Neonicotinoids – A Criminal Act in the Making?

Neonicotinoids are back in the news again. The BBC’s Countryfile programme revisited the issue in its 22 June (2014) edition. And we were treated to a representative of Syngenta – that most independent, unbiased and reliable source of information, and producer of neonicotinoids – telling us that their scientific studies have shown that when neonicotinoids are used properly they have a very low chance of causing harm to bees. Now, would they say anything other than this? Would any study that they undertook or funded, come to any other conclusion? Of course not! This is what happens when scientists prostitute themselves and sell their souls to the evils of global multinational corporations that would destroy nature in their pursuit of profit. And as for the alliance forged between Syngenta and Bayer to challenge to EU ban on certain neonicotinoids – this can be likened to a conspiracy to wage war on nature for the purpose of making profit.

Society needs to take action against companies like Syngenta and those, like their spokesperson, who hide behind science to make claims in their own self-interests. And if you knew how arrogant and ignorant people are within companies like Syngenta, and the contempt that they display towards anyone who takes a different view to them, then you would want to society to take action. So what can society do? The answer lies in law – criminal law! I will explain.

If people take to the streets of our cities and towns, running riot, causing damage, and looting, the full force of the criminal law is rightly brought to bear against the offenders. Yet when scientists and their employers run riot with nature, destroying it, leaving unpredictable and potentially life threatening legacies for future generations, society has no criminal laws that can be used to bring the guilty to justice. It is time to change this, and, when necessary, to bring such people before the courts, to show scientists and the organisations that support them, that they are not above the law, especially if there is evidence that their products are destroying nature. Of neonicotinoids, one might say that this is an example of a crime against the environment in the making, which could easily become a crime against humanity.

And I leave you with this thought: Zyklon B! Neonicotinoids! They are the same. And the legal principle is that there should be no difference in the eyes of the law, between using Zyklon B to kill people at Auschwitz, and the use of other pesticides, and genetic modification, in agriculture, when this leads to destruction of biodiversity which creates the potential for consequential loss of human life. The common issue lies in the creation of a culture where evil is normalised, and the difference lies only in the degree of evil, but the road from the lesser to the greater is short. The outer driven person will, by their compliance with the normalised culture of evil, accelerate the transition. The inner driven person will take a stand and resist the culture of evil. Now is the time to make this stand and to make science and scientists criminally accountable for their actions. Yet, if there are any inner driven people left within the world of science, their voices have fallen silent. And this is not surprising given the ideological nature of modern science, where to question is seen as heresy. This is what happens when dogma takes hold, and when such happens, human tragedy follows close on.

And in the coming days I will be tweeting a new Twitter Tale, called Let the Bees Die. Inspired by the appalling attitudes displayed by people in the agri-chem industry (and their apologists) towards the plight of bees, and using words spoken by people from that industry, this Twitter Tale reveals the values and thinking that may well lead to the extinction of our bees. It also highlights the perversity that prevails, because the destruction of bees, for companies like Syngenta, would be a good outcome, as this becomes yet another opportunity to exploit science for profit! And so, in the closing of the tale, one then confronts cultures of normalised evil and the matter of crimes against the environment, crimes against the unborn, crimes against humanity. 

To read more about the damaging effects of neonicotinoids, I recommend this article on The Organic View web site: Harvard Scientist Rebuts Industry Claims about Neonicotinoids.

A Brief History of Time

This week my blog is a book review. The book in question is A Brief History of Time by the theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking.

I came to read this book because I have been involved with developing knowledge about time for the past decade and more, and recently my new book, Moments in Time, has been published. This work of fiction is a novel about time, and that which is timeless and that which is not – more about this book will follow in future blogs. For the moment I will focus on Hawking’s book, which I have just read as part of the ongoing process of developing understandings of time in the context of using artistic processes as a research method. This too I will say more about in future blogs.

To begin, I will state that while I enjoyed reading Hawking’s book and found it informative, even though it is now relatively old (first published in 1988), the book is poorly written. Hawking’s talents, whatever they may be, certainly do not extend to writing. At the beginning, in the acknowledgements, he mentions that the publisher (presumably in response to the submission of a first draft) provided a long list of comments and queries. There is from my perspective as a person who is a writer, still a long list of issues that need to be addressed! I also found in this book, some lack of sound information about early cosmology, with what is provided tending more towards myth than what actually happened and how understanding of the universe evolved in early times starting with the Ancient Greeks, and what was actually known, but ignored. The influence of the Protestant interpretation of history is also evident in the book.

