"Thought for the (Christmas) day": the intellectual battle we face

On this Christmas Eve, when Christians throughout the world are reminded of their belief that the Creator God adopted human personhood, I am struck by this quote:

"I am more than ever convinced that the question of what it is to be a human person is the biggest intellectual question of our day."

I am inclined to agree, and also when the same writer says,

"... there is a major intellectual battle going on, especially in the West, between those who adopt a purely materialist view of human persons and those who believe that there is a distinctive reality and value about human minds, and that such minds far transcend their physical embodiments both in their nature and in their moral worth. [...] It is about what it means to be human and about the distinctive importance of human personhood in our physical universe. It is a metaphysical battle, a battle about what sorts of things exist and about whether persons are distinctive sorts of things that are different from purely material things. This metaphysical battle is real."

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Not much to laugh about, but ...

... this made me smile ...

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Everything was going fine until we came along ... ;-)

What an interesting idea ...

"... the whole world ... [perhaps] is the result of the mutual interaction, according to definite laws, of the forces possessed by the molecules of which the primitive nebulosity of the universe was composed. If this be true, it is no less certain that the existing world lay potentially in the cosmic vapour, and that a sufficient intelligence could, from a knowledge of the properties of the molecules of that vapour, have predicted, say the state of the fauna of [today], with as much certainty as one can say what will happen to the vapour of the breath on a cold winter's day."

A very similar thought had occurred to me. It also raises the interesting suggestion that until organisms capable of choice appeared, everything that brought the universe to that point happened because it had to happen according to those same "definite laws" which the writer invokes. Thus before we arrived, things pretty much had to be the way they were. Now they don't.

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Interest: a real injustice to the poor

Meanwhile, back in the real world, here is something the churches surely ought to have got their teeth into long before now:

Rising levels of poverty are putting millions at risk from spiralling debts, with the Government facing renewed calls to crack down on lenders who make large profits by exploiting the poor.

Those on benefits and the working poor are at greatest risk, according to new government figures which show that the number of payouts to people forced to appeal for emergency financial help from the Government has almost trebled in only five years.

The Bible is quite clear:

O Lord, who may abide in your tent? Who may dwell on your holy hill? [Those...] who do not lend money at interest, and do not take a bribe against the innocent. (Psalm 15:1,5)

Calvin was wrong on this, Luther was right, and the more that money-lending has become part of our social fabric, the worse things have got, not least for the poor.

If you want to see other stuff I’ve written on this subject, just click on the ‘labels’ below.

JPR

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How to take successful pictures of snow

So it’s snowing. Whoopee-do. And don’t we just love to take photos of it? Indeed, the media even go so far as to encourage us not only to take them but to send them in. “Have you got any pictures of planes skidding off runways? E-mail them to ...”

But snow is actually quite difficult to photograph, unless you are either (a) lucky or (b) possessed of a bit of knowledge about how cameras work.

So many of our ‘snow’ pictures turn out like this:

Not exactly the scene that caught your eye, is it? The reason is, that is how your camera is built to see the world.

Cameras and I have a lot in common — we both see the world as ‘grey’. A camera, even a modern digital one, doesn’t have a brain, so it can’t see that in one part of its field of view, something is bright, whilst in another it is dark. Instead, the light meter — the thing that measures the amount of light coming into the camera — is set to average out these light and dark bits and, effectively, mix them together.

You know what happens when you keep washing your watercolour paintbrush in the same water? All those vibrant reds, blues, greens and yellows turn to a mushy blue-gray. That’s what your camera does. Popularly it is referred to as ‘18 percent grey’, though technically it is not quite that dark.

But the result is that when your camera ‘looks’ at a snow scene, it says to itself, “That ought to be grey, not bright white, because that’s the way the world is according to Kodak, Fuji, etc.”

Actually, this works the other way as well. If you tried to take a photo of, say, a minister in a cassock (goodness knows why you would, but stick with it), the camera would again say, “That ought to be grey, not black, because that’s the way the world is ...”

The result, however, is that snow scenes, brides’ dresses, white sheets — in fact anything brighter than ‘normal’ — will under expose. The pictures will appear too dark, despite the brightness of the subject. Meanwhile, coal cellars, black cats, thunder clouds, etc, will appear too light, even though you might have been struggling to get a picture at all!

How do you get round this?

This is where it is very counter-intuitive. Basically, you have to over-expose light things and under-expose dark things.

