The Only Story by Julian Barnes

Click on the map below to view it full size.

You can post your own comments, too. 

Add a short slogan to summarise your opinion.

Solar by Ian McEwan

Click on the map below to view it full size.

You can post your own comments, too. 

Add a short slogan to summarise your opinion.

Man in the Dark by Paul Auster

The summary of the May reading is outlined below. You can post your own comments under it. Click on the map to view it full size:

1984 by George Orwell

The  April book is outlined below in mind map format. You can post your own comments below. Click on the map to view it full size:

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

The  February book is outlined below in mind map format. You can post your own comments below. Click on the map to view it full size:

Agnes Grey by Anne Brönte

The January book is outlined below in mind map format. You can post your own comments below. Click on the map to view it full size:

The Dying Animal by Philip Roth

The December book is outlined below in mind map format. You can leave your own comments below. Click on the map to see full size:

Alice in Wonderland

The November book is outlined below in mind map format. You can leave your own comments below. Click on the map to see full size:

Nutshell

This is the feedback site for "Nutshell" which we discussed in October. 

Below is an outline of some of the aspects discussed. To enlarge the image click on it.

You are invited to leave your own comments on the blog using the comments link below.

The Structure of the Bible 4: The Covenant with Abraham

In Genesis12 and following Abraham lives in Ur of the Chaldees, a place known for moon worshippers.  He is approached by El Shaddai to create a new covenant.

• The epiphany of God as El Shaddai (Gen 17), meaning 'The Nourisher, Benefactor”, the succourer as a mother to a baby. This is not a menacing God but one who will support and give life and meaning.
• El Shaddai establishes a new covenant with Abraham and his descendence, making good the promise that Israel will be the promised people (Gen 17). Circumcision is to be the outward sign of the covenant. Abraham is the first in the line of prophets (Gen 20/7).
• The promise made is redemption through the seed of Abraham.
• However the prople of Israel apostasise and lose faith in the one God (Josh 24).
• The curse is the destuction of Sodom & Gomorra (Gen 19).
• Promise of the land of Canaan

The Structure of the Bible 3: The Covenant with Noah

The background to the flood episode in Genesis 6-11 is the “Epic of Gilgamesh”, written in the Akkadian language of Babylonia and Assyria, particularly Tablet 11, kept in the British Museum.

These findings are in keeping with the writing down of the Bible story while the Israelites were still in exile in Babylonia. The Babylonian epic is assumed and transformed into the Israelite myth through the theology of the covenant and God's special relationship with his people. The narrative follows the covenant structure adding another layer to the interpretation of Israel's history in the light of the covenant.

• Epiphany: God now appears as Creator and also Judge.
• The promise of a new covenant is offered where their will be no more universal destruction, the reversal of creation.
• However, the Israelites default on their part of the covenant and build religious shrines, ziggurats, copying their Mesopotamian neighbours. Their is also the case of Sodom & Gomorra.
• The curse is a confusion of languages and the dispersion of the 12 tribes, something witnessed by the Israelites in their divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and the Assyrian and Babylonian invasions.
• The story immediately follows up with that of Abraham, the promise that Israel will be the chosen people. (Gen 12)

The Structure of the Bible 2: The Adamic Covenant

During their exile in Babylonia the Israelites began to put together the book about their beliefs. They started the Bible with a story about the beginnings of their relationship with God. However, they found that they were faced with two competing narratives:

• one from the Northern kingdom, Israel, which had succumbed to the Assyrians in 734 BC and in turn had been absorbed by the Babylonians
• another from the Southern Kingdom, Judah, which was taken over by the Babylonians in 587 BC

The peoples of both kingdoms had been reunited in their babylonian exile but they had two differing versions about the beginning of their relationship with their God.

The northern kingdom (Israel) proposed the poetic first narrative (Gen 1 – 2/3) called P, for priestly because it was probably the work of priests.

The southern kingdom already had a J versión (Gen 2/4-25), so-called because they gave the name YHWH, the modern-day Jehovah, to their God. This is a less poetic and indeed older versión probably written before the babylonian exile. It was modeled on an existing Arkaddian narrative: The Epic of Gilgamesh.

The editors of the book decided to include both versions about the first covenant God made with his people since the salient fact was not the truth of the narratives but the affirmation of the belief that God had established a relationship with Israel. Thus they knew who they were: the people of God.

