Joe's Jottings

Now that the smoke of battle (and confusion) of General Election 2010 has cleared and we have a Coalition Government that hasn’t yet been proven to be the spawn of Beelzebub, can I make a suggestion that demonising anyone in politics – even Tories – is not a good move?

Twenty five years ago, during the Thatcher years, a few of us on the Left made the observation that it was potentially unhelpful to refer to the politics espoused by her Government as ‘Thatcherism’, even as a shorthand.  Our argument went that if you attach a name to a branch of politics in that very overt way, then as soon as the individual dies, quits or gets voted out of office then, almost by definition, that form of politics disappears from the scene.  There is a historical precedent; whilst 99% of everyone called the political beliefs of Hitler and his followers Nazism or Fascism, a few people in the 30s – often doctrinaire Communists – referred to it as ‘Hitlerism’.  Whereas we’ve been able to spot Nazism over the decades, spotting the politics underlying ”Thatcherism’ seems to have been harder - the monetarist and ‘Shock Doctrine’ policies of the Chicago School have come back repeatedly to haunt us in many ways, culminating in the years of Bush Junior Government in the US.

This last election has been truly bizarre, with people repeatedly warning me about ‘re-electing Thatcher’ in the form of David Cameron.  The irony is that some of the folks who’ve been most vociferously demonising Thatcher and the Tories were in the twenties and early 30s – in other words, when Thatcher was in power these folks were either foetuses or snot-nosed kids. 

Demonising any individual politician is fraught with danger for those doing it; unless your target is very obviously evil incarnate (in which case the vast majority of people will see it anyway and you’re ‘preaching to the choir’) then folks will just regard it as sour grapes and ‘ad hominem’ arguments.  One thing that has started happening in recent times in the UK is that people have become disillusioned with the political process, politicians and the whole schoolyard ethos that seems to have permeated British politics for the last 20 years.  The demonisation of one individual or party by others involved in the same ‘game’, so to say, has all the elements of ‘pot calling kettle black’ and people have responded to it accordingly.

It IS last century – just look at the nonsense at ACAS last night when BA Chief Willie Walsh was surrounded by a good old fashioned British ‘leftie rent-a-mob’ that seemed to belong more in the 1970s at Grunwick than in 2010.  The union chief was furious, ACAS was embarrassed and angry, Walsh commented on the disgust he felt in the situation he was in.  The demonstrators focused their chants on Walsh, and have probably significantly damaged chances of settling the dispute.  Seeing the placards from groups like ‘Socialist Worker’, for those of us who were in the Labour movement in the 80s and 90s it was like a return to old times with the ‘Usual Suspects’ – the professional hecklers and agitators who have no great desire to settle these disputes but simply seek to benefit from them.

Boys and girls, that approach is over.  It was always pointless and now people see it for what it is – egotistical tantrum throwing by typically over-privileged, under-occupied political performance artists.  If you want to achieve change in our society – get involved with genuine community groups and put your  backs in to getting some work done.  Demonising the opposition is childish and pointless.

This story is desperately, tragically sad on a number of levels, and also makes me pretty angry.  Read the story – unless you’ve had a very sheltered life (oh, working in the public sector or the hallowed halls of academe or parts of the media)  then it’s almost certain that you’ll have come across  similar situations over the years.  A couple of friends – one white and one from another ethnic background – engage in banter in which each takes the mickey out of the other’s background or ethnicity.  I’ve certainly been there – I’ve had my religion described as a ‘lifestyle choice, not a real religion’ and been described as a ‘white bastard’ and in turn have suggested that we don’t upset one of my friends as he had a rucksack and wasn’t afraid to use it (immediately after the 7/7 bombings here in the UK).

Now, before anyone reading takes instant exception, I should point out that these comments were made in groups of people who love and respect each other, and who’ll almost certainly stay friends until the day they die.  It’s called bantering, having a joke, whatever you want to name it.  It’s happening between individuals who’ve known each other for years, who know exactly what the other people think of them and who also know that when the chips are down, they can call on these friends to help out.

