In case you missed the Dateline interview with Richard Dawkins.

And we rather like this (slightly remodeled):

“Fear and Folly: Bertrand Russell, C. S. Lewis, and the Existential Identity Thief” by Thomas S. Szasz, M.D.

One of the basic functions of living organisms is avoiding danger. In human beings, the emotion of fear serves that function. Because feeling fear is unpleasant, we try to escape it by seeking protection from danger, typically by looking to a Protector to protect us. Tragically, this longing — be it for a deity, demagogue, dictator, or doctor — is, itself, a source of danger.

“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.” (William Pitt, British Prime Minister, 1783-1801 and 1804-1806.)

Fear of the insane and the psychiatrist’s role as society’s protector from the risk he allegedly poses is what has made the mere ascription of the label “insane” a justification for depriving the bearer of liberty. Although the idea of “the dangerous madman” is a bugaboo or a tautology (because we redefine bad as mad, deviant as deranged), it has captivated the contemporary mind — secular and religious alike — and has entrapped some of the most admired modern intellectuals.

In A History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell, the great atheist skeptic, tried to refute David Hume’s sceptical empiricism and concluded that he was unequal to the task:

“It is therefore important to discover whether there is any answer to Hume within the framework of a philosophy that is wholly or mainly empirical. If not, there is no intellectual difference between sanity and insanity. The lunatic who believes that he is a poached egg is to be condemned solely on the ground that he is in a minority, or rather — since we must not assume democracy — on the ground that the government does not agree with him. This is a desperate point of view, and it must be hoped that there is some way of escaping from it”.

Russell’s “desperation” was inconsistent with his scepticism, expressed earlier in his Sceptical Essays, where he had stated:

“I wish to propose for the reader’s favourable consideration a doctrine … that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true”.

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Ah, commercial tv! How authentic, these commodified, shrink-wrapped, prefabricated, interchangeable personalities are! And what hilarious and completely spontaneous japes are they up to now, eh? At last they’ve “put Australia on the morning television map”, eh?

Technorati Tags: Stewart, Jon Stewart, Daily Show, Wii, nintendo, moment of zen, zen, curling, humor, humour, video

Richard Feynman:
I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degres of certainty about different things, but I’m not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don’t know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we’re here, and what the question might mean….

But I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn’t frighten me.

You’d Better Be 100% Certain

Religions teach that natural human behaviours, thoughts and tendencies are sinful, and are therefore punishable by any manner of “natural” disaster or physical retribution in this life. Religions also teach that in many cases those sins are punishable by eternal torture in a purported afterlife for which there is no evidence in a place from which there is no escape – indeed no escape for anyone to return and report their experience, or in other words, for which there is absolutely no evidence. A place which in fact is not real at all. And yet religious people threaten really young, innocent children with the terror of being consigned to this non-existent place forever.

But not content with instilling this kind of fear and guilt for being normally and naturally human, religions additionally assert that “god is omnipresent and omniscient”. “He” is supposedly everywhere and knows everything. He can not only see every single thing you do even in the dark, but can also see into the most secret corners of your mind to judge and potentially punish your thoughts.

This makes dealing with unruly childish behaviour more manageable, of course. You don’t have to keep your eye on them all the time. It’s a sort of remote control for lazy parents.

And so most children’s first experience of emotional abuse occurs at the hands of their loving parents and of religious teachers.

The real terrorists in our world are the religious people because they intentionally terrorise their own and other people’s children in this way. They exhort parents on pain of their own eternal punishment to terrorise their children.

And what is a child to do? Children think the thoughts it is natural to think. They imagine, they speculate, they try to put the experiences of their lives together. That’s what humans do. That’s why we have been successful as a species. Children do the things it is natural to do because they are human. So they are in a double bind. Life itself is turned by priests and their devout parents into a horror story in which the child itself is the monster. Their spirit is crushed. Fear and worry is their life, instead of wonder and joy, and all they can do in order to manage their anxiety is to deny themselves and their natural humanity and wait for the supposed and non-existent afterlife in a place where mummy and daddy, and priests and god, won’t terrify them any more.

Teaching children that their natural humanity is sinful is an obscenity.

Who would lovingly do this to their own child or to other people’s children?

Stupid, ignorant, superstitious, scared, monstrous, insane terrorists would. Devout Christians, Muslims and Jews would. Pious Hindus would perpetrate their own version.

