Cultures at the far edge of the world

Spend twenty minutes with Wade Davis, a Harvard-educated ethnobotanist and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence. He tells an intense and incredibly powerful story that challenges our view of the world and the lives we lead, in inspiring and beautiful ways.

Citizens’ rights and the rule of law in a civil society: not just yet

"On the 24th of November 2007, history presented Australia with a choice. To the surprise of some and the delight of a narrow majority, Australia chose the ALP and brought to an ignominious end 11½ years of John Howard’s Government... The magnitude of the choice became clear soon afterwards. In the first sitting of the new parliament, the Government said ‘sorry’ to the stolen generations. It seemed almost too good to be true: the apology so many had waited so long to hear. And it was astonishing and uplifting to hear some of the noblest and most dignified sentiments ever uttered in that place on the hill. It is worth recalling some of the words:

“Today we honour the indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history.
We reflect on their past mistreatment.
We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were stolen generations – this blemished chapter in our nation’s history.
We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and Governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians. …
For the pain, suffering and hurt of these stolen generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say ‘sorry’.
To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say ‘sorry’.
And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say ‘sorry’. …
We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians.
A future where this Parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again. …”

The 13th of February 2008 will be remembered as a day the nation shifted, perceptibly. The apology was significant not only for marking a significant step in the process of reconciling ourselves with our past: it cast a new light on the former government. It set a new tone. And I think it reminded us of something we had lost: a sense of decency.

Most of the worst aspects of the Howard years can be explained by the lack of decency which infected their approach to government. They could not acknowledge the wrong that was done to the stolen generations; they failed to help David Hicks when it was a moral imperative: they waited until his rescue became a political imperative; they never quite understood the wickedness of imprisoning children who were fleeing persecution; they abandoned ministerial responsibility; they attacked the courts scandalously but unblushing; they argued for the right to detain innocent people for life; they introduced laws which prevent fair trials; they bribed the impoverished Republic of Nauru to warehouse refugees for us. It seemed that they did not understand just how badly they were behaving, or perhaps they just did not care. And they are unable to change their ways in defeat: prominent back-benchers are scrambling for the lifeboats.
One of the most compelling things about the apology to the stolen generations was that it was so decent. Suddenly, a dreadful episode in our history was acknowledged for what it was. Unfortunately, when announcing that the Government would apologize to the stolen generations, the Prime Minister also said that the Government would not offer compensation. Let me explain why I think that was unfortunate. ..."

Excerpt from the Ninth Manning Clark Lecture entitled "Citizens’ rights and the rule of law in a civil society: not just yet". By Julian Burnside QC.

Full transcript is here, unfortunately the podcast has been removed.

A More Perfect Union

(P.S. Brodie has raised some poignant points, the comments section is worth a look)

Political Will is a Renewable Resource- Al Gore in Bali

NUSA DUA, Indonesia, Dec 15 (Reuters) - Bali talks headed for a compromise on Saturday to launch negotiations on a global pact to fight climate change after the European Union toned down a key demand for sharp cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.

The Dec 3-14 talks had been bogged down by a row between the United States, which opposes a reference to non-binding goals for rich countries to curb emissions by 25-40 percent by 2020, and the European Union, which wanted a clear numerical target.

"This is a compromise. We can live with this. It's in a footnote," German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said, referring to the 25 to 40 percent range for cuts.

The United States, the world's top emitter of greenhouse gases, also said it was satisfied.

"We can live with the preamble," U.S. negotiator Harlan Watson told Reuters of the introductory text of the talks draft that had been one of the main source of controversy for Washington because of its inclusion of a target range.

Genius: 2012

Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink and The Tipping Point, talks about individual and collaborative genius in problem-solving, the importance of stubbornness and the "ten-thousand hours to mastery" rule. Presented at the 2007 New Yorker Conference, “2012: Stories from the Near Future” . If you are at all familiar with Gladwell then you might like to skip the introduction by David Remnick.

Gladwell asserts that, "the modern problems that we face aren't two-page problems, they are two-hundred page problems". An assumption worth delving into.

