It's a FEAST! But not for everyone

On the 24 May the Queensland-European Research Collaborations Initiative (QERCI) was launched. It is the first time such a link has been established between a single Australian state and the European research community (read the announcement on the Forum for European-Australian Science and Technology cooperation - "Queensland researchers to enjoy close ties with Europe").

The benefits could be considerable, as the summary of the projects under the 7th Framework Programme demonstrates.

On the other hand... As Neil Hamilton, then Executive Director of FEAST writes in one of the Forum's newsletters, there are problems. Poignantly titled, "If Australian Science is World Class, why aren't we the Partner of Choice for European Projects?", he lists short-sighted funding on Australia's side, lack of strategies, high overheads associated with European systems, and being too busy just trying to make our own system work, as the main reasons.

Admittedly the article dates from January 2006, but I'll wager not much has changed. There is also a more insidious factor, often hidden but instrumental none the less.

As it happens, back in November 2006 Jean-Michel Baer, Director, Directorate L - Science, economy and society, issued an invitation to myself and Australian scientists in general to participate in the EU's 7th Framework Programme (see here and here). I had submitted the essay "The social Europe: a formal view". It deals with the EU as a large-scale system, subjected to various dynamics identified through the Otoom mind model which have the potential to advance but could also spell deterioration. Such a perspective is not derived from politics or ideology, but is available under a formal and objective analysis. This presentation - and possibly other material gleaned from the Otoom website - resulted in the invitation.

Wonderful, except for my limited means to follow through. As so much in this sad affair it comes back to the difficulty experienced with Griffith University. Being confined to your little room is hardly a productive basis from which to engage with the EU's scientific community. The posts "When in Rome..." and "The reasons behind Otoom" should give some idea what all this means.

How ironic - there is Queensland's Premier Peter Beattie proudly announcing the state's collaboration with Europe and here is one of its own citizens shunted sideways by the ignorance and deviousness of certain compatriots (and they are even members of a university!).

Clearly, something needs to be done.

Living in a fog

The other morning Brisbane experienced heavy fog. How rare to have the horizon only a few blocks away.

Your memory replaces the skyline and fills in all the bits. You get in the mood and think.

Fog - such a good metaphor for language. When the mists surround you objects retreat and turn into silhouettes. Much of their definition is lost, they have become two-dimensional.

Words can be like that. All those meanings so many of them have - unless the mind sees only one.

There seems to be a creeping paucity in people's understanding, an ever-shrinking space caused by the disappearance of meanings that have been swallowed up by their mental fog.

Take 'functionality' - in it's generic sense the property of a function. Over the years certain fields have added their special interpretations and so we have the functionality of a module in a software, or the nature of a hypothesis trying to model the human mind. Yet the original basis still stands, ready to be used.

In recent emails much confusion resulted from an insistence of readers to exclude any version of the word outside the context they were familiar with. Other words were suggested as a substitute to facilitate my explanation, but they didn't work because I wanted my readers' thoughts to proceed just so. But they couldn't know that, unless and until they accepted the word in its basic form.

In the exchange of emails the opportunity exists to at least point to the problem; but what if there is no feedback and contexts are changed ad hoc, never to be challenged?

Now the words have become like the silhouettes in the fog. The semantic landscape has turned into a flat canvas of shapes, a hotchpotch of things that may or may not connect with each other. One's very situatedness in the world has become precarious, based on subjective substitutes.

Carolyn Henshaw, an English teacher at a Brisbane school, has written about the worsening of language and how it is treated in the classroom (Courier Mail, 30 May 07, "Ideology turns joy of teaching English literature into an ugly game").

Instead of conveying the richness and beauty of language, the medium has become a vehicle for pushing ideological interpretations, a pared-down tool in the service of the political moment.

"Boys and girls", she writes, "who are still forming and clarifying their own beliefs and values are expected to analyse those of writers and historical contexts about which they know little or nothing."

"They regurgitate set phrases, such as 'marginalised groups', 'gaps and silences' and 'dominant discourse', in an attempt to meet criteria."

"Knowing how to play this critical literacy game is a more certain guarantee of 'success' than an appreciation of language and being able to respond to the complexities of literature with insight, intelligence and originality."

19th century poetry becomes an "integrating device for a discussion of inequality", "Hamlet is a stimulus for an exposé on Shakespeare's misogynistic attitude to women".

What happens when, instead of dancing with words, pupils are taught a "sociocultural-critical model of language", "invented by politically motivated academics and imposed by bureaucrats"?

Like someone wandering through a fog where the surrounds are looming shades of grey, their inner space has become a prison - and they can't even see its walls.

