ON BEING DUTCH

NEW BLOG: MANKIND IN THE BALANCE

2008-01-10T11:53:00.000-08:00

This is to announce my new blog:

MANKIND IN THE BALANCE
Reflections on the future of humanity

http://mankindinthebalance.blogspot.com

ON BEING DUTCH AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK VIA LULU.COM

2007-08-22T09:12:00.000-07:00

People across the world connect with each other – through the Internet – to share their interests in almost every possible field. Increasingly we create our platforms that help us foster these interests and further develop our views.

ON BEING DUTCH compiles the essays primarily written for that purpose in the period between January 2006 and August 2007 on the Blogspot weblog with the same name. They reflect the author’s view on many important societal, economic and political themes of our day affecting the future prospects of wealth, happiness and mental sanity across the globe.

The perspective of the author is twofold. First of all, he is a Dutchman. Secondly, by virtue of his background and education, his views of our contemporary world are distinctly libertarian. Although no criticism of current developments and people influencing them is spared, his outlook is essentially optimistic. The final chapters of the book are dedicated to articulating this optimism in a fresh and authentic sketch of a possible future world, or in his own words: A life to benefit all.

ON BEING DUTCH is available in paperback - and obtainable - through http://www.lulu.com/.

How to obtain a copy:

- go to http://www.lulu.com/
- enter "being dutch" in search
- click "ON BEING DUTCH" by Theo E. Korthals Altes
- follow further instructions for ordering en payment

We should not mistake technological supremacy for civilization

2007-08-08T05:20:00.000-07:00

The western world has proven supreme in driving human invention in modern times. As a result, the outlook of our entire planet has changed beyond recognition in just a couple of hundred years. It has enabled unprecedented masses of people to enjoy material comfort and access to our planet’s resources at such staggering scale as to fundamentally challenge the sustainability – even within the foreseeable future – of our entire existence.

Our only option, so it seems, is to fuel new invention capable of effectively bridging the gap – over the long term – between our material aspirations and existing scarcity. The hydrogen economy must be around the corner, if only the technologists work hard enough to get us there. And probably they will.

For it is my firm belief that technology is there to stay. It is there to advance more or less infinitely. Such advancement in my view will be a prerequisite for the survival of mankind and for the fulfillment of its potential as a living reality in our universe. A tremendous path still lies ahead.

But we may ask ourselves, particularly at this juncture, what civilization will successfully carry mankind beyond its current conundrums into a prosperous and humane future and towards a truly sustainable habitation of humanity on our living planet? For we should not mistake the technological achievements of our time for advanced civilization nor is it self-evident that our culture, including our political culture, and our social fabric are capable of bridging all other gaps that persist in our world, in particular between those who share and those who do not share the fruits of western advancement.

Well indeed, our social fabric is being eaten from inside, almost as if the world wide web has encapsulated us the way a caterpillar allows itself to be eaten by the butterfly that grows within its pupa. We sense that a new fabric is developing from within but we have no clue what kind of civilization will ultimately emerge once we truly master the possibilities that our technologies offer. We have yet to re-invent our world both a the level of the community or communities we live in and at the level of our markets, our politics, and our global alliances.

The great challenge we face is to allow for this transition without falling back to (escalating) archetypal conflicts most notably the conflict that exists to this day between the Western (Christian) world and the Arab (Muslim) world. It must be obvious to every one that in case of such (further) escalation, the security of the European world will be heavily undermined and as a consequence all other securities that have been maintained throughout the post-WW II era.

That era will come to a close, no doubt, but we have it in our hands to let this happen either with a bang or with a trumpet. A strategy purely aimed at victory can only lead to huge destruction as is clearly demonstrated by the disastrous policies of the present US administration in Iraq. Not only are those policies detrimental to the people of Iraq, they do not serve the integrity of our own world either. An offensive aimed at reconciliation – a joint effort of all nations including the US, Europe, Russia and Asia – is needed to substantially turn away from the present downhill slide of the Arab world.

But the key to a prosperous future for all is a reconciliation of the contradictions in our own world. We cannot wish for – almost – unlimited material wealth without re-assessing our true values and societal objectives. We cannot continue to advance our technology without a valid civilization to support – and utilize it. Our potential at present far outreaches our actual grasp of it.

There is no way we can stare into a crystal ball and visualize a pre-determined future. It doesn’t exist. We will have to conceptualize that future ourselves.

Where intelligence is needed, they better offer the highest reward

2007-07-05T02:20:00.000-07:00

The need for human intelligence

I am a regular viewer of Discovery’s ‘FBI files’. Clearly, crime fighting requires the intelligence of the smartest criminal. Otherwise it can never claim to be effective. In fact, every threat to the foundations of our existence should be treated with equivalent intelligence, at least. But what would stop us from going for the highest intelligence - the smartest minds available - all the way? Nothing, of course. Humanity craves for the utmost intelligence. Our planet roars for it. We are facing some very fundamental challenges to our way of life, not simply in terms of our security but in all aspects of life on Earth.

As a public we are given a peek into the inner workings e.g. of the FBI, and one can take many lessons from it. But how about the inner workings of other public offices? There are countless offices across the globe, in which people are assigned to crucial tasks. For instance, all those employed by the White House, or the staff of the UN Secretary General, people in the Federal Reserve Bank, the people around Russia’s President etcetera. How much do we know of those people and their true qualities?

Scooter Libby

When intelligence is being corrupted

Questions like these may arise especially when instances of incompetence surface in the media. Such instance is the case of Mr. Libby, former Chief of Staff of US Vice-President Cheney, who was found guilty in court of four felonies for lying about his role in the leak of a covert CIA officer's identity. For many it is obvious that Mr. Libby became the scapegoat of far larger misdemeanors of people in and around the Vice-President’s office, including Mr. Cheney himself. But all have been spared, including Mr. Libby himself, who was effectively pardoned by President Bush.

Many consider the current US Administration a synonym to the abuse of power, of intelligence employed against the interest of the people. But it would be a mistake to simply rely on the judicial process to control this and prevent an Administration from gliding further down the scale of corruption.

US Vice-President Cheney

Pay high salaries

The key is that the highest rewards should be given to people who are employed in positions that require their utmost – intellectual – abilities. It is paramount that the best people are attracted to the most critical tasks, whether in the judicial or in the administrative functions. When a new Administration signs in, the people’s representatives should scrutinize its chief employees as much as the salary paid to them. Scrutinize, that is: be sure that the salaries are high enough to effectively prevent these employees from being seduced by the pressures and attractions of the power machine they are working for.

Are we going to genetically cook up a more advanced chimp?

2007-05-12T03:30:00.000-07:00

They found chimps living like early humans, somewhere in Senegal. By the looks of it they are more similar to mankind than all other chimps, even the Bonobos, and gorillas, our closest living cousins. They use spears, and they dwell in caves. They are not the jungle type chimps, but the savanna type.

What do these chimps in Senegal constitute: the last remnant of primate evolution? Can there be such a thing, by the way? Or are they the first glimpse of the re-invention of mankind? And then, whose re-invention? Ours perhaps?

Because indeed, we could look at these chimps as an opportunity to push re-evolution. To perhaps create a versatile new type of human being which could make the life of ‘real’ humans even more pleasurable. We could create a new order of slaves.

How does this prospect strike you? Ugly? Well of course, it is the greatest outrage. Nevertheless, consider the question.

I think the answer will be that we might do one thing or the other, but in neither case we will really know what we are doing. Leaving the chimps as they are, or pushing their stock a little faster through the evolution chain.

What would our criteria be? How would we like to see this chimp evolve? Think of it. What you are really asking is which selective advantage your wish to grant to the chimp above all other advantages. In what way would you like to see a male chimp be more successful than an other? That is the basic issue..

We could first of all study the current habits of this particular group of chimps. Let’s see what characteristic in their group is a sure added chance for survival.

This is how you build up the more ideal new kind of humanity. It takes a long time. Because it is not simply a matter of one single advantage but of a multitude – mix – of advantages. And over time these can change according to circumstance: adversity and opportunity.

We should take this to account as and when we wish this chimp group to evolve in any direction whatsoever. I think it should lead us not to tinker with evolution altogether in any pre-masterminded way.

What if the Africans were the chosen people?

2007-03-15T03:42:00.000-07:00

And those who left Africa, were the expelled?

Just recently I attended a party in the heart of Africa
A cellar with very little lighting
Somewhere in the city of Rotterdam.

Only black people, real black people
They were very beautiful, all of them
Men, women, children
They laughed, and they danced
And they connected to each other
For this was a time for celebration.

The very same people,
Just over ten years ago
Lived in violent adversity,
Killing killing, killing.
The people of this celebration
All were Tutsi’s, Hutu’s and their kind.

For us westerners,
I told a white man next to me,
It is impossible to gauge the various tribal relations
And past hostility among these people
But you can imagine what it meant to all of them
Here in Rotterdam, celebrating,
What it takes to do so between murderers and their victims –
As one other white man present depicted this occasion -
A feast like no other feast, A celebration of reconciliation.
Of all these beautiful people,
So highly civilized.

Civilization most certainly is carried by the ability
To apologize and to forgive.
And this is exactly what I could see painted
On all these wonderful black faces.
And when some bumped into me,
They offered their apology, as any gentleman would do.
I saw ‘welcome’ in their eyes
And I walked around, looking at the mothers,
And their childeren.
Ah, what beautiful children I have seen!

A friend of mine, who is an African of noble birth,
That night gave me his shawl, a symbol of his respect;
And all people respected me
And they greeted me with open mind.

Yet I thought I had to earn respect
On my own account first of all
And I tried to do so,
Simply by saying to all of them:
“What beautiful children do you have!”
Perhaps otherwise they wouldn’t have known
What to think of this little white man.

I then spotted a young boy slapping
And kicking his mother
Immediately I walked upon him,
Kneeling right in front of him Saying:
“Please, young boy, never beat your own mother!”
But was it correct for me say this to the boy?
In my own world I probably would have been right to do so
But then, which world in fact is causing the greatest unrest
Among the Mothers?
Which is the world which tortures its mothers?
Everywhere – outside Africa – mothers are in pain
In our world where we hunt for almost everything except
The protection of Motherhood.

But here, in this wonderful celebration,
I could only see happy mothers
Who are proud of their children
Perhaps the boy had to slap his mom
Who am I really to deny this to him?
I walked along, with my white shawl
Wrapped around my neck.

Later that evening I saw a young black man,
He seemed a student, with glasses on and looking serious
I asked him: “Are you a professor?”
He looked up, laughed, and said: “Yes i am!”
“Good”, I said, “I can see that you have talent,
and that you have a good future”
He smiled at me, and he greeted me.

I followed the rhythm of the drums, and danced
On my own, and thought..
Really, drums must be the oldest instruments of humanity
For it is with dancing that music started
Not in the Church
Of which our Western music is a child.

I then returned to the young man and his glasses
Now there was young women next to him
She looked at me a little bemused
I said: “This is just between him and me”
And she nodded in acceptance
At which again I faced the young man
“Would you promise me one thing?”
I asked. He laughed.
“Would you promise me that you will develop all your talents
And that you will use them to the benefit of
Your own people?”
He considered this, with a friendly smile
“Yes”, he replied. “Sure, I will.”
“Great!”, I said. And then again I walked away.

This is how the celebration proceeeded,
Every time again, a laughing smile,
Joy all over!

And with the children I made my dance too
I believe they thought this was a little funny
The white man with his white shawl
But in their eyes I also saw a natural respect
They simply took me for what they saw
A strange man dancing. Ha!

There were others too who looked after the children
And one of them in particular struck me
As a special man
For he was making all kinds of jokes and funny movements
And I asked him
“Are you a teacher, or are you a lover?”
And he replied: “Yeah, a teacher!”
With a broad smile he embraced me
Yes, indeed a teacher!

This was not dissimilar from the conduct
Of my African noble friend
Who carried himself so naturally with the children
That instantly I saw in him what I had not yet seen
That he is a true Educator
He is not a teacher, he is an educator
There is a difference

Then this funny looking young man rushed past me
What an energy!
He was carrying a flag, the Burundi flag?
He sang and he danced on the rhythm of the music
“Give us the Power!” he shouted repeatedly
And all young man gathered under the flag
Holding a piece of it in their hands
And together they made a triumphant tour
Ending when a picture was taken
Of these young men and their trophy.
I walked upon the young man with the camera
And asked him to send the picture to me
At which point I wrote an SMS message
And he gave his cellphone number.
Who knows one day
I will have this wonderful picture
Of these young men of Africa
United under their national flag.

And having observed the entire event
In the way I did
Their joy and gaiety, and the intensely
Warm surge of love flowing among these people
I thought
Love conquers all distinction

But my most important reflection
Was this.

Let’s assume – let’s just assume for the sake of it
Let’s assume that the African people once were the Chosen people
And those who left it, were the Expelled.
Let’s assume that this was the case
Seventy thousand years ago
Why then, and based on what right,
Do we let our planet suffer the way we do?

Will the Chosen Man of Africa
Ever retake the possession of the Earth?
And restore Creation to its proper sense?

I cannot let go of this question just like that
Just think of it!Just think that this may be the truth.

History has no morality, nor can it have a sense of guilt

2007-03-05T13:38:00.000-08:00

But it must have a future

During WWII the Japanese, among others, committed various grave atrocities such as the use of female prisoners for the sexual service of men. But why would the present generation of Japanese be asked to apologize for the misconduct, even the crimes, of generations long dead and buried? It is like the Pope apologizing for the Inquisition, or the Spanish King for ravaging the civilizations of the Middle and South Americas. And so on. Why, perhaps even God will be asked to aplogize for enforcing thousand years of mental and spiritual darkness throughout Europe.

Who are we, in the end, to call for such apologies? History has no personality, it cannot defend itself. History can only be. In apologizing for the past, we are doing something that simply cannot exist.

We do however have a responsibility of our own. And this most certainly includes the way we treat the memories of the past (which is what history ‘is’). This responsibility can never change whatever happened in the past nor can it truly provide for any amends on behalf of those whose lives were devastated in the course of it. But it can, and should, influence our actions in the future. It is why we have this responsibility in the first place.

I have tabled some obligations to the future with regard to our past.

1. Never forget
It is paramount that history be recorded and that it remains accessible to future generations. This seems such a simple excersize but it is not. For what is recorded history for anyone who doesn’t even know who Napoleon was, when he lived and what he did, or for all those who lack the basic information about historic processes, chronology etc.? So many young people, including ‘educated’ people cannot access recorded history because they have no clue what to look for.

2. Truly understand
History is not just another story. It is about the Ascent of Man (Bronowski). History is what all of us carry with us, whether we realize this or not. It is what made us who we are. If we do not understand history, how the hell can we understand ourselves, our own Ascent in life? How can we effectively pass on our technologies, our experience in running our societies, our languages even, if we do not grasp their fundamental roots or their proper historic context?

3. Revisit, revisit, revisit
History is all but a ‘fixed thing’. It is as dynamic as the endless potential of scenarios for our future. You can revisit history time and again and never will it seem the same. There are different perspectives, there are different interests involved when we ‘counsel’ history, and there are so many possible ‘truths’ we can find, that a perpetuated visit of history is paramount to all future generations.

4. Educate
It follows from above that the introduction to history and to the wealth of insights it can provide, must be a crucial part of any education curriculum. This is not a one-way traffic, if it is done properly. And this too is obvious, yet so easily overlooked. It is not what we ‘know’ of history but how we relate to history (including the ‘facts’, of course) that in the end determines the effectiveness of history education.

Never should we be ashamed of our history, or of anything that happened that we do not wish to happen in our future. Such shame would only come in the way of understanding and properly utilizing our knowledge of history. This is what we should bring to future generations: neither shame, nor pride – but a clear framework for them to visit, revisit and understand history as it has to be understood in ther own time.

Western colonialism has all but disappeared

2007-01-29T15:43:00.000-08:00

Post-war decolonisation

I have long tended to look at post-war history as one great rally towards independence and self-government of – almost – all people in the world. This obviously includes the unraveling of the communist version of colonial rule, symbolized by the breakdown of the Berlin wall in 1989.

But I have increased reservations in respect of this particular aspect of our recent history.This is not simply because the Western World has continued to be the most dominant force on Earth.

And even though I am well aware of some major setbacks, I would like to be proud of the broad accomplishments of the Western World, particularly in the field of democracy, societal organization and efficiency, our technological advancement, our commercial success and so on. And I do not see any other road ahead than one which harbors these accomplishments at new levels of advancement.

Still, a price is being paid. A severe price is being paid today, and a price of as yet unknown magnitude still looms in the future. It is a good thing that our societies are gradually awakening to this.

Will we change our perceptions?
Will our further advancement include any change in the way we look at the world around us? I am thinking of the many nations outside our Western World, large masses of people in fact, who do not share our accomplishments by any measure, and many of whom are really being held back because of them.

The latter, I believe, is the most disturbing feature of our time. And again, there is abroad awareness of it in our own world. The most tragic example is the fate of Africa. It would have been much better if Africa had never been discovered. It almost seems like Africa cannot exist if, and as long as, the world is going our way.

Many people in Africa are being fed at a subsistence level, with bags of food being thrown out of airplanes – it is ‘manna from heaven’ – but without any serious efforts to get Africa on its true feet. Sure, there is the ongoing exercize in the name of Development Aid, but after more than four decades of sustained failure it becomes very difficult to believe that any good can still come from it. It is nothing less than an imperative for our Western World to exploit the larger part of our Globe, simply to help support our life of luxury and abundance.

So really, nothing substantial has changed after WW II. Colonialism turned into Development Aid and global commercial extravaganza at unprecedented scale, largely serving the same interests as did the former Western Powers in their time when they governed their ‘colonies’.

New approaches needed

I do not think that this situation will change by mere policy or any kind of international co-operation within existing frameworks. We may have the awareness, but we do not have the will, nor do we actually have a viable alternative from our point of view. It is not dissimilar from the dilemma’s prior to the abolishment of slave trade and slavery, or prior to the abandonment of ‘classic colonialism’. The power will have to be taken from us.

