Nothing new under the sun - not this anyhow

A lot of the fiction we read, hear or watch are just variations of archetypal myths that have been around for thousands of years. Sometimes the myths are well documented. Sometimes they are less well documented.

As an example we can take a song from last week's Now Show on BBC 4. It was Mitch Benn who started off with a classical "serious" introduction mentioning the author Arthur C. Clark and a recent finding that there is methane on the planet HD 189733b, which is 63 million light years away.

He then starts singing with an introduction about watching the stars - a theme that has been around for thousands of years. Only at the fourth line comes a slightly hidden reference to what clearly will be the theme of the song.

We cast our eyes out to the stars
Lose dodgy home made probes on Mars.
Who would imagine, who could tell,
the first sign of life would be a smell?

Note that the reference is not in clear. The same message could have been given in much more explicit words, but to keep the tension, it is only the very last word that hints at what will come: smell.

Then comes a stanza where the message is very blunt. It is reasonable to assume that man has laughed at flatulence for ten thousand years, and conceivably hundreds of thousand years. A studio audience of 2008 is still bound to laugh at the mere mention of the word "fart" - something that triggers certain emotions in most us, be they laughter or disgust.

Something's farting way out there in space
Are they friendly, are they hostile?
search your heart and search your nostrils.

To further play on the motive of emotions, the listener is asked to "search his heart" and then in an anaphora also his nostrils. Asking the listener to search his heart, his emotions, is a theme that catches our attention, and it certainly has done so for thousands of years.

Something farting in some far off place
And they left a trace behind
a close encounter of the whiffy kind

Again, the "far off place" evokes the distant unknown. During the neolithic it may have been the next valley. For Moses the promised land. For Columbus India, and for Neil Armstrong the moon. To all of us, there is some distant place where we have not yet been.

The reference to a "close encounter of the whiffy kind" uses the ancient method to create a bond between singer and audience by referring to common knowledge. In this case, it is of course a reference to the Steven Spielberg film from 1977 with a title alluding to a close encounter of the "third" kind. (For those who have forgotten, according to dr. Josef Allen Hynek, an encounter with aliens of the first kind is sighting. An encounter of the second kind is one with evidence for the encounter. An encounter of the third kind is contact. Dr. Hynek did not comment on whiffy encounters, as far as I can tell.)

The next stanza is probably the weakest one, and it does not follow known narrative archetypes very much. The mention of a distant place is just a repetition. The "gas giants" do not refer to any known mythical organism, and it does not clearly define the nature of such an organism. The stanza is probably perceived by most as a far fetched attempt to get more out of the gas theme without actually adding much of a message.

Something's farting way out there in space
it's hitherto unknown to science
someone's letting off gas giants.

The final stanza evokes an imaginary reality - a "what if" statement, just like man has probably done for thousands of years. Here Mitch Benn launches the thought that aliens may use olfaction as a major method of communication. It is of course far fetched, as smell does not transport very quickly over large distances. But it is nevertheless a possible means of communication for beings who stay close, like insects using hormones to call each other's attention. Even humans use hormones for sexual communication, but we are usually unable to consciously recognise the smell of hormones, even though we subconsciously use the information when selecting our partners.

Something's farting at the human race,
but we mustn't get irate.
It might just be how they communicate.



Ironically the whole theme of the song is incorrect. Methane is a gas that does not constitute a major part of flatulent gases, and it is in fact odourless. A fairly big part of the methane in the atmosphere admittedly comes from mammal flatulence, but most of the emitted gas in a flatus is nitrogen. The smell of flatulence mostly comes from sulphuric compounds, skatole and indole.

Factual accuracy is of course not needed in order for a fictional work to be appreciated. The lack of factual accuracy is very likely also a fictional theme that is thousands of years old.

An nescis, mi fili, quantilla prudentia mundus regatur

Conspiracy theories are often used to explain things that do not have any simple explanation - at least not simple enough for the speaker. Or they can be used to replace an explanation that does not fit one's ideas of what the world should be like.

Here is one theory for example: The present riots in Tibet are started by the Taiwanese government. The reason is that the riots will badly affect the Chinese stock market, which will go down, thus slowing down the economic development and inflation, which long term is good for the Chinese economy. It is in the interest of the Taiwanese to have a neighbour with a healthy economy, as that is good for their export market.

Is that a likely theory? Of course not. But all the steps individually are logical, even though the sum of them is ridiculous.

For most events in the world, it is easy to make up a "theory" like that, which may explain what you do not understand.

However, a lot of things happen without anyone wanting them. Some examples:

The first World War, 1914-1918, was in no one's interest. The state leaders who started it thought it would be a short affair, but no one had anticipated the importance of the Chauchat and other machine guns, the air forces or the tanks. In 1914 no one could have anticipated the Russian revolution or its consequences for the rest of the 20th century. It was development that happened on its own, without any conscious decision taken by any single individual. The entire war was just one big blunder.

