Ideas of TESOL (1)------> (something) ------> An elaborately embroidered eastern orthodox mitre?

Is that a hat?            

                                
   I teach English at various schools and colleges in Japan. In one of these places, there is a text-book for beginners that offers the following example:


                  Ken: Is that a hat?
                  Mary:  No, it isn't. It is a scarf.


    My question is: How useful is this example? Does any normal human being often use this question? Or is it the kind of question that is only used in very rare circumstances- maybe if you are The Earl of Carnarvon exploring Tutenkhamen's tomb, or possibly Chief O'Hara, entrusted with protection of a priceless collection of Etruscan snoods.
    To consider  some comparisons with examples in other subjects:

 

          Geography: An example of a country is: The Republic of Upper Volta.

          History:      An example of an English Monarch is  Sweyn Forkbeard.

         Biology:      An example of a mammal is a Gilbert's Poteroo.


         Maths:        An example of addition is a farthing + a potato

   　　 Physics:     An example of Physics is that In this box there is a cat both alive and dead.

  What's wrong with these examples? They are, after all, correct, just like: "Is that a hat?" is a correct example of a question in English. The problem is that all these examples are not basic examples, and therefore don't explain well enough for people to understand.  Is that a hat? is an example of a sentence that is hardly ever used, so it can be considered to be a bad example. Magnificently though, it is also, at the same time a good example, so it might be fairly referred to as: Schrodinger's hat .*
   The reason why it is both a terrible example and a perfectly adequate example is because of the most basic way that everything works which is:


                                Information -------------------------------> Idea

    If you are teaching anything, then the most basic goal is (or should be) to help people to understand how it works. Because, if people understand how something works then they can do it themselves. Note that we are talking about people. If you do not wish people to understand how things work, if you want them to just be confused and trained to take orders, don't worry and congratulations, it means that you are doing well and, to strengthen your un-just position in society you necessarily have to keep other people down. In fact, it is most helpful to you if you train people to just act as dogs.
 
    Anyway, if you are teaching language, then it is important to teach how it works. And it is here that things are often rendered unnecessarily opaque due to:

    1. Traditional education having a strong urge to treat people as dogs. Or possibly Morlocks.   
    2. People not being dogs, and the difference being in the difference of ability to communicate.
    3. The most widely-used definition of communication (transfer of information)  being one that               derived from machine processes.
    4. Humans are not machines, the difference lying in the way people deal with information. (One      can send the information of "7" to a machine and it receives it as "7". If you send the information of "7" to a human they will immediately try to connect it with an idea.

               
Information -------------------------------------------------->     Idea
       7                                                                                     7 what ?
                                                                                                  or
                                                                                             lucky number...erm...

                                                                                                   tears?
                                                                                                        or
                                                                                                  these guys?
                                                                                                        or
                                                                                                  these guys?

                                                                                                        or
                                                                              You Lot! What? Don't stop!
                                                                                                        or
                                                                                                        8
                                                                                                        or
     (written)                                                                                     L?
                                                                                                        or
                                                                                                        a leg?
                                                                                                        or
                                                                                                   better live
                                                                      
                                                                                                       etc

          5. Ideas of the structure of language that are akin to describing the basic structure of the human body in terms of body parts only (the human body is a head, torso and arms and legs) without pointing out the existence of the skeleton.
                                                                                             

      To try and explain:     As all communication works as information ---------> Idea, so language works. Consequently, it is better to teach how language works in terms of this model than in terms of,say…
SVO.
                               

  Calm down super-hero man! Try not to react so emotionally. I'll give you some examples:


The most basic parcels of information can be stated as:

Something, someone, somewhere, sometime, someone's, some reason, somethings and somehow.
As well as: does something, doing something, did something and done something.These are the most basic building blocks of information. We think in these terms and language reflects that. It is important to note, however, that language is not taught according to these most basic of foundations.

Using the information---------> Idea model, we can understand the following basic relationship-

          Information ----------------------------------------------------------------------------> Idea

           Something                                                                                                    a  chair

  
     Now, in Japan, this relationship is almost never taught, so that Japanese students quite naturally use the relationship that they know from Japanese:

            Nantoka  ----------------------------------------------> isu
which comes out as:
        
            something -----------------------------------------------> chair

consequently, articles in English remain much more of a mystery than they necessarily have to be, simply because they are not taught according to the way they most basically work, that is to say, articles are part of, not seperate from the idea of something.
 

