Love, as mortals understand the word, isn’t enough

“There’s something in natural affection which will lead it on to eternal love more easily than natural appetite could be led on. But there’s also something in it which makes it easier to stop at the natural level and mistake it for the heavenly. Brass is mistaken for gold more easily than clay is. And if it finally refuses conversion its corruption will be worse than the corruption of what ye call the lower passions. It is a stronger angel, and therefore, when it falls, a fiercer devil.”

—CS Lewis (Great Divorce, p 95)

ICAN

In the 1980s, a worldwide political movement arose with so much appeal and popularity and sanity that even Ronald Reagan had to pay attention.  People the world over were demanding an end to nuclear weapons.  Jonathan Schell wrote an excruciating book making us think about the unthinkable.  Helen Caldicott reminded us that for anyone concerned about human health and wellbeing, nuclear warfare would be a substantial setback.

The world’s stockpile of nuclear weapons peaked in 1985 with 80,000 warheads.  There are now less than 20,000.  Maybe less than 10,000, depending on how you count.

In the 1950s and 1960s, extensive tests were done, exploding thermonuclear bombs in the atmosphere, and spreading radioactive fallout downwind.  All life on Earth was affected.  Radioactive iodine was in our thyroids, and strontium 90 was in our bones.  John Kennedy advocated an end to nuclear explosions above ground, and a treaty was signed in 1963. 

In 1990, the Soviet Union proposed a moratorium on nuclear testing that was agreed to by the United Kingdom and the United States.  This created an opportunity to move ahead for those advocates who, for decades, had promoted a comprehensive ban on all nuclear testing.

The Soviet Union’s last nuclear test took place on 24 October 1990; the United Kingdom’s on 26 November 1991 and the United States’ on 23 September 1992.  rance and China conducted their last tests in January and July 1996 respectively, before signing the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty on the day it opened for signature, 24 September 1996, together with the other three nuclear weapon States and 66 other countries. Read the history.

India, Pakistan and N. Korea have broken the world’s moratorium in this century, but there remains a powerful moral imperative, with the force of 7 billion consciences. 

As years pass without testing the worlds stockpile of arms, no one can be sure that they will work if they were ever deployed.  Using them becomes less feasible with each passing day.  In the future, we will end all nuclear weapons, because we have to.

Ignoring anomalies is not scientific

It has been ‘discovered’ just in the last hundred years that the world is consistent: Do the same experiment twice and you get the same result. (In biology and quantum physics, this dictum has had to be liberalized to a probabilistic framework: not exactly the same result, perhaps, but the same statistical distribution of results.)

But there is no logical requirement that the world has to be put together in this way.  Many observations of anomalous phenomena turned out to be mistakes. Others opened the doors to new classes of reproducible phenomena.  But some were carefully observed, one-off anomalies – ‘miracles’, if you like.  Science can’t afford to ignore persistent anomalies.  We need a ‘science of the irreproducible’.

Beyond its disciplined reliance upon constructive iteration of sound experimental data with incisive theoretical models, good science is characterized by thorough and respectful cognizance of relevant past and present work by others, humility in the face of empirical evidence, and openness of mind to new topics, new approaches, new ideas, and new scholars. In particular, it maintains a profound respect for demonstrable experimental and theoretical anomalies and their crucial role within the scientific dialogue of experiment and theory.

— Robert Jahn and Brenda Dunne

“Everything that happens once can never happen again.
But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.”
— Paul Coelho

Proposed Roads to Freedom

In the daily lives of most men and women, fear plays a greater part than hope: they are more filled with the thought of the possessions that others may take from them, than of the joy that they might create in their own lives and in the lives with which they come in contact.

It is not so that life should be lived.

Those whose lives are fruitful to themselves, to their friends, or to the world are inspired by hope and sustained by joy: they see in imagination the things that might be and the way in which they are to be brought into existence. In their private relations they are not pre-occupied with anxiety lest they should lose such affection and respect as they receive: they are engaged in giving affection and respect freely, and the reward comes of itself without their seeking.  In their work they are not haunted by jealousy of competitors, but concerned with the actual matter that has to be done.  In politics, they do not spend time and passion defending unjust privileges of their class or nation, but they aim at making the world as a whole happier, less cruel, less full of conflict between rival greeds, and more full of human beings whose growth has not been dwarfed and stunted by oppression.

