Anathem

Some time ago, somebody said I should gather my entries from all my blogs and the places where I submit poetry, edit it a bit, structure the mass, and make it into a book. Occasionally, I think it might work, and I toy with that idea a bit.

Once in a while, I shelve the idea semipermanently because somebody's writing has impressed me so much that it rubs my face into the inferiority of my writing. This has happened so far with both Iain Banks (see official site) and Neil Gaiman (official site here).

However, with Neal Stephenson, what gets to me is the sheer baroque exuberance and depth of construction that he is able to muster. His writing is sometimes too dense, too full of half-ideas and full-ideas. Of late, however, I've been digesting his latest book, Anathem.

I think that it's a beautiful ideas book. Any student of epistemology or of ideas about knowledge, in general, should read this book very carefully. Go to the website and explore the links. It's not easy work, but if you can digest this book, it becomes a lot easier to understand the ideas people have come up with about reality.

I don't think I've ever recommended a work of fiction as a textbook for anything except literature. This is one rare exception; I think all serious students of mathematics (as opposed to those who do math just because they have to) should read this book. In fact students of philosophy, history, and the natural sciences would also benefit a lot.

Well, at this point you'll notice I haven't actually said anything about the plot or the characters. I think that if you're not going to read the book, it won't matter; if you do, it's best you find everything out for yourself. Or go to Stephenson's site and explore, before you decide to take the plunge.

Not So Regimented

I was much amused by a speech given by the Gnome on 17 October 1973 at the Grand Convocation of Educators. In that speech, while encouraging and exhorting the new stalwarts of the education system, he entertained as well. Here is one of the anecdotes he told, and which I hereby dedicate to my wingmen and companions in 'wayward habits'.

Let me relate to you an incident, a real one, which occurred in [a renowned warrior regiment of Albion] and which is recorded in a recent history of the regiment.

The regiment is noted for its unconventional fighting methods. Partly as a consequence of this, it was able to score glorious victories by doing the unexpected, thereby surprising and overwhelming the enemy. But while its battlefield record is illustrious, its peacetime activities posed a problem to top military brass. Top-ranking military officers, other than those of the highest level of genius, often have conventional minds with little liking for unorthodox behaviour. So Generals in peacetime looked with disfavour upon what they regarded as the wayward habits of this regiment.

It happened that when a General visited one of the units of the regiment, he drew attention to various shortcomings which he had observed. The unit's commanding officer was left in no doubt as to the poor impression he had made on the General. After the General's departure, the CO gathered his officers and men together and addressed them as follows:

"Men, I am afraid the General does not like us. But that doesn't matter as long as we like ourselves."

The men cheered their CO to the echo. And so, an episode that could have proved harmful to their morale was instead turned into something that boosted morale. The soldiers in this regiment were able to do this because they knew they were good soldiers...

Put in simple terms, it means this. If you want to hold yourself in esteem when you believe that some people do not, you must believe that you are proficient in your work. And the best way to cultivate this belief in your proficiency is to be proficient.

And that is all I have to say, in the time-honoured formula used to end military reports in the Atlantean army.

Adam Smith and the Facebook Gnomes

Actually, I was going to call this post Adam Smith and the Facebook Gnomes: Productivity Theft and the Wealth of Nations but it was too long a title to capture anyone's attention seriously. The reason for this post is that the time has come for self-flagellation and sad introspection on the demerits of modern online life.

Adam Smith wrote, in his 1776 masterpiece The Wealth of Nations, "When [a worker] first begins his new work, he is seldom very keen and hearty... for some time he rather trifles than applies to good purpose. Rural workmen obliged to change work and tool every half hour develop slothful and lazy habits."

In other words, multitasking (the doing of many things in an intertwined way) is a productivity sink. Many studies have shown that quick distractions result in long-term time wasting as the brain attempts to reorient itself. Work breaks actually break work. It is better, for example, to develop the habit of working 4-6 hour stretches on one objective than to work an hour, take a breather, and return to work.

However, the personal experience of modern man is such that most people find it psychologically impossible to work for long stretches. Rather, we make a virtue of short attention spans and call it multitasking. This, as Adam Smith points out, reduces productivity and the quality of work.

On the other hand, there are some specific areas of work which require true multitasking — the seamless perception of reality and its manipulation towards multiple ends through common activity. True multitasking is about doing many things at the same time, not doing bits of things in quick rotation or succession. Most of these areas of work require multiple people: think of the way a restaurant (or an orchestra) works, for example.

I've been letting myself take Facebook breaks too often, I think. I spent a day monitoring my productivity and was aghast to find that a day without Facebook adds about five hours of work at least! Going out for lunch actually takes two hours unless you are very focussed — and further downtime may be added if you then feel dozy after a heavy meal. In one day, I realise that unless I am actually teaching, making notes while reading, or doing active and specific research (as opposed to flitting through the internet) I might be wasting up to eight (!!) hours of my 12-hour working day just doing nothing specifically useful.

Woe is me... I feel a sudden urge to take a good look at the dour Scottish Protestantism that made a virtue of hard and unstinting labour without distractions between sunrise and sunset.

I hear it got a lot less dour and more fun after sunset though.

Writing a TOK Essay (Part V): Structuring the Argument

One might argue that unfolding an argument is as good as structuring it. That's not quite true. You can unfold a dress, but structuring it so that it unfolds nicely is a fine art.

