Just came across this today on Amazon (US), haven't seen it here before, and wanted to pass it along....
The Delirium Brief: A Laundry Files Novel Hardcover – July 11, 2017
Bob Howard’s career in the Laundry, the secret British government agency dedicated to protecting the world from unspeakable horrors from beyond spacetime, has entailed high combat, brilliant hacking, ancient magic, and combat with indescribably repellent creatures of pure evil. It has also involved a wearying amount of paperwork and office politics, and his expense reports are still a mess.
Now, following the invasion of Yorkshire by the Host of Air and Darkness, the Laundry’s existence has become public, and Bob is being trotted out on TV to answer pointed questions about elven asylum seekers. What neither Bob nor his managers have foreseen is that their organization has earned the attention of a horror far more terrifying than any demon: a British government looking for public services to privatize. There’s a lot of potential shareholder value in the Laundry’s “knowledge assets.”
Inch by inch, Bob Howard and his managers are forced to consider the truly unthinkable: a coup against the British government itself.
]]>Most often, when we reach our fundamental beliefs about what it means to be an adult, we do that when we are children, based on our observations of the exteriors of the adults around us, perhaps mostly our caregivers. But we judge ourselves to be adult or not based on our internal experience of ourselves.
That means there's a fundamental category mismatch-we're trying to align an internal experience with an observation of an exterior. So of course we don't feel like adults-our standard for judgement is highly or totally incompatible with the experience being assessed.
]]>Putting it differently, if you design properly for regulatory capture, then it's less of a problem. Possibly not even a significant problem. Of course, we haven't achieved that--yet.
]]>In my spiritual tradition, it is taught that The Eternal Source of Creative and Sustaining Power (often called God, the Divine, etc.,) is not all-powerful. Thus, both random chance and human malice can create pain. In my spiritual tradition, these unfortunate events are deemed facts of life, which one must bear.
Mike, does that seem at all meaningful to you?
]]>Once upon a time there lived an ideal community in a far-off land. Its members had no fears as we now know them. Instead of uncertainty and vacillation, they had a purposefulness and a fuller means of expressing themselves.
Although there were none of its stresses and tensions which mankind now considers essential to its progress, their lives were richer, because other, better elements replaced these things.
Theirs, therefore, was a slightly different mode of existence. We could almost say that our present perceptions are a crude, makeshift version of the real ones that this community possessed.
They had real lives, not semi-lives.
They had a leader, who discovered that their country was to become uninhabitable for a period of, shall we say, 20,000 years. He planned their escape, realizing that their descendants would be able to return home successfully, only after many trials.
He found for them a place of refuge, an island whose features were only roughly similar to those of the original homeland.
Because of the difference in climate and situation, the immigrants had to undergo a transformation.
This made them more physically and mentally adapted to the new circumstances: coarse perceptions, for instance, were substituted for finer ones, as when the manual laborer becomes toughened in response to the needs of his calling.
In order to reduce the pain which a comparison between the old and new states would bring, they were made to forget the past almost entirely.
Only the most shadowy recollection of it remained, yet it was sufficient to be awakened when the time came.
The system was very complicated, but well arranged. The organs by means of which the people survived on the island were also made the organs of enjoyment, physical and mental. The organs which were really constructive in the old homeland were placed in a special form of abeyance, and linked with the shadowy memory, in preparation for its eventual activation.
Slowly and painfully the immigrants settled down, adjusting themselves to the local conditions. The resources of the island were such that, coupled with effort and a certain form of guidance, people would be able to escape to a further island on the way back to their original home. This was the first of a succession of islands upon which gradual acclimatization took place.
The responsibility of this “evolution” was vested in those individuals who could sustain it. These were necessarily only a few, because for the mass of the people the effort of keeping both sets of knowledge in their consciousness was virtually impossible. One of them seemed to conflict with the other. Certain specialists guarded the “special science.”
This “secret,” the method of effecting the transition, was nothing more or less than the knowledge of maritime skills and their application. The escape needed an instructor, raw materials, people, effort and understanding. Given these, people could learn to swim, and also to build ships.
The people who were originally in charge of the escape operation made it clear to everyone that a certain preparation was necessary before anyone could learn to swim or even take part in building a ship. For a time the process continued satisfactorily.
