shadow of the Opium Wars…

Ricardo on 29th December 2009

Britain is expressing outrage at the execution today of Akmal Shaikh, one of its citizens. Notwithstanding the human tragedy that this represents, this reaction seems to me to reflect a failure of historical memory. We none of us easily forget humiliations that we have suffered, and the Chinese have not forgotten the Opium Wars. In that shameful episode, Britain, shelled Chinese cities (the origin of the term ‘gunboat diplomacy’, I think – and, if not, certainly a good example of it) when the Chinese authorities attempted to fight against the opium addiction that was spreading like a plague through its people. This drug trade was deliberately foisted on the Chinese by the British as a way of balancing their balance of trade deficit with China (who, uninterested in European products, refused to take anything in exchange for her exports except silver – a constant drain of the metal that was ruining the British Empire). As a consequence of this bullying, China was forced to open herself up to European traders and, further, those traders were granted extraterritoriality – that is, they were immune to Chinese law – irrespective of what crimes they might commit in China…

Armed with this knowledge, it seems to me that the Akmal Shaikh tragedy takes on a different hue. Here we have a British drug smuggler convicted by Chinese law of bringing heroine into China. Heroine, a modern and more potent version of opium. And, Britain, is wanting China to suspend its laws in this case. I am saying nothing whatsoever about whether I consider the penalty under Chinese law for drug smuggling to be reasonable. What I am saying is that, in the historical context, the Chinese position is not uncomplicated…

Copenhagen #3: aftermath…

Ricardo on 21st December 2009

Well, predictably, the Copenhagen conference was a washout. I am not, however, ready to follow George Monbiot in declaring it a disaster. The way I see it is that Copenhagen is the first time we have got together as a species to tackle a common problem. That this happened at all is a clear admission that global warming is a threat that we all now recognize. That in itself is amazing progress. Further, there were signs that this was not business as usual: the ‘developed’ powers handing down to everyone else the way things are going to be – something that they’ve been doing for at least 200 years now. There was a moment when Africa spoke as one and told the rich they weren’t having it… Now this may have been because they were after the $100 billion that the developed have promised the undeveloped to help them cope with global warming. I can’t see the point of being so cynical. The important thing in this, it seems to me, is that people who are normally divided, acted together. Then there is the blame being heaped by the developed on China. Though China has recently become the biggest CO2 polluter, it has only just overtaken the US – who has been pumping out CO2 for at least a century – and China’s CO2 emissions are still, per capita, vastly less than the US’… I have some sympathy for China’s position that since we (the West) have produced by far the greatest portion of the man-released CO2 in the atmosphere, that we should take responsibility for this… It’s typical of Western politicians to attempt to shift blame elsewhere…

So where where does that leave us? We have the whole world getting together for the first time admitting that we ALL have a problem. We have the rich, developed countries trying to force on everyone else a solution that leaves them, as usual, benefitting at the cost of everyone else. We can all see that this wasn’t acceptable to the developing nations – nor should it be. We have thus admitted there is massive problem and that business as usual isn’t going to solve it. Of course, time is running out, but it seems to me that – given the circumstances – Copenhagen was not at all a disaster…

who wants to live for ever…?

Ricardo on 15th December 2009

I used to passionately desire immortality. I would argue its benefits: the ability to experience so much more, to achieve so much more, to produce so much more artistic work. I wanted this so much that I remember getting quite manic reading Raymond Kurzweil who believes that we’re on the verge of being capable of halting ageing – and that, once this is achieved, it would only be a matter of time before rejuvenation became technologically available – and youthful immortality would become a reality. He is pursuing this dream so hard that, each day, he consumes a smörgåsbord of pills: vitamins, anti-oxidants, etc…

When I emerged from 5 years of gestalt therapy, I no longer desired immortality. Why should that be? Well, it seems to me that the reason is because I had ‘slain my demons’ – or at least come to an accommodation with them. I am now pretty certain that the pressure for immortality came from a realization that I had these demons to deal with; had been on the planet for 40 years and, in that time, I had made no progress whatsoever with them. On this basis, projecting forward, it was obvious – to my unconscious – that it was going to take an infinitely long time to deal with them. Thus the need for immortality.

The quest for immortality now seems to me not only hubristic, but another example of how out of touch with reality we have become. Here we are on a planet that is not really capable of supporting our population as it is, and that will soon have to support 2 billion more – and Mr Kurzweil is proposing that people (no doubt the rich) should stop dying… It is utterly, utterly insane!

