second Law states that the overall disorder of a (closed) system, its entropy, will always increase. This is why earphone cables somewhat infuriatingly tangle rather than spontaneously wind themselves neatly in your pocket, and indeed also why cathedrals and mountains are eventually reduced to rubble. We view such events as undesirable, and so attach to them a negative value captured in our notion of “disorder” (tangled cables, or piles of rubble strewn around where formerly there was a cathedral). Ultimately this disorder relates to our notion of things “going wrong” (the cathedral actually collapsing, or the more traumatic event of finding the earphone cable tangled every time).

So on this reasoning, something “going right” usually means – and is another way of saying – “the imposition of order”, which in turn is another way of saying “limiting the number of ways something can be arranged”. Whereas, on the other hand, something going wrong is our failure to limit the number of ways something can be arranged in a manner that suits us. So for example, it’s difficult to keep an earphone cable from knotting itself because there are many more ways to knot it than there are to organise it in a way that (to us) is tidy and ordered. And any one of these different ordered ways of arranging it require some expenditure of energy and, ultimately, costs us effort. Whereas the many disordered ways of arranging the cable (or ways that to us are not useful) require less energy and therefore happen more frequently, and for free.

So, given that an input of energy (or effort) is required to bring about a more ordered state (equivalent to something “going right”), it is therefore more likely that things will remain in, or degrade to, a less ordered state (things “going wrong”). That, in effect, is Murphy’s law.

Just make things even clearer, alternatively and equivalently we could state that given there are many more ways to arrange something in a disordered manner (something going wrong) than there are to arrange it in an ordered manner (it going right), things will on the average be more wrong than right – unless some effort (energy) is expended in making them “right”.*

(It would be a delight if a physicist suffering from a bout of otium and straying on to this page might offer an interpretation of the above.)

As a final observation, Murphy’s Law is one of the few if not the only law that is self-protecting: if something should fail to go wrong, this is not proof that Murphy’s law is wrong, it is in fact proof of the precise opposite: that Murphy’s Law works well, even to the point where the law itself fails to work properly on occasion. This is, of course, paradoxical, but that doesn’t stand in the way of Murphy’s Law.

In other words, Murphy’s law is non-falsifiable and therefore, like Religion, is forever safe from challenge. This is what makes Murphy’s Law a law of human nature and not a law of Nature. And though it is infinitely more entertaining than Religion, it nonetheless stands alongside it, in that its veracity and predictive power are dependent on human value rather than any particular objective fact of reality. As far as objective reality is concerned, nothing ever goes wrong; things just happen and it is us who impose strictures that dictate which ones have gone right and which have gone wrong.

* While it is useful to think of entropy as a measure of disorder, this is not what it is precisely. Entropy is a measure of the number of ways the particles of a system can be arranged (its micro-states), for which value-laden terms such as order and disorder provide no insight. An example of a system is indeed an earphone cable, the particles being those at the quantum level; i.e., the atoms making up the cable. The ultimate system that contains all other sub-systems is of course the Universe, and its entropy is a measure of how all its roughly 10^(80) particles are arranged at a particular instant. Thus, the entropy of the universe a moment ago was less than it is right now, because though we may have possibly imposed order (for example, by confining the number of ways in which an earphone cable can be stored to just one “tidy” way, eliminating all the “untidy” ways), overall the universe has been degraded, because work was required and something – food molecules arranged in a very specific way in an egg, say – had to be scrambled (literally in the egg’s case), so as to provide us with the energy to tidy the cable. This degradation or increase in the number of ways those molecules can be arranged represents an overall increase in universal entropy, given that to produce the egg in the first place the chicken also had to degrade food matter to obtain the energy in which to make the egg, and so on in a chain back to the Big Bang.

The order/disorder definition only makes sense from the perspective of a goal-driven organism. Ordered micro-states (low entropy) are just as likely as disordered micro-states (high entropy) and it is only because we value the ordered states (from preferring a pile of berries in the corner of our cave to having them still on the tree… all the way to tidy kitchens, fridges, and cars and so on, to transporting food from ordered supermarkets rather than having to pick it off trees or run after it), that we consider something as having gone wrong on the occasions we end up with disordered states.

Donald Trump’s Deeds Consistent With Character

[Former acting president] Donald Trump’s abuse of copyrighted music in the face of artists’ repeated protestations seems consistent with the character of someone under allegation of sexual assault and rape: he goes ahead and does it even when you say you don’t want him to.

