Michael Jackson vs. Alfred Hitchcock: The magic of the Thriller.

The midnight hour is close at hand.

       In December 1982,  Michael Jackson's music video for Thriller emerged from the Stygian gloom of Union Pacific Avenue and proceeded to shuffle and clap its way across the planet; with continents and cultures of all kinds succumbing to the remorseless 40,000 year old funk.
      This particular viewer, however, was moved to ask: Why is this called " Thriller" when it's clearly about a horror movie?
       
      "It is often forgotten that (dictionaries) are artificial repositories, put together well after the languages they define. The roots of language are irrational and of a magical nature."
                    - Jorge Luis Borges*
     
        All communication always (most basically)  works as: Information -------> Idea. As any information can give any number of ideas, it is clear that communication relies on agreement of idea, or, in other words, agreement of definitions. It should be noted that when people are asked to define their terms, the most common responses are bemusement, anger, and the singing of crickets with the soft whispering of tumbleweed, as the question is ignored.
       Simply put, this is the way communication works. Don't blame me, blame god/evolution/explanation of choice.
      As this is the way communication works, it is also clear that different people will have different ideas about the same information. This is perfectly normal. A danger lies in anybody insisting that their definition is correct. What really needs to happen, for better communication, is to try to get more information to try and understand anyone's particular idea.
       It should be noted here that the basic skill we are born with that enables us to get more information- the ability to ask questions- has always been an enemy of those with power. Which is why traditional education has so little interest in questions.   
       So why was it called Thriller? You might think that unless Mr Jackson does indeed rise from his grave, dancing or not, we would be unable to ask the song-writer. But the song writer was in fact, as people are often surprised to find out, this man-
 
 

The wizard Temperton.

           The writer of Thriller is Rod Temperton, whose place in disco heaven** is assured by the fact that he also wrote Boogie Nights. (The original groove rather than the film.)
           Originally, Thriller was to be called Starlight, but, thankfully, Temperton was asked to come up with another title by Quincy Jones. According to Temperton, he woke up in the morning and the new title came to mind fully formed.***
            So where did this idea come from? Possibly a thirteen year old Rod was influenced by the local cinema showing  Psycho.
                               

Poster for Alfred Hitchcock's thriller. Influence on young Rods?

    The thriller genre that Alfred Hitchcock was so enamoured of has always conjured up (for me, and probably for most people) ideas of espionage and plans of murder. A protaganist who often is flung into a chaotic environment where friend and foe are not easily identifiable. The horror genre, on the other hand is usually defined by the presence of a supernatural foe. My own Hitchcock favourite, Strangers on a Train can be easily labeled a thriller, although it also contains horrific scenes. However, there is no clear supernatural presence.+
     Psycho itself is variously labelled horror or thriller or even horror-thriller, but what excuse does Michael Jackson have for stocking his video with zombies and a werewolf, two of the most famous archetypes of the horror genre?
     Of course, his excuse is: "It gave and continues to give pleasure to millions and nobody cares that it's called thriller."
     I actually agree with this quote from Michael Jackson that I made up. None of this is really important, it's just, to my mind at least, an interesting example of the way that communication works. Moreover, it is entirely possible to live a good and happy life without once giving any thought to the way that communication works. We can also be perfectly fine without knowing how blood circulates in our body, or how our heart pumps it. But, when there is a problem, knowing how the heart or blood circulation works is of such clear importance that it hardly needs mentioning. Ask people how communication works, however, and its importance is far fom apparent.
     And yet, as the entirety of human history has been about better communication, if we are to pay more than lip-service to improving things in the future then an understanding of how comunication works may even be vital.

     The role of definition in communication is fundamental, as any information can always give more than one idea. Thus, there is no correct idea, but rather an agreement on what the idea is in any particular context.
     Understanding this, I am not about to load up on guns and take Muhammad Wassab, Jermaine Jackson and Jermaine Jacksun hostage until the Jackson estate agrees to change the title of Thriller to Horror.

     It is in this agreement of definition, this agreement of idea, that the great power, the great magic, of human communication is revealed.
     If any information can give more thasn one idea then there is always the possibilty of better ideas.      Throughout our history, human beings have looked for better ideas.  Better ideas about God or gods, better ideas about agriculture and medicine; better ideas about music and stories and football.
     Better ideas about music videos and psychological thrillers.

     And I agree that horror is not a better title than thriller.


     But of course there are always other ideas, it's just that we want better ideas don't we?
     Well, if we do, we are going to have to define better aren't we?
     But why talk about stuff, something that requires a little effort, when there's so much great  entertainment available?
     Because communication is the only thing we ever do, and the only argument for not wanting to do it better is that we wish to live as #dogs



     And finally, the information of Michael Jackson, might also just give us the idea of: child molester.
     And that of Alfred Hitchcock might give us: serial blonde abuser.
     But whatever idea you have about these kings of the thriller, they also left us with these ideas; these pieces of magic:

              And that's just the way it works.

                 Although, perhaps less (real) horror and more (real) thrills is maybe something to aim for?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------


* Completely failing to provide us with a definition of magic.

