European counter-proposal on Ukraine

  Today (Monday 24th November), there were two encouraging developments towards a resolution of the Ukrainian/Russian conflict.

[1] A US/Ukraine joint statement put out 23rd Nov by the 'Office of the First Lady'.
"Both sides agreed the consultations were highly productive. The discussions showed meaningful progress toward aligning positions and identifying clear next steps. They reaffirmed that any future agreement must fully uphold Ukraine’s sovereignty and deliver a sustainable and just peace. As a result of the discussions, the parties drafted an updated and refined peace framework.
The Ukrainian delegation reaffirmed its gratitude for the steadfast commitment of the United States and, personally, President Donald J. Trump for their tireless efforts aimed at ending the war and the loss of life.
    Ukraine and the United States agreed to continue intensive work on joint proposals in the coming days. They will also remain in close contact with their European partners as the process advances.
Final decisions under this framework will be made by the Presidents of Ukraine and the United States.
Both sides reiterated their readiness to continue working together to secure a peace that ensures Ukraine’s security, stability, and reconstruction."

[2] Reuters published (24th Nov.) the full text of the counter-proposal, drafted by Europe's E3 powers (Britain, France and Germany,) This counter proposal takes as its basis the 28-point U.S. plan (Seen by Reuters on Sunday 23rd),  but then goes through it point by point with suggested changes (and deletions). This, among other things, raises the size of the permitted peace-time Ukrainian army from 600,000 to 800,000, and adds detail to the way the reconstruction of Ukraine is to be financed.  

   This may annoy President Trump, but it may also add some constructive ideas on details of financing Ukrainian reconstruction. 

Trump's Plan for Ukraine

 Trump's Plan for Ukraine

President Trump's proposed plan for ending the conflict between Russia and Ukraine seems, to Ukraine and its European sympathisers, to be too biased in favour of Russia. 

Ukraine has to vacate territory, Russia  does not. Ukraine has to limit its armed forces, Russia does not. Russia started the war, Ukraine did not.

The draft plan [Ref1] proposes that Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk will be recognised as de facto Russian. This is ambiguous. The Charter of the United Nations is clear that it is no longer possible to conquer territory by force of arms. I do not think anyone could object to recognising certain territories including Crimea as being occupied by Russia, pending elections. That would simply recognise the fact of occupation. It would not confer 'ownership', nor any other legal rights or status.  

(Indeed the idea of ownership seems very odd in the context of states and territory. At least to those of us so lucky as to have been brought up under the principle of democracy; it is surely up to the people of Donetsk and Luhansk, not up to Putin, Trump or Zelensky, to decide whether (in the long term) they want to be part of Russia, or part of Ukraine. Russia should woo those people with cultural benefits, rather than by blowing out their windows with high explosives. )

The plan contains suggested forward commitments regarding Ukraine's membership of NATO and the European Union. These may be more sensible than the terms discussed above.  In the sort term, it does seem unacceptable to Russia to have NATO suddenly on its door-step.  That must be recognised. I have previously discussed the possibility that NATO could "guarantee" the independence of Ukraine without stationing troops on Ukrainian soil [Ref2]. 

There is nothing in Ukraine's dramatic gesture of rushing to fight with its giant neighbour that makes it incumbent on NATO to come to its aid. The power of NATO probably lies in the nuclear arsenal of the United States; the troops and the money may come from Europe, but the ultimate sanction is almost entirely in the hands of the 'gringos'.  If the US does not wish to use its weapons agains Russia it will not do so. 

On the other hand, if Europe does want to use its strength (economic and military) against an encroaching and bullying Russia, it should aim to prevail, and not just ring its hands and talk. The question of a European defence force may arise again, as it did before, but with far greater urgency [Ref3]  It is often argued that the best way to maintain peace is to prepare for war – and be very clear about one's own red lines and those of one's neighbours. 

References

[Ref1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cde6yld78d6o

[Ref2] https://occidentis.blogspot.com/2025/03/no-nato-boots-in-ukraine.html 

[Ref3] https://ecfr.eu/article/the-four-pillars-of-european-defence/

Carlos Manzo

Carlos Manzo – the Murdered Mayor of Mitchoacán

     It seems that, in more than half of Mexico, the forces of law and order are powerless to protect the population against the drug cartels who, by intimidation and the very real threat of death, extort "protection money" from small businesses and private citezens. The British Government advises its citizens against all but essential travel, in orange areas on the map below, and to take care in other areas also.

Map

     On the evening of Saturday 1st November, the mayor of  Uruapan (the second largest city in the State of Mitchoacán (Mexico) was shot dead while having his photograph taken with a bunch of children. He, Carlos Manzo, a man of 40 with a wife and young two children, had stepped forward the previous year to challenge this regime of intimidation and extortion,  by which the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) terrorises and extorts money from the populations in his state. In August 2025 local police, at Manzo’s request, had arrested the cartel's regional boss, René Belmonte. Manzo's assassination seems to have been in retaliation.  Was he scared? Sure! “I don’t want to be just another mayor on the list of those executed, those whose lives have been taken from them”. [Ref1]

     The Federal President, Claudia Sheinbaum has inherited the view of her predecessor, that directly combatting the cartels has been tried before and is counterproductive. "There would be no return to the war on drugs"  [Ref2].  On Monday 3rd November, Sheinbaum told reporters “Returning to the war against el narco is not an option, México already did that, and the violence got worse.” [Ref3]

     The gunman was a 17-year old amphetamine addict, regarded as belonging to the Jalisco cartel. But the gunman was not alone. He was gunned down instantly by the mayor's bodyguard, and tested positive for gunshot residues, but two 'accomplices' are in custody. 