In general, writing any essay begins with a quick survey of the key ideas. What is the question explicitly about? What is it implicitly about? Are you imagining the implicit? (Strictly speaking, what is implicit is what you can infer from the bare text, by use of logic alone, but within the ToK context.)

For example, supposing you're looking at a question that talks about language and reason being important in history. The choice of history as the area of knowledge or discipline is not unexpected; after all, history is one of the key disciplines in the overarching framework of human knowledge. However, the choice of language and reason implies that they are being set up as two interlocking parts of the definition of history; they're not necessarily in opposition, but they at the very least to be seen as complementary.

Defining history, language and reason is simple. Just take care to define history as an area of knowledge and the other two as ways of knowing — after all, this is in the context of writing a ToK essay. You also need to know that the main problem of history is veracity — how do you know that history is real? What are the tests for valid histories?

Once you've laid the definitional groundwork, you need to see how language and reason interact in the construction of history. Language is the medium that supplies (or conveys) much of the raw material, reason is the process through which the material is assembled into a useful structure.

Then point out the several problems of language in terms of information loss (at the source, during transmission, failure of recording, failure of reception, etc) and do a few paragraphs with examples about that. Follow that with the problems of reason in terms of information construction (validity, reliability, utility etc) and do a few paragraphs with examples as well.

You can now write about how these problems might be overcome, then summarise the roles of language and reason in the domain of history. Point out how histories can be improved by the proper application of the historian's discernment and artifice, as a conclusion based on your earlier paragraphs dealing with problems.

And... you're done.

Structure is easy: definitions, issues, problems, disposing of problems, conclusions based on what has been raised. You've probably got weeks to do it, and you probably only need two or three days. Anyone who is using more time than that is obviously wasting time somewhere.

Writing a TOK Essay (Part IV): Unfolding the Argument

In my previous post on this subject, I wrote about the importance of definitions and some approaches to the definition of terms. The thing about definitions is that they lead, by various forms of reason, to certain arguments. As such arguments unfold, we have to be careful to examine them to see if we are not blinded by preconceptions (constructed frameworks) or prejudices (judgements in advance).

For example, a student recently told me that there was the case of a girl whose mental age was fixed in early childhood (I think it was three months) by a biological defect. A case was advanced for keeping her, by elective surgery, at a pre-adolescent stage of physical development. One argument against this was that it would deprive her of her sexual rights.

There are many arguments you could advance, but this is definitely (and definitively) not one of them. The counter-argument is obvious: in almost all jurisdictions, the mentally incompetent are protected from abuse by law. This child will never have the ability to give legal consent to sexual behaviour, and hence will never have the legal capacity to exercise sexual rights.

The point of this example is that definitions constrain us, but we can choose which set of definitions to apply. In this case, we might argue that all humans in general have a right to sexual enjoyment. That's very abstract; in practice, society governs this by laws which protect the vulnerable. Once we define which humans are allowed these rights, and under what conditions, the case becomes much clearer.

Similarly, the argument that history is fundamentally different from science is not an easy one to make. I've mentioned this before. If you define history accurately, you will see that it is, if you like, the grandfather of science (philosophy is the grandmother). Science as we know it was once divided into natural history (observations of reality) and natural philosophy (theories of reality).

Because of this definitional background, if asked to choose two disciplines (or areas of knowledge) as examples of different approaches, you should choose things that are more unalike. It's possible to argue that history and geography are less alike than history and science (or than geography and science, heh).

The primary reason that I've used the phrase 'unfolding the argument' here, therefore, is that if you've already started by defining the terms, sometimes those definitions will automatically unfold into points of argument. It's like a battlefield; the disposition of terrain features and forces on both sides will make certain tactical options more likely and others less likely. In some cases (for example, the one ford over a river that one side must cross), it's quite clear that there is one obvious option.

The secondary argument is that one should be careful to 'unfold the argument' step by step. It's like reverse origami; you have a crane, can you decompose the crane into folds? If you do it correctly, the logic of the argument will be clear and the examiner will be less irritated by it. Sloppy folding leads to sloppy unfolding; sloppy unfolding can lead to tearing of the material that was folded.

Things To Do

I remember writing about my ambition, or lack of it, five years ago in this post. Despite being talked of as ambitious, I am quite certain that those who talked never knew me — I don't think I am. Rather, as I said then, my ambition as a teacher has always been "to warn the idle, encourage the timid, help the weak and be patient with everyone." Those lines are quoted from Paul's final instructions to the church at Thessalonica.

It was with some amusement therefore that I read the Gnome's version of June 1977, in which he said, "We had to exhort the faithful, encourage the faint-hearted, and censure the ungodly." That, he said, was the task of the Atlantean leadership.

It occurs to me that both lists are the outlines of some sort of philosophy. Both can be seen as lists of 'things to do'. For me, Paul's list is ideal for a teaching philosophy: you will always have three kinds of poor students — the lazy, the fearful and the less academically inclined — and you must be patient with all of them. For the Gnome, it was a question of political importance: what to do with those on your side, those on the other side, and those sitting on the fence.

The key difference is that I've never seen any kind of student as being 'on the other side'. If anything, I've always been on their side (whether they thought so or not, heh). I've felt frustration, but never contempt; I've felt irritation, but never hatred. Students are people trying to get on in life; it's the duty of a teacher to help them in whatever way a teacher can, and not to hinder them.

