war

My family and I went out for supper that night.  In Cape Town.  I was in the mood for stories and after we ordered I told my kids how WWI started.

In 1914 there were two power blocks in Europe.  There was the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary and on the other side were the Allied Powers of Britain, France, Russia and Italy.

There was no love lost between the two camps and on June 28, 1914 a Serbian assassin killed the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo.

Austria blamed Serbia for the assassination which was motivated by fierce nationalistic fever in Bosnia.

Austria made demands to Serbia which they gave in to, except one.  On July 28, 1914 Austria declared war against Serbia.

Russia declared war against Austria.  On August 1, Germany in turn declared war against Russia.  France mobilised against Germany in support of its allies and on August 3, Germany declared war against France.

Germany invaded the neutral nation of Belgium before it set its sights on France.  This event lead to the British declaring war against Germany on August 4.

The lines were drawn and World War I had begun.

On the web-site eyewitnesstohistory.com I came across this amazing account.  I read it to my kids.

“Richard Harding Davis was an American newspaper reporter and witnessed the German army’s march through the city [of Brussels in Belgium]. We join his account as he sits at a boulevard cafe waiting for the German arrival:

‘The change came at ten in the morning. It was as though a wand had waved and from a fete-day on the Continent we had been wafted to London on a rainy Sunday. The boulevards fell suddenly empty. There was not a house that was not closely shuttered. Along the route by which we now knew the Germans were advancing, it was as though the plague stalked. That no one should fire from a window, that to the conquerors no one should offer insult,

Burgomaster Max sent out as special constables men he trusted. Their badge of authority was a walking-stick and a piece of paper fluttering from a buttonhole. These, the police, and the servants and caretakers of the houses that lined the boulevards alone were visible.

At eleven o’clock, unobserved but by this official audience, down the Boulevard Waterloo came the advance-guard of the German army. It consisted of three men, a captain and two privates on bicycles. Their rifles were slung across their shoulders, they rode unwarily, with as little concern as the members of a touring-club out for a holiday.

Behind them so close upon each other that to cross from one sidewalk to the other was not possible, came the Uhlans [cavalry], infantry, and the guns. For two hours I watched them, and then, bored with the monotony of it, returned to the hotel. After an hour, from beneath my window, I still could hear them; another hour and another went by. They still were passing.

Boredom gave way to wonder. The thing fascinated you, against your will, dragged you back to the sidewalk and held you there open-eyed. No longer was it regiments of men marching, but something uncanny, inhuman, a force of nature like a landslide, a tidal wave, or lava sweeping down a mountain. It was not of this earth, but mysterious, ghostlike. It carried all the mystery and menace of a fog rolling toward you across the sea.

The German army moved into Brussels as smoothly and as compactly as an Empire State express. There were no halts, no open places, no stragglers. For the grayautomobiles and the gray motorcycles bearing messengers one side of the street always was kept clear; and so compact was the column, so rigid the vigilance of the file-closers, that at the rate of forty miles an hour a car could race the length of the column and need not stop – for never did a single horse or man once swerve from its course.

All through the night, like a tumult of a river when it races between the cliffs of a canyon, in my sleep I could hear the steady roar of the passing army. And when early in the morning I went to the window the chain of steel was still unbroken. It was like the torrent that swept down the Connemaugh Valley and destroyed Johnstown.

This was a machine, endless, tireless, with the delicate organization of a watch and the brute power of a steam roller. And for three days and three nights through Brussels it roared and rumbled, a cataract of molten lead. The infantry marched singing, with their iron-shod boots beating out the time.

They sang Fatherland, My Fatherland. Between each line of song they took three steps. At times 2000 men were singing together in absolute rhythm and beat. It was like blows from giant pile-drivers. When the melody gave way the silence was broken only by the stamp of iron-shod boots, and then again the song rose. When the singing ceased the bands played marches. They were followed by the rumble of the howitzers, the creaking of wheels and of chains clanking against the cobblestones, and the sharp, bell-like voices of the bugles.

More Uhlans followed, the hoofs of their magnificent horses ringing like thousands of steel hammers breaking stones in a road; and after them the giant siege-guns rumbling, growling, the mitrailleuses [machine guns] with drag-chains ringing, the field-pieces with creaking axles, complaining brakes, the grinding of the steel-rimmed wheels against the stones echoing and re-echoing from the house front. When at night for an instant the machine halted, the silence awoke you, as at sea you wake when the screw stops.

For three days and three nights the column of gray, with hundreds of thousands of bayonets and hundreds of thousands of lances, with gray transport wagons, grayammunition carts, gray ambulances, gray cannon, like a river of steel, cut Brussels in two.’”

References: Richard Harding Davis’ account appears in: Downey, Fairfax, Richard Harding Davis: His Day (1933); Keegan, John, The First World War (1999).’  (All quoted from Eyewitness to History)

Three evenings ago I was sitting in a Cape Town restaurant with my family and I read this to them.  My wife remarked that the account is biblical in proportions.

“That’s my point”, I told her.  ”It is biblical in proportion and the stories of World War I and World War II moves one.”

As I said, I was in the mood for story telling.  We just got our food and as everybody started with their meals, I started to tell another great war story.

The story about Major John McCrae, also from the Great War.

Major John McCrae was a veteran doctor who served in the Anglo Boer war in South Africa.  In 1915, during WWI he was stationed in Ypres, Belgium.

Here the 1st Field Artillery Brigade was engaged in a terrible 17 day long battle.  Casualties were sky high.  One death in particular shook McCrae.  Lieut. Alexis Helmer of Ottawa was killed by a shell burst on 2 May 1915.

He was buried close to McCrae’s dressing station and McCrae had to perform the funeral ceremony in the absence of a chaplain.

McCrae was sitting in an ambulance the next day only a short distance from where his friend was buried.

McCrae took his note book and described the scene and his feelings in what became the most famous war poem of all times:

He wrote:

(**  Flanders was a region overlapping parts of Belgium, France and Holland)

IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

Through the years poets wrote several replies to McCrae’s call.  The most beautiful to me is: “We shall keep the faith” by Moina Michael who was responsible for making the poppy the symbol of remembrance.

On November 9, 1918, two days before the Armistice for a meeting with the war-secretaries of the YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Organisation) she bought 25 poppies to use for the upcoming remembrance.

Here is her poem:

We shall keep the faith

Oh! You who sleep in Flanders’ Fields
Sleep sweet – to rise anew;
We caught the torch you threw,
And holding high we kept
The faith with those who died.

We cherish, too, the Poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led.
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies.
But lends a lustre to the red
On the flower that blooms above the dead
In Flanders’ fields.

And now the torch and Poppy red
Wear in honour of our dead.
Fear not that ye have died for naught:
We’ve learned the lesson that ye taught
In Flanders’ fields.

I am glad that I could share these stories with my kids. As I read the last stanzas of Moina Michael’s reply, I get a lump in my throat.  It is very emotional!

But, I compose myself and I get stuck into my steak. . .  and my kids think their father is  bit strange .

woody’s spirituality

WOODY’s SPIRITUALITY

Taj Mahal

.

Woody had a profound experience.  He lived in the woods in Brazil, close to Recife for 12 months with a tribe.  I asked him many times what he did in the forest.

.

All he said was that it was profound.

.

One day, when I nagged him again to tell me about Brazil, he gave me a note with the following written on it:

.

1. I believe I can change my belief system
2. I trust myself appropriately
3. I rate myself worth 100%
4. I reduce my fear to zero
5. I trust people appropriately
6. I allow myself the breath of life
7. I increase my levels of focus to 95%
8. I increase my balance to 95%
9. I replace fear with trust
10. In all situations, I STOP, LOOK AND LISTEN
11. I believe I can change my belief system
12. I replace careless rebellion with responsible rebellion
13. All accept that there is something like synchrony in life and accidents are not my responsibility

I asked him what it is and he told me that one night, back in Brazil, an angel gave it to him.  That he will never reach his destiny till he learns these lessons.

.

Then he got on a plane to India.

arriving in bombay

Bombay dis morning.

A remember da city well!  da peopl’s.   Da smell.  De relentless traffic!

Kabiers driver dropped me at de hotel.  kabier ~ a friend of DiDi.  A designer from cape Town.

A sit by da pool.  Amazing . . .  dis hotel was de scene of barbaric terrorist attacks not too long ago.  How many people died here?  a forget.  a dont want to kno!

Taj Mahal Hotel

Ma mind is sober.  Like two days after a heavy drinking session!  Dis place is funny.  Not as in “haha”, but as in “Oh-my-god”!  More alive with death dan Rome or Jerusalem.  More haunting dan Saint Peters-burg or Bulgaria.  So, a think about ma life and the “other peops” a shere dis life with!

da bridge for de queen

Ma Gabriela!

Her smell.   Da silk touch of her skin.  Da soft voice asking me when we wake up:  “tell me a story”.

(Da same voice dat told me – fuck off!)

In India ~ all seem so reasonable.  God knows – she should have done dat a long time ago!

Can a say dat ma minds fly’s????  As a eat ma $15 hamburger and beer.  Over da vast Indian plains.  Da gigantic monuments.  Da billions of humans.  Shit – da scramble for survival.

A told yo about ma bro in Cape Town and da poetry shit he got me to read?  Da other one hi wanted me to know is dis one . . . he said dat it will show me where to go when a loose ma way!!

An Old Man on the River Bank

by George Seferis

To Nani Panayíotopoulo

And yet we should consider how we go forward.

To feel is not enough, nor to think, nor to move

nor to put your body in danger in front of an old loophole

when scalding oil and molten lead furrow the walls.

.

And yet we should consider towards what we go forward,

not as our pain would have it, and our hungry children

and the chasm between us and the companions calling from the opposite shore;

nor as the bluish light whispers it in an improvised hospital,

the pharmaceutic glimmer on the pillow of the youth operated on at noon;

but it should be in some other way, I would say like

the long river that emerges from the great lakes enclosed deep in Africa,

that was once a god and then became a road and a benefactor, a judge and a delta;

that is never the same, as the ancient wise men taught,

and yet always remains the same body, the same bed, and the same Sign,

the same orientation.

.

I want nothing more than to speak simply, to be granted that grace.

Because we’ve loaded even our song with so much music that it’s slowly sinking

and we’ve decorated our art so much that its features have been eaten away by gold

and it’s time to say our few words because tomorrow our soul sets sail.

.

If pain is human we are not human beings merely to suffer pain;

that’s why I think so much these days about the great river,

this meaning that moves forward among herbs and greenery

and beasts that graze and drink, men who sow and harvest,

great tombs even and small habitations of the dead.

This current that goes its way and that is not so different from the blood of men,

from the eyes of men when they look straight ahead without fear in their hearts,

without the daily tremor for trivialities or even for important things;

when they look straight ahead like the traveller who is used to gauging his way
by the stars,

not like us, the other day, gazing at the enclosed garden of a sleepy Arab house,

behind the lattices the cool garden changing shape, growing larger and smaller,

we too changing, as we gazed, the shape of our desire and our hearts,

at noon’s precipitation, we the patient dough of a world that throws us out and
kneads us,

caught in the embroidered nets of a life that was as it should be and then
became dust and sank into the sands

leaving behind it only that vague dizzying sway of a tall palm tree.

.

Cairo, 20 June ’42

Ma life is as it should be ~

. . . . . . . . with all da confusion and struggle!

(In 1963, Seferis was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature)

just before 12

Ortiz

just before 12 p.m.

i’m looking at some poems written by ordinary people about extraordinary events.

Stumbled upon this one:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Stages of Grief

Denial
Things nightmares are made of
Now a haunting reality….
Never thought this would happen to me

Anger
Toward a heartless person
for taking a life in cold blood
Too young and loved to die

Bargaining
If I could, I would, WHY this?
God please take it back!
I promise I’d do anything!

Depression
Part of your life for so long
Gone in an instant
No time for goodbyes

Acceptance
It happened and life must go on
A void is left that can not be filled
Time will make it easier

Smile, just a facade
To hide the stages of grief
Memories are no consolation
Tomorrow is never promised

~~In memory of Bryant Eddie Ortiz the father of 2 of my beautiful children who was murdered on September 21st 2009. ~~

the note at the bottom strikes me.  Google the name :  Bryant Eddie Ortiz

Police say an argument at Ray’s Memory Lane on Pearl Avenue may have led to the fatal shooting of Ortiz. (Photo by Bruce Bishop, The Chronicle-Telegram.)

REAL people.  Real lives.  Real poetry!

For some reason i think of his kids.  and his wife.  and his brother. and his mother. and his death.

