A Quiet Watercourse

I have a couple more things to say on the subject of speech and racism, and I’ll start with responsibility for our speech. This is a theme that I’ve covered before and I feel that the time is right to revisit it and write a little more.

We all are very much for freedom of speech and my previous post goes deeper into my thinking on that subject. But it seems that there is a tendency to have our say come hell or high water, and then shrug when the hurt is done, and simply point to freedom of speech. I’ve known people both professionally and personally who are very forthright and simply have their say, get things off their chest and be damned, I personally know of instances of this sort of thing causing harm.

This brings me nearer to my point here, right speech. The Buddha give us this precept to refrain from unskilled (or false) speech, and while is sounds on the surface like “thou shalt not lie”, it goes much deeper than that. One aspect of right speech is that we should be gentle, tactful. By all means be forceful or sharp if the situation warrants it, but we need to consider the wider impact of our words. The act of simply saying what you think and be damned can often cause hurt and pain to others, and to simply throw this out heedlessly of the consequences is not skilful. If we are delivering such views, is not better to measure and moderate our speech to still say what must be said but be mindful and avoid causing unneeded harm?

This draws us into the realm of Karma, that as we all know, speech can cause very real harm. That harm need not be immediate, sharp phrases and barbed comments can ring in our ears for a long time after the words have faded. The effects of these words can be felt for days, or even weeks, or can cause problems for even longer.

So, to bring things home. Well I think we should have our say, our free speech to bottle things up has it’s own Karma, I mentioned this in my previous post. But we must recognise that this freedom to sow the wind comes with the freedom to reap the whirlwind, we should exercise mindfulness and go gently with our words wherever we can.

A few days ago the leader of the British National Party, Nick Griffin, made an appearance on the BBC 1 program Question Time.  His appearance was controversial to say the least, but I feel that the response and oppostion he got raises issues with the way we handle democracy and freedom of speech.

There were demonstrations outside BBC Television Centre and other BBC offices, and the view of the demonstrators that he wasn’t welcome on British TV was very thoroughly made.  The demonstrations were well meaning no doubt, and while I agree that racism and bigotry isn’t welcome, I’ll stick my neck out here and suggest that this risks taking the liberal movement into the territory of being an oppressive force.

The point I wish to make, is that the concept is “Freedom of Speech” not “Freedom of Speech We Like”. Our democracy gives everyone the chance at speech, and all points of view are necessarily represented.  The desire to suppress these views, to stop people expressing the views that are painful for us to hear, is only natural but it is wrong, no matter what our reasons are.  Once we start blocking speech on the grounds of the simple fact somebody somewhere doesn’t like it, it’s the thin end of the wedge, how long before that same power to block expression is turned on others?  How long before it’s turned on you?

We must hear the speech we dislike and challenge it, not cover our ears, to this will leave the field open to those who would spread hatred.  To silence or simply drown out the opposing points of view, undermines our own credibility, and simply shows that we cannot respond adequately.  It also deprives us of the chance to hone our arguments.

Suppressing speech also risks pushing issues under the carpet and they will never be addressed, left to fester.  Later they might resurface as political or social land mines, much larger problems than they needed to be.  Just because you don’t like what’s being said, or who’s saying it doesn’t mean that the speaker doesn’t have a valid point.

I know from my own experiences that listening to speech that you don’t like is painful and distasteful, but it is necessary.  I feel that this is where our mindfulness practise comes in, our sense of detachment is needed.

In short, while I disagree with the BNP on issues of race and discrimination (but will admit they seem to have been quite accurate in their assessment of post peak oil nuclear power and also nuclear emissions), I do defend their right to have their say.  Because to do otherwise, will ultimately harm us all.

I was reading a thread on a forum the other day, a guy had commented on the new “Ardipithecus ramidus” fossil find and said “so much for creationism” or words to that effect. The results were quite predictable, and as boring as usual, everyone jumped in and a blazing great argument started.

