There are really only two creation myths.

There are only two creation myths: 1. says a power made the matter from itself - this started the universe, and the other 2. that the universe has always existed - it did not begin it has always just been.

Recently, whilst listening to a series of lectures on Ancient Egypt, the author Bob Brier suggested that there are really only two creation myths. In the classic myth, there is a story that says there was an entity (perhaps a being) that made mater and cause it to move apart – this was the creation of the world and the universe. Although the details change between religions and creeds, the underlying theme remains the same.

The alternative interpretation is to say that matter has always existed, so to suggest that anything could be created from nothing is to misunderstand the issue.

There is one thing that links them however, and which I believe shows the two theories to be driven by the same thing underling assumption – energy. In the first myth, you could say that “energy get’s the idea to change itself into matter.” In the other myth energy, that was always there, changes itself into matter more like what we know today.

The two creations are thus fundamentally in agreement and mutually compatible. One places greater emphasis on change, the other on similarity; but they are both coming from the same place.

Considerable mileage from one series of lectures… Ken Wilbur’s Kosmic Consciousness

Considerable mileage from one series of lectures… Ken Wilber’s Kosmic Consciousness

Having read a few items by Ken Wilber over the last few years, I feel that it is now sensible to write a little on this unusual man. Ken Wilber might consider himself to be a philosopher or simply a writer. He is both of these, he might also be described as an espouser of a spiritual creed based upon comparative religion and textual analysis. He has produced many books which present an unusual “integral” approach to matters such as life, law and consciousness.

Ken Wilber is controversial and provocative; this is evident throughout his writing. In ‘the Spectrum of Consciousness’, for example, he elaborates a system of ever more exalted states of being. Wilber bares a startling resemblance to William James’s Varieties of Religious Experience, owing to the similarity of their methods. Both authors use textual analysis to lay out a system of increasing levels of happiness. Wilber’s levels are marked by ever increasing sizes of self interest. Low levels, for example, see themselves as single individuals in a place in space and time. These individuals only need to look after themselves and no one else. Wilber then goes on to say that if you look at important literary thinkers and indeed one’s own experience, you will see that you can define yourself interest as what is good for you, your family and friends. The next stage, is to see your self interest as the good of your country and even your world. In its final stages, the good of the individual loops back to a union with what the individual sees as divine. Wilber argues that many religions, most particularly the Abramic ones, see God and the individual as separate. Break this pattern, Wilber argues, and one has access to states so exquisite that the effort that goes into acquiring them is more than repaid. Wilber then uses various texts to suggest that if God is infinite the idea of you not being God is ridiculous; it is not possible to separate the creator and the creation: they are necessarily the same thing.

In a recent series of Interviews, Ken Wilber outlines his ideas further by bringing “the Spectrum of Consciousness” into a wider context based upon the assumption that ‘nobody is completely wrong in what they say and write’. From this point, Wilber attempts to slot various groups into a coherent framework suggesting a model that resembles Gartner’s developmental lines. He advocates perhaps 7 separate, but occasionally overlapping, strands to an individual’s state of being. Included in these categories are such topics as: bodily intelligence, morality and cultural perspective. Moral development may be considered advanced at the same time as one’s bodily intelligence (how to perform gymnastics) may be relatively low. Wilber then goes on to argue that the most virtuous system of personal development is first, to accept yourself as you are, then to choose a specific subset of areas to work on; whilst at the same time maintaining a reasonably high perspective on all of the other levels. He believes that whilst it is nice to have the highest level on all facets, at a practical level it is not realistic to achieve this in real life at society’s level of being.

Wilber identifies several stages in the history of societies. Resembling the spectrum, he suggests that societies have their own evolution which can be marked by distinct stages including: mythic, traditional, modern and post-modern. Mythic, for example, encompasses societies which define themselves in terms of their myths which includes the Ancient Greeks. The idea here is that human agents, by themselves are relatively powerless to change the nature of the world, but outside agents such as Gods can change the world. Whilst this may be true, a serious limitation of this statement is that, of course, we have no way of knowing if this is true: since we cannot truly enter into the mind of Ancient Greeks. He then identifies other societies, or groups of people within society as traditional, meaning that they value above all else their membership of a particular nation or kinship group. Modern and post-modern come about when societies industrialise as at this time, women and men have greater levels of equality. In post-modern a sense of moral relativism creeps in, so that people from one nation find it abhorrent to impose their ideas of right and wrong on another people. Wilber’s final stage is the Integral Level, at which time society accepts certain values as worthwhile regardless of the culture or nation saying them. His system presents a coherent framework which certainly has merit.

Taken as a whole, Wilber presents an all encompassing model. It certainly has provided me with food for thought. I will observe, however, that he might have talked at greater length about how we know what we know. Although he uses textual analysis, some sense of how it is possible to know through this method would have increased the veracity of his exegesis. A few more words on why scientific studies may be limited would have strengthened his argument perhaps talking about the difficulty of replicating certain internal experiences. Finally, he could have talked about epistemology rather than implying, but never stating directly, that is by feeling that we select the arguments we find most convincing.

Still, Wilber presents an ambitious framework that is well worth reading. Though individual details may not be right, his overall suggestions appear sound enough. In particular the argument that individual’s are never totally wrong squares well with our contemporary mores. In addition a framework that encompasses all philosophies around levels of increasing perspective seems intuitively right.

A new Britishness test

There has been much talk of immigration of late. One aspect that sometimes creeps into the debate is the “British” test that has recently been employed to test whether someone is suitable for to have the title “Briton”. I suggest that the current system of esoteric knowledge about pocket and customs is a fair attempt, but it could be improved to just one simple test – does the candidate possess a sense of ironic humour?