The narrative structure of the Adamic Covenant follows a similar scheme to the other covenants found in the Bible:

• An Epiphany: God appears as the creator of the relationship (the Covenant maker).
• The Covenant: the relationship with Yahweh gives creation meaning.
• Rejection: sin is the breaking of the covenant, the rejection of the relationship offered by God (in this case the disobedience of Adam & Eve, the sins of Cain, Lamech(polygamy) and Seth.)
• The Curse : Expulsion from Eden, work & death. The flood, a de-creation, chaos and meaninglessness.
• The Promise: of covenant renewal, redemption. The seed of the woman will destroy the serpent. (Good will conquer evil.)

The Structure of the Bible 1: The Background

The year 587 BC was a turning point for the peoples who wrote the bible. The Babylonia Empire invaded their land and Jerusalem fell. Worse, they were taken as captives to Babylonia and treated as slaves.

Until this point the 12 tribes of Israel had had a powerful sense of identity thanks to their oral and written traditions in which they had seen themselves as God’s people. Now, however, they had all ended up as slaves, not as the chosen race. It is easy to imagine that dismay and disbelief set in through this fall from grace. In order to retain their own identity in the midst of slavery they had to reaffirm it. The exiles did this by setting down their beliefs in a book: the Bible.

The core belief of the Israelites was that they had a special relationship with God. It is this link which structures the book they wrote to preserve their identity. The main theme of the book then, became the covenants, or testaments, between themselves and their God. This is what we know as the Old Testament and its purpose was to revise their own history and reaffirm Israel as the people of God.

The first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, were probably written down during the Babylonian exile; others were added after Cyrus, the Persian, released the Israelites from their Babylonian exile in 538 BC.

Recognising this covenantal structure of the Bible allows us to divide the whole book into seven different Covenants: The Adamic covenant; Noah’s covenant; the covenant with Abraham; the covenant with Moses; David’s covenant; the Restoration covenant and finally, in the New Testament, that of Christ.

(View the outline of the 7 Covenants on a one-page mind map.) to be continued...

Galápagos & Ecology?

Visited the Galápagos islands, Ecuador, this year.

The 'Charles Darwin Research Foundation', founded by a Belgian, is an unusal zoo situated next to Puerto Ayora, the prime tourist spot of Santa Cruz island.

Darwin is renowned for his discretion on the theory of evolution : the survival of the most adapted; Puerto Ayola zoo is famous for its adaptation of the least adapted. The century-old tortoise, Lonely George, is the last of a species of giant tortoise about to become extinct since he has no surving mate. No problem, the Foundation has deposited two females of another species in his caged area to see if he will mate. To date George has not done this to the disappointment of the 5 planes of human species of tourists who disembark on Galápagos each day.

Speaking of 5 Airbus planes a day, the Galápagos airport, built by the US military during World War II on Santa Cruz island, is now called an Eco airport. Eco as in ecological? Yes sir, the first ecological airport in the the world!. You may well ask: how can an airport which lands and sees off 5 Airbuses a day be ecological? It's the branding and cash flow, not the ecological reality, that counts.

By the way, the airport is around 45 minutes by bus and ferry from the capital, Puerto Ayora. This entails a ferryboat and a bustrip or taxi for all who land on Galápagos. Needless to say both the bus or taxi and the ferryboat spew out carbon monoxide to be added to the carbon footprint left by the departing Airbus. Did someone say ecological trip?

Many 'introduced' species were brought to the Galápagos islands by pirates and sailors. One of these was the tick bird (garapatero) which was introduced to rid the imported cattle of worriesome ticks:


However, the tick birds found that plundering the nests of the endemic species was easier and allowed them to survive better. Man has decided that this is not the 'endemic' way of living and has decided to eliminate the tick birds. If we followed this logic we would also eliminate the human population as non-endemic. But we are also of the human species so we don't apply this logic.

Is Galápagos a brand rather than a place? Is it a place where Mankind poses as God almighty?

I Believe

There’s an intriguing story told about that eye-catching insect, the bumblebee. In summertime it is frequent to see its plump form buzzing around gardens or other natural areas in search of nectar and pollen to feed its young. You have probably spotted one flying around tipsily, pollinating flowers and gathering food. They are difficult to miss because of their insistent buzz and striking yellow and black stripes. However, you might be surprised to learn that, according to the laws of aeronautics, bumblebees can’t fly! Restated in another way: the laws of aeronautics still cannot explain how bumblebees fly. In other words this aeronautical model is not altogether wrong, but certainly defective.