©  The background from a website: http://weol.northcoastnow.com/2009/09/22/slain-lorain-man-remembered-for-sense-of-humor-love-of-baseball/

learing how to bat

Tristan at a cricket match, 2009

The following is a quote from Groote Schuur Newsletter regarding a cricket match this week:

“Groote Schuur batted first and we scored 51 runs. Slogging was unfortunately evident and the boys lift their heads, close their eyes and hope for the best. Another tip you can teach your boys (and girl!) is to control the ball: Many runs are made by simply using the speed of the ball and guiding it behind the wicket. Tristan Van Tonder was our best batsman.“

and

“Man of the match: Tristan Van Tonder for sensible batting and discipline.“

I was thinking that there is much similarities between cricket and life.  Keep it up my boy and always remember to have fun while your doing it!

view of self

Tristan - Table mountain - 2009

the man

the man of the hour
. . . hes got the power

runs and have fun
. . . in the sun

the best of the best
. . . . unlike the rest

takes risks and bake chips

after all

… his friends name is paul

naughty is he and very sporty

© Tristan van Tonder (11 years old)

random favorates

tree

think that I shall never see
a poem as lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth’s flowing breast;

A tree that looks to God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

joyce kilmer. 1886–1918

~~  A sergeant in the 165th U.S. Infantry Regiment, Kilmer was killed at the Second Battle of Marne in 1918 at the age of 31  ~~

the day before yesterday

by Sean Reddan (www.myspace.com/seanreddansound )

On Friday I contacted a friend whom I vaguely remember – I was 13.

She responded to my Facebook message.  She remembered my birthday – 13 April 1969.

I look at a pic on her site – 27 years ago – some friends and her.  She gives me their birthdays as well.

So, she remembers things. . . .

When I was 8, I fell in love with debating competitions.  Rehearsed my speeches  in front of a mirror.  A teacher from school wrote me the most beautiful speeches. . . Hannetjie Hatting.

Those speeches are lost. . .  I looked for it many times.  No luck.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Back to cyberspace and HTML codes and bits and www and Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook. . .

I receive a message . . .

Look at it.

Re-look!

Fuck!!

She send me a quote from one of those speeches.

Verbatim.

“Remember?” . . .  the characters come through. . .  FUCK!

It was 27 years ago!

Then she quotes another paragraph. . .   another speech. . .

27 years ago!  For God’s sake. . .  we were 13!!!!!

~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~

The greeks turned the primitive idea of “god” into a volcanic though ~ the idea of the absolute.  Plato et al became the prophet of the absolute.  He wrote and it became gospel.  People believes the absolute exists.

Rene Descartes et al put scientific meat on the skeleton.  Anything can be defined in terms of anything else.  We can pull it apart and put it back together again.  Anything.

We experience our world through our senses.  Our minds run on sugar??

No!!

Hahahaha!

Runs on the “absolute-model software” of Plato and Descartes!

~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~

We talk the whole day. . .

She had cancer . . .  have cancer . . .  how do we know. . . do we ever NOT have cancer?

She is  intuitive. . . .

We connect . . .

~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~

I am uncomfortable with the Platonic “absolute” model of the world. NO!  Im Past it!

Well – not just me . .  hundreds of thousands of people know that it is just a stupid model.  Nothing absolute about our world or our lives . . .

THE PAST

We analyze it.

THE FUTURE

We try and manipulate it through understanding the long range nature of the models we engage in.  Vector-aspect of our reality.  A vector has direction and velocity.  Understand the vector of any part of a system and we can be HALLELUUUUJAAAAA!!!!  We CAN be GOD!!!!  WE can predict the future!!!!!!!!

But neither of these represent our lives. . .  itself a vector.  A moving target!

We ARE the present!  Our CURRENT experience!  RIGHT now.  The keyboard under my fingers.  The radio playing in the background.

~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~

She speaks about her life.

She falls and gets up.

Abuse.

Gets up.

Stares death in the face.

Gets up.

Why?  Im not sure.  I try to distinguishes between signal and noise.

She lives for the NOW.

On Friday I said – :  WOW.  The few minutes of transmission – wow!  (if you are lost – look up wow-signal)

~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~

A few weeks ago I did not know her.  We were 13 years old for gods sake!

Weeks ago she was discussing a major event with the people involved ~ the events did not happen, but she saw the vector.  The arrow.  Then  it happened.

The event happened to me.  People around me.  Close to me.  I have not seen her for 26 years but she was there!

~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~

I have been sick for months.  I try and work out every day, but have not done so for months.  I feel sick.  Yesterday I went on a 5km walk with Tristan and a friend.  They want me to buy them an FHM magazine.

We look for one ~ not in stock.

I promised them that as soon as it comes out I will buy it for them.

~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~

You know the feeling when you realize that life is SO much more than anything we thought it is.

W    O    W

a great heart to stand me by

Cecil John Rhods

Who were the Bill Gates, Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s (Google founders) of yesterday.  Who shaped the world we inherited from our parents.

Much of the landscape of Africa was shaped by one man – Cecil John Rhodes.

Wikipedia tells us that “Cecil John Rhodes DCL (5 July 1853 – 26 March 1902) was an English-born businessman, mining magnate, and politician in South Africa.

He was the founder of the diamond company De Beers, which today markets 40% of the world’s rough diamonds and at one time marketed 90%. He was an ardent believer in colonialism and imperialism, and was the founder of the state of Rhodesia, which was named after him. Rhodesia, later Northern and Southern Rhodesia, eventually became Zambia and Zimbabwe respectively. South Africa’s Rhodes University is named after him, and he is also known for the Rhodes Scholarship which is funded by his estate.”  Bill Clinton was a Rhodes scholarship recipient.

I have been in the little cottage in Simons Town where he died on 26 March 1902.  I sat in the horse buggy that he used to ride into Cape Town every day.

The more one learns about him, the less you like him, but on the other hand . . . the more you can see his hand in the institutions, history, politics, struggles and richness in present day Africa.

His dying words were reportedly “so much to do, so little done“.  As I have the story, his publicist were with him when he died.  Rhods apparently said, “well, so long friends” and died.

The publicist thought that was very uninspiring and when he walked out to address the waiting crowd and journalists gathered outside, he gave them the official “so much to do, so little done” line.

Definitely a larger-than-life figure.  A man who helped shape the world we live in today. A great heart to stand me by!

A few friends from the US, Julie, Lauren and myself took a drive  to Somons Town this morning and visited the Rhodes Cottage where he passed away:

Bre, Leah and Lauren

The room where Rhodes died

A replica of the Big-Hole at Kimberley

Cecil John Rhodes

at the Rhodes Cottage (Leah, Bre, Julie, Lauren and Brian Gibbs – curator)

sites and sounds – robin alexander

Robin Alexander

Sights and sounds from our past – Robin Alexander

If you lived in South Africa in the 80’s you would have listened to Bruce Springsteen and the voice of Robin Alexander.

From a site  http://www.opsmedic.co.za/radio.htm

“Robin Alexander had the voice that could keep you listening to the broadcast until the start of the day service broadcasts. Stayed up late as we go on pass today until Sunday. Needed to finish polishing boots, etc. and get ready for Pass Parade … If we are not neat enough our Pass could be cancelled. The last of us head off to bed … must be up early this morning. Radio Orion – Opening with Robin Alexander, 12.00AM Thursday 1 May 1986″

Click on the link below and hear the voice of the man himself:

Robin Alexander

FAITH, INFERENCE AND REALITY

The most common experience of humans is probably the experience of consciousness.  We are self-aware, we are aware of others and we are able to think in abstract terms by thinking on behalf of a real or hypothetical “other”.  We construct thoughts that may or may not have any basis in reality.

 

A good example of this are geometric shapes.  For example, the triangle or the square – there are no examples in nature of a perfect triangle or a perfect square.  These concepts exist only in our mind.  In a hypothetical world.

 

This leads us to the question of reality.  How do we know what exists and what exists only in our mind?

 

What about the laws of nature?

 

Ariel Caticha and Carlo Cafaro from the Department of Physics at the University at Albany wrote a fascinating paper called “From Informal Geometry to Newtonian Dynamics” in which they examines the notion that physics are not laws of nature but rules of inference.

 

“The objective of this paper is to use well established principles of inference to derive Newtonian dynamics from relevant prior information codified into a statistical model.  The challenge, of course, is to accomplish this task without assuming what we want to derive.  One must not assume equations of motion or principles of least action, and in particular, one must not assume the concept of momentum and the associated phase space, and not even the notion of an absolute Newtonian time”.

 

The thesis that physics are not laws of nature but rules of inference struck me.

 

Is it possible for humans to reason without prior knowledge (real or assumed)?

 

My gut feel tells me that it is imposable!

 

So, when we reason, we base our reasoning on prior knowledge.  How fundamentally this is true of humans becomes evident from Caticha and Cafaro’s paper.  More fundamental than I ever thought!

 

But how do we know?

 

The proses is very simple.  We first believe. I believe that I will be in Cape Town later today climbing Table Mountain.  If my faith in what I am about to do is true, i.e. I actually go and climb Table Mountain, then I can look back and my faith will become knowledge.  True knowledge.  I did climb Table Mountain.

 

Since Sunday this week I have been suspecting that this is the mechanism for all human discovery.  We first believe.  Scientists may say that we present an hypothesis.  Then we observe.  We learn.  We test our theory.  Our faith.  If it proves to be true, it becomes knowledge and this knowledge becomes part of the matrix that we access when we reason.

 

Another very simple example:  A few weeks ago I decided to develop a new product.  Despite much opposition to my proposed product (many thought it was not doable), I believed that it was possible.  I would only know if my faith is true faith if I am able to make a success of the product.  Then my faith will turn into knowledge.

 

I had many other products in the past that I believed would work and now, years later I can look back and see how they failed.  In many instances my faith was proved false.  It did not translate into knowledge.  (Even though I learned many other things – my particular faith in the success of the specific products proved to be false-faith that could not be translated into the knowledge that “the products will work”).

 

The importance of this discovery lies in the fact that it exposes a fundamental aspect of human thought and as we understand human thought in general and human consciousness in particular, this leads to better design of systems around us.  Systems that we create because we are self aware and because we think in abstract terms and live in abstract worlds (the family or a nation).

 

My good co-explorer and myself have been frustrated for years now with the fact that our thinking of faith systems such as Christianity is done in negative terms.  We feel that we want to approach the matter of our existence in a positive light by answering the question “what is true life/ existence” as opposed to exploring the fact that Christianity represent a false system.  An example of false faith that leads to disinformation – no knowledge can come from Christianity since the faith proved to be false.

 

But it was my evaluation of Christianity that lead me to the knowledge that Christianity is based on presuppositions that are false which renders the entire system ultimately false.  This lead me to consider human though generally.  How much of our thinking are based on untested presuppositions?

 

This lead me to Caticha and Cafaro and their paper on inferences, which confirmed my “faith”/ suspicion that all of human reasoning are inferential in nature – even when we talk about “the laws of nature”!

 

As long as our evaluation of Christianity leads us to a deeper insight into the human mind and the rules we use to process data I think that it is and will remain a highly productive topic of discussion.

 

I would love to interview Mr’s Caticha and Cafaro and understand how their position influences their world-view!

 

We live in a world where very few things are truly in an absolute sense the way we perceive them!  There are some business people who build empires on this understanding!  Abraham and his descendants build at least two very influential (and FALSE) faith systems on this.  The United States will elect a new leader today based on it! 

 

The life we life is based on how we see things in our mind and faith is our hope and dreams that keep us moving forward on the march of progress.  Nothing more than that.  It is one spoke in the wheel of progress!

IF SARAH PALIN LOSES, SHE’LL SHOOT THE ROBBEN ISLAND RABBITS

IF SARAH PALIN LOSES, SHE’LL SHOOT THE ROBBEN ISLAND RABBITS

The US election is over and the world waits in great anticipation for Mr. Obama to be the savior of all men, especially believers!

At the same time, the world has good reason to utter a collective sigh of relief for the fact that Sarah Palin did not come close to playing any significant role in US foreign policies.

I came across this delightful article in the South African Cape Times on the day of the results which I share with you with the authors permission.

Let me set the scene:

Robben Island, viewed from Cape Town, South Africa

Robben Island is a small Island just off the Cape Town coast that was home to the most notorious prison, established in 1961.  The most well know inmate was Nelson Mandela who spent 27 years of his life imprisoned on this island.  Shortly after Mandela’s release the prison was closed and turned into a Museum.

European Rabbis on Robben Island

The island is also home to a population of around 10 000 European rabbits.  These rabbits are responsible for devastating the islands ecology and the museum management decided that most of the rabbits will be culled during November this year.

Tahrs on Table Mountain, Cape Town, South Africa

The second fact that you must know is that Cecil John Rhodes brought a number of Himalayan tahrs to Cape Town.  These tahrs escaped from the Cape Town zoo and flourished on the cliffs of Table Mountain in Cape Town.  For various reasons most of these animals were also culled, but a few elusive ones still roam the cliffs of Table Mountain.

Table Mountain, Cape Town, South Africa

So, with this as a brief background, enjoy John Scott’s column.

BY JOHN SCOTT

IF SARAH PALIN LOSES, SHE’LL SHOOT THE ROBBEN ISLAND RABBITS

IT’S not yet official, but if John McCain loses the American presidential election, his running mate, Sarah Palin, has agreed to come to South Africa and shoot the Robben Island rabbits.

“Darn, I don’t think I would enjoy anything more,” she is reported to have said. “I’ve never been that far out of Alaska. It would make up for not getting to Washington.”

Her spokesperson said she hadn’t had much opportunity to shoot things during the election campaign, and felt that massacring thousands of rabbits would help to put American politics back into perspective.

“Sarah said having an itchy trigger finger is no use at all when they ask you questions about foreign relations with Russia — though living so close to that country, she knows better than most that the only good Ruskie is a dead one.”