But can we not anticipate? Why not pro-actively and substantially help African, Asian and Latin-American markets develop? Why not increase our investments, and sacrifices, beforehand, rather than risking a massive wave of destruction out of those countries, aimed at us? Let’s for instance increase our expenditure in Research & Development to include the development of new agricultural technologies suited in an arid climate. Let’s make rain!

Hopefully the development of new technologies will get us a long way. However, we cannot simply rely on this to save us from disaster in respect of natural resources, clean water, fresh air and space to live. In addition there is a great need for new approaches to international (global) development and co-operation. The United Nations and related institutions have all consumed their relevance in a world, which is gradually disappearing into the realms of the past. It is imperative, in my view, that the non-Western World take an active part in this process.

Take it up
We are severely obstructing the sustainable evolution of the world. It is already a fact that a long echo of this will run through many milleniums following ours. Climate change, depletion of energy resources, ravaged habitats, animal and plant species extinct…. What more do we need to stand up for the future?

A great day to die!?

2007-01-24T13:31:00.000-08:00

Have you ever thought of it? We all have our own preferences in respect of the way we die. But do we have a particular day in mind?

The perfect dying day

I came to this question when I was looking at a picture of Abbe Pierre, died age 94, on a billboard, with a crowd passing it. First of all: what counts is the way you live, I thought. That will largely determine the way, and most likely also the day you die. Abbe Pierre has died a loved, and probably highly lovable man. That is a good measure, so it seems.

You can also think of words like successful, talented, bright, kind etcetera, but love sums it all up. How could you ever be successful without being wanted, which is equivalent to being nice? And let’s exclude success that can only be attributed to greed and deceit.

So really, love is the key to the day you die. And it is the love you give, not the love you receive, even though in most cases they are always equivalent. But it is the love you give that counts. And love is what you give to the benefit of something or someone dear to you.

So the first benefit you give will be a benefit to your family: that they do not have the burden of your aging process.

The second benefit is one to society: that your death will not cost too much - particularly in the (last) period of your life - because you so much wish to extend it.

The third and perhaps last benefit that comes up in me is the benefit to yourself: not to suffer unduly when you are dying.

OK so this settles the context of a good death. All of it, so I would think, leads to a firm decision to be made by yourself as to the way you live and the day you die. It is a matter of common sense.

Thus, we get to the ideal day. It must be one without pain, with a lot of sunshine and love all over. It must be the day of fullfilment, all purpose done. This is not necesssarily the day of your retirement. Retired people still are of great value to society. The entire civilization of mankind is based on the caution, wisdom and courage of people of considerable age.

So, live a good long life. Help yourself and thereby help others. Go for a long term target with a reasonably obtainable fullfilment. Don’t dream your life away. And bow graciously for the gift of life at the right time, and take your leave.

We are all children of Africa

2007-01-06T04:10:00.000-08:00

Craddle of Mankind
Anyone who is acquainted with the history of humanity and who follows the pursuit of our knowledge in this field both through archeology and genetics, will have no doubt that the craddle of mankind is Africa. It is out of Africa that – some hundred thousand years ago - small bands of modern humans migrated to other worlds, where they dispersed into populations which we now identify by race and nationality, but which otherwise still represent the same species.

I was reminded of this in a conversation with a friend, a young man of good African birth, who happened to have spent a large part of his adolescence in Europe. But the memories of his childhood are still vivid enough to allow him to recant the songs of Africa that he knew as a child, and to cherish his African – cultural – values.

Manhood vs intellect
One example which I consider striking is the source of his pride for his father. When I think of the memory my father, my pride of him concerns his intellect. My father was my greatest teacher in all things historical, poltical and – let’s say – humanitarian. My sense of pride concerns a man’s popularity with the nation’s intelligentsia.

My African friend however tells about his father in different terms. The greatest source of his pride is not his father’s intellect, but his father’s manhood. The son is proud of a father who is popular with the nation’s women.

These distinct sources of pride reflect fundamental cultural differences.

Allow love to flourish
My African friend then sang a song. I couldn’t understand a word of it. He explained that the song was about (the beauty of) Africa, but also about the beauty of the love between a boy and a girl. He added that the specific message of the song is not simply this beauty but a warning against jealousy. Members of the community should allow love to flourish.

We can all understand this message, can’t we? But can we also say that in our Western world we are equally keen to ban jealousy as, apparently, the African world? Manhood, love, avoidance of jealousy: all of this resounds grassroot values out of which all of humanity is born. But what a differentiation along the way in the course of those tens of thousands of years!

Let's remind ourselves
One might think that we are all children of Africa. But perhaps we have largely forgotten what it really means. And perhaps this is the source of many tragedies in the history – and future – of Mankind.

TO MY READERS

2006-12-29T01:04:00.000-08:00

Early this year I set up this Blog first of all to settle in a place on the Internet where I could readily and freely publish my thoughts on subjects that interest me. I am aware of the fact that Blogging first of all is a satisfaction for the Blogger, even if it largely is a one-way-traffic for most of us.

Well is it? I rarely read comments. I have no clue who visits my Blog, nor do I know how many people can actually find me.

Nonetheless, the exercise of publishing my thoughts at regular intervals in this fashion is a very gratifying activity. I have now accumulated a large number of essays, of my own hand, which otherwise I wouldn’t have written. I can now consider publishing them in a classic form, if I like, .i.e. by turning it into a book.

But then of course, the same question still applies. Who would be interested?

I intend to continue this Blog well into the next year. I may have to reconsider the themes and subjects, perhaps even the style of my Blog. But all in all, I feel, I should not change much of its spirit and outlook.

Having said this, I should welcome any feedback, any suggestion, any comment that may guide me in pursuing this exercise.

So please, if by chance you read this request, kindly consider responding to it.

CHRISTMAS 2006

2006-12-18T00:30:00.000-08:00

Let's give the right example to the young

This weekend I had a young visitor. He is a young man of twenty-one, born in Morocco but raised in the Dutch city of The Hague. His is not a life of privilige. His father died of cancer when he was eleven years of age. He still lives at home, even though he finds it difficult to get along with his mother. None of his two elder brothers take much interest in him. So, he is very much on his own. He hasn’t completed any significant education or training, yet he has to pay off a debt of more than ten thousand dollars for whatever little education he has had.

I offered him my assistance, just talking about the possibilities that he might pursue, i.e. a job or any kind of vocational training.

After the young man left, which he did rather in a hurry, I noted that I couldn’t find my cellphone. And it didn’t take me long to realize that this young man had snatched it away from my desk. Damn!

Thankfully, I had his number (I could of course have called 'myself'). I reached him, and yes, after a moment he admitted that he had taken my cellphone away, so he could sell it for some money and pay off an urgent debt. “You wouldn’t have given it to me, if I had asked.”

Eventually, he agreed to exchange my cellphone for the money he needed. I went to the place in the city where he would wait for me. When he stepped into my car, I gave him a long hard look and said: “You really got the wrong guy. I could have meant much more for you than the money in my hand!”

He apologized for having cheated me this way, but he didn’t see any other way to obtain the money. We then exchanged the cellphone and some 60 dollars.

I told him that I well understood his situation, and that in some way I didn’t really blame him for cheating me this way. What good examples in his life did this young man have to trust anyone for providing him with true help? None whatsoever. In his life, the only thing he understands is that if you see an opportunity, you grab it.

Our society if full of bad examples. And it seems as if even I have no choice but to stick to my own interests, because otherwise anyone – not just this young man – will grab what he can take from me.

Where do we start? Well, I will not turn my back to this young man. I will simply allow him a second chance.

Can we concieve of progress without the continuation of our present day consumer’s slavery?

2006-11-27T03:43:00.000-08:00

Human ignorance cannot rule again
In our time many people sense that the world is rapidly moving towards decisive crossroads. Much of what our history has been about is in the balance. Ever since the Dark Ages we have progressively strived for a world that is open to invention, development, rationalism, individual freedom and ultimately to welfare for all. The forces of darkness and authoritarian rule did not readily surrender, nor have they totally vanished, but in our Western civilization we have caged them to such extent that they can never successfully embark on a new all out crusade or succeed in ignorance and human submission to rule again. Well, that is a positive outcome isn’t it? But is is true? I look at our world, and at the present day junction of history, in a slightly different perspective.

Yet we live in slavery
First of all, human submission has all but vanished. In fact, our world is entirely based on submission, be it in a highly successful disguise. Why submit people by force, as was once the case for many people, or entire populations, including the millions of slaves who helped our way towards Western supremcacy, if one can also succeed in submitting people by perpetual seduction? We have learned to percieve our world of material affluence as a world of welfare and freedom for many, but this is only one side of the coin. We have made our world highly dependent too on its perpetuation: on the ongoing cycle of material satisfaction and the subsequent desire for more at an unprecendented massive scale. People are gently urged to buy, and to do so systematically. Economies are rated according to our level of desire and the ‘confidence’ that we will effectively satisfy this desire. I call this consumer slavery.

Our icons do not create a better world
Secondly, we have learned that the state of our material environment is the key yardstick for the success we achieve in our own lives. We belittle material poverty and herald the rich. Those, for instance, who wish for a ‘better world’, are idealists, as are those who pursue ambitions in any other non-material but spiritual or social hemisphere. Idealism doesn’t generate sufficient currency to make us comfortable, does it?

We are driven to satisfy just ourselves
Thirdly, we are driven to pursue material wealth for ourselves, as individuals. There are few if any incentives to share our material wealth with others. But in a world which is bound to face the limits of material wealth as the inevitable consequence of Earth’s total material resources, this is a highly dangerous situation to get into. Especially so, if such pursuits become the key driving force of other, non-Western nations.

Let’s go for the longer term

All of this is in the balance, whether we like it or not. But as I see it, we have great possibilities indeed to make our world a better place, if only we care to share and shift our priorities – perhaps only slightly – to our long term interests, away from our immediate satisfactions.

Political thaw is setting in, but it happens in a void

2006-11-14T01:26:00.000-08:00

Both Europe and the United States have experienced a marked increase in the popularity of hard line, rightist policies over the past five years or so. This tide seems to have reached its outer limits. Obviously, the victory in the US Congress Mid Term Elections of the Democrats is one indication of a potential shift to a climate that is more amenable to leftist approaches. In my own country, the upcoming elections (Nov 22) are equally expected to boost the left side of the spectrum, although it remains highly uncertain whether this wil actually constitute a shift of power. In this period too, France is getting prepared for the Presidential election, and so far it seems that candidates on the left side hold the greatest appeal. Germany, as always, continues to keep all tides in a balance.

Where are the new concepts and solutions?

Having said this, I am inclined to take a cautionary view of the developments as they emerge at present. Much of the voting seems to be a vote against (the right) rather than a deliberate vote in favor (of the left). Secondly, it cannot be said that ‘the left’ has produced an articulate and appealing vision, anywhere. It has become abundantly clear that our time is especially barren in terms of (new) concepts and convincing (new) solutions to key problems both in the political scene and at the level of shared, global themes such as our environment and the difficulties of providing the bare necessities for an ever growing world population. So what do we buy, under those conditions, for any political ‘thaw’ or shift to the left? As much as I can see, they will, for the time being, only serve to protract the muddle created by the right, and increase the uneasiness among many – at all sides of the spectrum – as politicians continue to fail to address pressing social and economic issues.

New leadership and courage
One way or the other, the right moment for new leadership has not yet arrived. One cannot conceive of any substantive leadership in a void. There has to be the power of vision, and the power of persuasion, which most likely will only be nourished as the muddle progresses a little further down the slope. When appeasement doesn’t work, nor any retained hawkish policy; when new perpectives emerge, and the old perspectives are finally put to rest.

In my estimate, this is likely to take another few years, three – perhaps five. In the mean time, mediocrity will reign,with just a few flickerings of new light on the horizon. The rest is a matter of courage, and opportunity. There is no reason whatsoever not to take up our courage and grasp opportunity even in the smallest context. Your nor I really need to wait.

We Dutch: always subject of Scorn and Admiration

2006-10-22T10:24:00.000-07:00

Dutch history
The other day I read an account written by an English fugitive in Holland some time in 1619, reflecting both a clear contentment with the Dutch environment of religious tolerance and the general spirit of freedom, but also some serious concern about the behaviour of our children. Whatever the general merits of Dutch self government, tolerance and freedom, some English migrants held clear misgivings about the “licentiousness of youth in that country" and “the general immorality of Dutch youth and how they cared little for a personal relationship with God” (source: Bradford Smith’s biography of Pilgrim William Bradford). The writer was a member of the group that sailed on to America and later became known as the Pilgrim Fathers.

Holland experienced an astonishing success both as an economic power and as a center of science and art at the time. It was our Golden Age. We were greatly admired, but we also attracted the scorn of many serious people, who frowned at our social habits.

In many ways this is a theme that runs through our entire history. And it is true in equal measure, that in periods of stagnation or decline, our behaviour - whether towards children or towards other aspects of our social or religious lifestyle – stifled at the same time.

Duality of discipline and tolerance
So really, I have come to think of this duality as an essential characteristic of who we are as a people, and perhaps more broadly speaking, of the key ingredients of prosperity in general. Shouldn’t we think of social chaos – to a degree – as a fundamental prerequisite to progress?

Today, the Dutch are subject to similar criticism as the one expresssed some four hundred years ago. We are considered too permissive, we have legalized drugs (soft drugs that is), we allow Mosques to be built almost everywhere, whereas we are still supposed to be a (European) Christian nation; we allow for the greatest sexual freedom (or degradation), and our social system seems too tolerant to really stimulate people to get back to work etcetera.

Well, let’s say that we do address those issues. We are not ignoring them. Some of them do cause grave concern. But the last thing we will do is to resort to authoritarian measures to ‘solve’ them. We won’t.

Our country has emerged out of a fundamental adversary: the tides of the North Sea. Later on our main adversaries were European autocrats who thought they could rule a country that already was too much accustomed to rule itself. Even our Orange monarchy is a direct result of it, and not a contradiction to it.

Craddle of freedom in the greater world
Furthermore, we may seem chaotic and permissive to a degree, but otherwise I believe Holland is one of the most tightly run and well organized countries in the world. For us there is no alternative. Our country has too few acres to do it otherwise, but our population equals that of Australia.

I am not saying that we are miraculous in any way. But don’t mistake us for just a small country somewhere in Europe. Our minds and ambitions have been trained to largely carry us beyond our own borders, speak other languages, invest in other countries. We are the craddle of Republicanism that now governs the United States – thanks to the Pilgrim Fathers and those who followed. We don’t need admiration, nor do we need scorn. It is much more interesting to try and understand us.

Are we hunting ghosts?

2006-10-16T12:28:00.000-07:00

Last week the world was shocked to hear that North-Korea, in defiance of international decency, carried out a nuclear test. Now the International Atomic Agency casts doubt as to the accuracy of this event. They are not quite convinced that North Korea actually ignited a true bomb, or – alternatively – just a fizzle.

We all know that North Korea is not actually contemplating a nuclear world war. It is a country in great despair and in need of real help. Its leaders have lost their proper track for some time now, and it is probably a great challenge to put things in order, without a lot of faces being embarrassed along the way.

All of this does not justify War-type language – what does? – but a carefully designed multinational effort to help North Korea see a brighter future, and not let it protract the agony of its people.

Similar ghosts are plaguing us elsewhere in the world. In many respects I call terrorism such a ghost. We do not wish to see the reality behind this phenomenon, and thus will not learn how to respond to it as long as this is our attitude.

We continue to hunt the stuff of material affluence, but fail to become richer and happier in the process. When will we understand?

Really, it is going to require leadership of as yet unknown magnitude to counter the prevailing trends in our world and help us too to find our proper course on this Planet. For who can really say that we are less misguided than North Korea, or Iraqi insurgents etc.?

I have now watched Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, and I admire him for his courageous effort to bring across the message that has been obvious to many people for a long time already. Again, when will we really learn, and start to respond?

I do not want to spend my life hunting Ghosts. Nor do you. And I am not just sitting here, and commenting on all the wrongs etc. of my contemporaries. In my own life, I know what I can do to help future generations design a brighter future. I sincerely wish you can do this too.

Angels, angels out there in the cloud

2006-10-08T00:46:00.000-07:00

Angels, angels out there in the cloud
What is my destiny
for which you have vowed?
Time and again my life was saved
A thousand deaths were somehow waved
The scooter from which I fell
The car that could have sent me straight to hell
And all those other accidents in your store
Or vicious traps right there at my door
That you kept out of harm’s way -
Why is it that you want me to stay?

Over the years I tabled my goals
All of them fell into big black holes
Again and again my destiny was kept at bay
I never really grasped what you wanted to say
And even when mistakes I made
So huge, that in the end I was afraid
No purpose ever could be fulfilled
And it was I, myself, who really killed
All likelihood of a worthy cause
Thus did I count my failures, loss after loss
And yet each time a new horizon came in view
Chances for me, or otherwise for just a happy few

And now again a mission is laid at my feet
I know, it is of my own doing, my own treat,
A dream so beautiful and noble to pursue
Can I really benefit all, give everyone his due?
All the lessons that I learned must go in the balance
They will have to guide me to the final essence
Of what it is that a man should accomplish
Rather than to merely live at the whim of his wish
Even the reptiles understood this from their early days
It was for their offspring they had to make a case
All that life will count, as it goes on
Is what the organism for posterity has won
And then it leaves you to rest
To dream forever about what you did best.

The Hague, October 2006

I Need Another Battle

2006-09-30T01:34:00.000-07:00

A personal reflection

After weeks of total outrage, my anger has left me. I am content that I came out of the battle unscathed. And though perhaps I didn’t win my war, at least I emerged with the moral victory on my side and with the reassurance that many supported my cause.

But something else has happened too. All these weeks I had been wide awake, combattive, full of adrenaline and inspired by a fierce creative spirit. And now all that has gone too; it has left me empty to the point that, somehow, I want my battle back.

I am looking to the world around me with great mildness. What a joyful world it is, so totally filled with irrelevance and people just running around to buy their groceries and all their useless things, waking up and going to sleep again. Nothing stirrs me up.

I was happy to write my sharp convictions of the Bush Administration, day after day, but now I don’t really care. Let him be. One day, he’ll be gone.

I had arrived at some big questions about the mishaps of history, about the arrogance of ancient religious institutions and their lasting impact on our present day perceptions of right and wrong. I wanted to challenge every selfish drive for power as a mere end in itself (including the abuse of God as an excuse for it). Well, tomorrow is another time.