The devout truly believe the crazy hoax that there is an afterlife and a hell and a jealous, vengeful god.

The really devout believe that wrongdoers and unbelievers (in whatever brand of religion) have earned the wrath of their god and deserve their punishment in this life (or to be sent summarily to the next). They believe they are thereby given the authority by their “cruel, spiteful, vengeful, jealous and unbearable God¹,” through his sacred text (of whatever brand of religion) to mete out that punishment. In fact many believe they are commanded by him to do so.

But if you’re going to go around terrifying innocent children and crushing the spirit out of their lives in the name of your god and your beliefs (“purifying them”, as you may put it); if you are going to go around killing people, or urging others to kill people, in the name of your god and your beliefs, or with, as you imagine, the blessing and even the commandment of your god; then your belief is not enough. Your “faith” is not enough.

Mere belief is not enough. It is not enough to say, “I’m almost certain it’s true”, or “It must be true,” or “I can’t see how it’s not true,” or “Surely it’s true.” You can’t even get away with, “I had a personal experience of god.” Really? Perhaps you did. But how can you prove absolutely that it was a real experience of “god” and not one of the fairly common moments that many people have of hysteria, hallucination, the result of a brain tumour, lack of oxygen to the brain, wishful thinking, dreaming, all of which to the experiencing person seem real even though they are not in fact experiencing a close encounter with “god”. Of course it seems real. Hallucination does seem real. That’s why they call it hallucination. That’s why you can’t be 100% certain.

If you are going to go terrorising and murdering other people you had bloody-well better be absolutely certain and have utterly irrefutable proof that you are right. You have to know that if you are even ever so slightly wrong you are not the pious and god-fearing and devout person you have been pretending to be.

You are merely a child-abuser and a common murderer and a fool.

It is no defence to say that you “believed” or that you thought it was true, or that someone told you it was so and they seemed to know what they were talking about, or that they promised it was true and you trusted them, or, as some say, that you are “religious”. You absolutely must establish, not on the balance of probability, not beyond a reasonable doubt but beyond any doubt whatsoever, that you are right. And of course you know you can’t because that is impossible.

Also, you can’t do that because you are a person of “faith” and faith requires that you believe without evidence or proof and even in the face of evidence to the contrary. (This of course is a ridiculous posture to take.) And so you can’t know for certain, you don’t want to know for certain. And therefore you should stop bullshitting other people and your own children.

If you extend Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems beyond the world of mathematics into the system of axioms called your religious dogma, or your credo, you might say that there will always be statements within the system that are unprovable within the system. That is, there will always be elements of your belief system that cannot be proved. You have to at least allow that this may be correct and that uncertainty reduces the probability – however small you may think it is – of your being right below the required condition of absolute certainty.

You believe what you believe. And yet others believe equally fiercely that their opposing belief is true. Could they possibly be right? They think so! Just that fact introduces uncertainty. So your belief is, at best, simply a theory.

You can’t even be certain that this is not all a dream and that you are not actually a butterfly dreaming it is an elephant dreaming it is a human being. You can’t even be certain that this is not just a simulation you are living in. You can’t be certain that this belief in jesus christ, say, is not just a test that was sent you by the JuJu monster to test your faith in him and that by denying the JuJu monster you are condemning yourself to everlasting damnation.

The famous Aussie beach-bum, He-man Bondi, said:

The fact that stares one in the face is that people of the greatest sincerity and of all levels of intelligence differ and have always differed in their religious beliefs. Since at most one faith can be true, it follows that human beings are extremely liable to believe firmly and honestly in something untrue in the field of revealed religion. One would have expected this obvious fact to lead to some humility, to some thought that however deep one’s faith, one may conceivably be mistaken. Nothing is further from the believer, any believer, than this elementary humility. All in his power … must have his faith rammed down their throats. In many cases children are indeed indoctrinated with the disgraceful thought that they belong to the one group with superior knowledge who alone have a private wire to the office of the Almighty, all others being less fortunate than they themselves.

And by the way, acknowledging, as you inescapably must, that absolute certainty about your religious beliefs – whatever they are – is impossible, one might suppose that you would be a little more humble and act a little more modestly about them, especially in relation to your attitudes and actions toward others.

At least you could stop terrorising your children and other people’s children. You could stop killing people, or endorsing the murder of people, in the name of your (by the way, non-existent) god.

¹ Do you read the bible, actually? It is all, you know, the word of god, divinely inspired. Here’s what Thomas Paine says about the character called “Moses”.