A life lived in this spirit--the spirit that aims at creating rather than possessing--has a certain fundamental happiness, of which it cannot be wholly robbed by adverse circumstances.  This is the way of life recommended in the Gospels, and by all the great teachers of the world. Those who have found it are freed from the tyranny of fear, since what they value most in their lives is not at the mercy of outside power. If all men could summon up the courage and the vision to live in this way in spite of obstacles and discouragement, there would be no need for the regeneration of the world to begin by political and economic reform: all that is needed in the way of reform would come automatically, without resistance, owing to the moral regeneration of individuals.

— Bertrand Russell

A Digit Of The Moon

This book is written for Man’s ultimate need,
A creed of joy sent down to the aged Earth
From days of happier daring and more mirth
To comfort and console all hearts that bleed.
Here shall ye find how Love, that mastering weed
Of tropic growth and paradisal power,
Sprang in a night and found its fortunate hour
And was fulfilled of glory, flower, fruit, seed,
A wonder to the Forest.—O ye souls
Of men and women, who on Time’s whim wait
Nor clutch her hem when Pleasure turns to flee!
Read of these two, who ill content with doles
Rose in their rage and gave assault to Fate
And won their birth-fruit. Read. Nay, dare it ye!

—Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, born this day in 1840

A Digit of the Moon is the 8th of a 16-part work, entitled The Churning of the Ocean of Milk. A well-known Hindu legend recounts how the gods and antigods assembled to churn the ocean of milk for the nectar of immortality. They churned it using Mt Mandara, and in addition to their desired potion, they obtained the Moon as a bi-product.

Portrait of the Artist as a Prematurely Old Man

It is common knowledge to every schoolboy and even every Bachelor of Arts,

That all sin is divided into two parts.

One kind of sin is called a sin of commission, and that is very important,

And it is what you are doing when you are doing something you ortant,

And the other kind of sin is just the opposite and is called a sin of omission and is equally bad in the eyes of all right-thinking people, from Billy Sunday to Buddha,

And it consists of not having done something you shuddha.

I might as well give you my opinion of these two kinds of sin as long as, in a way, against each other we are pitting them,

And that is, don’t bother your head about sins of commission because however sinful, they must at least be fun or else you wouldn’t be committing them.

Is by the insurance you haven’t taken out and the checks you haven’t added up the stubs of and the appointments you haven't kept and the bills you haven't paid and the letters you haven't written.

Also, about sins of omission there is one particularly painful lack of beauty,

Namely, it isn’t as though it had been a riotous red-letter day or night every time you neglected to do your duty;

You didn't get a wicked forbidden thrill

Every time you let a policy lapse or forgot to pay a bill;

You didn’t slap the lads in the tavern on the back and loudly cry Whee,

Let's all fail to write just one more letter before we go home, and this round of unwritten letters is on me.

No, you never get any fun

Out of things you haven’t done,

But they are the things that I do not like to be amid,

Because the suitable things you didn't do give you a lot more trouble than the unsuitable things you did.

The moral is that it is probably better not to sin at all, but if some kind of sin you must be pursuing,

Well, remember to do it by doing rather than by not doing.

— Ogden Nash, born this day in 1902

It requires greater courage to preserve inner freedom, to move on in one’s inward journey into new realms, than to stand defiantly for outer freedom. It is often easier to play the martyr, as it is to be rash in battle.

— Rollo May       video clip

It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way.

The Strangest Dream

On this day in 1928, the world agreed to put an end to war. The Kellogg-Briand pact was signed by the US and 14 other nations. By July 1929 when it was to take effect, every major power in the world had agreed.

Deeply sensible of their solemn duty to promote the welfare of mankind; Persuaded that the time has come when a frank renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy should be made to the end that the peaceful and friendly relations now existing between their peoples may be perpetuated...

The High Contracting Parties agree that the settlement or solution of all disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them, shall never be sought except by pacific means.

The interdiction of aggressive war was confirmed and broadened by the United Nations Charter, which provides in article 2, paragraph 4, that “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”

The treaty has never been renounced, remains in full force and is binding against all combattants.

1928 newsreal     David Swanson’s blog     Wikipedia

Blameless people are always the most exasperating.

— George Eliot