And the bottom line is, that if it’s OK between these folks who’re directly concerned, and they’re not being a deliberate nuisance to anyone else, then it’s no other bugger’s business what X calls Y.  Especially when X and Y are laughing about it and each is giving as good as they get.  It’s called friendship.

It’s tragic that Mr Amor made a joke to his friend, who is black, and who took the joke in good heart, only to be reported by a work colleague.  And then Mr Amor shot himself.  No man should die because he told a politically incorrect joke.  And to be honest, no one should be grassing people up for making a humorous comment about the situation they were in, that the people immediately involved both found amusing.

No sensible person would suggest that jokes at other people’s expense are ever amusing; jokes about race, sexuality or religion told with the deliberate intention of hurting or offending should be dealt with appropriately.  Banter and chit chat between people who’re actually taking the jokes made about them in a good natured way, because they know the people telling them have good hearts, are not the thing, in any sensible world, that should be reported as an offence.

I don’t use the phrase Political Correctness very often on this blog – it’s an over-worked phrase, but today I needed to use it.  Just be careful out there, folks, there are likely to be sneaks listening in to make sure that the banter you and your workmates share together, and that offends no one, is ‘OK’.

It’s not new, of course.  Some years ago in one European country every workplace and block of flats had someone whose job it was to report on whether people they overheard were ‘toeing the party line’ when chatting.  It was East Germany, and the people concerned were agents of the Stasi – the secret police.  And prior to that were the hated ‘Blockleiters’ of Nazi Germany.

Totalitarianism starts small, with small minded people who hate the idea that someone, somewhere, might be having fun.  We need to start telling these people to keep their noses out of our business.

Over the last decade or so, the number of times when New Labour has created legislation in what ‘the Simpsons’ would call ‘the American way’ – i.e. do a ‘half arsed job’ – has been legion.  There must be some sort of finishing school for NuLab legislators where they go to have that bit of the brain responsible for common sense somehow removed.  And now Lord Ali has kept up the tradition by tabling an amendment to the Equality Bill that allows civil partnership ceremonies on religious premises.  Note the juxtaposition of words there…civil…and religious.

In a letter to The Times, Lord Carey, a former Archbishop of Canterbury, has expressed his concerns about this amendment.

Now, I was of the impression that the reason civil partnerships existed was for people who could not or would not undertake a religious marriage (irrespective of religion) but still wanted to publicly commit themselves to each other.  Look what the direct.gov website has to say on the issue:

“A civil marriage ceremony cannot have any religious content, but you may be able to arrange for individual touches such as non-religious music and readings to be added to the legal wording, and for the ceremony to be videoed. The register office where you intend to marry will be able to tell you more about the options available.

A Civil Partnership is legally formed by the signing of the civil partnership schedule. Like a civil marriage, this is also non-religious, but couples who wish to arrange for a ceremony should discuss this with the registration officials.”

Seems pretty straight forward there.  They even say ‘cannot have any religious content’.  With me so far?  Good.  Let’s take a moment to thing about religious buildings – and I’m going to include churches, mosques, chapels, synagogues and temples here.  Most religious buildings are built with certain tenets, based on the religion in question, in mind.  Ignoring the theological issues around whether the church refers to the building or the people who celebrate there, and focusing purely on the building itself, there are aspects of the construction and furnishing of most churches (and other religious buildings) that are symbolic – altars, crosses, positioning of certain fittings and furnishings, the orientation of a building within a plot of land – all can be highly symbolic, and hence ‘religious’.  So, to be strictly within the letter of the law, any ceremonies held would have to somehow remove the symbolism from the building.  Do we have to take away a cross because it might show up on a video, for example?

We then have the whole raft of issues around desecration; if a Mosque were to be used, do we insist on all those entering the main part of the room to be barefoot to respect the building, or do we allow any footwear?  Same with clothing.  Or is it likely that this opening up of religious buildings would only apply to, for example, Christian denominations or faiths that do not insist on certain rules around footwear / clothing / etc.?

And this applies whether the couple participating in the ceremony are heterosexual or homosexual; we have here a simple issue of a law being bought in as part of an ‘Equality Bill’ that will actually remove the rights of religious communities to indicate how their buildings are used by non-believers.  Hardly equal rites for them, is it?  Especially as in many religious communities the fabric of the buildings is maintained not by state or local government but by the religious group themselves.