There are a number of ways of doing this. On film cameras with a built-in light meter, you could ‘fool’ it by adjusting the ASA (film-speed) setting, reducing it to over-expose, or increasing it to under-expose. On really old, manual, cameras you could just open up the aperture of the lens to over-expose and close it to under-expose.

Many modern cameras, however, allow you to adjust the exposure directly: + for over-exposing, – for under. The snow scene below was shot by setting the camera to +0.7. (The number represents the old ‘f-stop’, where an increase of 1 stop meant a decrease by half in the light reaching the film. The + sign here actually represents an increase in the exposure, ie a decrease in the f-stop, but don’t let that confuse you.)

Another method is to use ‘spot metering’. Point the camera at something that actually is grey, lock the exposure, and then come back to your snow scene, which should now look something like this:

There is no hard and fast rule about the right exposure. If the sun is shining on the snow, you’ll probably need to go to 1½ or even 2 stops over-exposure (+1 or +2 on a digital camera). Fortunately, digital photography allows you to check the results. In the old days, you just had to waste film by bracketing.

Just remember, if the situation is reversed and the subject is dark, you need to under-expose. (My ‘worst case scenario’ was a black bride in a white dress on a sunny day!)

In summary: over-expose snow scenes, under-expose coal cellars.

So good luck, and I hope this helps.

John Richardson

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Ten (not really very good) Reasons Why the Proposed Anglican Covenant is a Bad Idea

Lacking anything more useful to do, I’ve been looking through the ‘Ten Reasons Why the Proposed Anglican Covenant Is a Bad Idea’ posted on the Comprehensive Unity blog.

Why bother? Because, if it is to stand any chance of success, the Covenant process needs clarity of thought. Looking through the Ten Reasons, however, one finds confusion and, indeed, a certain lack of logic.

Reason 1, for example, begins by stating that,

The proposed Anglican Covenant would transform a vibrant, cooperative, fellowship of churches into a contentious, centralized aggregation of churches designed to reduce diversity and initiative.

Every time I read this — and there have been several — I wonder how anyone could describe the present Communion as “a vibrant, cooperative, fellowship”. I honestly can’t see that. And apparently neither can whoever wrote this document, since under Reason 9 we read,

The proposed Anglican Covenant .... is advanced in an atmosphere of anger, fear, and distrust ...

So which is it? The answer would seem to be that it depends on what point you’re trying to make: one here against the Covenant or one later against Covenant advocates.

Reason 2, meanwhile, rests on a massive ‘beg the question’:

Under the Covenant, churches will be inhibited from undertaking new evangelical or mission initiatives for fear of offending other Communion churches and becoming embroiled in the disciplinary mechanisms set up by the Covenant.

Of course, it could be said one region’s ‘evangelical initiative’ is another’s departure from the ‘evangel’ itself, but isn’t that the whole issue the Covenant is set up to address?

Reason 3 is an assertion based, apparently, on special pleading regarding a particular understanding of management:

In an era in which power and authority are being distributed in many organizations in order to achieve greater efficiency, responsiveness, and accountability, what has been proposed for the Communion seems out of step with current thinking regarding large organizations.

This sounds fine, but if authority is ‘distributed’, could a diocese not depart from its province? This is not what one is hearing advocated currently in TEC. The point may (or may not) be valid, but its application needs to be more tightly defined.

Reason 4 is another of those statements which makes one wonder if one has not been living in a parallel ‘Communion universe’ for the past decade:

[The Covenant’s] immediate effect is to create divisions.

Like there aren’t any at the moment? The point continues:

Churches that cannot or will not adopt the Covenant automatically become second-class members of the Communion.

Well, yes, but won’t that be because of those divisions which have brought about the need for the Covenant in the first place?

Reason 5 might actually have some substance:

The proposed Covenant is dangerously vague.

Surely, however, another possible response, rather than rejecting the Covenant, is to suggest ways to tighten up the vague bits? The challenge may be valid, but the solution does not automatically follow.

Reason 6 is just piece of theological silliness, relying on a blatant tu quoque argument:

The proposed Covenant runs counter to the gospel imperative of not judging others. It is all too easy for Communion churches to complain about the sins of their sister churches while ignoring or diverting attention from their own failures to live out the Gospel.

If churches within the Communion are truly failing to live out the Gospel, the answer is not to let everyone else do it as well!

Reason 7 relies on another special pleading which has run throughout this whole dispute:

The proposed Covenant encourages premature ending of debate.