The Gnome in Your Head

Urgh. I overslept this morning and found myself dreaming. (Apparently the only time I dream, or at least remember that I've dreamt, is when I've been ill or when I've slept too much.) In this literal daydream, I found myself explaining to a group of people just why our civil service was both good and bad. I remember summing it up as 'good structures, bad implementation; planning evolves but people degenerate.'

I woke up with tumultuous applause ringing in my years, only to realise that all my best rhetorical efforts had come to naught — in the time-honoured let-down, "It was only a dream." How sad!

But all that did underscore the importance that the Gnome has been having in my life recently. I can't help but wonder when he will pass on, and what dire or wondrous revelations will come forth when he does.

Brotherless and Fatherless

In the old world of the Wyverns, we were all brothers. We kept our differences private and we were united by the common flag, the common emblems, the common ideas. We were all very different people and very proud of it, but there were some depths to which we would not descend.

No longer, it seems. Just tonight I was listening to a man who sat on the interview panels of the College of Physicians. He told me that he was interviewing a young Wyvern who was seeking admission to the College as a trainee. This Wyvern (if you can still call him that) was asked, "Why should we admit you, and not your brothers?"

At which point, the degenerate replied, "Because I am smarter and better." He then proceeded to run down his brothers in no uncertain terms. The interviewer was aghast. He asked me tonight, "How is it that such an attitude could ever be cultivated among Wyverns? They have always been closely knit."

It was another man who replied, "The Wyverns nest in a place where the ruling principality himself displays such traits of unseemly competition between brothers. He is known to make public statements denigrating his own mentors, his peers and fellow principalities, and even the other nests of the Wyverns."

And there you have it. Where there is no true father-figure, and no allegiance to the Father either, brotherhood will fail, and so will the Brotherhood.

Meditation on Psalm 124

This is the dominion, Darkness,
That thy hand is glad to find;
Though the world hath light and laughter,
Thou art never far behind.

While the thoughts of men continue
In materialistic vein,
Thou shalt ever be exalted
Through a haze of human pain.

Therefore we shall still resist thee
Though we be the last to stand;
We are really not too sorry
That we shall escape thy hand.

=====

Notes:
1. Psalm 124 is one of the Songs of Ascents, essentially hymns of pilgrimage.
2. My notes show me that I first wrote this as Part VI of a longer meditation back in the days of the online Poetry Room — this was on Friday 25 Aug 1989, apparently.

Justifiable Assumptions and their Consequences

I'm still ploughing through the hefty tomes that constitute the Gnome's wise sayings from his apical position at the top of the Atlantean hierarchy from 1959 to at least 1984. He makes an awful lot of assumptions, and sometimes, you have to take into account his weaknesses as well as his colossal strengths.

For example, the Thunderer once said that the Gnome was a bad judge of character, able to spot talent but not able to sense the constitutional underpinnings of it within each individual. From various readings, you can probably guess that the Gnome assumed something like a 1 in 3000 success rate at finding world-class candidates for the Atlantean High Command. The Thunderer's pragmatic assessment would reduce that to perhaps 1 in 10,000.

The Atlantean education system currently contains a shade under 30,000 educators up to the high school level. Of these, about 800 are principalities or deputy principalities. This means that if we are to take the founding fathers of modern Atlantis seriously as to the level of available talent, there are not likely to be more than three world-class educators in the whole lot.

The commonly-held assumption is that the best talent is actually sucked into the Administrative Service, the priesthood which controls all the highest functions of Atlantean society. Approximately 300 officers occupy about 600 posts; a large number of these officers run the commercial arm of Atlantean government.

The current Atlantean population is about 5,000,000 souls. If 1 in 10,000 is a candidate for the high Command, then there are only 500 people who can run the show. 300 of them are in the Administrative Service; that leaves 200 for everyone else.

Of these 200, we assume that 3 are somewhere in the education service, swamped by about 29,000 other officers of variable but lesser abilities. Yet somehow, we have managed to cultivate a 'world-class education system'.

My conclusion at this point is that if this education system is 'world-class' (whatever that means), it's a triumph of systems engineering over human leadership. It must be a system that works regardless of the manpower available. In fact, as I've published elsewhere, it is a system which has extremely fluid manpower characteristics but extremely rigid structural characteristics.

It is like a system of concrete channels within which seawater and all kinds of marine life circulate. The channels are fixed, but what kind of 'catch of the day' you get depends a lot on luck — the quality of your fish is not guaranteed, except that it is the kind which will thrive in such a system.

If I were less charitable, or willfully cynical, I'd call it a goldfish bowl system. But there is one key difference: with a goldfish bowl, the fish see each other and the observer can see them all — but in this system, the fish do not all see each other, and the observer can't see them all either. It's concrete and steel, not glass and light.

I can't wait to get to my final conclusion.

Dividing the Day

When midnight's shift divides the day
I look within — and what is saved?
Or what is gone, and not to be?
But sleep has come, and all is dark.

When morning's wall remains to climb
The first step's getting out of bed
More choices open up again
And boil away under the sun.

Educational Values

On a warm August morning in 1963, 144 years after the Gambler, the Gnome pronounced these fateful words: "I have always regarded the pursuit of knowledge as the noblest and the most rewarding activity of mankind... If I were asked what is the most important single criterion by which to judge the prospects of any underdeveloped country, I would have no hesitation in saying that it is its attitude towards education." He said this in the context of a talk entitled 'Industrial Growth and Political Stability'.