And then I read an interview with Kurzweil in which he was bemoaning that he had never got over his father dying and that he wants to bring him back to life. I am with Jung on this… beyond midlife, the purpose of living becomes to accept loss – and in that loss to find individual fulfilment. To everything there is a season. Without death, I believe that life becomes essentially pointless – a ship at sea with no course or destination…

eros

Ricardo on 11th December 2009

Nothing seems to me more absurd than applying our social mores to other cultures. Some have raised nakedness to the heights: others have damned it to Hell. Is one right and the other wrong? The only person who it seems to me has the right to judge is someone from the culture whose mores and behaviour are being considered.

The ‘Peoples of the Book’ (Jews, Christians and Muslims) have a particularly strong aversion to nakedness and what might be considered a ‘restrictive’ view of sexuality. I wish I could go and see this exhibition. Why? Because, though I know this stuff exists, I have seen only a few photographs of it – and I am fascinated by the Classical world. And why have I not seen this stuff? Well, because, though so many museums have lots of examples, these have been kept locked away, only to be viewed by ‘experts’ who, apparently, are far less shockable than the rest of us… What ludicrous censorship! and amazing that a post-Christian society, such as I would consider Western Europe to be, should still feel constrained by this nervousness about sex. It is simply the case that the Classical world did not have the same ‘prejudice’ and these ‘erotic’ works formed a normal part of their everyday lives – if you don’t believe me go and have a look at the frescoes on the walls of Pompeii…

Now whereas in considering the Classical world, our prejudice merely deprives us of what was, arguably, a non-central part of that culture, in the case of Ancient Egypt, such prejudice entirely undermines our understanding of that culture. For a core Egyptian creation myth was represented in the holy of holies of their greatest temples by an idol of Amun, chief of the gods, holding his phallus in his hand. This was because they believed that Amun created the world through an act of masturbation… Now that is a profoundly different way to see the world than having, in that sacred locus, a man dying on a cross…

folding plug – saviour of the universe

Ricardo on 10th December 2009

My brother pointed this out to me yesterday and it got me rather excited. Now first of all, for all of you outside the UK, this may be hard to understand. You may even think I’ve lost it. “Plugs? He thinks plugs are going to save the world?” But bear with me…

The reason this excited me – apart from the sheer elegance of Min-Kyu Choi’s design – was because it took me completely by surprise. Living most of my life in the UK, I have, with 60 million others (and a bit of googling reveals this– from which I learn that this kind of plug is also used in Ireland, Sri Lanka, Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, Yemen, Oman, Cyprus, Malta, Gibraltar, Botswana, Ghana, Hong Kong, Macau, Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, Nigeria, Mauritius, Iraq, Kuwait, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe), been wrestling with our clunky plugs. They’re ok individually, but whenever you try and put them into an ‘adapter block’, you can end up with a rickety and dangerous cluster and sometimes, you just can’t force them together at all! But, like everyone else who has had to use these things, I have just assumed that they were as invariable a part of the world as the clouds in the sky.

Warning: I am about to make a logical leap that might not be to everbody’s taste… So, what this linked to immediately in my mind was global warming. While I hope things work out well in Copenhagen, it is quite possible they will not. So the world will heat up heading for what, I have no doubt, will be much disaster for our (and may other) species. If this comes to pass… our only hope then will be technological fixes. And this is where Mr Choi’s humble plug is for me a sign of hope. For humans are not good at imagining that the world they have known all their lives could suddenly change tomorrow. This myopia is one of the main failings that has got us into this trouble. However, the flip side of this is that we also can’t see what innovation might appear tomorrow. And, for all our failings, we ARE very inventive and there seems to me some hope in that…

artificial intelligence

Ricardo on 9th December 2009

From ancient times man has dreamed of being able to give life to one of his creations. In Greek mythology, Hephaestus (Daedalus as well, I think?) constructed ‘robots’ (Talos, for example, Hephaestus’ gigantic bronze warrior of “Jason and the Argonauts” fame). It was not understood then how intelligence was going to be far more difficult to produce artificially than self-powered movement.

When I was at school, there was much talk about chess playing computers and how, once we had a device that could play chess brilliantly, then we would have artificial intelligence (AI). Of course, Kasparov, arguably the greatest human player of chess who ever lived, was beaten by IBM’s Deep Blue, but no one pretended it was possible to have a sensible conversation with IBM’s prodigy. It turned out, rather unsurprisingly in retrospect, that though for us it is difficult to play chess, for a computer with a fast enough processor it is a cinch. (Incidentally, as far as I’m aware, computers have not been able to beat master players of Go… and this only goes to show that, to play well, Go requires more of that elusive human intelligence, than does chess… and this again, to those who have played both, is not surprising.)

What was surprising was to discover that it was the things we find easy (recognizing our mother from different angles, under different lighting conditions, even if she’s wearing a disguise) that computers find almost impossible. Of course, the reason this was surprising was because we didn’t actually know what constitutes intelligence. We still don’t. If we did, then we would already have made a device mimicking it. Marvin Minsky has been making predictions for decades that, within a few years, there would be AIs around to whom we would appear imbeciles… Clearly, the man suffers from a delusion that he knows what intelligence is. He’s not alone.