I was adamant to face the madness of our world and strike it down, if only I had the means to do it. Hm, indeed, I don’t.

So do I need to wait for the next battle to restore me on my feet? There is much for me to do. I have many missions to fulfill. But they do require my energy, my creativity, and my firm belief that, out there, there is a cause to win.

Perhaps it is only natural to feel exhausted and empty, even after a victory of some sort. Is this what women feel who experience postnatal depression? Most likely, time will do the trick. And I am probably not alone. So perhaps I should seek out some other battle and side with the party most sympathetic to my own convictions, and up goes my adrenaline and in comes new creativity.

It is true, isn’t it, that much of what we project to the outer world, must have some root in what is going on in our inner selves. I am too content, at this moment, to disturb the tranquility of our Planet’s rotation and everything on it just for the sake of differences in opinion or even for the sake of my Great Ideas. That was yesterday, when somebody else’s crazy ideas came in my way.

So please, disturb me. Make me crazy. Put your ideas in front of mine. Let’s have a good and decent war of the minds.

Where will the Madness take us?

2006-09-20T20:28:00.000-07:00

I still remember a world in which being ‘mad’ meant: having fun, making jokes, provoke, stirr – all of this essentially to the benefit of our mental health, nothing less – nothing more. But in our present time a madness has emerged that seems vicious rather than funny and that has firmly infiltrated the minds of so many people – in many parts of the world – to the point where we seem to have lost all ability for reason and normal human restraint.

The M word
The totally unjustified outrage directed at the Pope for remarks which under normal circumstances would have passed entirely unnoticed, is only one example. "What should he apologize for?" someone asked. "There is freedom of speech, and what he said is objectively true." It is almost as if calling the M(uslim) word in itself is accepting the risk of some wild and vicious revenge. Why? I was proud, many years ago, to live in a Muslim country, showing normal curiosity (and respect) as to the customs and lifestyle of my Muslim friends, having normal discussions about our similarities and differences, taking a point here and giving a point there. But these days I have to tiptoe my way through the subject.

And the M(uslim) word is not the only madness visiting us. In my own country, The Netherlands, people lost their mental sanity some four years ago when a popular politician was assassinated by a mentally disturbed and very isolated single individual. Obviously, it was a horrible crime, and personally I greatly regret the loss of this politican. But ever since that fateful shot, a distinct madness has governed our public life that only very few firm minded and reasonable people have been able to counter.

In a way, it is not always easy to pinpoint exactly what the madness is, and this – in my mind – only illustrates the gravity of the situation.

Fear of complexity?
Perhaps my bewilderment about the prevailing atmosphere of our time has everything to do with the expectations which governed my youth and which for a long time have guided my sense of progress. To me, our present day hysteria and lack of reason but also the ease with which our world leaders are prepared to resort to irrationality and simple solutions to complex questions is at great variance (to put it mildly) with the reasoned development of policies and of public debate as it prevailed, say, two to four decades ago. In my own mind, madness struck right at the time when every sense of the ‘Res Publica’ was lost to individualism and materialism gone out of hand.

A spoiled child has awakened in us that can only respond to immediate rewards – or the lack of them –, that harbors fears (and silly joys) without the actual capacity to distinguish between the real and the unreal, between the rational and virtual. It is that same child that resorts to intimidation and the use of violence; the child that has become a US President and a President of Iran; it is the child with guns and explosives in Iraq, the child who wants to believe in some Great Designer of Life and Dreams, the child who thinks that mobile phones grow on trees and who thinks he simply has a right to use them in abundance, regardless of need and actual contribution.

New leadership
There is, obviously, a great need for reason and restraint to regain control of our own minds and for new – well structured – visions of a good future that can inspire all of us, at left and right, as Muslims and Christians and everyone else. But most of all we should wish for decent leadership that will put the spoiled child to rest; we urgently require leadership that can set the right example and create a new agenda for the ‘Res Publica’ that interests all of us, without fear, without ignorance, and above all: without the desire to satisfy just oneself. Only then will madness again be fun and health inspiring.

Five year Remembrance: how to end a War on Terror?

2006-09-10T13:02:00.000-07:00

Some five years after the most atrocious terrorist attack ever, officials of the US Administration are still busy defending the War that was waged in its aftermath. What they should be spending all their energies on instead is making a defense to end it.

The tragic sequence of events in the past years, including the terrible event in New York, should by now demonstrate in all clarity to everyone that – really – a War on Terror is a contradiction in terminis. It cannot be waged because when you do, it can never be stopped.

Terrorism is not about conquering new land or expanding a country’s economy, or about sorting out old differences between nations, which is what most of the true wars in history have been about. Most of all, terrorism is not about winning any war in the first place. So fighting it in a warlike fashion in actual fact is submitting one self to defeat from the start.

By now, much of what the US Government has done in its fight against terrorism has been declassified as illegal, torturous and ineffective, in short: a demonstration of atrocity that gradually equals the horror it claims to stop, this regardless the actual success in preventing new terrorists threats, which belongs to the realm of crime-fighting (not War).

The only way to end a War on Terror
is by not starting it

Terrorism is the contemporary expression of a people’s outrage against others, against – what they see as – infidels. As long as we continue to counter this simply by adding a terror of our own, we will never get to the point of truly responding to that outrage.

It is time we start to do that. It is time the Western World, the US and Europe together, reconsider every element of our today’s world that feeds the outrage of others against us, and start to make amends. Not by using intimidating language or by associating Muslims with ‘fascists’, or by ignoring the different cultural, economic and political realities in other countries, but by fundamentally questioning all these and other factors which today seem to be the core make-up of the world we wish to defend.

All of us were truly shocked on the 11th of September 2001. All of us would wish for peace – and closure. But such closure will be very difficult to achieve if we are still out to win a battle that we lost already, and not see the real challenge that we should address.

Americans are too complacent

2006-09-04T10:54:00.000-07:00

Tagging along
George W. Bush is well in his second term, in the sixth year of his presidency. Despite unprecedented violations by the Bush Administration of international law and of even the most obvious standards of international decency and common sense, most of the American population apparently are content to tag along with little if any organized opposition. The memory of his Democratic contender John Kerry has long been buried and forgotten, and to this day the Democrats have miserably failed in developing a clear agenda of their own.

Any one speaking out?
Very few speak out. And most of those who do, are hardly heard. Especially journalists so far – in my view - have been extremely restrained in their ciriticism, setting aside good exceptions such as the editors of the New York Times, or writers in such eminent, but perhaps too intellectual magazines as The Atlantic and The New Yorker.

Only recently, the American Bar Association has raised its voice – well, barely. A bipartisan, 11-member panel of the ABA found that President Bush is not only disregarding laws. They also pointed out that Bush has used signing statements to raise constitutional objections to more than 800 provisions in more than 100 laws. All of the presidents combined before 2001 had issued only 600. Well, if that isn’t a clear complaint, what is?

The ABA furthermore reported that “...(the) federal government is failing to enforce our laws on a wide range of issues. Trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, which is clearly a treaty, have not been approved by two-thirds of the Senate as required by the Treaty Clause of the Constitution.”

Shining City far away
When Ronald Reagan spoke his last words as President of the US, in january 1989, he referred to America as a country of decency and common sense, of freedom of worship and freedom of hope. His eyes and mind looked out to the Shining City on the Hill, filled with the goodness of mankind and of Americans in particular. We’ve come a long way from that shining vision. Why? And how come the Republican Party, which surely holds the memory of Reagan in the highest possible esteem, does so little to correct the Republican Bush?

I honestly don’t have the answer, and as a Dutchman I am obviously an outsider. The only thing I know is that a lack of a clear and articulate opposition is bad – very bad - for democracy. Bush and his followers have done almost everything to quash it. I still find it difficult to grasp that sensible US citizens swallowed the catch phrase of Bush per excellence: those who are not for us, are against us. If this wasn’t an outrage against democracy – what is? It is very hard to accept any policy of a President who follows this principle, whether or not he professes to sell democracy to other parts of the world. It makes him (and his Administration) loose all credibility.

And in Europe
But I wouldn’t wish to simply bang Bush. It would be all too easy. The greatest concern of this day is not his conduct or that of his Administration – bad as they are! The greatest concern should be the development of true opposition and political stamina, including some more muscle out of Europe.

I was pleased to note that at least one notable US Democrat, former President Jimmy Carter, expressed his personal concerns very much on the same subject. Last week, he told reporters how disappointed he was about the behavior of Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister. If anyone, Blair is in the position to add some counterweight to the narrow minded course of US policies. But Blair is not doing that. I totally agree with Carter. And I would add to this my personal disappointment about the complacency of my own country's government.

“We are in a situation where the United States is so unpopular overseas, that even in countries like Egypt and Jordan less than five percent of the population supports us”, added Carter. A highly troubling achievement indeed!

Wake up call
When will America finally wake up, or will the country remain complacent even as the Bush Administration continues to slide further down the path from decency to nothing less than becoming a terror in its own right?

Let me conclude in quoting a recent press statement of Senator Edward Kennedy on the current Iraq policies of Bush cum suis:

“…..The politics of fear may have worked for the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2004, but by 2006 the American people see through them. They will judge Bush and his Congressional allies by their record, rather than their rhetoric. Americans understand that staying the course is not a plan for victory - it is a political slogan and a recipe for disaster….”

I beg all decent American citizens not to let it arrive at such disaster.

We the Baby Boomers ....at 60

2006-08-22T11:46:00.000-07:00

Sixty, sixties
Mick Jagger is 63. Paul McCartney is 64. And now George W. Bush and Bill Clinton too have reached the magic treshold, both having turned 60 this summer. It has been noted by many that a notorious generation is gradually moving on to the autumn of its existence in our ‘valley of tears under the moon’, as my grandfather once called it.

Symbolically it is perhaps apt that we remind ourselves who we are at 60 as a generation which so much cherishes everything ‘sixties’ - indeed - as a source of magic remembrance and of an undiminished belief in a better future.

Education and prosperity
One commentary pointed out that never in recorded history one single generation has been so well educated and so prosperous as the generation that came out of the rubbles of WW II (*). And it serves as yet another – symbolic – irony that it has been our generation too which invested so much energy first of all to challenge the world order that was being (re)built to produce this education and wealth.

We vigorously wanted to change our world; our dream was to eradicate every single authority and all the bossiness that history had erected to secure the orderly conduct of human affairs and to safeguard what we considered highly rigid values and codes of conduct dominating the style and tone of the society in which we were born. We came a long way to change all this indeed, but we also set out to enjoy with equal vigour the seemingly boundless fruits of our heritage (and what we progressively made of it) in an unprecedented way.

1963: Bill Clinton and John F. Kennedy

The icons of our age
Many symbols accompany the shared memory of our generation and many icons can be found along the road of our lives’ history: noisy youngsters on motorbikes, the Cuban Revolution, Dallas 22 November 1963 and its aftermath, The Beatles, Paris 1968, Anti-Vietnam protests, HAIR and flower power, new democracy and social experimentation. To a large extent all of us are the children of John F. Kennedy, and Winston Churchill is our grandfather.

In the end, most of us focused on the need of a good career and the dreams of our youth regressed or they transformed into other pursuits such as the development of new management concepts, progressive government policies, new fashion and architecture, new institutions. Subsequent generations have already made their own mark or are finding their way to do so.

Our generation in the balance
We all now wish to be happy grandparents, and some have already reached this blessed situation. The great – last – challenge we face is to achieve that other emerging guiness record: a healthy and vital old age.

I am well aware that much of the achievement of our generation is the result, directly or indirectly, of the silver spoon with which we were born. Our wealth, our education and our health – all of this would have been unthinkable without the efforts – and sacrifices - of our own parents and their generation. And yes, some sacrifices were made in our generation too, most notably by those who were sent out to Vietnam.

But otherwise, our generation is a generation of great enjoyment, of unprecedented leasure and entertainment. One could say: well, yes – but they are a great value of life, and happiness is a fundamental human pursuit.

Not their utopia
Still, we developed our life style of enjoyment – and massive consumption – at a cost. Let’s not forget. In our Western world we deliberately created a paradise of entertainment beyond imagination, exploiting every capacity of our environment that we could extract.

And however prosperous our world may appear, it does not resemble any of the utopia's conceived in human history. In the eyes of many, particularly in the non Western world, we have created not a paradise but a horror story of mass depletion. We are essentially leaving it to the next generation to solve the great dilemma that has already become apparent. Bush at 60 may scoff at Climate Change, but if he is still alive at 80 and then has difficulty to breathe fresh air, he should not complain.

Bot otherwise, nearing 60, I do not complain. Whatever downsides I too can see, I will always tell my story of the sixties and beyond as a tale of adventure, inspiration and progress. And may it so be.

-----
(*) And perhaps never in history so much wealth followed a period of so much devastation.

On the Scale of Ignorance

2006-08-16T13:53:00.000-07:00

Public opinion about evolution graphic

Science vs. God - again?
I have already touched upon this subject a number of times (see below: God and the Divinity of Life). I do think it is a pertinent issue. So forgive me.

The above scale (published in Science Magazine) illustrates a highly salient insight. I would bluntly describe it as a ranking of countries according to their prevailing ignorance or – less bluntly – as an indication of the average quality of their common sense.

When reporting on the underlying research, a Dutch newspaper – just a few days ago – stated that in the past twenty years, the percentage of Americans who have serious doubts about evolution has increased threefold. This of itself is noteworthy of course, but the above scale puts the issue in a broader perspective.

And let us not overemphasize the difference between Europe (as a whole) and the US (as a whole). For instance, if you could pick out New England and compare it with, let’s say, France, you probably won’t find much difference.

We the educated people..
Still, educated Americans can seriously frown when looking at their score next to Turkey, very much at the bottom of this scale: it says, to frame it correctly, that in percentage terms Americans are at the rock bottom heap where it concerns the acceptance of evolution as the fundamental foundation or mechanism of (the diversity of) life as we know it.

The research furthermore indicated that fewer than half of the American adults can provide a minimal definition of DNA, which in the Western world is generally considered basic high school stuff.

In Europe, on average, 10% opposes evolution, and I must say that I don’t look at the Dutch score (which is higher, hence worse: approx. 12 %) with much pride.

It has all to do with religion, the researchers say. For instance, Americans tend to take the Bible’s Genesis much more literally than Europeans. Moreover, they add, the subject of evolution is a much more politicized theme in the US than in Europe. Court cases, such as in Kansas, about the acceptability of teaching creationism versus evolution at school, would be totally unthinkable on our side of the Atlantic. Above all, such processes are highly self defeating and they lead to false illusions (about who wins or looses) only.

Of course, we cannot say that ‘Americans are Ignorant’ simply because of this ranking. I hold the American society in very high esteem, in particular because of the advancement it has made on the basis of science. Still, we are talking of a troubling aspect that deserves our attention.

Fanaticism and selfrighteousness
There is a wider issue, to which much of this must be tied in our time. Let’s take another example where religious conviction and (scientific) common sense seem to collide. In the US there is a President who, without much due process, personally blocks any further progress in a specific type of research (stem cell research). His arguments, I must say, have rather more to to with personal zealotry than with sound and responsible thinking. I am not saying that stem cell research is acceptable at any cost, but in Europe, most of us would handle this question in quite a different, more studious way.

I furthermore do not believe that it is a coincidence, in our time, that in many places in our world - not limiting myself to the Western world - new fanaticism in the religious aspect of humanity has gained considerable momentum.

It is a strange, but hardly innocent irony that so much new dogmatism and disbelief emerges as to almost remind ourselves of the darkest ages of human history when only few but brave people dared to be inquisitive and not accept any truth simply because of somebody’s intimidation. Apparently to many, there is something very frightful in modern times (and sure, 'progress' as we know it is not filled with goodness only).

And I would observe that most of those who are inspired by their disbelief and dogmatism today are very prone to act with similar intimidation. President Bush, in his worst moments, is a true copy of his greatest foe, the current President of Iran.

We see the same phenomena in different parts of our world; in Iran people are being told that the WW II Holocaust is just a theory and not a fact. In the US self styled Evangelists aggressively block regular science education. How close is the Iranian President to the Right Wing Christian Evangelists in the US? Very close, if you ask me.

Love and Science
I am not a proponent of the thesis that there must be a battle between God and Science. If sexual replication has emerged as the key process of evolution – and we know that this has happened in a very early stage of life’s advancement – then we are actually referring to the process that humanity – across religions, across cultures – has come to call ‘love’.

Love is the key to life as we know it. And for many Christians, God is Love. Religion and science are two sides of the same coin. They are an expression of the Ascent of Man in all its richness. I would hate to see Religion go, simply because it cannot compete with our common sense of Nature. But I also hate to see Religion continue to be a source of fierce adversity between people - Christians and Arabs -who essentially share much of the spiritual and scientific heritage that we are talking about.

There are Religious leaders who at this moment carry a grave responsibility to allow the freedom of common sense and science to do its work, whilst a the same time to guide their following towards the goodness of their faith. They are not opposite – or should not be, regardless the Religious sentiments one may have.

What history may come

2006-08-02T11:23:00.000-07:00

I would not be surprised if a few thousand years further down the road, bits and peaces of the greatest fiction of our age will turn up in official history. Many seemingly credible records of our time are likely to survive as accepted facts many eons hence. Think of all the wonderful movies we will leave behind, think of the total mixup of these movies with tons of documentaries and filmed reconstructions? Who will be able to tell the difference between fact and fiction for every one of these accounts of the 20th and 21st centuries?

I don’t believe we will actually be able to really influence this. Even in our time we live with legends of the past which we readily wish to take for real. We might be capable of scratching the walls of old tombs and caves to correct – or confirm – these legends to some degree, but we don’t really have an interest in proving the legends right or wrong. We rather continue to retain their credibility and ‘truth’ – for our own sake. Take the Bible. Take the Holy Grail and the Da Vinci Code.

And even as our recent history moves on to the realms of a more distant past, we can already feel the process of history molding it to fit the needs of future generations for clear and convincing history. History itself is almost by definition a process in which both fact and legend find their proper place.

So let’s have a look at the great legends, the great stories of fiction of our own age.