     Within days, Grecia Quiroz, Manzo’s widow, put herself forward to replace her husband and was sworn in before the State Congress on Wednesday 5th November to succeed her husband as mayor. “They killed Carlos Manzo, but they couldn’t kill what he awakened,” said Quiroz. She speaks well to the crowds, and to the camera, and has aroused enormous sympathy. She is seen as a possible candidate for the Governorship of the State of Mitchoacán when the post is again vacant in 2027 [Ref4].  

     If she has not been shot. 

     On 15 November, protests in Mexico City requesting a stiffer response to the narco intimidation led to clashes with police. There have been calls for further demonstrations on 20 November near the Zócalo and the Palacio Nacional. The UK government advises travelers in Mexico to monitor local media, and to stay away from demonstrations.

Wisdom and Age

                             Wisdom and Age

Long after I had resigned my Fellowship at Clare College and taken a lecturship at Newcastle University, I was enjoying the privileges of an ex-fellow and lunching again with the fellows at college.  (Ex-fellows are surprisingly rare; fellows tend to 'stay on' if they possibly can.) Remembering college protocol, I took the next available seat at the common board, and found myself sitting next to the Master, Professor Robin Matthews.

How he had aged! I remembered the occasion of his appointment 12 year previously, under the  chairmanship of the elderly Professor Godwin (though with the acute and generous mind of Charles Feinstein at his elbow). There was none of the back-stabbing and shadowy machinations described in C. P. Snow's "The Masters".  We first laid down the principle that the new master should be aged 50 years or over, to avoid the burden of having a 'dud' chairing the governing body for too long a spell. Nevertheless, the name of Robin Matthews drifted to the top of the list of 'possibles', even though he was only 49. Here he was, now 12 years on, looking 70. I wondered briefly if he was suffering some curious condition that caused accelerated aging. 

Demonstrating his mastery of college table-talk, he turned to me, perhaps to show that he recognised me and remembered that I was a biologist, and he asked: "You are a biologist. I have been wondering if Homo sapiens is the only species that lives so long after ceasing to be reproductively active." I was simultaneously grateful and taken aback. Was he also aware that he was aging? I tried to reassure him, by suggesting that, if indeed 'Man' was unusual in that regard, it might point to the evolutionary advantage of wisdom; that we were a species that benefited from, and cherished, our grandfathers and grandmothers.  

Is there a Wisdom of Age? A special brand of wisdom. Perhaps like a collection of prized pebbles that a traveller picks up along the way, increased as much by the miles travelled as by the vigilance and curiosity of the traveller. 

I have recently acquired a few tricks that are peculiarly relevant to an aging mind, like writing things down, and paying special attention when I handle small but crucial objects like keys and mobile-phones. I have also evolved a new way of finding lost objects as an adaptation to weakening eyesight. For seventy years I enjoyed the role of family-finder. I could enter a room and sweep visually from two or three vantages, and spot the missing object before anyone else. Now the visual sweep yields nothing. I have to sit down and think where it was last used, think where it would be hard to see if it were in fact present, (Perhaps under something, or camouflaged; as a white pill on a pale carpet). But these are hardly 'special powers'; they are mere 'sticking-plasters' to make good my deficits.

On the other hand, I have evolved quite recently my own way of suppressing a cough. (You must, yourself, at some time have experienced the agony of struggling with a cough during a concert?) A lozenge offers some relief, as also a sip of water. But my new method require no equipment. The cough in question is the 'dry cough', the unproductive cough that seems to do nothing for the 'cougher', but to be solely to the benefit of the virus and its progeny. I was intrigued during the COVID pandemic by the idea that the virus had found out how to trigger the cough reflex for its own purposes, and I think I found a possible (even probable) mechanism. (See my post) However, my discovery of a way to thwart the virus owed nothing to that research. It was discovered by pure serendipity.  I put my hand loosely over my nose and mouth, perhaps with the idea of containing the cloud of virions, and than breathed partly through my mouth. I was surprised to find that the compulsion to cough faded to nothing in 30 seconds. I suppose in the space confined by my hand the air became enriched in CO2 and water vapour, and a little impoverished of O2; that may have affected the pH of the surface layers in the throat but, as long as it works, the mechanism does not matter, except for the curious among us. 

I have tried to interest others in this trick, purely from a love of mankind, but do not think I have made many converts to date. That does not worry me (unduly); I am able to enjoy the benefits in my own small way.  This, I think, qualifies as 'wisdom of age', one of the benefits of living beyond the period of reproductive activity. 

