h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

At the risk of offending but merely for the reason
of stimulating some discussion allow me to repond to:

>> Britain had more to learn from India than it had to teach. <<

By stating unequivocably that this is a load of tosh.

It merely appeared (appears) that Indian culture has an
understanding of the great mysteries of Life, the Uni, etc.
when in fact it is a melange of secrecy and mysticism based
on dubious misunderstandings of many things and a corrupt
and undemocratic class system that places no value on the
lives of individuals and worships a menagerie of gods who
reveal themselves as selfish and rapacious as the worst
kind of cruel and self-centered human beings.

Not to mention that even today the country has the lowest
ratio of toilets to human beings in the whirled, a scary
statistic when one realises it is the second most populous
nation on the planet. Nor shall I comment on the notion of
elevating cattle to holy and sacred status.


~jwf~

Strange, that they raise the cow to such a high status, yet, thanks to their presence in the UK, many of our population have raised 'curry' to a simularly high status

Amazing. As I pressed the Post Message button
on the above, I had a fleeting awareness that
I might have been too one-sided in my damning
of the Indian cultures and I almost paused long
enough to add an apologetic addendum regarding
their culinary delights.

Thank you for balancing the scales of Justice.

~jwf~

I'm rather fond of Indian textiles and porcelain objects, including dinnerware.

I agree that there are odious elements in Hindu religious matters. The discrimination and violence came out in the film "Slumdog Millionaire". Many, many Indians are not Hindus, though. The Muslim minority has its own way of life. I give all of them credit for participating in a democratic form of government. It can't have been easy.

I've enjoyed a number of books by Indian authors. "Death of Vishnu" was extraordinary. India also has a large and thriving film industry [also known as "Bollywood"]. We don't see many of their films here in the U.S., but I did get to see "Monsoon Wedding."

jwf

Well you describe pretty well the India that so badly needed reviving at the time that the tiny British East India Company became the only real effective government..

It was a very obvious example of "The Decline and Fall" of the Ancient World as described by Edward Gibbon at that time. But 23 years after Gibbon began to publish that great work, T.R. Malthus published his seminal work on the terrible prospect facing Britain and Europe as the population was thought to have doubled to about ten million in a hundred years. The whole thought of managing such a population, and its continuing growth, shaped British and European politics and history ever since_-war, famine and disease would be inevitable without "Natural Checks". But India was already hundreds of millions of people.

But the Western Civilization that had produced this terrible Mathusians situation and potential felt it was necessary to spread out and take over the Earth, eventually producing two world wars, and a capacity and apparent willingness to launch a Third World War that would destroy all life on Earth. But, unlike India and China that are 5,000 years old, it is hardly more than a thousand years old. Where will it take us in another three or four thousand years? What we are told is that by then, unless there is a radical change towards sustainability, Life on Earth will have endured a slow-death that may be worse than the nuclear holocaust.

But in the case of both India and China the course of their history during "The European Age" has been determined by invasion and conquest by less civilized people- among which one could include the Europeans, by their own estimation.

In the case of India this invasion was by various Muslim powers that imposed what became the dead hand of Islam, which is a faith of submission and not of creation. Muslim and Moghul India, as the British recognised during British rule, was based upon that conquest that produced a very small ruling elite, taking unto itself "the tigers share" of all the fabulous wealth, often squandering it on European goods, and living permanently on the fruits of past victory. But, as often happens in armies, the rank and file Muslim soldiers were rewarded with small plots that alloweed them to live as very simple and self-sufficient peasants. But ever-ready to serve the interests of the Muslim elite, when there was any challenge to their authority from the wealth-producing sections of Indian society.

It is interesting to note that this legacy of Muslim India continues to be "toxic" now that independence has meant segregation and separation, even within many British Asian communities. The very small number of rich and privileged Muslims within countries like Bangladesh and Pakistan continues a tradition of self-serving power and wealth an social inequality. Because the poor Muslim peasant has practically no education or resources, not least because centuries of peasant survival strategies have created their own nasty traditions and practices born out of povery and desperation, and because Islam and submission to Allah, and therefore the Imams, is a precious consolation.

Within the schools where I taught this lack of any educational background was so damaging, and I remember having arguments with Muslim boys who thought it was quite OK for their British born sisters to be sent off "back home" for a year when they were 14-15. They thus missed the first half of the examination courses for the 16+ examination, and would return either engaged or already married to husbands within the extended family to whom they had been promised years before. In any case their British education was irrelevant. They were expected to be married off and live as good Muslim wives and mothers, with their imported husband making sure that any children would be brought up not speaking English and with little knowledge of the English/British culture. Since those conversations in the late 1980's things have moved on: but even in a private school a very able Muslim girl told me that her father might not let her go to university. A Level was far enough for a girl.