There was Superman. He was a bird, no - he was a Boeing 747. At any rate he could fly. Clark Kent nearly replaced the Messiah Jesus, that is until Mel Gibson set it all right with the Passion of the Christ, just before St. John Paul II died. Most likely people will find a reddish star somewhere on the fringes of the Milky Way with remnants of an ancient planet resembling Krypton long before they will find the first planet with Earthlike life.

There wasn’t a Third World War. After Hitler came Darth Vader in five successive stages of a Galactic War. Luke Skywalker was the Winston Churchill of our age.

And what about little bits of twisted ancient history: wasn’t it Russell Crowe who killed the Roman Emperor Commodus?

Those who have seen the Libertine with the Earl of Rochester playing Johnny Depp, will remember that in 1675, golly, the promiscuous King Charles II said “what the fuck!”

Most clearly the celebrities of our time replaced the ancient knights and nobility. Marilyn Monroe, Brad Pitt as Joe Black, Scarlett Johansson who in real life was painted by Vermeer. Or..how was it exactly?

We cannot let history pass just as we let it pass. It may perhaps be wise to include clear records of fact and fiction in our legacy for posterity. But will even we agree on the right label? What do we consider legend or truth ourselves?

I for my part have never believed that mankind really reached the moon. Why, it was Tom Hanks! And wasn’t he just an actor?

Dutch Mona Lisa

2006-07-29T10:59:00.000-07:00

I visited the Mauritshuis in The Hague twice last week. First with my upstairs neighbor’s little baby daughter and her grandmother, second with an American nephew and one of my younger brothers.

The Mauritshuis houses the work of some fine Dutch painters of our Golden Century such as Rembrandt, Frans Hals and Johannes Vermeer. The three of them created a true revolution in art. And it wasn’t simply technique or angle, or even the reflection of light and darkness that made them unique in depicting the scenes and people of their time.

Most of all the Dutch painters of the 17th century captured the spirit of their day. They had left the elegance and refinement of the Renaissance behind them and had fully immersed in the energy and seriousness, mixed with the joyful passion of the new age of enterprise and human independence.

Vermeer’s girl with the pearl earring – as the painting is officially known (*) – can truly count as the Dutch Mona Lisa. A furtive young woman, busy with her chores, looking straight into the lense, alsmost literally, of Vermeer’s Camera Obscura. Her expression is a far cry from the sensual expression of many of Da Vinci’s women. Yet it is difficult not to be moved by her seeming innocence and the sensuality of the painter’s brush that captured this one second of her life.

Portrait by Frans Hals

The portrait of the man with a hat by Hals is of quite a different nature. But it is a snapshot in much the same way. With quick brushes Frans Hals depicts almost the entire inner life of a joyful, relaxed individual who seems to have come by for just a cup of coffee (or a pint of beer) before moving on.

This year is Rembrandt’s 400th birthday. He is the other historic celebrity next to Mozart to whom much of the Art world has dedicated AD 2006 as a year of commemoration. Rembrandt left us his selfportraits from his early adolescence up to the last year of his life. The portrait depicted below looks very similar to the pictures people nowadays take of themselves with their cellphone. Rembrandt is looking at himself as if he were saying: “Man, what have you done?” Here is a man, selfconscious and very much aware of the fortunes and misfortunes that had befallen him. Is he making excuses, or is he simply trying to make an assessment of himself, in full knowledge of his own weaknesses, not dissimilar from the questions the Apostle St. Paul might have asked whom he represents in this painting?

Rembrandt's selfportrait as St. Paul

It is a great pleasure to be able to visit the lives of people of so many centuries ago. But it is an even greater pleasure, of course, to transmit this enjoyment to people of new generations, whether it is a little baby or an American nephew.
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(*) A few years ago Vermeer's painting was the subject of a wonderful movie "Girl with the pearl earring", starring Scarlet Johansson in the title role. I recommend this movie to anyone interested in a credible representation of the stern family life in a Dutch town back in the 1600s.

God and the Divinity of Life

2006-07-25T12:14:00.000-07:00

Life is awesome. It so awesome that only the firm minded will accept life without the need to explain it by calling in (some) Divinity. Two totally unrelated articles in the NY Times of today (25-07) once again reminded me of this.

One was about the discovery of a hitherto hidden mechanism in life’s production system which dictates the exact application of a DNA sequence, or rather: particular parts of our entire genome according to the identity of the cell. Whenever cells split, their DNA splits all the way, and it reassembles all the way, from the stemcell up to the last hairfollicle. We all know that our entire bodyplan is stored in the DNA of each of our countless cells. But we did not so far figure out how the process of protein production in each cell gets so neatly attuned to its specific function.

But now Researchers believe they have found a second code in DNA in addition to the genetic code. This second code, superimposed on the first, sets the placement of the nucleosomes, miniature protein spools around which the DNA is looped. The spools both protect and control access to the DNA – i.e. the relevant part for the particular cell - itself.

The new code is described in the current issue of Nature by Eran Segal of the Weizmann Institute in Israel and Jonathan Widom of Northwestern University in Illinois and their colleagues.

Well, that’s a marvel. I mean, the discovery is a marvel, if only one thinks of the tiny dimensions in which all of this has to be sorted out. But the mechanism is a marvel too, of course. Just imagine how it must have come about in the early ascent of living entities billions of years ago. At this level humans are not different from peas, so we can well assume this is pretty fundamental to everything we call life today.

DNA's Double Helix with all our genetic heritage stored in each of our cells

Then there is the other article, titled “Faith, Reason, God and Other Imponderables”. It is a review of a number of books by scientists (some atheist, some religious) on our contemperary fascination with the Origin of it All.

Initially I thought it was just another ramble about the question whether faith in God can coexist with faith in the scientific method (which is one of the most stupid questions I know). But it highlights a few salient contradictions worth mentioning.

First of all it recounts the stories of intelligent men gone haywhire; ardent scientists who seem to have succumbed to our current latter days religious revivalism.

- In “The Language of God,” Dr. Collins, the geneticist who led the American government’s effort to decipher the human genome, describes his own journey from atheism to committed Christianity, a faith he embraced as a young physician.

- In “God’s Universe,” Dr. Gingerich, an emeritus professor of astronomy at Harvard, tells how he is “personally persuaded that a superintelligent Creator exists beyond and within the cosmos.”

Indeed, the more we understand of life’s underlying fabric, the stronger our tendency to reject the idea that life arose just by itself rather than by the machinations of a superior intelligent creator. This notion brings me the shivers. From the Age of Reason we are full circle back in the Age of Superstition.

But then the article mentions the courageous, yet countereffective efforts of professor Richard Dawkins (the emeninent scientist of the 1970s publication on The Selfish Gene) to help our world retain its common sense. He doesn’t convince above Gingerich, who argues that in simultaneously defending evolution and insisting upon atheism, Dawkins probably “single-handedly makes more converts to intelligent design than any of the leading intelligent design theorists.”. My God (I beg your pardon for saying so), what a conundrum! But indeed, most likely nothing good is achieved if we try to hammer in the concept of evolution through God bashing. Still, it is pretty disconcerting that scientists use their aura of knowledge to gain a higher footing with the unsuspecting faithful. Secondly, behind their reasoning lurks the argument that if we cannot disprove the existence of a Divine Creator, then he must exist. I find it hard to grasp that serious people readily accept this ignorant position, but there it is.

So far, I believe, Richard Dawkins (*) has made all the sense in the world. But we may have to accept that to counter Religion with more science, this will only throw new oil on the fire. Most likely, it will be more effective to counter the arguments with Religion itself.

I am not particularly religious, but I do hold that there is a place for God in our human life. The mistake we should never make however, is to use God, or Divinity, or any other Creator, to explain life on Earth or the life of humanity itself. God was never created for explanation. God and all his institutions are with us for guidance only. Humanity created God (not the other way around)to serve its need for moral codes of conduct and to glue the fabric of society. Religion in essence is the antithesis to the rules of nature. God would never think of Darwinian wildness and genetic selfishness. Yet these very processes made the advent of humanity possible, including the advent of spiritual life - and of science.

In the larger part of its history the Roman Church stifled science, and interfered with the advance of knowledge at great cost and human sacrifice. It learned the hard way never to try that again. So let's not wish to go back to the days of Galileo or worse.

Learned professors too better stick to their trade.
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(*)
In a recent TV documentary aired by BBC Channel 4 (The Root of All Evil) Dawkins describes his astonishment that, at the start of the 21st century, religious faith is gaining ground in the face of rational, scientific truth. Science, based on scepticism, investigation and evidence, must continuously test its own concepts and claims. Faith, by definition, defies evidence: it is untested and unshakeable, and is therefore in direct contradiction with science.

In addition, though religions preach morality, peace and hope, in fact, says Dawkins, they bring intolerance, violence and destruction. The growth of extreme fundamentalism in so many religions across the world not only endangers humanity but, he argues, is in conflict with the trend over thousands of years of history for humanity to progress – to become more enlightened and more tolerant.

To understand our future, we must study the past – and study it hard

2006-07-22T13:49:00.000-07:00

People without a decent sense of history (and I should add: geography) live in a total fog when it concerns their future. But now at least two generations have been educated mainly to consume the present, and to do this with unprecendented voracity, lacking even the most basic understanding of how their present came to be.

When I grew up – which was in the 50s and 60s – history was served at dinner, at school, on Television, in books. Sure, it was still served in a way faintly reminiscent of the heroic tales which constituted the main part of ‘history’ in our parents’ time and in the 19th Century. But the many movies and upcoming documentaries with increasingly realistic footage at least provided people of my generation with a sound ciritical attitude towards history – and all but the wish to throw it away.

Then, heroism was out, and our newly acquired sense of progress – and progressiveness – became the overriding driving force in our public culture, and this very much included education policies. History had to accept the back seat. Children could readily discard it in their curriculum resulting in an endemic ignorance even of elementary chronology: “Yeah, in the old days they had to learn dates and events etc.”. In the old days...

So increasingly people respond in highly short sighted terms to the events of their own time. In many ways the crazy hypes which have visited my own country in the recent years should largely be attributed to the lack of basic information about the historic context of many of these events whether in our own country or in foreign places.

This little girl in the Middle East experiences the force of history every day, every night

We also know that history is not a static phenomenon. The past is just as much alive as our present, and – of course – our future. Especially the past decade is a demonstration of this. Until 1990, Europe seemed such a simple thing, as was East versus West. But today things are not that simple any more. And the only way to grasp this is to go back in time and revisit the events of the late 19th and early 20th century.

I do not live in the past, but I thoroughly like to walk around in history. I thoroughly enjoy pondering about the issues of religion and politics as they developed troughout the centuries; I thoroughly enjoy every effort I make to understand the history behind the conflicts between our Western world and, for instance, the Arab world. But the greatest enjoyment I derive from gaining a sharper view of our possibilities in the future: the potential for history that lies ahead.

All Elephants now Extinct

2006-07-13T12:16:00.000-07:00

How would the world respond to such a headline? What will the outlook of our planet be when the world’s greatest living herbivore no longer roams the African or Asian forests and savannahs?

The prospect is not so unlikely, as many of us know only too well. Accellerated extinction of animal and plant species is a regular dish of our daily news in todays world. So let’s not get upset when it happens.

West African Black Rhino extinct. Another headline. But this one is not fictional. It is for real. It has happened, just recently. Check the National Geographic if you don’t believe me.

It seems just a footnote. Some may shed a tear. Not simply because of the Black Rhino, but because we realize that this is just another chapter of an ongoing story. A sequence of events, over thousands of years, in which humanity grows larger and larger, six billion of us and counting, consuming, cutting down, killing off, building and skyscraping….well yes, an ongoing story.

But can we still ask the question, on our way to wherever we go, whether the Elephant has a value to us? Whether we shouldn’t make all the effort to keep him alive and abundant? This isn’t just a question of ecology or environment, it is not just a matter of biology. We don’t even know what damage we cause in those terms.

But there is also the damage to ourselves, to our humanity. I don’t think I could face my child or any child of future generations and tell them to forget about elephants, lions, rhinos, gorillas, bonobos, or any other free spirited mammal that we effectively cleared out of our way – just to have it all our way. Technically we may continue to live, but in our spirit we will have killed an essential element of ourselves.

It is imperative that humanity address this development. It is imperative that we develop a Global Charter for the preservation and protection of animal life and that we implement this with discipline and rigidity.

Summertime @ :-)

2006-07-12T13:29:00.000-07:00

It is mid summer, and the hottest season ever recorded by man is approaching. Global warming? White western consumption abuse? Will we all burn in bush fires and super volcanos exploding or terrorists bombs being thrown all over?

For the next few weeks I will let all these and many other questions rest. I am going to enjoy every day in the sun or in the rain, whichever, have lots of coffee and chocolate, read some good books on history and politics, spend time with my daughter, in short: I will make my days most comfortable.

Perhaps there after I will redesign my weblog, or just continue the way I started, with fresh posts, new thoughts.

But for now, have a nice holiday.

Troubled youth, troubled culture

2006-07-08T06:27:00.000-07:00

Troublesome reports have surfaced about substantial numbers of rightist extremists, or ‘Neo-Nazi’s’, having been recruited in the US Army and effectively living out their Aryan fantasies amongst themselves but also out in the front, e.g. in Iraq and other places in the world.

The New York Times today quotes a Defense Department investigator, saying, "Recruiters are knowingly allowing neo-Nazis and white supremacists to join the armed forces, and commanders don't remove them from the military even after we positively identify them as extremists or gang members."

People belonging to ‘hate groups’ are exactly in the places where the United States project their selfappointed mission of democracy, christian righteousness and justice. This indeed must be a considerable embarrasment for the US Government, especially at a time of repeated accounts of US Army men apparently having gotten involved in shootings or even outright killings that are difficult to account for as normal acts (or risks) of combat.

It would be unwise however to treat these reports as mere exceptions to the normal rules of conduct. Young people with apparent affiliations to extremist or racist views are not mere aliens who can simply be traced and subsequently be taken out.

Moreover, to call them ‘Neo-Nazi’s’ is an easy way out. It suggests that they represent the last remnants of long forgotten, ill fated Germans, born on foreign ground. They are not. They are sons of US soil. They are the very product of the culture which now professes the wish to crack them down.

But no public expression of disgust of these young, ignorant men can take away the stains that are already there, and that are equally the product of the prevailing US culture. Stains that are called Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib prison, or more subtle: deliberately misconstrued intelligence to justify cracking down on an entire nation. In fact the source of extremism may well be the same sense of righteousness and superiority which runs through a significant portion of the US population.

So really, we should not turn our backs on these boys, but rather look into our own mirror.

Some thoughts on the 4th of July

2006-07-03T14:45:00.000-07:00

There is the story that when Thomas Jefferson was busy writing the American Declaration of Independence in the summer of 1776, he had a copy of William of Orange’s Apology of 1580 which denounced the claims of King Philip II of Spain as rightful sovereign of the Netherlands provinces.

Both documents indeed were written in a very similar spirit. Their main point was to establish the principle that a government is there to protect the rights of the people and not to trample them. In the case of the Netherlands, this was the first time ever in history that such clear language on behalf of a sovereign people was written.

Jefferson’s words and those of William of Orange continue to firmly root the identities and legal principles of our two nations.

Today, we consider the principle of an accountable government, installed to serve the people and not to bully them, as self evident. However, it is far from superfluous to remind ourselves – now and then – of the circumstances and the persuasions of those long forgotten days. History has not been a single avenue from slavery and oppression to freedom and individual enterprise. Time and again, people in power extended their reach, movements emerged to submit entire nations, wars have been waged – for no other reason than egotism, greed or shere hatred.

My own – American and European – forebears were immediate witnesses to the historic events of independence and self government on either side of the Atlantic, and thus there is an additional incentive for me to honour the memory of their contribution to our present day liberties – at least in my own country. But I also consider this a personal responsibility. In whatever way I can, which of itself is modest and most certainly of litle bearing to the general course of history, I will at least attest to this heritage.

The 4th of July for me has a very special meaning. Jefferson has been my hero for most of my life, and so has William of Orange. Today is a day of celebration for many people in our world.

Who or what drives America?

2006-07-01T12:53:00.000-07:00

Over the past decade or more, US assets have progressively passed into the hands of foreign interests. In the Age of Globalization this of itself is no reason for concern, let alone for any kind of xenophobic reflex. Capital must flow, and the greatest profits are reaped by those most successful. The United States themselves are champion of competition. Hence, nothing wrong.

Of course, this development requires a significant adjustment in the mindset of most US citizens, and it is clear from events in the recent past, such as the near take over by Dubai Arabs of the New York harbor (or something to that effect), that for many this involves a painful process. And let’s see what really will happen with Kerkorian's suggestion to have GM combine forces with French Renault and Japanese Nissan – a proposal which makes all the business sense in the world.

At another level, one would expect the Government to change its mindset. I do not think I get it wrong by stating that at present the main thrust of US foreign policy – i.e. the billions spent in Iraq – in fact is financed by, let’s say, the rest of the world. This is not a subject for outright exaggeration, but broadly speaking the current US economy is largely kept afloat by other nations who – at least so far – have sufficient confidence in the US economy over the longer term to allow for a considerable measure of financial trust.

Politically speaking however, the rest of the world is at great odds with the prevailing US attitudes. And I think most of us have come to the point where we simply hope for the best once the current presidency is over.

Whatever might have been said at the time of the War on Iraq, surely after 2008 it can not be a simple ‘who is not supporting us, is against us’. Financial resources will most definitely not be there anymore to support such ongoing arrogance and US self centeredness. There will be much less acceptance in Europe of another France or Germany bashing next time around.

There are those who say: next time around, it will be China who will be in the world’s driving seat. I do not believe that. Or at least I do not think this is the only plausible scenario.

The key problem is that our global political institutions, designed to forge alliances and to foster peace and prosperity, by and large do not fit our future world. I do agree with the US Government that the United Nations system has become obsolete, almost beyond repair. But it needs to be replaced by another, stronger system of international co-operation, it should not be abandoned altogether. Another case is the NATO. In my opinion we should get rid of this organization as soon as possible, and never again have separate political and military systems for consultation and co-operation.