          At base, to understand how things are connected, and to understand how to connect things ourselves is a reasonable goal for education, isn't it? To my mind, one simple reason why Japanese students are not taught simple connections is because people, that is to say, native speakers, don't know how they do it. It is not generally understand how it works. And even if you don't know how something works, you can still assign it a name,( that thing in the sky is Ra, the basic physiological system of humans is: blood, yellow or black bile, and pleghm.) In time an entire menagerie of fantastic beasts can be stocked, fed and watered just like kings have always done, and the plebs can marvel at the romantic articles and the fussy gerunds and thrill to the cry of the fabulous collocation.

Yet people consistently learn their own language without one single visit to the linguistic zoo.

         

There's really no point crying.

  If you were to ask Lionel Messi exactly how he puts an opponent on the floor before precisely chipping in to score,  it is unlikely that you would receive a satisfactory explanation. In the same way, native speakers of a language don't really understand how they do it. 

So how do they** do it?

 People's brains are set up to think in terms of basic information. Consequently, the first piece of basic information we always have to deal with is: something.
 Observation of young infants suggests that they are constantly addressing what can be termed the something problem.*** All babies# are born into a forest of information, and their brains immediately attempt to sort things out. On the most basic level, even before language, there is a constant on-going effort to categorise things in terms of what is it?
  At this point it is useful to note that, as adjectives are basically something, so the the question what is it? can produce ideas of good/bad, safe/scary, and delicious/not delicious as well as my mum/hunger, being held/ alone, food/not food.
  From this, it follows that we structure our thoughts in the most basic way as:

                          (something)  is (something)+

  This is the way we think about things at the most basic level, even before language, and it is on this skeleton that the muscle of language fits. Nobody, at the most natural level, thinks in terms of SVO or articles or adjectives, and it is because of this that we can learn our native language without ever once worrying about the need to wrestle an Indo-european diphthong.

And so, the question is: Is this the way it works?++
I am going to answer: Yes. So that Tesol should, fundamentally be about basic information. Basic information that leads to basic ideas.
 Which will then bring us, as unavoidable as is the sulphorous stench upon Lucifer's slags , to......


                                           

  

                 Join us+++ next time, for: Ideas in Tesol (2): The Whichfinder Specific !!


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

* Although, you probably shouldn't. But by putting it to one side, it is also still here.

** By they I mean us.

*** But probably shouldn't.

# Including the other animals.

+ It is interesting to note that, because communication is basically always: Info ----> Idea, we must necessarily make sentences basically as follows:
                           1. Information  -------------------------------------------------------> 2. Idea
                                                    3, Description/explanation of connection

   For example:  1. This            --------------------------------------------------------> 2. a chair
                                                     3. is

Again, to emphasise the point. nobody thinks in terms of SVO. So why is it taught that way?



++ And if it isn't, then how does it work, would you say?

+++ Obviously, I'm saying this for my three regular readers, only one of whom is fictional.++++

++++ And none of whom are directly involved with Tesol. You see, one fascinating thing I have discovered about trying to discuss these things is that, generally,  people outside Tesol, and more broadly, outside education are more likely to be willing to discuss these ideas.

      Here are some genuine reactions from people involved with education/Tesol:

(School manager to me (angrily) : "I don't have to explain anything to you!"

(University Tesol teacher to me (in a personal e-mail) : "I will never read your blog!"

(Manager at the largest provider of private education in the world, on being asked by myself as to what is their definition of education): "Who the fuck has a definition of education?"

(More than one person on being asked to consider the most basic way communication works):
"I think if we understood how communication works we would lose the magic"

(Ofsted - UK Office of standards in education, on being asked, by e-mail, for their definition of education): "Ofsted does not have a definition of education."

(University lecturer in Communication on being asked, on his blog, if Info--->Idea might be a better way of looking at things): "..........." (no response)

(Ofsted - UK Office of standards in education, on being asked, by e-mail, how they manage to measure standards in education when they have no clear idea about what it is): "........" (no response).

(Manager of private company that has the task of finding volunteers from the local community to help children to read on being asked by myself, by e-mail, why they they refused my mum's application simply because she hadn't been to university (I assured them that she had taught me to read and reads very well, herself)): "........." (no response).

(Japanese Publisher of text-books when responding to my pitch of a basic text-book explaining how communication basically works with the title being: コミュニケーション道　(The way of Communication): "I don't want communication in the title".
Me: "Why not"
Pub. "It's too vague."
Me:" But the point of the book is to make it clearer."
Pub. "....." (No response.)

(TED representative on being asked to explain why "communication is basically the only thing we ever do"* is not an idea worth sharing): "....." (no reponse).

etc,etc.

* I think it is an idea worth sharing, but I have often been frustrated in my efforts to do so. My own idea from this information is that I should try harder.

    

"The task is not to see what has never been seen before, but to think what has never been thought before about what you see everyday."

Erwin Schrodinger

A whale is a tree; obviously.

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.