No doubt that the 21st century offers us an increasing list of two-hundred page problems; energy production/storage/transport/sustainability, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence, gene therapy and neurotechnology, to name but a few. However, it seems that many of our really critical problems, the problems we have struggled with for centuries, do not need two-hundred page solutions. War and peace, international law and sovereignty, human rights and social welfare, can each be framed by a dozen volumes of debate, but no solution of such size will be applicable.

To mobilize large scale action, to maintain clarity of direction, to engage diverse interests in common benefit, requires two-page solutions. Or rather, they demand the ability to transcend the cacophony of spin and bias to describe succinct solutions accessible by the broadest base possible. Gladwell displays much of this skill himself- he has a rare ability to describe the simplicity behind a complex system, to turn two hundred page problems accessible only by specialists into two page problems available on any metro or plane ride.

Of course, we need all these types; the Ventrises to make the great leaps forward, fuelling and fuelled by teams of Wileses, and communicated to the rest of us by the Gladwells.

"A Very English Genius", a BBC documentary on Michael Ventris and his "Everest of Greek archaeology".

(Thanks, Tom W!)

Who's Tripping?

"THE HAGUE (AFP) — The Dutch authorities agreed Friday to ban the sale of magic mushrooms, a move sure to annoy many tourists visiting the Netherlands, known for its liberal drugs policies. The Dutch health and justice ministers said Friday that they have agreed to change the drugs laws to ban the sale and cultivation of hallucinogenic mushrooms. The move comes during an ongoing debate in the Netherlands about the safety of the so-called magic mushrooms after a number of incidents involving tourists who had taken them...

In March, a 17-year-old French girl on a school trip to Amsterdam ate the drug before jumping from a bridge over a canal in the city. She died, and the case resulted in a majority in the Dutch Parliament calling for a total ban on all forms of the drug. Since then, a media debate has raged over that and other cases, including that of an Icelandic tourist who broke both legs jumping from a balcony and a Danish tourist veering his car wildly through a camp site."

The Independent

"Around 500,000 "doses" of packaged mushrooms are sold here annually. According to a study published in January by Amsterdam's health services said the city's emergency services were summoned 148 times to deal with a bad reaction to mushrooms in 2004-2006. Of those 134 were foreigners, with Britons forming the largest group...

Marjan Heuving, a spokeswoman for the country's Trimbos Institute, a drug policy think-tank, said mushrooms are not toxic and themselves pose no physical risk to users. But she agreed that people's reaction to them is unpredictable, depending on factors such as weight; how much food they have eaten recently; their past drug experience; psychological health; and the setting in which they are taken.

"The main danger to the user is that he will somehow hurt himself," she said. "I should add that that's extremely rare."

Associated Press

Half a million doses sold per year in the Netherlands and an average of fifty emergency calls related to mushrooms each year. Thus, only 0.01% of doses lead to emergencies. Far lower still is the chance of accidents resulting in death. There are zero cases of overdose from psilocybin, and as opposed to alcohol or aspirin the lethal dose for psylocybin is far more than can be physically consumed. No psilocybin mushroom related deaths are even counted in the UNODC literature, and the examples hyped up by the Dutch press contain only one fatality. Compare and contrast to the number of emergency calls for alcohol related accidents, sexual abuse and deaths. Not to mention any potential benefit in psychological treatment or development that might derive from these entheogens- as showcased in the medical studies referenced below and the thousand years of indigenous use in the Americas.

No need to reiterate the case. Here is a 2000 Risk Assessment by the Dutch Government's "Coordination Centre for the Assessment and Monitoring of new drugs", (CAM).

The late and great Bill Hicks should have closed the debate fifteen years ago.

Other interesting references: The Harvard_Psilocybin_Project from the 1960's, the current DEA approved Psilocybin studies from MAPS, a BBC documentary/thought experiment on the effect of a radical liberalisation of drug policy, the informed and insightful writings of the late Terence McKenna- ethnobotanist and philosopher.

