THE ÜBERMENSCH CONSPIRACY

Yup, I went through some rather agonizing moments in the bath this morning and I’ve come up with the conclusion that the only solution is to own up.
Silence is a wonderful weapon, but then, no one really knows how to handle it - especially me… and under present legislation I could actually be held for 28
days on nothing but dry bread and water…

Yuk…!

Here, then, is THE ÜBERMENSCH CONSPIRACY, and you win no prizes for guessing that this is what finally led Special Branch to conclude that they were wasting the government’s time and resources on an inquiry that was going nowhere. In fact, I make bold to prophesy that this will be the future stance of MI5 after they have perused its contents, i.e. a dead-pan parody of international
conspiracy and of certain strains of political hypocrisy. Max McDowell’s angle is not altogether the conventional one, admittedly, but, I for one, remain profoundly struck by the forensic evidence presented. And clearly, the involvement of such individuals as foreign secretaries, ministers of the interior and heads of states is so pervasive in any case, that they tend to fall outside or go beyond the scope of the merely judicial process.


Nevertheless, McDowell has scored an impressive world exclusive. An
expatriate based in London, he’s a tough, self-regulating character with an
astute and ever-present sense of life's absurdity. It is of course painful for me
to know how much I have contributed to his present dilemma, and the passage of
two weeks has done nothing to assuage his outrage. But what we have here is a
personal eyewitness account, documenting seemingly cheap satirical fiction which in
reality is down and dirty fact. Indeed, the fact is, that police only withdrew a
file on his findings to the Crown Prosecution Service last month after an
undercover investigation by Der Spiegel judged it to be a John Grisham emulation. You will
realize what can be done with this sort of story by a writer with the gift of
ambience and the requisite touch of satirical sadism. Which is of course why it
is still the subject of a parliamentary inquiry in Berlin amid growing demands
by Christian Democrats to identify those responsible for 9/11.

But then, of course, Germans are not meant to have a sense of humour -
they are expected to be dour and rigid. For that, surely, is how the world at
large loves to hate them best.

So far as my own participation is concerned, I confirm that I had no
involvement in, or responsibility for, the alleged coup. In fact, McDowell never
directly reveals the true identity of his “sensual, sultry, seductive,
enigmatic, loving, stimulating and yet, compassionate“ Selena, but one can
hardly call him tight-lipped either. Which is a very sore point with me
(Bastard!). Being called upon to perform some two dozen times, I much regret
that my true nature will finally be revealed. What I'm trying to convey is that
my entire history is something I have nothing to do with. But then again, I’ve
long since wondered if I shouldn’t be someone else. I do feel your interest has
been waning boys, and so I might as well own up. Much to the unashamed relief of
Sir Percy, no doubt, who has the peculiar distinction of being the only person
ever to have been banned from this blog and who - by his own admission - comes
here for the sole purpose of jerking off…

Now, how cool is that?

Dreamy

WHAT GOES ROUND COMES ROUND...

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ROD LIDDLE - HUMOURLESS IMBECILE...

“Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian president, greeted Barack Obama’s victory by commending him on his “suntan” and was astonished to find people taking offence. God save us from humourless imbeciles, he said.”

Ever a stickler for diplomatic niceties, the excellent Rod Liddle, too,
was offended - an outrage more notable for its desperate self-deception than for
any measure of affront.

I’m afraid, the incorruptible Sunday Times columnist missed the point
when he claimed the “suntan” crack was quite as bad as someone referring to
Silvio as a “pasta-eating, sexually incontinent megalomaniac gangster.” The
implication is quite clear. If the latter is equivalent to the former, then,
Rod’s view of the black man can’t be very elevated. And there is the rub.
Prejudice is harder to shake off than common sense. By all means, don’t mention
the war when you run into a Kraut, but if the colour of someone’s skin not only
requires discretion but is actually taboo, then we have a problem. It's a
mistake that misunderstands the intrinsic value of cultural and racial
differences.

Rod is trapped in circumstances. From his perspective he has acted
chivalrously. Though one suspects that he does not recognize his own profoundly
patronising attitude. All his discernment and good will are plainly no
protection against the condescending bonhomie of his own inherent bigotry. A
community activist who runs a help centre advising itinerant migrants on how to
secure their full entitlement to benefits is one thing, but to extend
affirmative action to a towering heroic figure, president-elect and soon to be
commander-in-chief of the world’s greatest superpower, iconic and swathed in an
aura of mythic achievement - well, that’s quite another.