Our beliefs are just like this model for flying, they are constructions of how the world works, built up through our daily experience. There is no problem with that unless we succumb to the temptation to believe that our model really explains how the world works. The aeronautical equivalent would be expectations of lots of bumblebees toppling out of the sky.

Beliefs as Generalisations

In his book “Changing Belief Systems”, Robert Dilts defines beliefs as generalisations. According to Dilts they are generalisations about the connection between different experiences. For example one day in the middle of one of your boss’s tantrums you happen to notice that he is wearing red socks. You think it a little unusual and record it in your memory bank. However, the next time the boss goes off the deep end he happens to be wearing the same red socks. This double sequence of events, seeing the boss in a bad mood and seeing his red socks only has to happen to most of us three times and we’ll start believing that there is a causal relationship between the two events. From then on we’ll begin to expect the boss to start bellowing if we notice he has his red socks on because we have generalised the relationship between the two experiences into a reality when in fact it is a coincidence. The important point is that it is we ourselves who forge the connection between the two experiences. It is a mental construct. That is the nature of belief - we construct it in our minds.

The positive angle, of course, is that we can also learn to deconstruct, or change our beliefs. I believe that this is window of opportunity. If we can reconstruct our beliefs to make our lives more fulfilling and happier then we should grasp the chance. Why not learn to laugh at the boss and his red socks instead of seeing them as an ominous sign? Why not ignore them and avoid provoking a confrontation because we believe one should take place?

The Placebo effect

Another striking example of the power of belief to alter our lives is the placebo effect. Dilts looked into the research on placebos done in the USA where every new drug has to be tested against a placebo. He concluded that more than a third of the time placebos had the same effect as the drug being tested. This means that in over thirty-three percent of cases belief in the placebos effected a cure equivalent to the available chemical stimulant. This may not be so surprising if we reflect that vaccination works by eliciting the body’s own defence system and that, possibly, belief has the same immunological effect. However we explain it, the placebo effect remains a powerful example of the capacity of our beliefs to transform our lives. In education, for example, we can turn the placebo effect to our advantage simply by expecting students to learn well. Those who swallow the pill of our expectations will learn more than the subject matter; they will learn the benefits of constructing positive beliefs. Unfortunately our beliefs are often self-limiting and we don’t actually expect as much as we should. As Nelson Mandela put it,

"... our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure."

A model for beliefs

In his book Dilts goes further and offers a framework which enables us to explore the way in which we construct beliefs. The model of organisation he proposes distinguishes 5 different levels : Identity – Beliefs – Capabilities – Behaviour - Environment. For example if a child is having problems learning maths, a parent might talk about the problem from any one of the 5 viewpoints:

Identity: “You are a poor student.”

Beliefs: “Maths is only one area of problem solving.”

Capabilities: “You’ll have to develop better maths strategies.”

Behaviour: “You don’t put effort into concentrating so you can’t calculate correctly.”

Environment: “You don’t do your maths well because you can’t concentrate on your maths homework and the TV at the same time.”

The impact on the student of an isolated analysis will range widely depending on the level chosen, from Identity : “I am not intelligent.” to Environmental : “I can’t do maths because of the surrounding noise.”. Dilts invites us to view beliefs not as an isolated occurrence but as one level of the system. It is important to note that the higher levels of Identity and Belief have a knock-on effect and that working at these levels is probably more efficient. The function of beliefs, for example, is to activate capabilities and behaviours. The student above is encouraged to improve his maths strategies and make an effort by the belief that in this way she will be better able to solve other problems. In the same way enhancing a learner’s Environment, through supportive feedback, will also underpin their chances of believing long enough in themselves to allow change to take place, despite temporary failures. Belief is a construct and can be analysed as part of a system. It affects and is influenced by the other levels of the system. It is not to be confused with reality.

Belief and Faith

I believe that there is a difference between belief and faith. It is a difference in quality. Both terms suppose a leap in the dark, but faith is a belief which matters deeply, because it makes the world more sensible to the believer. Belief goes something like this:

- Do you believe that Australia exists?

- Oh, yes, I saw it on a TV documentary the other night.

- Did you believe the documentary? (Back to square one.)

Faith, however, goes more like this:

- Do you believe we were created by God?

- Well, no, I’m an atheist.

- Oh, how does that help you to make sense of life?