A religious building is for the celebration of religious events.  It’s not to provide a photogenic backdrop for people with no beliefs at all.  It isn’t to provide yet another football in the political battles around the rights of homosexuals vs heterosexuals in our communities.  By hanging this legislation of the Equality Bill, I’m afraid that it will end up putting some priests, Imans and vicars in a terrible position of being asked to go against their conscience or against the law in the name of equal rites – which don’t seem to apply very much to religious folks in these sorts of situations.  A vicar can refuse to marry people in a Church based on any number of reasons – divorce, where the people live, lack of obvious connection with the Church / parish.  These restrictions have been in place for centuries in some cases, and apply to everyone irrespective or sexuality, race, whatever who wish to use the Church.

This law seeks to effectively de-consecrate religious buildings for a short period of time – it should be resisted.

Now - here is where what I write will start getting contentious and I expect to be upsetting a few folks with what I say next. 

It’s no secret that I am a religious man.  I like to think of myself as a fairly tolerant and reasonably non-judgemental fellow, but it increasingly seems to me that when our Government talks of tolerance and equality it usually means that religious folks are going to get it in the neck, and be expected to suspend some of our personal beliefs in how we conduct ourselves in our day to day lives.  If we’re now going to start being told who we can and can’t allow to use our own churches and holy places, then our rights are being eroded, and perhaps it’s time for some tolerance to be shown to us and our beliefs.

As some of you will know, I’m what’s best described as an (occasionally) practising Christian.  Just to get the joke out of the way early, I’ll keep practising and one day I hope to get it right!  Yesterday I attended a Christening in a different Church to my usual one, and the sermon offered was about the topic of expectation; funnily enough, over the last 24 hours I found myself pondering a few issues around the topic of expectation – what I expected form others, and what others expected from me.

The funny thing is that this isn’t the first time that this has happened to me.  Before I became a ‘regular’ attender at Church, I’d sometimes go on a whim and was quite surprised at how often the sermon or a reading in Church would provide me with insights in to whatever was uppermost in my mind at that time.  Of course, I’m aware that there are any number of explanations for this sort of thing.  The first is that I remember only the times when there was a relationship between my state of mind / concerns and the sermon given on a particular day.  A second explanation is that I read more in to the sermon or reading that is actually warranted.  And there are probably more….

But…it sometimes makes me wonder.

Whether coincidence, causality or synchronicity I do find the experience useful, and in many ways that’s all that counts.  I get inspiration, guidance and intellectual provocation from what I hear at Church, as well as an affirmation of my faith.  I sometimes wonder if these ‘coincidences’ are actually some sort of answer to prayers that I’ve not said out loud – they are often so very relevant and provide me with inspiration and insight to get stuff done. 

As an aside, I just heard the following line of dialogue from the TV show ‘FlashForward’ that ‘What some people see as coincidence is actually God at work’. 

Daft as it may sound, I think that’s a great point to finish this post.

A couple of years ago Naomi Klein wrote a fascinating – and scary – book called ‘Shock Doctrine’  in which she presented the thesis that what we now call ‘free market capitalism’ – that form of capitalism that started with the activities of the Chicago School of Economists in the late 60s and 70s – came to it’s successful position in our world by a combination of military and political interventions that were almost acts of war.  She posited that various regimes – starting with the Pinochet regime in Chile in the 1970s – used the dislocations in society caused by coups, war and even natural disasters to bring in to being a form of free market economy that exploits the vast majority of people and gives certain companies and individuals vast wealth on the back of Government policies.

Recent examples have included the way in which beaches areas were sold off for tourist hotels after the Asian Tsunami wiped out fishing villages, the way in which New Orleans was totally socially re-engineered after Hurricane Katrina and the way in which companies like Blackwater and Haliburton have made vast profits form the war-created crises in Afghanistan and Iraq.