Though far less serious, using copyrighted material against the express wish of the copyright owner is out of the same stable as grabbing people by their genitals – without their consent. This is not to mention all the other violations he is on record committing or is accused of.

Columnist Aditya Chakrabortty also makes a similar observation on character in a Guardian piece on the sleaze surrounding Boris Johnson, a prime minister no less. Quoting F Scott Fitzgerald, Chakrabortty notes that “actions are character”.

George Floyd: a leisurely murder

Save for the humanity of passers by and their smartphones, George Floyd’s murder would have been filed away as just one more routine, run-of-the-mill police incident that ended in a “tragic” death.

The horror in the murder of George Floyd does not stop at the killing of an unarmed man who at most, possibly, may have passed a fake 20 dollar bill. And even then, he may not have known it was fake. No doubt racists might deem that justification enough, as it will only have been the tip of the nefarious iceberg that was Floyd’s undoubted life of crime. He was, after all, black.

For the rest of us, deep reflection reveals an aspect of the casual slaying that is nearly as chilling as the scenes of a man slowly expiring before our eyes. Had the images not been captured, it is not simply that justice would not have been served, as thankfully eventually it was; it is that the murder would have passed as just one more routine police “interaction”, to be processed as just another instance of police having no choice but to resort to extreme force to apprehend a violent, drug fuelled criminal – despite the fact that Floyd was anything but violent. Without the humanity of concerned passers by, one imagines the police report might have read “suspect died whilst resisting arrest” or something to that effect, accompanied by a routine coroner’s report showing health issues that explain why he died in that particular moment (for if he only died whilst resisting arrest and not because of it, then some other explanation is needed).

Except we do not need to imagine it. The actual police report released to the press on the day of Floyd’s murder reads:

“Two officers arrived and located the suspect, a male believed to be in his 40s, in his car. He was ordered to step from his car. After he got out, he physically resisted officers. Officers were able to get the suspect into handcuffs and noted he appeared to be suffering medical distress. Officers called for an ambulance. He was transported to Hennepin County Medical Center by ambulance where he died a short time later.”

All very tragic but routine.

And one can see just how routine it was for Chauvin in the chilling images of him leisurely choking Floyd to death, without the slightest grimace of discomfort or unease on his face. Neither is there regret nor pity in his eyes for what he later tried to claim was just following police procedure.

Whilst Jesus may love him, Chauvin is currently probably the most reviled individual on the planet. There is already a Wikipedia page on him, securing his infamy for as long as there is an internet. And once he has read it – for without doubt he will stumble across it over the next 30 years or so whilst leisurely surfing the web from his cell – if he has even a stump of humanity in him, it will dawn on him who he now and forever will be to those who similarly find the page, or learn about him at law school; he is not simply a cop who killed someone wrongfully, he’s the guy who nonchalantly choked a man to death.

The death penalty is barbaric and no one should be subject to it, irrespective of the crime. But that is as far as human mercy can extend in cases such as Chauvin. It’s up to Jesus now.

Thoughts Not Beliefs

I am prepared to be shown where I am mistaken and made aware of where I may perhaps be prejudice even without intending, or simply ignorant of facts. I enthusiastically invite correction if it is to advance an honest argument in good faith. But please do so only if your reasons are genuine and not motivated out of bad faith. Argue your point without resort to ad hominem and false accusation, because use of these weaponised tricks of discussion are the surest give away that we are indeed in bad faith and our arguments morally bankrupt.

Little of the commentary on Dinner Party Chatter should be taken as a firm stance or professed belief. Most of it, though not all, is reflection. Where the discourse might resemble a hard stance or belief, the reader should be cautious.

I also reserve the right to change my mind about a matter, and in fact invite others to try and change it for me if they are bothered. The willingness and especially the active search for challenges to our thinking keeps us from deluding ourselves. It’s how science proceeds, and with a little humour as well as on occasion a light-hearted excursion close to the edge, such scepticism and distrust, even of one’s own inclinations (I hesitate to call them beliefs) is a very good thing for us too. As I frequently try to remind myself, only the sane their sanity doubt. Which works the other way round also: only for doubters is sanity certain. Only doubters of their own beliefs can be sure they are thinking for themselves, and not because someone else taught them to think that way.

The only rule advisable when questioning one’s own beliefs and absolutely anything believed by others, is to keep it civil and if possible, entertaining.

