When I was young enough to be sat in school within glancing distance of a small library space that was dominated by a Miffy Wendy house# and contained, in my opinion, far too many Miffy books, yet just old enough to be offended that people would think that I would want to read about Miffy; the cover of one book spoke louder than all of those that surrounded it and thoroughly intrigued me.
The title of this book was: Jonah and the Whale.
Of course, this title referred to the famous Bible story, but at that age (maybe I was five or six) I don't think I knew of it. What I did know was what a whale was: a massive fish*, and that Jonah was someone's name, probably because of Ken Reid's comic character: Jonah.
So, the book's cover was something that drew my interest because, I wondered, why did the cover show an illustration of a man sitting under a tree? It was similar to this:
Why didn't it show a man and a whale?
Indeed, it is the basic and traditional definition of madness that the idea does not follow from the information. For example, if you were to suggest that next door's dog was telling you to kill people, you can expect people to have a certain idea about that **
To see that the idea follows smoothly from the information is the basic
setting of all brains, all autonomic nervous systems; from jellyfish to djeli.
It' s fair to say, I think, that this is the way that everything most basically works, that this is most basic function of existence.
The most basic and important distinction between ourselves and the other animals is our increased capacity for communication. Our wizardry with the most basic skills of: asking/checking/describing/explaining has allowed us to, first of all, to give that biggest shining light in the night sky a name, then to ponder on its characteristics: goddess? Airless rock? Artificial construct? After that, we spin stories about going there and then we clamber up these webs made from dreams that are eventually strong enough to support the heavy lifting carried out by science, our better conversation with the universe. ( And when we reached the moon, what was the first thing we did?)
Once you start climbing Olympus you just carried on going, voyaging further into idea-space, and generally building dwellings amongst the gods and kings as they begin to slide down the scree of our efforts. But when you get that high off the ground there is always the temptation to shut your eyes and pretend it isn't happening. Information must be dealt with and new information can often be frightening.
For as much as human beings have this increased capacity to communicate, we also have the ability to ignore it and embrace the simple comforts of our most basic animal self, a dog that tries to shut out the voices in its head, unwilling and most often encouraged to ignore the stranger tapping at the window of its soul. The stranger who looks exactly like us.
And so it is that we can choose to ignore information to ensure the survival of the idea that makes us happy.
Although as a long-term survival policy, the flaws should be obvious, but then you would have to be interested in asking and checking in order to get more information, and culture, especially through education, has a strong tendency to inhibit communication rather than encourage it. All of this is a necessary survival strategy for the ruling powers, of course, and as we live in a culture that prizes blind consumption above all, it should not be that great a surprise that the information of President of the United States, whereas it used to give the idea of a statesman who might at least be prepared to describe and explain his own ideas it now dissolves into the nebulous realm of a snake-oil salesman who'll say anything to get you to buy his product. And once the idea of a President Trump becomes normalised then this itself becomes information that much more easily leads to the idea of a President West.
A whale is a tree; obviously.
Ignoring information, and the general lack of practice of asking and checking ensures that events can be easily spun by those with power towards any idea needed. Consequently:
Information ----------------------> Idea
Terrorist atrocity Let's invade Iraq.
carried out by
15 Saudi Arabians,
2 UAE, 1 Egyptian,
1 Lebanese.
If you have encouraged a society where people's most natural communicative tendancies have been firmly inhibited then this kind of thing is possible. Because in order to understand any information better you necessarily have to seek out connections. Of course you may have someone explain the connections to you, but the only way you are ever going to do this above dog-level is by asking and checking. And asking and checking as basic skills are largely anathema*** to standard education.
One very important reason for society to inhibit asking and checking is that the current massive industry of Marketing, and its business clients, depend on it. Oh yes, they are careful not to appear that way: Marketing is defined by the American Marketing Association as "the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large." But it should be understood that for marketing "communicating" is one way woof-level stuff, where information is only there to engage with emotion, where slogans are drafted to appeal to our most basic ideas.
Information ---------------------------> Idea
Make America Great Ooh, sounds good.
Again
No questions are asked in order to ascertain precisely when and how and why America was great before. Questions that are necessary to better understand the idea.
It should also be noted that the Fourth Estate never made the slightest concerted effort to ask or check this idea. A fourth estate overwhelmingly consisting of the well-educated.
