Friday 29 September 2023

Pistis ponders 'pan-globally'‽ (weekending September 30th 2023)

 

‽istis ponders ‘pan-globally’‽ (weekending September 30th 2023)

This week in the UK it seems that perhaps some of the airwaves have been filled overwhelmingly with all-too audible dog-whistles[i], the sound of dead cats landing[ii] and waftings - like those that may foul the throat and assault the senses during a walk down a country lane at muck-spreading time…[iii]

Amid all the noise, fury, announcements, speeches, accusations, outrage, brazening-out, non-apologies or conditional apologies (if I have offended anyone), questions, evasions, distractions, heat and maybe the odd glimmer of light shed or shared - ‽istis has gleaned (or forged?) possible links between what may have been some rather less prominent news and stories:

‽ Pan-Africanism and proposed underpinning values[iv]:

·        ubuntu: broadly -‘humanity to others’, ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’

·        ujaama: broadly - a system of village co-operatives based on equality of opportunity and self-help

·        uhuru: broadly - freedom

·        sankofa: broadly - retrieving things of value from our knowledge of the past

‽ continued oil extraction by the UK: with regulators approving planning for the Rosebank oilfield, ‘the largest untapped oil field in the North Sea’ [v]

‽ a proposal by ex-Prime Minister Gordon Brown for an international windfall tax on ‘petrostates’ that could help poor countries in climate crisis. ‘Former British PM calls for 3% levy on oil and gas export revenues of biggest producers to generate $25bn a year for global south.’[vi]  

So, at the all-too common personal risk of bringing a few ideas together to then conjure and contrive something that is perhaps more than the sum of the parts (or more than the parts can bear), ‽istis wonders whether, given:

·        the ‘value’ words and ideas from the Pan-African perspective

·        the reminder that countries (who have perhaps polluted and exploited more than enough over the last few centuries) continue to seek to extract fossil fuels

·        the redistributive tax suggestions – taking us some way to an inter-national position of linked responsibilities, duties and needs 

could a case be made for a next-step radical view[vii] of the way we might think about countries/nations/states and also of the world’s natural resources, especially those derived and extracted so significantly and impactfully from the earth‽

What if:  

  • national and state boundaries were thought of as primarily human constructions and artifices; a legacy of past politics, power and governance arrangements; a representation of current governance, power and governance  – for only some of them are even defined tangibly and visibly as built walls, as coastline or topographical features
  • those national and state boundaries were considered to be changeable, reconstructable or even deconstructable
  • the ‘static’ extractable resources (that may already have been exploited more for the over-development, benefit and enrichment of just some of the nations and just some of the people within those nations) were considered to be precious pan-global resources of and for the whole world and all its people (rather than the exclusive, claimed belongings of the nation in whose territory or territorial waters they had been ‘found’, accessed and distributed – with associated benefit flowing along and reinforcing the existing lines of any nation’s or state’s socio-political character: less or more stratified, more or less equal)
  • the renewables - solar, wind and wave power ('less tethered', not so fixed by relatively static location - an oil field, a coal seam, a gas reserve - not so ‘claimable’, not so uniquely exploitable or exclusively profitable within current politically-defined artificial national and state boundaries) are seen not just as vital for a sustainable future[viii] but perhaps as pan-global resources of both symbolic importance for possibly a post-nationalistic future - and maybe also the vital practical progressive, redistributive, restorative, reparative development, benefit and enrichment of all‽ 

…then just imagine how different the world could be. 


©‽istis                                                                                                                    

NB: further reflections and comments linked to this week’s theme and past blog entries to be found on Twitter: replies, retweets (which don’t necessarily indicate approval, sometimes the very opposite!) and ‘likes’: @Pistis_wonders. Twitter ‘follows’ and respectful comment and dialogue welcome...  