The problem of course is that defining development is the difficult part. The Gnome grappled with it all his life; he said early on that you would need to look at it sociologically, psychologically, culturally, economically, historically — and you would still be like the blind men and the elephant. In fact, he said, you would be reduced to the maxim of, "I'll know it when I see it."

The issue is perhaps more clearly delineated as one of what kind of development you are looking for. The Gnome's world was primarily an economic one, although in his writings you can sense the frustration he had in realising that his beloved economic precepts were inadequate. In fact, he once said (firmly tongue in cheek) on the eve of a trip to the Annual Conference of the World Bank and IMF that he had to abstain from saying certain things because a) it would not be prudent for a small state to cause unnecessary offence to the great, and b) one should not go to the College of Cardinals reeking of heresy.

He always believed that education was the root of success. The problem was that it was inexorably linked in his mind to economic success, as well as cultural depth and political stability. He linked it to many other things, but the one thing that comes across was that he believed his people to be economically rational, perhaps to the exclusion of other things.

To this day, this is still the problem. Even those who lament the dearth of non-economic values in the national discourse are trammelled by the fact that Atlantis was a state born out of entrepreneurial migration and entrepot trade. The measure of man in modern Atlantis is his effectiveness as some sort of economic factor — how effective, how influential, how good a leader, how able to defend what has been raised.

The great thing about the Gnome, on closer reading, is that he was indeed decidedly heretical in his economic insights. He believed that state control was a good thing in parallel with a free market. That sounds odd, but in the 1960s, when he first said it, it sounded perilously like crypto-Marxism to some in the West. But the Gnome was really an avowed pragmatic socialist, if anything else. His was the world of Weber as well as Marx, of Adam Smith but only as far as an appropriate scale for the exercise of the invisible hand. He believed that the invisible world was all well and good, but it went with a visible glove, at the very least.

All that has crept into the metrics by which we measure local education. It is all very numerical, and if not, it is quantitatively qualitative. We have awards for things like 'Character Development', and schools list these awards — the more awards for qualitative development, the better. It is all very disturbing to those who look at the system from outside.

People, however, deserve the education they desire. For all the bitching, people here love the reliability of the system in the sense of its replicable behaviour, schedules, and concepts. They might dispute the validity, but seldom the utility. And that is probably how the Gnome would have wanted it.

Word of the Day: Travail

The etymology of this relatively common word is unusual and slightly macabre. It's originally from the French travailler, which in turn comes from the Latin tripalium. That last Latin word literally means 'three stakes' and refers to some ancient and now long-forgotten instrument of torture.

A travail is then, in the original sense, a period of prolonged suffering, inflicted by some external agency. If that external agency is geographical (weather, terrain, distance), then the 'travail' becomes 'travel'.

These days, however, travel is something many of us have learnt to enjoy. I am always somewhat bemused when people complain about air travel. It's one of the most comfortable sources of silent meditation in my life, in comparison with other means of mass transportation.

To enjoy that, the flight should be at least six hours long, a period sufficient for proper fluid intake, buffering, relaxation, reading, exercise and the odd amount of movie-watching. In particular, I like trans-Pacific or trans-Eurasian flights, which give you anywhere from 12 to 20 hours of peace and quiet — assuming you don't have fellow travellers who produce some sort of negative stimulus.

Today, my travels will include the final stage on my odyssey from non-driver to family chauffeur as I drive my father around for the day. Dad's always driven me around at various stages in my life. Now, I get to return the favour. I hope it will be mere travel, and not travail.

Where I Live (Part II)

I live in that awkward zone for men, the time of life during which you feel young enough for the sports of your youth, while knowing that this is quite likely untrue. I console myself with thoughts of Ryan Giggs and David Beckham, only to realise that I am older than either, and earn a minuscule fraction of their wages (and that's my annual wage against their monthly, it seems).

I live in the region just after spring, somewhere into summer, with a view of autumn and a dread of winter. Winter's faintest whispers are in my hair, my eyes, my sinews. I still feel young, but that is more a sign of how resilient my mental landscaping is, than a sign of how physically fit I am.

I live in that odd time when the old have passed away, but so have some of the young. Some of those I grew up with are dead, from heart failure, from misadventure, from a malaise of the soul. Just yesterday I received the news that a young man two-thirds of my age had died after a wasting disease. I knew him; he was a good man, a man of integrity — and he has gone away.

I have returned to the poetry of my youth. My mother, always one for the metaphysical poets, brought me up on John Donne. I found myself at Meditation XVII. And there, these words leapt out at me in violent ambush:

When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated. God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another.

And those great words are not even the most well-remembered of that meditation. Sometimes it seems that the talent of the world has died as well, that the world is like me; that old Dylan's 'green fuse' that drives my green age also drives the world, and both are less and less green by the day.

Where I Live (Part I)

Every day, I look around me, in the place in which I live, and realise what a peculiar and artificial state this is. It is the most heavily 'churched' area in this entire region; it is the most heavily Chinese; it is the most obviously Machiavellian; it is a synthesis of odd parts made unique by time and space, by commerce and grace.