Anyway, in the spirit of all information depending on context, it is instructive to consider the following:
What ideas can come from this? That Reagan didn't do a good job? That there is nothing new under the sun? Or that dropping the "let's" and striking a more imperitave form indicates that Trump is simply intent on ordering people about?
Or maybe the idea of making America great again would be to network decent allies and productive partners, the kind we used to have:
President Reagan's special envoy to the Middle East Donald Rumsfeld is reminded of a friendly client.
Rumsfeld would later serve as Secretary of Defense in the George W. Bush administration, he played a major role in the invasion of Iraq.
Information ---------------> Idea
Invasion of Iraq (2003) "Mission accomplished"
- President Bush
or
In Iraq, the city of Mosul in the north of the country suffered first the American invasion and then increasing sectarian violence and an exodus of professional people until the inevitable rise of the hardest gang of bastards to fill the political vaccuum resulted in a government of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
The Islamic State are, let's be clear, the most fundamental of fundamentalists. A gang whose activities even Al-Qaeda described as madness. Their reign of terror in Mosul was defeated in 2017 by Iraqi forces along with American, French and Kurdish forces.
Facing Mosul on the opposite bank of the Tigris, lies the ancient city of Nineveh. It was this city that Jonah was travelling to when he unexpectedly had to stay a few nights in his Cetacean Motel. It was here that God offered him the shade of the Kikayon tree.
It is said that the tomb of the prophet Jonah is also situated here. The tomb was a popular pilgrimage site[75] and a symbol of unity to Jews, Christians, and Muslims across the Middle East.[75] On July 24, 2014, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) destroyed the mosque containing the tomb as part of a campaign to destroy religious sanctuaries it deemed to be idolatrous.
Information -------------------------> Idea
What is correct? Our idea not yours.
Can I ask something? No.
Can I check your idea? No.
In the idea of the bible, Jonah sat outside Nineveh, in the shade of the Kikayon tree, awaiting its detruction. In another, he could have stepped outside his tomb and witnessed it.
Nineveh and its people have suffered greatly since the US+ invasion. Haliburton and its people have done very nicely from it. The prophet came to understand God's mercy. The profit showed none.
Jonah was swallowed by a whale. A preposterous story. But then; don't ask, don't check, and you can swallow anything.
A whale is a tree; obviously.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# I am pleased to discover that it is called a Wendy house precisely because of its association with the character of Peter Pan. An association I had considered, but never knew to be true.+++
* It would be a few more years before, with some amazement, I discovered it was a mammal.
** It might also be predicted that they will think that you are deliberately trying to give them that idea.
***The word anathema has an interesting history.
**** The Hebrew text uses dag gadol which just means big fish++
+ Of course, it wasn't just America.
++ And, as has been often stated, a whale isn't a fish:
+++ It only took me forty five years to check that.
The title of this book was: Jonah and the Whale.
Of course, this title referred to the famous Bible story, but at that age (maybe I was five or six) I don't think I knew of it. What I did know was what a whale was: a massive fish*, and that Jonah was someone's name, probably because of Ken Reid's comic character: Jonah.
 |
| Jonah-not the Biblical one |
 |
| Jonah...and...something. |
Why didn't it show a man and a whale?
For me, and I think the majority of publishers and illustrators, as well as any six year olds who might give it a moment's thought, it is an odd choice to not put a whale on the cover of a book that promises a whale as a main character. So much so, that my young mind couldn't accept the possibility that anyone would do this and automatically assumed that the tree in the picture must be the whale. I mean, why, on the cover of a book called Jonah and the Whale, would you not put a picture of Jonah and the Whale ?
So, therefore, it was obvious that the whale of the title was the tree the man was sitting under. What other logical conclusion could there be?
It was only many years later that I discovered that the tree in question does have an important role to play in the story of Jonah, as God first provides its shelter for Jonah from the blazing sun and then God takes it away in order to prove to Jonah a point about mercy (this is typical of the educational methods of The 2nd God). The plant in question is a Kikayon, so the story might well have been titled Jonah and the Kikayon. Except it wasn't, because what everybody remembers of the story of Jonah is that he get swallowed by a big fish. A fish as big as a whale****.
