Reflections

[johnhhemphill]

Recent Reading -The Second Sleep by Robert Harris

Historian turned novelist Robert Harris has written some excellent books including The Ghost. 

The Second Sleep, set in a dystopian future, is not one of them.

[johnhhemphill]

Recent Reading - The History of Philosophy by AC Grayling

Dense, long, and interesting.  I’m reading it in stages and am now well into the 19th Century. 

One has difficulty absorbing in detail the evolution of thought and ethics from Socrates, Plato and Aristotle to the present day. But that, in my view is not the value of the book. What’s intriguing is the journey. So many things we do reflexively today, such as how we think about government or science, was ground out bit by bit by successions of philosophers.   

Karen Armstrong (The Battle for God) wrote of the roles of the mythos and the logos.  By mythos she meant faith and belief, our non rational way of dealing with things.  By logos, she meant logical analysis.  The evolution of philosophy is partly a battle between these two with the logos becoming more and more prominent as more is understood science and how the natural world works. 

What of the logos, that area that Richard Dawkins denies?  Has religion a valid role?  Are we hard wired to believe, if not in God, in something? 

I’m trusting that AC Grayling is going to help me think more about this as I finish the book.

Excellent but you need time.

[johnhhemphill]

Recent Reading - Call Sign Chaos by Jim Mattis

For those of us brought up in the military, but long out of date, this is a fascinating book in several ways.  It covers Jim Mattis’ military career. 

Despite one description of the US Marines as the finest vehicle for killing young Americans, Mattis tells us that the Marines valued cunning, lateral thinking, and initiative. (Values rather prized during my days at the Royal Military College.) 

Mattis is deeply analytical and a gifted planner.  His descriptions of planning a deployment to Afghanistan are deeply interesting both for his gift in pulling allies like Special Forces into his net and for the thoroughness with which the deployment was considered.  (At one stage, officers with labelled jerseys, actually stepped through the deployment sequence so everyone could see how it would work and where the problems were.)

 Mattis is also memorable for getting to the point.  I’ve always been a fan of General Vasey’s statement during the Kokoda campaign that, ‘Here we bloody well are and here we bloody well stay.’  Mattis’ contributions are even more pungent including his statement to possible opponents before the first battle of Fallujah that ‘If you cause me problems, I’ll come back and fucking kill you all.’ 

One senses he was well equipped to be Secretary of Defence (not covered) but his patience would have run out with an unruly President.

Rewarding.

[johnhhemphill]

Recent Reading - Agent Running in the Field by John Le Carre

A jewel of a book, amusing, insightful, and not self parodying as some of the later Le Carre’s became. 

Told in the first person by Nat, a near to superannuated intelligence officer and an ace badminton player, it describes an operation to nail a Russian mole within the British intelligence services.  Displaying a light touch it covers the difficulties of parenthood, the unlikeability of ambitious bureaucrats, frustrated rage with Brexit and Trump, and the basic good natured cunning of the narrator. 

A must read.

[johnhhemphill]

Recent Reading - The Holy Fox

For Churchill devotees, Lord Halifax (‘The Holy Fox’) is seen as an appeaser who supported Neville Chamberlain and later made Churchill’s war time leadership difficult. Churchill thus engineered his removal as Foreign Secretary to become Ambassador in Washington.  And usefully out of the way. 

Andrew Roberts, whose History of the English Speaking Peoples since 1900 I greatly enjoyed, has written an eye-opening biography.  Halifax was a Tory grandee who served successfully as Viceroy in India while relatively young. Very tall, one-handed, and highly religious he brought aristocratic manners and a tough mindset to politics. 

Roberts explains this very well, especially Halifax’s time a Foreign Secretary for Chamberlain and later for Churchill some of whose wild ideas and moments Halifax restrained while acknowledging Churchill’s touch of genius in wartime leadership. 

Excellent reading for political tragics tired of Trumpism and the antics of Boris.  Or conservative populism generally.

[johnhhemphill]

Did I see things?

Bevving along Canberra Avenue heading towards Manuka I saw a cyclist coming towards me, against the traffic, but on the cycle path. He had an awkward looking sack over one shoulder. As we closed, I saw the sack was what looked like a large, white, apparently comatose dog. Could it have been? And where was the cyclist going?

[johnhhemphill]

Love your corgi

Passed a bloke with two largish corgis with ears like hares. ‘What beautiful dogs,’ I said. Bloke ignored me, turned to the dogs and said, 'Did you hear that?’

[johnhhemphill]

The Wollemi

A Jurassic classic the Wollemi, Often saw dinosaurs passing by. A secluded prickly sort of pine It's really stood the test of time.