What I really liked about the book though, was the honesty and the lack of hubris. Here one finds someone who it would appear, is not caught up in what I call the Science Delusion – at last a scientist who understands science! What am I referring to?

Throughout the book Hawking’s refers to the scientific process that is being deployed in theoretical physics. Constantly he reminds the reader that the models that are used are only models. They are hypotheses and conjectures, and there are several of them which are partial, and not fully compatible, and these are based on simplifications and approximations. In other words, reduction of what is far too complex to be fully understood, to something that is simper and more manageable – this is reductionism. Clearly stated also is the criteria that is used to measure how good these models are – their ability to predict observable phenomena or to account for what can be observed.

And there is no pretence here that these models represent the truth. They are exactly what the name suggests, just models. And as hypotheses they cannot be proved. All one can do is assess their value in terms of the match with observational evidence and this may or may not corresponded to the real universe. We have no way of knowing if this is the case! Here I refer you to Descartes’ Philosophy of Science, who, when writing about this very issue, observed that a watchmaker could construct two watches which were externally similar and equally accurate in keeping time, but with very different internal mechanisms. Thus one cannot prove that there was a big bang that brought the universe into being. If you believe that there was a big bang it is because you choose to believe this, and this is a subjective act. There may be another model that is quite different, but as of yet, this has not be put forward as a conjecture. Likewise if you believe in the evolution of species, it is because you choose to believe, there is no way to prove that this is what actually happened, for again there may be another hypothesis that equally well fits with the observable evidence. That such an hypothesis does not yet exist is not an indication that it does not, only that the closed minds of scientists are not willing to explore such matters. Which brings me to the matter of those nutty professors that constantly appear in television programmes, spouting phrase such as “I have no axe to grind”, or “I am a scientist, and I only deal with facts and evidence” and other such nonsense.

The difference between reality and models is an important point, as those who are caught up in the Science Delusion, for example the nutty professors that I just mentioned, seem to have lost sight of this, for they, it seems do believe that the models are reality.

The book nicely shows that science is not about the discovery of truth, but of understandings, which are too very different things. Only, most of the scientist I have encountered have lost sight of this, and instead believe that they are participating in some glorious quest to discover the truth – the sole truth!

This point is well illustrated by an encounter I had recently in Brussels with a scientist caught-up in the delusion that science is about revealing the truth. This scientist said to me that: “I see science as a process of successive improvements in approximations leading towards the truth and that the truth will out in the end.” This is nonsense, but very dangerous nonsense! There is, as has often been said, no-one more dangerous as he (or she) who knows the truth (or think they know the truth). This is why we need to bring science under control and to remove it from the affairs of government, of the state, for it is having a pernicious influence. More about this will be said in future blogs.

So, I conclude by saying that, if you can cope with the writer’s style, read A Brief History of Time, and begin to understand science, and that it is not about the discovery of the truth. Understand also from this book, the subjective and irrational nature of the creative process, and learn that science is not, as many of the nutty professors would have you believe, solely about logic, reason, and objectivity. To say that it is so, is both a mark of ignorance and delusion. Most of the nutty professors have the latter in abundance. Recall my observation from previous blogs: why so smart yet so dumb?

That scientists believe that they are engaged in a process of revealing the truth is indicative of its Abrahamic roots in Christian Europe, and is one of the reasons why, what I call Dawkin Science (or Dorkin Science), is another religion. It is the fourth Abrahamic religion, and carries with it the same dangers, which is why science and the state need to be separated, for this type of science is just as much about myth, superstition, tradition, etc. as Abrahamic religions are, and thus, as a religion, lacks credibility and authority.

The State should be concerned with authority that is derived from the democratic will of the people and laws that support the notions of civil liberty, equality, fairness, justness, and respect for people, about which science has nothing useful to say. And, as for this modern version of science – Dawkin Science – it will in the end be seen for what it has become: just another dogma that saves people from having to deal with the true complexity of human existence. Dawkin Science and Aristotelian Science are one and the same in the sense that they both have held back the development of human thought and understanding. And this you will find explored in my books, which are available to read online for free: Encounter with a Wise Man, A Tale of Two Deserts, Enigma and Moments in Time.

Talent Wants to be Free

This week my blog is a book review. The book in question is Talent Wants to be Free by Orly Lobel, an American Academic lawyer based in one of California’s universities – it matters not which one.

I came to read this book because my daughter mentioned it to me. Apparently her boss enthuses about it, and being myself interested in this thing called the knowledge economy, I borrowed her copy and read it. What follows is my opinion.