The reasons behind Otoom

As the affair with Griffith University and its associated problems drag on year after year the question might be asked, why bother? Quite apart from the sheer tedium, an obstacle created by humans usually implies an intent and with it comes the story - the concocted picture painted by those of ill-will. An unhappy situation all around, to put it mildly. So why not move on?

The world faces a number of problems that in their sheer extent pose dangers unimagined only a generation ago. There is no need to go into hyperbole. When even scientists, not noted for their exaggerations, avail themselves of descriptions that go way beyond the usual kind of warnings, it is time to take stock in a serious way.

Much has been said about climate change and its effects. A summary of what the changes entail and what they can cost us can be found in the Stern Review. Some have criticised the findings as too pessimistic, others say they don't go far enough. Hardly anyone argues about the central premise however, and considering the inherent unpredictability of complex systems that should be an achievement in itself. But how can any initiative be successful unless there exists an understanding of how reality is perceived and interpreted by the various demographics on this planet?

Consider the state of the world as of now. Some sense of the problematic nature can be gained from the Worldmapper site. Territories are re-sized according to subject matter. Compare the sources of international food aid with a map of war deaths. Despite the infusion of US$2.5 billion in the year 2005 alone from developed countries it does seem as if such aid merely fuels the intent of so many demographics to continue destroying each other (the discrepancy in year numbers - 2002 vs 2005 - hardly detracts from the argument). It would make sense to understand why this is so. Now take a look at the GDP wealth map. Although the gross domestic product is not the sole arbiter of livability, as a comparative parameter it does have its purpose. Imagine what those differences mean in a global mix of communication, expectancy, and population flows and one gets some idea of the driving forces behind our ongoing conflicts, world-wide finances and immigration - all factors which have a considerable impact everywhere. At the bottom of it all is the system of mind.

Take the Iraq war. One would think with a situation precarious as it is the last thing we should do is create even more disruption. But no - estimates of its costs range from a best-case scenario of US$100 billion to a worst-case of US$2 trillion over a decade. Now keep in mind that the war is still ongoing and there is no price one can put on human suffering and the dead. Furthermore these sums apply to the United States only, they do not include the costs born by all the other countries. And in any case, they refer to those items that can be translated into a monetary equivalent; there is much else that is missed. Surely, a means to analyse what is actually going on here would have some use.

How many decision makers have seriously analysed the phenomenon of China? Here is a nation of a size and growth that already supports the economic basis of the major Western powers. And yet it is a hybrid system of a central command structure and market dynamics totally unproven in its ultimate effectiveness. What happens when its internal dynamics, for whatever reason, cease to fuel the traditional expectations of the West and start to constrain the latter's profligacy in terms of international affairs, administrative extravagance, and welfare? China also happens to be an old civilisation containing many layers of cultural perspectives, there to be studied.

How then does the Otoom mind model stack up?

The main work, "On the origin of Mind", comes in two parts. Part I represents a deconstruction of 21 philosophies down the ages where their thought structures are analysed and found to be consistent in type across the entire range. All in all there are 527 references taken directly from those texts.

Part II addresses the subject of mind from the bottom up, from the neuronal dynamics to the mind of an individual to society at large. It features 441 references from science and human events in general to support its arguments. They can be seen as pieces of a giant mosaic which are placed into a coherent whole. There are no inconsistencies, no tweaks to bend reality to suit some purpose.

Since the completion of that work in August 2003 over 150 instances from science, politics, and human affairs in general have been collected that confirm the validity of the model. For example, the interpretation of the nature of terrorists under Otoom is one gradually being adopted by security agencies after so many mistakes made by them; the ultimate futility of the Iraq war has been predicted from its very beginning; ditto the engagement in Afghanistan; the riots in France have been foreseen; so was the implosion of so many Pacific island states; or the effects of immigration in Western regions. As one British diplomat in Washington was quoted by Max Hastings, from The Guardian in London, as he was referring to the current US administration: "We must just somehow stagger through to the end".

And so here I sit, faced with an idiotic arrogance by some (there are no other words for it), which prevents such material from reaching a wider audience. Enough years have been spent in exile under virtual house arrest, and something just has to be done.

PS: In my previous post I mentioned that the response from Queensland Education was still outstanding. Not any more. To their credit it has to be said theirs was the most constructive reply of them all. While not acting directly, they nevertheless offered some advice about whom to contact next. We'll see.

Behind the curtains

Our actions are often two-fold. One part is performed in the open, for everyone to see. The other is hidden, not so visible at all. It's as if there is a curtain drawn before them, a veil that shields their intent.