Another recent discovery which I am inclined to regard as an example of the 'wisdom of age' is my new method of drinking wine. This, also, as a life-long educator and philanthropist, I am keen to share. That you know how I came by this new method is unimportant. But I am inclined to tell you that it was as much to do with my health as my pocket book. Ever since my brief experience of exercise-induced angina pectoris at the age of 75 (see my post), the doctors have been asking me annually to declare the average number of units of alcohol drunk per week. As I had a small German 'tasting glass' marked '100ml' just below the rim, I resolved to limit my intake of alcohol to 100 ml of red-wine at lunch and the same again with my evening dinner. Essentially 2 bottles a week. That discipline brought its own rewards (smugness, largely) but that is not my present point. For I discovered that, by taking tiny sips, I got just as much gustatory pleasure as I had found with decent gulps of wine. I can now sip away at 100ml of wine for the best part of an hour. 

We had a young man and his mother round for a glass of wine and a chat the other day. I was astonished how quickly his glass required topping up. So much so that I found it more convenient to park the bottle his side of the table. As they were leaving, I shared my new tip; "small sips are as rewarding as large gulps." Another example of an old man's wisdom. 

        A further tip I would like to pass on is my unique 'neck-scarf'. I often used to wear a tie, but found that I was becoming a rare species in that regard. Furthermore, that my shirt-collars frayed rather quickly from rubbing against the short hairs on my neck (and perhaps also from the scrubbing required to clean the neckband). I tried tying a silk handkerchief round my neck but could not find one sufficiently large. So I bought a metre off a bolt of polyester(**) lining material; indeed one in green and one in blue. This is a slippery, shiny, hard-wearing material that can be washed and drip-dried inside 2 hours. I cut strips 25 cms x 100 cms, then turned and hemmed the edges. Tie under the chin with a half-hitch, before or after putting on the shirt, but before buttoning the penultimate button. (Leave the highest button undone.) So simple! It is pleasing and comfortable to wear, beside closing the gap between shirt and neck. I am seldom dressed any other way these days. 

(**Beware: this material requires a very cool iron.)

Autumn Leaves

 Autumn Leaves (or Hojas de Otoño)

     The streets in our Colonia in Mexico City (Colonia San Miguel Chapultepec) are typically lined with trees. They nestle in amongst the houses. Their roots thrust up the concrete slabs of the pavement and gradually mould themselves to the spaces they have thus created. Their branches tangle with the myriad phone lines that still drape themselves from pole to pole and cluster round the high eaves of the apartment blocks. Where a protective iron railing once circled a young tree, now the tree has engulfed the iron; the smooth bark gently creeping round till it meets bark and fuses. 

     Trees here are valued for their shade, respected and preserved by common consent. If a trunk leans over the pavement the pedestrians step aside, or duck. If you want to roof-over the yard to make a new room, the tree remains in the centre of the new room, finding its way up through the roof, the terra cotta tejas pushed back each year and the floor slabs chipped to free the trunk. I have seen a tree that grows through an iron fence, and another that grows in line with a boundary wall, which obligingly curves out and round the tree. 

     Popular species include a thin-leaved ash (Fraxinus uhdei) that towers upward and throws a light and dappled shade. And a small-leaved weeping fig (Ficus benjamina), which forms a dense canopy and throws a deep shade, the roots of which, when given space, come welling up and over the pavement, writhing in slow motion. Also popular is the Liquidambar (Liquidambar styraciflua) with its three-pointed leaves, fine autumn colour and prickly fruit. You will find the occasional Purple-Orchid tree (Bauhinia blakeana) and the yellow-flowered Tulipán mexicano (Hibiscus rosa-sinensis), obviously planted for their flowers.  Occasional here, but magnificent elsewhere in the city, you can see the astonishing, jaw-dropping Jacaranda (Jacaranda mimosifolia) whose lavender-coloured flowers in early spring completely cover the canopy. 

     Just now, in the last weeks of October, the streets are littered with fallen leaves, dry and yellow. For the Fraxinus and the Ficus, though evergreen, are also deciduous; the new leaves emerge even as the old leaves are falling. Housewives and caretaker are, for the next four weeks, repeatedly sweeping the pavement outside their property. I wrote before about the "Street sounds in our Colonia" but omitted to mention the gentle swishing sound that, night-after-night, I heard from outside on the street; though puzzling at 3 a.m., it turned out to be a night porter whiling away an hour or two of vigilance by sweeping his bit of pavement. 

Pocket-calculator Science (1)

 Pocket-calculator Science (1)    

    I enjoy viewing the earth as a sphere, for then I can calculate its volume, surface area, etc using the tricks I learned in middle school. 

    OK, it is not quite spherical, for the circumference through the poles is 39,942.209 km, while the circumference at the equator is 40,074.156 km. (I shall sometimes simplify by assuming it is a sphere with an average diameter of 40,008 km).