Moses, as stated in the Bible, is the most horrid that can be imagined. If those accounts be true, he was the wretch that first began and carried on wars on the score or on the pretence of religion; and under that mask, or that infatuation, committed the most unexampled atrocities that are to be found in the history of any nation. Of which I will state only one instance:

When the Jewish army returned from one of their plundering and murdering excursions, the account goes on as follows (Numbers xxxi. 13): “And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the congregation, went forth to meet them without the camp; and Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle; and Moses said unto them, “Have ye saved all the women alive?” behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord. Now therefore, “kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known a man by lying with him; but all the women-children that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for Yourselves.”

Among the detestable villains that in any period of the world have disgraced the name of man, it is impossible to find a greater than Moses, if this account be true. Here is an order to butcher the boys, to massacre the mothers, and debauch the daughters.

Let any mother put herself in the situation of those mothers, one child murdered, another destined to violation, and herself in the hands of an executioner: let any daughter put herself in the situation of those daughters, destined as a prey to the murderers of a mother and a brother, and what will be their feelings? It is in vain that we attempt to impose upon nature, for nature will have her course, and the religion that tortures all her social ties is a false religion.

UPDATE: This is interesting:

Technorati Tags: religion, sin, abuse, child abuse, terror, terrorism, terrorist, murder, christianity, islam, muslim, hindu, hinduism, jew, judaism, heaven, hell, punishment, retribution, belief, creed, credo, dogma, religious belief, faith, certainty, absolute, dawkins, hitchens, Feynman, hermann bondi, values, religious values, Australian religion, Australian religious values, epistemology

It sends a shiver of disgust down one’s spine listening to the sad clown, Gordon Brown’s, apologetics at the Iraq inquiry, especially the moral distance he is attempting to put between himself (his decisions and his actions), and the million or so Iraqis who have been killed as a result of the invasion of 2003 which, he admitted yesterday, he so enthusiastically supported.

And perhaps the most sickening thing of all was his wanting:

“… er … to pay my respects to all the soldiers and members of our armed forces who served with great courage and distinction … in Iraq … er … for the loss of … life and the sacrifices they have made … and my thoughts are with the families … er … Next week … er …we will dedicate … at the National Aboretum a memorial to the 179 servicemen who died … in Iraq … and I think the thoughts and prayers of …er … us are with all the families today.

We have previously devoted an outraged post to the these vomitous and vacuous sentiments and sentimentalities. “At a time like this,” we said,

“thoughts, prayers, condolences and sympathies are thick in the air like a flock of pigeons on crystal meth … When someone’s “heart goes out” to us, do we have to have a special jar to keep it in? What actually are these things? What do they mean? What actual value are they to us? How much did they cost? The answer to the last four questions are: nothing, nothing, fuckall and fucking nothing. Talk is cheap and mealy-mouthed words and pompous forms of words are empty and meaningless. So, for a politician, the price is right. They serve the speaker, not the supposed recipient who gets precisely nothing in fact. But at least the PM looks and sounds good and, who knows, might be a slightly better chance for re-election one day.”

This is even more pertinent to Brown’s carefully-prepared, carefully-worded, carefully-timed, probably focus-group-tested, utterly empty, utterly tactical hand-wringing, which has the stench of his political advisers all over it, than it was to Rudd when we wrote it. Brown was merely trying to take the sting out of the hostility he faces over his role in the Iraq invasion. He was attempting to take some sort of moral high ground by appearing to care and using supposedly high-sounding language.

Here, have a tree. I mean, shit, who wouldn’t rather have a tree than their son or daughter?

According to the BBC:

His own intelligence briefings had convinced him that Iraq was a threat that “had to be dealt with,” he said.

But the main issue for him was that Iraq was in breach of UN resolutions – and that “rogue states” could not be allowed to flout international law.

If the international community could not act together over Iraq, Mr Brown said he feared the “new world order we were trying to create would be put at risk”.

Gordon Brown’s “New World Order”? When did “we” vote on that? Who designed this “New World Order”? With what and whose authority? When was he elected The One, the most righteous, the most intelligent, the chooser of other people’s choices, the pilot of other people’s life destinations? And by whom was this honour conferred on him? Of course, he arrogates to himself this right, imagining himself somehow superior. Superior? He’s a fucking politician, for christ’s sake! That puts him a long way down the pile and actually nowhere near the short list. The best that can be said about his belief that his intellect is god’s gift to the world is that he’s incredibly ignorant and he mustn’t get out much.