And so, my young self was presented with information and naturally produced an idea:
Information ----------------------> Idea
This is the way communication most basically works. What is important to understand is that all infomation depends on context, so that if we are missing context, then it will follow that our idea will be different. If I had known that the story of Jonah and the Whale was better described as The Story of Jonah and God, then a man sitting under a tree would not have come as that much of a surprise, as it would be relatively easy to step to ideas of Lord and mercy, protection and sustenance with the clear image of the tree. To take the step from a tree to a whale might well be described as Madness:
And so, my young self was presented with information and naturally produced an idea:
Information ----------------------> Idea
This is the way communication most basically works. What is important to understand is that all infomation depends on context, so that if we are missing context, then it will follow that our idea will be different. If I had known that the story of Jonah and the Whale was better described as The Story of Jonah and God, then a man sitting under a tree would not have come as that much of a surprise, as it would be relatively easy to step to ideas of Lord and mercy, protection and sustenance with the clear image of the tree. To take the step from a tree to a whale might well be described as Madness:
All aboard the nutty train.
Indeed, it is the basic and traditional definition of madness that the idea does not follow from the information. For example, if you were to suggest that next door's dog was telling you to kill people, you can expect people to have a certain idea about that **
To see that the idea follows smoothly from the information is the basic
setting of all brains, all autonomic nervous systems; from jellyfish to djeli.
It' s fair to say, I think, that this is the way that everything most basically works, that this is most basic function of existence.
The most basic and important distinction between ourselves and the other animals is our increased capacity for communication. Our wizardry with the most basic skills of: asking/checking/describing/explaining has allowed us to, first of all, to give that biggest shining light in the night sky a name, then to ponder on its characteristics: goddess? Airless rock? Artificial construct? After that, we spin stories about going there and then we clamber up these webs made from dreams that are eventually strong enough to support the heavy lifting carried out by science, our better conversation with the universe. ( And when we reached the moon, what was the first thing we did?)
Once you start climbing Olympus you just carried on going, voyaging further into idea-space, and generally building dwellings amongst the gods and kings as they begin to slide down the scree of our efforts. But when you get that high off the ground there is always the temptation to shut your eyes and pretend it isn't happening. Information must be dealt with and new information can often be frightening.
For as much as human beings have this increased capacity to communicate, we also have the ability to ignore it and embrace the simple comforts of our most basic animal self, a dog that tries to shut out the voices in its head, unwilling and most often encouraged to ignore the stranger tapping at the window of its soul. The stranger who looks exactly like us.
And so it is that we can choose to ignore information to ensure the survival of the idea that makes us happy.
Although as a long-term survival policy, the flaws should be obvious, but then you would have to be interested in asking and checking in order to get more information, and culture, especially through education, has a strong tendency to inhibit communication rather than encourage it. All of this is a necessary survival strategy for the ruling powers, of course, and as we live in a culture that prizes blind consumption above all, it should not be that great a surprise that the information of President of the United States, whereas it used to give the idea of a statesman who might at least be prepared to describe and explain his own ideas it now dissolves into the nebulous realm of a snake-oil salesman who'll say anything to get you to buy his product. And once the idea of a President Trump becomes normalised then this itself becomes information that much more easily leads to the idea of a President West.
A whale is a tree; obviously.
Ignoring information, and the general lack of practice of asking and checking ensures that events can be easily spun by those with power towards any idea needed. Consequently:
Information ----------------------> Idea
Terrorist atrocity Let's invade Iraq.
carried out by
15 Saudi Arabians,
2 UAE, 1 Egyptian,
1 Lebanese.
If you have encouraged a society where people's most natural communicative tendancies have been firmly inhibited then this kind of thing is possible. Because in order to understand any information better you necessarily have to seek out connections. Of course you may have someone explain the connections to you, but the only way you are ever going to do this above dog-level is by asking and checking. And asking and checking as basic skills are largely anathema*** to standard education.
One very important reason for society to inhibit asking and checking is that the current massive industry of Marketing, and its business clients, depend on it. Oh yes, they are careful not to appear that way: Marketing is defined by the American Marketing Association as "the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large." But it should be understood that for marketing "communicating" is one way woof-level stuff, where information is only there to engage with emotion, where slogans are drafted to appeal to our most basic ideas.
Information ---------------------------> Idea
Make America Great Ooh, sounds good.
Again
No questions are asked in order to ascertain precisely when and how and why America was great before. Questions that are necessary to better understand the idea.
It should also be noted that the Fourth Estate never made the slightest concerted effort to ask or check this idea. A fourth estate overwhelmingly consisting of the well-educated.
Anyway, in the spirit of all information depending on context, it is instructive to consider the following:
Reagan Campaign button 1980
What ideas can come from this? That Reagan didn't do a good job? That there is nothing new under the sun? Or that dropping the "let's" and striking a more imperitave form indicates that Trump is simply intent on ordering people about?