Wake up, Rod. There are too many old grudges. You cannot repeal
two-thousand years of history by affirmative action alone. If the implication is
that black people are exempt from the laws of human progress because they are
somehow more disadvantaged than the rest of us, then, sadly, I remain
unconvinced. But if you’re saying they are a people with an indigenous
inferiority complex, something that anticipates the victim and perennial
resignation, then frankly, I couldn't be more unsympathetic. If given the chance
I would stay in bed all day eating chocolate. But it so happens, we’ve all got
to get up and get on with it.

You're a lucky dude, Rod, don't be a dumb one.

Dreamy

THE DREAMERS OF THE DREAM...

The tendency of modern physics is, of course, to resolve the whole material
universe into electromagnetic waves. When the eardrum vibrates, an equivalent
sound is generated in the fluid within the ear. This tells the brain about the
pitch, volume and duration or frequency of the electromagnetic “sound”.
Likewise, when an odour molecule docks with a receptor, the signal travels to
the olfactory bulb, which is the brain’s clearing house for smells. Essentially,
too, the entire range of electromagnetic radiation - from gamma rays, x-rays,
ultra-violet, visible light, infra-red, microwaves, radiowaves etc.- is beyond
the retina’s threshold for perceptible vision, while colours, across the visible
spectrum in both directions are merely different electromagnetic frequencies.
When light falls on the retina, chemical changes occur that stimulate certain
electric activities by which the human brain interprets to itself the content of
its sensory experience. Not hues, tones, shades, tints, blushes or dyes, but
sensations in the brain!

So are we dreaming a dream?

Well, if the cosmology of relativity is correct, then the only standard
by which reality can now be judged is an essentially prescriptive or even
solipsistic one. The perspective is decidedly anthropocentric. Einstein’s
greatest merit, of course, was his emphasis on relativity as a metabolic
principle. Before him the universe had been conceived of as inherently
mechanical. Now it became a dynamic, intelligent organism, in every essential
alive.

With Newton classical physics was at its greatest - and at its most
naive!

Einstein, by implication, was probing the universe as a function of its
relation to the human mind. Man fundamentally causes things to exist. He gives
them the essential attributes they possess. Upon this simple principle he
evolved a number of set equations which declared that the universe adapts to us
rather than being irrespective of ourselves. As I have written elsewhere, his
universe impresses not by its statement of fact but rather by a strong
susceptibility to the inherent characteristics of its own empirical psychology.
We are, as nearly as we can tell, inextricably entangled in what we see -
affected by no other causes than ourselves.

Of course, in order to understand the initial conditions of the
universe, we have to turn to quantum mechanics. The effect produced by the Big
Bang, the actual micro-second of creation 13,7 billion years ago, was primarily
one of the passage of time - i.e. of the relation of thought to extension. Very
few people trouble to remember that there can be no such thing as extension
without duration. Time and space are one. Both conceptions of the universe are
complete in themselves, apparently, but we cannot conceive of one without
recourse to the other. Space involves distance! Measurement involves time. Or,
indeed, energy - and definition (or mass, which we perceive as weight). Mass and
energy are, in fact, two aspects of the same phenomenon: E = mc2.

At what we call zero-time - mind became matter!

Neither by the grace of God nor by intelligent design, but by a sort of
irreducible necessity, the universe is produced like a rabbit out of a hat! Like
it or not, our cosmic inheritance, its very title deeds, lie in the thought, a
template which has to be accepted as a virtual concept rather than an
established material system. And not least because circumstances make of
irreducible necessity a conceptual law of creation - with Gravity being the
medium between thought and action.

The universe is a logical concept. It follows its own train of
thoughts.

If God’s aim was to produce something which relied upon irreducible
necessity rather than specific form he couldn’t have done better than with the
Big Bang. And He certainly gave prove of it. The creation of the original cause
is more properly to be regarded as an act of conception, rather than an event in
the ordinary meaning of the term. Something that can be metaphysical or
material, depending on nothing that the human mind can grasp. For it is through
our very own eyes that the Universe is, for the first time, able to conceive of
itself. Indeed, if there is one idea that one takes away from contemplating the
universe, it is that of pure intelligence. Or that of the cosmos, far from being
fixed by Newtonian edict, unfolding like some enormous brain.

But could God be unaware of his own divinity? By substituting Man for
God - or Thought for Being - it no longer seems quite so preposterous to imagine
that it is in this enormous, retrospective subjectivity that the unrivalled
conceptual power of the human mind, weak though it may be in other respects, is
ultimately vested.