    Imagine a man standing on the earth's surface. The force of gravity (Fg) was found by Newton to follow the equation: 

Fg =G.m1.m2/r^2

where G= the universal gravitational constant, m1 and m2 the mass of the man and the earth respectively, and r is the distance between the two centres of mass.  Imagine a man of mass 72 kg. Clearly, when standing at the north pole he is closer to the centre of the earth than when standing at the equator.  

    Taking the gravitational constant (G) as 6.674 x (10)^-11 ( N. m^2/Kg^2)

and the mass of the earth (m2) as 5.972 x (10)^24, and Newton's relation: F =G.m1.m2/r^2, from these I calculate the gravitational force at the north pole (Fnp) to be 9.8628 Newtons;  while the gravitational force at the equator (Feq) to be 9.798 N. (An average value is often quoted as 9.81 Newtons.)

    Applying this geometrical effect alone (ignoring any centrifugal effect) I would expect the man (of mass 72kg) would weight at north pole 72 x 9.8628 = 710 N; and at the equator 72 x 9.798 = 705 N. 

    However, the earth rotates on its axis once a day, relative to the sun. (Relative to the fixed stars it rotates a bit more because of its rotation round the sun in one day; approximately 361º in a 24 hour day, or 15.04º in one hour.)

    At the equator (circumference 40,074,156 m`), we are rotating eastwards with an angular velocity (𝜔) of 2𝛑 radians per day, but a quasi-linear velocity of 40,074.156 ÷ 24 = 1669.57 km/hr. The inertial centrifugal force (Ff), regarded as acting radially, is usually calculated  as F=m.r .𝜔^2 (where m signifies mass and r radius). A man of mass 72 kg (weight = 710 Newtons at the north pole) would find his weight reduced at the equator not only because of his greater distance from the centre of the earthe, but by a small extra amount due to the centrifugal force acting (as far as he is concerned) vertically upwards.

    If T is the rotational period (1 day, or 86,400 s), we can write the rotational velocity (𝜔) as 2𝛑 ÷ 86,400 radians per second.

    We can then write the centrifugal force (Ff) as:

    Ff = m.r.𝜔^2 = m.r.(2𝛑 /T)^2

Taking r as 40,074.156/2𝛑 km = 6,378 km; or rather 6,378,000 m:

    Ff = 72 x 6,378,000 x (2𝛑 ÷ 86,400)^2 Newtons = 2.4286 Newtons. (Note that at the north pole the man rotates at the same speed, but r= 0, so he experience no centrifugal force.)

    So, combining the geometrical effect of the greater radius at the equator and the spin which is negligible at the north pole, a man that weighed 710 Newtons at the north pole would be expected to weigh only 705 - 2.43 = 702.53 Newtons at the equator. 

(Next post Coriolis, if I succeed in understanding it!)

(Comments are welcome to cawstein@gmail.com)

The Brick Wall

 The Brick wall

    I suppose it is the same for most retired folk, but it seems to me that the world in going to the dogs, going off the rails. If we continue in this direction we are heading for an impasse. To make the image more visible I will call it a brick wall.

    Take for example our UK National Health Service. It seems to be running out of money and giving less and less satisfaction. I wrote about this in 2013, a period of austerity following the banking fiasco of 2008 and the 2010 election that produced a ConLib coalition. I was then arguing against austerity cuts and calling for an increase in taxation 'specifically for the NHS'.  A call subsequently made by others.

    In a similarly outrageous companion piece I expressed my alarm at 'mission creep' of the NHS. New expensive tools and therapies are constantly being developed. Since the NHS was conceived, we have developed CT (1971) and MRI (1977) scanners, kidney (1960), liver (1968), and heart (1968) transplants, in vitro fertilization (1977), and now gene therapy (2023). There is no foreseeable limit to the development of more and more costly therapies. (Thus, there are 19,000 other protein-coding genes, all mutating at the standard rate of 1/100,000,000 to 1/1,000,000,000 per generation.) A billionaire could have his genome repaired every year, but that service cannot be available to all. 

    Deciding where to stop repairing a failing human being and to let nature take its course opens up a new area of ethics, into which we have barely taken the first tentative step. Or rather, deciding the point at which it is not the responsibility of the state to fund the repair work (which can perfectly well proceed with private funds, if those are available). I suggested, in 2013, that the state's responsibility might be deemed to cease when the patient reached the age of 70. (I now wonder about suggesting the age of 80 years.)

    In January 2025, when I reached the age of 83, I found I wanted the surgical repair of bilateral inguinal hernias, and found myself queuing at the local NHS hospital. Very straight-forward, my sister-in-law reassured me; absolutely routine. Yet the NHS could not find a bed for me. I was scandalised that the (free) NHS, to which I thought of myself as being loyal, was failing so lamentably. 

    After waiting 4 months I remembered (with some embarrassment) my earlier conclusion that it may not be sufficiently in the state's best interest to spend public money repairing a 70 year old citizen, let alone an 83-year-old. Due to my persistent good fortune, I had plenty of money in my "re-roofing fund"; indeed, it was totally untouched. So I went private, and got both sides done in the same operation for a cost of some £4500.