** Rod himself, might well prefer the other place-

*** We might consider whether the universe itself  should claim a writing credit. I think the fact that the universe has never claimed a writing credit on Thriller can be explained by the simple fact that the universe is bigger than that. Besides, although Rod temperton enjoys a house in Fiji, the universe already has homes everywhere.

+ We are, of course, free to argue that the character of Bruno is driven by the Devil ++ himself.

++ Who, when not simply enjoying his disco inferno, is handing out rail tickets.+++


+++

"Room for one more inside, Sir..."



 # Which is, of course, a choice. But if it is explained  it to the rest of us, then we can get a leash and muzzle for whomsoever wishes to do so

Breathing together: The truth about 9/11.

      When the events that came to be collectively known as 9/11 occurred in the United States it was late night in Asia.* That night I made a phone call to my brother in China to arrange a forthcoming trip to visit him. When he answered the phone, I asked how his evening had been. He said: "We had a great night in a bar, some Chinese guy was trying to convince us that some terrorists had flown planes into the World Trade Center and that the twin towers had fallen down!"
      "It's true." I said.


 And since that day, pretty much the only thing that everyone agrees on is the fact that it happened. The who, what, how and why of that day however, have given rise to a much broader range of ideas.
    As far as I know,* there is no-one claiming that the twin towers didn't fall down that day, and they are, in fact still there. But every other piece of information about that day has been lifted high or torn apart, worked upon and bolted together again, in a fascinating variety of ways to form a construction of ideas so tall and mighty as to rival the original Tower of Babel.

Background: The Tower. Foreground: The Confusion.

        Unlike that previous tower, those of the World Trade Center have done much to bring people closer. We all enjoy the company of those with similar ideas, and conspiracy theory is important oxygen for those wishing to breathe together. 9/11 happened just as the maddest and most crippled of ideas were taking lung-fulls of fresh air on the suddenly wide-open prairies of the internet.
       The internet would be fertile ground for those who wished to push their own particular ideas. Let's have a closer look at some of those ideas:



      Idea 1. There were no planes.

      Some people insist that no planes crashed into buildings on that day. The usual reasons given are collusion by the T.V. networks (using computer generated images) and/or holographic technology. The natural questions that arise from this theory are: If there were no planes, what about the passengers? Are their grieving families simply crisis actors? Are the witnesses who saw the planes also crisis actors? What about the airline employees?
     Basically, any explanation that raises more questions than it can answer is not a good explanation. But putting that idea to one side, here's John Lear (son of the inventor of the Lear jet plane) to tell us his own ideas-
       

                                  
                        This is presumably the real John Lear, rather than a hologram.

Idea 2. There were no hijackers.

      This scenario is based on the idea that the planes were not taken over by hijackers but were in fact flown into their targets by remote control. A lot of theorising takes place about the suspected role of the defense contractor Raytheon. As with a lot of conspiracy theories, some juicy bait is dangled in the form of interesting information that demands people to snap at it. For example:
       Early in 2001 five senior Raytheon employees were seconded from their normal work and their close relatives say that they refused to discuss what their new duties were. They regularly flew to the West coast for days at a time in the months prior to 9/11.

On 9/11 all five of those seconded employees were passengers on three of the highjacked planes and died. On flight 11 were Peter Gray ( VP Ops electronics ), Ken Waldie ( Sen Qual control electronics), and David Kovalian ( Sen Mech eng electronics ). On flight 175 was Herbert Homes ( Exec seconded to DOD ). On flight 77 were Stanley Hall (Director of project management-Electronics warfare) and Charles Falkenberg ( GPS expert working on the Global Hawk project) Raytheon had offices on the 91st floor of WTC2.             

(Original post here.)

       Of course, we are presented with no sources for the basic story of the employees "new duties". There is also no checking  of connected ideas such as: Was it unusual for these people to be on these flights? What actual evidence is there that remote-control flights like this were possible at the time?
      Furthermore, if there are no hijackers, were they on the planes, or not?
      But of course, there is no need for questions when you are fully convinced that you are stating the obvious:-

                                       
                                             When will people wake up?**

      Idea 3. The buildings were demolished by explosives.

     When I watched the second tower collapse live I had a couple of thoughts that were in no way unusual: that looks like it does when they demolish a building , and why did they fall down like that?
     The official explanation of why and how the towers collapsed the way they did can be read here. It is important to note that conspiracists are united in their dismissal of it. Without having even bothered to read it.
      All communication works as INFO ---------> IDEA.   If you don't want your precious ideas to change you must ignore information that offers different ideas and you must attempt to collate only that information that supports your ideas.

     And so, if you go hunting for evidence of controlled demolition, you can be sure to find information that sure sounds good.  And if you can't find that, just resort to speculation and inference: Imagine what bombs the shadow government has...   here's a big bomb, so big bombs exist, so....  people heard explosions, so there must have been bombs (because nothing else causes explosions, right?)  All of this and more in this fascinating lecture which explains how they EASILY (in big letters) rigged the towers for demolition.

                            
                                     "How more obvious can a cover-up be?" ***   
  

                               Videos that support the official theory are ignored.


      Idea 4. The buildings were demolished by secret weapons.