[johnhhemphill]

The Sequoia

The mighty sequoia Will never annoy ya Although very tall It says nothing at all

.

[johnhhemphill]

The Atlantic Cedar

The Atlantic Cedar Is a very poor leader. It suffers from attitude From growing at altitude.

[johnhhemphill]

Riverrun

To the Wharf 2 for Riverrun – a stream of conscious recitation and animation of bits of Finnegan’s Wake by the remarkable Olwen Fouere.  70 minutes, non-stop.

Irish by birth, and from a family that admired and read James Joyce, this promised to be a treat for me.  Not least by making accessible the notoriously difficult novel. (Which Wikipedia tells us is ranked among the 100 greatest books of all time, a stunning achievement for a book no one can read.).

If you doubt this statement about readability, here is a brief, random extract of the book:

Oftwhile balbulous, mithre ahead, with goodly trowel in grasp and ivoroiled overalls which he habitacularly fondseed, like Haroun Childeric Eggeberth he would caligulate by multiplicab-les the alltitude and malltitude until he seesaw by neatlight of the liquor wheretwin ’twas born, his roundhead staple of other days to rise in undress maisonry upstanded (joygrantit!), a waalworth of a skyerscape of most eyeful hoyth entowerly, erigenating from next to nothing and celescalating the himals and all, hierarchitec-titiptitoploftical, with a burning bush abob off its baubletop and with larrons o’toolers clittering up and tombles a’buckets clottering down.

.So greater accessibility was to be prized.

Jason Blake of the SMH, greatly admired the performance, but wrote that he only got one word in five.  Attuned from earliest life to Irish accents, I got much less and soon drifted off into a completely comfortable reverie about solving plot problems in a book I was seeking to write.  It was a surprise when Ms Fouere stopped and the performance was over. The audience applauded loyally.

We saw Mid-Summer Night’s Dream done almost entirely in sub-continental languages in which we could still follow the actions of a familiar plot.  And Pentecost which had a long speech in Tamil but was easy to follow.  Riverrun, though, was simply incomprehensible.  Not unenjoyable, but incomprehensible.

[johnhhemphill]

Almost the Wharf Revue

We nearly got to the Wharf Revue - an annual feast of political disrespect, usually very funny.

But our car stopped on the corner of York and Margaret and refused to move.  We put on the hazard lights, opened the boot as an additional signal of being halted, and rang VW Assist.  After we’d passed their preliminary exam, a roadside guy was summoned and would appear within an hour.

Meanwhile we camped on the corner.  Several tourists with German accents told us the boot was open.  We thanked them.  One passer-by closed the boot.  We thanked him, too. Other passers-by offered assistance.  We thanked them.

A roadside bloke appeared, ran the tests we'd done ourselves, stared into the engine  compartment, disconnected and reconnected the battery, and summoned a tow truck.

We sat for another hour fending off the attentions of well-wishers and of anally retentive Northern European tourists.

The tow truck bloke arrived and was cheerful.  Had we been stopped by the transport authorities or were we broken down?  We assured him we were broken down.  He set about getting VW on his truck.

You've got to admire the sang froid required to operate a tow truck.  Our bloke cheerfully parked in the middle of a busy intersection in order to winch the VW aboard. 

He was suitably consoling about our breakdown.  'Computers,' he said derisively.  Of Middle Eastern appearance he had a prominent gold cross hanging outside his t-shirt.  He said,of the just-finished Martin Place siege, that he had trouble with Muslims.  We let the comment pass.

Our car went to a good home overnight and thence to our local service centre the next morning.  They rang up.  'Got a lot of cars booked in, could be a couple of days.'  We pointed out that we expected better than that.  It was their job to keep VWs on the road., we said.  They said they were ethically bound to handle the cars already booked in.  We said that was their problem, we needed our car fixed.  The conversation continues.  Pretty unsatisfactory, really.

[johnhhemphill]

Noel, Noel! The Brandenburg Orchestra

To the Brandenburg's Christmas concert at St Peter's Church, Cremorne.

Pre-warned, we arrived early and queued agreeably with the similarly aged and like-minded outside the rather ugly church.  We stood beside stone gate posts incised with Lest We Forget and 1914 - 1918. 

There was an a very good choir, a Ukrainian singer who played the bandura,  a fine soprano, a terrific saxophonist, and a splendid selection of music.  It was enjoyably excellent and there should be more of it.  If only the pews were more ergonomic.

[johnhhemphill]

Exodus - Gods and Kings

There is a point in Exodus where one gloomily anticipates a prolonged drama involving Mt Sinai, the Ten Commandments, and their mixed reception by the children of Israel.  This is more than two hours in when stamina is flagging.  Mercifully this is dealt with swiftly and we see Moses bumping off into the future in a cart containing the Ark of the Covenant.  Beside him walk his flock, still without any signs of visible support.  And the credits roll.