[iii]  https://www.staffordbc.gov.uk/odour-from-muck-spreading

Particular waftings assaulting ‽istis’ back of the throat have included a speech by the current UK Home Secretary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrpAMttlIkQ; the felling of a symbolic and much-loved tree: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/29/boy-arrested-in-england-over-deliberate-felling-of-famous-tree  ; the behaviour of two now-suspended GBNews presenters:  https://pressgazette.co.uk/news/gb-news-laurence-fox-dan-wootton/ ; the HS2 trainline saga: https://www.theengineer.co.uk/content/news/poll-should-the-birmingham-to-manchester-leg-of-hs2-be-scrapped/ ; the ‘ennoblement’ of what may be seen as ex-PM Johnson’s court favourites: https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/priti-patel-jacob-rees-mogg-honoured-boris-johnson-resignation-list-published ; a current PM’s responses to questions from local radio presenters: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-66945279 ; the tragic, tragic stabbing and death of a young woman in London: https://www.itv.com/watch/news/teenager-charged-with-murder-of-elianne-andam-remanded-into-custody/sdn7ctc     

[iv] from a film commissioned by @BrainFooood (on ‘X’/Twitter) https://twitter.com/i/status/1675152653712596993

[vii] …and possibly the working out of a radical approach in practice?


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Thursday 21 September 2023

Pistis ponders without whom...‽ (weekending September 23rd 2023)

 

‽istis ponders without whom…‽ (weekending September 23rd 2023)

This weekending ‽istis has been pondering all those people ‘without whom…’

‽ It started positively and gratefully on a wet fellside in the Lake District: reflecting on the role of forebears, those who have gone and gone before – parents, grandparents, great-grandparents (all at the same time) without whom the children, grandchildren or great-grandchildren simply would not be. A sort of a poem formed:

I look to the hills, whence cometh my help? (Psalm 121).

And winds and rains

Will carry and meld

Across the fells and back to earth.

And fruits will grow

With light and warmth

For kindled love remains.

‽ It continued with some passages that stood out in this week’s reading matter: ‘Long Shadows – Truth, Lies and History’ by Erna Paris[i]:

·        Karl Jasper’s distinction in the 1940s between ‘guilt’ for which there is only individual culpability – and – ‘communal responsibility’ for crimes that could not have been committed without a collective ‘looking-away’ (p.26)

·        The potential ‘effect the post-war silence about Hitler’s attempted genocide had had on Germany’s children…  the children themselves were often willing co-conspirators, so to speak, in that they sensed the need to turn their eyes from something hidden and appalling - they knew not what – for the good of their families.’ (p.69)  

‽ And then we heard from those speaking up and speaking out and speaking about the alleged behaviour of Russell Brand[ii]. And ‽istis wondered about enabling and ‘complicitism’[iii]…  those who may have commissioned, represented, promoted, bought a ticket, enjoyed, laughed along to, tolerated, not challenged …and endured.

‽ Policy announcements followed from a lectern[iv] from a Prime Minister elevated and enabled by those who were second and third and fourth (and on, and on) among equals. Future renegotiated relations between a potential new-hued government and the European Union were also talked of. And ‽istis pondered mandates, voting and who just might be responsible for the outcomes of an election or a referendum – and their consequences.

‽ Another TV programme aired[v] and a question raised by naturalist Chris Packham: “Perhaps I have to take another route. Does that other route mean that this is the time for me to break the law?” And ‽istis wondered about objection and protest – about the potential costs and benefits of ‘not just following orders’.  

So, at this week’s ending, final disturbing ponderings and wonderings linger:

What perhaps, possibly, might ‽istis be representing, promoting, enjoying, laughing along to, tolerating, not challenging, enduring, allowing others to endure, ‘complicitising’[vi] and enabling…‽

And what could be the consequences in this generation and the next‽

 

©‽istis                                                                                                                    

NB: further reflections and comments linked to this week’s theme and past blog entries to be found on Twitter: replies, retweets (which don’t necessarily indicate approval, sometimes the very opposite!) and ‘likes’: @Pistis_wonders. Twitter ‘follows’ and respectful comment and dialogue welcome...  