The idea came to her advisers after a Quebec trickster claiming to be French president Nicolas Sarkozy asked her if she would like to go hunting baby seals with him. “That would be fun,” she responded in the call, which was broadcast on radio. “We could have a lot of fun together as we’re getting work done. We could kill two birds with one stone that way.”

Or a lot of baby seals with one club.

“But rabbits are more of a challenge,” explained the spokesperson. “They move around a lot and are much smaller targets than a moose. It will be a real test of the VP candidate’s marksmanship.”

He said the beauty of having Sarah shoot all the rabbits was that they had to be killed anyway, so she would be fostering international goodwill. She had hoped to meet Nelson Mandela on the island while waiting for her rifle to cool, and was disappointed to learn he had left several years ago.

Her spirits rose, however, when it was mentioned that the island also had a population of 150 fallow deer, two bontebok and about 20 springbok. “I ain’t sure what these bontebok and springbok are,” she confessed, “but doggone it, if they move I’ll shoot ‘em.”

It is alleged that CapeNature is looking around for other things that Palin might be invited to shoot, while she is at it. National Parks have been asked if they want her to seek out the last two remaining tahrs on Table Mountain and draw a bead on them.

There are also rabbits on Schaapen Island in the Langebaan Lagoon. For years they have happily hopped around among the duikers, but sooner or later this fraternisation must come to an end, and Sarah Palin, having had so much practice on Robben Island, may be viewed as the best Alaskan for the job.

Conservation authorities are aware that gunshots would frighten the birds.

“Perhaps Ms Palin wouldn’t mind butchering them in some more silent way,” one has suggested.

Her spokesperson says that won’t be a problem for someone who, even as a schoolgirl, helped her father tear a moose limb from limb.

“No second lady of the United States,” he said, “ever wrung a neck as well as she does.”

# johnvscott@mweb.co.za (itals)

life….what an amazing experience!

in august i was ready to pack up everything in south africa and move to the americas to start a new adventure there. my family don’t insist that i live with them all the time and so, i have the unusual freedom of being 21 every year.

but the company that i worked for in johannesburg insisted that i give them at least another year in cape town to work on… well, whatever the hell i want to work on.

and so it happened that since August this year i have been working on a few food projects from cape town.

I developed two new food brands and a few product lines for every brand. the bottom end products for the mass african market are all import-based products. meat that i process here in cape town and will sell, but now, after the considerable effort that I expensed on bringing these products to life, I am unable to finally take them to market due to the fact that Brazil is unable (unwilling – ?) to supply me at all this year!

very, very frustrating!

the other brand is upmarket. these products are south african produced, but for various reasons supply is also a problem this year. and it seems the products were about a month to late to go to market. it is December and no retailer is in the mood to take on new lines.

very, very frustrating!

my client told me yesterday to go to the beach for the rest of the week )

and then, out of the blue, the bountiful earth we live on and the rich relationships and channels to relationships we have started to feed my starving vanes with high-energy, oxygen enriched super blood!

out of the blue i met a few amazing poets on myspace. especially connie (Connie’s profile) and brett! (Brett’s profile)

conny… an amazing published poet who did her phd research for 6 years in morocco. (Connie’s profile)

i read her poetry. i see her mind. i feel her emotions. my mind kept wondering back to her words, over and over and over again…repeating words and phrases from her poems.

her thoughts echoes with the deepest recesses of my soul!

as a child i dreamt about the middle-east and arab-lands and i was re-captivated! and she is the master kidnapper!

if connie is the sage, brett is the athlete!

i see connie reading her poetry in ancient palaces in istanbul, or in palaces in france.

but, brett (Brett’s profile) i imagine crossing the atlantic in a sail boat and reporting his experiences in poetry. connie is a sculpture of the english language with history and the beauty of the old and romantic; brett is the energy of a good national geographic documentary or the volvo ocean race. or a Joe Cocker or ACDC concert! his poems are crisp and powerful and engaging!

i love it!

when i was not reading great poetry, isabel matrins from recife in brazil were teaching me portuguese;

when i was not learning a new language i was trying to teach my son afrikaans so that he can pass the exam that he wrote yesterday!

if i wasnt doing that i was with julie in hospital where she had a very painful operation…

and if not that, i was planning with my friend, dawie (dawie’s profile) a new product we want to launch with the theme: “now that we are free from all religious and other crap; now that we have no absolute ax hanging over our heads – how then shall we live life to the full!?

as if that was not enough, i got an unexpected e-mail from another new friend of mine, AJ. a young man from south africa with some very definite thoughts on what it means to be alive! some great and amazing thoughts from a very talented young man!

the end of the week came and i am glad for every single moment i could live this past week!!

life….what an amazing experience!

an african ghost story

africa

 

very early in my life I learnt that there are things and there are underlying things.  underlying things are more fundamental than things.  things are (as in – they exist), they are the way they are (as in – form) and they work the way they work (as in – function) because of underlying things.

underlying things are sometimes just another layer of things and below these things you will find another layer of underlying things.

it is possible to drill down, layer after layer, until you reach the foundational realities upon which all of life is predicated.  the things that forms the foundation of everything!

this has been my life.  to search for the most fundamental thing.

as I look back at 2008, it has been the culmination of my life thus far.  the point where I achieved a conclusion to much of my search for the most fundamental thing which started from the age. . . oh, from as early as I can remember.

i chased the ghost of god, till I discovered that these three men that I admired most, the father, son and the holy ghost, took the last train for the coast. . . and on that day the church music died!

i chased the ghost of nationalism as a young afrikaans speaking south african, living in apartheid south africa.  but in the end the ghost of freedom and democracy killed my ghost and as nelson mandela completed his long walk to freedom, i saw the ghost of nationalism being locked up.

i briefly returned to the ghost of christianity, thinking that perhaps my particular branch of christianity was the problem and the real foundational truth is correctly delineated by conservative americal christianity.  but this ghost died as the bastions of inerrancy, inspiration and presuppositional apologetical methodologies came crushing down.

i wanted to serve a ghost! 

“dammit!!!! this is africa and here we worship!  give me something to worship!!”   - i cried!! 

so i turned to the ghost of reason and science.  and rationalism.  cold, dead rationalism!

i studied chemistry and mathematics and quantum mechanics and applied my new found reasonable tools to everything that i could find.  but inside i was dead and this god was even worst than the rest.  the church at least gave you coffee after the morning service, but this god did not care that i did not have coffee after the service. and so i became alone and in my deepest recesses of my being i yearned for coffee after the worship service!

and then i hit the bottom. . . and i realised that the bottom is what i have been searching for all my life.  to drill down as deep as we can go.

three ghosts appeared to me one night.

and i met trinity!  i did not recognise her by the white rabbit-tattoo on her shoulder.  but i recognised her.  she was the marix.  the system within which we all live and breath and have our being.

this system exist only in my mind. 

but the system was three systems running together as a whole that created my entire perception of reality.

one is the ghost of function and underlying principles.  the component parts that make up the whole.  this god called himself rene descartes!

the other ghost is the ghost of my interaction with myself and with everything that exist.  it is eben in the present tense.  it is eben seeing table mountain on a rainy day.  eben holding his little girl.  eben 3:00 am when the ghosts speak to me.  sun and rain and wind against my skin.  beauty and passion and sorrow and guilt and longing and my experience of the millions of powerful feedback loops that connects myself to everything that exist and that tells me – fuck man!  you are alive!!!!!

and i discovered a third ghost. as real as the other two. right at the bottom, called quality.  the ghost that causes simple living systems to evolve to more complex ones.  the ghost of faster, further, higher. 

it is the ghost that caused me to fall in love with the poetry of connie who simply do one thing with thought and language – she progresses! 

and warren buffet who progresses!

and eben who in his life desires to understand deeper and more fundamental and is never satisfied with the first answer!

and i realised that science and religion and communication and every other phenomena is build upon these three ghosts.

everything!

and a chapter in my life came to an end in 2008. 

i look at life and smile!

Perspective

Table Mountain in Cape Town, South Africa, is the mountain of my dreams.

It is one of the oldest mountains on earth. Six times older than the Himalayas and five times older than the Rockies.  It told me this itself!

I am no geologist but I am told that at around 800 million years ago, magma that was working its way to the surface of the earth hit some sedimentary deposits that stopped its march to the surface while still under water and granite was formed.

Water eroded the sediment that covered the granite. All this became part of a super continent of sorts. In fact, where I sit right now at the tip of what we today call Africa, was the middle of this super continent. Right centre of the whole dam thing!

But our chunk of granite was still at sea level, in the centre of the land-world-thingy magig and rivers started to dump more sediment on top of it. And so, soft sandstone layers formed on top of the granite.

Then the super continent started to break up and parts drifted away from Africa and South America broke off right at this chunk of granite, which is now stuck on the tip of Africa!

Huge forces started to play havoc with the earths crust! It was like rolling a piece of pizza doe! The pressure from the roller creates folds right in front of the roller, in the dough!

This, amazingly is what happened to the crust of the earth! Mountains were literally “folded” into existence!

This is easily observable where we live on the tip of Africa. One can see the folding right in front of ones eyes if you take no more than half an hours drive from Cape Town in ANY direction!

But our granite chunk was not about to be folded! It was way to strong and resisted. The energy had to go somewhere – so it went down and the granite chunk with its sandstone deposits sitting on top of it was lifted right out of the ground – forming a mountain more than 1000 meters above sea level!

Remember that the continent that drifter south and one drifted west from Africa and broke off right at this granite chunk.

Table Mountain was then right against the sea! And as the eternal, relentless waves crashed against the soft sandstone deposits covering our granite chunk, the face of the mountain was pulverized into a straight and impressive cliff face.

But I skipped over an important construction phase of my dream mountain. During the ice age, when the top of what later became Table Mountain was still level with the rest of the land, huge ice glaciers scraped over the soft sandstone – making the top flat.

And amazingly, deposits from these glaciers can still be seen at the summit of Table Mountain.

This is then how this amazing structure was created! One that is visited by more tourist every year than almost any other site on Africa!

Every week I climb this magnificent structure!

And every week I am amazed at the long time that it took to construct this mountain.

I am reminded that even this impressive structure is collapsing on itself as the storm winds and the persistent winter rain keeps on carving away at the mountain of my dreams!

I swear, at night when I sleep, the mountain talks to me!

THE EXPLOSIVE IDEA

The concept of the WORLD WIDE WEB is 20 years old this month.

The official CERN press release reads as follows:

“March 2009: 20 years of the web Twenty years ago this month, something happened at CERN that would change the world forever: Tim Berners-Lee handed a document to his supervisor Mike Sendall entitled “Information Management : a Proposal”. “Vague, but exciting” is how Mike described it, and he gave Tim the nod to take his proposal forward. The following year, the World Wide Web was born.“

MEET TIM BERNERS-LEE at CERN

It is probably fair to say that this is the single invention directly responsible for making more people millionaires than any other in the history of human kind!

Multi million Dollar industries exist because of it and every single industry around the world has been profoundly impacted by it.

My friendship with almost every single one of you are based directly upon Tim’s innovation.

This morning a friend of mine posted a superb poem on his MySpace site.  I in turn posted a link to his poem to my facebook site.

Within hours of my posting of the link a guy from India commented that joined my site out of the blue last week.

Here we have a South African in Cape Town, sharing a poem from a guy in America and it is read by amongst other a guy in India!

As I was thinking about this, I realized that the www is a concept that is more powerful than the atomic bomb.  The Bomb destroy vast numbers of people in the blink of and eye.  The www units people from around the world in the blink of an eye around poetry.

AMAZING!!!!

Towards a better world – lessons from AFRICA about sustainability:

 

- the ideology of “best practices”

 

The relationship between the developed West, the newly developed countries and the third world has always been strained. The strain is in large due to a clash of ideologies. The clash in ideologies is in turn due to the fact that each society finds itself on a different cultural and economic development trajectory.

There is a further complicating reality that there is no single developmental trajectory, but this is another matter altogether that will be considered at a later stage.

Let’s focus our attention firstly on the existence of different ideologies.
It is ideologies that carry “development” and before we understand “development”, we must first understand the carrier of developmental culture through ideologies.

The first point to remember is that the development of ideologies happens primarily internally. Each country can be seen as a small, largely closed system. It feeds back into its wider environment such as regional neighbors, their economies and cultures, and secondly, even further into the wider world economy and culture.

However, each system, each country, is not totally open and a myriad of barriers cause ideological development to happen first and foremost internally, irrespective and completely apart from ideological developments in the wider world.

In this entire process, ideology is of the utmost importance. It is ideology that drives the actions of countries. Ideologies such as democracy, socialism, capitalism, etc.

To complicate matters further, ideologies bearing the same label often times look completely different in various countries. Take democracy for example. It looks completely different in China, India, the USA, Iraq and Afghanistan, just to mention a few examples.

Some people take these differences as a mere curiosity. No more than a dinner conversation topic. To be given no more than a partial consideration before we move on to more pressing and immediate matters.

But if anybody wants to influence development they must not only understand the importance of ideologies, but that there is no “universal” ideology. Ideologies are local and it is an exercise in futility to try and impose any local ideology onto other regions.

Before change can happen, a local ideology must be developed that will solve the problem, but before THAT can happen, the local problems must be thoroughly understood.