I would urge all sensible US citizens, all sensible politicians, Democrat and Republican, to seriously re-evaluate who and what should drive America in the future.

J'accuse Car Design

2006-07-01T00:43:00.000-07:00

In a world where people become increasingly conscious of the need to economize on fuel and the general usage of natural resources, somehow when we hit the road, we wish to ignore it all.

And even though there are some good exceptions, the great majority of car manufacturers seem only too happy to stuff our streets and highways with one ridiculous vehicle after the other. This is not typically an American phenomenon. Sure, many crazy vehicles are US made. But I look at a good number of European products much in the same way.

First of all, there is this outrageous idea that if you have a family, you need to drive cars they call MPV’s or SUV’s. What other purpose do these cars serve most of the time than being huge show offs - of monstruous proportions - of their owners, who most of the time sit at the wheel without a single passenger to accompany them?

I was born in a family of six children, and my father had this wonderful car called the Peugeot 404 Familiale: highly economic in its own days, not taking any more space than a regular sedan; a very simple car, a light weight, but beautiful. And now – I regret to say: look at the Peugeot 407! A true monster of egotism.

The Peugeot 404 Familiale in 1963: a marvel of economy and function

They don’t make these simple and beautiful cars anymore. Cardesign has gone bezirk. The majority of today’s cars are the product of designer’s orgies; and this includes quality cars such as BMW or Mercedes Benz, all the recent models being plump and overdesigned, obese, without regard to true function and the need for economy in claiming space.

When was the last time that a new model came out that was smaller and carried less weight than its predecessor? In my memory, this must be some fourty to fifty years ago. Why is it that we can manufacture ever stronger and lighter composite materials, but cars get stuffed with ever more superfluous kilos?

The US alone is responsible for 50% of the global motorcar CO2 exhaust in the atmosphere, with only 5% of the world’s population. That is a massive contribution by all counts.

The true culprit in the end is us, the consumer. There is no way we could think of anything else than owning a car and projecting our self esteem to it. I am convinced that in hundred years time, people will look back at us with amazement bordering on disgust. By that time people will no longer need Fords or Volkswagens to tell eachother who they are. They will be more concerned about the efficiency of transportation and the comfort of getting from A to B in the shortest possible time. To have designers constantly work on new models for automobiles to them will seem outrageous, a total waste of time and resources. Until then, alas, we will have to put up with ugly piles of metal, glass and rubber polluting our cities and landscapes. Yuk.

It came to this

2006-06-29T11:21:00.000-07:00

I cannot think of an American President who would have allowed a flagrant violation of fundamental human rights under his own watch to carry on with the Supreme Court finally putting an end to it.

But Mr. George W. Bush is such a President. What a shame. And what a relief.

Of course it serves our sense of justice that some – but only some – of the evident legal mishaps in the present Admninistration’s conduct of affairs has now been stalled. And even if it is ‘only’ a 5-3 ruling – with the Chief Justice Roberts conspicuously opting out because of his prior involvement in defending the Administration’s position – there is no lack of clarity in the Supreme Court’s condemnation of the handling of terrorist cases without due process.

Also, those who have spoken out against the Guantanamo Bay violations of both national military law and international conventions have been given a massive impetus, and it is reassuring that their voices are not silenced in any respect.

The entire episode – so far – nevertheless continues to cause grave concern. It still remains possible for people in high offices to hold opinions such as the one expressed in the minority opinion by one of the Justices, saying that the ruling would "sorely hamper the president's ability to confront and defeat a new and deadly enemy." It is the opinion of someone who is willing to submit to arbitrary government and lawlesness whenever he or she is intimidated by something or someone fearsome. So many people still hang around in responsible positions who have sympathy with this kind of opinion.

So let’s hang out and remain vigilant. The shame should never be ours.

Humans are destined to become the Extra Terrestrials of our Universe

2006-06-15T09:54:00.000-07:00

The survival of the human race depends on its ability to find new homes elsewhere in the universe because there's an increasing risk that a disaster will destroy Earth, world-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking said (CNN June 15, 2006). Professor Hawking in particular referred to disasters caused by global warming, nuclear warfare, genetically engineered viruses and the like.

I believe that Professor Hawking, whom I greatly respect, holds an unnecessarily dark view of the destinies ahead for humanity. I do agree that the greatest challenges we currently face very much arise from the way the human race has started to tinker with the elements prevailing on Earth. And indeed, we run the risk of a massive disruption of our entire ecological system, threatening the key conditions for our survival on this planet.

But, first of all, I do not believe that this in itself will drive us out to other planets. Secondly, I believe we will successfully face these challenges in our own environment, perhaps at great cost, but nevertheless with sufficient resourcefulness and common sense to secure ample prosperity here on Earth for countless generations to come.

I see another main force urging us to embark on the great voyage outerspace. In essence it is the same force that created the Egyptian Pyramids and the Roman Empire. It is the force that brought about Christianity, or the Islam, and it is the same force that nearly forty years ago took us to the Moon, that created the Hubble telescope, or the unmanned voyagers to Mars and Saturn.

Humanity has not been created for any particular purpose. Our kind has developed its own purpose, with or without a God to sanction it. That purpose is to seek new frontiers and to achieve greatness in their conquest, every time and again, forever.

Our journey to the Universe is a future history - a story of mankind far beyond our current imagination. And they will not be guided by darkness. Their greatest brightness will rocket humans through the vast expanse, out to the distant stars and unknown worlds. Our Universe, sooner or later, is the prime destiny of the human race, whether or not there still remain some troubling issues on our own planet.

It is the destiny of mankind to become the Extra Terrestrials of our Milky Way – and beyond. Not because we have problems here, but because we will continue to cherish dreams about the impossible – and make them come true.

Justice, Mr. Bush?

2006-06-08T09:17:00.000-07:00

In all likelihood Mr. Al-Zarqawi - by any reasonable standard - was a bad guy. In all likelihood, it was a good thing to try and hunt him down.

In the process Mr. Zarqawi was killed. From the point of view of Justice, this must be considered an accident, not a victory.

Without any presidential restraint Mr. George W. Bush claims the event as a delivery of Justice. From every reasonable viewpoint, this is a greater outrage than many so far committed by terrorists.

In fact, Mr. Bush proclaims an order in which Justice can be delivered at any doorstep, at any moment, at whim.

No due process, no representation, no nothing will save you from being dead even before you become a regular suspect. In my view, it is impossible to call this Justice. And I find it even more difficult to hold the line between shere revenge and proper conviction.

A President of the United States, especially the President, should caution its citizens in events like this. Yes, perhaps we should not mourn the death of Mr Al-Zarqawi, but we should greatly deplore the circumstances in which this death has come about and the entire context of it. The President should also warn his citizens that this death alone can never be seen as a victory, from any viewpoint. It may have been inevitable, and possibly desirable, but never should a civilisation celebrate the mere end of a mortal adversary, if the cause - and thrust - of the adversity itself is not diminished.

Iraq will remain in turmoil, and the US has yet to provide a better prospect for the Iraqi people.

State vs. Conviction

2006-06-03T10:16:00.000-07:00

How come a US President gets away with claiming moral hegemony?

President George W. Bush again has taken up his crusade for a constitutional gay marriage ban. His arguments are rather less presidential, let alone constiutional, than fit for a pope. ‘Ages of experience have taught us that the commitment of a husband and a wife to love and to serve one another promotes the welfare of children and the stability of society." And he adds: "Marriage cannot be cut off from its cultural, religious and natural roots without weakening this good influence on society."

In the good old European tradition of strict separation of Church and State, any similar declaration of a public official would be considered a blasphemy. But in the US, or at least in a substantial (southern) part of it, the President gets away with it.

The reader should not misunderstand me. In my own social, cultural and religious life I am not particularly enthusiastic about the idea of gay marriage. I cannot possibly see it as an equivalent to the public institition of marriage which is mainly geared to protect (women and) children. In fact, I consider any marriage other than between a man and a women perfectly silly.

However, as a regular civilian (and as a lawyer) I would never even contemplate to deny my fellow human beings the bonds they wish to create with one another. If two guys or two women wish to make promises and call this ‘marriage’, well so be it. My sense of equality precedes any distinction that I make according to my societal values.

Not so Mr. Bush - and not so quite a few of his followers. Either Mr. Bush is not clever enough to understand the various distinctions that can – and can not – be made depending on one’s responsibilities or one’s perspectives. Or he is turning back – on purpose – on one of the essential foundations of our Western democracies. This is not merely the separation of Church authority versus State authority; it includes the wider responsibility never to let public legitimacy become the hostage of one single morality.

Mr. Bush is asserting a position that no US citizen with a sound mind should allow him to retain at any time, for any cause.
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Post scriptum 7th June 2006:
Today the US Senate blocked the proposed gay marriage ban. It is a relief that common sense apparently still prevails in American politics.

First came the egg, they say

2006-05-29T11:34:00.000-07:00

May I giggle a little? There now seems to be a scientific verdict on the age old question of what came first. The favors go to the egg.

It takes some reasoning, but in brief I understand it is as follows. Genetic material does not change during an animal's life. Therefore the first bird that evolved into what we would call a chicken, probably in prehistoric times, must have first existed as an embryo inside an egg (CNN Science, 29th May 2006).

In my view this reasoning comes very close to yet another version of creationism. It is alright to be filosofical about the chicken and the egg and maintain strong convictions about the prevailence of one or the other, as long as you stay away from claiming either proposition as the truth. Of all questions, the matter concerning the chicken and the egg is destined to be eternal. It is part of our humanity that we never claim the answer.

So it was a mistake to throw science into it altogether. And to come out with an answer like this is a blasphemy. Only in theory there is some bird we could call ‘the first chicken’, as only in theory we could contemplate the first human. Every first chicken will first have to be constructed out of the genetic material provided by the parent birds. They can’t simply not have been chickens as they probably were not any other bird either – or any bird we know.
At another level, the answer science has so painstaikingly found is obviously correct – of course. You don’t need science for that. Whatever chicken came out first, it could only have come from an egg. Everybody knows that.

So, it is not the answer that makes the subject so endlessly interesting. Why would anything so obvious even raise an eyebrow? Our scienctists in fact made pretty fools of themselves both by claiming the answer and by taking hold of the question. They shouldn’t have. They should have left the issue where it belongs: in the realm of filosofy, in that space of our mind where we can still entertain our fantasies, our power of imagination beyond the obvious.

That is what makes the chicken so important. The true question is about the origin and meaning of life. Therefore, in the name of our humanity, we should hold it eternally possible that the chicken came first as much as the egg.

The Da Vinci Fraud

2006-05-18T09:06:00.000-07:00

One of the most astonishing facts in the entire sequence following the publication of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, is the apparent conviction of the author himself that he has written a book of history rather than a book of fiction.

I read it two summers ago. It thoroughly satisfied me as an entertaining story on the beachfront, but nothing else. To any intelligent reader it is an obvious, well concocted assembly of totally fictitious events. Nothing in the book even remotely reflects anything historic, and to claim otherwise in my view can only be born out of a childish desire to believe in shere fairytales. After I finished the book, I didn’t give it a single further thought.

But then the book became a hype. I was flabbergasted. Who on earth would even contemplate to take Dan Brown’s fiction serious? Well, almost everybody.

We live in strange times. It is an ultimate madness. Why, even Discovery Channel and National Geographic spend their precious resources on the subject. Admittedly, their documentaries on the book largely declassify Dan Brown’s assertions. Still, in giving his book such sizeable attention, they at least leave us with the impression that The Da Vinci Code is serious enough for such documentaries to start with. Moreover, even when people like Tony Robinson clearly reject Dan Brown from A to Z, most individuals shown on both Discovery and NGC are allowed to brabble their nonsensical fantasies. They pollute the public’s mind with highly unfounded allusions about the history of Christendom that are fully and truly outrageous.

Why care?

Essentially I do not care about the fraud itself. But what disturbs me, is the apparent preference of many people in our present world to consume fiction as a substitute to fact. It worries me that such fiction but also the arguments which accompany it override the experience of reality so massively. It worries me that responsible TV-channels interview people like Dan Brown as an informant rather than in their true capacity of storymaker.

It is in particular in our Information and Communication Age that this tendency should cause substantial concern among people of reason and intellect, people who would like to see our world progress on the basis of our critical abilities and not on the basis of primitive emotions and stupidity.

Enough is said. Go and enjoy The Da Vinci Code. It is a good story. Go see the movie, as I will. And then forget it, as I most certainly will too.
--------
Post Scriptum:
So I saw the movie. Don't blame me. It was enjoyable to see it together with a good friend. How did Tom Hanks and Sir Ian McKellen get involved in this? Anyway, it is difficult to say I disliked the movie because I read the book, or despite the fact that I did. Either way, anyone who still believes the story is about a serious subject, should by now know better. However entertaining as a book, on the screen The Da Vinci Code entirely dissembles in front of your eyes as a mediocre, superficial and stupendous tale of Agatha Christie amateurs who stumble their way through one clue after the other, each time missing the one outstanding truth: somebody got killed and we all know who did it.

The Devil should be Yummie!

2006-05-17T10:33:00.000-07:00

Image of the Devil born out of superstition and the desire to punish people instead of helping them

One of the greatest mistakes of Christianity is to depict the Devil as a fierce and ugly entity, with flames coming out of his mouth and horns growing out of his skull and eyes that set you on fire the minute you look at ‘it’ .

A I see it, most of the evil things that the Church warns against are pure seductions. How come the Devil is ugly, but the evil things we crave for are so desirable? Moreover, why should the Church give out a warning against something disgusting to start with. Why bother?

The prime function of the Church is to propagate love and goodness, and selfless behaviour. And even if this is not a convincing advice for everybody, the Church theorems find support in classic and modern day economic theories which state that acting in the interest of all, also serves the interest of self. There is a multitude of paths to goodness.

And indeed, it is important for the Church – or any institution of morality – to help unmask everything that distracts us from our power of love and goodness in the societies in which we live. Today, this is an especially monumental task given the many distractions that surround us. It is very difficult to be good, or to love and be selfless, when we are seduced with such intensity by all the goodies and yummies that are piled up in our stores, on our TV-screens, around every corner, every minute of our daily life.

And deep down in our hearts we know that to fully succumb to materialism and to a role of mere slaves to the dictates of consumerism, we add little value to our own humanity, let alone to the humanity of those surrounding us.

So, really, it is not the Devil whom the churches and moral leaders should raise their hands against. The Devil is a mere relic of ancient superstition. It is a non-existing, highly unattractive concept of a world that was out to punish people, not to support them. In our world we should disregard this concept althogether as ridiculous and born out of ignorance.

Evil does exist, of course, and it follows every footstep of those who submit themselves to the mere satisfaction of their own desire, who see the world simply from their own viewpoint, without empathy for any one else. Such evil is all around us; it is in us, whenever we demand, rather than offer, whenever we want, rather than wish to give, it is around us whenever we take beyond our real needs.

I am not a Church man per se. Nor do I see the world, or its potential, through the windows of religion. But I do see an important function of religious people, religious leaders, such as the Bishop of Rome, because they are dealing with the essence of our humanity and with the prerequisites of its surivival.

What I am saying here, is that current and future Bishops of Rome would greatly enhance the power of their function, if they abandon ancient superstitions and concepts. I, for one, would be impressed by any bishop who recognizes that whatever evil we should fight against, is not ugly or filled with burning flames. The evil in our humanity is filled with beauty, it is most seductive; we crave for it, we want to eat it, we want to be its image, it is our own dream of youth and beauty; it is the urge to sacrifice everything that stands in the way of our greatest satisfactions. The Devil, in fact, is all Yummie!

Einstein, Speer, McNamara & the fog of guilt

2006-05-03T10:05:00.000-07:00

One might say that these names constitute an unlikely trio. They do. Yet, in key events of the Twentieth Century they reflect a common theme, each of them from a very different perspective – and each with a very different influence in his own lifetime.

It so happened that I had completed downloading The Fog of War (2004) from the internet, and decided to play it. From behind my desk it was almost like a two hour conversation between Robert McNamara, well known for his time as US Defence minister at the height of the Vietnam War, and me. But he was talking to an invisible interviewer, very intensively and with very little if any effort to conceal his emotions when touching apparently sensitive memories. McNamara served the Presidents JF Kennedy and LB Johnson, or – as one perhaps should say – he served Kennedy first of all and continued to serve Johnson until by the end of 1967 his position became untenible in the severe loyalty struggle that ensued in the last part of Johnson’s presidency. Soon after, McNamara became President of the World Bank and thus continued, almost without a scratch, his commendable career into the early eighties.

Next, the 3-part miniseries was televised about Nazi-architect and Armament minister Albert Speer and his relation with Adolf Hitler. Speer was one of the few of the NAZI-regime to be saved from hanging, getting a 20 year prison sentence instead, most of which he spent writing his Spandauer Diaries and ultimately his memoirs, without ever again talking to the remaining Hitler cronies. He was a free man in his last fifteen years until his death in 1981. To this day it remains somewhat of an enigma whether Speer was in fact a cunning opportunist or a true, be it naïve genius who simply got caught on the wrong side of the fence and didn’t know how to get out of it without jeopardizing his life or that of his family. His memoirs drew a large public as they provided the only credible first hand account of the inner workings of Hitler’s kllingmachine, admittedly without Speer himself being an immediate accomplice of its most horrid undertakings. But they never fully answered the question – nor did Speer himself in any of his further public utterances – whether or not he carried at least some of the blame for the prolonged agony and death of so many people, including Germans, unprecedented at any time in History.

Albert Einstein of course is the odd man out compared with McNamara and Speer, as he was a remarkable man in his own right and not a technocrat serving some one else, let alone living the life of a loyalist to dubious causes as can be said of the other two. Yet he too had helped to open a Box of Pandora, and singlehandedly he had let the world eat the forbidden fruit of Physics which ultimately led to the advent of the Atomic age and the Era of Nuclear Deterrence.

Thus it struck me that these three men represent – what I would call – the Dark Side of the Twentieth Century, largely without any of them wishing to have part in it, yet all three of them being highly instrumental in enabling the darkest side of humanity to do its devastating work. There is no doubt that these three men have struggled with this fact in their own conscience, as McNamara – who is the only one still living – apparently continues to do to this day. And there are of course, many differences. Einstein never, even remotely, actively participated in the planning and construction of the Atom Bomb. He saw it coming, and as he did, he tried to stop it.