The Dream That Must Be Interpreted

"This place is a dream. Only a sleeper considers it real. Then death comes like dawn, and you wake up laughing at what you thought was your grief. But there's a difference with this dream. Everything cruel and unconscious done in the illusion of the present world, all that does not fade away at the death-waking. It stays, and it must be interpreted...

And this groggy time we live, this is what it's like: A man goes to sleep in the town where he has always lived, and he dreams he's living in another town. In the dream, he doesn't remember the town he's sleeping in his bed in. He believes the reality of the dream town. The world is that kind of sleep.

The dust of many crumbled cities settles over us like a forgetful doze, but we are older than those cities. We began as a mineral. We emerged into plant life and into the animal state, and then into being human, and always we have forgotten our former states, except in early spring when we slightly recall being green again.

That's how a young person turns toward a teacher. That's how a baby leans toward the breast, without knowing the secret of its desire, yet turning instinctively. Humankind is being led along an evolving course, through this migration of intelligences, and though we seem to be sleeping, there is an inner wakefulness that directs the dream, and that will eventually startle us back to the truth of who we are."

Rumi (مولانا جلال الدین محمد رومی)

Artwork; Caspar David Friedrich's The Wanderer above a sea of fog

Animated Alan Watts

"South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone and their pals animated several audio recordings of Alan Watts (w'pedia), an iconic philosopher and writer who turned scores of people on to Zen Buddhism."Link (Thanks, Anthony Hall!)
posted by David Pescovitz on BoingBoing and stolen by my cunning ctrl-v strategy.

Christopher Hitchens on Religion

During the canonization of Mother Teresa in 2002 British columnist Christopher Hitchens was asked by the Vatican to testify against her. Author of "Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice" he was well prepared for the original role of "Devil's Advocate" (advocatus diaboli), in which he claimed Theresa was a political opportunist who had adopted the guise of a saint in order to raise money to spread an extreme and aggressive version of Catholicism.

In the lecture below Hitchens presents the case for his latest book, "god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything", a title well representing his abrasive, atheistic anti-fascist stance. Arguments can be made that he is inappropriately inflammatory and insensitive in a cultural landscape that is fiercely volatile, but my larger problem is that he ignores the inner development of psychological/existential/spiritual awareness from which religion derives it's energy yet so corrupts through institution. On the other hand his argument is humanistic, libertarian, informed, articulate and entertaining.

(Click to launch video on the intellectual odyssey that is fora.tv)

"the Pope having just repudiated limbo after a long struggle. The place where the souls of unbaptized children always went- apparently it was never there. Tell it no, but it’s serious, tell it to the parents of those children. I have met those people, the people who thought that’s where that poor kids had gone having died before they could breathe properly and not been let into heaven. That’s where they thought they were, so it was real to them. What characteristics is this to say oh it wasn’t really real enough, so we made that bit up. They can’t do this. It was real, it was a real place for those parents and for the brothers and sisters, of those children too they wept at the thought of where the little one had gone and to say, oh never mind. By the way we – we are wrong about this, but we are now ready to be, infallible all over again. This is disgusting and in the same week as he does this the Pope repeats, that we need to teach the children more about hell. Go back again to terrify the composure of young and the innocent with these horrifying stories told them by maladjusted elderly virgins."

I wonder what the famously anti-ecclesiastical Voltaire would have replied to Hitchens? Perhaps,

"La superstition est à la religion ce que l’astrologie est à l’astronomie, la fille très folle d’une mère très sage. Ces deux filles ont longtemps subjugué toute la terre."

"Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy, the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth."

A Sidenote on the Emotions of Materialism

"A theory is not an unemotional thing. If music can be full of passion, merely by giving form to a single sense, how much more beauty or terror may not a vision be pregnant with which brings order and method into everything that we know. If you are in the habit of believing in special providences, or of expecting to continue your romantic adventures in a second life, materialism will dash your hopes most unpleasantly, and you may think for a year or two that you have nothing left to live for. But a thorough materialist, one born to the faith and not half plunged into it by an unexpected christening in cold water, will be like the superb Democritus, a laughing philosopher.