Jonah-not the Biblical one

    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:

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:

                                          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?
                     

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.                                                                                   

The Jack of Tars and The King of Eggs: Luke's Cool Hand.

Something from Nothing

           The 1967 movie Cool Hand Luke tells the story of a man sent to prison for drunkenly decapitating parking meters. The main character, played by Paul Newman, is a decorated military veteran who, much to the amazement of the prison Captain, came out of the army the same rank he went in as: buck private.
             The governer, this man in authority and pillar of society, wonders what to make of this cheek to the natural order, this flagrant...


  The natural order, like any information, can be connected to any number of ideas. If you have done well in one particular system it is only natural for your internal dialogue to result in the scaffolding of one's ego: I have earned my place rightfully and truly, I deserve my rewards.  The uncomfortable nature of an alternative reality where men might follow other gods must be kept safely outside the walls of one's own mental Spandau.*

  The prisons we choose to live inside, to use Doris Lessing's great phrase, are designed to keep other ideas and information out whilst the regimented inmates that are our own thoughts are fed and watered and kept just happy enough to stay in line.
   Among the chickens of Luke's jail, The cock of the inmates is a big old rooster called, most suitably, Dragline; as his position within the system serves to keep that same system on a flat, nonthreatening plane:
Dragline: You don't listen much, do you boy?
Luke:     Ain't heard much worth listening to, a lot of guys laying down a lot of rules and regulations.
  The dumbfounded reaction of the other inmates to this bare-faced explanation of their reality expounded bare-faced to their immediate authority captures the ever-present fear of better communication that must be fostered to ensure that mental walls stay solid.

             New Inmate:    "How'd you get that scar?"

           Veteran Inmate:"What scar?"     

       During the day the prisoners must work. Watching over them is the man with no eyes who can see everything. He has the power of life and death yet denies those under him the possibility of human communication. He is known as Boss Godfrey.

      Inmate: "Don't he ever talk?"
    
     (Boss Godfrey shoots down a bird.)

      Luke:   "I think he just did."

     At the same time, there is the usual self-imposed hierarchy that people often feel is necessary to construct in an institution. When a new inmate is tricked into purchasing a better job for a dollar, a job which doesn't exist, complaining to a guard causes him to spend a night in the box; the tiny solitary confinement cell.
      As usual, people taking advantage of an unjust hierarchy must talk themselves into accepting the status quo*:

      Dragline: "They got their rules-ain't got nothing to do with that....he gotta  learn                    the rules."

     Luke:      "Yeah, them poor old bosses need all the help they can get."



    Another day on the job and the inmates are blessed with the visitation of an angel. A young woman washes her car, caressing hose and soaping the body in such a fashion as to pleasantly torture the men. Luke observes that, as she's fully aware of her effect, this angel is the Devil.
     Dragline, obsessed with his fantasy of the girl is annoyed when Luke brings him out of it and back to the grab-ass reality of the prison. He can not allow another's reality to interfere with the carefully constructed walls of his own mental compound and so responds with the basic animal communication that all humans are programmed with:

                          Direct, easy to understand, communication.  
  
         Dragline gets his anger out. One punch and Luke is down. The other inmates are pleased and reassured to see the old order reassert itself. Luke, however, looks up at Dragline- all powerful with a sun-halo and sees his tormentor. He sees the shadow of the shackles. He refuses to stay down and keeps getting up and getting punished until even Dragline realises he shouldn't be punishing him anymore. 
    The Bosses are unnerved by this show of defiance. Boss Godfrey, cradling his cane like a shepherd's crook sees an awful vision of his charges losing their sense of place.

    Game play has always provided freedom from the mundane, and the inmates turn to the poker table for some not-so-cheap thrills. Luke produces a rabbit from a hat and earns the respect of Dragline:


      
   Whereas a man might have a cross around his neck, Luke wears a bottle opener. Not trusting in a man who was tortured to death long ago, Luke's charm is a symbol of practical, personal, salvation.

        "Sometimes I wish people was like dogs, Luke. Comes a day...the bitch don't recognise the pups no more. She don't have no hopes or love to give her pain."   
   Here, Luke's mother expresses the human dilemma. Beyond the other animals, our imagination allows us to see the possibility of something different, of something better. Locked into this system, a certain amount of sadness and sorrow is inevitable. We are, of course, much better off not creating unnecessary sadness and sorrow, but as dogs in human bodies while largely being unaware of it we look for the safe kennel and the regard of our master; and calmly piss on the hopes of others; hardly noticing or caring.
      It's no surprise that dogs*** have no gods, but we do. They are an inevitable, and necessary, part of the conversation:

                         
             
                  "He wasn't much for stickin' around- but he made me laugh."