Naturally the Muslim "dead hand" was a recipe for economic and cultural stagnation and impoverishment, that reduced Hinduism to a fossilised state, before the Great Hindu Revival that began in the early Nineteenth Century and which found an amazing champion in Annie Besant, who founded the Hindu University, and in amongst an exceptional career was elected the leader of the Indian National Congress during the First World War.

By this time she had become one of the leading lights of the Theosophyst Movement and had arranged for Krishnamurti and his brother Nita to be educated in such a way as to combine the wisdom of East and West. The movement was perhaps more Western than Indian in its essential premis that the world needed a saviour who would be "The Great World Teacher". Westerner Civilization believed in learning in order to teach or to get power of one kind or another, not in order to become wise and live a good life.

Crucially as a great annual camp in the Netherlands, where the followers of "The Order of the Star" assembled, Krishnamurti finally prepared the people for his "coming of age" speech. His great theme was that "Truth is a pathless land" that each must travel alone, freeing themselves from any teacher or leader. This was not the kind of message the "Western" organisers of Theosophis, wanted to here in the late 1920s. Or other westerners either. It was the great age of the Duce, the Fuehrer and the Red Tsar that was sweeping the world along a path that led to world war and the death of c50 million people.

Cass

Some of the Indian textiles on one of the market stalls in town, here, are just fabulus... the matterials alone are fabulus feels, and then there's all the colours and patturns... I get strange looks though, if I start wearing womens clothes I almost 'Had' to buy a fabulus scarf I saw err yesterday actually

Thanks Cass. As always your wealth of information
is enlightening and eye-opening (actually enlightening
and eye-opening may be the same thing). Please never
let the lazy readers discourage your pregnant posts!

I was particularly delighted by the phrase 'Truth is
a pathless land' - that we are each alone in our pursuit
of meaning; that we experience life and the universe in
our own unique, individual and subjective ways.

I have always believed that, being constantly and sadly
reminded of that reality. To understand it fully can be
quite dispiriting and lead to hopelessness in any search
for common good, common ideals or Hope for the species.

And yet, it is ultimately liberating to realise, as the great
Jimi Hendrix said, "I'm the one who's gotta die when
it's time for me to die."

Oh god! The angst!

~jwf~

jwf

Thanks for kind posts. Perhaps all the more so because your words are appropriate to what I am just going to write.

In spite of the angst,and though each must pursue truth alone, as in the pursuits of hunting and fishing, there comes the time to come home with the tribute of what has been harvested.

And then, as in this time of Harvest Home - the mood should be happy and celebratory as the harvest of truth comes with all who can bringing their contribution to the table to make a feast..

Thus this whole theme of sharing food in the ministry of Jesus, from the "miraculous" Feeding of the Five Thousand amongst strangers, or the Last Supper among friends- "Do this in remembrance of me".

Cass

The apopolex 21st Dec? Nah, But to give due credit, that's less than a year out.
See Comet Ison.
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap121001.html

'The Apopolex' gonna happen late November 2013 -
"One of the brightest comets ever?"
and
"Comet ISON appears on course to achieve sungrazer status as it passes within a solar diameter of Sun's surface in late 2013 November."

That phrase "within a solar diameter" means... what you read into it and meself, I'm laying plans for a spectacular sendoff

Wot! 12 more months you say!
Crap, I had it down to less than 3 months now.

Still not gonna do any Xmas shopping or desocrations.


~jwf~

Oh, I shouldn't let a little thing like a local apopolex spoil your personal Xmas desecrations. Go ahead, there's room for all, even here in this puniverse corner.

Happy Eczemas.

We seem to be worrying too much about a disaster that has nothing behind it other than the end of some ancient civilization's poorly-understood calendar.

I worry more about a space rock that's too small and elusive to be spotted by our astronomers, but big enough to do serious damage if and when it strikes this planet. Boston, Prague, Chesapeake Bay, and perhaps Naples all show signs of having been impact craters in the past.

Another disaster-in-the-making is a Thera-like volcano. Ever hear of Thera? It destroyed the Minoan civilization and set civllization in general back about a thousand years.That was about 3,600 years ago. Nothing of that magnitude has occurred since then.

In the 4th century, a major volcano spread enough ash over Europe to kill 250,000 people in Constantinople.

Seriously, are we more worried about the Mayan calendar than Global Warming? If so, I could argue that the human race is too delusional to survive anyway.

I don't think too many people are worried by the Mayan calendar. Nor, indeed by 'supervocanos' (Hawaii, Yellowstone, Lake Taupo...).

Global warming, on the other hand, seems no longer to be a major subject of debate though one may be forgiven for being worried.
Question: if global warming doesn't wipe us all out, how long will it be before we could say that it wasn't a minor vagary of the sun?

Hawaii is not a supervolcano! It's a "hot spot" volcano. It isn't a danger to anyone except Hawaiins.