    My updated suggestion, therefore, is that the present system may not be so bad. Perhaps GPs could give a stronger hint to well-off, elderly, patients that they could quite honourably jump the queue, and have a private bed if they were prepared to pay. They could think of it as a voluntary contribution to the coffers of the NHS. 

    It is marvellous to find that the majority of citizens in Britain are willing to spend public money to help less-well-off citizens. But public money is largely other people's money. It would be even more to the nation's credit if there were some citizens willing to go over and above the average donation, and voluntarily to forego their fair share of the public benefits. 

    (Comments are welcome to: cawstein@gmail.com)

     

Age

Age & Aging

    Until  the last fortnight, I think I treated life as everlasting, and myself as immortal. Not explicitly and to the letter, of course, for I know that there is an allotted span to the life of man; that, barring accidents, "The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow;" [Ref1]. I know also that "80 is the new 70", or some such figure, for we are definitely living longer than our grandparents (on average). But in many other ways I completely ignored the fact that I was hurtling towards my end. 

    As a youth I did not contemplate death, but life rather; nor did I notice forgetting, but rather I thought of myself as learning. And, until quite recently, I thought of myself as learning still. Also, that I was playing my fiddle better each year; by guile, perhaps, if not by dexterity. I did not write a will until I was 60, and even then I wrote it only because I was setting off on an adventure. (A minor adventure, perhaps, but still cut off from the security of 'home'. And every billion plane embarkations yields 73 fatalities.)

     I do not know what, in the last fortnight, triggered this change of viewpoint. Perhaps I suffered a mild stroke? But I think not. Or was there a step-change in my biometric data? Again I think not.  I packed my suitcase for 10 weeks in Mexico as I have for the 10 years past, using my list of things-taken-last-year. And still I forgot to pack my UK ➙ USA electrical socket adaptors; no doubt because I was concentrating so hard on switching off the gas, while clutching my passport. On my last evening with my son and daughter-in-law in Brookline we tuned up two fiddles and a mandolin only for me to discover with horror that I could no longer sight-read; even in the first-position. What then is there left to live for?

    Imagine a stream, which I could normally take in a stride. I have slowed of course, but still can leap the stream. Then comes the day when such a leap seems out of the question, and I am cut off. It is an all-or-nothing thing. 

    For a week now I have been living with this new undercurrent to my thoughts. That, if I only have another decade, and if I am to write anything worthy, I shall have to plan my time rather rigorously. If, for example, I am to solve (for myself) the Coriolis force and the pKA of water, if I am to tighten, lay-out and transmit my (perhaps important) views on morality, let alone politics; I must focus. I must forego those happy but time-wasteing computer-sessions with Sudoku, or Duolingo, and those TV drama series set on Caribbean islands. I must delegate (if I can) the time-consuming tasks I do for the Historical Society and the local Quaker meeting. 

    But this morning, as my accustomed time for morning coffee found me roaming the cereal section of a supermarket, I realised I was feeling a whiff of faintness. Two minutes later, as I watched the second-hand bookseller raise the shutters of his higgledy-piggledy shop, a second deeper wave forced me to push rudely past him muttering something about "Silla" and "Necesito sentarme".  And I thought to myself, what if not even a decade but three years! What if I am allotted only one year!!

    I went my wiggly way up to 'La Milla' and ordered an café americano and an almond croissant which was brought to me up on the little roof garden that looks out over Calle General Molinos del Campo. There, no longer experiencing a trace of faintness, nor indeed of morbidity,  I sketched these few paragraphs. And plotted an Essay on "The Brick Wall", and another on "Pocket-calculator Science", and another on "The Search for New Music". 

[Ref1] Psalm 90, v. 10

The Good

'The Good': Is Morality still Needed? 

Do we have, or desire, or need a set of moral rules, or a moral compass?  My answer is "Yes!" We are social animals and need (and desire) a set of rules. But we do already have some guidance; partly in our instincts (the compass), partly acquired culturally (in our historic religions) and partly acquired individually (from parents and from 'life').

Can our historic religions provide? My answer is "No!"  Most have lost their authority by deploying  guesses, half-truths, myths, and arrogance.  Religion in the West, is today largely abandoned; devalued by its arrogance; recklessly challenging science, offering barmy claims, and making empty promises. (See my essay "The Rise and Fall of Christendom." (yet to be written) 

I am talking of Europe, and of now, in the twenty first century. So, I am also talking about Christianity (still the world's leading 'faith' system, apparently).  Science has, to a considerable extent, replaced religion; stolen its thunder and its arrogance; explained the motions of the planets, the weather, procreation, and (to some extent) disease. Science has expanded the universe a million-fold and relegated mankind and our little planet from the status of sovereign to be just another infinitesimal speck on an infinitesimal speck near the edge of the the universe.  

Very few people would claim that there is no difference between good and bad behaviour. Nor would most people deny that they prefer the good. It can be hard to decide for any one action whether it is good or bad. For example, people may vote either way on the assassination of Julius Caesar. That being the case, it is even harder to define what we mean in general by good and bad behaviour.  Most adults (though to varying extents) feel they know the difference. But, if you ask from whence we get that feeling, there is little agreement. Maybe it comes partly from our genes, partly from our earliest childhood, and partly from subsequent experience. There is scope here, for acute and methodical observers to spend a lifetime studying and processing data; comparing people from different backgrounds, rich/poor households, large/small families, good/bad schools, provision/absence of religious instruction. But I think that study has yet to begin. 