His delight in a mechanism that can fall into so many marvellous and beautiful shapes, and can generate so many exciting passions, should be of the same intellectual quality as that which the visitor feels in a museum of natural history, where he views the myriad butterflies in their cases, the flamingoes and shell-fish, the mammoths and gorillas. Doubtless there were pangs in that incalculable life, but they were soon over; and how splendid meantime was the pageant, how infinitely interesting the universal interplay, and how foolish and inevitable those absolute little passions."

Sidenote: Positive emotions proper to materialism.
The Life of Reason, by George Santayana, 1905.



Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, closes a conference on science, religion, reason and survival. 2006.

TED Talks

TED is a four day annual conference held Monterey, California at which a "group of remarkable people gather to exchange ideas of incalculable value". A huge array of world class speakers speaking/performing for 20 minutes each- not only on TED (Technology, Education, Design) but business, development, science, society and pretty much anything. What really makes the value really incalcuable is that all the presentations are available online, for free. All on Google Video, or released each week on the TEDtalks site.

Example speakers include;

Richard Dawkins, - evolution beats even intelligence // life is beyond imagination
Al Gore, -what we can do to avert a global climate crisis
Robert Wright,- that human history has an arrow — toward greater complexity and intelligence
Nicholas Negroponte, - challenges for the $100 laptop (One Laptop Per Child)
Daniel Dennett, - the imperative of educating the world religions // revealing dogmas
Jimmy Wales, - the management system of Wikipedia
Tony Robbins, -how to unlock your true potential
Dan Gilbert, -the misguided pursuit of happiness
Sir Ken Robbinson, - creativity is as important as literacy // creativity is educated out of children
Malcolm Gladwell, -on learning from spaghetti sauce

The 2007 conference begins this month, so an ever increasing plethora of awesome intellectual stimulation awaits!

(thanks Mazzy!)

Richard Feynman

I just finished a series of four lectures on quantum physics, given in plain(ish) English by the incredible Dr Richard Feynman (1918–1988). Feynman's genius won him the Nobel prize for physics, saw him publishing revelatory dissenting opinion while investigating the Challenger disaster and publicly envisioning nano-technology in the 50's.


His engaging, authentic and accessible style made him a legendary lecturer and watching him speak in this series is a pleasure in itself, let alone the fact that he makes one of the most complex aspects of our physical reality comprehensible for the non-scientist.

I've never been able to figure out how to explain Quantum Electro Dynamics and I thought that this was an opportunity to try a poor, unhappy audience to see whether it was at all possible to explain this subject in a finite number of lectures. And I chose to come to a part of the world as far distant as possible from my home so that if I were not quite successful I wouldn't have to suffer so directly.

Richard Feynman, University of Auckland, 1979.

Feynman lived a remarkable life; from his work in the Manhattan Project and the anguish the atomic bomb caused, to his passion for translating Mayan hieroglyphs and latin drumming. He was a a true Renaissance man- simple and complex in all the best ways.

"The Pleasure of Finding Things Out" is a 50 minute interview with him in later life, revealing much of his history and life philosophy, available on GoogleVideo. His blackboards at his death.

"I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things; by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose — which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn't frighten me."

Richard Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

Benefits Beyond Calculation

This morning I listened to a podcast featuring Dr Edward O. Wilson, Pelligrino University Research Professor, scientific humanist and sociobiologist. He was joined by Harvard theologian Harvey Cox to consider the fate of the creation. Below is an extract from Dr Wilson's speech on the state of the biosphere and an empowering call to reasonable action.

"What are doing about it?... We are engaged in mapping the hotspots of the world... areas like the forest of Madagascar, the western gap, rainforest of West Africa, Sri Lanka, New Calendonia, the rainforest of Hawaii- the extinction capital of America, and so on...

34 of these richest of the hotspots cover only 2.3% of the land surface of the world, but they have within them nearly half of all the known species of plants and animals. Save them by whatever means its takes and you can save a lot of the Life.

Add to them some major core areas of the remaining tropical rainforest wilderness Amazon, Congo and New Guinea and your covering 70% of the known species. And how much would it cost to do that, one payment of approximately 30 Billion dollars... 1/1000th of the annual world domestic product of 30 Trillion dollars...

