Silk Roads

When I was around seven years old, my friend Andrew told me about his father’s plan.  Back then, more than seventy years ago, his father worked for the Great Western Railway in the UK.  Apparently, one of the perks of his position was that he could have one long instance travel trip per year, in his holiday.  He could go from London to York, or to one of the railways stations in Devon or Cornwall.  Andrew told me that his dad had never taken one of these trips, but was saving them up:  when he retired he was going to travel from Paris to Moscow, and from there go on the Trans-Siberian railway all the way across to Vladivostok.

The trip by rail from Moscow would be 9,289 kms on the ‘Rosslya’ could be completed in some 7-10 days.  First class travel was labelled ‘SV’, private two berth compartments, and the train would offer samovars for hot water, dining cars, and attendants.  However, Andrew’s dad would take longer, stopping at various places along the way.  His itinerary included such exotic paces as Kirov, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, and Belgogorsk, with a side route that could take you to Ulaan Baatar and Beijing.

Well, that was it!  For the next few years, it was my plan too, although I had no ideas at to how to accomplish it.  At the time I learnt about it, the train was far less sophisticated than the current express, but I was convinced I would love it, despite any hardship.  However, what I didn’t realises at the time, it also was the start of a lifelong fascination with travel outside of Europe, and especially in Asia.  Of course, fascination is one thing, and being able to realise it is another, and when, some 30 years later, I began regular visits to North East and South East Asia, my travel was by air, and train journeys forgotten.  All of that was reawakened when I received a copy of a book about the Silk Road, and the exotic civilisations and countries strung out across that route.

 Back in 2002, Frances Wood published The Silk Road, a Folio Society volume.  It was lavishly illustrated, full of fascinating information, and, in some ways, a bit like a pirates’ treasure chest in that it was full of intriguing tidbits.  She begins by telling us that the silk road is “one of the most evocative of names, conjuring visions of camels laden with bales of luxurious brocades and diaphanous silks in all the colours of the rainbow.”  She quotes from James Elroy Flecker’s poem, The Golden Journey to Samarkand:

When those long caravans that cross the plain

With dauntless feet and sound of silver bells

Put forth no more for glory of for gain

Take no more solace from the palm-girt well.

Yes, this is about the distant, exotic world of the East – at least as we imagine it.  It has played a role in history over centuries, from Marco Polo to 18^th Century European explorers.  However, Frances Wood does a good job of keeping our feet on the ground, telling us that Silk Road was “only coined in 1877 by the German explorer and geographer Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen” (no, not the same one Snoopy was constantly engaging in aerial combat!).

Wood’s book is both engaging and frustrating.  She deftly introduces figures, place, events, and people from the many countries and centuries of Silk Road history.  However, each chapter leaves the reader wanting more, often because the accompanying illustrations are rather like postcards capturing moments in the past that deserve a whole book for each era and group that is depicted.  There is more to the story than this, however, because the image of the Silk Road is also concerned with luxury, riches, items distinctive and special, with luxury merchandise and access to what is exotic.  However, she also reminds us that there are many parts of the Silk Road that go through inhospitable terrain, with mountains, deserts, extreme weather, and frequently days with limited access to anything more than very basis food and drink.  Some days in parts of the journey there is the likelihood of bitter winds, and snow and ice, while at other stages the challenges come from heat, aridity, and isolation.  Now train travel is more like a rather special adventure, but not that long before it was risky and uncertain.  Does it mean we now see the Silk Road as rather exciting, even desirable?

Having read Frances Wood’s book, the Silk Road began to occupy a place in my thinking, and for reasons that I can’t quite explain, I began to wonder about making that cross-continental tri, but the other way round, beginning in Japan (well, OK, starting in Japan, next popping up to Vladivostok and then continuing on from there as my real starting point).  To begin in Japan wasn’t entirely without reason, as that would fit in with another of my fantasies, which was to buy my tickets in Tokyo, and commence this travel saga with a visit to the Mitsukoshi store in Nikonbashi, where I’d be able to purchase travel books, luggage, suitable clothing, cameras and binoculars and more!

Why the Mitsukoshi store?  Well, it is one of Japan’s finest retailers.  It is claimed to be the first store of its kind.  It had started trading in 1673 as a kimono store, until 1904 when it changed had change to become Japan’s first department store.  It is simply stunning.  It is huge, with two large lion statues at the main entrance (since 1914), and the ‘Statue of Sincerity’, an 11 metre wooden goddess in the centre of the building. Italian marble walls showing Mesozoic ammonite fossils surround the floors, combines with luxurious fixtures and fittings including high vaulted ceilings and a pipe organ that is played every week!  It appeals to the nostalgic in a country that revers traditions, although I read that just recently, Mitsukoshi advised the public that each of its department stores will abolish the ‘issuance of receipt by handwriting on Sunday, February 1, 2026.’  Plus ca change!

Clearly, travelling the Silk Road has to begin at Mitsukoshi Nihonbashi.  However, after dealing with a change in starting point and direction, the next issue is that we have to address is the fact the Silk Road isn’t what it once might have appeared to be: today, we know it is all about ‘Roads’.  This was made dramatically clear in 2015 when Peter Frankopan published The Silk Roads – and the key point was the ‘s’ at the end of the tile.  Ambitious, exciting, and for many academics frustrating, what Frankopan did was to help readers see there were new ways to look at the history of the past 2,000 years or more.  To put it simply, he wanted his readers to set aside the traditional view of Europeans that our world emerged from the Egyptians, followed by the Greeks, followed by the Romans.  He challenged this ‘Eurocentric’ view and suggests that the centre of the world was to be found further to the east, in the Caucasus, or in Iran, or even in those places often referred to as the “stans”.