Where it is usual and often expected to profess a firm belief and to defend it as such (Brexit is right/wrong; God does/doesn’t exist; AI is good/bad, and so on) the smartest position might be to look at things dispassionately, though not necessarily with indifference; or perhaps acknowledge an inclination towards one position or another and see what comes of it as you find out more. What Brexit made painfully clear and religious belief has always suffered from, is that most of the time we do not have enough data to make a judgment one way or the other, not one that is worthy of the title Belief, to be defended until the break up of the United Kingdom or the Second Coming. Though perhaps such matters do make for good discussion down at the pub (sadly, currently a thing of the past during this coronavirus pandemic).

Such issues as Brexit and existence of God usually get decided on what we prefer and what we think we want or need, whether it be lower immigration or eternal life, and not on what we know. There may also be an element of fear. In these and many other examples, factual data is what we need to make a firm decision and formulate a belief. When we have such data, along with guiding principles of right and wrong, we can afford the convenience of neatly filing away a matter under the heading Beliefs, possibly.

For myself, most times I know what I like and don’t like, and I’m aware of certain actions that work to produce wellbeing and others that prevent it, and on that bases I feel, sometimes at least, able to make decisions. But such practical decision making is not based on belief in the rightness or wrongness of something, it’s just prudence. It is probably how most people navigate daily life, driven, as I say, by likes and dislikes on the one hand, and on the other by conduct whose consequences we perceive as bringing about wellbeing, or not, with both hands at times being in conflict.

We like wine, but have learned that an extra glass could be harmful. So in this sense we could be said to hold a belief that wine in excess is bad for overall wellbeing, and such a belief seems justified because there is evidence, gathered first hand and usually the next day, that too much wine is harmful. But as to whether or not wine is actually good for us, this is a trickier belief to defend, however much we like the idea. We need vast and numerous scientific studies free of funding from the alcohol industry and bias from the media, carried out by sober scientists, to confirm what could only ever be suspected and much hoped for all these thousands of years of imbibing and boozing. (There is now, if it is to be believed, alleged evidence that shows red wine is good for you. Which is good news, though the bad news is that it’s only in moderation.)

Other matters are even trickier. Whether Brexit is a good thing or that God exists involve reviewing a huge body of historical and scholarly data on the EU in the case of Brexit, and having absolutely no evidence whatsoever to work with in the case of God’s alleged existence. Thus few can claim to be in a position to make a firm judgement and hold a belief on the former, and only charlatans claim to know anything about the latter.

Similarly with the phenomenon of billionaires. I can only say that I know I don’t like the idea of billionaires or trust them on the basis of what they say and do. Even so, as with God and Brexit, I am unsure whether, all told, they might possibly hold an overall benefit for humanity, what with their innovating and captaining.

The question of billionaires is a useful example of the healthy practice of doubting and testing your inclinations, by the way. I am inclined, possibly because I am frequently on the rails, against billionaires arising among us. There is as I say an unhealthy dollop of envy in this inclination naturally, but it is balanced with a sound smidgen of curiosity as to whether they provide an overall good for society. If they do, then we must preserve them, whilst trying to minimise the harm that they will inevitably also produce as autocratic power houses in the fertile ground of democratic societies. (Auto and demo are contradictory terms not for nothing. Those Greeks knew what they were talking about.)

If billionaires do turn out to provide an overall benefit for a democratic society, they could reasonably and I argue happily be put to work in its service. Once proven to be the indispensable innovators and dynamos they claim they are (currently used to partly justify their control, as a tiny group, of more than half the world’s resources), economies based on true equity and sustainability can cultivate billionaires without compromising on principle. A billionaire would be the equivalent of a well loved jackass – and some of them are quite adorable – put to work for the benefit of all, but really, really well cared for. They will be given a luxury mansion in which they would all be stabled comfortably together, with a yacht, private jet and plenty of carrots, all to give that necessary incentive to produce golden eggs for society, and not the illusion of it. Lavish praise and adoration would be provided by visitors, who would come for the day with their children to marvel at these remarkable individuals who in exchange for a few luxuries and some love, provide so much.

But seriously, without poking fun, it is a pet hypothesis of mine that individuals exist who have the same or better acumen and genius of our current billionaires, yet without an accompanying yearning for personal accumulation beyond that of a decent life free of wants and imbued with true eudaimonia, with genuine egalitarian opportunities for fulfilment, and also a delight and love of creation for itself rather than money, excessive luxury, and power. In other words, authentic philanthropists, who do not need to first accumulate more than half the wealth of an entire planet before munificently bestowing some of it back over the inhabitants, in dribs and drabs, according to fiat, and with their name attached (as in the Gates, Soros, Buffett, and so on foundation). Reputation and belonging would be their currency, rather than what it is now, estrangement and a separateness.