[i] Paperback edition: Bloomsbury 2002 ISBN: 0 7475 5804 3

[iii] Is that a word‽

[v] Review in ‘The Big Issue’: https://www.bigissue.com/culture/tv/chris-packham-break-the-law-review-climate-activism/ Programme: Chris Packham: Is it Time To Change The Law? Channel 4 Wednesday September 20 at 9pm https://www.channel4.com/programmes/chris-packham-is-it-time-to-break-the-law

[vi] Now that surely is definitely not a word‽


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Wednesday 13 September 2023

Pistis ponders what matters‽ (weekending September 16th 2023)

 

‽istis ponders what matters‽ (weekending September 16th 2023)

This weekending ‽istis wonders whether – perhaps, possibly, maybe – that which matters most is that which cannot be digitised/digitized‽

That’s all, this week…

©‽istis                                                                                                                    

NB: further reflections and comments linked to this week’s theme and past blog entries to be found on Twitter/'X': replies, retweets/reposts (which don’t necessarily indicate approval, sometimes the very opposite!) and ‘likes’: @Pistis_wonders. Twitter/'X' ‘follows’ and respectful comment and dialogue welcome...  


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Friday 8 September 2023

Pistis ponders the sins of the fathers (weekending September 9th 2023)

 

‽istis ponders the sins of the fathers (weekending September 9th 2023)

Power; safeguarding and abuse; faith and religion; dominant/prevailing/hegemonic beliefs or ideologies and what may be built on them; ‘history’ and potential legacy of the past in the present; memory and forgetting; trauma, vulnerability and resilience; apologetics and apologies…  themes that ‽istis perhaps too often ponders and quite often includes in several recent and earlier blogs[i].

Once again, this week, many of those same themes seem hard to avoid:

·        Watching the ‘Woman in the Wall’[ii] on TV (‘Murder, mystery, morality. One woman's traumatic past threatens to expose Ireland’s most shocking and darkest secrets.’[iii])

·        Reading about army chaplains during the Second World War[iv], about ‘Gott mitt uns’ on the belt buckles of every enlisted member and non-commissioned officer of the German army and navy; reading about the ‘Holocaust by bullets’[v] and thousands of Jews executed in the forests before the scaled-up industrialisation of the gas chambers of death camps

·        Hearing David Harewood and David Lascelles (the current Earl of Harewood) discuss the ties that bind their ancestors and their present - not least slavery. Owned and owning; exploited and profiting; advocating for apology, ambivalent to apology for something that one is not directly responsible for but recognising accountability and duty; seeking restorative and reparative actions together[vi]   

·        Reading the conclusion to the internal Church of England investigation into safeguarding concerns relating to Canon Mike Pilavachi – ‘substantiated’[vii].  

So, all these troubled ponderings and wonderings for ‽istis have settled on the issue of spiritual abuse and perhaps the role of religion in, at the very least, providing fig-leaf cover for international, national, social, institutional, organisational familial and individual ‘sins’ – of the fathers?[viii]

In the Church of England report (above and ‘endnote vii) the substantiated concerns (covering a period of c.40 years and pre-/post organisational approval, blessing, ordination and even the according of hero status?) are considered an ‘abuse of power relating to his[ix] ministry, and spiritual abuse.

Spiritual abuse: described in guidance as ‘a form of emotional and psychological abuse characterised by a systematic pattern of coercive and controlling behaviour in a religious context.’

And so ‽istis has been wondering about what could be considered to be centuries of coercive and controlling behaviour in a religious context - perhaps, possibly, maybe:

·        control of hearts and minds and behaviour of individuals, in relationships, within families, in homes and schools and communities

·        the threat of hell, the threat of eternal damnation and torment v the ‘promise’ of heaven, if…

·        the ability to decide what and who is wrong/right/sinful or holy

·        the promotion of family structures perhaps despite the domestic violence and child abuse; the prizing of patriarchs and patriarchy, of masculinity sometimes deified, sometimes toxic, sometimes both

·        the inclusion and exclusion, access or barring – to jobs and opportunities, preferment, status, power

·        the blessing of exploration, endeavours, exploitation, systems of government and political ideology; sectarian strife, conflict, wars civil and international

     the suppression of dissent, the defining of heresy, the treatment including murder of dissenters and heretics, excommunication, shunning, silencing 