What we know, of course, is that the only ending of the debate which will not be rejected as ‘premature’ by those who want to keep it going is an acceptance of homosexual practice. This is actually made clear in what follows:

[The Communion] has too quickly concluded that “homosexual practice” is “incompatible with Scripture” and that adopting the Covenant is “the only way forward,” neither of which is either intuitively obvious or universally agreed upon.

Fine — but do those opposing the Covenant in this way really accept that it could, after debate, be universally agreed upon? If not, let them be honest and say so.

Reason 8 seems invoke phrasing from the Windsor Report of 2004, where it was envisaged that the Covenant would “make explicit and forceful the loyalty and bonds of affection” holding together the Communion. However, it turns on a re-interpretation of ‘forceful’ to mean ‘using force and coercion’, which is not at all the same thing;

The notion that we need to make “forceful” the “bonds of affection” is fundamentally flawed. If we need force and coercion to maintain relationships between Communion churches, there is no true affection, and the very foundation of the proposed Covenant is fraudulent.

Reason 9 again relies on giving a particular word a desired ‘spin’:

The proposed “Covenant” seems more like a treaty, contract, or instrument of surrender than a covenant. In the ecclesiastical context, a covenant is usually thought of as an agreement undertaken in joy and in an atmosphere of trust—baptismal and marriage covenants come to mind.

One is tempted to point to the example of Suzerainty Treaties, which had parallels with the biblical Covenant between God and Israel. These were not exactly ‘undertaken in joy and an atmosphere of trust’. More importantly, however, it is the existing lack of joy and trust which has brought about the need for the Covenant — and which, as has already been observed, point 9 actually recognizes:

The proposed Anglican Covenant .... is advanced in an atmosphere of anger, fear, and distrust, and with the threat of dire consequences if it is not adopted.

That is regrettable, but not having a Covenant is not going to change matters.

And finally Reason 10 reveals the objections themselves to be somewhat disingenuous:

The Anglican Communion would be better served by remaining a single-tier fellowship of churches, allowing disaffected members to leave if they must ...

So in fact the objection to the Covenant is not that some Anglicans will “become second-class members of the Communion” (Reason 4). Indeed the idea of ‘business as usual’ causing some people to leave the Communion is regarded as entirely acceptable — so long as it is the ‘right’ people who leave (those who are “threatening to walk away”).

Thus, ultimately, what the objectors to the Covenant want is exactly what those in favour of the Covenant also clearly want: a Communion to their own liking.

And there is nothing wrong with wanting that. But if even those objecting to the Covenant don’t seem to recognize the truth of their own position, what hope is there for real dialogue and real understanding?

John Richardson
18 December 2010

PS: Sitting here a day later, I'm actually quite sorry to have had to write this piece No one really likes criticism and no one should enjoy dishing it out. But I couldn't look at these ten 'reasons' without reacting to the perception that they lack, well, 'reason'. Illogicality and self-contradiction is something to be avoided, whatever the field you're writing in. If the author can go back and come up with some alternatives, maybe I'd think again.

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It's Anglicanism, Jim, but not as we know it

Disappointed by the cricket (for a change), I took a look at the Thinking Anglicans website, where there is a piece from an anti-Covenant blog on "Ten Reasons Why the Proposed Anglican Covenant is a Bad Idea".

Now as I said before, the point where groupings like Thinking Anglicans start saying the Covenant is a bad idea is the point at which I start thinking it might not be that bad after all.

However, I was very struck by the first of the ten reasons:

The proposed Anglican Covenant would transform a vibrant, cooperative, fellowship of churches into a contentious, centralized aggregation of churches designed to reduce diversity and initiative.

A "vibrant, cooperative, fellowship of churches"? Lacking contention and centralization?

Its Anglicanism, Jim, but not as we know it.

John Richardson

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Now you see us, now you don't, or "Who knows where the time goes?"

Earlier in the week I posted a ‘musing’ about time.

I’ve been thinking about the issues raised there for quite a while, but more recently I’m inclined to suggest they have some bearing on our present-day intellectual battles.

I have just begun reading Keith Ward’s More Than Matter?, which makes the following point:

Most people ... accept a philosophy of common sense. They assume that things continue to be roughly what they are observed to be even when nobody is observing them. We live in a world of real objects in three-dimensional space, and we observe it more or less as it is (this is ... sometimes called naive realism, because many philosophers think it really is rather naive). (30-31)

That, I think, pretty much describes where most people are at. Indeed, I would go further and say that is pretty much where the public discourse encourages them to be at. We are encouraged to think of the world on a ‘what you see is what you get’ basis, within which we are marginalized as mere accidents, able to observe for a while but due to disappear quite soon, whilst the ‘reality’ of the universe continues as it has always done.