The company deKomper Enterprises is a company that seeks to re-examine and re-design supply systems from a local perspective. From producers, through the processing of the food, its distribution through the most effective channels to the markets and in the end the pick up of the products by consumers.

deKomper seeks to assist farmers to produce food in a sustainable way, both financially and in terms of the impact of the farming activity on the environment. Then to distribute the food along channels that represent responsible earth-citizenship, and finally to deliver the products to the end-consumer at the lowest possible price.

In order to develop these new processes, deKomper realizes that it must first of all assist in the development of new local ideologies that will effectively address local problems.

The biggest obstacle in this process of re-examining and developing new, local ideologies, is overcoming and neutralizing some of the incorrect and counter-productive ideologies that are being imposed upon any society by others – mostly developed countries.

The first critical consideration is the world wide concept of “international best practices”.

“Best practices” is something that company executives like to write into mission and vision statements. But as deKomper interacts with local farmers and food processors across Africa, it had to confront the concept of “best practices”.

“Best Practices” is one of those ideological cornerstones that is defined by developing countries and then preached to developing and third world countries. It is a premise that is very hard to argue against since this concept carries with it the inherent claim that it represents the “better option”. And who will not choose a “better option”?

One example of such a “best practices” concept is that of HACCP, a food safety standard that is sweeping the food processing industry.
Wikipedia defines HACCP as follows: “Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) is a systematic preventive approach to food safety and pharmaceutical safety that addresses physical, chemical, and biological hazards as a means of prevention rather than finished product inspection. HACCP is used in the food industry to identify potential food safety hazards, so that key actions, known as Critical Control Points (CCP’s) can be taken to reduce or eliminate the risk of the hazards being realized. The system is used at all stages of food production and preparation processes including packaging, distribution, etc.”

Very few people will argue with the lofty principles of HACCP or its relevance around the world. But as deKomper starts to realize, HACCP and similar “best practices” standards has its limits and its relevance is limited to the environments (countries) where they have been developed.

I don’t want to make this a discussion about the merits of HACCP, but a few examples of the shortcomings of HACCP will illustrate my point very well.

HACCP is a very expensive system to implement and maintain. The fact is that many food processing facilities around the world that are not HACCP compliant produce food that is perfectly safe for human consumption and have been for years, without the expensive HACCP system.

The result is that these non-HACCP, but safe, processing plants produce food at much lower cost to the consumers, yet the mindless application of HACCP and the misguided perception that HACCP represents the “best practice” in food processing, is forcing an increasing number of these plants to convert to the HACCP system. This leads to an increase in food cost to consumers as the processing cost increases.

It is easy to see how HACCP was developed from good intensions in a desire to increase general food-safety standards in a framework that will be self-regulatory. Like ISO.

Logically, one can see how this system came about in an over-regulated Western context where there are more lawyers per capita then there has ever been in the history of the world. In fact, there are not just more lawyers than ever before – there are more graduates generally. “Regulation” is an easy object for a graduate to spend energy on and it is easy to see how and why greater regulation comes out of wealthy societies.

But, after years of work in Africa, deKomper is seeing how the blind application of “best practices”, like HACCP, may have far-reaching detrimental consequences in other countries.

Even though deKomper has not formally studied the impact of the application of a system like HACCP on the wider economy of developing and Third World countries, it is not aware of one single example where the application of HACCP has lead to lower food cost and a greater access to markets by small-scale farmers.

The fact is that it has numerous examples of exactly the opposite. Food processing plants that have produced food for local communities over many years without any food-safety incident are being forced to adopt HACCP as a system and the results is an increase in cost of production. If they refuse the conversion to HACCP, access to distribution channels is under threat.

deKomper is therefore calling for a radical re-think of the concept of “best practices”. What is seen as “best practices” in the US can in no way be seen as “best practices” in other countries. The concept of “best practices” must itself be re-defined in terms of a local context.

deKomper is not suggesting that there should be different standards between the developed countries and the third world. Rather than suggesting different standards it is suggesting an objective evaluation of every industry in every different country on its own merits. In addition to this it is asking for a re-think of the entire prevailing almost blind belief in “best practices”.

If Western Countries want to assist developing countries or Third World countries, they must not send evangelists and preachers who will try and “convert” other countries to their “best practices”. What is needed are problem-solvers. People with the ability to create solutions, not in terms of what works in first world countries, but in terms of the local context.

Preaching – apart from being offensive, the content of these “sermons” is mostly absurd nonsense in terms of the different environments it is being preached in. If anybody is interested in real change and development, they must be prepared to re-think, re-evaluate and re-solve problems in terms of their local context first and foremost and then, from a local perspective, fit it into a regional and finally a global context.

What is religion and why do people believe in god?

Christianity and the phenomena of religion interest me.

It seems like one of the most contradictory aspects of life on earth.  On the one hand it seems like a supremely influential components of every day life and on the other hand it contradict almost every other experience. 

People sit in church and affirm beliefs they hold to without a single shred of evidence apart from very personal experiences that can legitimately be interpreted in many other ways apart from the god-hypotheses.  Still they affirm Christianity as “truth” based on a certain set of assumptions.

Then, they get in their cars and drive home and every single decision they make from the time they walk out the church doors are predicated upon a completely different set of assumptions.

Even more intriguing is the fact that the assumptions that allow them to call Christianity “truth” and the assumptions they use when they for example select a restaurant to go to after church are mutually exclusive. 

This seeming paradox is of HUGE interest.

PART 1

A few months ago I worked through The Religious Case Against Belief by James P. Carse.  Carse is a master at analyzing religion from a fresh, new perspective.  It is one of the most refreshing discussions on religion and belief available.

I mention Carse because he offers in my view one of the best descriptions of the characteristics of faith and religion and before anybody commit to any of the faiths of the world I suggest that they first read Carse.

His insights de-mystify much of the god-hypothesis and are a useful first step for anybody thinking about the “why” behind the god-hypothesis and religion.

Why do people believe in god?

I am in Cape Town and these questions dont want to let go of me. 

The weather bureau warned that the first storm for the winter was on its way.  It would hit the Cape Peninsular by the week-end of 15 May 2009.

By Thursday the sky was ominously black.  All was quite.  The clouds started to take on some strange shapes.  Seagulls flew more nervously.

Friday night the rain started. 

Tristan, my 11 year old son, had a rugby match the next morning.  When Julie tried to get us all ready to go to the match I protested that its going to rain and they would never make the kids play in this storm. 

She tried to get hold of the coordinator from school.  No luck.

We made it to the rugby fields.  Not even the match convener showed up, thinking that no parent in his or her right mind would think that ANY match could be plaid.

But it was a beautifully stormy day in Cape Town and we decided to take a drive around the Peninsular.

As we wound our way down to the historical town of Simons Town on the M3 past the back of Table Mountain, I was thinking . . .

Religion and Christianity is nothing more than cultural expressions.  Superstitious beliefs.

Humans develop faster when we do it collectively.    

Some humans always think about “better” systems.  Things that will make our society function better.  These people then packaged these “better systems” and sell it to the rest of the humans.  They package it as ideologies.

We experiment a bit with the ideologies and if it works we adopt it into our large cultural practices.  Some set out again to develop better social systems, usually parallel to the development of technology.  Again the new ideas are packaged into ideologies and experimented with.  And on and on the cycle goes. . . 

Take any of our great social institutions like democracy and capitalism and even something like short-term insurance.

Also, consider some of our great social experiments like communism, fascism and slavery.

The systems that “worked” survived.

In a similar way people thought about unseen “powers”.  It is evident from history that the ideas of these “powers” were developed into the concept of different “gods” and later developed by some into the concept of one supreme “god”.

The reason for these developments had nothing to do with the question of the ultimate purpose in life (why are we here?).  For the earliest people, the concept of “powers” and later of gods and even later of one god had to do with every day survival.  About crops failing or yielding.  People getting better after a sick-bed or dying.  Bread and butter issues.

Less than 100 years ago the people in the small North Free State Farm where my grandfather was a farmer thought that God caused his crops to fail because he bought modern tractors and  did not plow his fields the way the good lord intended it to be plowed using plow and oxen.

The god-hypothesis was a cultural development.  Something that exist purely in human thought.

Nowhere in nature do we have an example of any animal responding to any god-concept.

It is people who look at natural events and explain it with the god-hypothesis.  It is not nature that bows itself before god and causes humans to come to no other conclusion except that there is a god.

So, the first important consideration in the “why” behind faith is that the concept is cultural.  Its development can be traced historically.  It is a system that started out as a way for us to “manage” and explain nnatural systems such as weather systems.  

PART 2

We stopped just past Simons Town on the side of the road for breakfast.  Breadrolls and chips.  It drizzled slightly.   

When we drove past Cape Point, it started to rain and the wind picked up. The big storm was definitely about to hit!

We drove on to Scarborough where we turned to the beach.

the "big picture"

Cape Penninsular

 

Soetwater (Sweet Water) Beach

 

Scarborough is definitely one of my most favorite places on earth! It is far from Cape Town. Undeveloped. Few people. Unspoiled.

The wind was ice cold. The sea was rough.

I could not resist and I walked into the sea.

The water was warmer than I am used to at Sea Point where freezing cold sea currents converge.

For a second I forgot about the business that I am getting off the ground with a friend of mine from the United States and the question about faith.

After splashing around in the water for a while, we drove a few kilometers past Misty Beach to Soetwater (Sweet Water) and I spotted a few surfers with wetsuits in the huge storm swells.

The temptation was too much! We stopped and I joined them. I looked towards Scarborough and the majestic cliffs of the Table Mountain range farming an amazing backdrop to the small little town and the amazing waves and the breathtaking sea.

With humungous waves breaking over me I was thinking that this is the most beautiful site on earth and I am the luckiest man alive!

As I swam in a very stormy sea, the thought hits me that the concept of “purpose” and “design” is a question that only makes sense to the human mind. 

A much as the concept of god has absolutely basis in reality apart from our superstitions, so the question of our purpose on earth is something that is meaningless outside its cultural context.  Like the question of God, it is NOT something that comes to us from nature. 

The church loves to bring up this question as a reason of the “why” of Christianity.  As if Christianity is the only rational answer to the “why” of life itself!

In answering the Christian claim that Christianity is the answer to the “why” of life I have always asked the counter question that there is no reason why Christianity should be the answer to the “why” of life and not any of the other religions of the world.

Even if one would concede that there may be a god, why should god be the Christian god?  No Christian can give a proper answer to this.  The Christian faith itself can not deal with it.

Their reply is always that they know this in their hearts.  That somehow the Holy Spirit revealed this to them and that they don’t have to give a rational answer to the question.  Everybody from every cult and faith throughout history has always claimed the same and the answer remains a nonsensical and self contradictory one. 

It occurred to me that the question of the “why” of life is itself a cultural phenomenon.  Like Christianity and faith itself.

It means absolutely nothing to the sea.  The cliffs around me.  The trillions upon trillions of molecules combining and reacting with each other throughout the universe. 

Even the word “purpose” and “design” have no meaning outside the human mind.  These are only models we use to describe a process (itself a model) that we perceive with our senses and that we can compute with our minds.

The fact that a system exists is not proof that the system was designed or has a purpose in the sense that we think about “intelligent purpose”.

The fact that we speak is no proof that speech was “intended” no more than the fact that a bird sits on a branch is evidence that the bird was intended or made for “sitting on the branch”.  The fact that we exist is not proof that we were intended to exist. 

At the same time it occurred to me that if there are any significant discovery as to the “why” behind life and if this should ever become a relevant question to ask, this would probably be discovered by the people who are looking for answers and not the people who are satisfied that they have discovered the answer.  In other words, Christians who believe they already have the answer would probably NOT be the ones to discover this.

I wondered if scientists would for example discover one day that the universe is governed by a completely different set of “rules” that exist outside our universe, of which our universe and its laws is a mere by-product; and if science will discover that behind this “different set of rules” is a life form that exist as a result of realities that are so different that only people who transform and become one of these life forms can ever understand it – then science will have discovered the ultimate answer to life, death and everything.  The anwer to the “why” behind our existance.

But we must first understand that even the above statement is predicated upon a model of cause-and-effect and as useful as this model may be at the current point in time, it is only a model.

The fact that we have the model and the fact that the model is useful does not mean that the model is true in the sense that it has some kind of “independant existance”.

The first observation must still be that cause-and-effect is only a model.  It IS NOT TRUTH in any absolute sense.

Human thought and human culture does not determine reality. The fact that we ask a question does not mean that it is a valid question.

PART 3

Tristan is standing on the beach watching me swim.  He signals to me that it’s about to start raining again.  When I look up the sky is blacker than it was a few minutes before.

I start running out of the water.  “T” covers himself with my jacket, but the rain comes down as spiky arrows that sting your skin.  It “really” starts to rain and “T” and I run!

When we get to the car its still raining.  “T” is drenched from the rain.  Julie and Lauren are waiting in the car.  I put on a T-Shirt and another jacket and we start driving back to Cape Town.

I try to get my mind off the cold . . .

I realize that the concept of faith has been one of the most irrelevant matters in the history of the world.

Take matters of marriage for example.  Thousands of years ago one man had many wives.  That morality changed over time – within one system of faith and one family of faiths.  People gravitated to monogamy and this became the morality. 