Speer but also McNamara did participate in the organisation of evil, as McNamara readily admits in his account of the dilemma’s that – in particular – the people of the Johnson administration faced when they couldn’t just turn their back on Vietnam. They were the prisoner of the perceptions of their time, as ‘The Fog of War’ so clearly demonstrates, probably in a similar manner that Speer’s vision was fogged by the misleading appearances of the Hitler era (in particular in its first stages) – and in many ways, both men were left with an emerging hindsight that they had grossly misinterpreted the realities of their time, and that they would have to come to terms with this (if only in their own troubled minds) if ever their souls were to find peace in the afterlife. Einstein struggled with a similar sense of responsibility, and who can say what peace his soul has found in the mean time.

McNamara presented a number of Lessons as he emerged out of his own fog. There is an obvious merit to these lessons. Not only to they serve us to better understand the complex dynamics of good and evil in the larger part of the Twentieth Century. Most certainly they can help us to better understand the fog prevailing in our own era. But we should never loose out of sight (however troubling this may be especially in a fog), that this phenomenon works both ways. We can’t simply say: the fog is with our enemy, and not with us. Empathize with your enemy! – one of McNamara’s lessons. We cannot simply say: our world is good, and any world that threatens us is evil. The dilemma’s in our own time are obvious, and the outcome of our endeavours are far from clear.

Perhaps we need that other great achievement of the human mind, of which Einstein is its greatest icon, to prevail in our own perceptions of time, of good and evil, and right and wrong, before we can actually clear the fog that is permeating our lives today. The true understanding of Relativity. It is how we move, where we go, or where we stand at any given point, that perhaps can give us a clue, a slight hint, a minute insight into how we can achieve peace for our own souls once we reach that threshold ourselves.

The Performance Bonus Fallacy

2006-04-20T10:40:00.000-07:00

In the business world and even in the public domain it has become regular practice for employees to commit themselves to specified tasks and targets and be rewarded with – additional – bonus payments accordingly.

There is is nothing against this practice offhand. I believe both an organisation and its staff can benefit from certain incentives that drive them beyond the mere fullfilment of their statutory or contractual obligations. And if every employee in the organisation is committed in similar fashion it works as a reciprocal arrangement at all levels, even at the top.

So, fine.

But there is a downside. And this is not so much in the principle as in the way the entire institution of tasks, targets and – particularly – bonusses seem to have evolved over the past decades.

Let’s start at the top.

In our time we know of many instances were the bonussystem has become a fixed, sizeable element of what already are fairly sizeable salaries. And even if there is some allowance for actual results (or performance), the bonus remains huge. I know of very few cases – if any - where these bonusses can reasonably be related to any performance of realistic human dimensions. In most contemporary board rooms, the mere fact the people have reached that hemisphere of life attracts these entitlements and exempts the system from actually measuring true performance against real benefit. I call this an outrage.

Secondly, down the line, employees tend to happily underwrite tasks and targets that cannot possibly be met simply on the strength of their own input and motivation. Meeting our targets in most cases means: the signature of some one else.

How can your performance be assessed on that basis? I call this ridiculous.

But many people, if not the majority, accept this fallacy. People accept the pressure to commit themselves to commitments of others simply because they are eager to get their share of the cake.

Big deal!

In my view this state of affairs feeds dishonesty, embezzlement, playing or fiddling with the figures – untruthfulness. Stupidity.

Think about it. Go for a clean salary. Just be payed for your jobs’ worth. Commit yourself to it. Perform, by all means! But never get yourself entangled in a situation where ultimately only a bribe can keep you free.

For the love of Women

2006-03-22T13:42:00.000-08:00

I’d like to share with you the most ridiculous proposal coming from an established political party that I’ve heard for a long time. I don’t know whether to burst into laughter or into tears. Let’s say that it serves as an indication of a world driven by materialism to its extremes.

In Holland we have a social democrat party. Although I am not in any way a socialist, I have always considered this party a serious, responsible and relevant segment of our political spectrum.

At present the party is serving its time in the opposition quarters of our parliament. Of course this is not an enviable position, but all in all it allows a party to seriously rethink its strategies without the burden of government responsibility, and sure, this sometimes induces the members of the party to take up extreme positions. To test the public waters so to speak.

I first thought some party member spoke out too loudly on television, loosely lipped, stupid, forgettable. But this wasn’t the case.

Here is the serious proposal.

Quote: women who enjoyed full education, e.g. including university education, should repay the cost of their education if they choose not to work (for instance: when they decide to have children and attend to them). Unquote.

Argument: when women throw away their education, this constitutes capital destruction, and therefore this should be corrected.

Horror. It was a relief to see that objections came instantly from almost all other sides of the political spectrum.

So really, all this talk about woman emancipation was nonsense all along. Women should be educated, so they can work and contribute to the cycle of supply and demand that so fascinates our western world as the measure of all development.

The greatest horror in my view, is that this proposal did not come from a male specimen of the social democrat party, but from a female specimen. What other indication of female self degradation does one need in order to understand the fundamental disturbance that has come to underpin almost everything in our present world?

And even if this particular proposal, obviously, will not stand the slightest chance, it still merits serious thought why it surfaced at all, and whether in fact it may reflect rather wider held rigid views about the role of men and women in society and in the economy. Well, that’s a stupid question. We all know that the answer is yes. It is evident that the main thrust of the socio-political evolution in the past decades has been to join the bandwagon of salaried jobs, that ‘employment’ in monetary terms has become synonymous to ‘welfare’, and that men and women should enjoy this ‘welfare’ in equal terms.

Let me put this straight: I am a strong proponent of equality. I am moreover fully convinced of the benefits of women participating in our society at all levels, in all trades etc. It would be a great benefit to our planet if the feminine side of humanity had greater bearing on the course of history than in fact it has. But to reduce this potential benefit to (the obligation to) ‘work’ is a serious deminishment of the actual potential of women and of the status they should be able to enjoy in our societies.

I have known many women who didn’t ‘work’ in their lifetime, but whose contribution (greatly influenced by their education) to the lives of others, not merely their families, has been far greater than any paid job would have allowed them to make.

But even sticking to the family: what kind of capital destruction does our social-democrat have in mind if a woman (probably together with her husband) decides to spend her education on educating her children? Good God, what a grim view of life, if this doesn’t count for anything.

Anyway, the proposal won’t stick. But even if I don’t have to burst into tears, it is still impossible for me to laugh. For the love of women, for the love of all our children and grandchildren, let us allow the best education for all, and the fullest freedom for everybody on how we re-invest this in our future world.

A life to benefit all

2006-03-19T09:52:00.000-08:00

Some thoughts on the survival of humanity beyond our time

II

The resolutions needed to achieve welfare for all and sustainability across our planet at the same time should not be extensive or especially restrictive. More over, they should essentially encourage humans – and not cage them – to be productive in their best possible way, to their own benefit but not less to the benefit of the community of which they are part.

Secondly they should encourage a human enjoyment of life far less determined by individual material consumption and possession, and far more determined by the equilibrium between our material needs and the capacity for regeneration of our consumption. We cannot sustain life, nor can we effectively contribute to the prosperity of all mankind, if we allow ourselves to be simply driven by the laws of supply and demand, whether at the level of consumer markets or at the level of labour markets.

Human life primarily geared towards the well being – and continuity - of all does not by definition go against the principles of a society based on individual choice and political freedom. Nevertheless it should serve as a countervailing value – or countervailing purpose. The degree to which we contribute to the purpose of our community – which ever its scale - most certainly should have a bearing on our actual individual benefits. Individual efforts should make a difference – to all, and to ‘self’.

If anything the western world, i.e. if it desires to continue its level of welfare and its potential for future welfare creation, should embark upon a conscious program aiming at equilibrium in terms of its use and regeneration of resources, both ‘at home’ and in the rest of the world. We should redress our current claims on the resources of other parts of the world in as much as we cannot effectively secure its regeneration capacity.

Secondly the family of nations is in need of a program aimed at the happiness of all human beings living on this planet and at the secured sustainability of life and diversity on our planet over a longer timeframe. There is no reason why we should not apply the wealth of our technology in reaching this objective. However we would still risk an unhappy ending if we were to sit back and simply rely on technology to solve our problems for us.

Humanity has the capability to add new opportunities to its survival and prosperity as a species. We should redress the current process leading to the diminishment of such opportunities.

In this process ‘community’ – i.e. the circle of humans with whom we share our economic and social life – will acquire a new importance but also: new appearances. We have progressed from tribal communities to nations, from nation to nation treaties to federations (or unions) between states. At a larger scale we have already experimented with the unity of most of not all nations on our planet. At each of these scales the human society will continue to evolve. But what is most needed in the immediate future is the re-appearance of ‘community’ in our individual lives. It is an economic necessity, it is a political necessity, and it is a necessity immediately derived from our needs as human beings, ranging from the enjoyment of life – and love - to that of ‘purpose’.

In the course of this development we may also bear in mind that whatever we wish for, as a human being, or as a community, is best served if first of all we give – whatever we have to give – before we receive; that contributing to the well being of others, as our prime objective, is much more satisfactory in our own lives than spending all our energy primarily to take, or acquire for the sheer satisfaction of ourselves. If the animal world has already grasped this concept, a fortiori we can expect humanity to grasp it – and enjoy it.

If however, for our happiness and continuity, we continue to rely largely on commercialism, and on capitalism driving it, as the prime force shaping our lives, we will seriously risk destroying it. Indeed we will perish by the force our own selfish desires. But we do not need to abandon commercialism, the force our markets, all together. Nor do we need to install a rigorous dictatorship to plan and execute the production and distribution of goods according to ‘needs’ determined by tyranny or absolutism. We can still foster a world governed by individual responsibility and individual liberty. Political freedom should govern our societies and our human ‘mindset’. In this sense, liberalism can still serve as a legitimate and responsible basis for the government of human communities. But in economic terms this force of individual freedom should primarily be directed to serve the prosperity of all: the continuity of our community or society, which ever is the level at which we are capable of contributing.

One of the dividing lines between the animal world and humanity is how we deal with (and care for) those who are unsuccessful – or incapable of (fully) competing - in the ‘winning game’. In a world based on the prosperity of communities, there should be sufficient incentives for every member of society to contribute, whatever the level and limitation of his (or her) capabilities. Their individual prosperity will continue to be a function of their contribution but in as much as wealth is independent of labour, they should enjoy it in equal measure with their fellow human beings. Individual health and well being as well as individual security will be a function of individual (previous) contribution but also on the total wealth (=added value) created of the community – either at regional level or at nation-state level. In such a system, the employment of labour should be encouraged (through premiums or otherwise) and it should pay towards our social security according to the wealth it creates (not according to the number of individuals employed). There is the possibility for every one to contribute – and to share -, there is no need for any one to be left out or to beg on the streets.

Are we talking about yet another Utopia? Is this another attempt to bring humanity back to its primitive existence in a herd? No I don’t think so.

First of all, we are living in a world which runs the risk of becoming a huge nightmare. We have to substantially refocus our ‘way of life’ in order to avoid such a nightmare. Technology without doubt will play a large part in addressing that risk. It will help us create more efficient and sustainable sources of energy, more efficient means of production – and recycling –, with improved productivity of the natural resources which provide us with food, clothing and other material provisions. Technology will come a long way to help us redress pollution and the pressure on our eco-system. But even if we push these developments to their utmost potential, there remains the fundamental requirement for humanity - the western world in particular - to adjust to the natural limitations of our world – as much as it may continue to enjoy its opportunities.

Secondly, there is a need to construct a new fabric of society to guide, inspire and sustain the human community. We need not necessarily to go back to the classic foundation of the family community or of ‘neighbourhood’. We have the ability to create communities of common interest, of shared skills, professional networks, communities of parents (families). It is conceivable to re-form existing corporations into communities with a broad social and economic function.

How should we look at the emerging competition between the family of nations (representing man the herbivore) and the amalgamate of global corporations (representing man, the predator)? What role should we aim to assign to our democratic institutions – and democracy in its entirety? It is interesting to note that an increasing number of scholars quite independently from one another raise this question and that they do so very much on the basis of their understanding of life’s evolution and the progress of humanity to date – in all its dimensions.

“Management is essential to produce an effective, cooperative planetary society. But our current forms of government are seriously limited in their ability to discover and adapt the management that is needed. If humanity is to fulfil its evolutionary potential, it must discover new and better processes for establishing the various levels of governance. The development of a managed planetary society is not enough. The next great evolutionary challenge for humanity will be to invent a new form of governance that will overcome the serious flaws in our existing processes” (Evolutions Arrow, John Stewart, Australia).

I have taken this citation out of randomly selected documents on the internet, and if anywhere in the world one can read numerous articulations of these shared concerns, it is on the world wide web.

But before the internet can effectively bring us together in a living intellectual community, the existing community of nations – whatever their weaknesses – should already come some way towards a shared view of the world in which we want our future generations to progress and flourish. We don’t need to answer how they do that, as long as they have a chance to do that.

And whether or not we allow our religious (communal) beliefs to have a bearing on the direction we take, the application of our rationality should largely suffice to respond to the call of the entire community of life to make sure it will no perish long before its time by virtue of the most primitive instincts which we carry as a human being: the hunger for more, more, more... It should be possible to make life a happy experience for all if we decide to do with less for ourselves and a little more for the others.

The Abstinence from Greed

2006-03-07T11:47:00.000-08:00

Picture: Maya mural painting, 100 BC

Some thoughts on human survival beyond our time

I

Life’s evolution is a history of winners. For each individual plant or animal, the passing of its genes is subject to its survival in the continued struggle both against stronger members of its own species and against adversaries of other species which either compete for the same food or hunt them to be their food.

The laws of nature are severe but clear. If you wish to survive, you compete. And if you are not a winner, you perish. You either perish instantly or your genes perish.

But even if life on Earth has largely progressed along the lines of an action thriller without happy end, it has not simply favoured individual competitiveness as the prime condition for survival. It has been equally favourable to the development of competitiveness based on co-operation. The first and foremost unity is the bond between males and a females striving to secure the survival of their offspring.

And life on Earth did not wait until the advent of humanity to prove the potential advantage of co-operation between individuals in a larger unity. For even before the Dinosaurs, animals became responsive to the call of community – the unity of the herd - as a prime force towards their security and prosperity. Human evolution has been possible by virtue of this sense of community. Community has been fundamental to the ascent of man in the animal world; it is not, as we may think, an invention of our humanity. The community of the herd perhaps didn’t provide for happy endings in all cases but it made life at least a little more pleasant for the animals.

The morality of community precedes all other moralities of the human mind. Without it, humanity is incapable of survival even at the level of the most primitive reptile. The same is true for the morality of preservation: if we consume more than we need, next time nothing will be there to eat. Like Baloo the Bear, we enjoy most prosperity when we aim for just ‘the bare necessities’.

Yet it seems as if humanity, or at least that part of humanity which inhabits the western world, believes it can survive in defiance of these two fundamental rules of nature. For what other view can we have of the icons of individualism and private wealth creation as it pervades our lives both in economic and in societal terms today?

We have come to challenge even nature’s most fundamental unity of the family as a safeguard for our survival. We are tolerant, if not increasingly indifferent to the absence of any kind of community in the fabric of our societies to the point where society as such looses its relevance altogether as a contributing, meaningful factor in our pursuit of welfare and happiness.

The development of ‘society’ as we have known it and as it has functioned in many different shapes and at many different scales in human history, has culminated in the organisation of the (nation-) state. The rise and prosperity of the nation-state is a history not limited to the western world. It has been the common story of all humanity in our time. Throughout the past two centuries, efforts have been made to create a society of nation-states, a unity of all nations, to secure survival and prosperity for all mankind.

We still have a long way to go before we can really speak of a family of nations. More over, this process of ‘globalisation’ is being challenged by another, competing globalisation process which emerged near the end of the last century. This is the winning game not geared to prosperity for all but to the wealth of the few. This process favours those most capable to efficiently produce as much as individual humans can possibly consume to satisfy their greed.

In our world we foster human consumption beyond our true needs. Increased supply pushes demand. We herald individual wealth and prosperity as an example for us all. We applaud the rich and the beautiful. We do all this even if at the same time we harbour reservations or disgust when confronted with human misery as it persists in our time. We disregard the fact that the unhappiness of many humans in our world at least in part is caused by the hero’s whom we reward or who we wish to be ourselves.

Wealth creation and wealth distribution is largely geared by consumer votes rather than by conscious deliberation. Key decisions regarding the exploitation of Earth’s resources are governed by ever larger conglomerates of commercial enterprises, operating across national boundaries. The prime motivator for these enterprises is their own profit. There is no immediate incentive for them to consider the long term sustainability of their claims on our resources and thus, their output.

In evolutionary terms, we have, in the western world, moved away from being a society of communal herbivores to becoming a wilderness of single minded predators, requiring ever larger territories to satisfy our thirst for things to have.

It is furthermore arguable that in fostering a process of wealth creation and wealth distribution based on commercialism and on the perfection of markets up to and including markets targeted at global scale, we live in defiance of one of the basic commandments of humanity if not of our living as fundamentally communal animals: thou shall not kill. Indeed, commercialism is in the hands of the new great predators, the Tyrannosaurus Rex’ of our age: the oil companies, the car companies, the companies spewing out innumerable electronic gadgets, Microsoft and others, in short: us.

When you look at it this way, there is nothing incomprehensible about our fascination with story of the Dinosaurs, their awesome appearance, their impressive size and varied abilities and so on. We share this fascination most of all because we are looking at the mirror of our own evolution. But do we actually understand the world of the Dinosaurs?

We tend to forget that we are still subject to the same forces of continuity and discontinuity that made the Dinosaurs so evidently successful in their struggle for survival and to those that led to their eventual demise. There is no way humans can deny let alone eradicate these forces. Nevertheless, if perhaps we do not deny them, at least we underestimate them, such as the forces which so far have allowed us to breath and enjoy fresh air, filtered sunlight, clean water. The same forces may one day pose a serious threat to these enjoyments, either because we have tampered with them or because of some other, natural occurrence. We equally underestimate the challenge to humanity posed by viruses and bacteria, the smallest yet by far the most successful representatives of the animal world in its war against mankind.