At the same time, however, we are also encouraged to regard human affairs as of mammoth importance — the state of the economy and the behaviour of governments, for example, are prominently headlined, even though, for the most part, most of what is headline news only affects us emotionally (and, indeed, is written up precisely to affect our emotions).

Thus one could say we actually live in a ‘Matrix world’, imagining we are busy with important things, but shielded from too much present awareness of the real reality.

Of course, those who understand much science (and especially physics), know the naivety of this ‘naive realism’ all too well. Matter is not matter ‘as we know it’. Nor, indeed, is time what we ‘know’ it to be. Indeed, our ‘real’ world of space-time is avowedly elusive, and, at the level of ‘common sense’ almost illusory.

One illustration of the latter, it seems to me, is the question of when ‘now’ becomes ‘then’.

Common sense says we live in the now — the present moment — which has an extension in time. My guess is that for most people ‘what is happening now’ is quite a flexible concept. Right now I am typing. Right now in Africa people are starving. It is now early evening in Perth — and so on.

Yet if we think about ‘now’ as ‘that which has not become the irrecoverable past’, it becomes contracted almost to the point of vanishing. By the time I finish typing this sentence, the production of the capital B is already ‘the irrecoverable past’. I can go back and correct a mistake, but I cannot go back in time and not make it in the first place.

Worse than that, however, by the time I have typed the w at the end of ‘now’, the n at the beginning is already in the ‘irrecoverable past’. And so it goes on, as we slice ‘now’ (both the action of producing the word, and the concept itself into smaller and smaller sections.

But, of course, it is not just the ‘time’ that is irrecoverable, it is also the matter — the physical reality that we think of as ‘permanent’.

And this realization can, I think, be somewhat mind-boggling. We are accustomed to think of the past in terms of millennia (or even ‘billennia’) that, by their sheer magnitude, establish it as something ‘real’. Yet it would seem that actually nothing ‘in the past’ exists. Certainly it existed, but only for that brief moment we call ‘now’. In our ‘now’, what is ‘then’ doesn’t exist at all.

More strangely still, the entirety of the universe is exactly the same. All the vastness, from here to whatever is the furthest point we can speak of as physically existing, is actually in existence only ‘now’. We may predict what vast swathes of it are going to be like in a moment’s time, or even millions of years time, but what we can predict nevertheless has no existence. And we can see what equally vast swathes of it were, and how that relates to the nature of things ‘now’. But what once ‘was’, now ‘is not’.

And this, I would suggest, has implications for the answer to the question, ‘Why are we here?’ For although the condition of the world ‘now’ results from its condition in the past, the existence of the world ‘now’ stands — it would seem — separated from either the past or the future.

And there I must leave it — for now.

John Richardson
16 December 2010

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It is just sooooo tempting to call this evidence for the flood ...

From here, "Life may have survived 'Snowball Earth' in ocean pockets".

The Snowball Earth hypothesis suggests the land and oceans of our planet were thrown into a deep freeze, the like of which has never been seen before or since.

"For the first time, we have very clear evidence that storms were affecting the sea floor," said Dr Dan Le Heron of Royal Holloway, University of London, who led the research.

I'll put this in the 'naughty but nice' category of theology.

John

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Spam comments not spam

My apologies to a couple of you whose comments have not appeared after you have sent them in. I've discovered that Blogger has automatically detected these comments as 'spam' when they are not. As a result, although I've seen them appear as copies in my e-mail and assumed they were on the blog, they were actually not there.

If this happens to you in future, can you e-mail me (use the link near the bottom of the clutter on the left hand side)?

Meanwhile, I'll try to keep an eye on things, and I've 'unspammed' those comments.

John

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Is there really "no time" like the present? A question about physics with a theological twist

I am looking for some help with understanding an aspect of physics which relates to something I want to consider theologically.

Basically, it is to do with the question of existence and time.

There’s a rather nice diagram which, I gather, sums up the present state of understanding in terms of time and space.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_line.svg 

Here, the past is ‘the region from which we can receive light’ and the future is ‘the region to which we can send light’.

Thus the longer ago a thing happened, the further the distance from which we can receive light from that event. Hence, the ‘past’ light cone contracts towards us, the observer, in the present, as we can only receive light from recent events that are correspondingly near to us in space, whereas we can receive the light of events that took place billions of years ago from equally immense distances away.