I would suggest that my daughter’s boss find better books to read, for Talent Wants to be Free is repetitive and banal in the extreme!

The setting for the book is what is called the knowledge era company, where the implication is that information, knowledge and innovation are central to competition among enterprises. This though is the definition of any company in the free market, and is the basis upon which the industrial revolution was founded – innovation in technology in a business setting, which required information and knowledge, on a scale not before seen, leading to economic growth and the spreading of material prosperity through the stimulation of demand. So here we are in the 1750s with companies doing what the author (and many more) regard as something that characterises businesses in the 21^st century. And the twist is that the author (unknowingly) demonstrates the importance of information and knowledge in this long past era, in the final chapter. I will tell you more of what constitutes a knowledge era company in the future. For the moment I will focus on the review.

Talent Wants to be Free is essentially a book about legal matters, in particular non-compete clauses in employee contracts that prevent them from working for competing companies after leaving employment with their current employer. Also covered are non-disclosure clauses, the protection of trade secrets, and the control mentality of firms seeking to enforce these agreements to prevent the leakage of proprietary information and knowledge.

Found within the text are many anecdotal accounts of what American companies have done, or not done, how different States enforce or do not enforce these contracts, scattered among which are bits of information from research projects, the author’s and other peoples, combined with a liberal use of quotes from Nobel laureates, which all point to the message that control and restriction are bad for all – for employees, for companies, and for the economy both local and national. And all this is presented, I suppose, to demonstrate what is stated in the book’s sub-title which is – Why We Should Learn to Love Leaks, Raids, and Free Riding. But there was no need to write such a book to make this point. It is self-evidently clear that any company, any region, that seeks to restrict the free flow of information and knowledge will atrophy (the former Soviet Union being the classic example of this). This understanding comes from systems theory, and the second law of thermodynamics expresses the concept in formal terms – in a closed system, which is one that is isolated, in other words no inputs or outputs cross the system boundary, increasing disorder will result. Prevent the free flow of ideas, and soon you will have problems!

That American companies are highly litigious is well known. It is not however clearly stated how many of them actually engage in the legal battles described in this book, so we are left wondering if, what is reported is just a collection of rather extreme cases which are unrepresentative of the majority. But being European quite frankly I do not care! Evidently this is a book for Americans, and no effort has been made to make it appeal to a wider audience, which perhaps reflects the parochial attitude often found in the United States.

The book is not entirely about legal matters and the author also wanders into the area of organisational and industrial psychology, particularly the matter of employee motivation, where she tells the reader what many will already know, that financial remuneration is not the sole motivator. Wow! She then demonstrates that reward systems need to be designed to create the employee behaviour that is sought. Again wow!

She also mentions the work and motivations of Henry Ford and Frederick Taylor but her knowledge of these are inaccurate. The author states that Taylor provided the academic backing to Ford’s reforms (of production). This is not true.

Taylor pre-dated Ford by decades. Taylor’s work on the development of so-called Scientific Management took place during the latter decades of the nineteenth century. I say so-called Scientific Management for the work is not scientific at all. Mostly it is just precepts dressed up as being scientific. There is a joke among engineers that goes like this: electrical engineers have Ohm’s law, mechanical engineers have Hooke’s law, but production engineers have the precepts of Frederick Taylor.

Many years ago I explored the work of Taylor in great depth, along with that of Henry Ford. Taylor’s work was not that of an academic (he worked in the steel industry in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania), so it is no academic work, nor can it be described as scientific. While he made technical contributions in certain areas, the most notable of which is the Taylor equation, which relates to metal cutting on lathes, his efforts to present his ideas about how to manage factories were nothing more that a disingenuous attempt to package as scientific, what were just his opinions and obsessions. Judging by his behaviour, it would seem also that he was suffering from psychological problems. Today we would not praise him, but most probably advise him to seek professional help.

Taylor was obsessed with control and efficiency, having discovered as a young metal worker apprentice, that workers deliberately work inefficiently to avoid managers setting the pace of work (this was known as soldiering). So later in life he set about implementing a system of management that would put an end to this, taking control over work (the thinking and planning) away from shopfloor workers, and placing it in the hands of managers. This is central control and what he was doing is known as vertical division of labour. And Taylor was not alone, for there were many others developing related ideas, such as time and motion studies, which were all part of a movement in the late 19^th century to develop the means for managers, often acting on behalf of absent owners (investors) to formalise the running and operation of businesses. And this interest in control was nothing new, for it can be traced back to the early days of the industrial revolution, when managers were faced with the challenge of organising and controlling people who had, very much before then, been used to working in a more autonomous way, in what today we would call a subsistence economy. One can also see this interest in control in the writings of Adam Smith.

