Do we still need stories?

Throughout human history man has been a storyteller. The development of language from a physiological viewpoint has been traced back at least 100000 years, and appears to have been common between Neanderthal and Modern humans, although the specific structures are not identical, so it appears that the ability for verbal communication is one of the defining qualities of the development of hominids. There are of course many types of non-verbal communication used by many animals from communal insects through to higher primates, and version of verbal communication used by aquatic mammals that we have yet to comprehend fully. The difference appears to be in the ability to convey abstract concepts. A colony of bees can use body language to convey location to a source of pollen, but would struggle to convey an artistic concept.

There is a question over whether the ability to think in an abstract way was a condition in developing verbal communication, or vice versa, but it does appear based on cerebral morphology that the two abilities developed in parallel perhaps with one driving the other. Whatever the developmental process, what is clear is that as far as we can tell, humans are the only animal that has developed the ability to create and tell stories. The question today is, what purpose have stories historically had? And perhaps just as importantly, are they still necessary today. Broadly we can split stories into a number of categories. We have stories which provide information on morals and ethics, stories that carry a warning, stories that convey complex arguments succinctly and stories that serve to explain the inexplicable.

We currently live in an age where we are beginning to understand the World around us, and our place wthin it, so it could be argued that explanatory stories have less of a place. The myths of thunder Gods and wrathful sea demons have largely been consigned to the annals of history. We also have ways of teaching about morality and how to live in society that rely less heavily on stories for their method of dissemination. Early years education appears to be moving away from story telling towards a more focused and integrated approach to societal interactions. The warning stories of history, primarily in the form of fairy tales still have a place, but their role is being diminished by earlier exposure to the brutality of reality with danger being increasingly explicit rather than implicit.

So what rle for modern day storytellers, the bards of yore? Personally I believe that the role of the story needs to change. If we consider stories as thought experiments, specifically designed to promote creative and logical thinking patterns, and to encourage a love of experimentation and learning then I can envisage a future in which the creative storyteller weaving a believable situation can havea  strong role to play. We can also perhaps see a role in terms of expanding the remit of what is currently considered “Pathworking” using a story to create an altered state of conciousness to allow for enhanced creative ability and psychological healing. Perhaps a core area of research that needs to be explored is the symbiosis of practical psychology, talking therapies, hypnotism and altered states of conciousness and philosophy. By weaving a story using these tools it may be possible to use stories to enhance peoples experiences of life, and possibly even to create an environment whereby individuals are more able to “think” creatively and develop new ideas beyond the facilities of the physical world.

The possibilities may in fact be truly limitless….

Thoughts on strange ideas

This is a response to a conversation I had about the possibility of the moon being a hollow sphere, containing who knows what.....

I consider the hollow moon in the same way that I consider the old hollow Earth theories. Doesn’t seem particularly credible, especially when considered with the results of geological surveys of the moons surface showing reasonably unequivocally that it was formed by a large scale planetary collision in the early days of the solar system blasting debris into orbit around the still forming Earth. I guess you could make a case for the possibility. You could consider the use of a toroidal plasma engine as a power source similar to that suggested for the TR3B black project anti-grav aircraft, but on a much larger scale, possibly with the outer surface being taken from the early Earth by a hyper-advanced alien civilization. The use of this type of engine would allow both for the enormous energy requirement, and the gravitational discrepancies between a solid body and a hollow sphere.

Of course, potentially anything is possible for a sufficiently advanced civilization. Michio Kaku and others have suggested that there are levels of civilization based on energy usage, with a level one civilization using all the power output of a star, through to a level three civilization using the power output of entire galaxies, and if you consider that the universe is some 15 billion years old and our particular bit of it is more like 6 billion, the possibility of a civilization a billion or so years in advance of ours is not beyond the bounds of credibility, but there is a substantial caveat in my opinion….

….Why? What purpose would a hollow moon serve? It would have to have been created, but to what end? It seems an enormous amount of effort fr some sort of observation post. I guess it could be part of an overarching plan to stabilize the early earth to make it more habitable but wouldn’t just moving a planetessimal into position be easier? It doesn’t seem to make sense, unless of course it is an interplanetary escape module left there for when we become so technologically advanced we can recognize it for what it is, and coincidentally have so completely stuffed up our own planet that we need it? That would be quite cool, but personally I think it is unlikely.

Of course, since we haven’t yet managed to full comprehend life and all of its possibilities perhaps hollow moons are some tremendously ancient life form that we simply can’t comprehend, but I fear that we are slipping into Pratchetts World Turtle realms here…..speaking of which, I liked the answer given by Didactylos in Pratchetts “Small Gods” when asked to refute the World Turtle story, “I will write another paper to refute it, a universe of spinning balls, I shall give you more balls than you can imagine…”

Enjoying simple pleasures....