On the other hand, if we point a flash gun at the sky and set it off, the light will spread out (theoretically) throughout the universe, so the ‘future’ light cone expands away from us. After eight minutes it will have reached the Sun. After about four and a half years, it will have reached Alpha Centauri, and so on.

What I am really interested in, however, is that bit of the diagram labelled “hypersurface of the present”, and what the relationship is between ‘the present’, ‘the past’ and ‘the future’.

And here’s my key question: how can we speak of things that are not on the hypersurface of the present actually existing?

It would seem patently obvious (though I may be missing something!) that from a simply physical point of view, nothing on the ‘future’ side of the diagram actually exists at all, even if its ‘coming into being’ is both predictable and inevitable.

Does the same, however, apply to the past? If so, then the only realm in which we can talk about things actually existing is on the plane of the hypersurface of the present.

But then we have to ask the question, just how ‘thick’ is that plane? I believe some people suggest it is just a ‘Planck Moment’, but I’d be interested to know of other ideas.

I am aware that the question is complicated by aspects of Relativity theory, which mean that time is not ‘absolute’. In particular, there is the interesting, though hard to conceive, fact that events which appear simultaneous to one observer may be separated in time from the perspective of another observer.

Considered overall, then, the hypersurface of the present may be ‘wavy’ — a bit ahead for some observers, a bit behind for others, but how far might these ‘waves’ extend?

I am also aware that St Augustine of Hippo wrote a whole chapter on this subject in his Confessions. What he said is very interesting, but I’m trying to get at the physics in the first instance before looking at the theology.

What I am asking is whether it could actually be that, despite our memories of the past and our anticipation of the future, what exists, physically, is confined to a ‘micromoment’.

Thoughts and contributions would be welcome.

John Richardson
14 December 2010

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Another day, another reason to dislike WikiLeaks

Listening to Radio 4’s Sunday programme this morning, there was an interview with Andrew Brown from the Guardian in which he said something like this: that the reason the WikiLeaks cables were so useful was that, unlike journalists, they could disclose their sources, because those who sent them assumed that they were speaking confidentially — “But of course, they were not.”

Now this was interesting, coming as it did from a journalist. I don’t think Andrew was saying he wished he could be as frank about his sources. Rather, the point seemed to be, isn’t it great when we can do what judges and politicians often wish they could do, namely find out who is behind a story or comment.

The sense of unease was further increased when the word ‘gossip’ was used — whether by Andrew or the interviewer I can’t right now recall. In effect, the point was made, we are listening to gossip.

So, broken confidences and gossip are the essence of the journalistic use of WikiLeaks material.

Though I listened on to find out how the interview ended — and also because, with church coming up, I didn’t want to fall back to sleep — I once again felt uncomfortable about how we are all being drawn in to something which has a worrying agenda and operates on a principle which ought to require a high level of moral justification.

Earlier in the week, I read an online article in the Sydney Morning Herald describing a meeting between the journalist Philip Dorling and Julian Assange himself. You can read the article here, but Dorling describes how it took,

Six months of emails, clandestine meetings and confidential exchanges ... before arrangements for a visit to Britain were locked in.

And, ironically, he adds,

WikiLeaks takes security very seriously, and it is right to do so.

So, is it WikiLeaks conspiracy ‘good’, government conspiracy ‘bad’?

This is a serious question, given the apparent basis of WikiLeaks in the principle that good governance can only come about through degrading the ability of governments to  ‘conspire’ through secure communications.

I have no doubt that bad conspiracies happen in governments. But that has always been true of all governments. There are bad conspiracies amongst political activists of all kinds. (Indeed, a useful debate for the future might be ‘Is politics a force for good in the world?’ I’d like to hear Christopher Hitchens on that one.)

The fact is, WikiLeaks is a ‘conspiracy’ in its own terms, at the head of which is a ‘man with a mission’. And we have all become players in the game.

Unless, of course, we choose to turn off the radio.

John Richardson
12 December 2010

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The WikiLeaks Conspiracy - another journalist 'gets it'

Yesterday I posted a link to an Australian article which I think understands (from Julian Assange's own writings) just exactly what WikiLeaks is aiming to, which is not what most Western media commentators evidently think it is trying to do.

Given the power the kind of people who actively support WikiLeaks not only possess but are evidently prepared to use to interfere with the internet, and therefore with all of our lives, it is surely vital that we become aware of what exactly are the issues here, so that a proper engagement can take place.