Henry Ford on the other hand, undertook his work on the development of mass production lines many years after Taylor, and Ford was focused on what is called horizontal division of labour, which again was not new, for it had been applied since the early days of the industrial revolution, when factory owners recognised that it was a way of de-skilling work, thus allowing them to employ less skilled people at lower cost, and also giving them more power over employees.

What Ford did was to take horizontal division of labour to an extreme by creating jobs in an assembly line, that required little skill (hence the quote from Ford which goes along the lines – the person who puts the wheel on does not put on the nuts, and the person who puts on the nuts does not tighten them …). This massive simplification of work also allowed him to introduce automation, and of course this was all done in the context of what was normal in those days – a very hierarchical organisation, where also horizontal division of labour was also applied across all the functions that need to be undertaken in a business, thus leading to the silos that have been and still are the curse of many enterprises.

Ford in doing what he did, was focused on eliminating costs and speeding up production so that he could mass produce. Interestingly though, Ford eventually discovered that his production line was not a place where people wanted to spend their whole working lives, and that their was a limit to how long a person could stand this mind-numbing work where they constantly had to undertaking machine like actions. His 20 dollar day was in part, a recognition that to keep people working on the production line he needed to pay above the odds.

Apart from the above defects in the book, as I have already intimated, what one encounters in the book, is page after page of the same issues discussed repeatedly, all of which could have been briefly summarised and placed in an appendix! It is not until one reaches the final chapter than one encounters something interesting, for at page 218 suddenly there is the beginning of an introduction to the notion of companies cooperating and sharing information, but then the book ends, so no sharing here on the behalf of the author! Perhaps she thinks that this is enough to bring clients to her door? Perhaps it is, if one does not know about such things, but the book does not demonstrate that the author knows anything either, only that she knows how to write a boring book deeply rooted in the notion that you tell as little as possible – keep the trade secrets to yourself and only reveal them to those willing to pay (perhaps?).

In the blind man’s world the one eyed man is king! Better though to speak to someone with two good eyes, and a third eye, the mind, with knowledge of what is new and what is not. And there is little that is new in this book! So my recommendation is to read another one, for in the end what it seems to be, is nothing more than a marketing pitch on the part of an academic lawyer, who also does consulting work. It is the author’s way of saying look how much I know.

Being a European, and having worked for nearly 30 years in research projects involving collaborations among competing companies, I have come to know something about how to manage and protect Intellectual Property in such circumstances, as well as the value to be found in such cooperation and how to achieve that value. I also know that many companies do not know very well, exactly what is a trade secret, and that often what they think are trade secrets are not at all. This is the problem with secrets, they are not shared so what is in fact thought of as a secret may in fact be common knowledge, but no-one ever discovers this because they are too busy protecting their non-secrets.

Companies often also do not fully understand what is unique to them, what is known more widely, and that the best approach to protecting any uniqueness that comes from owning Intellectual Property (in what ever form that may come), is to develop more of it, and that this also involves sharing with others and also giving some of it away! And all this I discovered in the early 1990s, and so did many others.

When Civilisations Collapse …

History shows that when civilisations begin to collapse, to disintegrate, and to come to their natural end, people in these civilisations retreat into the past, into that which is familiar and reassuring. But this does not stop the collapse. Most likely it hastens the end, for what such civilisations usually need is a radical transformation, a process of revolutionary renewal, a rebirth, where what exists, is overturned and new ideas flow into the body of society, bringing new life. This does not mean violence, for most often what is needed are changes within the mind, changes of thought, which can come in the form of something like the renaissance.

In the aftermath of the European Parliament elections is looks as though many Europeans are beginning to seek refuge in the comfortingly familiar, and are opting for far-right parties – a mixture of neo-fascists, racists, xenophobes, and nationalists. A retreat into the past!

But this is not the only retreat into the past that is becoming evident. In the United Kingdom we have a government that is retreating into familiar industrial era economic policies which involve growing the industrial era sector of the economy, through capital and resource intensive projects: the high speed rail link HS2; Fracking; and Nuclear Power, are three examples of this. They are also pushing the development of what seem to be new industries, but which in reality are not: biotech. The technology may be new, but the mindset of these companies is routed in industrial era thinking.

There is also a retreat into science, which has become over the past decades highly discredited. Science apparently, is going to save us, so we need more of it which is bad news given the increasingly unethical nature of modern science, not the mention the highly deluded nature of scientists.