The Russian revolution in itself was a strange case of things happening without anyone understanding its consequences. The members of the first polite bureau during the October revolution 1917, the people who kicked it off, were Lev Kamenev (Лев Борисович Каменев), Nikolai Krestinsky (Николай Николаевич Крестинский), Andrei Bubnov (Андрей Сергеевич Бубнов), Grigory Sokolnikov (Григорий Яковлевич Сокольников), Leon Trotsky (Лeв Давидович Троцкий), Josef Stalin (იოსებ სტალინი, Иосиф Сталин) and of course Vladimir Lenin (Владимир Ильич Ленин). Out of these all but Lenin were killed off by Stalin in different ways. In other words, five out of seven initiators were killed due to the event they had themselves started. Out of the 1,966 delegates to the 17th Communist Party Congress, which confirmed Stalin's power, more than half were later arrested by him, and most of them died. Clearly, they had no idea what they were doing - just like so many decision makers today.

When Osama bin Laden (أسامة بن لادن‎) and al-Qaida (القاعدة) blew up the World Trade Center in 2001, they cannot possibly have had any idea what the effect would be. They could not know if the American response would be bigger understanding for Islamic issues with American policies, the deposition by the Americans of the Saudi government or mass conversion to Islam. Neither could they have predicted the irrational attack on Iraq, which, as we know now, was completely unrelated to al-Qaida. Here we had a case of an irrational action from al-Qaida that was followed by an irrational action by the USA.
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In spite of this the world moves forward. The state of affairs was well put by the Swedish 17th century statesman Axel Oxenstierna. His son doubted his own abilities in taking on an important diplomatic mission. Axel Oxenstierna replied:

An nescis, mi fili, quantilla prudentia mundus regatur?

Or in English:

Do you not know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is ruled?

The Best but not the Only

There is a very big difference between thinking that your own opinion is the best one and thinking that your own opinion is the only possible one.

Mysterious Tibet

This is an apolitical blog entry. It does not intend to accuse anyone. It does not intend to free anyone from responsibility of their actions. The intention is just to add perspectives to current events.

There have been riots in Lhasa (ལྷ་ས་) the last few days. No one can deny that. For most of us Tibet is very far away. To many of us, all of China is very far away. It is populated by people we may not know, and it is ruled by a government that is very different from all Western governments.

A team of neuroscientists at Harvard have recently discovered that we use the same brain region (the ventral medial prefrontal cortex or vMPFC) when we think about people we consider similar to ourselves, as we do when we think about ourselves. When we think about people we do not consider similar, however, we do not use that brain region.

It is reasonable to assume that most of us Westerners do not use the vMPFC when we think about the Chinese. It is also very possible that a lot of Chinese do not use it when they think about Tibetans, and that a lot of Tibetans, especially Tibetans in exile, do not use it when they think about Han Chinese. ("Han" is a word for people who speak some variant of Chinese as first language - not Tibetan or other non-Chinese languages.)

It is much easier for us Westerners to condemn the Chinese government than our own ones. It is very far away, and we do not need the vMPFC to think about it. The pure fact that people get killed in Lhasa may trigger people to condemn the Chinese government. Well, killing is not good, so that must be reason enough to condemn the government, must it not?

It can be. It often is. This may be a case when it is. But let's anyhow apply some perspective.

Last year there were riots in Villiers-le-Bel in France over a mortal car accident where a police car was involved. 130 policemen were injured. 70 cars were burned. One library, two schools, one police station and several shops burned down. Did you blame the French government?

Last year in Nørrebro in Denmark, 750 people were arrested in riots over the closure of a youth centre. Did you blame the Danish government?

In 2001 in Genova, Italy, 329 persons were arrested, 400 rioters and 100 security men were injured and 1 person was shot dead in riots around the Group of Eight Summit. Did you decry the Italian government?

In 1992 in Los Angeles, USA, 53 people died in riots over a questionable court verdict. Did you condemn the American government? Would you boycott American products because of this?

We still do not know exactly what triggered the events in Lhasa - something that perhaps is not that surprising, as the Chinese government considers it has the right to block news when it thinks it is needed. However, the cause for the riots is very likely to have something to do with some Tibetans' desire for independence from the People's Republic.

We do not even know if they planned to start riots for their goals, or if the riots just happened, as some tense situations got worse.

There are, however, reports that the violence has been aimed at Han Chinese. A Swiss tourist, Claude Balsiger, said everything that looked Chinese had been attacked or beaten up. The Economist talks about an orgy of anti-Chinese rioting and at least one Han Chinese stabbed to death by the rioters.

Still, it is very difficult to judge if the rioters had cause for their violence, and it is not known how violent the authorities' answer has been. People have died on both sides, but the exact circumstances are not known to the outside world.