Another example is the large wars that were fought over the last few hundred years.  The American Revolution, the First and Second World War.  Christianity had absolutely NO impact on any of the thousands upon thousands of people who commissioned these wars, despite the facts that they all professed the same faith.

Millions upon millions of churchgoing faithful went to war with each other!  Christianity and faith did not matter one bit.

The treatment of the Jews and slavery demonstrates to us that Christianity did not have any effect on these social ideologies in any shape or form.  Economics and superstition played a much more dominant role.  Christianity was not influential enough to stop the slaughtering of millions of people.

IN THE MIX of influences upon cultural developments it may have some bearing, but its major role has definitely changed from a means by which we try and manage crop failure and matters of health to the primary way that we as humans manage our superstitions.

It explains why people who go to church and call themselves Christian can be biologists for example.  Christian beliefs have been and are becoming more and more irrelevant.

Its winter.  Its stormy.  As we turn into the street where we live its starts raining big time!!!!!.  HEAVY rain!  We sprint into the home, leaving all our junk still in the car.  We will get it when the rain stops.

I am FREEZING cold and have mild hypothermia.  I open the taps to the bath, strip down and get in the hot water.  My skin burns read in the hot water, but my body registers the heat and welcomes it. 

I soak in the warm water . . .  and as I do another thought hits me. . . .

I think about human thought. 

It can not be that our human thought is disconnected from the environment.  I have long suspected that this may be one of the reasons for the usefulness of mathematics.  I am sure it is not the full story, but I suspect it plays a role.

It is safe to say that what we understand as “development” and “progression” and “ordering” are inadequate labels that we give to a process that we have only partial glimpses of with our human mind, our primitive mental models and our limited five senses.

There is little doubt with me that we will one day understand how we develop language, grammar and comprehension.  There is also little doubt in my mind that the developmental path of language, grammar and comprehension has its basis in the material world we find around us.

But even if the developmental path of language gives us a clue of its origins, it still does not mean that language or comprehension or abstract thought is limited to the world where it originated from.  Thought may be “from” somewhere and become “more than” where it originates from.

Living system is always more than its constituent parts or its origins.  It will be “like”, but it will at the same time probably always be “more than”.

This means that even the question of “intelligent design” is a very natural question to ask.  Even if there is no intelligent reason behind the development of human thought, it seems to be consistent with the process of thought to ask the question – if we purpose, is there not a probability that we have been purposed as well?

But this question comes from the matrix of human thought.  We ask this question because of three reasons:

 -  we have the ability to purpose ourselves;

-  secondly, we are conscious of this process;

-  and thirdly, the question is something that is not inconsistent with the matrix of human thought.

There is absolutely no evidence that we ask the question because of anything we find in nature.  In the same way as we have no evidence that animals or rocks “worship” a god or responds to a god-force (as Christians claim without any basis for the claim), in exactly the same way we have no evidence of purpose besides the three factors that we have mentioned above.

Let’s assume something interesting to illustrate the point.  Let’s assume that our minds evolve over time and that we become capable of observing more about our world than we do with our five senses and that we develop a new matrix that will manage the interaction with this new perceived world (what else is our current thought than a process that manages our social interaction and our interaction with our world through our senses). 

And let’s call this super-thought, based on super-perception.  And let’s assume that in this new matrix we work with a better model of reality than cause-and-effect.

There will be no god and there will be no “purpose” in that world and it will be completely “natural”.

This example illustrates how the matrix of thought governs and limits activity within that matrix.  We are slaves to our matrix of thought.

It demonstrates how we will never be able to function outside the matrix.  But, on the other hand, it also illustrates that it is possible to look at any system like Christianity and to go to the matrix and say without any shadow doubt that in terms of the matrix claimed by the system of Christianity and in terms of the matrix of human thought generally, the system of Christianity is not a possible description of life, death and everything.

Human thought itself is so new and so young – and all indications are that in a few hundred years from now we will no longer have the scourge of religion or faith with us.

I get out of the bath.  The wind is howling outside!  I drink some lemon juice and coffee.

The whole experience of the last few days leaves me invigorated.  The salt taste of the water in my mouth, the gigantic waves breaking over me, the freezing cold wind against my skin, the richness of the amazing questions we can contemplate, the warm water, the coffee.

I am amazed by life!

SUCCESS

Pre-Reconstruction Rubble of Frauenkirche and Statue of Martin Luther in Dresden, Germany.  It was bombed by the Allied Forces in WWII.  I did not take the pic, but this is how I saw it when I visited Dresden in 1991

 

What is success in life?

Is it achieving unparalleled success with ones career?  Being an innovator?  Doing what few others will ever be able to do?

Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel was born on 15 November 1891. During his life he developed as a military strategist of note. He was a son who made his family, community and country proud. This is the man who during WW II, due to exceptional skill in Africa, was nicknamed the “Desert Fox”.

 

He was one of the greatest German Generals who ever lived.

But, the problem is that whatever he achieved, he achieved during an unfortunate place and during and unfortunate time in history – Germany at war. . .

He was one of Hitler’s Generals – but unlike most of Hitler’s Generals, Rommel was by all accounts also a decent human being.

He was SO decent that he was involved in the plot to kill Hitler.

Hitler did not take very kind to this and plotted to plan German War-Hero.

He sent some Gestapo soldiers to Rommel’s house with orders to kill him and his family if they try to resist the chilling choice that Hitler was about to give Rommel.

Let’s give Rommel’s son¸ Manfred a chance to tell the story (taken from:  www.eyewitnesstohistory.com):

Manfred enters the house and we pick up the story as he recalls: “ . . .I arrived at Herrlingen at 7:00 a.m. My father was at breakfast. A cup was quickly brought for me and we breakfasted together, afterwards taking a stroll in the garden.

‘At twelve o’clock to-day two Generals are coming to discuss my future employment,’ my father started the conversation. ‘So today will decide what is planned for me; whether a People’s Court or a new command in the East.’

‘Would you accept such a command,’ I asked.

He took me by the arm, and replied: ‘My dear boy, our enemy in the East is so terrible that every other consideration has to give way before it. If he succeeds in overrunning Europe, even only temporarily, it will be the end of everything which has made life appear worth living. Of course I would go.’

Shortly before twelve o’clock, my father went to his room on the first floor and changed from the brown civilian jacket which he usually wore over riding-breeches, to his Africa tunic, which was his favorite uniform on account of its open collar.

At about twelve o’clock a dark-green car with a Berlin number stopped in front of our garden gate. The only men in the house apart from my father, were Captain Aldinger [ Rommel's aide] , a badly wounded war-veteran corporal and myself. Two generals – Burgdorf, a powerful florid man, and Maisel, small and slender – alighted from the car and entered the house. They were respectful and courteous and asked my father’s permission to speak to him alone. Aldinger and I left the room. ‘So they are not going to arrest him,’ I thought with relief, as I went upstairs to find myself a book.

A few minutes later I heard my father come upstairs and go into my mother’s room. Anxious to know what was afoot, I got up and followed him. He was standing in the middle of the room, his face pale. ‘Come outside with me,’ he said in a tight voice. We went into my room. ‘I have just had to tell your mother,’ he began slowly, ‘that I shall be dead in a quarter of an hour.’ He was calm as he continued: ‘To die by the hand of one’s own people is hard. But the house is surrounded and Hitler is charging me with high treason. ‘ “In view of my services in Africa,” ‘ he quoted sarcastically, ‘I am to have the chance of dying by poison. The two generals have brought it with them. It’s fatal in three seconds. If I accept, none of the usual steps will be taken against my family, that is against you. They will also leave my staff alone.’

‘Do you believe it?’ I interrupted. ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘I believe it. It is very much in their interest to see that the affair does not come out into the open. By the way, I have been charged to put you under a promise of the strictest silence. If a single word of this comes out, they will no longer feel themselves bound by the agreement.’

I tried again. ‘Can’t we defend ourselves…’ He cut me off short. ‘There’s no point,’ he said. ‘It’s better for one to die than for all of us to be killed in a shooting affray. Anyway, we’ve practically no ammunition.’ We briefly took leave of each other. ‘Call Aldinger, please,’ he said.

Aldinger had meanwhile been engaged in conversation by the General’s escort to keep him away from my father. At my call, he came running upstairs. He, too, was struck cold when he heard what was happening. My father now spoke more quickly. He again said how useless it was to attempt to defend ourselves. ‘It’s all been prepared to the last detail. I’m to be given a state funeral. I have asked that it should take place in Ulm. [a town near Rommel's home] In a quarter of an hour, you, Aldinger, will receive a telephone call from the Wagnerschule reserve hospital in Ulm to say that I’ve had a brain seizure on the way to a conference.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I must go, they’ve only given me ten minutes.’ He quickly took leave of us again. Then we went downstairs together.

We helped my father into his leather coat. Suddenly he pulled out his wallet. ‘There’s still 150 marks in there,’ he said. ‘Shall I take the money with me?’

‘That doesn’t matter now, Herr Field Marshal,’ said Aldinger.

My father put his wallet carefully back in his pocket. As he went into the hall, his little dachshund which he had been given as a puppy a few months before in France, jumped up at him with a whine of joy. ‘Shut the dog in the study, Manfred,’ he said, and waited in the hall with Aldinger while I removed the excited dog and pushed it through the study door. Then we walked out of the house together. The two generals were standing at the garden gate. We walked slowly down the path, the crunch of the gravel sounding unusually loud.

As we approached the generals they raised their right hands in salute. ‘Herr Field Marshal,’ Burgdorf said shortly and stood aside for my father to pass through the gate. A knot of villagers stood outside the drive…

The car stood ready. The S.S. driver swung the door open and stood to attention. My father pushed his Marshal’s baton under his left arm, and with his face calm, gave Aldinger and me his hand once more before getting in the car.

The two generals climbed quickly into their seats and the doors were slammed. My father did not turn again as the car drove quickly off up the hill and disappeared round a bend in the road. When it had gone Aldinger and I turned and walked silently back into the house…

Twenty minutes later the telephone rang. Aldinger lifted the receiver and my father’s death was duly reported.

It was not then entirely clear, what had happened to him after he left us. Later we learned that the car had halted a few hundred yards up the hill from our house in an open space at the edge of the wood. Gestapo men, who had appeared in force from Berlin that morning, were watching the area with instructions to shoot my father down and storm the house if he offered resistance. Maisel and the driver got out of the car, leaving my father and Burgdorf inside. When the driver was permitted to return ten minutes or so later, he saw my father sunk forward with his cap off and the marshal’s baton fallen from his hand.”

Yesterday was the first time I heard this account. And I realized that despite everything that Rommel may have achieved in his many war-exploits, that afternoon in the woods in Herrlingen may have been Rommels finest hour!

In October 1944, Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel did something extraordinary.  The German General gave his life for something he believed in.  He did not sacrifice his life for any of the modern ideologies like democracy and “freedom”. But for the age old “ideology” of family!

He died a remarkable man!

Story of an African family

All off a sudden I hate Cape Town! One of the most beautiful places on Earth, but it is winter. Extremely wet, extremely cold and I am extremely sick – constantly!

I know that I must get the hell out of here. But the business that Dawie and I started is precariously perched on the point between success and failure and it requires my 100% attention. I know I will have to be here at least until the end of August.

As I get interested in leaving, all of a sudden I find myself drawn to my origins. I am glad, in a sense – at least it is something that I can do while I lie in bed.

On my father’s side the family originated from a small town called Tonderen in the South of Denmark. Some of the people from Tonderen migrated to Holland. In 1650 a boy was born in Holland to one of these families. They called him Andries Cornelisz van Tonder. Andries became a miller, moved to the Cape of Good Hope and on 31 August 1700 he became a Cape citizen.

I know what life must have been like for Andries. Life in Cape Town is much like life in Europe, wet and cold. Every time it starts to rain I get unbelievable sinus headaches; my lungs fill up with shit and I don’t stop coughing until the weather clears.

The headaches persist night and day!

Church in Tonder, Denmark

By this time, I want to chop off my head!! But then I feel the distant throbbing pain of a wound that has still not healed completely in my right armpit.

Three weeks ago a surgeon cut at least three inches wide and deep into me to drain an abscess – and I decide to leave my head where it is. I stay in bed. I remember some religious reason for the people from Tonder to spread across Europe.

As I recall, they came to South Africa due to the persecution from the Catholic Church (they were protestants). I have always regretted the fact that my family comes from very strict protestant background.

I admire the Catholics for their spirit and ability to really enjoy life without an over sensitive sense of morality. But I am not in the mood for considering my religious heritage today. I don’t feel well and I don’t have wine! And before one considers faith, you must make sure you feel well and have LOTS of alcohol handy!!!!

A much more interesting family comes from my mother’s side. Her surname is Kok. It comes from Middle German/ Dutch meaning “chef”. It was high fashion at some point in Germany to call yourself “Chef” or, “Kok”, “de Kock”, “Kogh” or anything like that if you were a chef and the surname stuck.

In 1745 JOHANN HEINRICH CHRISTOPH KOCH arrived at the Cape of Good Hope on a ship from Holland, the Weltevreden, employed by the Dutch United East Indian Company (VOC), as a mercenary.