I have to admit to being something of an agnostic on all of this, I take the view that there is much we don’t know and will possibly never know.  As much as many would like to cling to a holy book and proclaim that this is certainty, it isn’t and I’ll refer the reader to my essays for more on that.  In many ways I can make a similar observation of the scientific orthodoxy, science seems to get a revolution every so often and is quite defined by the unknown.  I’m also not the first to observe that science seems to be gaining it’s share of fundamentalists, and I feel that a fundamentalist attitude does science no justice at all.

I’ll also step aside from the row surrounding the much misunderstood and misrepresented theory of Evolution, other than to observe that it seems to be producing the goods in a very practical sense across a number of fields and that its opponents have produced no science of their own that I’ve seen and seem to do nothing but throw mud.

So I’ll move towards the whole question of a creator prior to the beginning of the universe.  Now this, of course, assumes that there was a discrete beginning and that the whole thing doesn’t move in some kind of cyclical way that would make for a very interesting line of investigation.

Now, for what I can see of it everything we have regarding events prior to the big bang is pure conjecture, nobody really knows. It seems to me that every debate I’ve seen boils down to a “yes it was / no it wasn’t” with nobody willing to budge an inch. Now, this sort of thing is one of the questions that the Buddha described as being a net, I can see why, all it does it cause upset and you can never really settle the argument no matter which side you’re on.

But it makes me realise, that many people are shouting certainty from a position of not really knowing.  My sense of things is that true liberation and real courage is to openly admit that you don’t know and possibly never will.  Then get on with something more relevant.

I got involved in a debate with a work colleague a week or so ago about the death penalty, he was for it and I was against.  It was interesting to notice the faith in Science to give the right answers in such a case, almost unquestioning, though I’ll ponder the question of Science as a religion at a later date.

What was interesting, was that his position seemed to be emotionally chosen, and this isn’t the first time I’ve seen this.  I’m very sure everyone reading this has come across people making decisions emotionally or holding positions on issues emotionally.  For example, the debate on climate change seems to be such an issue, with much shrillness and name calling, and that does the subject no justice given the massive importance of what they’re discussing.  I also recall Richard Dawkins telling us in his book “The God Delusion”, of some very senior scientists who, while holding no religious faith themselves, go to church or synagogue out of a feeling of “supporting the team”[1].

So why do we have emotions?  The study of the evolution of emotions began with Charles Darwin in his book “The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals”, which was published in 1872.  Darwin noticed that even in people who are born blind, many facial emotional expressions remain the same as in sighted people, research since has shown that many emotional expressions (joy, anger, etc) are common across even isolated cultures.

So why use them in decision making?  The answer, in my opinion, lies in the value of fast decision making.  Dr Dawkins covers this in great detail in the God Delusion, and I highly recommend that book to everyone.  In short, we often need to make quick fairly reliable decisions, if we take time to consider our actions thoroughly, then the odds are we’d be dead long before we made a decision.  Sometimes, you need to act very quickly indeed, and our emotions cut in before our thoughts [2], how often have you acted first and then stopped to think?  This is the nub of it, emotions hit first and then we override our emotions with complex thought.

So coming back to where I started, is it so surprising that we take emotional stances?  How often do we hear the question “How do you feel about that?” not “What do you think of that?”, so I did an informal experiment.  I put the phrase “How do you feel about that issue?” into our Google overlord.  Interesting results, both with and without the quotes, showing a range of subjects in both searches that should not be left to feelings to decide.  I’m not saying we should abandon empathy and emotion, far from it, but my searches turned up health care reform, abortion, stem cell research, choosing the gender of children, these things need more careful consideration.

I think we as a species need to engage in a little consciousness raising here, stop letting our emotions control us and start thinking with our heads.  Not only the use of Science, but the Buddhist emphasis on mindfulness and the Taoist emphasis on awareness all serve to lead us in this direction, I suppose that there’s hope for us yet, eh?

[1] The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.  2007 Black Swan edition. ISBN 978-0-552-77331-7.