The silk roads he describes are a complex series of trade, transport and migration paths along which people, goods, ideas, religions, disease and much else has flowed.   If Richthofen’s term the “silk road” is relatively recent,  Frankopan uses his term to describe a complex set of routes between China and the Mediterranean Sea, many of which which run through several of the world’s most disturbed and dangerous countries.  Christopher Marlowe called Persia/Iran “the middle of the world” back in 1587 but Frankopan goes much further back.  He notes that 2,000 years ago, as he depicts it, Chinese silks were worn by the Carthaginian elite, wealthy Iranians used Provencal pottery, and Indian spices found their way into Afghan and Roman cuisine.

The transfers were always in both directions.  Alexander’s military campaigns led him to the east, and  brought Greek culture to the Indus valley, as a result of which the Buddha was given a recognisably Greek form and Buddhist sculpture became popular. Christianity spread along the silk roads under the Romans. Islam more obviously did so, too. Scientific advances, philosophical ideas and much else was cross-fertilised by exposure across the east and west.

Not everything was beneficial however, and violence was a regular accompaniment for the traveller .  Frankopan documents the rise of the Mongols, who wreaked havoc as they went, and other chapters cover the spread of the Slavs and the rise of the Rus, as well as later sections documenting British and American meddling that had first been evident since the 19th century.  If his focus is on looking east he makes some salutary points.   The spread of the plague from Asia into Europe decimated Europe’s population, but he notes that because there were fewer workers, the price of labour rose, wealth was spread (a little) more evenly and as a consequence the resulting cultural acceleration of the Renaissance was enabled.

The Silk Roads is sub-titled ‘A New History of the World’.  It wasn’t an ideal choice of words.  Rather it might be better thought of a a corrective to most Western histories, offering insights and facts about some of the events taking place in Asia.  However, we are still awaiting an equally compelling history of the world to appear, one that also embraces Africa and Southern America.  Despite this and within its limits, it is an account that, as one reviewer put it, “is full of intriguing insights and some fascinating details.”  Among other comments he offers a salutary and important argument in support of the view that today the centre of global importance is shifting back to the East, as the international focus moving away from the Western-centric view which has been true of the last few centuries.

 Overall, The Silk Roads consists of 25 thematic chapters that set out to reframe one key part of global history by focusing on the region connecting the East and the West (as we term them), specifically Central Asia.  It examines early trade networks, before moving on to chart the spread of major religions, especially early Christianity’s reach and the rise of Islam.  As we move into later centuries, economics and politics become central, with the interaction between major powers, and growing trade across the steppes and into Northern Europe.  However, politics soon dominate, and we read about the Crusades and European dominance, on side side of the region, and Mongol expansions on the other.

Somehow the story becomes darker, with the impact of the great plague and the rise of new wealth, the latter a result of changing trade dynamics, imperial expansion, and shifting power blocs in the late 19th/early 20th century.  Alas, now Frankopan’s account becomes rather more familiar to many of his readers, with World War I, political compromise, genocide, and the ‘miserable’ ideological conflicts of the 20^th Century.

Professional historians have been rather.critical, perhaps unkindly so, as Frankopan was clearly writing for a broad audience.  According to one anthropologist and archaeologist, each chapter’s heading is highly intriguing: almost every one starts with ‘The Road to/of.  He adds that “Frankopan masterfully balances history with literature, so that the book is accessible even to those who are unfamiliar with history.”  Just so, and that’s a real strength.

Some commentators have concluded that the advent of the Silk Road caused countries to seek shared interests, often doing so as a result of exploitation and a lack of collaboration among European countries.  Certainly, in both East and West the rise fascism of reflected a change in the economic balance of power. In charting the shifting economic and political structure of Western countries, and in contrasting this with the Asian experience, Frankopan suggests the evidence can be seen as indicative of the weaknesses of the liberal democracy approach.

As some commentators have pointed out, Frankopan’s work can be seen as centrally concerned with the debate between Eurocentrism and non-Eurocentrism. Challenging Eurocentrism is amongst the biggest challenges in political economy, given so embedded are its assumptions that it is difficult to detach ourselves from the Eurocentric beliefs of western academics and commentators, not least with the dominant narrative of endogenous western development which emerged from the classic Orientalist distinction between the ‘rational’ West and ‘barbaric’ East.  Just as Edward Said’s Orientalism threw many assumptions into question, so by focusing on Persia and its contribution to the history of the world, Frankopan offers a fundamental and worthwhile assault on Eurocentrism through the re-orienting of world history away from a narrative justifying an inevitable Western emergence.

As Frankopan forges ahead with his re-assertion of the importance of Persia, commentators have observed opportunities are missed for his book to live up to its ambitious subtitle – to be ‘a new history of the world’, an oft-attempted and rarely achieved goal. As one reviewer suggested, if he had limited himself to simply detailing the history of the Persian world system – something he does with remarkable zeal, detail and passion – the scale of his ambition would have been met. But by striving for the world yet settling for just a fraction of the Eastern story of it, he has produced an incomplete world history but at least in doing so has made up for just some of the deficiencies in Eurocentrism.

The Silk Roads ends with the history of the modern-day Middle East. From this vantage point it becomes clear that this former heart of the world has become a bridge between, and product of, other powers – particularly the hegemonic West which, often inspired by Eurocentric assumptions, has remained heavily engaged in the region for more than a century. That this engagement has been either the product, or more contentiously the cause, of a troubled recent history for the region is well documented. Daily news reports still testify to the chaos across areas which once belonged to the Silk Roads.