      Humour, like anything, is most basically communication. A novel idea triggers something inside us, it stimulates our pleasure centres. A new idea born suddenly and without warning is its own reward.
       Funny is both peculiar and ha-ha. It has to be.

       One day, presented with the task of tarring a long stretch of road in baking heat, Luke produces the novel idea of completing the task as quickly as possible. "(The Boss) wants it-let's give it to him!"
    This playful subversion gives the men a sense of triumph in adversity, the idea of personal power over the system. The inmates end the day laughing as the Bosses are forced to truck them early back to the prison.
      Boss Godfrey is not laughing.

      Luke's creativity provides the prisoners with more joy when he offers to eat 50 hard-boiled eggs in an hour. An impossible task it seems, so much so that Dragline can make a killing on bets as even the chef and the floor-walker are drawn into the magic. Everybody is convinced that nobody can eat 50 eggs. Luke does so and thereby provides the inmates with a miracle: the idea of magic.
      This act of creativity, like any act of creativity, is a function of communication, and better communication gives better creativity. But the better communication Luke wishes for most is walled in by the resistance of Boss Godfrey to simple human interaction and the resistance of God to engage with an eager Luke. As Lightning threatens him in a storm, Luke implores:"Kill me, just let me know you're up there!" There is no answer from God, so Luke acknowledges that he is "Just standing in the rain, talking to myself."

    The desire for better communication with God is paralleled by the worse communication that the humans are carrying out. When Luke's mother dies he is denied the chance to attend her funeral and, to make sure he doesn't think of escaping in order to say his last goodbyes, he is granted only a night in the box.
     The boss who puts him in there whitewashes his own compound walls with: "Sorry Luke, Just doing my job." In answer to which Luke points out that abrogation of personal responsibility is no get out of jail free card: "Calling it your job don't make it right." 


     Pushed beyond what he is prepared to take, he runs. And the hounds are sent after him. In an interesting example of the gerrymandering of cause and effect that protects the boundaries of our ideas, the dog handler who is mourning his hound who has died of exhaustion exclaims: "Look what he done to Blue!"
    

　　　When the escaped prisoner is returned, we are allowed to see the most basic blueprint of the prison. The shackles, indeed all punishment, is applied for own's own good. Humour, one of the most useful tools of those who wish to express different ideas, must also wear leg-irons:
      

   
     

    Unjust power stuctures must necessarily inhibit communication to survive, even while they are expressing how important communication is. A feat of misdirection that relies on the audiences inability to understand how things really work.

     When Luke runs again he is free for months and sends the inmates a magazine that shows a photo of himself and two showgirls. Eventually he is returned to jail badly beaten but, even before he has stopped bleeding, the men demand more details of the girls. Their fantasy comes crashing down when Luke tells them it was all a fake.
     Fantasy can sustain a human being even as our lives are being hung drawn and quartered by those who are telling us we are suffering from an excess of innards. The prisoners hate the reality of Luke being battered into submission by the bosses. Instead of sympathy there is dismissal and anger, as a happy illusion is beaten into dust.

     With Luke subservient, Boss Godfrey finally deigns to speak: "Go fetch it Luke." The man has been reduced to a dog.

     It is only with one last human creative surge that Luke makes his final bid for freedom, inspiring Dragline to scale his own mental walls and come along.
    Entering a church alone Luke attempts another dialogue with God:
                "You made me like I am, where am I supposed to fit in?"

   Once again there is no response, and Luke arrives at the most basic idea that comes from  the silence of God: "I guess I gotta find my own way."

              At which point, the tempter arrives in the shape of Dragline, who has negotiated with the bosses who are waiting outside the church. They have promised that Luke won't be hurt. Dragline offers the comfort that lies in denying ourselves and submitting to the will of others, available for the usual price:
                                    "All you gotta do is give up."

         To give up on better communication is, however to deny the way the universe works.

           Ideas inevitably follow information. No information has only one idea.

           A bullet to the head is both excellent communication and terrible communication.

           It is up to us to decide which idea is better.



           Finally. Dragline, once a man kept low by rules and regulations acknowledges the effect that Luke had upon him: "A real world-shaker."
           Where once there was just the drag of the line, a whole lotta nothin', there is now the permanent smiling idea of something better.

           And ideas are bullet proof.           

 

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

* Or, if you prefer, one's own mental Spandau Ballet.+

** Certainly, some find it more difficult  than others.

*** I have sometimes been accused of putting dogs down (that is to say, criticising them, rather than euthanising them ) by making this kind of comparison. So, if you are a dog, and you're reading this thinking: "Rubbish! Dog-kind has a rich tapestry of religious cultures that are unknown to humans!" Then please write and let me know.++

+ Which, if true, could possibly be better expressed as: one's own mental mental Spandau Ballet.