      The main proponent of the idea that the towers were pulverised by secret weapons is Dr Judy Wood. Her basic theory is that the amount of debris produced by the collapse of the towers was too small when compared to the material contained in the towers. Her own explanation for this is that some kind of directed-energy weapon was used to achieve the necessary pounding of the materials to turn a lot of it to dust. Why the top floors all collapsing down on the floors below, as is stated in the official story, does not offer an adequate explanation for massive pulverisation is not clearly addressed by Dr Wood.
     Nor does she offer any explanations as to how these weapons were employed, or even what they are.
     

     Idea 5. It was the American Government behind the attacks.

     As the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the Patriot Act, were easily facilitated by the events of September 11, it is a simple step to the idea that the government must have conspired to produce said events.
     Further questions, such as: "How is government being defined here?" Bush/ Cheney? C.I.A.? F.B.I? FEMA? All of them? are notable by their absence.
     As all communication is INFO--------> IDEA, the less questions you ask, the stronger your idea will remain. You don't have to explain anything. Also, having an ill-defined idea of top-level malfeasance allows you to feel the moral satisfaction of being superior to them without the grind of having to do anything about them.
     That the government may be not entirely made up of evil geniuses but rather the exact caliber of people we work and live with ourselves is, of course, a scenario too chilling to contemplate.......
 

     Idea 6. It was Mossad behind the attacks.

     This idea is built on the fact that 5 Israeli men were arrested on 9/11 after a witness reported seeing three men on top of a van filming the events and seemingly "happy."Although an attack on the U.S. by Moslem radicals was indirectly a good thing for Israeli policy, it is a leap of faith to suggest that Israel was behind the attacks.
     Although they could, of course, have had fore-knowledge of the hijackers plans and refrained from letting U.S. authorities know.... And Aliens could have used their energy weapons....****
     And then there's this van .......   

  


     Idea 7. Building 7. (Building 7!)

      It is indeed interesting to note that people are generally unaware that WTC 7- a 47 story building- also collapsed on the afternoon of 9/11. That a major occurrence  of one of the best documented news events in history should pass most people by itself suggests the often vague relationship that human beings have with information. Of course, if the information is vague, then the ideas the follow have little chance of clarity.
     Better information ----------> Better ideas. But people do instinctively appreciate this, so you naturally present information in order to dazzle the audience-

                          
                        BBC reports collapse of WTC 7. 20 minutes before it actually happened.

      It is natural to be surprised by this kind of information. It's unusual, it's strange.  What needs to happen in order to have a better idea is to ask some questions in order to get better information: How could this happen? Has this kind of thing happened before? What was the situation at the time?
     The conspiracy argument is that the BBC had fore-knowledge of the controlled demolition of WTC 7. On the surface, it is an attractive idea. But disturb the surface with questions, and the clear image dissolves: So the U.S. government (or Mossad) told the BBC of their plans? Or Did one of the conspirators, who did such a fantastic job otherwise, make the error of telling the press of the collapse of WTC7 before someone had pushed the button?
    On the other hand, as the fire department was aware that the building would collapse, couldn't that information have become has collapsed, in all the confusion?

                                     
                                  News report of concern about WTC7 collapsing+
        
    Idea 8. It was the Saudi government.

      The U.S. government inquiry into Intelligence activities before and after September 11 contained 28 redacted pages that are suspected to contain information relating to links between the Saudi government and the hijackers.
      As reported here, by March 2003 45% of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was personally involved with the 9/11 attacks, an impression that the Bush administration was happy to encourage. However, this deliberate misdirection on the part of the government would lead some to suspect that the Saudis were being deliberately kept out of the spotlight. Which in turn suggests the idea that, not only were the Saudi government  behind 9/11, but also that the Bush administration knew this and were covering up for them. Of course, the simple fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens does nothing to dampen this particular idea.
    

    Idea 9. The U.S. government knew what was going on and let it happen.

      This concept is similar to the Pearl Harbour advance-knowledge conspiracy theory. It is interesting to consider that with this theory, the government is still in control. That the world's most heavily armed nation is not at the mercy of raggle-taggle terrorists with box-cutters, has an obvious appeal to anyone whose comfort zone has experienced total collapse while witnessing the terrors of 9/11.
      And it is here that we can ascertain an important human motive behind choosing to accept any particular idea or explanation.
      They make us feel good.

      If you are to accept any of the ideas above, then these ideas themselves become, in their turn, information that leads on to other ideas. One of the most basic of which is that the powerful forces behind 9/11 are such super-human magicians that any attempt to go against them is purest folly. Consequently, we can put our feet up and drink beer and enjoy our audio-visual entertainment; because there is simply nothing we can do.
     All of the basic information within the theories outlined above offer the same basic idea: someone's in control. To accept the official narrative, that a group of foreign hijackers out-witted the most expensive defense on earth is to accept that no-one is really in control, and that any promise of a better future relies on the efforts of people in general.
     You, me, representatives of Illinois' law enforcement community.......everybody.
  
      To breathe in conspiracy theory as oxygen is to abrogate one's own responsibility and ignore one's own power. The power to change things by ourselves, our birth-right as human magicians. The warm embrace of the conspiracy allows us a regression to child-hood, to be able to put aside struggle and surrender to unseen and all-powerful forces.
     