So, we shouldn’t be surprised, despite the removal of President Bush,  to see companies moving in to Haiti to exploit and socially engineer the country after the recent earthquake.   It’s a good situation for the purveyors of ‘disaster capitalism’- a sort of peacetime ‘shock and awe’ – which can make use of natural disasters that dislocate normal society.  The Haiti earthquake’s magnitude, combined with the nature of the country, gave a fertile ground for these people to operate in.  Let’s just take a look at the situation there.

• People are still without proper shelter; nothing like forcing people to live in squalor to break their will.
•  Just a 100 miles north of the devastated capital city, cruise ships are docking at privately run resorts.
• The Heritage Foundation – an advocate group for disaster capitalism – pulled the following quote shortly after the ‘quake: “In addition to providing immediate humanitarian assistance, the U.S. response to the tragic earthquake in Haiti earthquake offers opportunities to re-shape Haiti’s long-dysfunctional government and economy as well as to improve the public image of the United States in the region.”  Even their existing material tries to play up the ‘communist threat’ angle - pretty pathetic.
• The first loan given to Haiti by the IMF after the quake allegedly came with various strings attached – increasing prices of power, etc. – that is typical of the approach that the IMF have previously taken when they wanted to bring about neoliberal political change in a country as a condition for getting financial help.

In other words, despite the attention being paid to Haiti at the moment, and the demise of the Bush Government, there is still potential for disaster capitalism to be used to radically restructure Haiti in all the wrong ways.  And it’s worth remembering that some of the larger companies who typically profiteer from these situations will only start showing up when rebuilding starts – i.e. when there’s money to be made.

Hopefully if they realise the rest of the world is keeping an eye on things they’ll be put off – a bit like lobbing rocks at a dog grubbing around your dustbin.  If you want to find out more, take a look at the following:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=292737727221

http://twitter.com/nohaitishock

Say ‘No’ to Disaster Capitalism – you never know where it might show up next.  Time to stop the bastards in their tracks.

I have a thing for penguins.  I have no idea why, but they appeal to me.  It all started 20 odd years ago when I saw the ‘Bloom County’ cartoon strip that featured Opus the penguin (he who features wherever I need an avatar online).  Quite why penguins appeal to me I have no idea.  I think part of the reason is that it’s really difficult to be a pompous twit if your online persona  is a fat, big-nosed, a non-flying sea bird.

I found myself thinking about Opus this morning when I read this article from the Mail on Sunday about yet another one of these courses designed to put men (lower case ‘m’) in touch with their masculinity and become Men (upper case ‘M’).  the chap who wrote the article ended up adopting the name ‘Relaxed Penguin’ as his ‘Warrior Name’ on the course.  This, along with the tone of the article and the photographs illustrating the piece indicated to me that perhaps his take on the topic of the article wasn’t as serious as it might have been; which is a shame, as taking the piss out of tehse weekends is pretty easy,  which can make it easy to miss the more important problem with this sort of  short cut to being a man confident in his masculinity – however he chooses to define it - in the 21st century.

I’ve read some books from the so called ‘Men’s Movement’ over the years; I have to say that I’ve not been terribly impressed with most of them, or the philosophies espoused.  The most famous book that gave rise to a lot of what is known as ‘Menswork’ and particular the sort of experience that Mitchelson goes through in the article above was ‘Iron John’ by Robert Bly.  In it Bly examines a Grimm’s fairy tale from a ‘masculine’ perspective.  It did bugger all for me, but seemed to give rise to the stereotypical view of men discovering themselves by sitting around forest clearings, half naked, playing drums – the so-called ‘mythopoetic’ approach. 

Part of my problem with this approach – both back 20 years ago and today – is that, like the more ‘out there’ aspects of ‘wimmin’s work’ , I believe that it is irrelevant to most men.  Self awareness, a spriritual underpinning, a moral and ethical compass, a sense of fair-play, and a sense of purpose are what I regard as essential for anyone – man or woman – in the world today. Whilst it’s obvious that there are differences between men and women – which is just as well! – there is very little difference between the genders when it comes down to behaving like a civilised human being. 

There are obvious psychological, social and cultural differences between men and women, and whilst it’s true in our society that we lack the rites of passage in to manhood that many cultures have, that doesn’t mean that by creating them artificially on courses like this we somehow make men into Men just by their participation. My own attitude is to simply be a decent human being, take your responsibilities and duties seriously and be there for familyand friends.  Respect yourself, those around you, and the world in which we live.