At the very least, again, ‘fig-leaf cover’ has perhaps been given for international, national, social, institutional, organisational familial and individual ‘sins’ – of the fathers; possibly these dynamic processes still play out today, maybe their legacy reverberates on and on…

At the very most, perhaps, possibly at a fundamental level in some of the actions of a hegemonic Christian church over centuries, we may have seen an utterly dominating ‘form of emotional and psychological abuse characterised by a systematic pattern of coercive and controlling behaviour’ with maybe unquantifiable and unqualifiable consequences and impact at psycho-social-cultural structural and systemic levels – for individuals, relationships, families, organisations and institutions…

And ‽istis wonders now who might say sorry – who might recognise their accountability and duty; who might seek and be responsible for restorative and reparative actions…  

But you may well have a different view. The 'church', the 'bride of Christ' - for better or for worse? Humanity's well-being - net gain, net loss? 

On earth as it is in heaven? What evidence could be presented, would 'amens' and ‘hallelujahs’ ring out, and would the conclusion be: ‘substantiated’‽

©‽istis                                                                                                                    

NB: further reflections and comments linked to this week’s theme and past blog entries to be found on Twitter: replies, retweets (which don’t necessarily indicate approval, sometimes the very opposite!) and ‘likes’: @Pistis_wonders. Twitter ‘follows’ and respectful comment and dialogue welcome...  


[i] Preoccupations and interests are all to obviously on show, perhaps…  

[iv] ‘The motives of the chaplains were not unusual… their noble, personal and professional motives turned them into a legitimating force in a war of annihilation.’ From the article below, by Jennifer Popowycz.(Jan. 24th 2022)

[viii] …and patriarchal domination may well be one of the most pernicious… discuss!

[ix] Canon Mike Pilavachi….


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Friday 1 September 2023

Pistis dreams an AGI future (weekending September 2nd 2023)

 

‽istis daydreams or daymares an AGI future (weekending September 2nd 2023)

Serious ponderings and wonderings this week with many threads - frayed, pickable, pull-able and perhaps, possibly, maybe weaveable‽ - coming from various sources:

‽ an article in the Sept/Oct edition of ‘New Internationalist’: ‘The Fight for Reparations’ by Priya Lukka[i]. ‘At the heart of the neoliberal system, the imperialist structures that have created global inequalities remain.’ And a picture including banners proclaiming: ‘Who owes who?’ and ‘Pay reparations for climate change and colonialism’. And a sub-heading in the article suggests: ‘A movement is growing to build collective power and rework the rules that have dominated the world over the last 500 years.’

‽ A ‘Tweet’ (or an ‘X’ post) from @BladeoftheSun: ‘The 10 richest men on the planet (they are all men), have the same wealth as the poorest 4 billion. Hyper Capitalism is what will destroy humanity they need to be taxed out of existence.’ (is that really the case and could taxing help? and a request for the source of the information was sent…)

‽ An advertisement from ‘The Radical Tea Towel Company’ that included a reference to this question from the 17th century: ‘Was the earth made to preserve a few covetous, proud men to live at ease; or was it made to preserve all her children?’ Gerard Winstanley (of the ‘Leveller’ movement) 1649

‽ a BBC news item[ii] with the headline: ‘UK’s £18tn slavery debt is an underestimation, UN judge says’. The ‘Brattle Report’ published in June and co-authored by the judge, Patrick Robinson, is cited - suggesting that ‘In total, the reparations to be paid by 31 former slaveholding states – including Spain, the United States and France – amount to $107.8 trillion…’  based on ‘an assessment of harms caused by slavery and the wealth accumulated by countries involved’. A decades-long payment plan is set out.

‽ a documentary in the ‘Storyville’[iii] series: ‘iHuman’[iv]  ‘Artificial intelligence now permeates every aspect of our lives, but only a handful of people have any control over its influence on our world. With unique access to some of the most powerful pioneers of the AI revolution, iHuman asks whether we know the limits of what artificial intelligence is capable of and its true impact.’