>>Global warming, on the other hand, seems no longer to be a major subject of debate though one may be forgiven for being worried.
Question: if global warming doesn't wipe us all out, how long will it be before we could say that it wasn't a minor vagary of the sun?<<

Global warming is happening but it's not going to wipe us all out. There will be winners and losers. What will likely have a bigger impact is rocketing oil prices as oil runs out (it is running out) and rocketing food prices (as grain is turned into biofuel). The irony is that virgin forests (Amazon, Borneo etc) are being cut down for planting biofuel, while selling the wood to the west, and china etc.

The biggest neglect in the modern world has been the failure to invest in alternate energy supplies. Nuclear power is the only realistic option at the moment, plus a return to coal.

"Nuclear power is the only realistic option at the moment, plus a return to coal."[Stone Aart]

There's a city on the coast of Japan that found nuclear power to be unrealistic when they were hit by a tsunami. Nuclear power plants are very dependent on access to sources of cold water to cool their reactors. As sea levels rise, reactors that are too close to the ocean will have to be closed down or moved, at immense expense.

I don't think we can "return" to coal unless we depart from it. Coal is used for lots of things nowadays.

A lot of energy is lost when fossil fuels are burned to produce electricity. Improving efficiency could be just as good as finding more oil or coal reserves.

The fundamental energy problem is twofold (a) an economic system that was developed by exploiting the windfall of fossil fuels, creating a weak and dependent Humanity, and (b) the largely unfullfilled and neglected energy of people, creating apathy, lethargy and the new plague of obesity.. Shock news yesterday was that Italians last year bought more bikes than cars... Wise Italians they may have remembered that human survival is best suited by the critical mass achieved in City States, where collective power is still at a human level and people can get around by walking or cycling.. I saw that someone has opened up a Bicycle garage facility in the centre of London- all those City "Fat Cats".. They cycle in and a mechanic takes the bicycle away, if necessary carrying out any repairs. Then there are showers and locker facilities for getting presentable for work, which is within comfortable working distance.

Cass

They're building a fusion reactor in France:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER

If we're lucky, the media won't be able to twist the public's views against it, and we can eventually transition to fusion power.

>>Hawaii is not a supervolcano! It's a "hot spot" volcano<<: Mr. X
I can't argue - it just keeps coming up in same paras as the others I mentioned.

>>Global warming is happening but it's not going to wipe us all out<<: Stone Aart.
I find this comment interesting after all the hoohah a while ago, yet an absence of 'laying the blame' for all the extreme weather around the world more recently.

>>Nuclear power is the only realistic option at the moment<<: Stone Aart
and
>>There's a city on the coast of Japan that found nuclear power to be unrealistic when they were hit by a tsunami<<: Paulh
Yes, it seems so, and yes.
Because of the need for cooling most reactors are likely to be low-lying (or bugger-up local river environments).

Coal? Preferably not - I don't know of anything like a 'clean' process.
Fusion? Yes please but it seems to be some way off as yet - and what are the disadvantages? (and disadvantages there will be).


problems, problems. It all seems to come down to burgeoning population, doesn't it?
The coming apopulex.

Quote : "we can eventually transition to fusion power".

Which "we" are we talking about. In "Small is Beautiful" in 1973 Dr. E.F. Schumacher argued that the known resources of the world that had underpinned a "modern" and "industrial" way of life did not exist in sufficient quantities for the 1973 standard of living to be "rolled out" across all Humanity.. Since that R&D has perhaps pushed back the moment when we run out of vital resources. But that R&D tends to be much more expensive than the "windfall" age when Natural Resources could just be "picked up for peanuts".. 1973 was also the year when the OPEC Oil Crisis signalled that an oil cartel could hold "The developed world" to ransome, not least because the majority of people on Earth would probably be "on their side" in arguing against a situation in which the rich States , and their citizens, gained a higher income from the Oil- via their tax-revenues- than those States and citizens whose "once and for ever" "Black Gold" was being sold off.

Part of the problem with the Industrial Revolution was the whole idea of doing something on a massive scale.. Justifying a massive and monstrous solution by creating a massive and monstrous problem.. The key idea/image was provided by Jeremy Bentham's "Panopticon", the prison that he developed (for his brother) in which his design would make it possible for one lone warder to keep a huge number of convicts in prison because of the cell-blocks radiating out from one central spot where the Guardian could see all the doors at the same time.. Of course the whole idea presupposed that there is nothing more to running a prison than in keeping the inmates locked up like caged animals.. If you treat people like animals...

But massive centralised systems and mechanisms became the great dream of the "Age of Heoic Materialism".. and continue to inspire ideas e.g. regarding a new centralised Banking System for the Euro Zone, with a more powerful central bank making sure that the Austerity message gets home..

Cass