But here is the awful admission that the old dragon, the imperial colonial arrogance which Britain (England, really) has long claimed to have abjured, has merely lain dormant and is resurrected at the slightest provocation. Here is the disdainful assertion that the British (and Americans) own the world or at least are its rightful rulers and that it is they who own the prerogative to decide to chastise disobedient and unruly child nations.

So … “Rogue States” …

There is, of course, no such thing in international law, or in formal international dialogue, as a “rogue state”. It’s propaganda. It is a debating conceit synthesised by (mainly American) political apparatchiks and theorists to create an emotional trigger in a polemical argument to justify possibly contentious state policy (like killing hundreds of thousands of innocent foreigners).

Rogue state is a term applied by some international theorists to states considered threatening to the world’s peace. This means meeting certain criteria, such as being ruled by authoritarian regimes that severely restrict human rights, sponsor terrorism, and seek to proliferate weapons of mass destruction. The term is used most by the United States

[ ... ]

Critics charge that “rogue state” merely means any state that is generally hostile to the U.S., or even one that opposes the U.S. without necessarily posing a wider threat. Some others, such as author William Blum, have written that the term is applicable to the U.S. and Israel. Both the concepts of rogue states and the “Axis of Evil” have been criticized by certain scholars, including philosopher Jacques Derrida and linguist Noam Chomsky, who considered it more or less a justification of imperialism and a useful word for propaganda.
Political scientists Stephen M. Walt and John J. Mearsheimer, from Harvard University and the University of Chicago, respectively, consider Israel to be a rogue state in The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.

But let’s go back to eat more of the vomit of Gordon Brown.

“I met the intelligence services on a number of occasions during the course of 2002 and early 2003,” he said. “I was given information by the intelligence services which led me to believe that Iraq was a threat that had to be dealt with by the actions of the international community.”

Or in other words, “I am not responsible for my own actions. I was led to believe…” Blameshifting is the other excuse of the murderous guilty, after “I was only following orders”.

And it is a simple lie to suggest that the threat was dealt with by “the international community”. It was just George and Tony and a little bit of John but hardly the “international community”. Most of “the international community”, especially as represented by the UN, was strongly opposed to it and didn’t agree that such a “threat” had to be “dealt with”. But then, in their narcissistic arrogance the US and the UK must assume themselves to be the only important members of “the international community”.

But, he added: “What we wanted was a diplomatic route to succeed. Right up to the last minute, right up to the last weekend, I think many of us were hopeful that the diplomatic route would succeed.”

What a slimy load of horseshit. Here’s what Erich Fromm had to say in the 50s, in The Sane Society, about politicians who “try to avoid war”:

Everybody is looking with a mixture of confidence and apprehension to the “statesmen” of the various peoples, ready to heap all praise on them if they “succeed in avoiding a war,” and ignoring the fact that it is only these very statesmen who ever cause a war¹, usually not even through their bad intentions, but by their unreasonable mismanagement of the affairs entrusted to them.

¹ One’s emphases

It is always possible to avoid a war, especially a war of your own choosing.

What you do is not start it.

What Brown is saying has all the moral force of

“I was hoping that I could avoid having to bugger the child but he refused to say “yes” and my already-erect cock was so juiced-up and insistent on satisfaction that it overwhelmed all actual moral judgment. It’s his own fault. If only he’d just sucked me off like a good boy … “

Because you know that Blair, Brown and others, and Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and others, Howard, Costello, Downer, Sinodinos and others all had their little stiffies out, and their lust for war and death required satisfaction. If only Saddam Hussein had just bent over…

So Brown says that “right up to the last minute” he’d hoped that diplomacy would succeed. And what is the truth of that assertion? Well, we’ll never know for sure but the known facts are against him. What is pretty certain is that “right up to the last minute” Saddam Hussein was trying to reach a diplomatic solution and that the US and Britain refused to engage in diplomacy.

In December 2002, a representative of the head of Iraqi Intelligence, General Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, contacted former Central Intelligence Agency Counterterrorism Department head Vincent Cannistraro stating that Hussein “knew there was a campaign to link him to September 11 and prove he had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).” Cannistraro further added that “the Iraqis were prepared to satisfy these concerns. I reported the conversation to senior levels of the state department and I was told to stand aside and they would handle it.” Cannistraro stated that the offers made were all “killed” by the George W. Bush administration because they allowed Hussein to remain in power – an outcome viewed as unacceptable. It has been suggested that Saddam Hussein was prepared to go into exile if allowed to keep $1 billion USD.

Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak’s national security advisor, Osama El-Baz, sent a message to the US State Department that the Iraqis wanted to discuss the accusations that the country had weapons of mass destruction and ties with al-Qaeda. Iraq also attempted to reach the US through the Syrian, French, German, and Russian intelligence services. Nothing came of the attempts.

In January 2003, Lebanese-American Imad Hage met with Michael Maloof of the US Department of Defense’s Office of Special Plans. Hage, a resident of Beirut, had been recruited by the department to assist in the “War on Terrorism”. He reported that Mohammed Nassif, a close aide to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, had expressed frustrations about the difficulties of Syria contacting the United States, and had attempted to use him as an intermediary. Maloof arranged for Hage to meet with civilian Richard Perle, then head of the Defense Policy Board.

In January 2003, Hage met with the chief of Iraqi intelligence’s foreign operations, Hassan al-Obeidi. Obeidi told Hage that Baghdad didn’t understand why they were being targeted, and that they had no WMDs; he then made the offer for Washington to send in 2000 FBI agents to confirm this. He additionally offered petroleum concessions, but stopped short of having Hussein give up power, instead suggesting that elections could be held in two years. Later, Obeidi suggested that Hage travel to Baghdad for talks; he accepted.
Later that month, Hage met with General Habbush and Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz. He was offered top priority to US firms in oil and mining rights, UN-supervised elections, US inspections (with up to 5,000 inspectors), to have al-Qaeda agent Abdul Rahman Yasin (in Iraqi custody since 1994) handed over as a sign of good faith, and to give “full support for any US plan” in the Arab-Israeli peace process. They also wished to meet with high-ranking US officials.

On February 19, Hage faxed Maloof his report of the trip. Maloof reports having brought the proposal to Jamie Duran. The Pentagon denies that either Wolfowitz or Rumsfeld, Duran’s bosses, were aware of the plan.

On February 21, Maloof informed Duran in an email that Richard Perle wished to meet with Hage and the Iraqis if the Pentagon would clear it. Duran responded “Mike, working this. Keep this close hold.” On March 7, Perle met with Hage in Knightsbridge, and stated that he wanted to pursue the matter further with people in Washington (both have acknowledged the meeting). A few days later, he informed Hage that Washington refused to let him meet with Habbush to discuss the offer (Hage stated that Perle’s response was “that the consensus in Washington was it was a no-go”). Perle told The Times, “The message was ‘Tell them that we will see them in Baghdad.”

Brown, in short, is a liar or really stupid. One deeply suspects he is both.

Politicians squirming under the post-facto boot of public scrutiny usually squeal and claim some sort of immunity – you know, “I was just doing my job,” “I was doing the best I could under difficult circumstances”. They also seem to assert some sense of immunity because they are somehow “special”, in a special position. One has met truly “special” people in “special schools” who are far more special in every way than Brown, Howard, Bush and all their careerist sycophants.

Politicians deserve no special treatment merely by dint of the fact that they are politicians. Prime ministers and cabinet ministers especially are due no special moral privilege because they are senior decision-makers, the political elite. Pursuing a career in politics is voluntary. The decisions that politicians make, they make 100% by their own personal choice and they therefore bear 100% of the responsibility for those choices. There is no possibility for blameshifting or diluting culpability. Brown made a very big mistake and no amount of squirming can relieve him of the burden of guilt which he now carries for the deaths and destruction which he so eagerly told Blair he could pay for.

“I think it was the right decision and made for the right reasons.”

Clearly and demonstrably – as all the evidence shows unequivocally – it was not for the right reasons. The evidence shows that the reasons were just about 100% wrong. Firstly the reason cannot be pre-emptive regime change. That is illegal in any language and any system. If that is what he is suggesting he has admitted guilt and he ought not pass Go. He should go directly to gaol.

And it’s not enough to “think” it was the right decision. It has to be rolled gold certified undeniable F-A-C-T if you’re going to go and kill people on the basis of it.