 These sorts of things seem to be sadly missing form these sessions in the woods, and I’m afraid I don’t believe that you can be a real Man without them.

Regular readers of this blog will realise that there are certain hobby horses that I have.  One is that I ask for little from Government except that they do what only Governments CAN and SHOULD do, and otherwise stay out of my face.  The other is that I genuinely believe that there are people who can be described as evil, and that Moral Relativism is a seriously dangerous philosophy.  I explored that territory in this post - I commented at the time how surprised I was when I found a number of people on another online site berating me for calling the boys involved ‘evil’.

Well, I guess I’d better get ready for some more berating, because this suggestion from Maggie Atkinson, Children’s Commissioner for England, is a typically daft liberal riposte to a problem caused by the worst form of liberalism.  The suggestion is to raise the age of crimninality from 10 to 12, because most 10 year old criminals don’t know what they’re doing.  Bollocks.

OK…deep breath….

Ms Atkinson.  There is one question to answer here.  The vast majority of 10 year old kids do not take a toddler from a shopping mall, lie to people who stopped them about their relationship with the toddler, and then  torture the toddler to death on a railway line.  Which to me indicates one of the following:

1. The desire to do so is very, very rare and when it does occur in someone needs to be regarded as abnormal.
2. The desire to do so maybe more common but most children of 10 are aware of right and wrong and know it would be wrong.
3. That even if someone did want to do it they’d be scared by the consequences.
4. That the desire to do so is rare, AND most children of 10 are aware of right and wrong and know it would be wrong.

Now, I’d argue – being a fairly average man in the street – that (4) is the reason why this sort of crime is rare.  Most kids wouldn’t even think about it.  Videos and media imagery may bring such thoughts to the heads of a few more children, but then (2) and (3) usually kick in.  And if someone gets as far as (1) then we’re looking at someone who is either mad or bad, but is undeniably dangerous.

The Bulger killers were given a lot of help in trying to rehabilitate, but in at least one of the killers, the efforts at rehabilitation seem to have failed and he’s back inside after release on licence. 

Now.  The two boys were approached when they had James with them, and lied about their relationship with him and where they were going.  They also attempted to cover up their actions.  Now, call me simple minded if you will – and I promise I won’t mind at all – but to me lying and cover up means that at least one of them WAS aware that what they had done was wrong.  And even if only one was aware, the other went along with it, rather than admitting the situation to his parents.  So he was ashamed of what he’d done – again, that frequently indicates that we know that what we’ve done is wrong.

My point is that these kids, in my opinion, knew wholeheartedly that they’d done wrong – just like the Edlington kids.  Whilst I accept that media influences and bad parenting may have contributed to both cases, the bottom line is that in both cases I believe that it is inconceivable that they didn’t know that what they were doing was wrong.

So…there is an element of bad there…possibly some mad…but definitely dangerous.  As for rehabilitation and releasing them, even on licence, I refer you again to the story of the Scorpion and the Frog which I first related here:

There’s a fable that’s been repeated in many places, about a Scorpion who wants to cross a river.  He ponders this problem for a while when he sees a frog hopping along.  He asks the frog whether it would be possible to ride on his back whilst the frog swims the river. The frog points out that the scorpion is likely to sting him on the journey and kill him.  The scorpion replies that were he to do that, then he too would drown, as well as the frog.  The frog goes along with this, and the pair start the river crossing.  Half way across the scorpion stings the frog, and as they both drown the frog asks ‘Why?’  The scorpion sadly remarks ‘It’s in my nature.’  

It’s in my nature.  Whether mad or bad, boys such as this are evil and dangerous.  Their nature would, to me, preclude them from release; not for any desire for punishment, but because they cannot be trusted not to do something similar again.  But that’s another story, and I await the bleeding hearts telling me why I am so wrong.

Like many of us on Twitter, I follow a number of Twitter users who post aphorisms, quotes, sayings, etc.  A sort of electronic review of the ‘Wisdom Literature’ of the last 2000 years.  This can be pretty cool; I do wish that some folks would post their tweets across the day rather than in large floods, but, hey, it’s tolerable.