Every part of the machine has been crafted by deliberate consideration. Even if at times that consideration has not been the smartest or wisest, it has been deliberate and the justifications clear. Whether the justifications were sufficient or even morally correct, is of course a different thing. But this little place is certainly the most artificial (in the original sense of 'made by art') place in this realm entire; it is the gateway between two very large and interesting oceans — large in culture, history and variety.

There is no other island in the world that bridges all the major civilisations of the past, as well as all the major ones of the present. Living here is sometimes like living in a panopticon, a central hub from which one sees everybody else more clearly than they see each other. It is interesting to see through Anglo-Chinese eyes, and Anglo-Indian eyes, and the relentless lenses of the American (and post-American) world.

Just the other day I was reflecting on how I made the transition from birth in the West to studies in the East; scholars from this island tend to make the reverse transition. It is all an enigma, but one I've begun to disentangle.

The Gnome on his own Island

There is always danger in traduction of the established narrative tapestry to suit a specialized point of view. This is especially true when one examines the life of a person of multifarious viewpoints, a man who has had (apparently) something to say about everything even when he has claimed not to have anything to say about it. Then, the specific temptation is to try and find the one mind, the one strand of thought, that binds all the sayings together.

But as a moment’s reflection will establish, even for less complex persons such as ourselves, this is not possible. We are simply too different from ourselves when compared even at different times of day and in different company and different places and when speaking on diverse occasions.

The problem of the historian who aims at biography is therefore not to delve too deeply into the psychology of the individual — even when the personality is immediately presented, this can be problematic to a professional psychologist — but to determine what kind of picture one can paint in sure and uncontestable strokes while capturing the essence of a personality in such a way that those who may have known him, and those who read of him and examine his works, may say that this was quite likely the man.

The essay I am writing will therefore a be pen-sketch, perhaps a charcoal outline, of a specific perspective on the Gnome. It is an outline of his ideas on education, how these may have led to his acts of educational intent that are part of the history of Atlantean education up to the pre-university level, and the consequences of these actions which are part of the public record. It will not capture the man himself, but provide a single silhouette from a narrow viewpoint.

It is intended that In combination with other such silhouettes, a kind of hologram may be constructed that will be a kind of remembrance of the service of this inimitable and gnomic public servant. There are few who could withstand the Thunderer's blasts; yet the Gnome gave as good as he got, in good faith and genuine camaraderie. At the end of the Gnome's 25 years of ministerial service, we read a genuine sense of loss in what the Thunderer wrote to him:

Your biggest contribution to me personally was that you stood up to me whenever you held a contrary view. You challenged my decisions and forced me to re-examine the premises on which they were made. Thus we reached better decisions.

The Thunderer was later to write, in his own biography: "The one retirement I felt most keenly was [the Gnome's]... He [felt he] had done enough, and it was time to go."

To this day, it's still hard to capture the essence of the man who for so long was the Thunderer's true and faithful internal opposition. He was a myriad times more effective in this respect than any opposition party, having the gravitas and the intellectual ability to know his stuff better than anyone else. He was strangely blind to human personalities and characters, but that made him blunt enough to square off against the Wielder of Lightning himself, and survive.

I often wish that those authorities with authoritarian tendencies would at the very least have the brains or fortune to have a Gnome in their inner circle. Unfortunately, most such dictator-types or autocrats, principalities or powers, do not see the need for such a person.

From Donne's famous 'Meditation XVII':

Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? but who takes off his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world? No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

And yet, some people are like peninsulas. The Gnome was one of them.

Familiar

I'm looking back at the day just past and thinking what a fine thing it is to have a family that is reasonably familiar and familial. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing that happened today, which made it a good day.

I was doing my weekly run to Serene and then I thought to call my father up. "Hoy dad, where are you?"

Grouchy perturbation. "Waiting for your mother, she's late, I don't know where she is. She's supposed to be here!"

You don't expect that sort of reply. So I went, "Errm, where exactly are you?"

"Buying lunch! And I've bought the lunch and I'm waiting for here because she went shopping! If she gets here, we'll be home in about ten minutes. Where are you?"

Well, at least I knew he was about ten minutes from home. Since he's a fast driver, that makes it a fairly large radius though. I made a fateful decision. "I'll be there at 1 pm, see you!" And I hung up.

I grabbed some food of my own and drove over. Yes, they were late. But that was compensated for by the chance to help my mother stash the groceries away, sit down over a meal, chat a bit, and in general do the sort of thing I haven't done for years — have lunch with my parents at home, instead of some restaurant somewhere; lunch instead of dinner, in a house that used to be my home.

Thursday's Child

When I was young, my father taught me a rhyme that went like this:

Monday's child is fair of face;
Tuesday's child is full of grace;
Wednesday's child is full of woe;
Thursday's child has far to go;
Friday's child is loving and giving;
Saturday's child works hard for his living;
And the child that is born on the Sabbath day
Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.

I was born on a Friday, and I suppose it would be nice to live up to that. But my life really has turned most frequently on the fulcrum of Thursday, which (as perhaps some of my old acquaintances from Oldham Hall will remember) has always been my longest day.

It is so even now. For some reason, I retain the urge to pack my Thursdays solidly. Thursdays are for early-morning lectures and workshops and teaching sessions; Thursdays are for working lunches and afternoon meetings; Thursdays are Serene days, on which the shipments come in; Thursdays are the days which only allow me to unwind after 11 pm. They need not be so, but they still are.