Perhaps only a personal viewing and your own reflection is the best recommendation that ‽istis can make… 

However, many questions were prompted for ‽istis, not least:

·        who has control?

·        who owns and manages the power to provide the means of operation and production?

·        to what tasks might AI be put?  

One contributor, Max Tegmark[v], suggests in the programme that AGI (Artificial General Intelligence[vi]) ‘…could be the last invention we ever need to make, because it can then invent everything else much faster than we could.’ (c.57’ into the programme).

So ‽istis began to daydream, or ‘daymare’ the future, with Stephen Hawking’s words swirling around: ‘Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately it might also be the last.’

And the bones of a short (or longer story) started to emerge:

~  It all began with a simple request sent to the AGI's silicon brain of super-connected artificial neural networks:

‘Please make recommendations for principles, systems, structures and arrangements that could promote the ‘most best’ for all life on Earth - for as many people, fauna and flora as possible - both now and sustainably into the future?’

~  ‽istis pressed ‘enter’ and tried to imagine what might happen next: the scanning of the world’s accumulated ideas and wisdom and ‘product’: of sacred texts; of prayers, of poetry and novels; of every document available – research papers, declarations, charters, statements from summits, legal judgements, academic texts, diaries, journals and blogs, love letters and parents’ promises, and dying wishes; songs and music scores and recordings; images and art and craft and design – pictures paintings, sculptures and films and textiles and pottery and even NFTs[vii]; buildings and architecture; site plans and circuits; catalogues of animals and insects and marine life, of minerals, and of vegetables; and the expressions and articulations, messages of disappointments and frustrations, anguish and despair, of hopes and dreams and joys; and the missing voices that if we listen hard enough we might just hear, though oh so often silenced, defeated, excluded, denied…

~ Perhaps that was the easy part, the safe part, the theory… ‘Please make recommendations…’

~  But then ‽istis remembered, fatefully, a quotation: ‘…to practice without theory is to sail an uncharted sea; theory without practice is not to set sail at all.’ M.Susser[viii]  

~  A second simple request was typed - perhaps the last command that the AGI required: ‘Please enact these principles, systems, structures and arrangements…’

~  And ‽istis pressed ‘Enter’…

©‽istis                                                                                                                    

NB: further reflections and comments linked to this week’s theme and past blog entries to be found on Twitter: replies, retweets (which don’t necessarily indicate approval, sometimes the very opposite!) and ‘likes’: @Pistis_wonders. Twitter ‘follows’ and respectful comment and dialogue welcome...  


[i] https://newint.org/issues/2023/08/29/decolonize-now Apologies, subscription necessary for this one

[ii] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66596790 report by Joshua Nevett (23.8.2023)

[iii] ‘Amazing, shocking, inspiring and award-winning – the best in international documentaries.’ (BBC website)

[v] ‘A Swedish-American physicist, cosmologist and machine learning researcher. He is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the president of the Future of Life Institute. He is also a supporter of the effective altruism movement.’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Tegmark In the documentary (c. 1hr32') Tegmark says: 'AI isn't good and it isn't evil either... it amplifies the desires and goals of whoever controls it - today - a very, very small group of people. The most important question that we humans have to ask ourselves at this point in history requires no technical knowledge: what sort of future society do we want to create with all this technology we are making? What do we want the roles of humans to be in this world?'

[vi] Described by Jűrgen Schmidhuber in the documentary as the invention ‘that can learn to improve the learning algorithm itself, without limitations except the basic limitations of computability.’ (and ‽istis wonders what these are – but surely must include the ‘hardware’, ‘software’, physical components and materials and running power, and their security and sustainability…  perhaps, possibly, maybe herein lies a weakness?)  

[viii] In ‘Community Psychiatry: Epidemiologic and Social Theories’ 1968


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‽istis ponders volunteering, expertise and tapping (weekending April 27th 2024)

  ‽istis ponders volunteering, expertise and knowing where and how to tap (weekending April 27 th  2024) Various themes this weekending; m...