The history of man may end up as just another tale of Dinosaurs. We may wonder who - or what species - in 65 million years from now will live to re-tell or dig up our story. We may wonder whether that species will even remotely resemble humanity, physically and otherwise. Just think of it. They may conclude that the Neanderthal man, having lived for over two hundred thousand years, was far more fit to survive than ‘modern man’, who lived and thrived for only fifty thousand years, or less, and who became extinct not by another, more ‘superior’ species but by himself.

But we should not be too concerned about such questions today since we cannot possibly influence every single eventuality in a time frame of millions let alone tens of millions of years nor does it make sense to speculate about such eventualities. However, some questions must be addressed in our time.

Indeed, the question here is not about speculation, nor about the actual destiny of mankind in the next 65 million years. What should concern us however is that we have trespassed the limits of our own lifetime in our influence on life’s future: human life as much as all other life. Already we have sniffed the life out of a vast number of plant and animal species. We have done so irrevocably and with as yet unknown consequence. Already we have unleashed a virtual K/T meteor of epic magnitude to do its ravaging work. Already we have created a story which will echo long, long after us; a blast of extinction which will continue to awe generations well into the unimaginable future.

We can still survive and live in prosperity, and allow future generations to flourish even beyond our current capabilities. But we have to consciously choose to do so. We can allow all of humanity to live in happiness if only we express our wish for it – and live up to the rules required to achieve it.

Even in Auschwitz, dialogue should remain

2006-02-17T10:57:00.000-08:00

The management of the Auschwitz concentration camp museum has refused entry to a special committee of the Iranian government, assigned to investigate the Holocaust.

This must be a mistake. It was the British prime minister Tony Blair who saught to diverge international tensions, caused by the Iranian president's denial of the Holocaust, and advised the Iranians to go and see for themselves. He was very right in making this suggestion.

Of course, having to allow entry to a committee with an evident bias against the unprecendented historic event of the holocaust is not an easy task. But then, the whole idea of the Auschwitz museum is not mere remembrance, but also the wish of our civilization that nothing like the Holocaust will ever be repeated. So, in my view, the management of Auschwitz has a very critical responsibility, which includes confrontations such as the one now at hand.

So again, it is a huge mistake not to have Iranians come and look for themselves. It is a missed opportunity of vast proportions.

I do hope that the Polish government understands this mistake and will act swiftly to correct it. But I also know my hopes in this respect cannot go very far. Perhaps other European governments can step in, even only whispering in the ears of their Polish colleagues, and suggest - if need be, with great emphasis - that here is an opportunity for diplomacy with Iran that cannot and should not be missed.

And yet again, I do not raise my hopes beyond reality. Unfortunately, most European governments have responded in extremely weak and evasive terms to the many uproars across the Muslim world over mere cartoons.

The Holocaust thing is not about satire or differences in sense of humor. It is about a fundamental reality in the history of the European world. We better see to it that everybody else on our planet keeps full understanding of that historic reality.
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Note 19-2: I wrote an email to the management of the Auschwitz museum with above content.

Scoring our dislikes

2006-02-06T14:55:00.000-08:00

When thinking about the havoc caused by the Arab misunderstanding of our sense of humor (see my previous blog posting), I can’t escape the nagging feeling that, really, I don’t very much like Arabs. I have no problems with the Islam, I have lived peacefully among Muslims, but Arabs – as a rule – rub me the wrong way.

So yes, I do think we should strive for friendship, but no - I don’t see that happening in a general sense very soon.

Am I alone in this? I have no clue. I therefore decided to google the sentence ‘I don’t like Arabs’ and see how many hits this sentence gets on the Internet. The answer is: nearly 3400.

The next question is: is this a normal hit, a high hit, or a very low hit? You can build up some kind of scale, I thought, if you relate this score for the preference of Arabs, against other scores.

I then did the same thing for ‘I don’t like the Dutch’. Well, let’s see. I can take a blow. The score for the dislike of the Dutch according to the Internet (or Google) is 800.

It should therefore be concluded that, roughly speaking, there are less people who express their dislike for the Dutch than people who do the same as regards the Arabs. It is not an unexpected outcome.

Here is the score on other preferences:

- I don’t like Americans-------------------15700
- I don’t like Arabs------------------------3400
- I don’t like the French--------------------880
- I don’t like the Germans-------------------950
- I don’t like the Dutch---------------------800
- I don’t like the schoolteacher------------none (!)
- I don’t like my boss----------------------2500
- I don’t like my husband-------------------1200
- I don’t like my children------------------1100
- I don’t like sex--------------------------1300

Our dislike for Americans by far outweighs our dislike for Arabs, or at least there are more people willing to put this dislike in writing. That is an interesting outcome. It suggests to me that Americans face a far greater challenge to brush up their image than Arabs do. I do not dislike Americans, I only thoroughly dislike their current Administration.

However, broadly speaking, the dislike for Americans but also for Arabs is relatively strong compared with any other negative feeling that people can harbor, even between wife and husband.

I would say that scores like this one are food for thought only, but I do find it an intriguing way of polling opinions across the world wide web.

In my dislike for Arabs I do not stand alone. It doesn’t make me feel proud, but at least I am not an exception.

It is highly desirable that people in the Arab world seriously look at their overall image. The Arab world is full of history, intellect and civilization. But what the Arabs allow us to see today, to me seems a more horrible caricature than any Western cartoon can depict.

Humor is the fabric of friendship

2006-02-03T09:58:00.000-08:00

A great Dutch cultural historian, Johan Huizinga, of the first half of the 20th Century once wrote a sizeable essay titled ‘Homo Ludens’ – the playful man. He wrote it in the decade of hate, in the years of the rise of NAZI absolutism when everything people called ugly was to be eradicated. The last thing Hitler and his cronies would think of was making fun of themselves, let alone of all their horrid dogma’s.

Humor, the ability to laugh at one’s own weaknesses, yes – even one’s own ugliness – defines every society. Don’t expect you can attain stability, in any group of people, whatever its cause, if there is no laughter to accompany it.

I was strongly thinking about Huizinga’s thesis when I read of the emerging outrage among Muslims caused by Danish and French cartoons ridiculing the prophet Mohammed.

I haven’t seen the cartoons. I do not know their intention or what characteristic of the Muslim world they wanted to depict. Generally, I hold cartoonist in high esteem. I can’t believe they were insulting by our own standards. And yes, I do think that even God can be subject of a cartoon. But I also think a good cartoon – rather than being insulting – should be intelligent. The best cartoons demonstrate a truth that otherwise we don’t see. And it gives us an additional insight, it opens our eyes, it makes us understand difficult issues, conflicts, or contradictions, a little better.

Our ability to be critical about ourselves and to accept that we are not the representatives of any absolute truth, is key to the cultures of the western world – and we also consider this a fundamental prerequisite of our freedom, including freedom of the press. Perhaps we do not always realize it, and perhaps at times we still harbor prejudices against people of other cultures, but at least we have been educated with this understanding of ourselves.

Cartoons, intelligent ridicule, are essential in our culture. They may provoke, but they should not be designed for the mere purpose of insult.

Muslim absolutism is an object par excellence for provocation. If Muslims wish to live along side people in the Western world, this is the price they will have to pay in order to gain our friendship and in order to gain our love for their strengths and weaknesses.

Without the ability to make jokes about one another, it is impossible to think of stable multiculturalism (or whatever label we attach to it) any time in the future.

So I agree with those who will not heed to the outrage that recent cartoons have caused. Muslim absolutism is unacceptable. And in this respect I care less about the outrage in other countries than about potential conflicts in our own countries, where Muslims and Christians live alongside one another. Official response in Europe, e.g. from the British Foreign Affairs minister Jack Straw, has so far been too restrictive. It suggests that we should be more prudent when it concerns the sensitivities of the Muslim world. I disagree. He got it all wrong. This is not a free ride. Muslims want to be part of our world. Fine. But if need be, I would be the first to take on a Crusade to defend humor, including humor directed at the habits of the Muslims and their religious icons. Not because I wish to ridicule them, but because I profoundly wish to be their friend.

One road to permissiveness: a dead end?

2006-02-02T09:58:00.000-08:00

Most of us who have grown up in the sixties tend to view the evolution of morality in our time as just one road straight ahead. With many conflicts we struggled our way out of the legacy of the Victorian age which had imbued us with huge inhibitions and which had created a society of emotional rigidity and moral intolerance unparalleled in history. Never again would we allow ourselves, or our children, to be denied the full experience of life, however trivial, however damaging perhaps to our health, however destructive to the fabric of society. First and foremost are our spiritual freedom and the claim of each individual to pursue his or her own leisure, whether in the cerebral, social or sexual dimensions of our lives.

The Dutch in particular have become rather infamous in taking this quest for freedom and permissiveness to the extreme. We have been very true to our role in history in this respect. Yet even in my country, the tide has turned. To some extent, this development is influenced by the greater complexity of our society as compared to the situation in the sixties. Most notably, the influx of people of vastly different cultures has created new conflicts and has increased sensitivities on how people behave, even in private, and thus it has raised the issue of tolerance, including the tolerance of people’s behavior within our own, indigenous culture at the same time. To put it bluntly: if our permissiveness especially stimulates destructive behavior of people of other cultures living in our own country, how can we contain this if we do not restrict the behavior of everybody? When it comes to it, discrimination is a far greater evil than permissiveness. Murders have been committed that shook society, and they have been committed by a white Christian male and a brown Muslim male respectively..

But even without this additional ethnic or cultural issue, it seems our tendency towards freedom and permissiveness has reached the end of the road. In particular this is the case in respect of our lenient policies and practices on drugs. But it pervades the other realms as well.

Only recently, within a weeks time, Dutch cabinet ministers and senior party officials came up with no less then three proposals limiting our civilian freedoms. First, there was the minister who aired the idea of forbidding the sale of alcohol to all minors; secondly another minister wanted to introduce the rule of Dutch language only in public spaces (good for tourism!), and third there are people who want to limit religious freedom, especially where it concerns religious expressions that are hateful to women.

It is obvious that any public incitement against the integrity of women is already forbidden by law. There is no need for any additional safeguard, let alone for some frantic limitation of our religious freedoms. In particular, thoughts like these, coming from people who claim responsibility for our government policies, illustrate most clearly that we are gradually losing sight of the essence of freedom and tolerance in our society. Xenophobia is taking grip even of people who would normally have reasonable opinions, and in giving in to it we are setting the most horrid examples particularly to whose of whom we wish that they accept our rules of law and of decent behavior.

To me, permissiveness is not the ultimate issue. We should continue to ask ourselves whether as human beings we should be in the business of permitting or forbidding any other human being on any aspect of his or her behavior. Obviously there are limits, and to a large extent the ancient rules suffice: Thou shalt not kill etc. Nor do I feel that speaking about permissiveness in general terms is at all helpful. In some respects the Dutch may have been highly permissive, in other respects we are not quite as tolerant as some make us to be.

The larger issue in my view is the degree to which we wish to encourage cohesion in morality and behavior, and to what extent we allow individuals in ours society to have their own experiences. In both dimensions, serious interests – in every society – are at stake. I also believe that behavior is not a static phenomenon. Most people go through certain phases in their lives, and some of us want to learn from ‘bad’ behavior in order to – eventually – find the ‘good’.

All of this, to me, would tend to a twofold approach at all times. Permissiveness – allowing for freedom in a large measure for everybody – should go hand in hand with greater public awareness of morality, social cohesion and social responsibility. We all cross the thresholds at one or more points in our life. What really matters, is whether we learn from it.

The goodness of Benedict

2006-01-26T10:09:00.000-08:00

Early tonight, a good woman was at my door to see whether I would make my contribution to the church of which I am a member. I said I would. Although I am not particularly religious, I do wish to express my appreciation for the work of the church in our community and - in a way – to make clear where I stand in the world of our Christian humanity.

I am a staunch protestant. Yet I follow the events in Rome with keen interest. Whatever one may say of Rome’s rigidity v.à.v. Christians who call themselves Catholics, the Vatican is the only authoritative source available on the broader meaning of Christianity in our current world. So, whereas many of the stringent rulings of the Church affect its members only, a Pope’s actual influence extends far beyond its constitutional borders and thus affects the identity of other Christians much at the same time.

And it so happened today that Benedict XVI issued his first reading as the supreme teacher of the Catholic Church.

The new encyclical is titled ‘Deus Caritas Est’. Most papers translate this as: ‘God is Love’. But when one reads its content, it might be better to translate it as: 'God is Goodness'.

"In a world where the name of God is sometimes associated with vengeance or even a duty of hatred and violence, this message is both timely and significant," Benedict writes. "For this reason, I wish in my first encyclical to speak of the love which God lavishes on us and which we in turn must share with others." Well, fair enough.

He then proceeds to explain his concept of love. Benedict projects this concept first of all as an expression of the bond between a man and a woman. He underscores that this concept of love should “mature into unselfish concern for the other - creating a love that ultimately demands charity and justice even to strangers.” Wonderful.

Love is “a journey, an ongoing exodus out of the closed inward-looking self toward its liberation through self-giving, and thus toward authentic self-discovery and indeed the discovery of God." It takes a Pope to make love sound so beautiful.

“Deus Caritas Est” further elaborates the concept of love along those lines. Really, it doesn’t strike any discord with me.

And the first responses to this recent teaching seem equally positive. A liberal group We Are Church, called the encyclical "a sign of hope" that Benedict would prove to be a "human face for Christianity and for the Catholic church."

Most of all, this papal letter to the bishops seems much more an exploration than an instruction. In no way does it order or condemn. It confirms the profound humanity that seems to drive this Pope, who is a man of age and who – as I see it - more than anyone else realizes that this is not the time for yet another Crusade, but for reconciliation and for coming to terms with the commonalities of humanity, rather than to seek the light between them.

Thus far, I have viewed Benedicts papacy as an extension of the reign of John Paul II, and in many ways his new encyclical seems to confirm this. At various points he stresses the continuity of the papacy in the past nearly thirty years. I believe it is part of his strength – and of his potential to effectively address the many conflicts that still linger between the – western – Christian world and others.

In fact I believe the moment is long overdue that our Christian societies, whether Catholic, Protestant or otherwise, come clean on what the Benedict’s goodness of God really offers to the rest of the world.

Survival of the fittest

2006-01-24T14:07:00.000-08:00

Picture: a contmporary view of our Neanderthal cousins

A recent study has shed new light on the displacement of our hominid cousins, the Neanderthals, by our human forebears. The emerging picture reflects themes that are highly illustrative of selective pressures at work even in our modern day mass societies.

The archeological research from the University of Connecticut and other universities reported that some 30.0000 to 40.000 years ago “each population (i.e. Neanderthals and modern humans) was equally and independently capable of acquiring and exploiting critical information pertaining to animal availability and behavior.” They furthermore suggest “that developments in the social realm of modern human life, allowing routine use of distant resources and more extensive division of labor, may be better indicators of why Neanderthals disappeared than hunting practices.”

Doesn’t this ring a familiar bell? Differences between contemporary human populations are all about the ability to organize and communicate at great distances. In particular, the white western variation of humanity excels in this capability. And our variation does so at the greatest possible expense of the remaining populations of homo sapiens. Don’t we?

For our capability of networking and global organization, our power of communication between and within unparalleled conglomerates of human co-operation exceed anything that life on our planet has seen before, and that – at the same time – has been such a threat to it. This is not only the case in respect of the many variations of life that we have deliberately or thoughtlessly whizzed away into oblivion; it also holds true for the lives of a great many of our brothers and sisters - modern humans - of other cultures.

Yet we choose to arm ourselves against them in a highly primitive way. Does our way of life hold so little attraction to others that we can only say: if you don’t like us, we will fight you? The Neanderthal example should give us the conviction that a better quality – and organization – of life should in the end prevail against any lesser alternative, and that there is no need to fight for it – only to demonstrate it.

Sure enough, people will say: but what if other humans decide to fight and throw airplanes filled with kerosene into our skyscrapers? I agree, it is the saddest possible tragedy, and anyone is justified to enhance defenses against it.

But the main thrust of our energies should not go into defense, let alone outright war. If we wish to survive ultimately, our best prospects are gained through the quality – and sustainability – of the way of life we choose for ourselves. Our best offense is in increasing that quality, and allowing our immense capabilities of communication and organization to truly work in our advantage, and – ultimately – in the advantage of people who today we might label as ‘adversaries’.

The greatest tragedy (well, at least for you and me) would be if the Neanderthals in the end – are us.

Youth, alcohol and society

2006-01-19T10:01:00.000-08:00

In Holland a serious discussion is at hand to forbid the sale of alcoholic beverages to youth below the age of 18. Lately, the Health minister suggested he would move to submit such a proposal. The current age limit for alcohol and tobacco is 16. Initial response in parliament is hesitant.

I believe a downright prohibition for youth below the age of 18 is a very foolish proposal.

The use of alcohol by young people is a widely acknowledged issue across Europe. The Dutch youth according to recent statistics tops the bill. So, indications are that this phenomenon does indeed require our serious attention.

Among those who are hesitant about raising the legal age limit are people who stress that we are talking about a – substantial – minority of the youth, but certainly not all of them. Secondly, it would be counterproductive to simply penalize young people and not increase our efforts to take away whatever causes the apparent abuse.

In an unrelated news item, just a week ago or so, it was reported that our present society is all but sympathetic to our children. Our social life, and especially our way of life that affects the environment in which young people grow up, has become unfriendly, harsh, dictated by the needs and pre-occupations of the working generation, parents and so on, rather than geared to nourish and groom the younger generation.

True or not, the issues are not unrelated. It is always better – first of all – to look at the factors that drive a particular development, such as alcohol abuse, rather than cry wolf over its unwelcome effects. To many this must be obvious, but in our current political climate, with fear becoming more and more the key determinant of almost all policies, it is not so evident any more.

Dutch politics and political attitudes especially have grown more restrictive than they have been for many decades. It seems as if old rigidities have suddenly woken up after we put them to sleep some time ago when we took the road of deliberate permissiveness and liberalism.

Those days appear well past now. It is a liberal minister who wants to solve the issue by means of old-fashioned punishment!