Here is an extract from another journalist, this time in Canada, who 'gets it' about WikiLeaks:

[...] WikiLeaks is a worldwide network of individuals who share a common ethic and a common cause -- a conspiracy, if you will. As Northwestern University philosophy professor Peter Ludlow argues, WikiLeaks "is the product of decades of collaborative work by people engaged in applying computer hacking to political causes."

This means that "were Assange to be eliminated today, WikiLeaks would doubtless continue." Indeed, as Assange's own discussion highlights, a conspiracy will survive even if a high value target like Assange is eliminated. And further, "even if WikiLeaks were somehow to be eliminated, new sites would emerge to replace it."

This suggests that, just as the attention paid to individual leaks is misplaced, so too is the attention paid to Assange.

WikiLeaks isn't about one man any more than it's about one leak. And trying to neutralize WikiLeaks by neutralizing one man, or one leak, is like trying to cripple a centipede by breaking one of its legs. Read more

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The Wikileaks conspiracy

A couple of days ago I posted an article asking what is the real motivation of Wikileaks. That was because, like most people, I was ignorant about what Wikileaks is trying to do.

Today, thanks to a comment on the blog (from someone who, ironically, chooses to keep his full name and address a secret), I know the answer.

That might sound a tad arrogant. How can I possibly claim to ‘know’ such a thing, given the complexities of the situation itself, to say nothing of the intricacies of human motivation?

The answer is quite simple: Julian Assange has told us himself, in a couple of quite short pieces which are on the internet (here and here) for anyone who cares to read them.

Actually these pieces (it is inappropriate to call them essays) are two versions of the same thing, and are both incomplete. Nevertheless, they tell us all we need to know of the motivation for Wikileaks.

Assange’s thesis is that, left to their own devices, governments (and “neocorporatist” bodies) tend to act in authoritarian ways, and therefore become ‘conspiratorial’ since they need to conceal the plans which maintain their authoritarian power.

Essential to this is communication between the ‘conspirators’ — the various parts of the government or other body. Therefore disrupting communication between the parts of conspiracy will bring down the conspiracy itself:

“If all links between conspirators are cut then there is no conspiracy.”

This, Assange understands quite clearly, is the basis of recent Western attempts to combat Islamic terrorism. But in his own words,

“We extend this understanding of terrorist organizations and turn it on the likes of its creators where it becomes a knife to dissect the power conspiracies used to maintain authoritarian government.” (Emphasis added)

Note, the government which produced this counter-terrorist strategy is actually itself authoritarian, and therefore conspiratorial. According to Assange, “the US Democratic and Republican parties” are “two closely balanced and broadly conspiratorial power groupings”.

If they could not communicate internally, however, and if they specifically had to give up,

“... their mobile phones, fax and email correspondence — let alone the computer systems which manage their subscribes, donors, budgets, polling, call centres and direct mail campaigns ...” (emphasis added)

... then ...

“They would immediately fall into an organizational stupor and lose to the other.”

The group (or government) that communicates least effectively is the loser. Thus his second, and still incomplete, piece concludes that,

“... new technology and insights into the psychological motivations of conspirators can give us practical methods for preventing or reducing important communication between authoritarian conspirators, foment strong resistance to authoritarian planning and create powerful incentives for more humane forms of governance.” (Emphasis added)

The motivation of Wikileaks, therefore, is clear: it is to change the way governments in general, and the government of the United States of America in particular — ie bad governments — operate. And the strategy is quite simply by the act of leaking since, again according to Assange:

“The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive ‘secrecy tax’) and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulting in decreased ability to hold onto power as the environment demands adaption.” (Emphasis added)

This is why, however, it does not matter in the least that so much of the information released by Wikileaks is, in fact, trivial. One website analysis favourable to Assange’s aims and strategy has it precisely right:

“In this sense, most of the media commentary on the latest round of leaks has totally missed the point. After all, why are diplomatic cables being leaked? These leaks ... seem to simply be a broad swath of the everyday normal secrets that a security state keeps from all but its most trusted hundreds of thousands of people who have the right clearance. [...] But Assange is not trying to produce a journalistic scandal which will then provoke red-faced government reforms or something [...] Instead, he is trying to strangle the links that make the conspiracy possible, to expose the necessary porousness of the American state’s conspiratorial network in hopes that the security state will then try to shrink its computational network in response, thereby making itself dumber and slower and smaller.”

Assange is, quite literally, seeking to bring down the government of the United States. And this is not conjecture — it is his declared intention.