      And then maybe.....maybe the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was actually to convince people that they didn't exist.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 
     The truth about 9/11 is that you can take any idea you want from it. You can believe it was the U.S. government or Mossad or the Illuminati. It can be a Rorschach test to confirm your deepest prejudices, or it can be an opportunity for your ego to bask in the warm glow of self-righteousness. You can even believe the fantastic idea that the grinding plates of history spat out a group of people who went half-way round the world to murder people they didn't know.
    But like anything else, better information gives better ideas. We get better information by asking and checking while looking for better describing and explaining.
   Alternatively, we can just choose the idea that makes us feel good and switch off.
    But when we do that, it makes it a whole lot easier to fly planes full of people into office buildings.
    Or tacitly support sending people half-way round the world to kill people they don't know.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------


*     On 9/12 I went to the travel agent to book my flight to China. They were surprised to see me and said: "You do know what happened yesterday, don't you?"

**   And be more like me, because I'm right.
***  The final commentators just about sum the whole video up.


**** With Israeli assistance.

+      And a random white van is definitely a demolition van. ++

++     Whatever that is.

Breathing together: Oxygen-rich conspiracy theory.

Friends nowhere to be seen....

    Conspiracy theory is, most basically, an alternative explanation. It offers a different idea from that which is most widely accepted. In some conspiracy theory, no man has ever set foot upon the moon, 9-11 was organised by Mossad, and the entire world is in thrall to the world's worst secret society: the Illuminati.
　　　  Coming into contact with conspiracy theory often elicits the question: why do people believe this stuff? A more useful question, however, would be: Why do people believe anything?
        
         As all communication works as info -----> idea, our ideas can only ever come from information. Traditionally, human culture naturally encourages information that supports the ideas of the ruling class and attacks and often attempts to hide information that might give rise to awkward new ideas. Children are encouraged down certain communicative paths from a young age, and this happens everywhere.
        When I was young, the story of Noah's Ark was presented to me as a simple tale of the wonder and magnificence of existence as produced, arranged, composed and performed by God.. Looking back, it is noticeable how the bit about Noah being 600 when the heavens opened wasn't mentioned. For that's the kind of information that could give a child ideas.
         Yet such is the way that communication works that I find myself in agreement with most of the (often perfectly sensible) 11 ideas that follow.....
       

The clearest view?.......or......

A God-awful large affair?

       
           .....and of course, from the story of Noah we can also get the idea that God is a vicious  psychopath; A raving maniac killing 99.999% of all life on the planet, who should be safely locked away in some kind of cosmic Arkham Asylum.*
          
             In most of human history, our ideas were programmed directly into us by our own culture. Generally, the further back into history you go, the tighter the control of ideas. Also, it is traditional within a culture for those in charge to most often seek to maintain their status and position by controlling information to ensure control of ideas.
          Compared to say, 500 years ago, the modern world allows for much more communication about everything in general and Bible stories in particular. It has thankfully become a lot rarer for people in Christian cultures to be attacked or executed for criticising the Bible. The basic reason for this is that the historical rising tide of communication has consistently pushed forth new and strange ideas that tumble on to shore, and the strongest of them survive the heat of the Sun and the pecking of the gulls. One of the strongest ideas turned out to be science itself, and that is most basically better communication.
          The ideas of the scientific revolution, including such odd notions as the Earth revolving around the Sun, would take root and overcome resistance thanks to their superior explanatory power, and the late 20th century would see the greatest and most recent communicative wave  bring the god-like power of the internet crashing onto the land in the greatest information revolution in history.
          More and more traditional gates that have long prevented better communication are buckling, and some are now wide-open and will never be shut again. Information flows in a vast all-encompasing tsunami, and kings, priests and tyrants are all driven before it.
          However, as in any storming of a Bastille, the lunatics and the deviants are freed as well, so now anyone can log on and make 2 + 11 + sun + celeb = illuminati.
           

On America's tortured brow.**

 

       25 years ago, anybody interested in the John F. Kennedy assassination would be stung into action by any documentary that promised a quick look at that sacred Kodachromatic shroud of Dallas: The Zapruder film. This historical document wasn't even shown publicly on television until 7 years after the event. The situation now is somewhat different.
     When Abraham Zapruder+ decided to sell the rights of his film he demanded that the most graphic scene should not be published. Zapruder had had a nightmare in which he saw a sign in Times Square, New York announcing : "See the President's head explode! " One can only imagine his astonishment and disappointment at the multiple versions of his film available to all and watched by millions on YouTube.
     It must be increasingly difficult to find anyone who hasn't seen the President's head explode.
 
     With more information available to more people, new ideas inevitably follow. The ringing gunshots of 22nd November 1963 continue to call to congregation those who are interested, even 50 years later.++
   

         Information leads to idea which is itself information which leads to idea which...... 
                                           - we are built this way.

Asking you to focus on.....

The Best Selling Show.