Dutch United East Indian Company Logo

JHC Kok turns out to be one of my great-great-great-great grandfathers and he grew up in an area in Germany called Waldeck. As soon as I read about him I felt that I could like this guy.

I can easily imagine him as a regular guy. Much like the rest of my cousins and brothers. He would have fit right in.

The kids all got together on the Northern Free State Farm during the school holidays. We wrestled constantly; rode horses; swam in the farm dams; shot birds; set the veld on fire; hypnotized the chickens; fished in the streams and rivers; built forts in old gold-trenches. Jip, he would have been “one of us”.

But How did he end up in South Africa as a mercenary? For the answer we must return to Waldeck in Germany.

Waldeck was a semi-independent region and part of the Holy Roman Empire during this time. Much cross-pollination happened between the different aristocratic families in Europe (and I mean this in the most pornographic sense of the word – and I am sure this was the case with the local prince – mr. KAF – he knew people – especially the DUTCH!!!).

Karl August Friedrich (September 24, 1704 – August 29, 1763) was the ruling prince in the Waldeck and Pyrmont-area when JHC was living. The Waldeck’s had a proud history of military service in the Dutch Army and in 1740 Karl August Friedrch created the 1st and 2nd Battalion of mercenaries in Waldeck – only 5 years before JHC Kok arrived in Cape Town as a mercenary.

Karl’s mercenaries would serve at almost all the flash points that the Dutch had to deal with as the VOC (United East Indian Company) was trying desperately to try and keep control over their vast assets during the spice wars of this time.

Later, he would contribute large forces to American and South African campaigns.

Karl August Friedrich was so influential in Holland that he commanded the Dutch army during some key campaigns and in 1746 he became Field Marshal of the Holy Empire.

So, the 1700’s that saw JHC coming to the Cape of Good Hope was a time of change and he was probably on board the Weltevreden, as an employee of the VOC, hired from the good friend of the Dutch, Karl August Friedrich.

The VOC was the largest company of its day and probably the first truly multi-national. They fought wars, issued currencies and had vast territories under their control

VOC HO in Amsterdam

The company was created in 1602 in response to an outdated trading monopoly held by the Portuguese. The company’s sole goal was to manage the vast resources of spices from the Far East.

This time was probably one of the most successful times for the VOC that was finally liquidated in 1800. The General Motors of its day ceased to exist in the same way that Microsoft and Apple will probably one day cease to exist as the technologies that predicated their founding become obsolete.

It is interesting to me as I think about JHC’s coming to Cape Town and how so much of the cross currents that form our lives are mega-movements that have little to do with our personal aspirations, goals or acts of God.

I think of my brothers and cousins. We are all descendants of people whose lives were directly shaped by the times they lived in. We are the result of them doing the best they could in the time they lived.

As I think of my brothers and cousins, I realize that each one of us has been directly and profoundly affected by the environment we live in. Generations to come will be able to look back at our lives and link the choices we make today and the places we end up at, directly to the large scale movement of politics and economics of our time. And our greatest success, as a family and even wider, as the human race, is probably the fact that we manage to go on. No matter the challenge.

what were the Van Tonder’s thinking??

The Cape of Good Hope

I am wondering about the development of modern human history and the things that shaped our world to be the way it is.

This is my general experience of life:

I fight my way through the swamp called life with great commitment. I look up momentarily and see the bright blue sky!  Hope and belief stirs – there IS beauty and fulfillment in this life!

The thought sits for only a moment before I realize that my leg is stuck in drift sand in the dam swamp! To stay alive I must keep
moving. It’s life.

My mind races. I try to decipher the hidden code that will swing open the swamp’s (prison) doors and all of a sudden the swamp will be gone and I will stand in full sunlight on my favorite beach during a glorious afternoon – a stunning woman next to me in a sexy bikini.

Oh, it’s all a bit melodramatic, but it reads well.

My thoughts on modern human development are precipitated by my looking into the history of my ancestors and how we ended up in South Africa.

The Van Tonder’s originate waaaaaaay back from a small town in Denmark, called Tonder.

City of Tonder in Denmark

The story, as far as I have it, is that due to religious reasons, many of the town’s people migrated to Holland where they adopted the surname “Van Tonder”, meaning, “from Tonder”.  They were NOT Catholics!

During the late 16^th and early 17^th century, the town Tonder became
German and the territory part of the Holy Roman Empire.

The Holy Roman Empire was a federation-of-sorts of territories, city’s and small independent states in Central Europe that existed from around 962 to 1806 when Napoleon decided that enough is enough!!!!!

Banner of the Holy Roman Empire

The Empire was neither HOLY, nor Roman, but had an association with the Roman Catholic Church. It was more German and Central European.

The relationship with the Roman Catholic Church became extremely strained – especially when the Reformation sprang up in the heart of the Empire under the leadership of Luther, Calvin et al. The Reformation is generally regarded to have begun in 1517 and ended around 1648.

The reformation lead to greater conflict with the Catholic Church and a push to reduce Rome’s influence in the Empire. During and just
following this time, thousands of people fled the Empire and the UK in
search of a new life in the new worlds of the time.

Notably, they came to the United States of America, but also to places
like South Africa around 1671, with its strong Dutch influence.  This is when the Van Tonders left Holland for South Africa and for greater personal freedom.

That gives a super-boring historical background!

FAR more important than just the dates, places and surnames are the thoughts of the people of these times. What were the
issues that they discussed as they sailed from Europe to South Africa?

Several cross currents converged at this critical point in Central
Europe.

These cross-currents were all aligned around one profound thought – that of re-organization. Well. . . actually – NO, not just re-organization! Progression of thought! Profound progression!

The development of a living system is closely linked to the efficiency of the feedback mechanisms in the system that feed results about the systems efficiency back to the system itself which allows the system to develop in-line with its environment.

One mega trend of the time was the passing of a major economic system in favor of a more effective one.

For many years, basic economy was arranged around powerful landlords. Not just economic, but also legal power was vested in these lords.

The system was ultra-inadequate as a means of managing scarce resources such as labor and raw materials, but it was a stable system and there was little incentive for the rich landlords to give up their land and abdicate their positions of power.

The Roman Catholic Church was organized along very similar lines. Conceptually, power and privilege was in the hands of the church and its leadership as powerful landowners. Priests many times chose to study law, rather than theology which points to the large influence they had as property administrator and rulers.

Lords did not want to relinquish the land they owned for many years and that the old and outdated economic system was predicated on.
So, god intervened with the Black Death and between 1348 and 1350 he
killed around 75 million people (some estimate).

Black Death

Just kidding. We all know it was not god who killed them! It was Satan!! J

With millions of people dead, it paved the way for a complete re-organization for the Central European society along the lines of free enterprise and a more productive utilization of resources.

Another valuable mega-trend in this time was the tradition of democracy. German speaking tribes have been electing
rulers along democratic lines since time immemorial. The trend was away from the group and towards the individual.

Another mega-movement was the development of the Roman-Dutch legal system that forms the basis of the legal systems around the world. Rulers in the Empire were subject to this legal system as much as the subjects. A development that later emerged  again in constitutional democracies such as the United States.

These were some of the major reasons for the Holy Roman Empire’s
friction with the Roman Catholic Church with their old and increasingly outdated model of government in the person of the Pope and management through the Roman Catholic’s land-ownership.

Protestants started to re-interpret the Bible from an individualistic perspective. Luther and others were sponsored by land-owners – anything that can “legitimize” the ruler’s disdain for the Roman Church in the Empire.

The Reformation became the carriers of the doctrine of “individualistic
power”. They dethroned the Pope and set up the paper-pope in its place. (I borrow the concept from a friend). The Pastor would become the new “Pope” and the authority would be in written words as interpreted by the local teacher.

They did not do away with the Pope-concept completely yet. They merely re-defined the pope, but it was an important development nevertheless.

Physical pictures were replaced by mental pictures. Mental pictures – as long as they don’t actually paint it, it would be OK.

Payments to the Roman Church were conveniently replaced with payments to the local church and taxes to the local rulers.

This was Europe at the time when the Van Tonder family packed up their belongings, probably sold it and re-located to the Cape of Good Hope at the Southern tip of Africa.

These were the discussions that happened around the dinner tables and in the town squares in the days.

Isn’t it interesting that the general development of human thought continues along the same general trajectory today!

Almost three hundred years after the first Van Tonder came to Cape Town, we continue to re-align social structures to the individual.

These are some of the rays of sunshine that starts to break through the clouds after 35 years in the swamp. And the girls with the
sexy bikini’s – well, some day there are more than other days. But hell, it still beats the swamp!

theory of mind

reading in babylon – sean

we all have a theory of the mind. it is a theory because we have no way of seeing into the mind of someone else. we can only look into our own consciousness.

theory of mind is how we perceive the relationship between belief and observation in others. we not only perceive others, but we perceive that they perceive. their perception creates a system of beliefs.

false belief-test:

take two dolls. carla and julie. play this scene to a child.

carla and julie is in the same room. cala holds a marble. she puts the marble in a box. julie sees it. now Julie leaves the room. carla removes the marble and places it in a drawer. julie does not see this. she is outside the room.

brings julie back into the room and ask the child: “where will Julie look for the marble”.

most children will say that julie will look in the box. even though the child knows that this is a false belief – the child will correctly predict the false belief of julie.

the child knows that belief is predicated upon observation. and that others perceive independent from his/her own “seeing”.

from a very early age we develop a theory of mind. most do not fully develop this until later in life. some never develop this fully (and then again – what is “fully”).

when I was 25, I was on a mission. oh god, I was on a mission. i believed everything as if my own mind represented fact. at 35 i more fully developed a theory of mind. the realization that there are many missions and everybody is on his and her own mission. my mission is just one of many missions. my mission is no more valid or invalid that the mission of the next guy or girl. but there is such a thing like belief and false belief. these are not arbitrary (not purely subjective)

theory of mind – my theory about the minds of others based on their observation. i can predict what others will believe.

belief is what drives action. so, we predict the actions of others. even if we are not god – we can predict.

this is something amazing!

its like reading in babylon.

thanks sean.

dedicated to my son: tristan, for making me see the theory of mind.

symmetry

symmetry

At the heart of good writing is the concept of symmetry.  Connie Stadler announced the release of a new book called paper cuts.

It reminded me of the major achievements in our lives.  At the amazing moments and how inspirational it is do something well!

In 1895 Alfred Nobel established a prize that came to exemplify the height of human achievement in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace.

The 2008 Nobel Prize for Physics related to symmetry and the breaks in symmetry. In celebration of Connie’s work I share the introduction to the lectures with you to give you a sense of the moment.  The grandeur.

“The Nobel Lecture of Yoichiro Nambu was presented by Giovanni Jona-Lasinio, La Sapienza, University of Rome, Italy, 8 December 2008, at Aula Magna, Stockholm University. He was introduced by Professor Joseph Nordgren, Chairman of the Nobel Committee for Physics”.

Professor Joseph Nordgren’s introduction:

http://nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=1059

Excellence has a symmetry of its own!

cry, the belover country

In honour of:

-  Pat Beckmann and the Beckmann family who’s lives have been changed forever this week as a result of crime in South Africa;

-  Nick Roets who lost his life and the Roets family who’s lives have been changed forever this week as a result of crime in South Africa;

- Piet van den Berg who lost his life and the Roets family who’s lives have been changed forever this week as a result of crime in South Africa

A front page article in the Pretoria News of July 16, 2009 read:

“Tuks woman feared paralysed after attack“

“A Pretoria University sports projects co-ordinator is feared paralysed after she was shot in the chest while trying save her husband’s life during a botched house robbery.

Pat Beckmann, 60, was asleep in the family’s Constantia Park home when she and her husband, Colin, 63, were attacked during the early hours of yesterday (WED) morning.

The attack, the fourth in as many days, appears to be part of continuous bloody siege on city homeowners and appears unstoppable with criminals murdering and maiming Pretoria residents at will.

On Monday Pretoria businessman, Nick Roets, 56, was shot dead in his Raslouw smallholding less than 48 hours after Cullinan mielie farmer Piet van den Berg, 64, was gunned down on his plot.

Van den Berg was shot dead on Saturday by gunmen who then tried to burn his wife, Madeleine, 59, to death when they locked her in a cupboard and then set the house alight.

Beckmann was shot yesterday (WED) as she ran through her house in an attempt to save her husband who was struggling with two gunmen in their garden.

He was attacked by three men as he walked through his garden and back into his house after wheeling out a dustbin for rubbish collection.

Unbeknown to Beckmann one of her husband’s attackers, who spotted her turning on a bedroom light, was waiting in the passage for her and shot her as she ran past him.

The bullet, fired from almost pointblank range, tore through her right hand and breast puncturing her lung before it lodged itself against her spine.

The trio fled empty handed moments after they shot Beckmann.

An emotional Colin Beckmann, speaking from outside Pretoria East Hospital’s intensive care unit where his wife is in a serious condition, said the attack was over within minutes.

“As I was walking through the garden I saw the men running at me and heard them screaming at me to standstill.”

As instinct kicked in, Beckmann, fearing for his sleeping wife’s safety, immediately tackled and wrestled two of them to the ground.

As he wrestled with two of the men the third pointed a gun Beckmann’s head and tried to shoot him, but missed when he (Beckmann) managed to push one of the gunman’s accomplices into him deflecting the gun as it was fired.