[2] Ethics as Emotions – An Evolutionary Approach.  Chris Lucas (date unknown)

I see that in the wake of their party conference, the UK Conservative party is talking about small government.  Well, it’s about time!  We’ve seen the effects of big top heavy government in the UK for a few years now, and it’s been a complete drain on the country.

Lao Tzu warns us specifically about this, Taoists don’t go for meddlesome Big Government, the flaws are too obvious and if we’re being honest about it the long march over time towards intrusive and overbearing big institutions is going to bury us if we’re not careful.

We have the sight in the UK, of government quangos, full of bureaucrats beefing up the ranks of the middle managers, increasing the number of highly paid Chiefs.  Yet the people providing the services are the first to feel the cull.

I saw the news today about the introduction of body scanners at Manchester Airport, the first airport in the UK to have them.  Not satisfied with no end of personal data, we now have to face the prospect of being electronically undressed before going on a plane.  It is optional, for now, but for how long?  This is how they do it, draw the line somewhere that nobody would argue too much, then push it to where you REALLY want it, arguing continuity all the way.

It’s time to get smaller.  Why do we need a huge bureaucracy?  It seems to me that the work of big government is to an extent self generating busy work, we could lose quite a few management postitions and some very much overpaid executives and be no worse off.  We need to honestly ask if some of the things that our government does are even needed.  As Lao Tzu correctly spotted all those years ago, big government is not good government.

A couple of years ago, I wrote a little program called SitQuietly.  This is a GNU/Linux meditation timer, nothing fancy, just a simple tool for a simple enough job.  Just as it should be.

Well, just as the original filled a couple of needs I had, namely to learn Python and to get a Free Software meditation timer, I’m very pleased to announce that there is a new kid on the block.

I needed to get back into web design, PHP, HTML and CSS.  I’d also had the idea of of a completely web based version of my timer knocking about in my mind for about a year.  Well, I started it and then had data loss and got busy.  But I restarted it from memory very recently and after some work and a little swearing at Internet Explorer (don’t ask) you can find the results of my endeavours at http://sitquietly.quietwatercourse.co.uk/.

Now I’ve tested this on the most recent versions of all major browsers and as long as you have your Javascript turned on and an up to date copy of Adobe Flash Player, you should be laughing.  If you find a problem, or think things could be clearer, don’t be shy, tell me!

And yes… those are the words “Facebook Edition” on the site, I’ll keep everyone posted on that one… after the Web Edition itself only took a year to emerge! Lol!

We seem to be having something of a false dawn in the UK, in terms of the economy.  There is indeed a light at the end of the tunnel, but I have the funny feeling that it’s a flamethrower.  I’ve been looking round various financial forums, keeping an eye on some blogs, and wondering how the heck we let ourselves sleepwalk into this mess.

We’ve all been quite blind, and it’s interesting to watch the global reaction.  It seems, at least to me, that there is a feeling of waking up but also a desire for “just 5 more minutes”, people are not letting go of the old illusions easily.  Who can blame us?  It’s the start of a very long journey, and it will not be easy.  Watching the U.S. reaction to Obama, I’m inclined to think that there are some there who underestimated how change would happen.  It’s going to be a long and difficult road, there is no shortcut.

I was mulling the Tao Te Ching again, of all the books of philosophy/spirituality in the world, I find this one the most worthwhile.  I found a verse that says it all:

Holding a cup and overfilling it
Cannot be as good as stopping short
Pounding a blade and sharpening it
Cannot be kept for long

Gold and jade fill up the room
No one is able to protect them
Wealth and position bring arrogance
And leave disasters upon oneself

When achievement is completed, fame is attained
Withdraw oneself
This is the Tao of Heaven

We have tried to fill the cup to the brim, in our greed we have tried to extend the cup, we’ve tried to use complex financial methods to outfox reality.  Reality always wins, you can’t beat it.  Those in positions of wealth and power have behaved arrogantly, and the consequences are now being visited on all of us.

[Tao Te Ching verse from www.Taoism.net and Tao Te Ching: Annotated & Explained, published by SkyLight Paths in 2006]

One of the things I’ve learned on my journey through Taoism and Buddhism is the futility of intellectual striving, I’d realised that it’s often better not to force the mind, but to let it take its own time.