Then a man who had been found, for the time being, lacking in the necessary qualities rebelled against this order and managed to develop a masterly idea. He had observed that the effort to escape placed a heavy and often seemingly unwelcome burden upon the people. At the same time they were disposed to believe things which they were told about the escape operation. He realized that he could acquire power, and also revenge himself upon those who had undervalued him, as he though, by a simple exploitation of these two sets of facts.
He would merely offer to take away the burden, by affirming that there was no burden.
He made his announcement: “There is no need for man to integrate his mind and train it in the way which has been described to you. The human mind is already a stable and continuous, consistent thing. You have been told that you have to become a craftsman in order to build a ship. I say, not only do you not need to be a craftsman – you do not need a ship at all!
“An islander needs only to observe a few simple rules to survive and remain integrated into society. By the exercise of common sense, born into everyone, he can attain anything upon this island, our home, the common property and heritage of all.”
The tonguester, having gained a great deal of interest among the people, now “proved his message by saying: “If there is any reality in ships and swimming, show us ships which have made the journey, and swimmers who have come back!”
This was a challenge to the instructors which they could not meet. It was based upon an assumption of which the bemused herd could not now see the fallacy. You see, ships never returned from the other land. Swimmers, when they did come back, had undergone a fresh adaptation which made them invisible to the crowd.
The mob pressed for demonstrative proof.
“Shipbuilding,” said the escapers, in an attempt to reason with the revolt, “is an art and a craft. The learning and the exercise of this lore depends upon special techniques. These together make up a total activity, which cannot be examined piecemeal, as you demand. This activity has an impalpable element, called ‘baraka,’ from which the work ‘barque’ – a ship – is derived. This word means ‘the Subtlety,’ and cannot be shown to you.”
“Art, craft, total, baraka, nonsense!” shouted the revolutionaries.
And so they hanged as many shipbuilding craftsmen as they could find.
The new gospel was welcomed on all sides as one of liberation. Man had discovered that he was already mature! He felt, for the time at least, as if he had been released from responsibility.
Most other ways of thinking were soon swamped by the simplicity and comfort of the revolutionary concept. Soon it was considered to be a basic fact, which had never been challenged by any rational person. Rational, of course, meant anyone who harmonized with the general theory itself, upon which society was now based.
Ideas which opposed the new one were easily called irrational. Anything irrational was bad. Thereafter, even if he had doubts, the individual had to suppress them or divert them, because he must at all costs be thought rational.
It was not very difficult to be rational. One had only to adhere to the values of society. Further, evidence of the truth of rationality abounded—providing that one did not think beyond the life of the island.
Society had now temporarily equilibrated itself within the island, and seemed to provide a plausible completeness, if viewed by means of itself. It was based upon reason plus emotion, making both seem plausible. Cannibalism, for instance, was permitted on rational grounds. The human body was found to be edible. Edibility was a characteristic of food. Therefore the human body was food.
In order to compensate for the shortcomings of this reasoning, a makeshift was arranged. Cannibalism was controlled, in the interests of society. Compromise was the trademark of temporary balance. Every now and again someone pointed out a new compromise, and the struggle between reason, ambition, and community produced some fresh social norm.
Since the skills of boatbuilding had no obvious application within this society, the effort could easily be considered absurd. Boats were not needed—there was nowhere to go. The consequences of certain assumptions can be made to “prove” those assumptions. This is what is called a pseudocertainty, the substitute for real certainty. It is what we deal in every day, when we assume that we will live another day. But our islanders applied it to everything.
The words “displeasing” and “unpleasant” were used on the island to indicate anything which conflicted with the new gospel, which was itself known as “Please.” The idea behind this was that people would now please themselves, within the general need to please the State. The State was taken to mean all the people.
It is hardly surprising that from quite early times the very thought of leaving the island filled most people with terror. Similarly, very real fear is to be seen in long-term prisoners who are about to be released. “Outside” the place of captivity is a vague, unknown, threatening world.
The island was not a prison. But it was a cage with invisible bars, more effective than obvious ones ever could be.
The insular society became more and more complex, and we can look at only a few of its outstanding features. Its literature was a rich one. In addition to cultural compositions, there were numerous books which explained the values and achievements of the nation. There was also a system of allegorical fiction, which portrayed how terrible life might have been, had society not arranged itself in the present reassuring pattern.