There are many things that don't take a lot of effort, don't take a lot of money, don't even take much organising but can be a real joy after a hard week at work. Personally I take enormous pleasure from simply preparing a meal for myself and my friends, sitting quietly listening to good music, having a conversation with an old friend. The lifestyle that many of us live is frantic, urgent, constantly full of deadlines, meetings, agenda, and at the end of a week of stress and exertion it is nice to unwind properly. I know from speaking to friends and aquaintances that there is a phenomena that seems to affect the current generation of workers. It is a little odd, but it appears that when people go on holiday, there is a tendency to suddenly feel unwell after the first couple of days. I have been observing this for a while now and I am convinced that it comes down to having to be constantly on the go at work that the body stores up all the aches and twinges and illness ready for that moment when you finally get to relax.

Once that happens, all of those maladies re-emerge and as your stress levels go down, your feeling of wellbeing go down at the same time, you end up having a less than enjoyable holiday, and you almost get to the point when you crave being back at work. This is one of the reasons that I try to make it a personal policy that work gets done at work. I try not to bring anything home with me, so that once I switch off for the day I can properly relax. I have my wind down routine that starts the minute my work phone goes off and I leave the office. Even just on the walk to the bus stop I am already starting to let the pressures of the day dissipate and beginning to wind down, so that by the time I get home I can really relax properly.

It has got to the stage that even the sales calls in the evening are nothing more than a minor irritant, and that feels really good....

The dubious joys of the infomercial

Last night I almost fell off my chair I was shouting so hard at the TV. I was watching a programme on the National Geographic channel, a channel that I quite like despite its heavily American slant and style, when my enjoyment of a programme putting forward a rather dubious (in my opinion) version of the Stonehenge story was ruined by an infomercial sponsored by Panasonic heralding their successful links with UNESCO World Heriatge Sites programme. It wasn't just that the infomercial was fronted by a rather strange looking Sarah Brightman, whose environmental credentials are by no means clear. It wasn't just that a major contributor to the consumer driven growth that is seriously threatening our planet was indulging in the worst sort of greenwash. It wasn't even that UNESCO had seen fit to allow this use of their name and logo for advertising purposes. It was more the blatant lack of credible science being presented, and the half truths and part stories being pushed as fact.

I take a keen interest in environmentalism, and in ethics, and I am quite reasonably aware of the flaws in the current range of proposed solutions, but to run through them one at a time, and bearing in mind that Panasonic are rated at number 8 out of 18 globally by Greenpeace amongst electronics companies for their environmental impact, we can start with the assertion in the infomercial that solar power is a sustainable way forward for energy production. This is clearly nonsense since reports are now being published showing that the materials used in the manufacture of solar panels are far from sustainable, particularly the rare earth elements that are not only finite in quantity but are also rather damaging in terms of excavation and production. This is before we move on to the manufacturing of the batteries required. For quite some time there have been debates over the environmental impact of manufacturing batteries for hybrid/electric vehicles, and the same applies here.

Moving on to the claims of conserving precious water, certainly I am aware that Panasonic, along with many oth global companies are working to imprve water quality and cleanliness around the World as part of their community development programmes, but this is largely being done in the same way that 18th and 19th century industrialists arranged accomodation and sanitation for their workforce primarily to ensure that they still had a workforce despite the horrendous conditions their factories produced. Even the feature on sustainable building techniques talking about recycling stone roofs used images of limewashed houses in southern Spain, limewashing being an incredibly environmentally damaging building technique given the manufacturing process involved in creating the lime mortar.

Not a particularly useful or accurate infomercial then, and certainly not one that addressed perhaps the most important issue in building a sustainable global economy, the need for all of us to consume less. But of course, what global manufacturer is going to say that?

Art for the sake of art.....

I wonder sometimes if the whole of human development hasn't been a quest for the freedom to be creative. Even before we made the transition from hunter/gatherer to settled agricultural society we were creating art. Many of the examples of rock art found around the World, from the cave art in Western Europe, to the petroglyphs in South America, to the aboriginal art on Australasia depict hunting scenes and may well have been markers to wandering communities passing through the area, but many seem to have no clear relevance to the conveyance of anything other than "We were here". If we consider the prevalance of hand and foot paintings found, and consider also the discoveries of very early rock carved figures and images that seem to serve no purpose other than to be objects in and of themselves it would appear that we have an inbuilt desire to create art.

We have been striving since our earliest development to find more and more efficient ways to do the things that must be done for survival, thereby freeing up more time for creativity. This creativity comes in the form of art, music, literature, theatre and more recently film and computer games. It is as if we can't stop ourselves, and I wonder why that is. In general terms, creativity beyond practical considerations is not a strong survival trait. We can think perhaps of Bower birds where mates are selected on the quality of their nests, and the nests certainly to our eyes appear full of artistry but they serve a purely practical function, protecting the eggs of tree climbing snakes. I am certain that there must be an evolutionary reason for the desire to create art, but I can't quite get my head around what this might be. I will have to muse on it further....