There were some good bits in this film with spectacular plagues and battles and chariots falling down hills and biblical violence.  But it's much too long.

As attention drifted thoughts of Guru Bob floated in.  A Red Sea tsunami falling on the Egyptians brought to mind Moses' attributed comment to Joshua,  'This will give the boys a lot of confidence at this stage in the season.'  Or when Moses asks his spin doctor about getting the story into the Cairo Times he replies, 'Won't get up.  But I can get you a page in Exodus.'

Not one of Ridley Scott's best.

[johnhhemphill]

Cyrano de Bergerac

To the Sydney Theatre for Cyrano.  It began with a crowd scene with plenty of swashbuckling, braggadocio, and noise and confusion.  It looked worryingly tiresome.

Then, halfway through the first half, it found its pace and played out beautifully for the rest of the performance.

Richard Roxburgh and Erin Jean Norville were particularly good - so good that disbelief was suspended on a number of occasions as the play flowed enjoyably to its unhappy conclusion.

One outstanding performance a year is perhaps is all one should expect from a good theatre company.  And this was it.

[johnhhemphill]

Family Tree

[johnhhemphill]

Human Evolution - Robin Dunbar

Human Evolution by Robin Dunbar comes highly recommended by The New Scientist.  So it should be – it’s a riveting read.

Dunbar takes us quickly through the broad picture of human evolution which I’ve sought to capture in the rather anthropomorphic diagram above.  While there are great sweeps of time, most of the exciting action is packed into the last few hundred thousand years.

Dunbar looks at the cultural and social influences which made us what we are now.  He argues, for instance, that we are distinguished from the other apes by two uniquely human characteristics – religion and story-telling; characteristics which require us to be able to live in a virtual world.

Dunbar (and colleagues) also tell us that brain size reliably predicts the size of groups that will be found in populations of chimps, gorillas or humans.  According to this analysis, the maximum group size an individual can comfortably stay in touch with is around 150 (as opposed, say, to 55 for chimpanzees).  This 150 figure resonates with examples like military organisations (the infantry company), with commercial organisations, with Christmas card lists.  It is very durable in human experience.

Dunbar points out that the effective maintenance of larger groups requires more time socialising (or grooming in chimpanzee-speak).  But individuals still have to find food, feed themselves, and rest within real time constraints.

Put another way, our ancestors had tight time budgets.  What then were the innovations that allowed brain size (and associated group size) to grow from early hominins of 600 cc to anatomically modern humans of 1370 cc?

The answers proposed are surprising.

Grooming is a 1:1 activity, but laughter (which similarly releases bonding endorphins) works at least at the 1:3 level.  Thus it provides efficiencies in bonding and therefore group coherence.  Dunbar points out that people are 30 times as likely to laugh in groups as on their own.  He argues laughter likely predated language. 

Language is obviously critical in group relationships.  Argument exists on when this first began but it was probably 500,000 years ago.  This similarly will have led to efficiencies in how time budgets were managed.

Hominins were able to control fire about 300,000 years ago (ie; about 100,000 before homo sapiens).  This would have given another boost to more efficient use of time budgets through cooking, and the ability to eat less and more efficiently.

Which also leads us back to groups and the role feasting plays.  Feasting similarly releases endorphins and promotes bonding in groups.

And singing and music can trigger endorphins even better than laughter (here comes musical comedy) as it can involve large groups.

So the picture emerges of the progressive socialisation of hominins through innovations in managing bigger groups as brain-size increased.

Let’s jump to the beginning of the modern world – the Neolithic around 12,000 years ago. Dunbar argues the greatest achievements of the Neolithic were not inventing agriculture, nor storing food, nor building houses but rather the ways those societies managed large groups in very spatially cramped settlements.

Certainly, Dunbar acknowledges that groups of over 500 led to the emergence of specialised roles in those communities.  But he says the two big innovations were organised religion and alcohol.

Large vats at least 8,000 years old have been found in Neolithic settlements and it’s possible barley may have been first cultivated for beer and not food.  Dunbar points out that alcohol releases endorphins very efficiently.

And it seems that organised religion emerged from religions of experience (shamanic) to religions of place with an attendant hierarchy of rules and structures.  Again, endorphins released from group singing would have been important just as the emergence of prosocially encouraged behaviour.

So, while a number of evolutionary forces have been at play, the role of endorphins in helping tolerate and manage progressively larger groups seems really important.

An intriguing book full of new insights