However, Frankopan ends his volume with a surprisingly optimistic vision for the future of the region. ‘What we are witnessing,’ he claims, ‘are the birthing pains of a region that once dominated the intellectual, cultural and economic landscape and which is now re-emerging. We are seeing the signs of the world’s centre of gravity shifting – back to where it lay for millennia.’  It is a strong point, but having digested the latter portion of his 500-plus-page volume, it seems scarcely obvious that the countries which occupy the former Silk Roads will will ever become anything more than a bridge between the two focal points of geopolitical power: the established European and North American West, and the emerging Chinese and Indian East. It is far from clear that the power, patronage and prestige of seventh-century Baghdad are going to be repeated.

If an extremely unlikely situation, if I were to find myself to travelling on the Iron Road (rather than on a Silk Road), what would I see as I progressed from Vladivostok to Moscow?  Perhaps I’d do no more than notice the residues of once great centres, the remains of a focal region.  Or perhaps I would see that the middle, the crossing point between East and West, was beginning to rise again, and realise it is only our Eurocentrism, or our North American perspective, that is likely to ensure we are about to miss another iteration of the Silk Roads and their key role in human affairs.  Geomagnetic poles can reverse, and so can human affairs!

Arcadia

Why do some moments stick in our minds?  Often, they are memorable because they are both exceptional and unanticipated.  For me, one was in early March 1995 when the Melbourne Theatre Company’s production of Arcadia was on at the Playhouse Theatre in Melbourne.  Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia was written in 1993 and premiered at the Royal National Theatre in London on 13 April 1993.  It employs what is known as a diachronic narrative method: it is  an exploration of two stories set in the same country house, one charting the interaction between two modern academics, and the other concerned with the residents back in the early 19th century, including aristocrats, tutors and even the fleeting presence, unseen on stage, of Lord Byron.  In shifting back and forth between 1809 and the 1990s it touches on subjects from landscape gardening to thermodynamics to chaos theory.

The 1809 story focuses on an extraordinarily gifted 13-year-old Thomasina Coverly and her handsome tutor Septimus Hodge.  Stoppard imagines this precocious girl, Thomasina, was beginning to toy around with ideas of the laws of thermodynamics and mathematical theory.  This topic is balanced by the 20th century story, in which a university professor, Bernard Nightingale and author Hannah Jarvis are visiting the elegant estate where Nightingale plans to conduct research on a literary scandal involving the poet Lord Byron, while Jarvis hopes to find out more about the so-called ‘Sidley Hermit’, a figure found in drawings of the house’s gardens.  The themes of the play include the philosophical implications of the second law of thermodynamics, Romantic literature and the English ‘picturesque’ style of garden design.

Kate Herbert’s review in The Melbourne Times, in late Feb 1995 offers a wonderful introduction to what I saw.  “We make of history what suits our politics and philosophy, even an earthly paradise – Arcady.  Tom Stoppard’s play, Arcadia, is impeccably crafted, perfectly structured, intelligent, witty and challenging. I cannot fault script, Simon Phillips production nor any individual performance.  In inimitable Stoppard fashion, Arcadia unravels a superb biographical-historical plot … [which] interweaves an aristocratic family of the late 18th century Romantic period of literature, painting, gardens and classical mathematics with the 20th century’s literary criticism, computer technology and chaos theory.  The result is a mind-bending intersection of worlds charged with sex and conflict.”

Kate Herbert suggests “History always eludes us. It is unscientific, as are natural phenomena and human nature. We cannot quantify it. The unpredictability is the rule, unlike quantum physics and relativity.”  She adds “The play captures the “decline from thinking to feeling” which was the social norm after the Age of Reason. The Romantics created their own chaos as have the Chaos Theorists today. We discover that ‘everything you thought you knew, was wrong’ both in life and in the drama.  The play is moving, passionate, analytical and inspired.”  She was right, a view further enhanced when four years later, during a visit to Winston Salem, North Carolina, I went to another production at Wake Forest University.

So much for when I saw it – but what as it that made this such an unforgettable experience?  Set in Sidley Park, an English country house in Derbyshire, the action takes place in both 1809/1812 and the present day (1993 in the original production). The activities of two modern scholars and the house’s current residents are juxtaposed with those of the people who lived there in the earlier period.  The play’s set features a large table, used by the characters in both past and present.  Props are not removed when the play switches time period; books, coffee mugs, quill pens, portfolios, and laptop computers appear together, blurring past and present. An ancient but still living tortoise also appears in every scene, perhaps as a symbol of long-suffering endurance and of the continuity of existence.

Arcadia explores the nature of evidence and truth in the context of modern ideas about history, mathematics, and physics. It shows how clues left by the past are interpreted in the present, by both laypeople and scholars. Stoppard has said that his initial inspiration came from reading James Gleick’s 1987 bestseller, Chaos: Making a New Science, “which is about this new kind of mathematics. That sounds fairly daunting if one’s talking about a play. I thought, here is a marvellous metaphor,” (quoted by Paul Delaney in Tom Stoppard in Conversation. UMP 1994. p. 224).

As the Wikipedia entry on the play explains “Besides chaos, the play attends to a wide array of subjects, including thermodynamics, computer algorithms, fractals, population dynamics, determinism (especially in the context of love and death), classics, landscape design, Romanticism vs Classicism, English literature (particularly poetry), Byron, 18^th Century Periodicals, modern academia and even South Pacific Botany.  These are all concrete topics of conversation; their more abstract resonances rise into epistemology, nihilism, and the origins of lust and madness”.  Stoppard was writing for an intellectual audience!