Philosophy from a non-philosopher

Defining what a philosopher actually does is not as easy as you might think. In principle a philosopher studies the world and the problems and dilemmas faced by people in order to better understand the World as a whole. The remit of the philosopher covers a vast arena of study taking in all that is, and all that could possibly be. Going back to the early Greek philosophers, they were engaged in exploring their understanding of the physical and metaphysical world, using a combination of mental and physical experiments. It should be noted that in this context, the origin of metaphysics as a concept needs to be understood. The term comes from the collected works of Aristotle, and wasn't coined until about 100 years after his death. There are two collections pertinent to the use of the word. The first collection is known as Aristotles Physics, and pertains to "things that change" the second collection is known as Aristotles Metaphysics and pertains specifically to "things which do not change". The label metaphysics is thought to be a reference by later compilers to the understanding that students would read "Physics" first and that therefore "Metaphysics" would be read later, the word meaning literally "after physcs".

I make no claims to any structured philosophical training, but I do have a desire for knowledge, and for understanding of the World and its systems at a fundamental level. I have been told that I am eclectic in my study areas, attempting to access and discover knowledge by immersing myself in a chosen paradigm until such time as that paradigm no longer serves my purposes. This is a fairly intense process starting with developing the core basics of a subject area, before slowly moving on to more advanced work. Of course this has to be fitted in around real life, but that is part of the fun. Over the course of the next few months I am aiming for a philosophical paradigm, the first step may well be to try to refine exactly which branch of philosophy that will be. My current preference is ethics and morality, as that fits in quite nicely with a couple of other projects, but on of the joys of eclecticism and exploring new areas is that in that initial exploration process there are all sorts of ideas that present themselves.

Thoughts on alternative medicine

There has been a lot of debate recently about the use of alternative or complimentary therapies such as accupunture, homeopathy, reflexology, crystal healing, even chiropracty, and whether these have a positive or negative effect on health. There are a couple of distinct arguments around the subject and it is an interesting topic to debate I think, as it draws in ideas of ethics, psychology and pathology, and creates thoughts around how we as a society and as individuals perceive health and wellness. To begin, there is an arguement that in general, we, as a society are becoming more focused on our personal health, and that potentially this is leading us as individuals to become more selfish in terms of our demands on healthcare professionals. There has been a dramatic increase in the rates of diagnosis of a range of medical conditions which broadly fall into a category of having a unknown cause. These are conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome, chronic fatique syndrome, fibro-myalgia, chronic pain syndrome and the like. What makes all of these conditions similar is that they are diagnosed by exclusion. That is, doctors act to rule out other possible medical conditions that have known causes and can be treated, and having ruled those out, conclude that the symptoms in essence have an unknown cause.

This causes problems for the mainstream medical profession since if the cause of symptoms is unknown, treatment of the underlying condition is impossible. All doctors can do is try to treat the symptoms and hope that through alleviation the condition will improve. It also causes problems for the patient in that without a clear cause and treatment it is difficult to convince people that there is anything really wrong. From the point of view of the general public there can be a feeling that people suffering from these conditions are malingering and that there is nothing really wrong with them. This can create a sense of desperation in the patient in that the patient can become willing to try anything to ease their condition. Consequently it is a fertile ground for alternative treatments.

Concurrent with this is a prevelent idea that many of these conditions are neurologically created, either in a psychosomatic way, or as a consequence of psychological stress. The mechanisms of the mind in dealing with stress are not fully understood, so it is at least possible that changes in neurological, and more specifically neurochemical conditions can manifest as physical ailments. Having experienced extreme stress personally I can attest to thephysical manifestations of neuro-chemical imbalances, but if neurological changes are a contributing factor in these conditions, could these not be tested for? Cost is clearly an issue, since the testing procedure would involve FMRI scanning of the brain which is not easy or cheap to organise given the prevalence of these conditions. It also, if we accept a psychological component, opens the door for alternative therapies to actually be of benefit since they may work quite effectively at a psychological level.

There has been some evidence that GP's who take longer to talk to patients, and who are perceived to take patients seriously tend to have a better success rate in terms of alieviating symptoms than those GP's who appear to lack time, empathy and genuine concern. It could well be the case that in certain specific areas, the use of complimentary healthcare could give measurable benefits, based on the attention given to the patient by the practitioner, even if the therapy itself is limited in its practical funtionality. My personal opinion is that much more research is equired into the whole field, and that, if nothing else, taking a more holistic approach to patient well being would provide long term health benefits.