++Or possibly you may wish to keep Dog culture a secret so you can continue to do this kind of thing when our backs are turned:

God is not dead; He's just Regenerating.

 

                                      Regeneration scene of the 3rd God.


         Ever since He appeared in his first adventure thousands of years ago on Saturday the 23rd November*, God has been a hugely popular character thanks to his mastery of time and space, his interactions with his mainly human companions and, of course, his battles with the evil of the universe. Spanning the generations as parents pass on their love of Him to their children, His fans continue to praise and laud the show whilst arguing over the finer details of the stories. It's not surprising that a story as long in the telling as that of God's has often had armies of fans disagreeing over what is or isn't canon.
         A lot of the problem's in God's continuity come from the simple fact that His stories had so many writers in the early days. Also, this was a long time before the modern concept of a showrunner. Consequently, certain of His episodes seem to directly contradict another and it is also widely acknowledged that a lot of the earliest episodes were simply wiped, as archivists of the time had little inkling of how much continuing interest there would be in the future.
        However, thanks to the efforts of His many fans, including many of the professionals who have worked on the show, we now have a generally accepted continuity for the God-universe.**
      
       The first complete episode, entitled Ahura Mazda, introduced the basic story concepts that people still love today. God appears as the guardian of justice and wastes no time telling the humans he encounters of the errors of their ways. His seemingly magical ability to appear anywhere in time and space quickly caught the imaginations of people far and wide, but it was  the climax of the first episode that really had audiences eager for more. For God chose a human companion to help him in his adventures.

                                                  Zarathustra. He Spake.
        

          It was with the introduction of Zarathustra*** as the first companion that the show really took off. Now, the viewing public could identify with a character whose general demeanor appealed to many, while that same character would pull off the dramatic feat of explaining the main character while keeping the main character compulsively elusive.
       In the second episode, entitled Asha,  Zarathustra would utter the immortal lines: "No guide is known who can shelter the world from woe, None who knows what moves and works Thy lofty plans." With this one line was established the show's long tradition of dramatic legerdemain. The star of the show is brought into focus whilst, at the same time, it is inferred that He remains too bright, too majestic to allow anyone a long, close examination. The characterisation of the 1st God was also vague enough to open the door for many other writers to bring their own interpretation. And one of those writers, the brilliant creative spark Ibrahim Millat, would stun the audience by not only kicking down the door, but demolish the entire house as he introduced the concept of Regeneration, and a new  God.
 
   
     Millat's genius lay in performing story surgery that, although commonplace today, was breathtaking in its audacity at the time. Very simply, Millat retconned the origins of the main character to include scenes and concepts that had never been mentioned before. Suddenly, people were presented with such overwhelmingly operatic scenes as the creation of the world and, in the hugely popular The Ark in Earth, the destruction of mankind! 
      The  audience went mad for this second regeneration of God. Gone was the rather vague and occasionally dotty grandfather figure of previous series, and in came a much more three-dimensional character who was only too pleased to inform all and sundry, in writing if necessary, of what exactly was what, and what the rules were. He strode the stage because he owned it. He was both the good cop and the bad cop in the same uniform . There can be few more compelling characters in history, and the audience simply couldn't get enough of it.
      The Genesis episodes are the bedrock on which the Classic Era of God was built. It was this story arc that brought in a huge number of new fans, but it is the excellence of individual episodes such as Count The Stars, Eyes Ne'er Closed; Eyes Ne'er Opened, and the legendary Sturm und Drang of the 2nd God classic And He Called that really ensured that people's passions would be stirred by this new series of God as never before.

Classic era 2nd God companion Abraham.

        In Count The Stars, God promises that He will give wonderful gifts to Abraham and his family, and that Abraham's offspring would be as numerous as the stars in the night sky. This might seem laughable to a modern viewer, but for the viewers at the time, who all identified with Abraham, this episode was a sensation with some fan groups immediately declaring it: best episode ever.  
        This kind of attitude toward the, admittedly hackneyed, story-line has coloured it in the eyes of many fans of newer era God. However, although it has slipped down the best-of polls over the years, the continuing popularity of Abraham ensures its core compelling images will endure.
        Ibraham Millat's tenure would also see the introduction of God's most famous adversary in  Eyes ne'er closed; Eyes ne'er opened. Who could forget the great tragedy of the 2nd God's companions Adam and Eve succumbing to the machinations of The Adversary having cunningly adopted the guise of a Squamate?
       Although first appearing in Genesis, the character of The Adversary would prove to be God's finest foil, and an enduring love/hate character. Taking various forms through the history of the show, many critics believe his dramatic high-point occurred with John Milton's celebrated ret-conning of the evil one's origin story, showing a largely unexplored relationship with God that the adversary had in his youth; a revelation that excited fans the world over.
        The entirety of the classic era of the show has been criticised for over-reliance on violence, war-stories and simplistic moral shading. An episode as once revered as And He Called, 
is often ridiculed for the way its dramatic pay-offs are clearly engineered to appeal to the audience of the time, an audience that the writers of the show knew kept them in the life-style that they had grown accustomed to.    
       It is this kind of ouroborosian pact that ensured that, at the end of its run, the classic-era God would feel increasingly stale and repetitive, with episodes like My Holiday and Stew being sad echoes of former glories like Bowels Boiled.+
        And it would also be a reaction to the old cycles of violence that would see a new group of writers take the 3rd generation of God into exciting and experimental territory.