Hearing the commotion outside their bedroom, Pat Beckmann, jumped up and grabbed a pepper spray gun and ran down the passage – straight into the man who had just tried to kill her husband.

Beckmann said when he heard the shot and saw the men fleeing he knew something terrible had happened.

“When I did not see any blood I thought she was alright,
but I began to panic when I saw Pat could not breathe or move.”

Beckmann, fighting back tears, said the doctors believed that his wife would be paralysed.

“The bullet apparently hit her spine which is now damaged,” he said.

Beckmann, recalling the moment he was confronted by the gunmen, said: “When they told me to standstill I refused. I was not going to let them get to my wife.

“I tried really hard to stop them. I was fighting them like crazy. I managed to tackle two of them, but I could not get to the third,” he said, staring blankly at his hands.

Pretoria East Hospital spokeswoman, Ronel Leyds, said Beckmann was undergoing a series of tests to determine the extent of her injuries.

“She will undergo an operation later this week,” she said.

Garsfontein police station spokeswoman Sergeant Lynnette Erasmus said no arrests had been made and that the suspects had escaped without taking anything.

She said a case of attempted murder and attempted house robbery was being investigated.

Anyone with information on the suspects whereabouts or identities can contact Crime Stop on 0860010111.

Article by Graeme Hosken.  He is a crime reporter with the Pretoria News and his e-mail address is: graeme.hosken@inl.co.za

Pat is slowly recovering in the ICU unit of the Pretoria East Hospital.

She will never walk again. Her dreams about her retirement years have been shattered.

Nick Roets and Piet van den Berg have been killed.

When will the madness end?

Pat and Julie

Pat and Hackpick

Pat, Colin, Tris and La

one owner – one bullet

Colin and Pat, at Sun City – Dec 2008.

In 1994 a prominent South African politician Peter Mokaba reportedly made an old slogan popular again when he called for : “one settler - one bullet”

Tonight, in a Pretoria Suburb we first hand experience “one consumer – one bullet”; “one owner of anything – one bullet.”

Three nights ago the Beckman family was attached in their home and Pat is left paralyzed, recovering in hospital.

Last night the family guard dog was poisoned at around 1:00 am in a clear attempt by the gang of perpetrators to return to the scene of the crime and finish the job that they started.

I did not bring my Laptop along from Cape Town when I drove up with the kids to be with their grandparents – because of the crime in Johannesburg.

I am writing this post from an internet café close to where Colin and Pat live.

The day was spend in a frantic arranging of better security matters, meetings with the police and various community policing forums.

Everybody agrees that the perpetrators are so aggressive that unless they are caught, they will probably wait for the 24 hours police patrols to be canceled and they will strike again.

Colin fought back. He saw their faces and he can link them to a serious crime (shooting pat).

Its 6:26 p.m. in Pretoria, South Africa. Its getting dark and I must get home.

life and death

Tristan – December 2008 – pure poetry

Scene 1

A month ago I got horribly sick.  Went to the doctor.  Same day –  saw a specialist.  7:00 that same evening –  operated on.

Infection was poisoning my body.  I just wanted it to stop.  No thought about my life; my kids; my wife; my business;  friends – I just wanted it to stop.

I asked myself if I am prepared to die to make it stop.

Strange.

– YES!

Scene 2

A week ago my mother-in-law was shot during a robbery at their Pretoria home.  Paralyzed for life.

Julie flew up from Cape Town to Pretoria.  I went by car with the kids.

While the adults panicked – the kids joked and played.

I asked myself how much this will affect them.

Strange.

– NOT MUCH!

Scene 3

I thought about this while I climbed Lions Head yesterday.  One of the hills next to Table Mountain, Cape Town.

When we die, we won’t experience death.  To die –  consciousness ends.  Loosing consciousness is not bad.  It happens to us for at least some time every night while we sleep.

I asked myself who life belongs to then.

Strange.

Life is the domain of the living – why do we worry so much about death?

Death belongs to the old and sick people.  Children bounce back from the worst expenriences.  The older we are, the more we linger.  Until we are so consumed with sorrow that we welcome death.

Scene 4

Got home after a difficult day at the office.  Screaming children wait for me at home.  A friend mails me about the attack on Pat.  My wife drives me nuts as wives do after 10 years of marriage!

I asked myself if I will go mad or welcome death when it all becomes to much.

Strange.

I opened an e-book by Connie Stadler,  Paper Cuts.

And I read poetry.

Here is what I read:

Plato’s Cave

In your shadow world
You might take me as a prisoner
For I do not believe in the duality of
perceptual reality
Or the ‘thing’ of/in itself.

Protoplasmic molecular conjunctions
Ephemeral constitutives
Conceptual, sentient contortions.

You challenge my
Incomprehension of Form
of Idea.

But all you do is verify
You never loved.

I never want to stop reading/loving the poetry of life!

legends are made in africa

.

.

to every man, woman and child

affected by crime

in a land, still finding itself -

so much is destroyed with each senseless act

The myspace profile site of Lucky Dube starts as follows:

“The South African reggae musician, Lucky  Dube, has been shot dead in front of his children in Johannesburg  during an attempted car hijacking. He had been dropping his teenage son and daughter off in the suburb of  Rosettenville on Thursday evening. Police say they were already out of the car when three shots were fired through a car window killing their father. Alongside Bob Marley, he was thought of as one of the great reggae artists – singing about social problems. He was also one of the apartheid regime’s most outspoken critics.”

Last year, on my way to work I heard the following remarkable story:

A South African lady Maria Kint was attending a UN conference in a remote part of Bakino Faso earlier that year.  In the mornings she would get up and watch the sun rise over the desert.

One particular morning she walked to the entrance of the area where they were housed. Very far in the distance she could see dust over the desert.  It did not take her long to notice that the dust was someone approaching her.  An old man.

He walked up to her without any hesitation.  Bluntly he told her that he was looking for Kint, Maria Kint.

She was startled!

“Well, the universe must be looking favorably upon you.  You found her!” she replied equally bluntly.  Completely startled.

He proceeded to pull out of his pocket the sleeve of a CD cover.  It was a CD cover of Lucky Dube.

He handed it to her.

“Here“

“I live in a community some distance into the desert”

“We heard that someone from South Africa would be here for a conference by the name of Maria Kint”.

“My village asked me to come speak with you.  We heard that Lucky passed away.  When you return, will you meet with Lucky’s family and convey our sincerest condolences?”

“We don’t have electricity in our village, but we have a CD payer and a battery which we connect up.  That’s how we listen to his music and at night. . . . .

. . . . . . we sing his songs when we dance around the fires“

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8iZ8jIqrQo

Such beauty and humanity in such a brutal land.

Nkosi skelel iAfrica (GOD BLESS AFRICA)

the unbearable likeness of being

a week ago, pat was attacked at home.
shot through the chest
a robbery

shot. . . for no reason
shot, through the chest and longue
(a 9mm causes a lot of damage)

(was it a week, or did life just pass me by?)

paralised . . for life

I saw her in hospital today
she is so frail and weak
(when i walked in – she was asleep)

i held her hand – she opened her eyes. looked at me.
(so frail)
(why a 9mm?)
(fucking asshole,
fucking no-good,
fucking useless jesus
. . . why???? – fuck the excuses!!!!, fucking god)

i rambled on about stuff. . .
stroked her hair . . .
held her hand . . . ….
kissed her on her forehead goodbye. . . ….
went outside. . .

and wept bitterly

rehabilitation

Pat Beckmann.  Rehabilitation. July 2009

from the beauty of the land she loves, a rendition befitting her. . .

&fmt=18

number theory

2:00 p.m.

I pick a friend up –  Leah.  She is visiting from the US. Studdying.  I want to take her to visit a radio station.  She mentions in passing a class on number theory she did in school.

“Number theory”, I think to myself.  How odd.  I have been thinking about that all afternoon.  Or does it now become even?!

5:00 p.m.

Its raining in Cape Town.  Table Mountain is spectacular when it rains and Tristan wants to go.  I need NO invitation.

5:30 p.m.

At Table Mountain.  We start the hike.  I ask Tris about rocks and flowers.  Why do we call it rocks and flowers?

Energy.

Molecules.

Memory.

What you call it is irrelevant.  Call a flower shit and “shit”, “flower”.  Then your mom will tell you not to use the word “flower” in good company.

Memory of energy states.  Direction. Velocity. Decay from one state to another.

A seagull in flight.

What is that?  A feedback loop between our brain and a clump of molecules, energy, memory travelling through space.

6:00 p.m.

We take a route – have never been here before.  Spectacular.

The cliffs of Table Mountain were carved by the sea that slammed against the continent at this very place long ago.

Tris loves the thought.  He wants to become the cliff!

6:30 p.m.

Tris wants to stand in the water.

Whatever you can do, I can try as well.  It may kill me – by I will try!

We wonder about life. Rocks.

Plants.  Under a different matrix-set – rocks, flowers, life would look different.  We would love it – and we will call that “natural”.

6:55 p.m.

Getting dark.  A sign says – 55 minutes to the Cable Station.

We run!

memory.

the key.

memory

bus station

M    E    M    O    R    Y

M  E  M  O  R  Y

M E M O R Y

MEMORY

COLLECTIVE

Billions are spend on marketing.

The management of “memory”.

We see an image.  The mind searches for recognition.  Recall.

“Brand” is a loaded image.  Around the image is a personality.

e b e n

became – “Eben”.  “Eben” has a personality.

When people read “Eben”, they see in “Eben” the complete personality of “Eben”.  The total memory of “Eben”.

So we create consumer brands.  We build the “brand personality”. Instant recall.  The positioning of the brand in the mental framework of the masses.

Brand is the management of memory.

The management of memory is what makes people millions.

.

PERSONAL

Memory bits.  Its own personality.

When we see a dog.

d o g

becomes “dog”.

Recall.

The entire “dog” personality.  Our experiance of “dog”.

The correct management of “memory” can make us happier people.

s e x

becomes “sex”.  But what is the personality associated with the memory recall?

We are able to change brand-personality for personal memories as much as we are able to do this with Coca-Cola or Velcro.

This is not easy, but it is possible.

.

GENERATIONAL

Billions of data bits in libraries and books.  Computer hard drives.

Memory.  Creates culture.

Life is the management of memory.

Personally and collectively.

Brands and intellect.

life = the management of memory

I will manage my memories and live!

Deut 30:19  ”Today I invoke heaven and earth as a witness against you that I have set life and death, blessing and curse before you.  Therefore choose life so that you and your descendants may live!”

legends

This morning I have been thinking about the life and times of the legendary Syd Barrett.

Strange what you think about when its cold and gray outside.  . .

Syd Barrett (6 January 1946 – 7 July 2006), born Roger Keith Barrett, was a founding member of the band “Pink Floyd” and one of the most legendary rock stars of all times.

Wikipedia says that he was active as a rock musician for about seven years, recording two albums with Pink Floyd and two solo albums before going into self-imposed seclusion lasting more than thirty years. His post-rock band life was as an artist and a keen gardener, ending with his death in 2006.

During his withdrawal from public life there were numerous works about him, most notably his former band Pink Floyd’s 1975 album Wish You Were Here.

David Bowie is reported to have said in an interview that he had Syd Barrett in mind after he got sick with a mental illness when he (Bowie) wrote this song about a fictional astronaut.

legends – 2

George Santayana (1863 to 1952)

His work:

Premonition

by George Santayana

The muffled syllables that Nature speaks
Fill us with deeper longing for her word;
She hides a meaning that the spirit seeks,
She makes a sweeter music than is heard.

A hidden light illumines all our seeing,
An unknown love enchants our solitude.
We feel and know that from the depths of being
Exhales an infinite, a perfect good.

Though the heart wear the garment of its sorrow
And be not happy like a naked star,
Yet from the thought of peace some peace we borrow,
Some rapture from the rapture felt afar.

Our heart strings are too coarse for Nature’s fingers
Deftly to quicken as she pulses on,
And the harsh tremor that among them lingers
Will into sweeter silence die anon.

We catch the broken prelude and suggestion
Of things unuttered, needing to be sung;
We know the burden of them, and their question
Lies heavy on the heart, nor finds a tongue.

Till haply, lightning through the storm of ages,
Our sullen secret flash from sky to sky,
Glowing in some diviner poet’s pages
And swelling into rapture from this sigh.

from poemhunter.com

His memory:

George Satayana was raised in the United Sates and graduated from Harvard University in 1886.

He was a poet and a philosopher.

His philosophical works include:

-  The Sense of Beauty (1896)

-  The Life of Reason, (1905–6),

-  Scepticism and Animal Faith (1923)

-  The Realms of Being  (1927 – 40)

The Life of Reason is arguably the first extended treatment of pragmatism ever penned.

Satayana is famously remembered for his quote:  ”Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy writes about him:

“He was a naturalist before naturalism grew popular; he appreciated multiple perfections before multiculturalism became an issue; he thought of philosophy as literature before it became a theme in American and European scholarly circles; and he managed to naturalize Platonism, update Aristotle, fight off idealisms, and provide a striking and sensitive account of the spiritual life without being a religious believer.”

Santayana is a legend and along with Billy Joel and Ray Charles invited to our dinner party!