        Most simple experiments are unethical. For example, that of the Scottish king, James IV,  who put two new-born babies on Inch Keith in the Firth of Forth with a dumb nurse, hoping they would emerge speaking the UR-language; Sanskrit or Hebrew. Or that of Japanese Emperors in the period of competing religions (1560 - 1614), who assigned one noble to live as Christian, another as Buddhist, etc. 

The value to a society of having a clear exposition of what constitutes 'good' and 'bad' behaviour has been so great that every human civilisation (that we know anything about) seems to have 'evolved' a set of moral rules and 'invented' a religious myth to justify it. 

These sets of rules, the lists of 'to-do' and 'to-not-do', are interestingly similar, comparing one civilisation with another. (Tell the truth, honour the elderly, do not kill, do not steal, do not sleep with your wife's sister.) Their corresponding religious myths, by contrast, are sufficiently different to occasion wars, and genocides. 

A different, and perhaps separate, question concerns the presence, or absence, of a mind, or a will, behind everything, guiding, planning, intending, and above all caring. Such a mind is to me both incredible on the one hand, as too obviously human, and showing too little evidence of supra-terrestial interests and concerns. And, on the other hand, the existence of such a mind seems repeatedly contradicted by events: the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, the Malaysian tsunami of 2004.

But, to many people, both complex and simple people, the absence of such a mind seems intolerable. 

What is to be done? We could [1] postulate such a mind; pretend it exists. If the claim is believed, it would give the believer purpose, and at the same time authorise the rules. But it is deceitful.  It would require of the priests extraordinary insight and consistency, or they would slide into [2]  a cloud of prevarications, obfuscations, hints and ambiguities which is what Christianity now offers. Or [3] we could try to generate such a mind collectively, to care for the needs of each other, using the collective wisdom of the best guides, past and present, continuously updating the rules by judging each new situation afresh; each participant telling only what is true for himself, or herself. This is essentially what Quakers do. (Perhaps it is like a collective, synthetic, substitute for God?) 

I find repugnant the idea of telling a giant lie. Nor does obfuscation and prevarication appeal any better. I advocate a deliberate system of mutual support, and caring; for those who want it, and want to provide it. 

There is a caveat. If the group is too small it can fall under the sway of a single charismatic leader (See my essay on 'Death Cults'.) Quakers have, so far, avoided this danger by linking local meetings together into area meetings, and these into yet larger 'Yearly' meetings.

(Fine)

Why I am a Quaker

If you are interested, please read this very compact little essay again from the top. (Da capo al Fine) That will tell you why I am a Quaker. 

(Comments are welcome direct to: Cawstein@gmail.com)

Living the Dream

 Living the Dream

It was noon, one sunny, summer, Sunday, and I was walking down Parson's Street towards the bus-station. I was struck, as I often am, by how polyglot we are in Banbury, how ethnically and culturally diverse. It speaks to the tolerance, and basic decency of a town that was for centuries a byword for non-conformity. The racial mix may be partly due to Oxfordshire's policy of housing waifs and asylum seekers in the cheapest housing available in the county. And there is as much evidence of cheapness in Banbury as of heterogeneity: pound-shops, nail-bars, charity shops, and rough-sleepers. 

Banbury, the second largest town in Oxfordshire, never attracted an upper class; but it grew moderately rich in the middle ages as a wool town. Iron ore abounds in the rust-coloured stone and clay; and ore was smelted here in charcoal bloomeries for at least 2.5 millennia.  But Banbury acquired access to coal with the completion (in 1778) of the canal from the midland coalfields. In the nineteenth century Banbury added metal-working to its skills, making farm machinery and bicycles, as well as weaving blankets, horse-girths and plush.

Pedestrianised Parsons Street runs eastwards down towards the Cherwell, so it has a sunny (north) side and a shady (south) side. The former is favoured by cafés and pubs; the latter by the nail-bars and charity shops.  On the sunny side, at the chairs and tables outside 'Roma Coffee' , there was the usual cluster of slavic families, 

teaching the natives how to enjoy pavement life.

Sitting in the sunny doorway of a closed shop, a dishevelled man was angrily haranguing an imaginary audience. Nobody minded him. Grubby sleeping-bags and sheets of cardboard gave evidence of rough-sleeping in some doorways facing what was once the 'Cow Market'. Two elderly Pakistani gentlemen, in kurta and pyjama, were enjoying a bearded chin-wag. Beautifully dressed African children held their parent's hand, while a black-hooded, black boy on a black scooter, whizzed harmlessly past. Following her father came a little Indian girl on a bike with blue stabilisers and pink ribbons on the handle-bar ends.