     
    A vital part of  better communication is understanding that: all information depends on context. The better we understand the context, the clearer we can understand any ideas connected to any information. Quite simply, this is why education and culture have long been determined to keep Bela Lugosi in his box..
    As human beings, we react very naturally to context. This is why a king wears a crown and a high priest a daft hat. Because if they didn't, people would much more easily ask awkward questions: he's no different to our Stan. Why should I listen to him?

   Thus, if you really want to sell your conspiracy theory, rather than bother with boring old describing + explaining + asking + checking, the basic skills of communication, just get yourself the equivalent of an Arch-bishop's mitre - the punters will be well impressed.


 In April 2014  U.S. Marine Captain Randy Cramer announced publicly that he had served 17 years on Mars as a member of the U.S. defense force, protecting Earth from hostile alien forces including Grays and Mantids.
    Captain Cramer is supported in his claims by Sonia Glick, the great-granddaughter of a dock-worker.

    Actually, that last part is definitely not true. For the fact of the matter is that Captain Cramer's assertions are supported by Laura Eisenhower, the great-granddaughter of President Eisenhower.
    Honestly, doesn't the context of the relation of a respected President make all of this sound  a little more intriguing? Regardless of whether Laura Eisenhower is or isn't just a daft hat.

 

    


                              Laura Eisenhower - spitting in the eyes of fools.
   
          
          Anyway, as people generally find it pleasant to hang out with like-minded individuals, so the conspiracy theorists cram together in pockets of the internet where they can breathe together and enjoy what is essentially the normal oxygen of friendship.
         It also helps that, among any tribe of conspiracists, everyone will muck in to keep Bela's coffin lid safely nailed down. In the following interview,  British local councillor Simon Parkes, who claims his mother was a Mantid, clearly states at 59: 52 that "I can shape-shift." Does the interviewer, the rather credulous Alfred Lambremont Webre, ask Mr Parkes to demonstrate? He does not.


         Personally, I'd love to see someone shape-shift. Alf is staggeringly uninterested. And the obvious idea here is that he is uninterested in his own ideas. And in order to be so uninterested, we must necessarily degrade our own communicative ability to the extent that our own ideas are cruelly buried alive, away from the light, interned alongside Bela Lugosi.


    

                                  
                                                  A saddening bore.
                               
        But then.....

      What if there are human bases on Mars? After all, I've never been to Mars, and, unless you served with Earth hero Randy Cramer, or you are a Martian, neither have you.+++ Maybe Laura Eisenhower is right, maybe Simon Parkes mum is an 8 foot-tall insectoid alien. Maybe we should all be Nazis.
                         How do we decide these things?

                        We decide them the only way we can, through better communication.

                        Because communication is the only thing we ever do.

                                                  ------------------
    

And if there were Martians observing us, our culture and our conspiracy theories, what would they think?++++  Looking at the cave-men on Earth might they not just shrug their shoulders and consider it all the freakiest show?


         

                   
                      But then, there are always other ideas......
                              And then, there are those conspiracies that are real.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------


* Mind you, that place is one of the most insecure secure facilities there is. God would be out and causing trouble in no time.

**  This picture shows the Umbrella Man. His use of an umbrella on a fine day in Dallas naturally led to people asking questions. An early favourite of conspiracy theorists, he was accused of either signaling the shooter#, or shooting the President with his special fancy umbrella dart gun. Eventually, when called before The House Select Commitee on Assassinations in 1978, the Umbrella Man a self-declared conservative, would declare that he was using the umbrella as a symbol of appeasement, wishing to heckle Kennedy for his father's support for Neville Chamberlain. ##

+ Zapruder was a 33rd degree Freemason. Conspiracy theorists, start your engines!

++ And the question not usually asked: Why is it important who killed Kennedy? Don't we have better things to think about? And from that, might the powerful not have a vested interest to keep people interested in parlour games rather than how things actually work? And might it not suit certain parties to dismiss sober analysis as conspiracy theory?

+++  Or a being from Zeta Reticuli, or Adamski, or Billy Meier or someone in Alternative 3 or......###

++++ As long as they are not too busy enjoying a pleasant chat with Rock Hudson, that is.

# Whoever he was...

## But then of course, he would say that, wouldn't he?

### And technically, Martians can only have been to Mars if they were born on another planet. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Martians are emigrating and raising their children elsewhere as their home planet is by all accounts getting a bit crowded.

No light escapes: The Black Hole in Education and Culture.

                                                       What is it ?


        This is the fundamental question, that sits atop Bela Lugosi's pyramid: and a question (like all other questions) that can produce an infinite set of responses or ideas. In order to understand something clearly we must first ask: what is it? and then attempt to produce the best idea in response. Any effort to attempt to do any of these basic steps of communication is most often greeted with bemusement or derision. It is noticable that the level of derision often increases according to the person's level of "education." Funny that.
 