The subject of billionaires is for another day. The long and short of thoughts versus beliefs is that while thoughts can be held and considered without worry, it pays to be wary of beliefs. To continually question them, and welcome when others question them honestly, with the intention of arriving at truth rather than scoring a point or advancing an agenda.

How Planets Tell You Something Is Wrong

The short answer is they kill you. Read on to see what form this justified homicide might take.

The re-emergence of birdsong and other long forgotten natural phenomena are Nature’s Final Wakeup

This morning the sun shone in a crisp, clear sky and the birds sang in a near total coronasilence. As they twittered, I was lifted by the thought that someone had recently come up with a plastic-eating bacteria (also here), and our status not to mention footprint as a festering sore on the face of a gorgeous world might become a little bit smaller.

Only how would they tell the difference? Once the miracle organisms had feasted on the masks and rubber gloves, surely they’d start on our toothbrushes and shirt buttons, after nibbling our laptops, phones and polyester underpants, literally stripping us bear? It’s not an unreasonable worry, as such might be the perils of trying to engineer ourselves out of stupidity rather than working on being smarter.

Notwithstanding the extra masks and gloves, perhaps we should bless the virus that has brought the world to a crawl and killed more than 3 million*. It took such draconian measures, but thanks is due the little pathogen for nudging our species to its senses, if just for a while. If we die in sufficient numbers, or at least are deprived of hair salons and cinemas for long enough, we may come fully to our senses, and elect governments that discipline – hell, dismantle and disband – the corporations that stoke and pander to our love of consumption and convenience. Or perhaps SARS-COV2 will fight back with a mutant that keeps us reliably locked up and, on the whole, consuming and polluting less, allowing Nature a foothold to tiptoe back to where we have elbowed Her out. Or maybe the munificent greed of Capitalism – to cite an approving Prime Minister Johnson – as it slashes and burns forest while we stand and watch, will release another pathogen that will happily jump the species barrier, to wreak the havoc required to get our attention. Would we then rid ourselves of the Johnsons, the corporations and the compulsive greed that they and not the planet or its majority thrive on?

Johnson & Greed – could be the name of a financial consultancy. What an entitled, odious twit we have as Prime Minister.

Is it always necessary to suffer in order to wake up and mend our ways? Or more to the point, fix our politicians? What of the loved ones who have died, the disparity in infection across race and class, and even our own increased risk of death? We must curse not bless the virus surely.

Only the heartless would stand and do nothing as someone lies on the ground gasping for breath. Yet the colossal environmental destruction that we permit is nothing less than our gorgeous Earth having a seizure whilst we stand idly by. Except we are hardly just idle onlookers, but guilty, actively complicit in the spectacle before us, the ones who earlier put the boot in, kicking a defenceless man to the ground to lift his wallet.

Except the outcome is somewhat different when you mug a planet as opposed to a man. Unlike a man, the planet takes so much then leaps up and fights back. If there’s any mistaking it, what we perceive as fires and floods, poisoned rivers and oceans, the great bio-diversity die-off all around us, and this blessed pandemic to cap it all, are the gasps of a life-support-system about to pack up, which we have termed an “environmental crisis”, “climate emergency” or some other doomsday planetary catastrophe. There is no such thing as far as the Earth is concerned. It happily shrugs off one catastrophe after another, eon after eon, species after species, and it might yet still see better than us to come. What happens next may kill us off, but could also be the fertile Earth for a species that thrives on our spoil and waste. Take comfort at least from that.

Perhaps then, worry less about the planet for its own sake and more about ourselves, because already it is us who are gasping for breath. To save the system that supports our lives and as a bonus delights us with its beauty – if you’re into that sort of thing – there is only one way to do it. Politically. Out with governments that serve corporations and the rich, in with those who not only pledge to put the planet first, but visibly and daily work with the scientists and experts who will show them how to do it; just as we see experts right now guiding politicians throughout this coronavirus pandemic. That is the only way to be sure that we are in for a chance of averting a shut-down of our blue-green life-support apparatus.

Recycle and switch off lights if it makes you feel better. But without a genuine political will that has teeth, directed by the truthfulness and clarity of science, the best advice is to eat, drink and make merry, for tomorrow, if not you, then your children will surely die.

The noblest among all the moral fruits of science and that which is peculiarly its own, is Truthfulness; that truthfulness which leads from the sense of personal responsibility to inner Freedom

Max Planck

*As of writing