However, I recently started wondering about aphorisms in general – just how much wisdom can you cram in to 140 characters?   There is a lot of really smart stuff that gets posted, but just how much of it ‘sticks’ with us – indeed, how much of it is actually thought about by the people who actually post the wit and wisdom? 

Don’t get me wrong – there is quite a bit of good stuff that comes up.  My main issue is just how much we think about what we see – indeed, how much time do we have to think about what’s presented to us in the Twitter-stream.  After all, Twitter is fast and ephemeral – that hardly seems a suitable medium for something designed to stimulate thought and insight.  There is a serious risk when we start delivering and consuming ‘bite sized’ wisdom literature, and that is that the interpretation  and assimilation of what we read gets forgotten about.  

the whole idea of ‘widom literature’ is that it delivers to us something to chew on; it’s not a finishing point, it’s actually a starting point from which each of us may trace our own journey starting from the same starting point.  There is a Christian practice called Lectio Divina - literally ‘Divine reading’  which is based around reading a piece of spiritual writing – maybe scripture, maybe something generally spiritual – and then study it, ponder on it, interpret and then use as a basis for prayer or other worship.  And this is a process that takes time, and isn’t rushed.  While a piece used in Lectio Divina might easily be short enough to encompass in a Tweet, the time taken to interpret it certainly isn’t ‘Twitter-Time’.

Twitter is a great medium for certain types of message, but I am starting to wonder whether it’s a valid medium for wisdom literature ; I toyed with the idea of launching a ‘blog’ type site last year based around publishing a suitable quotation each day and writing a short piece based around my own thoughts on that topic – but then ditched the idea after a week or two because I realised I was subjecting others to my own interpretation. 

At least Twitter removes the ego from the posting of such literature quotes; there’s no space to post an interpretation, after all!!  But Twitter reduces everything submitted to it to something that exists in the reader’s ‘window of opportunity’ for just a few minutes before it’s forgotten.  Is that really how to treat this type of post?

Even when I have something worth worrying about, I have to say that it takes a lot of worry to stop me sleeping; having said that, I doubt there’s a night goes by without me waking up at some point.  2 years ago, however, I did manage to sleep through an earthquake, but that’s another story.

When I do wake in the night I usually just let my mind drift until I doze off again; last night I found myself reflecting on the peace and quiet of that moment.  My wife was sleeping by me; two out of our three cats were in the usual place, and Jarvis (almost certainly the cause of my wakefullness) was wandering around the bed trying to find a place to sleep.  It was quiet, warm.  I was incredibly comfortable, and wasn’t bothered whether I went back to sleep or not.

I love that feeling; it’s the state of mind in which I count my blessings.  Yesterday I learnt of the death of a young woman known and clearly loved by several of my friends.  I found myself thinking last night of all the other folks my wife and I know, younger than we are, who’ve had ill health over recent months and years; almost a reversal of the natural order of things.  I thought of their families, and of my own mortality.  Not in a gloomy way – almost a matter of fact acceptance and realisation that my presence in the world and awareness of that presence is one of the many ‘everyday miracles’ we take for granted.

Jarvis settles for a while by my side; there’s silence in the world outside and it’s still pitch black.  A moment of light – that usually indicates that the neighbour’s porch-light’s been triggered by the passage of some animal or other.  It also starts me realising that there are a few things in my life I’m not going to manage.  I’ll not be an astronaut; I won’t become a world famous political or business figure; I might make millionaire with a lot of luck and the odd break.  On the up-side, though, I’ve done all sorts of stuff and had a good time doing it.  I have a wonderful wife, beautiful God-daughter and niece who I love dearly, and other folks in my life who I love and respect and who, I think, have the same feelings for me.

In other words, I’ve counted my blessings and found them good.  When it comes down to it, I think it’s the ‘small stuff’ of life that can bring most pleasure.  Like being warm, comfortable, with people you love.

Whatever else today may bring, I’m happy to have experienced that time of quiet in the middle of the night, a time when I knew that, in the words of Browning:

“God’s in his Heaven –
All’s right with the world!”

and I start this new day content.