      
     Traditional public education has always had one basic, yet most often unarticulated, goal: The continuation of the status quo.*  Because of this, there are the usual attempts to encourage children to believe that they live in a magical country handed to them by God, or else born covered in the blood of brave and noble warriors, or maybe forged in the white-hot crucibles of the finest minds who ever lived.  We may find ourselves requesting in song that our deity saves our richest member,** or perhaps we are encouraged to say a morning prayer to our cloth-god:

          The option to.... ***

        If you are to have effective education that continues the policies and mores of the ruling powers, there are two basic ways to achieve this. As all communication is, most basically, Information ---------> Idea, the first way is to control the information. This, historically, has always been the weapon of choice**** for rulers and is still being employed to different degrees in, for example, China and North Korea. In countries where direct control of information by government is largely forbidden by law, ruling powers have to control ideas.
   The simplest way to control ideas is to try to ensure that, if not dead, Bela Lugosi is not roaming at will; that is to say, asking and checking  (fully 50% of communication) must be strictly tempered. How many children are graded on their ability to ask and check? Clearly, if those skills were valued in society, then there would be lessons explaining how asking and checking work and children would be encouraged to ask and check as much as possible. Instead, children and young adults can spend 13-16 years in education without being informed once of just how important asking and checking are to communication. Communication: basically, the only thing that they will ever do.
     Of course, people are not taught how communication works. Let's be clear about this:
            Communication is the only thing we ever do.
            We are not taught how it works, therefore:
            We are not taught how we work.

          We are not taught how we work. Our  lives are hi-jacked by other people's ideas. We sit at the bottom of the gravity well, straining to see, and accepting instructions to keep our eyes cast down from those whose more exalted position depends on that position receiving as little illumination as possible. And that is the pattern of history.

             However, we now live at a time in history when information has been emancipated like never before. Not so very long ago, if you had a question that those around you could not answer, it might require a special trip to the library, by which time you've probably forgotten it (if you are anything like me.) Now, the very real wonder of the age is that answers to our questions are but a keyboard interface away. Of course, there are a range of answers, so it might be a good practical idea to teach people how communication works so that they, (and here comes the dangerous part ) decide things for themselves.  It would be a simple and practical step to acknowledge this.
   The organisation of our societies, however, depends on the inhibition of communication in order to survive , so there is no political will to acknowledge even this basic point. In the same way, an organisation like The Vatican strives to keep its doors closed to new ideas, lest any sliver of light allowed encourages the herd to force its way in and start to inquire as to what might be the nature of things in the flesh?




                               

                                                         What am I?          

Know Thyself- "Man walks through a forest of symbols."

The encouragement to know oneself is the most basic practical step towards knowing others and other things.

If we accept that, as human beings, communication is the only thing we ever do, then we need to ask: what is communication? If I seem to be labouring this point, the reason is that it is very difficult to get people to talk about what communication actually is. I have no problem if people think communication is just information, or if someone thinks communication is such a nebulous term as to be meaningless. People can think communication is a pink banana, a raspberry beret, or a dog's dinner; anything they like. What I would actually like is for someone to explain why my idea about communication is rubbish. Not much to ask is it? Doesn't happen though.

  Overall, Communication theory has been largely dominated by the original ideas of Claude Shannon, who was wrestling with how to achieve transfer of information in machines; the basic system he was trying to design being: information ------> information. Shannon's work laid a lot of the foundations for all the computing systems we have now. A great achievement, of that there can be little doubt, but...

                                      People are not machines.

       And the most basic explanation of the difference is that people communicate according to
                                     Information --------> Idea.

And this is basically why machines don't think that next door's dog is telling them to kill people. 


       All communication works like this. Any information has an idea connected to it. The basic difficulty of communication lies in the simple fact that any information can have any number of ideas connected to it. Take, for example, a guest in someone's kitchen who asks: "Where are your cups?" As all information depends on context, we might assume that the guest is about to prepare some drinks and is looking for the suitable receptacles. But if we receive more information  then the idea may well change: Let's say it's Tiger Woods' kitchen, we might now have the idea that the guest is asking about the whereabouts of the great golfers trophies. This idea, itself information, might then encourage us to form the idea of a friendly chat in the kitchen between Tiger and his mate. If the context changes, if the questioner in the kitchen is there at 2 a.m wearing a balaclava and has just forced Woods from his bed, then a whole new set of ideas are created.+
     In short, the more information you have, the better your idea. Asking and checking helps us to get information. Traditional education cares little for asking and checking. This, of course, has a knock-on effect on the wider culture whereby someone wishing to understand someone's ideas better, by asking and checking to get more information, is often considered to be frightfully rude.
     The basic reason asking and checking is not encouraged by those in charge is that, if it were, more describing and more explaining  would necessarily have to follow. And then people would have a better idea about things. Thus it is that the skills of describing and explaining are also given short shrift in education in general.

                     
                                           But.........
 

          All improvements in human culture are a result of better communication.

　　　　　　　　　　　　What's wrong with saying "Jehovah" ?
 

          It makes sense, then, to have an education system based on communication#. Make sure people know how communication works. Encourage, or rather, don't get in the way of the basic skills of describing, explaining and asking and checking; and let people know that, as communication is the only thing they will ever do, so that they might want to try to get better at it.
         Once all that is established we can all spend the afternoon swimming in the creek.+


         Because there is nothing more important than communication, not only is it the only thing we ever do, it is the only thing that ever happens. ++

       It`s a girl, it's a rhyme,

             It's a hawk, it's a quail,

                  It's the promise of life, it's the joy in your heart,

                       It's a knife, a death, the end of the run,

                         It's a sliver of glass, it is life, it's the sun,

         It is you it is me, it is all our lives will ever be,

                      It's the river-banks talking of the waters of March,

                         It's the end of all strain, it's the joy in your heart.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


* Yes, that's why they've had such a long career.