The interesting thing in all this, however, is that (as the comment above observes) the media, even those made party to the Cablegate leaks, seem not understand this. Thus an editorial in today’s Guardian (one of the papers privileged by Wikileaks) asks rhetorically, “Should diplomats be able to speak confidentially with their governments and sources?” It continues,

“The answer is, clearly, yes. Without secret communication there could be no meaningful diplomacy and textured communication between countries.” (Emphasis added)

One cannot help wondering how long and hard Mr Assange must have laughed at this (assuming he currently has access to the Guardian).

Like Hitler when he wrote Mein Kampf, Assange has previously made his attitudes and intentions abundantly plain to those who would care to read. Yet like so many throughout the subsequent war years, it seems that those who ought to be most aware of what is going on have not cared to read.

Certainly nothing I have read or heard from media outlets in the last few days has done anything to clarify the Wikileaks agenda as much as my own brief explorations on the internet. Moreover, what has been said generally reflects a view that Wikileaks is basically about exposing bad behaviour so that it can be put right — which we can plainly see is not the case at all.

As the website quoted earlier puts it,

“... the point is not that particular leaks are specifically effective. Wikileaks does not leak something like the ‘Collateral Murder’ video as a way of putting an end to that particular military tactic; that would be to target a specific leg of the hydra even as it grows two more. Instead, the idea is that increasing the porousness of the conspiracy’s information system will impede its functioning, that the conspiracy will turn against itself in self-defense, clamping down on its own information flows in ways that will then impede its own cognitive function. You destroy the conspiracy, in other words, by making it so paranoid of itself that it can no longer conspire ...”

Indeed, given the current media interest, revealed in the kinds of details appearing in the national press, one may go so far as to wonder whether the media themselves have not been duped, insofar as they are publishing what they clearly believe will ‘sell’ to their own audience, without apparently realizing that, as far as Assange is concerned, they would achieve his aims if they merely published the embassy laundry lists (or lists of sites regarded as vital to US security).

And this leads me to ask whether, in a sense, there is not actually a Wikileaks conspiracy, whereby Western media have become useful allies in a game which they themselves have not fully understood — and certainly have not revealed by fully explaining it to their public — whilst Julian Assange and his associates understand precisely what they are doing through this.

There is, however, one last important element to Assange’s thesis, written as a footnote to his second piece:

“Everytime (sic) we witness an act that we feel to be unjust and do not act we become a party to injustice. Those who are repeatedly passive in the face of injustice soon find their character corroded into servility. Most witnessed acts of injustice are associated with bad governance, since when governance is good, unanswered injustice is rare. By the progressive diminution of a people’s character, the impact of reported, but unanswered injustice is far greater than it may initially seem. Modern communications states through their scale, homogeneity and excesses provide their populace with an unprecidented deluge of witnessed, but seemingly unanswerable injustices.”

In other words, in the modern communications era, we are all of us, by the sheer amount of information we receive about injustice, being rendered increasingly passive to more bad governance and increasing injustice.

The only way out (salvation?) is by acting in response to perceived injustice, and the only way of eliminating injustice is through eliminating “bad governance”, since (he asserts) “when governance is good, unanswered injustice is rare”. We must act or become mere ‘drones’.

For Assange, this is, ultimately, a battle for the human soul, and this should induce a certain caution in all of us who know how dangerous such battles can become. 

One comment on Assange’s early ‘blogging’ rather naughtily describes it as being, “like Adrian Mole discovered the web after an A-level course in sociology and Hunter S Thompson”. Julian Assange is clearly a ‘man with a plan’, and in the last few days we have all become part of it. That being the case, it surely vital that we should all know exactly what the plan is and also something of the man behind it.

John Richardson
8 December 2010

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Wikileaks: What is the real motivation?

As I understand it, the ostensible justification of Wikileaks is ‘whistleblowing’ — the revealing of wrongdoing that has been kept secret or covered up.

This is important, because in normal circumstances the breaking of confidences can be considered immoral. Today I received an e-mail (ironically) from the Guardian newspaper group. At the bottom, it contained what is becoming a standard ‘disclaimer’:

This e-mail and all attachments are confidential and may also be privileged. If you are not the named recipient, please notify the sender and delete the e-mail and all attachments immediately. Do not disclose the contents to another person. You may not use the information for any purpose, or store, or copy, it in any way.

Given the actual content of the e-mail, this does seem slightly over the top. Moreover, I generally find myself wondering whether someone I’ve never met who sends me an e-mail I have not requested can place me under such a moral obligation — particularly if they’ve sent it to me by accident.