For some odd reason, the rhyme I quoted earlier on only has two known names: some people call it the Monday's Child rhyme, which is eminently logical; some other people call it the Thursday's Child rhyme, which isn't. I have always wondered why.

But I was born just before midnight on Friday, and unfortunately, I still have to work hard for my living — and, with Frost, I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep. It's sad when a Friday's child ends up an hybrid of both Thursday and Saturday — sad, but all too expected.

The Gnome's Tale (Redux)

It is with a sense of the utmost defeat in the face of poetic justice that I write this post. Some months ago, I wrote about that intriguing facet of the Atlantean myth which is The Gnome's Tale. In that post, I made reference to the two chapters in the annals of the Thunderer's lieutenants which were reserved for that august henchman and alter ego of the High Priest of Atlantis.

Now, I am stuck with the latest edition of the annals; indeed, for the sins of my house, my father and I are writing (please do not snigger) TWO CHAPTERS about the Gnome in what may well be his eulogy. My chapter, of course, is on his contribution to the Atlantean education system which sees little Atlanteans educated for 12 years (or more, if they are particularly intransigent) from the age of 6 (or thereabouts). My father will write about their fates thereafter.

How does one outline this particular aspect of the Gnome's career?

I suppose, although the material is all circumstantial, that one ought to begin by establishing his recorded perspective on such things and then trying to figure out what on earth he intended. Fortunately, in the 159th year since the Gambler founded Atlantis (or laid claim to having done so), the Gnome did us all the favour of actually producing a document in which he roundly excoriated the Priesthood of Learning for their uselessness and incompetence. He then laid out a long list of sweeping reforms, in which he restructured the Priesthood and the schools they administered, but pointedly and deliberately left the curriculum to 'specialists' under an 'effective management system'.

He then ruled with a titanium fist to ensure that good numbers were produced. It was like an educational version of his economic policy. If you couldn't count it, you couldn't count it as a success. Under the Gnome, literacy levels rose from an estimated <75% (he personally thought it was more like 30%) to more than 99%. The numbers of teachers rose. All the numbers looked better.

The tongue of the West established itself, rising in usage from <15% in the homes of the Celestials to its current >60%. And a cunning plan to destroy the Middle Kingdom's dialectical (haha) hold on language resulted in two things: the reduction of dialect usage to <1% as a primary tongue (although the Lucky variant is actually used by about 80% of the sons of the Celestials), and the rise (and stunning fall) of the Manchurian candidate's version to a peak of 80% and then down to <40%.

What a legacy! And yet, there are so many problems with the narrative and its significance that I don't quite know where to start and how deeply to dig. The corpses are still prone to rising up and walking around, as the Thunderer opens his mouth up and tells old war stories about education, more and more, as he grows mellow (and garrulous) with age.

The Earth-Apple Zone

I was just looking at the latest quad-core 27" Apple iMac today, when suddenly my brain executed one of those famous intuitive free-association leaps. It was a short jump from Earth to Apple to Earth-Apple to pomme de terre, which is of course what the French call potatoes.

And it was in that blinding flash of a thought that I wondered: can one construct a spectrum from the whole and unadulterated potato to the slenderest and crispiest of French fries? And can one do that by walking around local restaurants and burger joints and such?

I shall try. It is my new mission in life.

Mahasamatman

December is coming. The season of the rains is here, and it always reminds me of the start of Roger Zelazny's epic (but short) 1968 novel Lord of Light. The only difference is that my life is a lot less interesting than Sam's. The similarity lies in the fact that December is downtime for me; I feel that my essence is captured in a standing wave for about a month. Then, I am summoned back to the world of humanity in January.

Thinking about it, I realise that Herman Hesse's bildungsroman about Siddhartha the not-Buddha is not half as well constructed, nor as interesting, as Zelazny's.

Strangely Warmed

A few days ago, when the canal system failed (a 'once in 50 years' occurrence, according to Government spokespeople), the first thing I thought of was the 'global warming' phenomenon. It's instructive to take a careful look at the long view.

Yes, it's been getting warmer and more watery of late. Should you be concerned?

The answer is clearly 'yes'. But can we do anything about it?

The answer is clearly 'yes' — but here, we don't actually know what can be done in practice, and what the ultimate effect will be. It's probably the greatest game-changer of all, as far as human life for the next few decades or centuries is concerned. The problem is that the problem is too complicated for simple explication. We can't teach it in schools with any degree of the required nuance. We can only use extreme positions. It's all very unsatisfactory.

It is a strange new world we live in, that has such people in it. Misquoting the Bard helps, I suppose.

Doctor Evil

The archvillain in the story is always over-the-top. His nature encourages the audience of a melodrama to boo and hiss his every action. Slowly as he begins his fall, his acolytes and henchmen desert him or are eliminated because they fail him. He becomes sensitive to every implicit slight, no matter how slight or how imaginary.

And then comes the revisionism. Slowly, the story of how a plodding scientist wades in blood becomes the narrative of a brilliant scientist steeped in white robes and the holy sanctity of the laboratory. Slowly, the story of how a defiant chap mauls his mentors and badmouths them at every turn becomes the story of how his mentors were never good anyway, and besides, he too has his detractors who were once mentored by him.