In Arcadia, Stoppard presents his audience with several highly complex but fundamental mathematical and scientific concepts. He also uses these theories and ideas to illuminate relationships among his characters, adding to their poignancy.  Arcadia’s complex themes are presented through a series of dichotomies. Most prominent is chaos versus order. The play’s characters and action embody this, moving from a settled social order, in which relationships arise, toward the final scene, where the social order – and even the separation of the two eras – dissolve in the party’s chaos, relationships collapse, and the characters die or disperse.  Yet within that chaos, order can still be found. As Valentine declares: “In an ocean of ashes, islands of order. Patterns making themselves out of nothing.” Although the play’s world grows increasingly chaotic – with overlapping time periods, increasingly complex ideas, and ever greater variations in social norms and assumptions – connections and order can still be discerned. The characters attempt to find and articulate the order they perceive in their world, even as it is continually overturned.

One of the play’s main thematic concepts is chaos theory. Paul Edwards, in his essay “Science in Hapgood and Arcadia“, notes that “chaos mathematics is about the recovery of information from apparently chaotic and random systems where entropy is high. […] It is ‘asymmetric’ (unlike the equations of classical physics), yet it finds regularities that prove to be the regularities of nature itself. Strikingly, this mathematics can generate patterns of amazing complexity, but it also has the power to generate seemingly natural or organic shapes that defeat Newtonian geometry. The promise, then, (however questionable it is in reality) is that information, and by extension, nature itself, can overcome the tendency to increase in entropy”.  John Fleming, in his book Stoppard’s Theatre: Finding Order amid Chaos, makes a similar observation. “Deterministic chaos”, he writes, “deals with systems of unpredictable determinism. … [T]he uncertainty does not result in pure randomness, but rather in complex patterns. Traditionally, scientists expected dynamic systems to settle into stable, predictable behaviour.” But as systems respond to variations in input, they become more random or chaotic.  “Surprisingly, within these random states, windows of order reappear. […] There is order in chaos – an unpredictable order, but a determined order nonetheless, and not merely random behaviour.”

That centre-stage table with props from both time periods in place throughout the play is a vivid metaphor of the chaos/order dichotomy. As Paul Edwards, professor of English and History of Art at Bath Spa University, suggests:

At the end of the play, the table has accumulated a variety of objects that, if one saw them without having seen the play, would seem completely random and disordered. Entropy is high. But if one has seen the play, one has full information about the objects and the hidden ‘order’ of their arrangement, brought about by the performance itself. Entropy is low; this can be proved by reflecting that tomorrow night’s performance of the play will finish with the table in a virtually identical ‘disorder’ – which therefore cannot really be disorder at all.

Paul Edwards, The Cambridge Companion to Tom Stoppard, CUP, 178–183

A closely related theme in Arcadia is the opposition of Classicism and Romanticism. This appears most clearly in the running arguments between Noakes and Lady Croom about proposed changes to the garden. Their disagreements are about changing from the tidy order of Classic style to the rugged naturalism and Gothic mystery of the Romantic. A parallel dichotomy is expressed by Septimus and Thomasina: He instructs her in the Newtonian vision of the universe, while she keeps posing questions and proposing theories that undercut it. Hannah’s search for the hermit of Sidley Park also comments on this theme. “The whole Romantic sham!” she passionately exclaims to Bernard. “It’s what happened to the Enlightenment, isn’t it? A century of intellectual rigour turned in on itself. A mind in chaos suspected of genius … The decline from thinking to feeling.”

Another major theme is entropy and the irreversibility of time. Thomasina examines this scientifically, remarking that while Newtonian equations work both backwards and forwards, things in reality – like her rice pudding – cannot be “unstirred.” Heat, too, she notes, flows in only one direction (the second law of thermodynamics). This is embodied by the characters, who burn bridges in relationships, burn candles, and burn letters – and in the end, Thomasina herself (like a short-lived candle) burns to death.  Thomasina’s insights are an echo of the poem Darkness by her ‘real life’ contemporary, Lord Byron.  Written in 1816 , which was described as the  ‘The Year Without A Summer’ when atmospheric ash from the eruption of Mount Tambora in the Dutch East Indies fell.  Darkness depicts a world grown dark and cold because the sun has been extinguished.

The play’s end brings all these dichotomous themes together, showing that while things may appear to contradict – Romanticism and Classicism, intuition and logic, thought and feeling – they can exist, paradoxically, in the same time and space. Order is found amid the chaos.  At the same time, scientific and mathematical concepts in Arcadia include the Second Law of Thermodynamics and the concept of entropy.  Entropy is the measure of the randomness or disorder of a system which states that overall, the universe is evolving from order to disorder. At the same time, the second law of thermodynamics states that heat spontaneously flows in only one direction, from hotter to colder. These equations embody the ‘arrow of time’ and the eventual ‘heat death’ of the universe.  Thomasina captures the dark side of science.

In Arcadia, Stoppard uses all these concepts to reveal that “there is an underlying order to seemingly random events.” The characters discuss these topics, while their interactions reflect them. Often these discussions themselves create order and connections beneath the appearance of disunity. For example, both Thomasina’s theories on heat and Valentine’s search for a “signal” in the “noise” of the local grouse population refer to the physicist Joseph Fourier and his development of the Fourier transform, which he first used to analyse the physics of heat transfer but has since found wide application. Though the characters would seem to have little in common, their work relates to the same topic.