Nevertheless, I take the attitude that I can interpret the rider as, in effect, a personal request, as if the person at the other end were saying to me, “Look, if we’ve messed this up, please don’t go blabbing it everywhere, and if this is meant for you, please treat this communication as being between the two of us.”

The decision to reveal the contents of the e-mail would therefore be a decision to decline such a request, which puts it, in the end, at the level of other, inter-personal, moral decisions.

However, there are indeed occasions where information one receives ought to be made known to others, even against the wishes of those to who originally divulged it. Sometimes this will be to ‘proper authorities’, but certainly in some circumstances the only obvious route is a general divulgence of this information to the general public. Suitable scenarios are relatively easy to construct.

In the case of what Wikileaks itself is calling ‘Cablegate’, not only the operators of the site, but sections of the Western media have clearly felt that something about the behaviour of the US government has justified just such a general release of information.

And this confidence clearly rests on a presumption of moral fault in what the e-mails reveal. Julian Assange himself is reported as saying that if what some of the e-mails suggest is in fact true, then the newly-elected President of the United States ought to resign — something which would put him in the same category as Richard Nixon, which is scarcely where the world believed him to be just a couple of years ago.

This is why, however, serious questions must be asked following the release of e-mails which detail the nature and location of facilities considered vital to the security of the United States.

In particular, we may ask whether it is a moral fault for a government to compile such a list or to identify such facilities so as to inform its own policies.

If the answer is yes, then of course the release of this information by Wikileaks is just another example of moral ‘whistleblowing’ in an immoral political world.

Yet it is hard to see how the question could be answered in the affirmative. Indeed, it was interesting watching the lawyer for Mr Assange, Mark Stevens, answering questions about this on the ITV lunchtime news. Mr Stevens’s response was that the US government had been given the option to comment on the list and declined to do so, therefore it was appropriate to release the information into the public domain.

His body-language, however, was that of someone who knew he was talking rubbish. As a lawyer, his livelihood depends on being able to spot a non sequitur, and clearly this is one.

If I said to someone, “I have information about how much you get paid, would you like to comment?”, the answer “No,” is not a justification in itself for me telling the world. There may, of course, be other justifications, but these would depend on factors other than simply a refusal to comment.

Up to this point, the ‘Cablegate’ episode, including the involvement of some of the Western media, has relied on the general justification that immoral actions have been concealed and should be brought to universal public attention.

If part of the intention of this is to generate a debate, then it seems fair also to debate whether that is the real motivation, given the nature of what is being revealed.

John Richardson
6 December 2010

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More on Tom Wright at ETS

Those who were following the discussion on Tom Wright's views (see here for the last and latest) may enjoy a snippet at Matt Reilly's blog about the meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society at which Wright spoke:

Wright surprised me as well. I somewhat expected him to dig his heels in and simply restate what he had said in the past; this, of course, is basically what he did in his last book on justification, which disappointed me. If one is going to take the time to write a book, then he ought to be sure to move the discussion forward. But Wright really answered some questions this time. Two particularly surprising moves were ...

... and you'll have to visit the blog to find out.


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Guardian 'Comment is Free: Belief': Christian sexuality is a Jacob's Ladder

My contribution to the CIF section (see yesterday's post for other links).

[...] Human sexuality needs to be seen, therefore, in both its sacramental aspects if it is to be understood Christianly.

"Outwardly and physically", it is part of the marvellous, but commonplace, process by which living things make variant versions of themselves. Thinking of it this way should keep us grounded in all our thinking about the topic, including both its personal expression and its social dimension.

But considered "inwardly and spiritually", human sexuality has an iconic significance, being a point where the divine finds earthly expression – where something that is true about the creator-redeemer God in his relationship with his created-redeemed people is imaged and embodied in human relationship and experience.

This is why the subject of our sexuality is so inescapable, despite various efforts over time to neutralise, demonise or trivialise the subject. It is a veritable Jacob's ladder – a place where heaven and earth combine. But until the two become one, it will continue to trouble us, as well as to enthral us. Read more 

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How should Christians think about sex? Guardian 'Comment is Free: Belief'

The Guardian 'Comment is Free: Belief' site is running a series on the question, "How should Christians think about sex?"

Andrew Brown's introduction is here.

The first response, from Stephen Tomkins, contributing editor of Ship of Fools and deputy editor of Third Way magazine, is here.

The second, by Roz Kaveney, a writer and activist, is here.

A response by myself will be published in due course, and linked from here.

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