We should all know that any kind of prohibition will only make things worse. It will simply add to the thrill of alcohol, nothing less.

It will be much better to step up our efforts to make our society more worthwhile for the young, increase their challenges, commit them to change, involve them in our world, and allow them to enjoy it at the same time.

Abuse never came out of such dedication.

There is no such thing as time - 2

2006-01-19T03:33:00.000-08:00

The Universe as we know it is all a jigsaw. We perceive a Universe that is actually a complex puzzle of events that took place at widely different stages of its development. When we read of advanced telescopes able to peer far away in the very outreaches of this great expanse, in fact they look at faint reflections, far out in the distance, of events way down in the past, one a little more close to us perhaps than the other.

Time is just a convenient measurement. It allows us to keep track of things as they progress. Keep track of our own life, history etc. and and it allows us to mark the various events with ‘dates’, or time.

Astronomy is the ongoing adventure of jumbled snapshots.

We cannot tinker with causality. Even if we wish to reverse a certain process – let’s say: if we wish to restore order to something that has gone into disorder – we only add a new causality. We do not really reverse the original events. By the same token we cannot turn back time.

But then, time has become humanity’s first and foremost obsession. It has become an obsession very much in the same period that youth has become an obsession. We do not want to age, but time goes faster en faster. We want to stay young, but our years continue to count.

Still, there is room for what people tend to call time travel. We all know that if you go fast enough - and I mean: extremely fast – your physical processes start to operate at a different rate than the physical processes at your point of departure. And when you return, the sum of your experiences will have left you 'pass your time' at a seemingly slower rate than is the case for the people you left behind. You return a young man, and everybody else has aged or is possibly dead and buried.

It is a strange journey for sure. But it is not time travel in the sense that most people attach to it.

So let’s forget about time. Why bother about something that is relevant only in our measurements but that otherwise does not in reality exist.

Yes, as you progress, your biology and physiology changes. But this does not necessarily make you ‘old’. At one point you die. But you can still die someone young.

We can allow ourselves to increase our enjoyment in the present, live the present – day after day. Expand our senses to suck all experiences, everywhere, at every instant. Enrich ourselves, drink each precious when-and-where down to the bottom, in short: let’s live intense.

The more we do that, the longer we will live, or rather: the larger our life will be, and the richer our memories.

There is no such thing as time

2006-01-16T11:02:00.000-08:00

Picture: at our distance we can look at the outreaches of this nebula in a nanosecond. But to actually travel between them would take many light years.

I am not a physicist but I would very much like to understand the reality we are living in before the instant that I am no longer there.

One thing I do grasp is the vastness of our universe and the nearly infinite minuteness of the particles or strings that make it work.

I also appreciate that for mere practical purposes we use our concept of time to express distance. For instance, when we say that a particular star or galaxy is so many light years away.

A consequence of the vastness of our universe, and some of the physical laws governing it, is that the universe we can ‘see’ in a star filled night, ‘is’ not actually there the way we see it.

Most of what we see are the mere images of stars and galaxies at many different distances – and reflecting situations at many different instants - that happen to meet our eye at the same juncture.

It is even true when we ‘see’ our own sun. We don’t. At any given point we only see the image (the light) of our sun as it took off a few seconds (or minutes) before.

We use the concept of time to express a succession of realities. And we know that this succession cannot be measured for the entire universe as one fixed sequence. Enter Einstein’s relativity theory. It all depends on your point of view and on your speed.

Yet, in the end, I feel, that if we would simply travel a long enough distance and would bring along a camera of infinite fine resolution, we would be able to make a snapshot of our universe very close to what it ‘is’ and what it looks like at that particular instant. The problem is, of course that such a journey in itself would take an infinite number of instants, so for all practical purposes, it is impossible. And I am not quite convinced that the concept of warps or other theories of long distance travel would by any means be truly helpful.

In the meantime, we are making all sorts of fuss of this concept of ‘time’. Why? The main reason, I believe, is that we have set our minds to either ‘go back in time’ or go forward in time, and travel to the future. But both ideas are utterly ridiculous. We cannot tinker with time as a distinct phenomenon. The only way to go back in time is to look at old photo albums, much the same way look at our sky as a collage of pictures, taken from events at very different, actual, instants.

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I believe, that the image of time moving and "going by" is misleading. What goes by are our experiences. (Ernst von Glasersfeld)
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When we say, for instance when the weekend is approaching, “Wow, the week went fast”, we are simply referring to our experience of the (speed of the) week’s events, not to the actual speed of time.

Time is a construct of our mind, indicating that there is an – inevitable – sequence of experiences, events, actions followed by reactions etc. We do need time to arrive at the concept of speed, but there is no flow of time separate from events and mere causality. And it is quite clear, especially from Einsteins theory of relativity, that the actual sequence of events in different places, relative to one another, can differ according to relative speed etc. I do not wish to question all that, however difficult it remains to fully grasp.

“When I punch the ‘post’ button, this blogposting will be in my past, but it will still be in your future. The passage of time is a measure of motion." I here paraphrase a thought placed somewhere on the web by one John Merryman.

My wish is to eradicate time as a distinct phenomenon in our discussions of the properties of our universe, however vast or however small.

I am confined to what I am - and when I am - at every given instant.

(To be continued)

Would you like to be frozen for an eon or so?

2006-01-13T08:54:00.000-08:00

A guy, somewhere in France, has fought his way up in court to keep his dead mother at home frozen in a box, until such time that medical science is able to resurrect her. This is probably not any time soon, so he may end up joining her in this icy state for one other eon or so. But he is unlikely to get the chance. In France, there are only two ways out: regular burial or regular burning.

I wonder, would you like to be frozen – and be resurrected, say, a few thousand years from now? Even if the waiting is only a couple of hundred years, I would still hesitate.

But let’s assume there is the possibility. One day in the future, you wake up. The first thing you’ll say is: “Please put the heater on, I’m freezing cold.”

Strange eyes will gaze at you. They might smile and check your heartbeat. They might utter a few kind words, but you cannot possibly understand them. The surrounding in which you open your eyes is totally alien. “Am I, after all, in heaven?” you might ask.

But you are not. You’re still on Earth. And it is unlikely that you find yourself in the very same spot where many years ago eh ..you died. You’ve been moved, and the facility in which these strange people with their funny clothes have brought you back to the living may well be miles down the road from where you went to sleep. In the mean time, things have changed in other respects as well. Buildings have gone, new ones have been erected; villages have been replaced by new bundles of skyscrapers; the entire countryside, perhaps even the entire nation has been replaced, turned upside down, new populations moved in; massive natural disasters have pressed the evolution of mankind into new crossroads. The one thing they did was to preserve you – and re-ignite your life.

Then you are discharged from the facility with a clean bill of health. Congratulations. Now what? Where will you go? And where will you live – or how? You might as well have landed on Pluto, with a one way ticket. No way to go back. You find yourself thrown into a jungle in space, inhabited by vaguely humane beings, with friendly eyes – still staring at you, wondering – as much as you do yourself – how to communicate.

Off you go on some unknown crowded street. You start walking. Funny things zip by. Whatever they're driving in, the vehicles they use don't really look like cars.

At one point you realize that you have built up a massive appetite. It’s been a while since you last had a snack. So, do you have money? Is there any way you can pay for your living? Whatever salary or pension you may have enjoyed in you earlier life, it will have dried up long, long ago.

Chances are that you next life will be on the fringes of decent living and that – at best – you will be given some sort of welfare payment, hardly sustainable, let alone a living that is worthwhile to be frozen for.

They may even want you to pay for all these years, or eons of electricity needed to retain your icy state.

So here is my advice.

If you wish to freeze yourself, never go it alone. Have somebody to join you, so at least – later on – you have a person to talk to.

Secondly: bury a treasure of some kind in a place that can stand the tides of time. A grotto, or the deep ocean. Be sure this is a treasure that will still have a value in the future – so you can change if for the relevant currency later on. Gold? You don’t know. An artifact of your own time? Perhaps. Keep it a secret!

Third: see ya.

Should the Dutch go to southern Afghanistan?

2006-01-12T00:40:00.000-08:00

A new hot potato has emerged on the Dutch political scene. It was already brewing late last year when the Dutch cabinet discussed a decision to dispatch 1200 troops to southern Afghanistan, in support of an essentially American led peace enforcement operation.

Given some strong reservations within the coalition, the cabinet moved to let the ultimate decision be taken by Parliament. Although the free liberals are the main dissident party at this point, none of the other coalition partners from the outset wholeheartedly supported this mission.

The Netherlands have already contributed to peace keeping efforts in the country, but these efforts have so far been of a restricted nature and, more importantly, have been directed by NATO rather than the American forces.

In the southern part of Afghanistan, where operations thus far have been solely directed by American troops, there is noted activity of militant Talibans. There is a greater possibility in this region that Dutch troops, in the event they get involved, will have o pull their trigger.

Some people say that the Dutch reluctance in this case is based on our fear of actual combat risk. I have been given to understand that this is not the reason for our hesitation. Most people understand that such risk is part and parcel of having a Defense outfit to start with.

An important factor is the trauma of previous engagements. In Sebrenica, more than ten years ago, we took the hard lesson of an embarrassing involvement (i.e. by remaining totally passive) in genocide, most of all because there was a total lack of authority-in-situ and of support (from the NATO command) to allow us intervene. We do not want to get into an other Sebrenica.

Secondly, there is strong hesitance to – continue to – simply follow a US-lead situation. It’s like little Hans putting his finger in the dike and the water still running through. The question here – politically – is whether Holland will continue to support the foreign endeavors of the Bush administration that are seen by many as a flagrant failure. Do we wish to look foolish and run a serious risk of having caskets instead of living bodies arrive at our airports?

Most certainly, if the Bush administration would shrug at the Dutch, and say (what they seem to have said already), well, if you don’t help us here, this will damage your interests in the US, then that’ll be the final B(ush)-word. We may be a midget in military terms, but in economic terms, the Dutch are still – relatively speaking – giants. So, Washington better be a little more understanding and helpful.

The Dutch dilemmas furthermore do not stand in isolation. They are shared in other European countries. They only illustrate the underlying rift between Europeans and Americans. They are perhaps in part caused by a lack of European unity – particularly in matters of international security - but most certainly they are a result, too, of the prevailing egotist attitudes of the Bush hawks.

In the meantime, at the level op Dutch politics, the issue has become a matter of prestige for the free liberals: they will find it extremely difficult to turn around and support the position of their coalition partners. Evidently this has little to do with the merits of the case. Politically, it should be far preferred that a decision is reached which can draw the support of all coalition partners, rather than that the cabinet will need the support of the main opposition party, the Social Democrats. But this is a question to be resolved in our own house, so to speak.

Finally, other than Irak, Afghanistan is more truly a case for the international community. Americans so far have done most of the dirty work there, and allowed NATO partners to do the peace-keeping. We are a vehement NATO supporter. A Dutchman is its Secretary-General now. Dutch government parties would prefer close allegiance in that context, but we cannot pledge loyalty to it at any price. This is what makes it a complicated question. There is a lot of credibility at stake. I agree with William Pfaff in today’s IHT: perhaps even the future of the NATO is in the balance too. Even more so, it cannot be simply the Dutch to push this balance in the right direction.
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Note, February 2: The Dutch parliament, in large majority, decided to back the governments proposal for the mission to Afghanistan. The social democrat opposition saved the day. The free liberals decided not to support the mission, but they will not block the cabinet's ultimate decision. A face saving exercize for many, a wise outcome for all.

What do you mean: progressive?

2006-01-10T11:41:00.000-08:00

A short while ago I participated in a television program called “The Future of The Netherlands”. Really my cup of tea, I thought. I didn’t actually participate in the program, but I did log-in to its website, which carried me through a host of questions about possible changes in the outlook of our country, say, twenty years hence.

The questions were of the kind that more typically reflect our present-day concerns, such as personal security, the threat of terrorism, minority issues and so forth, and most of the possible changes which the questions hinted at, in my mind, would make our country nothing less than the worst nightmare. They would take us far beyond ‘1984’, with human beings living as mere puppets on the string of Big Brother watching – and punishing – you. Not for me, I thought. Nor do I really believe that this is the inevitable course of our society.

I completed the questions and clicked ‘send’. I immediately received the program’s (or whatever was behind it) evaluation.

“Conservative” it said.

If ever I felt insulted, this was the moment. Never in my life I have been labeled a conservative, never will I accept it. So I wrote this e-mail to the producers of the TV-program. I suggested they better review this program. “Have you really succumbed to our present-day shallowness”, I asked them. “The government measures suggested in your program are a far cry from progress. They are gruesome, right wing, abhorrent”, or words to this effect. I got a reply, a few days ago, thanking me for my comments and emphasizing that contributions such as mine are a great help. Well, OK.

I do realize that my kind of progress is highly out of fashion these days. Only a few months ago, when I was talking about some current issue (I don’t remember which) to one of my younger colleagues, he said to me: “Ah, yes, but you are of the generation of progress”. He more or less implied: your are of the past.

Sure enough, the attributes of progress as I learned to understand them, have very little to say in our present day. I am a liberal, not a socialist, yet in my mind real progress is a phenomenon at the societal level. It is reflected in every enhancement of our behavior (and our being) as social animals. We should be able – and willing – as a society to control violence and aggression, and help others to enjoy a decent living etc., and never allow any of this to be the sole authority of intelligence officers, let alone militia’s or armies or similar agents. We should control the need for legislation, spying on citizens or invading people’s privacy, and be more societal – less egoistic – in the conduct of our own lives.

Perhaps my outlook on politics stems from the sixties and the seventies – not the eighties and the nineties, when extreme individualism and, more in particular, extreme consumerism took the lead over public cohesion and active political debate. Yet I am convinced that, one way or the other, new terms for progress will emerge. I am convinced that we will not succumb to the nightmare of rigid policing, of consumerist slavery, of utmost materialism. Our real future lies elsewhere. Our progress will be a different dream.

So I hang on to my outlook. I cherish all the improvements in my lifetime. I will fight stupidity. I will stand at the center of a progressive, fee society where common sense prevails and where the energy of freedom is directed to benefit the common good.

The Rule of Law

2006-01-10T00:00:00.000-08:00

Supreme Court nominee Alito has said that a judge's only obligation "is to the rule of law” (CNN). That is the truism of the day. And it is true not only for the judicial branch of government, but as much for the executive too.

In the western world we are all children of revolutions with the same theme: the eradication of arbitrary government, the rule of law and the trias politica – the separation of powers – which was most rigidly installed in the US Constitution.

Well indeed, Senators in the US who are so eager to grill Alito with questions on divisive topics such as abortion, equal rights, the right to privacy, gun control etc. should first and foremost check with themselves whether at all times they have been sufficiently critical about the actions – particularly in recent times – of the executive branch in these dimensions and whether in fact, they are not at the same time – potentially – pointing their finger to weak spots in the American res publica that most of all they can be blamed for themselves.

Of course, the people’s representatives in the Congress have a right – if not the obligation – to examine whether Alito has been truthful to the rule of law in his actual record as a lawyer and a judge. But they would be doing a very bad job if actually they are trying to probe into Alito’s opinions on matters of policy or legislation, which can only be resolved by the legislative branch.

I am well aware that law is a living phenomenon. Law arises from legislation – and judicial practice. So, in part, the judicial branch does have an influence on the actual outreach of the law. But even then, the sense of the law (and not of public opinion, let alone of someone’s private opinion) is its one and only source.

I have no position on Alito personally. That’s quite beyond me. But public proceedings on nominations such as a judge of the Supreme Court are extremely important in terms of testing the legal and public morality of a nation. So I follow it with keen interest.

I have been active in the sphere of - the Dutch – public administration most of my life and I have always taken an active interest in politics. In many ways I am the child of a period when government policy and especially policymaking was having its heyday. We loved the idea of changing the world – for the better. The legislative part of policymaking always came as an inevitable burden, preferably to be avoided. At that time, some twenty-five years ago, a good friend of mine completed his Ph-D on the very subject of the rule of law: there can be no policymaking, he said, unless it is a strict execution of the law. He was right, I knew, but I also felt a little uneasy. Policymaking, government, having influence and all that, is quite addictive. The tendency is to extend the law – as much as you can, to find all kinds of excuses to evade it; the only thing that mattered – we were inclined to think – was the benevolence of our policies. And benevolence came in plenty!

Later I learned that benevolence throughout history has been the greatest source of human terror and destruction – not otherwise. So I have grown a little more cautious about good ideals before they are fully supported by the voice of the law – the voice of our legislators.

Today my good friend is a member of the Dutch Council of State, the highest advisory body in our government. So, I feel quite assured about the rule of law in my own backyard.

I am far less assured about the rule of law in the United States. I truly hope that Congress will be as vigorous about it v.a.v. the Executive as it now appears to be v.a.v. the Judicial. It would make our world so much better to look at.

Getting started

2006-01-09T11:21:00.000-08:00

This is my first sentence in a blog.
I'll have to figure out what it can do for me - and what I can do for blogging.

There are quite a number of topics that interest me. Some may be of interest to others.
First of all, I am a person who very much likes to think about the future.
In very much the same measure I am a man of history too.
One is impossible, I feel, without the other.

So that is where I will start.

My history and my future are most of all determined by my background.
This is not a simple background, like..where I was born, or what I am doing in my daily work.

My mind is filled with a huge library of legacies and memories which constitute who I am and how I think about, for intance, the passage of time.

All this, I will clarify along the way, wherever my thoughts carry me.

Just a few data for starters:
- I am 53 years old
- I was born in Amsterdam, The Netherlands - so:
- I am a Dutchman
- I live in The Hague, often called "The Legal Capital of the World"
- and, yes, I was trained as a lawyer
- I am single (divorced), and I am blessed with a wonderful daughter
- I would call myself a progressive liberal (as opposed to many liberals in Holland who are actually very conservative or right wing)
- I am not at all pleased with the mainstream drift of American and European politics
- this is one of the topics I will most certainly touch upon in my blog.

Today, my greatest concern has been my foolishness over the weekend when I left my bicycle unlocked at the grocery's, only to return this morning to find it gone - taken by someone who
obviously took the opportunity.

Damn! If only I were more careful.