In other words, faith deals with the unanswered questions which seem to haunt humans. We appear to be doomed, probably by the structure of our brain, to seek to understand the whole meaning of things, including our own existence. This innate impulse towards holistic comprehension of life has lead humans to depths of despair and also to peaks of beauty. This is surely what Art in all its forms is seeking : to give more meaningfulness to life, be it in the form of a symphony, a classic play, a good book or a great painting? This is also what religious faiths are striving to offer us: the ultimate meaning of existence. Sin, after all, is just the name for the contradictory human experience of needing wholeness yet being unable to attain it. The Existentialist philosophers made a brave attempt to live on a horizontal plane with no reference to anything outside mankind. Yet Camus was haunted by what he called “le soupçon d’autre chose”, the suspicion that there is more to living than what we can quite explain. Sartre himself also admitted that there was no explanation which could account for the suffering of an innocent child. They had come up against ‘sin’, which doesn’t admit philosophy with ease.

We are makers-of-sense and we cannot but help look for patterns in what we experience around us. Christianity, for example, follows the Jewish tradition and sees in the two Genesis creation stories the expression of how life can be given meaning, the affirmation that creation exists for a purpose, not just by accident. The rest of the biblical story is an attempt to analyse and convey the meaningfulness of living. The ancient Greeks, the Maya and the Celts also created a meaning for their world through myth, as all cultures have, because they needed a holistic explanation of how their world was.

Many contemporaries prefer the modern myths of science to those of religion. It is curious to reflect that Science doesn’t claim to give a whole explanation to life but we have such a thirst for complete explanations that we attribute it that capacity. This conjures up that fun picture of bumblebees falling out of the sky.

Science and Pseudoscience

I know a researcher who worked for the Swiss government at the cutting edge of nuclear medicine investigation - non-invasive brain scanning. I once asked him what practical use his work had. He thought for a moment then said brightly, “Well, when someone thinks of the word ‘cheese’ we know exactly which part of his brain he is using.”


Surely this is how fundamental scientific studies work: it measures a tiny piece of life and, using the results of other equally small experiments, gradually builds up a general hypothesis which is relentlessly put to the test through more detailed experiments.

This is a highly rational and verifiable method of understanding reality. It enables us to build up models about the world that surrounds us, based on measurable and accurate data which can be confirmed and re-confirmed if necessary.

However, it is always necessary to remind ourselves that no matter how detailed the experiments, the resulting models are constructions and do not reflect reality exactly. They are themselves hypotheses. In fact they are beliefs about how the world is, based on laborious and often ingenious hard work, but nonetheless, beliefs, not reality.

This is not an attempt to deny the scientific method all its merits, but rather a caveat to prevent us from converting it into a magical answer to everything. Take an example of what an anecdote that happened to me. A few years ago I wrote an article on Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s work. When working as a psychologist at Chicago university Csikszentmihalyi’s developed a theory called “flow”. Basically it is that state of grace which you experience when you are deeply involved in something of great interest, when hour-long activities pass like minutes. The article talked about the possible applications of ‘flow’ to educational contexts. Some time after publishing the article in Internet I received an e-mail from a chemistry graduate who said that ‘flow’ was not a complex psychological phenomenon but actually a straightforward chemical reaction. He added that to induce ‘flow’ you simply had to provoke a surge in dopamine. I asked him how you administer dopamine surges in a classroom. He still hasn’t replied.

The point here is that sciences such as chemistry have found clear answers to some chemical questions but maybe need to recognise that description is not application. When chemical answers become applications the answers are less clear. Think, for example, of the disastrous effects of thalidomide or the moral implications of cloning. Recognising that humans can be analysed into chemical components does not imply that humans must see themselves as chemical compounds. Scientific analysis is true, but it is not the whole truth. Wholeness is something that the human spirit yearns for and which can only be satiated in complex beliefs like art, which influence our culture perceptions, religions which give us interpretations about the ultimate meaning of life or scientific models which rationalise the structure of our reality. The clash between these different beliefs can lead us to think that one is more valid than the other. I think that it is truer to say that one usually prevails, depending on the moment, but that none of them is more authoritative in all spheres.

It is certainly true that application of science to everyday life, what we call technology, is very attractive. Its method of asking the pragmatic question. “How can we make it work?” has led to very useful innovations. They have directly affected our daily lives, particularly in communications and health, from cell phones to heart transplants, from the Internet to cures for cancers. However, we must not confuse this very positive spin-off of fundamental science with scientific philosophy. True science does not claim to explain everything. It patiently builds theoretical models and tests them in a rational manner. It would be irrational, and unscientific, to assert that science is Truth.