 

The watcher appears to Mary in this scene from the first episode of The Gospel Era

        Gospel era God kicks off with the announcement of its own incredible dramatic conceit in a scene with one of God's Watcher companions announcing to a human female that she is to bear the son of God.
        At the time, a lot of the audience were confused by this new story line. Indeed, some fans would abandon the show at this point. Others would simply remain unconvinced of the validity of this 3rd regeneration.
        As usual, it would be the strength of the writing that would win over new converts, with many viewers stunned by the magnificent first 2-parter of the Gospel era:  The House of Bread/ The House of Meat
      In a deliberate shift in narrative tone, the new God, unlike the old, was extremely vulnerable at first, and it was not at all clear to the audience that He would even survive. Viewers gasped as the maniacally infanticidal, but hugely popular, new villain Herod went about his grisly business.
      This bloody rampage allowed the creative team the necessary breathing-room to spin a series of quiet contemplative episodes concerning the new God. Whereas the classic era indulged in Manichean power plays, the gospel era began to challenge its audience as they followed the new God's struggles with the authorities' natural conservatism. Episodes such as The Universe Next Door, introduced new themes while the spectacular return of The Adversary in All The Kingdoms of the World kept up the more expected story-telling traditions of God. 
        What also drew fans' interest were the new companions known as The Apostles. Not only were people impressed by their number, they were excited by the 3rd God granting these companions super-powers of authority over all devils in 5+2=5000. (Although we are also clearly reminded in the same episode of His own mighty abilities.)
        Of course, Gospel era God reached its incredible and beloved climax with the story arc known as A Crossmaker.
       Starting with scenes of great optimism as He enters Jerusalem, where it looks as though the 3rd God is finally being triumphant in his battles, the writers are simply setting the audience up for the devastating events to follow. Slowly and surely, the world slips from under Him as parochial powers do their worst, and he is betrayed by those who were once most dear to Him in the heart-rending episode 30 Easy Pieces.
       Even some 2000 years later, the events that unfold in A Place of a Skull have a resonance that only the finest story-telling can manufacture. It is not difficult, even at this remove, to imagine the effect on fans of seeing the 3rd God mocked, spat upon and finally horribly tortured to death. As a character who had promised something more than the oft dull cul-de-sacs of the 2nd God, to then see him destroyed without that same 2nd God materialising to save him would, could, only draw great and sustained passion from the audience.
        The following episode would be much more traditionally exciting and action-oriented, although certain critics see it as being a sop to certain groups of fans. The Harrowing of Hell  remains controversial to this day.

     The penultimate episode of the Gospel-era would see the writers bring out the twist that people remember and celebrate even today: the 3rd God came back from the dead. The plot of Carry thy Myrrh Home has often been criticised as muddled and a convenient deus ex sepulcrum.   It was this episode, however, along with the following The Key of the Bottomless Pit that made a great many fans proclaim the 3rd God and the entire Gospel-era to be the best ever. 

       

        After the Gospel era, the next high point in a time when the show seemed, far from resting on them but actively cultivating bigger and better laurels, came from the creative partnership of  The Council of Nicaea producing one of the all-time favourite episodes: The 2 Gods which was the first adventure to show 2 regenerations of God together. Later writers would build on this work to produce the The 3 Gods, which was the dramatically logical culmination of the earlier adventure. 

Mecca at the time of Muhammad. (Muhammad not pictured.)