** Clearly more important than anyone else.

*** .....pledge allegiance to The Time is predictably absent.



****......a much better weapon of choice would be:


+ There is, of course, no end to this. Add the information that Tiger's guest, a very good friend,  is a connoisseur of jock-straps, and novel and, possibly interesting ideas begin to form. 

# Unless there is a better idea, of course...

+ A metaphorical creek if you prefer, of course. Although, on a practical level I would caution against swimming in Cripple Creek, because of the Ferry, and if you must venture up Shit Creek then a suitable instrument to propel your vessel is recommended. Also, don't swim in it.

++ Please let me know if you think this idea is no good.

The first thing we did when we got to the Moon.

One small step.

          

            When Neil Armstrong`s boot disturbed the basaltic surface of the Moon on July 21st 1969 it was indeed one small step for one man. But behind that single step lay a series of other small steps that all came together in order to form that giant leap for Mankind. If you ran the film backwards, the boot would go up the ladder into the Lunar Module which would then leap back onto the massive rocket powerful enough to take us out of Earth's jealous grasp. The boot and the rocket would land in Delaware and then the rocket alone would travel on to Nazi Germany, painted with light by Fritz Lang, before disappearing into the minds and imaginations of human beings as far back as people go.
       This action was the fulfillment of an idea that our species had dreamed upon since first we raised our gaze to the heavens and began to question: What is that thing up there? and how can we get there?  As well being the natural consequence of the evolution of explanations to those same questions.
        In the oldest surviving tale of a trip to the Moon, Lucian of Samosata's 2nd Century True History *, the voyagers are lifted to the heavens on a giant waterspout. Apollo 11, lacking lacking a sea-tornado of that size, had to make do with a Liquid-propellant rocket that was powerful enough to escape Earth's gravity.
        More generally speaking , Apollo 11 was carried aloft on the highest wave of the 400 year long tide of modern scientific history.  It was appropriate, then, that when reaching their goal, these modern astronauts would come down safely in the Sea of Tranquility.
           
      Armstrong's boot, and the high-tech costume it was attached to, as well as providing that one small step, also offers an answer to the important musical question of What did Delaware ?  As It turns out, she may very well have worn a space-suit; as the manufacturer of all Apollo suits was ILC Dover, based in the state.
     Delaware is also known as the first state because it was the first of the original 13 U.S. states to ratify the Constitution; thereby supporting the ideas that had come hand-in-hand with the scientific revolution : all of which would help make the U.S. the eventual winner of the space race.**
     Drawing back from that first foot-step, a strange spider-like machine comes into sight. This vehicle that had carried Armstrong and Aldrin to the Moon, designed and built by Grumman, not only had to deliver the astronauts to the surface of the moon, but to escape the Moon's own significant gravity in order to return to the Command/Service Module.
     One of the most significant design aspects of the Lunar Module would be its weight. The engineers at Grumman were continually in a battle to make this spider fly. One important victory in this battle came when somebody offered the simple question: Do they need seats ?  Thus it was that this vital idea for weight reduction was created by a question that any passing 5-year old could have asked. Perhaps then, our education systems might consider why they have so little interest in questions?
     Anway, the story of the first and only manned space-ship to never have had a test-flight (as it could only be flown in space) is told here-





The rocket that took us to the Moon was the fruit of various branches of the tree of knowledge. One of the most famous of its gardeners was Wernher Von Braun, the man who would come to be known as The Father of Rocket Science; as well as famously being known as an ex-Nazi and member of the S.S.
    Von Braun's abiding passion was not, however National Socialism and would be expressed clearly when he had the chance, as a young student, to meet the high-altitude pioneer Auguste Piccard in 1930: "You know, I plan on travelling to the moon at some time."
    It is clear that Von Braun's dream was space travel, and it was the grim anti-communicative structure of the Nazi regime that would ensure that some of his earliest rockets would contain war-heads and be aimed squarely at London instead of the Moon.***
   
    As the war finished, Von Braun made a choice to surrender to the Americans rather than the Russians. He stated: 
"We knew that we had created a new means of warfare, and the question as to what nation, to what victorious nation we were willing to entrust this brainchild of ours was a moral decision more than anything else. We wanted to see the world spared another conflict such as Germany had just been through, and we felt that only by surrendering such a weapon to people who are guided by the Bible could such an assurance to the world be best secured.” ****
   Von Braun was one of a group of rocket scientists who were quickly and covertly brought to the United States. This journey (after his first small step onto American soil in Delaware+), would eventually lead to his overseeing the design and construction of the Saturn V rocket for NASA.

     

   Frau im Mond- The first man; and woman; and boy, on the Moon.  