We can solve this problem, but we haven't got the will yet... The cost is not very high and the benefits are beyond calculation, I repeat the benefits are beyond calculation.

A civilisation able to envision God in an Afterlife is surely going to find a way to save the integrity of this magnificent planet and the life it harbours. I will close by a quote from my friend the late John Sawhill, president of the Nature Conservancy...

"Society is defined not only by what it creates, but by what it refuses to destroy.""

The Challenge of the Hour

Professor Sacks is Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth and a world leader in interfaith dialogue. His address, extracted below and in full on mp3 which you should really listen to, is one of the most beautiful religious expressions I've ever heard. A call for openness between religions supported by a humanistic interpretation of Exodus that is both educative and compelling.


"I believe that at the university, and in the public square in general, in the 21st century we are being tested. Anyone of religious beliefs and certainly the three great Abrahamic monotheisms, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, to become open to one another rather than closed off from one another...

I actually believe that if we do not do this we face a great danger, of a return to the wars of religion that scarred the face of Europe in the 16th and 17th Centuries. And we really must have thinking equal to the challenge of this hour...

Friends, I have tried to suggest that the great test which religions will face in the 21st century is, are we open to the other? Are we open to the stranger? Are Jews open to non-Jews, Christians to non-Christians, Muslims to non-Muslims? Are we willing to stand up and insist in the name of our faiths for the rights of one who is not like me to continue to be not like me and yet be my equal serving God and bearing his image within me? Can we see the human other as a reflection fo the divine other? That will require all our humility, all our generosity of spirit but above all all our openness.

And that is the meaning of the otherwise cryptic phrases in Exodus when Moses asks God, "What is your name?" And God replies, "I will be where I will be", meaning quite simply, in the place where you least expect me to be, there I am. And I will be there too in the face of one whose faith and language and culture and history are not like yours. You will see the trace of God in the face of a stranger, even in Pharoahs daughter, even in two Egyptian midwives, and I believe that is the openness we need to survive the terrible risks of the 21st century...

I just wish to give expression to the still small voice that never gives up hope, and that prepares the ground maybe between just a few in each religion, because those few when the time comes, will become the leaders of a new way. That is all I can say. "

Professor Jonathan Sacks was speaking in Australia at Monash University, via SBS.

The God Delusion

Richard Dawkins, the Charles Simonyi Chair in the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, speaks on his latest book "The God Delusion". In the first part he focuses on debunking the ethical primacy of the Bible and the illustrating the logical fallacy underlying supernatural belief, however, my favourite part is in winning back Einstein in the religion debate. He differentiates “Einsteinian religion”, whereby some scientists use the word “God” as a metaphor for nature or the mysteries of the universe from revealed religions with the belief in "a supernatural creator that is ‘appropriate for us to worship’". Christians have often misrepresented Einstein's references to "God" (""God does NOT play dice", etc), whereas Dawkins answers this with Einstein's own definitive clarification.

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly."

Again in his own terms, Einstein did in fact "believe in Spinoza's God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind."

Spinoza's belief, expressed as Naturalistic Pantheism, hold at it's fundament that God is Nature (nature means all things), and that there is no real difference between "Good" and "Evil"- everything in existence is perfect. He makes no account for the revelatory status of the Bible or for any religous practice as fulfillment of convenant or Word. A far cry from any Abrahamic doctrince preached at the Synagouge, Church or Mosque.

Back to Dawkins, in the second half of his presentation he takes questions from students of the hosting Randolph Macon Women's College- and also visiting students from the Jerry Falwell's Baptist "Liberty University". The undoubting faith shown by the Liberty students makes me wonder if they followed the argumentation at all or merely closed themselves off and prepared to try and untangle Dawkins on morality questions- in which they fail. I would love to hear the reactions of a rationalist believer to Dawkins presentation- someone who is open to doubt, can follow the logic and still maintains their belief in the Koran, Bible or Torah and a personal God.

Jon Stewart Interviews President/General Musharraf of Pakistan

Video Link for Stewart/Musharraf Interview