The circumstances around the evaluation of an honours thesis have been presented at length, here and on the Otoom website. On one hand they represent the judgment of examiners who perceived certain flaws in its text. But not until one examines the examiners begins another picture to emerge. References made to remarks that simply do not exist, other remarks that are treated as if they have never been made, facts from real life dismissed outright, and features which are criticised regardless of their inherent value... are those the actions they seem to be, or is there another agenda at work?

Take our attitudes towards drugs. On the surface they are moulded by our desire to remain healthy, to help the addict. But do they? By now over a century worth of policies and their results brings to the fore a trend. Substances are getting stronger, the finances richer, the groups behind them more and more powerful. Entire countries stand or fall on the production of illicit drugs, armies are equipped from their sales and sent into the field against us, and the addicts are more helpless then ever. All this is supposed to make for a healthy society - so we are told.

Religion - a curtain par excellence. Values such as helping others, team work, a sense for love and beauty; all of them noble and all of them found anywhere, yet they are assigned to one's spiritual tribe as if the others never heard of them. And so we go to war. Has not the commonality become obvious by now? Apparently not, or so it seems.

There are those who favour unfettered immigration. They point to human rights, to an equitable society, to tolerance and fairness. But the side effects are violence, the emergence of ghettos, and hate towards the hosts. Those results are known, they play themselves out almost daily, but still the chant for more persists. What are the real values shown here?

In France many responded to the election of Nicolas Sarkozy with an unbridled sense of desolation. We are meant to believe that an inefficient economy and rioting gangs require more of the same. What do the mourners really wish for?

An old joke goes something like this. If you get mugged in a dark lane it's an accident; if it happens in the same lane again, it's bad luck; but if you get mugged there a third time, it's stupidity.

When it comes to the decision makers who attract a considerable status it would be simplistic to talk of stupidity. Nor are sizable movements, created through a process of debate and feedback, a mere matter of coincidence. There is planning at work, design and intent - although they may not be of the overt, conscious kind.

There are curtains that shield our actions. They are made of invisible strands of wishful thinking that show our acceptable side, while at the same time allowing us to pursue our dark instincts of destruction behind the veil. Not only do they keep out the light, they serve to protect a sinister land where age-old monsters survive.

Those inconvenient truths

Reports are released that focus on climate change and its effects. They trigger conferences around the world which even politicians find now inadvisable to miss. The findings filter into the mass media in the form of articles and documentaries. Industry is gearing up for a change to alternative energy sources.

Does that mean we are getting prepared for the tasks ahead? Well, yes and no.

Let's look at the issue under the sociological perspective. The increasing complexity of Western society has given us science and technology and its products. Those products are the cause of the current problems, but they are also the result of an evolving sophistication of our behaviour. Science cannot prosper unless the people involved have the opportunity to research and present their findings. Industry cannot make use of their findings unless there exist the skill base and infrastructure to implement the necessary processes. And pervading all this is the general atmosphere of convivial standards, from a democratic governance with its separation of powers, church and state, to a judiciary that presumes innocence until proven guilty, and to a general acceptance of human rights regardless of one's personal background. This means if you're gay you are not imprisoned or are given electric shocks, it means as a woman you are not judged by the number of children you have or by your matrimonial status, and you can walk down the street without being attacked for your choice of clothes.

Every level of achievement carries its own costs, but it is a measure of maturity whether those costs can be addressed rationally or under a cloud of superstition and fear.

The prospects of such issues as climate change, peak oil, and pandemics confront us with a scale and profundity that surpass anything our past has presented so far. We cannot refer to practise runs in our history. If the combinatorial effect of all those features mentioned earlier has made our current quality of life possible, then any flaws (and they do exist) were not sufficient to prevent the obvious rise. But as in any system that is less than ideal, its shortcomings are sure to show once the pressure builds. It is at that stage that its true quality becomes apparent.

An issue of global proportion invites, no, necessitates the recognition of those demographics which are best suited for coming up with the solution. We are back at the overall standards that either allow or not allow the required actions to be taken.

It stands to reason therefore that a culture - meant in the widest possible sense - has the duty not only to preserve its current quality but to engage in measures that correct any shortcomings so that it may be that much better positioned for what is to come.

Although in the West we are becoming aware of the looming dangers, we are less open to the prerequisites for being adequately prepared. For example, how does the rise of Christian fundamentalism enable our collective minds to think rationally about our fate? How does the infusion of Islam with its medieval morals preserve our current human rights, achieved with so much pain? How does the transfusion of so many energies into inadequate demographics, bordering almost on obsession, secure our own readiness for the future - a transfusion which is often undertaken without the slightest regard for the societal conditions at the target?

Suppose in due course the West suffers a resource shortfall so that its present standards become untenable - which demographic can take its place? Such an event does not make the crisis disappear, it makes it worse.