The Tibetans may fight for what they perceive as the freedom of their country, like the IRA in the United Kingdom and the ETA in Spain. Have you blamed the Spanish governments for the 800 casualties in the fight with ETA, and did you want your country to cut all ties with the British government for the 1800 casualties when fighting the IRA?

And if you did so, did you use your vMPFC when you did it?

Hopefully, this blog entry has not changed your opinions on Tibet or China. Regardless of your opinions, that was not the blog's intent. But hopefully some of you now feel you have a better foundation for whatever opinions you have - and hopefully your vMPFC plays a part in it.

"I just did like they did"

The picture above of smiling girls on a picnic is taken at a recreation home called Solahütte. The girls are having blueberries enjoying a day far from work. Solahütte is just a little South of Auschwitz, and the man handing out blueberries is Karl Höcker, adjutant of the concentration camps' commander. The girls are SS helpers. At the same time, 1944, hundreds of thousands of people are exterminated in the gas chambers of Auschwitz no more than 30 km away.

If you had met one of those girls on the street a sunny summer day, would you have imagined that they could work at a concentration camp? Would they have been able to imagine it themselves 10 years earlier? 5 years earlier? 5 months earlier?

There was a recent article in der Spiegel about how common people were introduced to the SS for work in the camp.

Karl Höcker himself had been bank teller before joining the SS. The camp commander, Richard Baer, had been confectioner - probably giving free candy to happy children.

Nine out of ten new SS men who came to work in the camp refused the order "kick that man in the stomach", the first time they heard it. The fresh SS men seem to have had common human moral standards: "Kick him!" "No, I will not do it." That means that nine out of ten SS men refused to obey order in one of the strictest armies in history. They refused the first time.

Then started an intense psychological attack with insults and group pressure to make the newcomers do what they were told. Most of them gave in of course.

Most humans follow the moral standards of the group around them. If your only acquaintances think it is fine to steal towels at hotel rooms, you may very well think so too in the end. If they think it is fine to cheat with their tax declaration, you may do so too. If they think it is fine to steal cars, to burgle apartments, to sell drugs to minors - you may think so too in the end. Imagine if you did not know anyone who did not do it. Imagine that all your friends did so. Everyone who ever showed they cared about you. Everyone you cared for. If your choice was between losing the only friend you had or to help him steal a car, what would you do?

The older SS men made sure than the younger ones were treated as friends, people who cared, people one could confide in. An inside jargon kept them together against "the others".

In the concentration camps, the older SS men used arguments as well. The prisoners were considered "criminals". Some of them had committed no other crime than to be born by a Jewish mother, but they were "criminals" in the eyes of SS, and they had to be treated as such. The violence against the prisoners was supposed to be necessary considering the "danger" the prisoners posed.

The psychological defence of the newcomers was slowly broken down - just like it is in some armies and other organisations today. And once the young SS man had accepted using violence, realising the status it brought him in the eyes of the older ones, he could be used to foster other newcomers in a vicious circle of increased violence.

The article in Der Spiegel may be biased. It may be read as a twisted excuse for what earlier generations have done. But it all seems very plausible. Humans are not inherently evil, but the clay we are built of can be shaped to make us criminal and evil given certain circumstances. The same lump of iron can be made into a gun or a ploughshare - be it in Rwanda, Nanjing (南京) or Srebrenica.

This does not free us from responsibility of course. On the contrary. Considering that some of the worst crimes in the world have been committed by people who probably just imitated what people around them were doing, we should consider "I just did what everyone else did" the worst of all defences.

Un straniero crudo

Dan Brown has written a book called "Angels and Demons". It is mostly set in a city called "Rome" in a country he cleverly calls "Italy", just like the real country occupying the Apennine peninsula. It is a very entertaining book, at least as long as you remember that Brown does not have any clue about the real Rome, Italy or the Italian language or anything at all, apparently. Unfortunately, it is possible that your mind slips during the reading, and you briefly think he tries to come with facts or realistic descriptions, and then your adrenaline shoots up so your head is about to explode. He for example claims that the Christian Eucharist was inspired by the Aztec and he places Argentina on the Eastern side of the Atlantic.

And then there is the linguistic aspect. After languages like Esperanto, Volapük, Lojban and Klingon, the world now has a new artificial constructed language: Dan Brown Italian, (DBI). DBI vaguely resembles real Italian, but it is largely unintelligible by any Italian. A phrase like "we're fungito" does not mean anything in Italian. A "straniero crudo" means "an uncooked foreigner", whatever that is supposed to be. And when a DBI speaker says "È chiusa temprano" to express that something is temporarily closed, an Italian speaker's natural reply would be "do you speak English, by any chance?"

In spite of the large number of factual errors, the book remains entertaining. Dan Brown did the right thing to publish it. And all his readers do the right thing in making fun of him for it.