There is even more to this intellectual tour de force.  The play’s title was abbreviated from its initial version: Et in Arcadia ego.  Arcadia refers to the pastoral ideal, and the phrase literally translates, “and in Arcadia I am”. The tradition of placing a tomb in a pastoral idyll has a long history, and the phrase appears in Guercino’s painting dated in 1618-1622. Both the image and the motto are commonly linked with the phrase being spoken by Death: “I, too, am in Arcadia”.   In the play, Lady Croom, translates the phrase as “Here I am in Arcadia!” Thomasina drily comments, “Yes Mama, if you would have it so”. Septimus notices this and later, suspecting his pupil will appreciate the motto’s true meaning, offers the translation “Even in Arcadia, there am I”. He is right – “Oh, phooey to Death!” she exclaims.   Although these brief exchanges are the only direct references in the play to its title, they anticipate two main characters’ fates: Thomasina’s early death, and Septimus’s voluntary exile from life.

In a more obvious sense, the title also invokes the ideal of nature as an ordered paradise, while the estate’s landscape steadily evolves into a more irregular form. This provides a recurring image of the different ways in which “true nature” can be understood, and a homely parallel to Thomasina’s theoretical description of the natural world’s structure and entropic decline using mathematics.

Overall, Arcadia draws on several highly complex but fundamental mathematical and scientific concepts.  Having noted that one of the play’s main thematic concepts is chaos theory, Paul Edwards, (in ‘Science in Hapgood and Arcadia’), notes that “chaos mathematics is about the recovery of information from apparently chaotic and random systems where entropy is high. […] It is ‘asymmetric’ (unlike the equations of classical physics), yet it finds regularities that prove to be the regularities of nature itself. Strikingly, this mathematics can generate patterns of amazing complexity, but it also has the power to generate seemingly natural or organic shapes that defeat Newtonian geometry. The promise, then, (however questionable it is in reality) is that information, and by extension, nature itself, can overcome the tendency to increase in entropy”.  What a compelling perspective for a playwright, that there is order in chaos.  If it is an underlying and unpredictable order, there’s order nonetheless, and far from random.

In Arcadia, Stoppard draws on all these ideas as his characters discuss an almost bewildering variety of topics.  He reveals himself as a Levi-Straussian bricoleur.  In The Savage Mind Claude Levi-Strauss used the word bricolage to describe the characteristic patterns of mythological thought, which draw on a variety of things ‘at hand’,  putting objects, ideas and histories together in new ways, using them for purposes that weren’t previously considered.   Like Levi-Strauss analysing mythologies, Stoppard  is a contemporary bricoleur, taking what we know from 19th Century and contemporary science and technology and rethinking ideas, to explore unanticipated possibilities and interactions just as he uses Thomasina’s theories on heat and Valentine’s search for a ‘signal in the noise’ in that imagined analysis of the local grouse population.   Some ideas in the play recall Goethe’s novella Elective Affinities: Thomasina and Septimus have parallels in Goethe’s Ottilie and Eduard  and the historical section of Stoppard’s play is set in 1809, the year of Goethe’s novella.  There is so much more packed into this play, and if you’d like to dive into its riches, go along to a performance.

What more can I say?  Arcadia is a 20th Century intellectual masterpiece and a stunning play.  Vale Stoppard, who died 29 November 2025.  He will be missed; his plays will live on.

Brick by Brick

It must be a strange sight for a young child, to be confronted by a pile of plastic bricks, with no instructions as to what to do.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, many small children find the big and brightly coloured blocks fun to play with, and pile on top of one another.  Then they begin to fit them together and eventually find there are ways to connect wheels to their creations.  Moving toys!  Around 6 or seven years of age, they find there is another, smaller set of blocks, still interlocking and still using primary colours (although some other shades are included).  Soon, they discover they are being given bigger boxes, and each contains an assembly of component blocks with which they are able to build much larger structures, ranging from houses and commercial stores through to racing cars and familiar places, a diverse range including models to build of such places as the Eiffel Tower, Neuschwanstein Castle, and the Antarctic exploration vessel Endurance.  Of course, not all children as they grew up abandon their hobby and continue to use their Lego collection to become AFOLs, Adult Fans of Lego, thereby remaining as lifetime Lego builders (LLBs?).!

Lego first appeared in 1932, and at that time it comprised wooden toys made in the workshop of a carpenter from Billund, in Denmark.  By 1934 the founder, Ole Kirk Christiansen, had named his company ‘Lego’, a name which was based on the Danish phrase leg godt (meaning ‘Play Well’).  Several years later Lego began producing plastic toys, and by 1949 it commenced a new product line, an early version of the now familiar interlocking bricks, and called them “Automatic Binding Bricks”.  They were initially manufactured from cellulose acetate, offering an enhancement of traditional stackable wooden blocks of the time.  The company adopted Christiansen’s motto, “only the best is good enough”, a comment still reinforced by the company today.  The motto was to serve as a way to encourage his employees never to skimp on quality, a value in which he believed very strongly.   By 1951, plastic toys accounted for half of the company’s output, even though many had initially believed  plastic would never be able to replace traditional wooden toys.

Lego was first sold in Denmark in 1957, and the company expanded its sales across Europe towards the end of the 1950s, before expanding outside the European continent from the 1960s.  It was Christiansen’s son, Godtfred, who saw the immense potential in Lego bricks in becoming a system for creative play.  However, the bricks still had problems:  their locking ability was rather limited, nor were they particularly versatile.  In 1958, a new modern brick design was developed; using ABS for manufacturing, which allowed the company to make use of an attractively coloured manufacturing material five years later.   ABS, Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene, is a durable, tough plastic which Lego has used since 1963 for most of its bricks.   Duplo, an alternative for younger children based on larger bricks was introduced in 1969 becoming a range of blocks whose lengths measure twice the width, height, and depth of standard Lego blocks and are aimed towards younger children.