One of my professional interests is in Artificial Intelligence – AI.  I think I’ve had an interest in the simulation of human personality by software for as long as I’ve been interested in programming, and have also heard most of the jokes around the subject – particularly those to do with ’making friends’.   In fiction, most artificial intelligences that are portrayed have something of an attitude problem; we’ve had HAL in 2001 – insane.  The Terminator designed to be homicidal.  The Cylons in the new version of Battlestar Galactica and the ‘prequel’ series, Caprica – originally designed as mechanical soldiers and then evolving in to something more human with an initial contempt for their creators.  The moral of the story – and it goes all the way back to Frankenstein – is that there are indeed certain areas of computer science and technology where man is not meant to meddle. 

Of course, we’re a long way away form creating truly artificial intelligences; those capable of original thought that transcends their programming.  I recently joked that we might be on our way to having a true AI when the program tells us a joke that it has made up that is genuinely funny!  I think the best we’ll manage is to come up with a clever software conjuring trick; something that by deft programming and a slight suspension of disbelief of people interacting with the software will give the appearance of an intelligence.  This in itself will be quite something, and will probably serve many of the functions that we might want from an artificial intelligence – it’s certainly something I find of interest in my involvement in the field.

But the problem with technology is that there is always the possibility of something coming at us unexpectedly that catches us out; it’s often been said that the human race’s technical ability to innovate outstrips our ethical ability to come up with the moral and philosophical tools we need to help our culture deal with the technical innovations by anywhere from a decade to 50 years; in other words, we’re constantly trying to play catch up with the social, legal and ethical implications of our technological advances.

One area where I hope we can at least do a little forward thinking on the ethical front is in the field of AI; would a truly ‘intelligent’ artificial mind be granted the same rights and privileges as a human being or at the very least an animal?  How would we know when we have achieved such a system, when we can’t even agree on definitions of intelligence or whether animals themselves are intelligent? 

Some years ago I remember hearing a BT ‘futurist’ suggesting that it might not be more than a decade or so before it would be possible to transfer the memory of a human being in to a computer memory, and have that memory available for access.  This isn’t the same as transferring the consciousness; as we have no idea what ‘conciousness’ is, it’s hard to contemplate a tool that would do such a thing.   But I would accept that transferring of memories in to storage might be possible and might even have some advantages, even if there are ethical and the ultimate in privacy implications to deal with.  Well, it’s certainly more than a decade ago that I heard this suggestion, and I don’t believe we’re much closer to developing such a technology, so maybe it’s harder than was thought.

But what if….

In the TV series ‘Caprica’, the artificial intelligence that controls the Cylons is provided by an online personality created by a teenage girl for use as an avatar in cyberspace that is downloaded in to a robot body.  In Alexander Jablokov’s short story ‘Living Will’   a computer scientist works with a computer to develop a ‘personality’ in the computer to be a mirror image of his own, but that won’t suffer from the dementia that is starting to affect him.  In each case a sentient program emerges that in all visible respects  is identical to the personality of the original creator.  The  ’sentient’ program thus created is a copy of the original.  In both Caprica and ‘Living Will’ the software outlives it’s creator.

But what if it were possible to transfer the consciousness of a living human mind over to such a sentient program?  Imagine the possibilities of creating and ‘educating’ such a piece of software to the point at which your consciousness could wear it like a glove.  From being in a situation where the original mind looks on his or her copy and appreciates the difference, will it ever be possible for that conscious mind to be moved in to that copy, endowing the sentient software with the self awareness of the original mind, so that the mind is aware of it’s existence as a human mind when it is in the software?

Such electronic immortality is (I hope) likely to be science fiction for a very long time.  The ethical, eschatological and moral questions of shifting consciousnesses around are legion.  Multiple copies of minds?  Would such a mind be aware of any loss between human brain and computer software? What happens to the soul?

It’s an interesting view of a possible future  for mankind, to live forever in an electronic computer at the cost of becoming less than human?  And for those of us with spiritual beliefs, it might be the last temptation of mankind, to live forever and turn one’s back on God and one’s soul.