And the stories come out all over the place, each one more fantastic than the one before. Where a distant figure attempts to manipulate a young person, now we have the father-figure who teaches the child every week, only to be betrayed. The lies accumulate. The evil doctor eliminates anyone who objects to the stories, and then tells more stories. He doctors reality, and indoctrinates the unwitting.

He hears tales he wants to believe, about imaginary crimes committed by otherwise hardworking and decent folk. These legitimise his own deeds, help him believe that he is not so evil, just misunderstood. And he weaves those tales into his narrative. He creates a hero myth for himself, for all villains deep down want to be heroes in this kind of drama.

Will he be believed? There's no doubt that some will believe out of the innocence of their hearts. There's no doubt that others will believe because it suits them to believe. We wait with bated breath, but sooner or later the denunciation comes — the truth will be spoken, and the evil which has clouded the minds of his tools begins to disperse.

But what's this? These tools love to have their minds clouded. It spares them the bright touch of reality, a reality in which they lose significance and power. They would rather the darkness, within which their poison has an impact that they perceive more fully, that they feel is more real.

It amuses us, we who are the audience. But for some of us, before the lights come up and the actors take a bow, we wonder: "What if it were true? And what if there really were people like that?"

And the reason we feel uneasy thereafter is that, yes, there are.

Toolism

Ah yes, today I gave my little talk on 'East and West: The Problems of Knowledge and Inquiry'. It was fascinating to realise that almost every single teacher there was a humanities teacher. It's as if the local system has spasmed and decided that math and science teachers don't have problems with knowledge and inquiry. It used to be the same thing in the local university: science majors weren't normally offered the Philosophy 101: Introduction to Logic course.

In my experience science, math and engineering majors need a lot more of that sort of thing. It's because many of them are very good at limited rule-sets and closed (well pseudo-closed) logic systems, but very bad at figuring them out in human terms. A lot of the problems of philosophical logic are human problems — problems of problem identification, problem definition, problem expression.

I hate simplifying stuff for students unless I can tell them, "This is the simplest I want to make it for you; it is much more complex than that and if you want a good map of reality, WORK FOR IT YOURSELF!"

Give them the tools, let them make art. And if it doesn't work, it's not your fault. But give them good tools, useful tools, interesting tools.

A Flood of Thoughts

It is the greyest, wettest afternoon in a very long while. It's not just the sheer quantity of water falling from the sky — that is something quite common at this time of year here — but the amount that is unable to flow away because it's high tide. The old canal, widened at huge taxpayers' expense, has proven unable to fully cope. It's still a big improvement over the days of my youth though.

I remember that I was still a student when I last waded in hip-deep water through that stretch of the Road. You had to be very careful lest you step on something unpleasant, and you had to take off your shoes so that you could put them on again at the other end. It was very slow going.

Today was not like that. But the subdued light, the resigned-looking motorists, the sad headlamps that might flicker and go out soon — these were known of old. There was an ambulance stuck in the mess. But no amount of civic cooperation would float it across the little lake where even the 4WD vehicles dared not go. I found myself wondering if the person who needed it would be in trouble.

The light was astonishingly uniformly grey. It somehow contrasted nicely with the butterscotch-milk colour of the canal waters. At this rate, iron-tainted aluminosilicate clay deposits will be a thing of the past, and this island will be down to granite bedrock. But I have faith that this won't happen. I know the Patriarchy well: they'll just import topsoil from the Southern Archipelago as usual.

Exit Strategy

This morning I ended up reading the 21st chapter of Ezekiel. For those of you seldom (or never) end up prowling around such distant chambers, the book of Ezekiel the prophet is one of the most visually and viscerally dramatic of apocalyptic writings. Ezekiel 21 is not an exception.

And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,

"Son of man, set thy face toward Jerusalem, and drop thy word toward the holy places, and prophesy against the land of Israel, and say to the land of Israel, thus saith the LORD; 'Behold, I am against thee, and will draw forth my sword out of his sheath, and will cut off from thee the righteous and the wicked. Seeing then that I will cut off from thee the righteous and the wicked, therefore shall my sword go forth out of his sheath against all flesh from the south to the north: that all flesh may know that I the LORD have drawn forth my sword out of his sheath: it shall not return any more.'

"Sigh therefore, thou son of man, with the breaking of thy loins; and with bitterness sigh before their eyes. And it shall be, when they say unto thee,' Wherefore sighest thou?' that thou shalt answer, 'For the tidings; because it cometh: and every heart shall melt, and all hands shall be feeble, and every spirit shall faint, and all knees shall be weak as water: behold, it cometh, and shall be brought to pass, saith the Lord GOD.'

Again the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,

"Son of man, prophesy, and say, Thus saith the LORD; 'Say, A sword, a sword is sharpened, and also furbished: it is sharpened to make a sore slaughter; it is furbished that it may glitter: should we then make mirth? it contemneth the rod of my son, as every tree. And he hath given it to be furbished, that it may be handled: this sword is sharpened, and it is furbished, to give it into the hand of the slayer.'

"'Cry and howl, son of man: for it shall be upon my people, it shall be upon all the princes of Israel: terrors by reason of the sword shall be upon my people: smite therefore upon thy thigh. Because it is a trial, and what if the sword contemn even the rod? it shall be no more,' saith the Lord GOD.