Lego pieces of all varieties constitute a universal system. Despite variations in the design and the purposes of individual pieces over the years, each remains compatible in some way with existing pieces.  Bricks from 1958 still interlock with those made today, and sets for younger children are compatible with those made for teenagers.  As an aside, it turns out that six bricks with 2 × 4 studs can be combined in 915,103,765 ways.  This ‘simple’ system makes massive manufacturing demands:  when two pieces are engaged, they must fit firmly yet be easily disassembled.

Despite various mis-steps and challenges, overall the company grew and grew.  On 7 June 1968, Legoland Park opened in Billund, featuring elaborate miniature towns built entirely from Lego bricks. The three-acre (12,000 m²) theme park attracted 625,000 visitors in its first year alone. Over the next two decades, the theme park grew to more than eight times its original size and eventually attracted close to a million visitors annually. Sales of Lego sets also reached more than eighteen million units in 1968.  This pattern of growth was increased in the following year, 1969, when the Duplo system came into shops.

Designed to be used by younger children, Duplo bricks are much larger than Lego bricks, safer for young children (preventing them from eating them!), and the two systems are compatible: Lego bricks can be fitted neatly onto Duplo bricks.  Indeed, the name Duplo comes from the Latin word duplus, which translates literally as double, meaning that a Duplo brick is exactly twice the dimension of a Lego building brick (2× height by 2× width by 2× depth) so that a Duplo brick is eight times the volume of the Lego brick alternative.

Despite overall growth, like any business Lego has had its ups and downs over the years.  However, The Guardian reported that by August of this year Lego had recorded sales of £4bn and sales rose by 12%.   Their Chief Executive suggested this recent surge in growth could be the result of parents’ desire to keep children – and themselves – away from smartphones, helped by strong sales of its Botanicals and Formula One grand prix-themed sets.

CEO Christiansen said:

“We see ourselves as competing for children’s time. The most important thing is to provide relevant and exciting experiences” and has seen the company signing deals to produce toys linked to the Bluey and Pokémon cartoon series and launching the She Built That campaign to encourage girls to use Lego creatively. The company has seen success with its Botanicals range of plant-inspired building sets for adults, especially for Valentine’s Day and Easter.

Lego is clearly a global business.  Recently, sales have begun to grow in China, after a tough start to 2024, and the company expects worldwide sales to continue to rise by about 9% in the second half of the current year given the existence of “strong consumer demand”.  The company now has six factories in operation, in Denmark, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Mexico, China, Vietnam, with a further addition planned to open soon in Virginia, USA.  It uses an international business model, with several facilities focusing on molding and others on decoration and packaging.  The production process involves injecting molten plastic into molds to create bricks, with rigorous quality control checks to identify defects and ensure colour accuracy. The company has to aim for high precision; with the result their approach ensures bricks made today continue to fit with those made back in 1958.  The manufacturing process starts with plastic granules heated and injected under high pressure into molds to form bricks.  Today, Lego recycles almost all its plastic waste from manufacturing, with non-reusable plastic sold to other industries. 

The group has benefitted from its strategy of having manufacturing facilities as close to markets as possible, and also adopting a lean production approach whereby it seeks to produce only what is needed and simultaneously keeping stocks tight.  Lego has talked about taking steps such as making  some of its toy tyres from a material derived from recycled fishing nets, ropes and engine oil. The company is also introducing e-methanol, a material made from mixing renewable energy and CO₂ from biowaste, to create rigid Lego elements such as wheel axles and minifigure hands.

Actually, it is much more than that.    According to an article in Sustainability, it seems ‘Lego is Building Towards a More Sustainable Future’ (in a report by James Darley, 7 September 2024), as Lego expands its supply chain, smart choices and thinking are helping the Danish toy company meet its sustainability targets and achieve growth.  Surprisingly in a toy industry grappling with market downturns, Lego has not only maintained its position at the top of the tree but has also posted record-breaking results for the first half of 2024.  However, Darley reports the Danish toymaker’s success goes beyond profit margins. It is commitment to sustainability, particularly within its supply chain, which is setting new standards for the industry and providing a blueprint for responsible manufacturing.

James Darley writes that a key to this approach is using sustainable materials as the foundation for operational changes.  Recently Lego has made major increases in the proportion of sustainable materials it uses in its bricks. During the first half of 2024, the company reported that 30% of all the resin it purchased was certified under the mass balance principle, translating to an estimated 22% of material sourced from renewable and recycled sources.  This is a substantial improvement from 2023, when only 18% was certified mass balance, equating to 12% sustainable sources for the full year. Sources suggest that if it  continues to make similar year-on-year progress, it could reach the point where its products could be 100% sustainable within the next two decades.

Carsten Rasmussen, COO at the LEGO Group, says:

“We continue to invest in expanding our global supply chain network, maintain a strong focus on harvesting productivity and have made significant progress on our sustainability ambitions by increasing the amount of sustainable raw material used in our products.”

The company has set ambitious targets for the coming years, aiming to purchase more than half of its raw materials from sustainable sources, seeking to reduce its use of virgin fossil materials.  At the same time, a key initiative in this area is the launch of a Supplier Sustainability Programme, which mandates that suppliers set emission reduction targets by 2026 and further targets by 2028. Lego has even linked annual carbon emissions reductions to employee bonuses, creating strong incentives for its sustainability team.  While Lego seeks to focus on expanding its supply chain, they locate production and distribution facilities close to major markets.  Recent developments include opening factories in Vietnam and Virginia.

It’s sustainability initiatives are not just good for the planet, they’re also good for business. The company reported revenue growth of 13% and consumer sales growth of 14% in the first half of 2024, significantly outperforming the toy industry. Operating profit grew by 26% and net profit by 16% compared to the same period in 2023.  Niels B Christiansen, the current CEO, emphasises sustainability in the company’s strategy, achieving double-digit growth while significantly increasing sustainable materials in our products.”