African Farmers – migrating from subsistence to small-scale commercial

AFRICAN CATTLE FARMER

One of the challenges in Africa is to turn subsistence farmer into a viable commercial farmer.

Farming in livestock will be used as an example, but the same basic principles can be applied to grain or any other farming operation.

The experience of one company, LOCAL PODUCERS TRUST will be used, but the principles and challenges are so pervasive in Africa that the solution serves as a viable model for sustainable development in Africa and upgrading the farmer from subsistence to small-scale commercial.

Creating small scale commercial farmers results in:

• a dramatic increase of income for the farmer;
• African Farmers changing farming operations from environmentally destructive to environmentally acceptable practices; and
• African Farmers increasing their productivity and thereby lowering food production cost in a region of the world where food production is under constant pressure;

Generally subsistence farmers have problems of access to markets, unproductive farming techniques, scale restrictions (i.e. a lack of economy of scale) and a lack of capital to funds cash flow and growth.

Overcoming these problems seems like a daunting task.

DE KOMPER ENTERPRISES is a Minneapolis based IT, Brand Development and Supply Management Company, working in Africa through a South African company, DE KOMPER TRUST.

Part of the brand value that DEKOMPER TRUST associated with all its retail brands is the fact that even though brands are nationally and regionally managed, produce sold under the brands are LOCALLY produced under a stringent set of “best practice-norms” most appropriate for each market and LOCALLY sold.

This allowed DE KOMPER TRUST to offer access to large formal markets to subsistence farmers and for consumers to purchase food products that have been produced LOCALLY.

DE KOMPER’S first approach was to try and organize a number of subsistence farmers into “production units” to produce food at consistently high quality and quantity. It saw its role in terms of production, primarily as that of “coordinator of production” according to a set of minimum standards and “coordinate supply” from subsistence farmers.

It thought that by offering market access to subsistence farmers, it could dictate production standards to farmers and that farmers would support the venture based on the opportunity to grow its output considerably by its access to large, lucrative LOCAL markets.

The vehicle, set up to achieve this is the LOCAL PRODUCERS TRUST or LPT, which was set up to manage supply quality and quantity.

LPT is responsible to organize local subsistence farmers to supply local commercial processing operations that would in turn process the livestock and sell it to the formal retail industry under DE KOMPER TRUST brands.

By creating a separate entity in LPT to focus on the food production, DE KOMPER TRUST would be freed up to focus on marketing the brands and for building the brand value under the umbrella of “LOCALLY produced food, produced according to “best practices”, sold LOCALLY”.

LPT is tasked to deal with food production problems and had its work cut out for it!

The problem that LPT ran into was the fact that subsistence farmers is not primarily “subsistence” due to their lack of farming expertise (even though this is a problem), but the biggest challenge of the subsistence farmer is its lack of cash flow and the fact that the farmer lives from-hand-to-mouth.

The subsistence farmer is under constant pressure to sell or use their produce prematurely to provide cash for food for them to survive day-by-day.

LPT signed contracts with subsistence farmers to supply a certain quality and quantity of animals at a certain date that would be sold to local food processing plants. Before the animals reach the desired weight (at a certain fat to mussel ratio) the subsistence farmer would need some cash for itself and would sell its animals prematurely to their traditional customers at reduced income levels to itself or would simply slaughter some of the animals for private consumption.

There was under contract a certain minimum number of animals that LPT had to supply to local food processors in order to make LPT viable as a new production channel.

(The problem relates to a requirement to at least fill trucks with animal carcasses and that the number of carcasses had to be enough to fill up production capacity at processing plants for at least a certain number of production shifts. Failure to do so made the local subsistence farmers products simply to expensive for the formal food industry.)

The problem was so pervasive that LPT was unable to supply any stock to local food processors.

LPT realized that the fundamental problem with the subsistence farmer in Africa is not in the first place a problem of farming expertise, or even a lack of economy of scale advantages (although these are real and daunting challenges in and off themselves), but a problem of capital.

Capital (as in money in the bank) would stop the subsistence farmer from selling its livestock prematurely. If they are able to hang on to their livestock until the right time, they will be able to supply contracts according to large, formal market-requirements and they will be able to get a better price for their animals due to the fact that when they sell their livestock prematurely, they generally worsen their position by not just failing to supply according to contract-requirements on quality and quantity, but also by discounting their animals.

LPT’s role evolved into managing the cash flow requirements of local subsistence farmers in a way that would provide security for investors and cash to subsistence farmers when they need it.

These cash flow requirements are distinctly different from commercial farmers and the legal and infrastructural frameworks had to be created to manage this in a 3^rd world context.

These frameworks were created by an integration of the principles of capitalism and social responsibility.

Capitalism:
Investors are given a fixed annual return on investment at a rate that reflects the inherent risk involved in the investment.

Management of the investment is done by LPT who operates under legal supervision from formal structures in the South African judicial system as well as local government agencies.

LPT and DE KOMPER TRUST jointly negotiate and manage supply contracts with lucrative formal local markets.

LPT not just manages the contracts, but also physically manages the logistics and day to day execution of these contracts. This allows LPT to provide investors with a detailed income statement on a weekly basis of the commercial trading activities.

Social responsibility:
Subsistence farmers contribute livestock according to contracts to LPT. This allows for a dramatic increase in revenue to the farmer.

Each active supplier is also appointed as a beneficiary of the trust (LPT). As such they are formally “members of the trust” and in addition to income from their sale of livestock to the trust, they also receive a profit share, thereby further increasing their income position.

Their profit share is offset against cooperative ventures with suppliers of farming inputs such as veterinarian services, lease on land and equipment, etc.

LPT assists the subsistence farmer in their relationship with local government and Non-Governmental Agencies who are essential partners in any social context in Africa.

The net result is that subsistence farmers are changed into small-scale commercial famers by providing cash flow in accordance with the needs of someone who lives “from-hand-to-mouth” and by providing a safe investment opportunity for investors who seek solid investment opportunities and not just investors who want to make a social-investment.

This model is currently being implemented in one region in South Africa. If successful, it can provide a workable model for development across Africa.

August 2009
Eben van Tonder
Email: eben@dekomper.com

Trustee – Local Producers Trust (South Africa)
Trustee – DE KOMPER TRUST (South Africa)
Partner – DE KOMPER ENTERPRISES, LLC (USA)

legends – E. V. Rieu

Dr. E. V. Rieu

On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland – an event that sparked the deadliest war in human history.

Between 1939 and 1945, over seventy million people died.

This was a state of “total war” where entire economies of the largest countries in the world were dedicated to the war effort.

These were extraordinary times and in it lived some amazing people.

When Hitler invaded Poland Dr. E. V. Rieu was 52.

Emile Victor Rieu was born on 10 February 1887 in London and  died on 11 May 1972 in London.  He was a celebrated translator from Latin and Greek, and editor of Penguin Classics from 1944-1964. His son, D. C. H. Rieu has revised his work.

In the 2002 preface to the translation of the Odyssey, which his son revised with Dr Peter Jones, his son writes the following account of his father:

“My father E. V. Rieu’s translation of the Odyssey was published in 1946, as the first of the Penguin Classics series which he founded with Sir Allen Lane. His vision was to make available to the ordinary reader, in good modern English, the great classics of every language. This vision, shadowy at first, came to him in the early days of the Second World War, when he used to sit in the drawing-room after supper with the Odyssey on his lap, translating aloud to his wife and daughters, while the bombs fell on London. When he retired as general editor of the series he had searched out the scholars and men of letters he wanted as translators and seen through to publication about 160 books.”

Dr. Rieu also translated the Iliad, the Voyage of Argo by Apollonius of Rhodes, The Four Gospels and Virgil’s Pastoral Poems.

Patrick Kavanagh evoked the translations’ crisp and readable character in a poem “On Looking into E. V. Rieu’s Homer”:

“In stubble fields the ghosts of corn are
The important spirits the imagination heeds.
Nothing dies; there are no empty
Spaces in the cleanest-reaped fields.”

The picture of E. V. Rieu reading/ translating to his family while the bombs fell on London stays with me.

Dr. E. V. Rieu – an extraordinary man!

PS: Dr. Rieu’s work was the conduit that allowed me access to fossil records of thought from the fourth century BC.  From these I now understand much better who I am, where I come from and why I think the way I think.  I wrote a blog to myself on these insights called SHORTHAND NOTES TO MYSELF

legends – gisele bundchen

Picture from:  http://www.gisele-bundchen.info/galleries-bw.html

Arguable the biggest model alive today is the Brazilian born supermodel Gisele Caroline Bündchen (born July 20, 1980).

The IMDB website writes the following about her:

It was in 1994 when Gisele Bundchen was discovered at age 14 in a Brazilian fashion mall, and now she is ”the” most famous face in the business.

Since then, Gisele has graced the covers of countless magazines as any other model in the history, including Rolling Stone, Time, Forbes, Newsweek and all the fashion top magazines such as Vogue, W, Cosmopolitan, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, i-D, The Face, and many others.

Gisele also has multi-million dollars deals with some of the world’s biggest companies. Her contract with Victoria’s Secret is the biggest in the fashion industry, and she also has deals with Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, Bulgari, Dolce & Gabbana, Valentino, Joop!, Otto, Lanvin, Guerlain, Nivea, DSquared, St. John, Colcci, Vivo, Vogue Eyewear and Grendene. Her own line of shoes, called “Ipanema Gisele Bundchen”, have sold more than 100 million pairs since 2001.

On August 26, 2008, the New York Daily News, in a list, named Bündchen the fourth-most-powerful person in the fashion world.

On May 12, 2009, The Independent, called her the biggest star in fashion history.

She is a supermodel, a superstar and has achieved what millions of girls all over the world only dream about.

Gisele – you are a LEGEND!

i have a dream

.

.

.

.

From Glamour.com

I have a dream that my kids will grow up, free from the stigma associated with sex and comfortable with their sexuality.

We grew up in a world that was governed by scary stories about god, hell, demons and angels.  Where superstition ruled!

My dream is for my kids to grow up in a different world.  Where they will never think that  that it is a “sin” if  they have sexual intercourse before marriage or outside marriage.  In fact, that they will see marriage for what it is – a cultural phenomenon that some people choose to manage and pair up emotional, physical and legal aspects of a relationship.

I have a dream that my kids will grow up with no stigma associated with sex, not just related to having sex outside a marriage or a long-term relationship and masturbation, but related to same sex intercourse as well.

I simply fail to see the “unnaturalness” of same-sex relationships.  It seem to me that the argument can easily be settled by the fact that there are people attracted to people from the same sex which makes that very natural.

The God-hypothesis is so preposterous as it relates to sexuality that I am not even going to deal with it here.  I will deal with this in a different forum at another time.

The more basic question, before one asks the question if someone is homosexual or heterosexual is whether someone is male or female.

This is a question that I would not have given more than an amused fleeting moments of attention in the past, but after following the Semenya debate over the last few weeks, it seems to me that it is not that easy.  It is not just a matter of sex organs physiologically.

The question with the South African middle distance runner, Caster Semenya for those who are not following the story is whether she has to much male characteristics as well, so as to give her an unfair advantage in competing with other females.  Contrary to what I expected, there is NO easy answer to this question.

I refer all interested in an introduction to the debate to a good article by Ross Tucker. http://running.competitor.com/features/what-is-caster-semenya_4836

If it is this complex in determining if a female athlete has not to much physical “male” characteristics so as to give her an unfair advantage, how complex is this matter not emotionally and psychologically when it comes to being male or female.

Instead of a cut and dry position of being either male or female, it seems as if there are a lot of people who are in-between – physiologically and psychologically.

It occurred to me that we may be making the same mistake when it comes to heterosexuality or homosexuality.  That these may be two extreme cases and that many people may not be on any of the extreme position, but somewhere in the middle.

Extreme labels concerns me almost as much as extreme positions.

Take a situation where a person is not fully homosexual or fully heterosexual.  He or she has no clear preference either way.

Imagine the courage it takes a man or woman to come out and proclaim to the world that he or she is homosexual or lesbian.

Imagine then how much more difficult it must be to tell the world, after he or she “came out” as a homosexual or a lesbian, to tell the world (friends and family) that he or she is attracted to people from the opposite sex as well.

I can just imagine the possibility for more confusion and conflict.

From this perspective, as long as sexuality is a “be-all and end-all” in our society, even the labels of homosexual or heterosexual may be damaging.  Making people choose between extreme-case-scenarios is not all that helpful.

Why is it not enough to say that we are sexual beings and leave it there?  Why do we need these extreme labels?

Male, female, homosexual, heterosexual is however not where it ends.  It is not the only “extreme case” positions or views we take on sex.

A husband, wife, boyfriend or girlfriend’s commitment to a relationship is many times measured solely by whether he has sexual intercourse with another man or woman or not.

No matter how many hours he or she works to contribute to the needs and luxuries of the family – many times our society will disregard all of this and make his or her sexual commitment the only measure of his or her faithfulness.

It seems like  madness.  Like the case of being 100% male or 100% female, heterosexual or homosexual, measuring someone’s commitment to people can not be done solely on the basis of his or her willingness to have or not to have sexual intercourse with someone else.  It is simply not that easy.

I have a dream that my kids will grow up in a society where sexuality and commitment will be things that they think through and where they will have the freedom to make choices and have LOTS of fun.