From time to time instructors tried to help the whole community to escape. Captains sacrificed themselves for the reestablishment of a climate in which the now concealed shipbuilders could continue their work. All these efforts were interpreted by historians and sociologists with reference to conditions on the island, without thought for any contact outside this closed society.
Plausible explanations of almost anything were comparatively easy to produce. No principle of ethics was involved, because scholars continued to study with genuine dedication what seemed to be true. “What more can we do?” they asked, implying by the word “more” that the alternative might be an effort of quantity.
Or they asked each other, “What else can we do?” assuming that the answer might be “else”—something different. Their real problem was that they assumed themselves able to formulate the questions, and ignored the fact that the questions were every bit as important as the answers.
Of course the islanders had plenty of scope for thought and action within their own small domain. The variations of ideas and differences of opinion gave the impression of freedom of thought. Thought was encouraged, providing that it was not “absurd.”
Freedom of speech was allowed. It was of little use without the development of understanding, which was not pursued.
The work and the emphasis of the navigators had to take on different aspects in accordance with the changes in the community. This made their reality even more baffling to the students who tried to follow them from the island point of view.
Amid all the confusion, even the capacity to remember the possibility of escape could at times become an obstacle.
The stirring consciousness of escape potential was not very discriminating.
More often than not the eager would-be escapers settled for any kind of substitute.
A vague concept of navigation cannot become useful without orientation. Even the most eager potential shipbuilders had been trained to believe that they already had that orientation. They were already mature. They hated anyone who pointed out that they might need a preparation.
Bizarre versions of swimming or shipbuilding often crowded out possibilities of real progress. Very much to blame were the advocates of pseudoswimming or allegorical ships, mere hucksters, who offered lessons to those as yet too weak to swim, or passages on ships which they could not build.
They needs of the society had originally made necessary certain forms of efficiency and thinking which developed into what was known as science. This admirable approach, so essential in the fields where it had application, finally outran its real meaning. The approach called “scientific,” soon after the “Please” revolution, became stretched until it covered all manner of ideas.
Eventually things which could not be brought within its bounds became known as “unscientific,” another convenient synonym for “bad.” Words were unknowingly taken prisoner and then automatically enslaved.
In the absence of a suitable attitude, like people who, thrown upon their own resources in a waiting room, feverishly read magazines, the islanders absorbed themselves in finding substitutes for the fulfillment which was the original (and indeed the final) purpose of this community’s exile.
Some were able to diver their attention more or less successfully into mainly emotional commitments. There were different ranges of emotion, but no adequate scale for measuring them. All emotion was considered to be “deep” or “profound”—at any rate more profound than non-emotion. Emotion, which was seen to move people to the most extreme physical and mental acts known, was automatically termed “deep.”
The majority of people set themselves targets, or allowed others to set them for them. They might pursue one cult after another, or money, or social prominence. Some worshipped some things and felt themselves superior to all the rest. Some, by repudiating what they thought worship was, thought that they had no idols, and could therefore safely sneer at all the rest.
As the centuries passed, the island was littered with the debris of these cults. Worse than ordinary debris, it was self-perpetuating. Well-meaning and other people combined the cults and recombined them, and they spread anew. For the amateur and intellectual, this constituted a mine of academic or “initiatory” material, giving a comforting sense of variety.
Magnificent facilities for the indulging of limited “satisfactions” proliferated. Palaces and monuments, museums and universities, institutes of learning, theater and sports stadiums almost filled the island. The people naturally prided themselves on these endowments, many of which they considered to be linked in a general way with ultimate truth, though exactly how this was so escaped almost all of them.
Shipbuilding was connected with some dimensions of this activity, but in a way unknown to almost everyone.
Clandestinely the ships raised their sails, the swimmers continued to teach swimming…
The conditions on the island did not entirely fill these dedicated people with dismay. After all, they too had originated in the very same community, and had indissoluble bonds with it, and with its destiny.
But they very often had to preserve themselves from the attentions of their fellow citizens. Some “normal” islanders tried to save them from themselves. Others tried to kill them, for an equally sublime reason. Some even sought their help eagerly, but could not find them.
All these reactions to the existence of the swimmers were the result of the same cause, filtered through different kinds of minds. This cause was that hardly anyone now knew what a swimmer really was, what he was doing, or where he could be found.
As the life of the island became more and more civilized, a strange but logical industry grew up. It was devoted to ascribing doubts to the validity of the system under which the society lived. It succeeded in absorbing doubts about social values by laughing at them or satirizing them. The activity could wear a sad or happy face, but it really became a repetitious ritual. A potentially valuable industry, it was often prevented from exercising its really creative function.