The thing is this: if you’re going to go around killing people and destroying countries and ruining people’s lives, you’d better be absolutely 100% certain you have your facts 100% right, and your legal facts 100% right and your moral rights 100% right, otherwise you are culpable and a murderer and a war criminal. It is not enough to say that you “thought” it was probably right, or that you “believed” it was the right thing to do. It’s not enough to say that you “believed” your advisers, because they don’t have to pay if they made a mistake. You pay. It’s not enough to think that you’re right “beyond a reasonable doubt”, or “on the balance of probabilities”. If you’re going to go around killing people in the name of your country, or (in the case of George W. Bush and Tony Blair) in the name of your god – or possibly, in Brown’s case, in the name of his political career – then you need to be dead-set 100% absolutely cast-iron certain without the faintest hint of the palest doubt that you are right. Otherwise you are culpable and a murderer and a war criminal. And Blair and Brown, Howard and Bush are in this writer’s opinion culpable and murderers and war criminals.

Technorati Tags: Iraq, Gordon Brown, UK, Britain, US, USA, America, Prime Minister, Chancellor, Blair, Howard, Bush, inquiry, enquiry, Iraq inquiry, BBC, war, war criminal, war criminals, WMD, regime change, murderer, murder, rogue state, international community, UN, Security Council, Richard Perle, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Costello, Sinodinos, Downer, international law, morals, morality, ethics, terrorism, intelligence, MI6, CIA, politics, government, diplomacy, Fromm, Erich Fromm, Sane Society, values, Australian values, political values, moral values, ethical values, new world order

Yes, old premarital-sex joke from the still-nervous sixties. But if you like your cause-and-effect “gee-whizzz!” then take a look at this video (via Pharyngula¹ )

Yes, we know, being a Values Australia reader you’re going to be sceptical and think that they’ve done a few bits of sleight of hand. It’s still a remarkable feat, nevertheless, and amazingly creative.

¹ Note: PZ Myers will soon be here for the Atheist Convention in Melbourne.
Also, as you’ve noticed, Dawkins and A C Grayling are both here already. They will be speaking at the Opera House on Sunday [Grayling at 12md, Dawkins at 2pm] although we believe both talks are booked out.

The Sydney Morning Herald says:

If you can’t be there you can watch live on the The Sydney Morning Herald website here: http://bit.ly/dawkinssoh (but don’t try the link until Sunday because it won’t work until then).

Technorati Tags: pharyngula, OK Go, this too shall pass, dominos, dominoes, mechanics, mechanical device, Dawkins, P Z Myers, Grayling, atheist, atheism, melbourne, atheist convention, opera house, sydney opera house, music, pop music, rock music, rock and roll, music video

Daniel Kahneman’s TED Talk confirms Sir Roger’s deep and lengthy investigations into the nature of happiness. Has anyone ever asked you, “are you having fun?” and you replied, “I dunno, I guess so…maybe…” and then days or years later, when you recall that experience, you think, “Damn that was fun!” as if you had been having fun but didn’t appreciate it at the time because, you know, you were too busy having the experience?

In his lectures, Sir Roger tells his audiences that people are three things above all: Meaning-Making Machines, Story-Making Machines, and Complaint-Making Machines. When the facts and events manifest themselves contrary to our personal Theory of the World (or what we usually call “Ther Truth”) do we adjust our theory? What? How can you adjust Ther Truth? No, our theory, our Truth Theorem, can’t be wrong, by definition. Therefore and ergo, it’s The World that is wrong. And so is born the Complaint.

As Douglass Adams said, “In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.”

In any case Sir Roger is happy (in retrospect and recollection) to have had his own Truth Theorem validated by a man of Kahneman’s stature.

Technorati Tags: happiness, happy, satisfaction, fulfillment, how to be happy, experience, memory, recollection, the tyranny of memory, past present, future, Daniel Kahneman, TED, Ted video, ideas worth spreading, Technology, Education, Design, intellect, research, video, Australian values, values, lifestyle, lifestyle values

And this one is for Handel (and the White Shirt ladies).

With all one’s gibbering over those other sopranos one forgot that the greatest of the great was a homegrown Australian – La Stupenda, Joan Sutherland.

So here she is singing “Ah, mio cor, schernito sei” from Handel’s Alcina. This is purity. This is effortless magnificence:

In an unlikely link to the Diva, Sir Roger’s childhood piano teacher and her husband had been Sutherland’s original singing teachers. Ada had a lot less success with (then simply “The Hon.”) Roger. (He never got into preliminary grade.) But Ada Dickens was forbidden to rap him over the knuckles with the metronome for never practising….