It was the Greek philosophers who gave us the belief that we could understand the world through our reason and thus opened the way for measurement, analysis and science. This has enabled mankind to work towards material progress in many areas. Yet some would argue that reason cannot explain everything we experience. In fact the very impetus of science, that of concentration on the observable, may have blinded us to what is not directly observable, or measurable, and given us a materialistic perception of our world. In this way, science, just as it has enabled us, could at the same time limit us, by inducing us to believe that what we cannot measure does not exist.

How does space smell?

This intriguing question was put to some astronauts when they came back from trips into space. The expected answer would have been that space is a vacuum and has no smell. The real responses given were descriptions of a metallic smell or again that of fried meat. It seems that NASA got into this complicated enquiry because they wanted to update the preparatory experiences astronauts received when training to fly into space. Weightlessness, G forces and the rest all formed part of pre-flight experiences and when returning crews described smells it was decided to incorporate that into the programme.

The question still remained of how to create these smells in a relatively naturally way. Surprisingly experts consulted were able to bottle these olfactory experiences. More surprising is the reason they are able to do this. It seems that the sense of smell depends less on the air going into your nose and more on the vibration of the molecules being sniffed. Thus smells can be created and changed by manipulating their movement and thus capturing the smells in a container - ready for use.

The Cloud

The Cloud is the trendy name for the process of computing in Web2.0 when all our data will be on the Internet - in the cloud.

The advantages of this are that you can use the most up-to-date software without downloading it to your local computer. All your information will be available anywhere at any time since it is stored in the cloud, not in a personal machine. You will be able to access all your own data and any other information you might want on the move via a small reader like a 3G phone so 'offshore location' takes on a new, positive meaning. You will have everything with you, everywhere.

The Cloud sounds like a wondrous place to have your information stored. It has connotations of a big white fluffy blob in the sky. It is almost cuddly. The advantages it offers a mobile world seem endless.

However, one thing is the concept and another the reality. Google, among others, have been hard at work building the Cloud right here on earth. It consists of a series of computer farms spread round the globe at places where there is a rich supply of electrical energy. This is the down-to-earth picture of Google's cloud :


So why should big companies be spending so much cash on Web2? One reason is that the investment will probably be very profitable. The Apple iphone is paving the way for mobile computing which will require the Cloud if it's going to be successful. After all you can't expect people to lug around laptops containing their data forever. No, Apple and Google's android operating system will ensure that you can access all the information you want on a small screen.

The info., of course, won't be on your 3G phone, it will be in the Cloud. And guess who owns the Cloud? The owners will have to be trustworthy since they will be the keeper of all your data, who you are, what and how much you buy, where you move, when you go, your preferences... In a word your full and evolving profile.

Is the Cloud beginning to look blacker?

Seeing things.

There is an interesting talk broacast on ted.com which purports to share a powerful idea about ideas. It is recommendable because the speaker shows us how we understand. The basic idea is that we are blind, we can't actually see, or more specifically we can't see actuality.

Kay summarises this in a catchy phrase: "We see things as we are." Not as they are. In sensory terms this means we filter the reality that our senses offer us and discard what we can't make sense of. Perception wins over 'reality'.

Reason gets us no further since it is always based on a belief; quite the opposite of reason.
Perspective: the world is not as it seems and we use science to rectify our distorted view of it. We use models to approach reality but we can't reach it.

We each view things through a distorted mirror. That's why we are condemned to negociate reality with one another.

Tom

The Net result.

When I wrote with a typewriter I was actually just copying from a handwritten script, principally because updating the text meant typing it out again. I longed for a way of typing and updating at the same time. Along came the word processor to answer my dreams. It incorporates a spellchecker and synonym dictionary - all the better. Does this mean I write differently? Not really, the ideas still well up from my experience. The outcome is probably comparatively better though, since it is more checked, more varied and more revised.

Reading a newspaper I tend to look first at the economy section, then the international news, the opinion pages and finally the home pages. I read all these parts linearly starting on the first page of the section and turning over until the last.
Reading online is a completely different experience. I use the index page as my base and click out from there, sometimes following up other links within a story.
I do read web news differently, using more choice and less habit than with the printed press.

Searching for information on the internet is always a googling task for me. I sometimes get sidetracked but often find the answer to my question in a few clicks. I hardly ever consulted an encyclopaedia when a schoolchild so I believe Google has enriched my curiosity and learning. (Something quite different is to believing that everything read on Google entries is true.)

Surfing the web and cooperating on it can lead to disparity and lack of concentration but it is almost always stimulating.