If the person questioned does posses this faculty then they should be allowed in, if they don’t I think it is unlikely they would qualify as a Briton. Of course there would be an appeals procedure and if, during that appearance, their humour could be demonstrated then citizenship should be granted.

A possible example of ironic humour would be something quoted from the First World War. A fresh private arrived at the front at said to a seasoned soldier “I have heard the front is really bad, the pit of humanity, is it true?”

The senior solder replied “its a holiday, the only thing that stops it being heaven is they don’t make the cornbeef quite right.”

I use this as an example, I hope the principle is clear. Just imagine what a nation of phlegmatic comedians will be created with this humour. I certainly think it a better test than the ability to learn customs from a book!

Bring back the trolley buses

Sometimes, one has to look to the past in order to find the answers to today’s problems. Enter the trolley bus, a public transport solution from over 100 years ago that could clean up our inner cities.

The first overhead powered car was designed in Germany before during the 1880s and proved so successful that its basic design was adopted to make a bus familiar to us from photographs from the 1950s.

So abundant are the advantages of these vehicles, it is hard to see why they so many systems were done away with. To be charitable, it may have been because during the 1950-60s, it was deemed desirable to standardise on just one form of power. In addition, it saved the cost of maintaining pylons. These days, however, such costs must seem very small compared with fuel prices and the benefits of electric transport in cities.

Luckily there are a few systems in the UK that use electric power; Blackpool and recently Nottingham use trams/trolley buses.

Our European, and even American, brethren could teach Britain a thing or to do about using trolley buses for transport. Let’s hope to see more of them on our travels. Transport that does not pollute at the point of delivery has to be the way forward. In addition electric transport may well be cheaper owing to reduced fuel costs. The technology is already in place it is known that it works. Just imagine if the same cities used solar and other renewable technologies for their power as well!

Above is a contemporary Polish trolley bus, showing that the technology is very much alive and well.

Reasons to go to British Museum

A few days ago, Miss Moto and I visited the British Museum in London. We thoroughly enjoyed the trip, as we have a mutual interest in Ancient Egypt. Look at some of the lovely objects we were able to see and be inspired!

Observe, the Rosetta stone, the object which first allowed investigators to understand hieroglyphs because it contains writing in Greek and two Egyptian scripts. Originally, it was found by during Napoleon's expedition of Egypt, but it was subsequently taken by the British, when they won the war in 1815.


Although I am unsure about what the provenance of this statue is, I do remember that the paint on it is the original and survives in remarkable quantity all over the statue. Not bad for 3000 year old workmanship.













Finally, an elegant mummy, which reminds us all why the Egyptians are so renowned for craftsmanship. This elegant example shows what, I believe, is an example of a fairly late mummy (IE from the 20th dynasty). Surprisingly life like is n't it? And so elegant, the Egyptians really understood form.

Cafe Lumiere goes commercial

Once on the blog, I suggested that we use hemp paper as a means of saving trees. Hemp paper would save the carbon stored in trees being unlocked, prevent the loss of useful carbon dioxide/ oxygen converters, help to save the rain forests and reduce the carbon foot print of transporting the trees to the uk to be processed.

After some effort I have secured some hemp paper. It is therefore, with some delight that I announce that Cafe Lumiere has gone commercial. For more details and the chance to order some paper look at the following webpage on ebay:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=230180156054&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT&ih=013

Britain’s balance of trade concerning people, myths and traditions.

To an observer of such things, it is curious that so many old myths and traditions have a habit of surviving and popping up in the most unusual of places given their origins. Once upon time, Britain was uninhabited and then early settlers cam across the land bridge that existed between Europe and Britain. When that link became water logged, people used small boats such as coracles to navigate the divide. Then Britain imported a variety of groups over some 2500 years of history including Romans, Germans, Vikings, Normans, Flemish, Jews, Irish, Pols, Italians, Africans and many more besides. IN our own time, we are used to immigration from peoples from all parts of the globe. On the other hand, Britain has done its fair share of exporting people too. Consider the mass immigration from Britain America, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the like. Neille Fergusson quotes some seemingly impossible number, like 44 million people dispatched from the UK over the course of the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Yet, this figure believable when examined closely. It goes to explain why people may speak English as their first language in as diverse as Aukland and Arizona.

The British fixation with Roman and Greek history, myths and religion is also another curious case of customs coming in and then going out; just like some warehouse full of goods. Stock comes in, is changed in some small way and is then exported again to some unrelated place. If you were some external observer, perhaps a human from a tribe who had had no dealings with the outside world until recently, would it not seem remarkable that characters such as Hermes and Venus should still be referred to in the language at all? Would not seem even curiouser that the state religion of Britain (at least in theory) is a mildly altered version of Roman Catholicism, which itself is largely a product of Egyptian imagery, Greek ideas and Roman heirachies?

Then there is the unusual case of King Arthur, who Churchill described as the last of the Romans. This great “British” icon, is considered an exemplar of national virtue, yet those very virtues were imported (or enforced) by romans. This then, was a deficit on the part of Britain.

Ultimately, Anglicanism and its variants was exported around the world, having in the first place been imported from many different nations. The lesson to learn, I suppose, is that no people or nation exist in a vacuum, but rather are a result of a collection of influences acting upon it. People are also slow to abandon religious customs, but seem able to acquire new ones within an existing framework. Truly an unusual balance of trade – but one which seems to have balanced itself somehow.