      The direct ancestor to the Saturn V was the V2 rocket used by the Nazis during the war. The first one to be successfully launched had the words Frau in Mond painted upon it. Frau im Mond was a 1929 German science fiction movie directed by Fritz Lang++ and concerned a voyage to the Moon. It contained such an accurate portrayal of rocket technology that it was to have a great influence on the rocket scientists of Germany; so much so that they offered the daubed tribute when they took Lang's dream and made it reality.
      Things created are often first seen in the realm of the imagination. The human mind plays with ideas in dreams and stories and then those dreams can become reality. Any authority that takes and uses its power without consent can only retain its power with censorship of ideas. Thus it is that human history has always been, most basically, a struggle for better communication.
      The natural and necessary effort at explanation that constitutes part of communication has improved over time. Our ancestors did their best with the information they had, but if you actually want to travel to the Moon, a water-spout is less practical than a rocket. The idea of the Moon as a predictable rock is more useful than the Moon as Selene.

      In other contexts however, it may well be useful to acknowledge that, although communication always works as Information -------> Idea, any information can always produce more than one idea.
      And there have always been many ideas about the Moon.
  
      In the Kabbalah, the traditional esoteric explanation of how the universe works, there is a map, containing the 10 Sephiroth, the aspects of God, which offers a basic guide to existence.


                                                          

 

           

             At the root of this Tree of Life  sits the attribute of God usually known as Malkuth. This represents the physical world, the Earth and the planets. Above Malkuth lies the realm of Yesod. This is the attribute of connection where concepts of the imagination can become actions that unite us with God. Yesod is usually closely associated with the Moon, and the world of imagination.
           
            And so it was, on the 19th July 1969, that men made reality the dream of Lucien and Fritz Lang and Werner Von Braun and countless others besides, as an Eagle - the bird who had carried prayers to the Great Spirit in the Spirit World for the Native Americans - came to rest at Yesod.
        The tide of communication had risen high enough to carry us to the Moon. Although we had been visiting there in our imaginations forever.

   
          Imagination + Will = Creativity.
    The Dreamtime + The Right Stuff = A man on the Moon.

     From the first question asked of the Moon - what is it ? - to the first explanations - a place. A god. The realm of dreams. From the first new information from telescopes to the new explanations - a celestial body, a satellite, a moon!  From the first tales of travels by water-spout up to the discovery of the Monolith; and finally through the ideas and dreams made flesh by the new science and technology: the new magic.
We were now here. Walking in heaven with the gods. 
              

And so, after all that; what WAS the first thing we did when we got to the Moon ?


   After the Lunar Module had safely touched down,+++ and just before the astronauts were to step onto the surface, Buzz Aldrin brought out a small container of wine along with some altar bread; symbols of the blood and body of a man Aldrin believed to be the son of God. After saying: "This is the LM pilot. I'd like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way"   Aldrin took Communion.

   Having arrived at Yesod, the first thing we did was to communicate with God.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

   * Baron Munchhausen would also claim to have been to the Moon, but he is, let us say, an unreliable narrator. Mention of the great man, however, allows us to remind ourselves of what a good movie can be full of -




** Soviet science was hampered by the Soviet system which was, basically, more anti-communication than the American one.

*** On a related note, when is a rocket a missile? The usual definition is that a missile is a rocket that contains a war-head. North Korea has launched a series of tests involving rockets over the past few years causing alarm in many countries. However, the reporting in, for example Britain, is notably different from that of Japan.
Here is the BBC on the North Korean test

Here is the Japanese state broadcaster NHK reporting the same story

The BBC story is about a "rocket" and the NHK story is about a "ミサイル (missile)".
Of course, any rocket test is also, basically, a missile test, yet the difference in definition is striking and the reference to a "missile" is constant throughout the Japanese media. Why would the media do this? One simple idea is that a story about a North Korean "missile" being tested near Japan gets the punters attention. Another idea is that it suits the agenda of certain powerful groups for the general Japanese public's attention to be focused on a non-concrete threat rather than elsewhere....

**** So, What did Delaware? A nazi de-mob suit?

+ One wonders at this point if the great Werner Von Braun was fully aware of some of the less well-known ideas in the Bible. Perhaps, like so many, he'd never read it. All of which allows me to say: C'mon Werner! It's not Rocket Science!

 ++ Frau im Mond was, remarkably, filmed entirely in Delaware.+++

+++ No it wasn't ! - Ed.

++++ As told in Andrew Chaikin's book: A Man on the Moon.
 Of course, as all information gives any number of ideas one might argue that the first thing we did when we got to the Moon was: turn off the ignition switch, or breathe a sigh of relief, or convert Oxygen into CO2. You could also argue that getting to the Moon should be defined as the voyage of Apollo 8, or even Luna 2.#

# If your idea is Luna 2##, then the first thing we did when we got to the Moon becomes made a big mess. Now that is another very pertinent idea about humans.

## In what may be the greatest attempt at a thunder-heist in history, the Soviet Union crash-landed an un-manned space-craft onto the Moon while Apollo 11 was still on the surface. Who remembers Luna 15?###

### The Soviet effort to land their craft at the same time as Apollo 11 might also be described as the worst (or best) attempt at a  photo-bomb in history. The effort was, of course, information intended to suggest the qualities that was the idea of the Soviet Union. An effort at communication. What else can we expect from people? Communication is, after all, the only thing we ever do.