No matter who we are, our actions are never completely bereft of emotion. But these celebrated commitments are only given the opportunity to be celebrated eventually had the accompanying actions been the correct ones to begin with. Unguarded emotion let loose with knee-jerk reactions destroys, and there is no happy ending where history gets duly inscribed. Libraries are not made of ruins.

There are more inconvenient truths than meet the moist eye.

Life is a game of cards

Not an original remark, I'm sure. So here is a further refinement.

The other day I was sitting at my Solitaire during another boring backup session. Then a not uncommon situation occurred, one that is most frustrating.

The Aces are laid out on top, almost all of the other cards arranged in red/black sets below, and only two or three remain to be turned. At that point you need one Two or one Three of some suit to begin hauling the deck up to the Aces, but that very card is one of those hidden and to retrieve it some other must be removed. That other can't be used because, you guessed it, that Two or Three blocks any move.

Just about all the cards are there and waiting to go, but a single one holds everything up.

There endeth the metaphor.

In life things can get arranged, one by one, until a single item is left to set the closing event in motion. Sometimes the air becomes almost palpable, so obvious is the next step. But that next step is yet to come, the outcome still in the future no matter how obvious. Perhaps akin to the way a storm builds going through the familiar phases, but when it breaks no-one can say for sure.

Is that how the story of Otoom goes? The pieces have come together for years now, some clearly visible, some less so. Those pieces like the cards belong to many suits and have many different values. Together they form an entire deck, although there are still some missing.

The game is not finished until all the Aces are covered. With one card here and one there to go the final stage will be quick - but when?

The joys of reality (Jean Baudrillard)

In our constant search for the ultimate symbol of reality, so that it may reflect to us the spectacle of death, the recent act by Jean Baudrillard has given us a timely invitation. People of reflective moods eagerly enter into engagements to fulfill the destiny of their thoughts.

The creative act becomes attuned to the lights, be they the summary manifestation of a nuclear furnace by day or the local subsidiaries in our streets and shops during the night. It also assumes the silhouettes of darkness, the non-reflection of the something without intent, without act, and without causality, making it the perfect representation of any wish ready to come into being.

Light, the positive, to accentuate the other; and darkness, the negative, the succor to the former. The act of our creating of course does not care for the causality of either. For the hero the light is not a friend; it is the foe because without a danger his status is brought to ridicule and the night needs the danger to give it spice. The essential need of light is then darkness, and the prerequisite for adulation must be the destroyer waiting in the shadows. Yet the foe would not realise the awaited destiny alone and so depends on its counterpart yet again. Causality remains undefined.

The symbol of one becomes the symbol of the other, until its trademark is the combinatorial reflectivity shimmering under whatever radiation.

If life on earth is the creative effect of its star, and if the neon tube or TV screen is the creative result of us, then the symbolisation process initiated by the sun moves in the inexorable direction of mutual ambiguity in its attempt to portray life. It has passed many a way station, but today the acquisitioned technicity from ancient plants and ancient atoms translates the world for us. It also translates the world to us, because the representational complexity of Life has become too large for our linear minds to process.

To be sure, the serious thinker grapples with the iconoclastic significance of nothing. But for the rest the reference is compacted into the form of infantile worlds, or worlds within worlds, who play their theme songs in endless repetition. Why shouldn't they - we need to remember them as templates.

The formality of linear constraints prompts for an escape. Amorphous symbols have programmed society to conceptualise on their own terms, and the real, that universal template already suffering its first interpretation via God, has turned into a prefabricated logo-set long ago. What else but for on-off voltage potentials to transmute the ying-yang nature of our spirit into the digital realm. Functional modules of a third-order programming language reflect the perceived symbolisation of manifested energy from some star; they are clustered to produce 3D renditions of societal arrangements and give themselves off as being virtual.

But the gamer knows better. Roaming the conceptual space where symbol and simulation interplay as if being moved around the surface of a Klein bottle, there never is an inner, because there never can be an outer. The synergy of both is the emergent icon, a representation in its own right just as the ancient hero carried light and darkness on him.

And so the rendition within the computer game is not Life, but equally Life does not exist without the computer game. The new reality is of the nth order. Symbiosis through synergy through clustering through complexity - a recursive function that has become the arbiter at all scales.

Is it the ultimate symbol of reality? Only annihilation will tell.

References:

J. Baudrillard, "Simulacra and Simulations", from "Jean Baudrillard, Selected Writings", ed. Mark Poster (Stanford; Stanford University Press, 1988), pp.166-184.

J. Baudrillard, "Paroxysm: The Perfect Crime", AFAA (Association Française d'Action Artistique) 1993, pp. 5-12.