        Under a shelter, down by the canal, a weather-beaten, white-moustachioed man guarded his half-dozen plastic bags. At first glance you might think he was selling something, or waiting for a lift on a narrow-boat; but a second glance suggests the goods were his personal effects;  of little value, except that they are his. A steady, sober man; day after day in the same place. I imagine he has a good decade of life ahead of him,  and that this was as good a place to wait as any other. Or he might move on; after all, he was not here a year ago.

I have occasionally found Banbury depressing. It, and its citizens, look a bit stuck; not going anywhere. But on this sunny day I took a fresh look and realised that my neighbours were not dissatisfied with their situation. I must try to see their lives as they see them; not using my perspective. In many cases I could plausibly believe that they were happy, or at least content; perhaps they were even living their dream.

My Books

My Books

Michel de Montaigne wrote an essay 'On Books', disclaiming scholarship; claiming rather to be clumsy, slow-witted and forgetful, but explicitly intending to throw light on aspects of himself. Here I frankly do the same. 

I love my books as friends. Each book shares with me at least one common interest, and in many cases more than one. Sometime I discover an interest and recruit the books to share and deepen it. Sometime a book will initiate the friendship and open my eyes to a new fascination. Sometime a book will introduce me to its friends, as when I met Coleridge as a friend of Wordsworth. Then, through Coleridge, I met Hazlitt and Lamb.

Some of my books are old friends, going away back to my earliest childhood.  At that age books appeared at the whim of grown-ups. Some I retain largely by chance, for I had to share family books with six siblings. Thus, I have Father's copy of  'Household Stories from the collection of the Brothers Grimm', and Granny's 'Lives of the Hunted'. My mother must have brought to the family shelves S. R. Crockett's 'The Lilac Sunbonnet' (the first time that my pre-adolescent heart-strings had been played upon in that way). Two more books that were chosen for me, but which I dearly loved, are: 'The Secret Garden' (by F.H. Burnett, illustrated, Heinemann, 1949 printing); and a book of Irish folk tales called 'The Little Good People' (by Kathleen Foyle, illustrated, Frederick Warne, 1949 printing), given me (as I always imagined) by our Irish nanny.

When I was only eight, I was allowed to cycle by myself down from our home in Juniper Green to Colinton Library, one of the many public libraries in Scotland that benefited from Andrew Carnegie's support. I remember the excitement at seeing so many books. And borrowing Tom Brown's Schooldays, though that was read to us by Father. Mother (or Father) read to us the entire "Swallows & Amazons" series, Gone with the wind, Vanity Fair and several Scott novels; but those volumes are now on other's shelves.

        As a teenager I roamed the shelves of the two public libraries in Shrewsbury, and the dustier recesses of the town's second-hand bookshops. I owe to those dusty shelves my love of the helplessly irascible Walter Savage Landor, and his 'Imaginary Conversations'. From Landor (the first man I heard described as a 'Literary Lion') I learned what little I know of the private life of Aesop. Also his fascinatingly arrogant 4-line 'Finis'. But alas, his sun has set; his name is scarcely known today. 

Likewise to those dusty shelves I owe my transient admiration of Herbert Spencer. What heroic ambition!; his plan to summarise all knowledge in a 10-volumed 'System of Synthetic Philosophy', a work that took him forty years to compile. Knowing my limits as a slow-reader with meagre funds, I bought only his 'First Principles', intriguingly divided into two sections: (i) The Unknowable, and (ii) The Knowable. When I moved to the Biology sixth form at school, I quickly concluded that I would learn nothing about biology from Spencer, and disposed of my 'First Principles'. Like Landor, Spencer is another sad relic, passing in a hundred years from clubbing at the Athenaeum with Presidents of the Royal Society, to virtual anonymity; his fossilized remains barely discernible in the forgotten strata of second-hand bookshops. 

I may confess here my pride in owning a 1847 edition of Robert Chambers's 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation'.  What a lovely conceit, that of prying into the mind of God as he fumbled his way towards the creation of man! Chambers wondering (for example) if those two small nipples were added to a man's chest "for mere appearance sake" (p. 200). This 6th edition (like the earlier ones) was anonymous, as the canny Robert Chambers did not want to bring trouble on himself or his family. This book was acknowledged (by Darwin himself) as paving the way for the acceptance of Darwin's  Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. It seems clear that Chambers was as convinced as Darwin, and Lamarck, of the long slow process of evolution, but he suggested no mechanism. If the animals and plants had been created by a divine hand, then clearly God had been at work experimenting for many thousands of years. Today it seems amazing that church leaders were still, mid-nineteenth-century, so outwardly confident in their opposition to the idea of evolution. 

I might mention one other book where my pride in ownership (such as it is) outweighs my regard for the book. The preposterous Lord Chesterfield wrote some 400 letters to his illegitimate son, trying to teach him the superficial polish that he himself valued so highly. He told his son: “I shall love you extremely, while you deserve it; but not one moment longer.” The illegitimate Phillip himself fathered two sons before secretly marrying their mother. He died before his father who, in his will, provided for the two boys, but not for their mother; whereupon she exposed the mean-spirited Earl to ridicule by selling  the accumulated letters for 1,500 guineas. I bought my copy in 1990 when my son was 12, thinking I might learn some tips in parenting; but was horrified at the advice it so earnestly advocated.