So retreat into the past seems to be everywhere. The prospects therefore of a renaissance, which is what the New Narrative for Europe declaration calls for, is largely being ignore as those with power stampede towards that which is safe and reassuring – the past. And from this great woes will flow in due course.

This rush to reinvent the past highlights the failure of existing institutions and illustrates well why ordinary people now need to act to peacefully bring about radical changes. One way they can do this is to create a renaissance from the bottom up, and this is where artists and writers, who are generally more connected with ordinary people and local communities, can show the way, as I do in effect through my writings (this blog, my books, my tweets, my web site). This is the way towards rebuilding civilisation, and it is most necessary as it seems that the early signs of a collapse of our existing civilisation are starting to appear, which will in due course lead governments to engage in authoritarian actions as they struggle to retain control. And it is from these governments that will come forth the violence and restrictions of civil liberties that accompany collapse. Only they will not call it such, for they have different names for it: maintaining order; the rule of law; state of emergency; anti-terrorism; national security. The joys of the Nation State!

New Narrative for Europe – A Very European Outcome!

In my blog last week I asked the question whether the New Narrative for Europe initiative did deliver a new narrative. The answer is no!

The declaration, produced by a group of artists and intellectuals, did what most Europeans do, produce that which is European in character, which essentially involves saying what a fine bunch of people we are, but what a pity that a few spoil things! The few of course are those nasty people - racists, fascists, communists and others – who did all those bad things that we are constantly reminded about in television documentaries and often also in films. The problem with Europeans however is that this aspect of Europe has many dimensions and has been with us for thousands of years. And it is still there now, manifesting itself in new guises that we, the current generation of European, do not recognise, but which future generations will, and for which they will also condemn us, just as surely as we now condemn our predecessors.

I do agree with the declaration that there is a need to respond to the populist movements founded on nationalism. This represents a re-emergence of one of these nasty elements that will lead to trouble in the future, but I do not agree that the answer to this is to present the EU as the only alternative, thus doing what Europeans are good at, either/or thinking. What I was looking for from the so called New Narrative was an understanding that, what we call modernity, that what emerged from the enlightenment and the scientific revolution, while increasing our material wellbeing, has failed. With that failure also comes an understanding that the Nation State and its institutions, as well as Supra States, namely the EU and its institutions, are all failing, and that Nationalism and Europeanism, are not the way forward, have nothing new to offer, and that the time has come to be rid of both, to transition to a different and more democratic way of organising ourselves. The future one can say lies not in a system dominated by representational democracy, but one founded on participatory democracy, where the power of the representational is constrained and limited by the participatory, and both are framed within the context of that which transcends political dogma and national interest, things which are, for example, captured in documents such as the American Declaration of Independence, Constitutions, Bills of Rights. “We hold these truths to be self evident …”

Thus while I agree with the call for a new Renaissance, it needs to be one based on overturning what we have now, and building a new type of civilisation. Artists have a major role to play here, but not by producing what that emerged from the New Narrative initiative. This was an opportunity to tell the politicians that their world is finished.

We need to reinvent Europe, and this starts by acknowledging that there is something about Europeans that is not very pleasant, and we should be aiming not just at a transformation of Europe, but of the European mindset, with all its strange values and beliefs, some of which I mentioned in my blog last week.

I suspect that this is not going to happen from the top down, and that existing institutions are not going to accept that they are failing and no longer relevant. Building a new Europe, a new world, means empowering ordinary people to peacefully build a different type of civilisation, where those in power, no longer have the power to do the things that brand Europe as the most destructive culture that has ever existed. And, as I say in my book, A Tale of Two Deserts, no-one has to be hurt, no one has to die, to achieve a better world. All people have to do is be decent, and start behaving differently, changing their lives, their lifestyles, and turning their back on what Europe and the Nation State currently offers, thus making, by default, a different type of Europe. And this does mean disengaging from existing institutions, while also at the same time remaining engaged, especially to ensure that the more extreme aspects of European culture, those nasty people, do not fill the vacuum that will be created by this disengagement. So a great irony is, that to build a new Europe, we need also to keep working in the old system, thus ensuring that we create a peaceful transition. This latter word, transition, is an important one, and is where we should be focussing out efforts – transitioning to a new system, the details of which we need to begin working out as we go, which is not a very European thing to do, to acknowledge that there is no clear truth around which we can build a better world.

It is for the people of Europe, ordinary citizens, to create a New Narrative for Europe, and about how to do this I will say more in due, course, for it is bound to the idea of sustainability, and making this concept more than just empty words, which again leads me to say that it is all about behavioural change.