Dreamy

THE UNBELIEVERS - (A Treatise Concerning The Limitations Of Human Understanding)

All Shook Up: I have trouble in applying pure open-ended logic, in an infinite range of possibilities, to theoretical events and phenomena that must (in my view) be seen as actual, observable events. I can never get my head round, for example, the (to me) ludicrous idea that a bunch of monkeys sitting at typewriters for infinity would eventually come up with the complete works of Shakespeare.

Well, ASU, if abstract reasoning could be reduced to mere algebraic calculations, and mathematics allowed to operate by itself and without limitations, then, I’m afraid, you’ve just put your foot in it - and here I mean absolutely no offence. It seems almost unnecessary to add that your monkeys would not only re-produce the works of Shakespeare, Joyce and Goethe but of every single weblog that was ever consigned to the cybersphere. It’s basic physics, Jack, and to deny that is to abdicate any intelligent understanding of what constitutes either reality or reason.

BOB: An alien might see/ perceive the motorcycle in a different way, or
he might not even see it at all, but the fact that I can see it and other people
and animals are enough evidence for me that there is an a priori motorcycle that
will still be there when I am gone. These things are also known as common sense
and I am aware that it is a philosophers job to challenge such 'obvious' truths,
but up till now I could never be convinced. To me it is not more then a thought
experiment.

There is no point, then, me insisting that our planet, in spite of what
Bob thinks, isn't a blue and fragile jewel, but electromagnetic energy, and
consequently lacks the defining character of both, substance and colour. Or that
- within the limits set by the relevant principle - a given number of observers
might assign a different number of measurements to events and forces at the same
point in space and time. Which becomes even more plausible when you absorb the
simple fact that far from being a thought experiment, common sense already
exploits the effects predicted by the two basic theories - of relativity and
quantum mechanics - in its latest technologies. Nor would one speak
disingenuously about a subject which has genuinely engaged the responsible
attention of one’s intellect. But what baffles me is a way of thinking which is
characterized by a paradoxical combination of steady acquiescence on the small
scale and repeal of purpose on the large scale - which is very unnerving.

Almost invariably, the human mind has a tendency not to dispute the
facts, but to backtrack on the conclusion. And that is not a tenable procedure.
There are no compromises or deviations. We need to be quite clear about what
happens here. Once you accept propositions which are intrinsically self-evident
and which eminently consist of ideas that are clearly and distinctly conceived,
you don't need a PhD to come up with the results. And my point is not that these
results are something new, which indeed they are not, but that quantum physics
and idealist philosophy have come full circle and adopted common ground. Only
now, in a world explained by quantum mechanics and informed by relativistic
understanding can Berkeley’s idealism be properly appreciated. Here, the
distance between virtual experience and real encounters has narrowed to nothing.
Indeed, a quantum blueprint of our universal geometry has rendered conceivable
what has previously been beyond imagining: that to be is to be perceived.

ASU: Prove it!

Of course, I can go over the same ground ad infinitum and insist that
yours, indeed, is the fundamental objection of classical mechanics, whereas in
quantum mechanics, indeterminacy is an inescapable property of the world. But I
would much rather suggest that you prove the opposite. Without recourse to the
five senses, that would be a problem with a far less definable solution. Indeed,
try thinking of the world without “humans“, i.e. without structure or coherence,
and you have a serious dilemma. Like trying to think of an ass without thinking
of its ears, you inevitably have to have a mental picture of what you’re
supposed to do without. And so the argument is circular. Because, trust me, you
can’t. You’re forever chasing your own tail. Proof itself introduces an unavoidable element of visualization into reality, and my mistake was to assume that the likelihood of its abstraction ever existed.

For subatomic physicists, apparent logical impossibilities are the norm. And yet, how can they be illustrated? The human mind is never more mediaeval than in its perception of
what is at the forefront of scientific ideas. It hardly seems credible yet it demonstrates the difficulty of establishing the truth about an epistemological conclusion of this magnitude in the absence of visually representative information. Humans have a deep psychological need for inherent concepts, and cling to their priorities. So the preferred avenues of intellectual escape are
miracles, mathematics or outright denial. In fact there are still theologians
who will argue that the miracles of Jesus were supported by reliable testimony,
even though I find no argument for the existence of the divinity and virtue of
Christ in the fact that he was walking on water. All it really meant for him was
that from the moment you learn to do that, you are no longer under the necessity
of getting your feet wet. The miracles were true because the concept was true,
and that was not a matter of accurate testimony, but of the contemporary
evidence of human understanding. So, even today it will still take major
conceptual steps - particularly in the absence of easily accessible mathematics
- to replace perception with logic and move the psychological paradigm from the
relativity of science to the indeterminacy of the entire
universe...

But all this is rather old hat, folks - cheer up, the latest frontier is genetics!

Dreamy