     
       
        The next great sustained period of God would come about when the new creative partnership of Praise and Desire took over. Immediately, they ret-conned the 3rd God and proceeded to take the show in a new  direction that would eventually prove immensely popular. As well as the 4th God, the new regeneration's new companion Muhammad also gained legions of fans, and the writers used the superb dramatic conceit of this being God's final regeneration to great effect.
        Many new fans were drawn in by Muhammad's many scenes where he would explain his own conversations with God in newer quieter episodes like: Shahada as well as the crowd-pleasing and reassuring Zakat. Also, as there was a general insistence to respect the work of Ibrahim Mittal and a debt owing to some of Zarathustra's stories, fans of other Gods were  often also charmed by these episodes.
        It was also during this period that more hard-core fans would be inspired by the episode Hajj to set up the first regular fan convention where people can happily mingle in costume with kindred spirits who also share a love of God.
       However, older fans, and many hard-core devotees of the 2nd God, would find much more of interest in the 4th God's adventures when the Mother of All Settlements story-arc began to catch fire as it gradually adopted more aggressive themes. Here, Muhammad's trials, battles and eventual success would provide compelling viewing, especially in episodes like Conquest of the House of God.
        With quality like this, it was no wonder that so many fans happily submitted to the Recitation-era of the 4th God.
       

      Although starting brightly with the 4 part Rashidun, the Caliphate-era adventures that featured the 4th regeneration of God and the Caliph companions would ultimately prove disappointing. The seeds of the potential fascinating story-arcs which may be glimpsed in Rashidun went largely unfulfilled as successive teams of writers simply started repeating dramatic themes from both earlier and later God stories, often with a paticular emphasis on the 11th God.

5th regeneration: The War God.

      In order to get back on track and excite the audience again, writers came up with the 5th regeneration, who is often referred to as The War God.
      His first appearance in Dieu Et Mon Droit established the general tone of what would become known as The Martian arc, the lengthiest story arc of any of the Gods. It was in the climactic scenes of this episode that we can see how the 5th God's new companion Henry V offers the poisoned grail directly to the audience with his Elysian promise of "we few, we happy few, we band of brothers".       
       It would be this poisoned grail that would turn wine to blood and bread to burned flesh. It would be one of the most popular runs of God.
       The War God would be insanely popular for the next few hundred years that would include some of God's most violent stories, including the massively experimental 11,349 part The New World.

       When the 5th God finally regenerated into The 6th God (also known as The British God), viewers were treated to the full debut of Science as a regular companion to God. Having appeared in bit parts since the very start of the show, it is surprising now to consider just how angry many fans felt at Science being given a major part. Fortunately, thanks to story-lines concocted by the likes of Isaac Newton, who cleverly played out challenging new themes with old-school images from classic episodes such as Eyes Ne'er Closed, Eyes Ne'er Opened, Science's role in the show only went from strength to strength.

Joseph Smith- young writing talent.

       The characterisation of the 6th God was never as strong as it might have been, and in the 19th Century fandom was split as the very young Joseph Smith assumed writing duties on the series. Bringing fresh new ideas and what certain commentators considered to be a bold and hugely entertaining new approach, Smith's 7th God episodes would prove tremendously popular with some, while others, annoyed by Smith actually writing himself in as a companion, would sniffily dismiss these episodes as fan fiction. Whatever you think, it's hard to deny the genius of an episode like Returned To an Angel .

Fred und Karl: Young Turks.

       Although the thirst for new episodes of God showed no strong signs of diminishing, experimental and highly controversial episodes written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche would lay the groundwork for new approaches to God as the 20th Century rolled around.
       This pair of writers had previously only shown contempt for the show, so it was a big surprise when they both wrote a couple of episodes. Unsurprisingly, Marx's Alien Nation, and Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra would usher in new directions for God, with Nietzche's episode famously ret-conning the old Zarathustra adventures as both stories laid down themes that would have a profound influence on the writers and producers of God for the next hundred years.
       As a reaction to these themes, the writer Peter Keys would ensure that the regeneration of the 8th God would result in a more traditional main character for the show. The 8th God's relationship with his new companions The Leiter Brothers and certain fascinating episodes like The City in The City ensured a solid foundation for the adventures of the 8th God that would reach their apex with what was to come.
     
        The long Martian Arc would eventually culminate in the famous and shocking 249 part story of The 5 War Gods. Astonishingly, but grippingly, the 9th regeneration: The God that Failed would align itself with the 6th God as well as an antimatter version of the 6th God to do battle with the 8th God that had forged an alliance with the 10th regeneration: The God Emperor.
        Fans of the classic era flocked back to the show, but this story burnt so brightly that only a new direction, using new dramatic fuel, could possibly keep the audience's interest.

Plenty of interest: the 11th God, Mammon.