Perhaps it is almost superfluous to say it, but the other strength of Lego is design, of course.  The company’s product development cycle is focussed on ensuring adherence to the Lego approach and  style.  Proposals go through a rigorous assessment process before they move to testing and production, ensuring the attractiveness of the kits isn’t compromised .  Their CEO notes “We used our solid financial foundation to further increase spending on strategic initiatives, which will support growth now and in the future to enable us to bring learning through play to even more children.”  He might have added ‘through offering compelling and engaging products to delight our customers’.

Oh, and one more comment.  My partner is a long term AFOL, and I’m a recent convert.  It offers a great range of buildings and vehicles to construct, using an astonishing range of building components.  Our local Lego store is a place we visit frequently, trying to decide which model we ‘ll build next.  Surprised  to learn we’re fans?

Aigai

We were in the second half of our cruise, travelling down the eastern coast of Greece, when the ship stopped at Thessaloniki.  As on other days, there were various land tours we could select, but at this stage in our cruise there was only one choice, to go to Vergina, on an excursion described as In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great.  To be going to Vergina might seem rather odd:  it  is a relatively new town, established in 1922 in the aftermath of the Treaty of Lausanne, an agreement that had officially resolved the conflict that had initially arisen between the Ottoman Empire, and various European countries including Greece.  The treaty delimited the boundaries of Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey, and, among other provisions included the agreement that all the islands, islets and other territories in the Aegean Sea (Eastern Mediterranean in the original text) beyond three miles from the Turkish shores were ceded to Greece, (with some minor exceptions).

If Vergina is a recent establishment, it is best known as the site of ancient Aigai  the first capital of Macedon.  Back in 336 BC Philip II was assassinated in Aigai’s theatre and his son, Alexander the Great, was proclaimed king. While the resting place of Alexander the Great is unknown, researchers uncovered three tombs at Vergina in 1977, in a location that was part of what had been Aigai.

This was to be an extraordinary visit, and even the first stage of the visit was memorable!  The coach trip from Thessaloniki stopped in Vergina, and we had a fairly long walk to a park area, in which all we could see was an open grassy area, and around it several trees, and small modern building, and some slightly raised areas.  Our tour guide went off, and we tried to find shade from a very hot sun.  When were we going to go to the site of the tombs?  The tour guide returned and led us over to an almost invisible entrance that took us inside that slightly raised area:  the tombs had been uncovered by archaeologists and then re-covered once they had been studied.  Just inside, we stopped, to get accustomed to the darkened interior.

This gave us the opportunity to learn about Aigai.  The area where it was built was formerly  covered by a series of  villages, which together formed an important population centre by 1,000 BC.  In the 7th century BC, the Macedonian expansion in the region subdued local populations, establishing the dynasty at Aigai.  Archaeologic research has shown  Aigai developed as an organized collection of villages, a group of aristocratic tribes,  and it never became a large city.  From Aigai the Macedonians spread to the central part of Macedonia.  In the first half of the 5th century BC Aigai became the capital of Macedonia, characterised by court luxury supported by merchants coming from all over the ancient world bringing  valuable goods including perfume, carved ornaments and jewellery.

At the beginning of the 4th century BC, the Macedonian capital was moved northeast to Pella, but Aigai retained its role as the sacred city of the Macedonian kingdom, the site of a royal palace and royal tombs.  However, by the 3^rd Century BC Alexander’s heirs were involved in bitter struggles.  The city never recovered, and visiting mercenaries plundered many of the tombs.  Collapse continued, the Romans overthrew the Macedonian kingdom in 168 BC, and withing the next six hundred years the city disappeared, first by human means and later a landslide destroyed what had been remained or had been rebuilt.  Aigai disappeared.

In the middle of the 19^th Century, archaeologists had become interested in the burial mounds around Vergina, some believing the long-lost site of Aigai was in the vicinity. Excavations began in 1861 but had to be abandoned because of the risk of malaria.  In 1937, the University of Thessaloniki resumed the excavations, by the 1950s and 1960s much of royal capital had been uncovered.  One Greek archaeologist  was convinced that a hill called the Great Tumulus covered the tombs of the Macedonian kings, and in 1977, a dig at the site revealed four buried tombs, two of which had never been disturbed.  It was concluded these were the tombs of Philip II, father of Alexander the Great, and Alexander IV, his son.  Further research in 1987 revealed a burial cluster of  queens, including Queen Euridice (mother of Alexander II, and Grandmother of Alexander the Great).

All this does little to prepare visitors for the treasures that have been found.  The museum of the tumulus of Philip II was built over the tombs,  leaving them in situ and showing the site as it was before the archaeological excavations.  Inside there are four tombs.  The two most important (tombs II and III) had not been ransacked and contained the main treasures of the museum.  The larger room in Tomb II included a marble chest, and in it was a closed coffin (larnax) made of 24-carat gold and weighing 11 kilograms (24 lb). together with a golden wreath of 313 oak leaves and 68 acorns, weighing 717 grams (25.3 oz), the golden grave crown of Philip II.   This room also included the richly carved burial bed on which Philip II was laid, several exquisite silver utensils for the funeral feast, along with such items as gold-adorned suits of armour and weapons.  All are now on display for visitors.

In the antechamber was another chest with another golden coffin containing the bones of a woman wrapped in a golden-purple cloth with a golden diadem decorated with flowers and enamel, indicating a queen,  possibly Philip II’s Thracian wife, Meda, who by tradition sacrificed herself at the funeral.