People felt that, having allowed their doubts to have temporary expression, they would in some way assuage them, exorcise them, almost propitiate them. Satire passed for meaningful allegory; allegory was accepted but not digested. Plays, books, films, poems, lampoons were the usual media for this development, though there was a strong section of it in more academic fields.
For many islanders it seemed more emancipated, more modern or progressive, to follows this cult rather than the older ones.
Here and there a candidate still represented himself to a swimming instructor, to make his bargain. Usually what amounted to a stereotyped conversation took place.
“I want to learn to swim.”
“Do you want to make a bargain about it?”
“No. I only have to take my ton of cabbage.”
“What cabbage?”
“The food which I will need on the other island.”
“There is better food there.”
“I don’t know what you mean. I cannot be sure. I must take my cabbage.”
“You cannot swim, for one thing, with a ton of cabbage.”
“Then I cannot go. You call it a load. I call it my essential nutrition.”
“Suppose, as an allegory, we say not ‘cabbage’ but ‘assumptions,’ or ‘destructive ideas’?”
“I am going to take my cabbage to some instructor who understands my needs.”
~ ~ ~
The Islanders – A Fable, from book The Sufis, by Idries Shah
]]>Again, I'm not the person who introduced the religion/spirituality thread to this discussion.
Your examples (stock market, 90 mph, getting girls (but what about those who want boys? Or watermelons?) might suggest a certain narrowness of scope. What if a benefit of spirituality is to help you grasp a whole new range of values, rather than to merely reinforce possibly shallower values already held?
Why do you assume that spiritual mastery doesn't lead to stock market success, etc. I'm not saying it's necessary; I'm saying that depending on a person's roles and goals, spiritual mastery may be sufficient for those kinds of successes. For other people, those kinds of successes may be irrelevant.
Your position could be seen as similar to someone who is perhaps 10 or 11 saying to a college professor, "But what use is your class in physics if it doesn't help me succeed at Pokemon?"
So, certainly choose to study what you judge serves you best. And be aware of how that determines the scope of your informed decisions and statements.
]]>But if you're interesting in the nature of the experiences I've had, are you willing to read a book or two for a meaningful conversation? If you were asking me to describe my Ph.D.-level experience in any other field of human endeavor--say the fine arts, drama, or high-energy physics--surely it would be reasonable to ask you to develop the background understanding for a meaningful conversation, no?
]]>Let's try one more thought experiment, then (noting that the original quote from MLK said nothing about religion!). What if the entrance to mastery of spirituality (as distinct from religion, which is merely a fossilized hierarchy imposed on the decaying remains of a spiritual event) requires as much study and effort as, say, a Ph.D.--maybe 7 to 10 years? If that's the case (and I posit that it is) then all this posturing about atheism seems to be pretty much a display of ignorance, no?
In this same line, my experience has been that nearly all the atheists I've been exposed to seem to be as, umm, belief-based as any religionist. The religionists are just more frank about that, usually.
Two paraphrased quotes to close, from people I respect:
"No one says they believe in electricity. This is because they have experience of electricity, either directly in the form of a shock, or indirectly in the form of electricity transformed, into heat, light, or mechanical motion."
"That God you don't believe in? I too don't believe in that God."
]]>Let's assume all of Charlies axioms are true to fact. Let's even assume the conclusions are true to fact.
Given that, what is necessary to turn enough of it around that, say, the UK/US become as delightful to live in as, say, Denmark? (If you don't like Denmark, pick the polity/economy of your choice).
There's a certain kind of attractiveness in trying to figure out how horrible things are going to be--for me, that's part of the attraction of Lovecraft. it strikes me as much more difficult, and admirable, to try to figure out how good things are going to be.
So, what kind of black swan would have to occur? The first one that come to my mind (I'm a US citizen) would be a well-nigh total remake of the Democratic Party from the grassroots on up, along the lines modeled by Senator Elizabeth Warren. I can see a whole cascade of positive events following from that.
Putting all of this differently, it strikes me as surprisingly short-sighted and straight-line extrapolating to think that things are going to continue to get worse. The trajectory of history is more bumpy than that, in my opinion. It may even be that as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King said, "The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice."
]]>Thanks.
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