          The simple fact that the 11th regeneration of the long-running and beloved character is Mammon causes hackles to rise far and wide throughout the fan community. Clearly, a lot of the controversy results from the fact that a character that looked a lot like, and even shared the name Mammon was introduced in one of the 3rd God's adventures: The 2 Masters.
          But it is exactly this controversial energy that writers have used to such amazing effect, in order to pull off one of the greatest narrative feats in history. In short, large parts of the audience and even some of the writers seem to be unaware that Mammon, is, in fact the 11th God!
          It was thanks to the elements of The 5 War Gods, the confusion about whether The War God himself should be counted as the 5th regeneration, and whether The Antimatter War God was, in himself a new regeneration, that a potential dramatic smoke-screen blew up around continuity that later writers would seize upon.
          Margaret Thatcher, writing at a time when female presences were very rare in the production of the show, produced a lot of popular episodes including the famed The Price of Everything and The Value of Nothing, but it is probably the less well-known Managed Decline, that exemplifies a lot of her basic philosophy about the character. Some argue that a large part of Thatcher's skill with the 11th God was due to her own mis-reading of the character, so that her own ideas were never in synch with the reality of the story that played out, resulting in stories that made little sense and often polarised fans even while they made for compelling viewing.
        
        Excellent writers such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins also provided popular and challenging episodes for the show, but both Hitchens' Toxic Medicine and Dawkins' The Naked Leprechaun put the companion Science so front and centre, that the true nature of the relationship between Science and the 11th God lacks clarity and can leave viewers with the impression that the 11th God isn't even part of the show, just part of the scenery. 
     
        Never topping any polls, but those fans who love it maintain that it has changed their entire relationship with the show, is the recent story arc Morningstar. Here, writers such as Aleister Crowley, Anton LaVey and Charlie Daniels built on the earlier work of Marx and Nietzsche and ret-conned the entire history of The Adversary. The most popular episodes, Crowley's Count The Stars (+1) and LaVey's The Best Friend of God, while not widely loved, have their own devoted fans. Some fan groups even go as far as to insist that The Adversary has been the star of the show from the beginning.
       
        With increasing amounts of ret-conning, and the flurry of new themes, it is easy to sympathise with those who complain that the show is becoming increasingly difficult to watch. Indeed, new viewers can be bewildered by the sheer volume of back-story, although, as it ever was, audience members usually retain a great deal of nostalgic affection for the first God they enjoyed.

        But, as God himself said in The City in The City: "That is enough of the past. What of the future?"

The Universe (possibly.) - The 12th God?

         Increasingly derided as a story for children, if the show is to continue to be popular it must do what it has always done; innovate and evolve while retaining the beating heart that fans the world-over love. There has been talk of ideas like a female God as well as discussion as to whether the show is becoming stale enough to warrant the end of its run. 
        
         Here's what the British-Indian physicist and cultural critic (and God fan since she was a little girl)  Wash Sukh Jana has to say on the subject of The 12th God:

                 As an 8 year old watching the adventures of God (from behind the back of the Sofa, of course), I loved all the classic themes of Love and sacrifice; of fighting for your land and your loved ones, and standing up for what you truly believed in. I cowered as the monsters threatened our heroes (The Adversary's wings! The Leviathan's wake!), but it was when the stories centered upon the young (female!) companion called Science that the show really began to speak to me. And it is now, as an adult, that I can see that across the totality of all the adventures of God there is one huge story arc. I would expect the 12th God to reflect this, and, as the story of God would be nothing without revelation, I would expect something big from the adventures of this regeneration.

    　　I'm a fan, so here's my theory: Each regeneration of God has allowed us a glimpse at different facets of what, obviously, is the same character. We know that He is the Lord Of Time and Space who helps and loves humans, yet is often mysteriously unable to help in certain times and places. We know that He drifts from Father to Mother to Son to Ghost to Adversary and seldom provides any clear statement about what all of this might ultimately mean. He embraces science and he embraces war. We complain about Him as much as we love Him.
       In short then, we can conclude that God is the universe.
       Now, as we all are part of the universe, this necessarily means that we are all aspects of God. Like the character of Science, our increasing understanding of God is our increasing understanding of the universe. Like Science, and her character arc with God, our science is basically an increasingly fruitful conversation with the universe, with our interlocutor being, at times, irascible, mean, vicious, unbearable, nightmarish, horrific, comforting, extraordinary, miraculous and occasionally incredibly taciturn. Now, does that sound like anyone we know?
       With God as the universe there will certainly never be any shortage of future episodes. After all, the most basic way the universe works is what allows so many ideas about God; what allows Him to regenerate and pushes for the inevitable change that provides us with new stories. It is the way things work.
       For that basic gift, we can thank God. Whichever one may be your favourite.
          

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


*  According to legend the original broadcast was delayed by the untimely slaying of a beloved goat.

** Often referred to by fans as: The Universe.

*** Or Zoroaster, as some fans prefer.

+ Contains the now-classic line from The Adversary: "Bowels boiled hot, bowels boiled cold,  bowels boiled in the pot, nine years old!"