I do not know how Plato's shorter dialogues first came into my hands. Were they simply 'in the house', or was I rooting about in Shrewsbury's town library where Darwin himself had been a schoolboy? The first I read was either 'Gorgias' or 'Protagoras', which I read as an elegant routing of a pompous windbag. I soon chased up the others. I was perhaps most impressed at Socrates's demonstration (in 'Meno') that the slave boy intuitively knew Pythagoras' theorem; and was most moved by the death of Socrates (in 'Phaedo'). Socrates became one of my adolescent heroes, and for years was shoulder to shoulder with Jesus.

Yes, I love my books, deeply but not exclusively. In the spring of 1962, the family moved from the fine 18 century dower house at Dorrington that we had rented for 7 years, to a smaller, newer, house in Carding Mill Valley. I came back from college to find the family already in occupation. Instead of my old room, under the eaves on the 2nd floor, facing south over the rose-garden, where the swifts swooped and screeched as they came in to their nests, I now shared a bedroom with my older brother. But I still had my fumed oak dining table, and my mahogany chest-of-drawers; and my books. One evening, after I had retired from the drawing room, Father came up to tell me that Mother had been quite hurt by my saying, over our postprandial coffee, that "I loved coming home to my books". Oh dear! I could not un-say it.  Of course I loved my mother too. But let me return to my theme, for that was meant as a brief aside; we still have a way to go.

        We were a moderately large family; by 1958 we numbered six boys and one girl. I was in the lucky position of being born second.  By inclination and by choice I did not compete. I was a slow, but retentive, reader. And it may be for that reason that I read relatively few novels; perhaps some forty (or 100) in my entire life. I remember Father buying several copies of Sartre's La Nausea and Kafka's The Castle and handing them round, saying that this was the sort of stuff his psychiatric patients were telling him. But I think my main fascination was to learn about things; people, their ideas and their doings. Not people's fantasies ("wouldn't it be nice if" ). 

I suppose I was rather normal as a teenager, but unique for all that; at least in my reading, where I differed from my siblings. And who else might I compare myself with, for we were a rather isolated family, perpetuating perhaps our shy father's own boyhood isolation, and his insecurities. In Dorrington, we had entertained for several days a visitor from New Zealand, a Dr. Armstrong; he who had established the medical practice and built the house in Taupo that became for three years our home. He gave me a book called 'The Boy's Country Book', containing articles on camping, fishing, gliding, underwater swimming, plant hunting, beach combing, and more.  Why me? Perhaps I already showed signs that I would become a botanist. Or, perhaps my path in life was determined by the book. In either case it became a favourite. In the next few years I made myself a canoe, kept pigeons, grew carnations, caught fish with my fingers, fly-fished our stream, collected and identified wild-flowers, bought myself flippers and snorkel, camped rough-and-light, and youth-hosteled.  

Two others of my favourite teenage books may be mentioned here: E.V. Lucas' 'The Open Road' anthology, and Stephen Graham's 'The Gentle Art of Tramping'. The latter explained how to make coffee in a billycan, and advised plenty of handkerchiefs. I have since walked (sleeping rough): Edinburgh to Moffat and back, Church Stretton to Llanbister Road station, Göttingen to Kassel, and part of the way from Paris to Dieppe. 

I love my volume of Mathematical Tables: Logarithms to 7 decimal places, Trigonometrical, Nautical and other Tables. The Log(base 10) of 3 is 0.4771213. Not that I can navigate, but I like the idea that I am able to correct celestial altitude observation for refraction according to the temperature and pressure of the atmosphere. And calculate the distance (in nautical miles) to the visible horizon from my height above sea-level (in feet). And I enjoy my volume on 'Driving'  (1890) for its binding, for its haughty exclusion of the 'motor carriage'; but chiefly for its coverage of 'single-harness' and 'tandem-driving' by Lord Algernon St. Maur and Viscountess Georgiana Curzon respectively.  Even though I, myself, never drove more than a two wheeled 'governess cart'. 

My real-life heroes are mostly intellectual: Socrates, Plato, Marcus Aurelius, Montaigne, Francis Bacon, Descartes, Newton, Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, J.S. Mill, Darwin, Einstein. I have biographies and, where available, autobiographies. Regarding men of action, I have biographies of Nelson and Wellington, and bought (or was given) Slocum's 'Sailing Alone Around the World', George Bayly's Sea Life Sixty Years Ago, and Dana's Two Years Before the Mast. Yet I am amongst the least nautical members of my family;  for half of the family sail, and half do not, just as half play music and half do not. 

I have numerous books of biography, travel, history and philosophy; too many to list. And, in any case, owning, reading, and loving, are three very different things. I have several large dictionaries, and a similar number of grammars or guides to usage, poetry in collections and single authored volumes, and some hundred works of fiction ranging from Chaucer to the present. But these do not clamour to be listed. 

        However, I fear I bore my readers with this deliberate and un-called-for exhibition of my inner life.