Or maybe the idea of making America great again would be to network decent allies and productive partners, the kind we used to have:
President Reagan's special envoy to the Middle East Donald Rumsfeld is reminded of a friendly client.
Rumsfeld would later serve as Secretary of Defense in the George W. Bush administration, he played a major role in the invasion of Iraq.
Information ---------------> Idea
Invasion of Iraq (2003) "Mission accomplished"
- President Bush
or
"In a September 2007 interview
with The Daily Telegraph, General Mike Jackson, the head of the British army during the invasion, criticized Rumsfeld's plans for the invasion of Iraq as "intellectually bankrupt," adding that Rumsfeld is "one of those most responsible for the current situation in Iraq," and that he felt that "the US approach to combating global terrorism is 'inadequate' and too focused on military might rather than nation building and diplomacy."[70]
The idea that the invasion of Iraq would lead to chaos was barely discussed in the rush for loot, yet it was grimly predictable. Clearly, to get people to focus on vague ideas that appeal to the most basic of emotions takes standard marketing techniques. Get people to support something and then don't think too much about it ever again.
Information -----------------------------------------> Idea
Iraq, Christmas 2018 It's better now,
right?
with The Daily Telegraph, General Mike Jackson, the head of the British army during the invasion, criticized Rumsfeld's plans for the invasion of Iraq as "intellectually bankrupt," adding that Rumsfeld is "one of those most responsible for the current situation in Iraq," and that he felt that "the US approach to combating global terrorism is 'inadequate' and too focused on military might rather than nation building and diplomacy."[70]
The idea that the invasion of Iraq would lead to chaos was barely discussed in the rush for loot, yet it was grimly predictable. Clearly, to get people to focus on vague ideas that appeal to the most basic of emotions takes standard marketing techniques. Get people to support something and then don't think too much about it ever again.
Information -----------------------------------------> Idea
Iraq, Christmas 2018 It's better now,
right?
 |
| Christmas 2018. Mosul, Iraq. |
In Iraq, the city of Mosul in the north of the country suffered first the American invasion and then increasing sectarian violence and an exodus of professional people until the inevitable rise of the hardest gang of bastards to fill the political vaccuum resulted in a government of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
The Islamic State are, let's be clear, the most fundamental of fundamentalists. A gang whose activities even Al-Qaeda described as madness. Their reign of terror in Mosul was defeated in 2017 by Iraqi forces along with American, French and Kurdish forces.
Facing Mosul on the opposite bank of the Tigris, lies the ancient city of Nineveh. It was this city that Jonah was travelling to when he unexpectedly had to stay a few nights in his Cetacean Motel. It was here that God offered him the shade of the Kikayon tree.
It is said that the tomb of the prophet Jonah is also situated here. The tomb was a popular pilgrimage site[75] and a symbol of unity to Jews, Christians, and Muslims across the Middle East.[75] On July 24, 2014, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) destroyed the mosque containing the tomb as part of a campaign to destroy religious sanctuaries it deemed to be idolatrous.
Information -------------------------> Idea
What is correct? Our idea not yours.
Can I ask something? No.
Can I check your idea? No.
In the idea of the bible, Jonah sat outside Nineveh, in the shade of the Kikayon tree, awaiting its detruction. In another, he could have stepped outside his tomb and witnessed it.
Nineveh and its people have suffered greatly since the US+ invasion. Haliburton and its people have done very nicely from it. The prophet came to understand God's mercy. The profit showed none.
Jonah was swallowed by a whale. A preposterous story. But then; don't ask, don't check, and you can swallow anything.
A whale is a tree; obviously.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# I am pleased to discover that it is called a Wendy house precisely because of its association with the character of Peter Pan. An association I had considered, but never knew to be true.+++
* It would be a few more years before, with some amazement, I discovered it was a mammal.
** It might also be predicted that they will think that you are deliberately trying to give them that idea.
***The word anathema has an interesting history.
**** The Hebrew text uses dag gadol which just means big fish++
+ Of course, it wasn't just America.
++ And, as has been often stated, a whale isn't a fish:
+++ It only took me forty five years to check that.
I enjoyed reading that. When I first saw the title I thought it was going to be about how DNA between animals, humans and trees are very similar. Supposedly we share 60% of the same DNA as a banana, which explains a lot in a lot of instances. Anyway most glad to see you back, keep it up.
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