Beginning

Tired of being apathetic. No longer scared. Time to talk.

The way people view the world right now is disappointingly consumed by fear and gloom. Human achievement is truly amazing and what we as a species have created and are able to do is a testament to that. We are amazing and hopefully will continue to amaze more as time opens up to us. It is clear that our achievements are possible – we’ve done them! Why then are we constantly concerned that we will not be able to continue to achieve them? There is fear and gloom regarding the financial crisis and we worry about environmental disaster. The financial crisis, it seems to me, is a self inflicted injury and the subject of perception, not reality per se. The environmental crisis is real, but nevertheless a part of the universe and its unfolding. We need to adapt to our environment and make sure that as part of it we are able to live in it. No crystal balls required, if we are clever enough.

Diversity is a key component to our ability to adapt to a changing environment. Diversity is similar to tolerance. Instead of a simple acceptance of a different perspective and a rationalization of its existence as something separate from ourselves, diversity is an embracing of the value and need for the different perspective, indeed all of the different perspectives. This embracing allows, as a part of the multitude of ways of thinking, behaving and acting, at least a part of our species to thrive in whatever environment is presented. Popular thinking to any one extreme threatens this diversity and, perhaps counterintuitively, the differences between people may be the more important aspects, not the similarities. Even though on its surface, focusing on similarities would seem to lead to more peace and harmony, I don’t believe this is correct in the long run. It can be difficult to reconcile differing points of view, and there exists a need to face these oppositions in order to continue to adapt. My view is that government and corporations, in their present form, are a major source of problem in terms of resolving conflict and embracing diversity.

Governments often purport to represent the people. In a democracy the leader purports to represent many millions of people. I find this laughable. I have yet to meet a single person who truly believes that they are capable of understanding many millions of people simultaneously and presenting a unified view of those many millions of people. My experience suggests that even obtaining a unified view with merely many dozens of people is a feat in and of itself. Governments pretend to represent everyone, but know that they do not and so in a process of rationalization decide on a particular course of action which truly only represents a portion of the people that they are purporting to represent. As this trend continues we find in the proverbial ‘West’ that corporations gain more power over people.

Corporations are sitting on large quantities of capital, typically in the form of money, and receive tax breaks from governments in order to entice them to ‘set up shop’ in that government’s jurisdiction and hopefully create jobs. This type of politics has been carrying on for years and it seems to me that generally neither the jobs nor the capital flows from the corporations to the government jurisdiction. Corporations seem to have the ear (and balls) of government and the people are not benefiting from this relationship as much as they deserve. If this trend continues than there will come a time when people must lose faith in their governments, the corporations and ultimately in the promise of a future, presently provided in the form of money, offered by these institutions. If the value of money is lost to us average humans we will see a truly real financial crisis. Let us not forget that a corporation is a collection of people and that these collections have a vested interest not only in the survival of their own corporation, but also the other corporations that form part of the foundation upon which their own corporation relies.

I plan to blog about issues like this on a regular basis. This is the first of many. I know that some of you will like what you read, others will not; that is good – diversity is important. The remainder of today’s blog entry will be about me and who I am so that there is some context for my perspective.

I am a human being aged about 35 years. I have spent time in Europe (mostly the UK), Asia, North America and lived most of my life in Canada.  I am a single father sharing custody of my only child.  I became a vegetarian in about 1999 and as of 2011 I am a pescetarian.  I have a Master of Biochemistry degree from Oxford University. I am a patent agent and I have my own company. I believe in anarchy - not the violent, chaotic sort, but rather an understanding that the government and laws do not prevent people from behaving in particular ways, but rather are a construct that provides a sort of social contract (in other words the government is the biggest gang around right now – though corporations are giving them a good run for their money). Philosophically, I believe in free will, but that free will is born from a deterministic, pan-dimensional universe in which every possibility exists and is played out. Time is not linear, but more like a field that permits objects to have time (like depth is a something that objects have and not because depth is a linear vector acting upon objects). Which universe you experience is up to you – you have control over the most minute fraction of the choices in the universe, but those that you do are the key to your free experience of the universe.