"Thou therefore, son of man, prophesy, and smite thine hands together. and let the sword be doubled the third time, the sword of the slain: it is the sword of the great men that are slain, which entereth into their privy chambers. I have set the point of the sword against all their gates, that their heart may faint, and their ruins be multiplied: ah! it is made bright, it is wrapped up for the slaughter. Go thee one way or other, either on the right hand, or on the left, whithersoever thy face is set. I will also smite mine hands together, and I will cause my fury to rest: I the LORD have said it."

It is all in the sheer dynamism of the phrasing, the graphic nature of the word-hoard, the eccentricity of punctuation. It is the voice of He who wields a terrible swift sword, who makes hearts melt and hands become enfeebled. The trial comes, and then the judgement, and who shall withstand the wrath?

One is tempted to take such literature out of context, irrationally and antitheologically. But one should be conscious and cautious about what exactly one intends to do. What if the tolling of the bell is not for the wicked who are obviously so, but for those who claim to be righteous and are not? What if this warning to ancient Israel has nothing to do with modern Israel, or to any modern Jerusalem that sets up the abomination of desolation within its gates? But there it is; when the eagles of Zeus are mounted in the gates of the once-consecrated city, it is the end.

A Musement

I spent this morning giving a little talk to the Friends of the local Museum. It was a talk about '200 Years of Atlantean Education'. One charming senior lady told me that Aristotle had mentioned it (I suppose that would have been more than 2000 years ago!) but refused to tell me exactly what he'd said.

This Atlantis, of course, is not the Mediterranean vision of Plato and Herodotus, but the distinctly different one of Old Thumbs. It was amazing and amusing to all of us that I was able, in my allotted hour, to cover all 200 years of the educational history of the place.

The main concept, as always, is the use of education as more than (but also) a tool for commercial gain. It is the basis of a state's security — whether social, military, or economic — and should not be seen as merely something that gives people a generic kind of value-added quality. Rather, the careful and directed application of education is, just as Stalin said, like a weapon. And Wisdom, as the Preacher said in the book that bears his title, is actually better than weapons of war.

So there I was, at the brand new Museum, having a perfectly civilised discussion about how Atlantis had come up with the superb piece of social engineering called the Education System. I began with the whims and fancies of the Gambler, fast-forwarded through the efforts of the various religious orders and the tight-fisted Cathayans of my ancestry, and ended up with the sweeping reforms of the Gnome and his successors.

Everyone enjoyed themselves. So did I.

Dreams of Steel

Had a bad night. Dreamt that I was back at the old place, in the post-Stalinist era. The place was in lockdown mode. I was visiting with the warden, who was my old friend Dhónall. We had porridge for breakfast down in the steamy benches of the workers' canteen. Steel fences were everywhere, and the local blue-and-gold bank had set up shop. The bank tellers were the only bit of glamour in a mass of industrial concrete.

Dhónall told me that everything had gone this way after the Old Man had bought it in the bathtub and his successors had proven too weak to hold the centre. A purge had followed, with revolutionaries, counter-revolutionaries, revisionists and post-modernists all taking part in the bloodshed. Women were not spared. In fact, some had been blamed for the greatest atrocities.

Below everything was a large sewer with stone slabs covering up most of it. The stench was far enough away that it had little effect. It was all starkly, frighteningly detailed. It was real. All along the perimeter of the fence were the old awards. Best for this, best for that, quality this and that. Above them all were the words, "Work makes you free."

Everyone looked tired. The teachers punched cards to book in and out. The students just marched from place to place, the chips in their necks telling everyone who they were and where they were. From a green glass module suspended by a crane in the middle, a monitor station kept tabs on each person, lighting up the truants and delinquents with various colours of laser beam. The PE department consisted of ex-rugbymen with truncheons and water-polo caps.

I woke up feeling bothered.

The Prisoner

Today, for some reason, I felt a sudden urge to go even further back in time than usual, to a time just before the Beatles. It was the time of that great Patrick McGoohan series, The Prisoner.

One of the quotes that kept yammering at me was this one: "Unlike me, many of you have accepted the situation of your imprisonment and will die here like rotten cabbages." It was a dark time, the late 60s — but it was also a fantastic time of baroque invention around the theme of Orwell's 1984.

I have a sudden sense of loss for those early TV shows — The Prisoner, Ultraman, Space: 1999, The Man from UNCLE, Mission: Impossible, The Wild, Wild West, Sapphire and Steel, The Avengers, and of course, the early Doctor Who. There are at least a dozen more I could mention. Somehow, the sheer quantity of interesting TV programmes seems larger than it is today, even in the days of cable TV.

Sigh.

Legacies in the Rain

It's one of those melancholic nights. You sit in the shushing rush of the rain around your cold walls and you sit in the warm light that does not warm you, and you ask if anything is left of you when all of you is gone.

And then, you read the little comments and traces from people like the Teaman and the Wyvern Girl, and the older ones from people like Wolfberry and the Dancer, and those that came in between and before.

Perhaps, at that moment, you feel a little happiness. It is not little in a quantitative sense, but it is small and compact and fits under your breastbone and will never leave you. It is more powerful than a pacemaker, it is more powerful than a Peacemaker. It is the little grain of faith that God gives you to tell you that at some point, you made a difference, and it doesn't matter if you are forgotten or not.

Because the memory that streams away in the cold and midnight rain is a nothingness, beside the fact that it is draining into the rivers of the world and all the after life of it. O God, I am so grateful!