Personally, though like so many others I have been fascinated by the idea of AIs most of my life, perhaps we should be careful what we wish for. No doubt a ‘real’ AI would be able to do everything we do INDEFATIGABLY – and there’s the rub. An AI could do everything we can do, but without needing to rest, without having moods, self-doubt. If we could make it, it could make a version of itself… and if it could do so, such that its creation was even infinitesimally more capable than it was, well, we would have started a new evolutionary line that would quickly out-evolve us… and then Dr Minsky would finally be right…

the seed of this rant

imperfect knowledge…

Ricardo on 8th December 2009

Nothing is certain, nor should we expect it to be. What can we know about China (for example)? For me, it’s far away. I’ve visited China – but only Hong Kong and Macao. I’ve read about China, but only a couple of dozen books. I have studied T’ai Chi, but only for 10 years, and only one form of it, and dabbled in some others. I have eaten Chinese food and cook it myself. I have made some attempts to learn Mandarin. I have watched Chinese films. I have watched documentaries about events there, about Chinese history, Chinese wildlife. I’m sure we would agree that this is a vanishingly small, teeny-weeny, smidgen of what there is to know about China. However, it my best attempt at becoming informed about the place, its people, its history. It is my approximation at knowledge about China. It is, of course, highly imperfect. Composed of a few fragments, glimpses, and all of these moderated and channelled by my perceptions, my prejudices and errors, and those of the people who have delivered information to me. At any given moment, I can only occupy a single viewpoint in space and time. I am subject to moods. I will only live for a brief period. Set up against this is the world around me – vast and ever changing – and that’s only the part we can perceive with our senses, our probing instruments. So let’s not fool ourselves that we know what’s going on – that we can ever know what’s going on. The best we can do is to do the best that we can do. And that will have to do…

Copenhagen #2…

Ricardo on 7th December 2009

Here is a link to an excellent article in the Guardian that sets the stage for the drama that Copenhagen might turn out to be…

I’m sure you’re as concerned as I am about the threat to our planet from global warming. I can’t say that I have great hopes for the meeting that is opening today at Copenhagen to come up with any definitive progress. However, I have become heartened by the way this issue has so quickly moved up everyone’s agenda – considering that a few years ago I was hassling people about it and, then, few seemed to have even heard about it. Unfortunately, the various points of no-return are rushing towards us even faster. For all our technological successes, it seems to me that we remain primitive on the level of social organisation. We don’t seem to be able to rise above the programming of our instincts. We don’t seem to be well designed to cope with this kind of ‘nebulous’ threat in the ‘future somewhere’… Now if this were a good old-fashioned war against ourselves, I have no doubt that we would manage miracles of speed and adaptability… the VAST amount that it seemed reasonable to spend on the ‘War on Terror’ comes to mind…

All this said, I feel that there is some hope in us all getting together at Copenhagen to tackle this common problem. Though, however pressing the deadlines from the global warming threat, we can only do what is ‘politically possible’… sad, but there it is. Let’s hope that the drama at Copenhagen neither turns out to be a farce, nor a tragedy…

personal gravity…

Ricardo on 4th December 2009

My brother has a concept of ‘personal gravity’ that he uses to describe a quality that a person demonstrates towards others. Specifically, he has used it as a stick to beat me with: complaining that I have such strong ‘personal gravity’ that I never “leave my own planet to go and visit other people’s” (ie. his)…

I think that this concept can be generalized to some advantage. Gravity – in the sense that Einstein defined it – as the distortion of space-time caused by a mass, allows parallels with a person’s ego. All masses draw other masses to them: as egos do. The greater a mass, the more likely it is to trap other masses in orbit around them: as egos can do. If the mass is great enough it will draw everything to it, including light – there is, perhaps a parallel here with an ego so massive it destroys those that come anywhere near it. Further, if we expand the analogy to the whole universe – a procedure that I imagine Jung would have considered plausible – then we have the conjecture that, if the universe were to contain enough mass, it would fold so much that its space-time would become ‘closed’… A person too ego-centred (and I do not mean this in any pejorative sense) could become folded in on herself/himself – so that she/he would become closed to all other egos…

Copenhagen

Ricardo on 3rd December 2009

Here’s another of those wonderful graphics (discussed in a previous post). It instantly makes many things clear. Not least how responsible we are in the West – the US and Europe in particular – for the predicament we find ourselves in. Also how little China and India and Brazil, the new ‘bad boys’, are responsible.

And most crucially, how little time there is… Then, when you combine it with this other graphic… noting especially the red box near the centre (not to mention other hilarious boxes, such as the grey one labelled “bribes received by Russian officials”)… then is there any need for me to say anything else?

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