Technorati Tags: Opera, Handel, Sutherland, Joan Sutherland, Alcina, Ah mio cor schernito sei, music, classic, culture, Australian values, Australian cultural values, voice, soprano, coloratura, bel canto

This is a reminder that in just three days’ time Three Idiots, the Bollywood Blockbuster and most successful Bollywood movie ever, is about to given a charity screening at Letchworth in England, a bit north of London [Letchworth is a bit north, not England], to support the Druk White Lotus School, in Ladakh, north-west India, where part of the movie was shot.

It’s a great cause, it’s by all accounts a brilliant film, so if you can, get up to Letchworth Garden City. The details are here and here (with video teasers) and here:

Wednesday, 3 March at 6.15pm at Broadway Cinema, Letchworth. Tickets are £8 and available from David’s Bookshop and St Christopher School, Letchworth.

You know it would be a hoot to do it just because you can. (And after all, there is an Australian connection.)

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Sir Roger is maxed out for superlatives after Barbara Bonney (and the amazing Kathleen Kim’s Olympia) but here are two sopranos worth listening to:

Martina Serafin
- Heut noch wird Ich Ehefrau (Franz Lehar)

- Meine Lippen Sie küssen so Heiß (My lips kiss with such fire)

As someone said, “This here is high octane!!” What a voice! What a range! What energy!

[If you would like to compare Anna Netrebko's BBC Proms version it's here. She has a purer top note and is great fun.]

Miah Persson
- Kyrie from Mozart’s Mass in C Minor – Nobel Prize concert

- Mass in C minor, Et incarnatus est

and if you want a conversation with someone who actually knows about opera and singing and world travel, and has probably been to all those places you keep saying “I must go there some day” about, well, you could have a chat with the Wanderer.

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UPDATE BELOW

Sir Roger is in love with a man … and a new woman …

In fact Sir Roger has been infatuated with the man more or less constantly since his early childhood.

The Man’s name is Robert Schumann and he wrote Dichterliebe, the love-song cycle which Sir Roger’s father, Lord Migently, used to sing so passionately and beautifully to his Princess all those centuries ago.

But why this sudden revival of passion? Sir Roger has discovered, belatedly in his dull ignorance, a Lieder singer of special brilliance that probably the whole world knew about – except him.

She is the Other – the New – Woman. Her name is Barbara Bonney and her voice is simply exquisite and pure as moonlight on snow.

Sir Roger heard her singing Schumann’s “Mondnacht” (Moon-night), accompanied by Vladimir Ashkenazy, on ABC Classic FM today and was instantly transported into the glimmering, ethereal night in a wintry 19th-century German forest. Heartbreakingly beautiful and tender. After he had exhausted the tissue box he searched for this woman and found her here at Se Vuoi Pace, otherwise known as handelismygod¹.

Se Vuoi Pace reveals that Ms Bonney may be singing at the Lieder Festival, “Lied und Lyrik”, at Coburg in Bavaria, in 2011 in the northern autumn. Sir Roger is determined to be there.

So here is Barbara Bonney singing Schumann’s “Mondnacht”, accompanied by (we think) Vladimir Ashkenazy:

It was as if the sky
Had quietly kissed the earth,
So that in a shower of blossoms
She must only dream of him.

The breeze wafted through the fields,
The ears of corn waved gently,
The forests rustled faintly,
So sparkling clear was the night.

And my soul stretched
its wings out far,
Flew through the still lands,
as if it were flying home.

………………

Es war, als hätt’ der Himmel,
Die Erde still geküßt,
Daß sie im Blütenschimmer
Von ihm nun träumen müßt.

Die Luft ging durch die Felder,
Die Ähren wogten sacht,
Es rauschten leis die Wälder,
So sternklar war die Nacht.

Und meine Seele spannte
Weit ihre Flügel aus,
Flog durch die stillen Lande,
Als flöge sie nach Haus.

UPDATE: See comments below for more, juicy, excellent and timely information. And meet the owner of Si Vuoi Pace.

¹ The owner of the website says that “Handel reminds us … real life is the bastard love child of tragedy and comedy (conceived in a drunken stupor in a bus shelter at 2am, possibly with a member of your own family).” We don’t think so. At least we don’t think Handel said that. Did he? Not the bit about the bus shelter, anyway. But Sir Roger does like the sentiment before the parentheses, as a conceit.

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