I’m reminded of the idea the we have two parts to our minds, one like a searchlight and one like an illuminating candle.  The searchlight mind is the part of our mind that is calculating and intellectual, logical.  The other, less focussed mind is more intuitive and less logical, in the West I really don’t think we trust this one as much, which is a big mistake in my view.

I’ve relearned this lesson the hard way as a consequence of having spent a few weeks revisiting my old Anglican thought, which led to a re-assessment of why I left.  In short it’s been mentally stressful, and is an experience I’m not eager to repeat.  The problem is that as I’ve said previously it just seems to be one huge argument based on essentially unresolvable questions, in essence a wilderness of opinions.  The Buddha had a series of questions he would not answer, when drawn, he said they were like a net and weren’t really relevant to what he was trying to do.

He compared our situation there to that of a man shot with an arrow, who refuses all treatment till he knows all about the arrow, the bow it was fired from, the character and caste of the archer, etc, etc.  This man will die of his wounds before he gets any answers, and what good does that do him?  Our situation is urgent and lots of speculative arguments do us no service at all in resolving it.

The searchlight part of our mind is the part that runs after answers, often heedlessly.  The less focussed more “illuminating” (and never were quotes more needed) part is our inner Sage or Buddha, who if we will only listen, can save us so much trouble.

Well, if you look back a few posts, you’ll find that I felt compelled to invesitgate my home team; the Anglican Church.  It was a well meaning enough idea, I felt moved to reinvestigate them, to see if I’d missed something and dismissed them too hastily, all those years ago.

So I bought a copy of a NIV bible and a book on the history of the gospels, also a book on the history of the God belief and it’s interpretation[2].  Well, the bible is an interesting read, I found myself pointing out a problem before we’d left the Creation, and as for the flood and the whole Sodom & Gomorrah thing, well others have covered the Noah’s Ark story in more detail than I ever could.  S&G was just mishandled full stop, at least to my mind.

I fast forward to the New Testament and find myself perplexed by the differences in the Gospels, yes I appreciate they were written by different men for differing audiences, but there are problems that go beyond that.  Inconsistent reporting is the most outstanding, but that is something I can’t really overlook in a text that makes the claims this book does.

Then I wander through some sites and find that nobody agrees on the interpretation, some very literalistic (see my essays for my views on that) and some very liberal but nothing that really solves the issues I see.

So I revisited arguments, religious apologetics vs skeptics, I found that things haven’t really changed.  To be honest, I got heartily sick of debates where nobody really manages to resolve anything honestly.  All I saw were arguments full of smokes and mirrors obscuring tactics, which made me ask ‘If you religious apologetics can’t even discuss this on the level, is it even worth bothering with at all?’, I appreciate that everyone does it (even inadvertently) from time to time, but there is so damn much of it in what I was reading that it made me sick to the depths of my mind.

That was what did finally it, I have what I consider legitimate criticisms of organised dogmatic Christianity and couldn’t find a straight externally verifiable (i.e. not circular logic) answer that didn’t shoot at least some of the bottom layer of cards out from under the whole edifice.  All the answers I could come up with that worked left me with a thing that wasn’t much of anything (no omnipotent interventionist creator, no legitimate ancient dogma, etc) and I realise now I was applying the valuable lessons I learned from reading the Kalama Sutta.

Eventually, I realised I was reading the Bible as a Skeptical Buddhist, which kind of resolved things for me.  Things were finally sealed by my learning about the Panadura Debate (or Panadura Controversy) in Sri Lanka.  An exact transcript of this doesn’t exist as far as I know, but I have searched and found a commented summary of it gleaned via an Internet forum.

I’ve just heard in the last few minutes that the Prime Minister has issued an apology for the awful treatment of Alan Turing.

I’m very pleased as this just underlines the fact that treating someone like this is utterly unacceptable in any society that claims to be civilised.

The link to Number 10 website is here.