In 1978 Tomb III was discovered, also near the tomb of Philip, which is thought to belong Alexander IV of Macedon, son of Alexander the Great.  Like Tomb II, but smaller and also undisturbed, the main room contained a cremated body, in a silver funerary urn a golden oak wreath.

As with Tomb II, inside exquisite silver utensils and weaponry indicating royal status were still in place.  A narrow frieze with a chariot race by a great painter decorated the walls of the tomb. The remains of a wooden mortuary couch adorned with gold and ivory is regarded as notable for its exquisite representation of Dionysos with a flute-player and a satyr.

Finally, the tomb has one other remarkable and moderately well-preserved feature.  This is an astonishing mural, dated from around 350 BC.  It depicts the Abduction of Persephone by Hades,  the God of the Underworld, with a silent Demeter and the three unprejudiced Fates present at the event, accompanied by Hermes, the Guide of Souls, leading the way, and a scared nymph witnessing the horrifying event.   Regarded as a unique example of ancient painting, it is believed to be the work of the famous artist Nicomachus of Thebes.  It is also considered to be one of the few surviving depictions of the ancient mystic views of afterlife.  The image below shows part of the painting

The challenge with visiting a site like this is there are so many extraordinary visual images – and they make my words rather superfluous.  Sadly, next to Tombs II and III is another, the remains thought to be those of Philip II, but tomb robbers stole all of Tomb IV’s  contents.

How had these tombs been preserved?  The tumulus was constructed at the beginning of the third century BC by Antigonos Gonatas, perhaps over smaller individual tumuli to protect the royal tombs from further pillaging after marauding Galati had looted and destroyed the cemetery. The hill material contained many earlier funeral stele.  Could Gonatas have imagined that some 2,200 years later his actions had ensured we were able to enter the tumulus and, despite tomb robbers destroying some of the original material, much of the original structure and contents remained, a remarkable testimony to a key historical era.

Six Great Ideas

I wonder if anyone reads Mortimer Adler today.  For a while he was an influential and also popular philosopher, often referred to as the Fat Man.  That name referred to The Fat Men’s Great Books Group, an informal discussion circle in Chicago in the 1940s, co-founded by Mortimer Adler and Robert Hutchins, the President of the  University of Chicago. The name came from its participants, who were wealthy and influential Chicago businessmen and executives and who were led by Adler and Hutchins to experience the ‘Great Books’ method of discussing classic texts, believing it would bring intellectual rigour and insight to the business elite and potentially bridge societal divides.  The group was formed in 1943 after a prominent businessman, Wilbur Munnecke, had developed concern about the communication difficulties he observed among bright executives.  The approach was seen as a way to unite academic thinkers and businessmen using the wisdom of classic literature, in part to temper the excesses of capitalism and at the same time to guide societal decisions.

Who was Mortimer Jerome Adler?  Born in New York City in 1902, the child of Jewish immigrants from Germany, he dropped out of school at age 14 to become copy boy for the New York Sun.  He soon returned to school, and went on to study at Columbia University, eventually completing a  doctorate in psychology.  However, a key moment in his life was in 1930 when Robert Hutchins, the newly appointed president of the University of Chicago, ensured he was hired as a professor in the philosophy of law, despite resistance from staff from within the university’s Department of Philosophy. Learning about the Great Books seminar inspired Chicago businessman Walter Paepcke to establish The Aspen Institute, and it was there Adler began to teach philosophy to business executives .  With Hutchins he went on to set up the Great Books of the Western World program, in 54 volumes in 1952  A second edition was published in 1990, in 60 volumes.

The decision to include a book in the series required meeting three criteria:  the book had to be relevant to contemporary matters; it had to be rewarding to re-read repeatedly; and it had to contribute to ‘the great conversation about  great ideas’.  The books weren’t chosen on the basis of ethnic and cultural inclusiveness.  Historical influence was seen as sufficient to be added.  Nor was it a requirement that the editors agreed with the authors’ views.  The books were published under the auspices of the Great Books Foundation.  In 1952, Adler founded and served as director of the Institute for Philosophical Research.  He also served on the Board of Editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and succeeded Hutchins as its chairman from 1974.

If what was done back then was seen as a key stage in the awareness of key literature from the past, enthusiasm for an  approach where ‘Great Books’ were identified and promoted has declined ever since the first edition appeared.  Today it is easy to make fun of the idea of ‘great books’:  many of those selected are now seen as the embodiment of various evils, from sexism to cultural hegemony, from conservatism to oppression.  However, rather than indulge in criticism of the great books endeavour, there is still value in going back to read books published in earlier decades or centuries.  How were the various titles chosen?  Rather than trying to assess the complete range of publications, a good introduction to Adler’s approach can be undertaken by looking at his 1981 book, Six Great Ideas, (published by Collier Books, a Macmillan imprint).

In Six Great Ideas, Adler examines what he proposes as six foundational concepts, ones he saw as having shaped the pursuit of truth and meaning: these topics are Truth, Goodness, Beauty, Liberty, Equality, and Justice.   Adler invites his readers to join him on ‘a reflective journey’, one where he intends to challenge their understanding of  the principles that govern lives and society.  He  argues  that these ideas form ‘the bedrock of human civilization, guiding our moral compass, our understanding of the world, our appreciation of art and culture, and our endeavours in creating fair and equitable societies’.  He claims these ideas are deeply embedded in everyday life, and he argues they have continuing and enduring relevance.  They are essential tools for navigating the complexities of contemporary life.

He explains his approach is to reveal, in straightforward language, the philosophical basis for these key terms, attempting to take these complex and important ideas and make them accessible to an intelligent (rather than an academic) reader.  The book begins by putting the six foundational concepts he wanted to examine into two groups.  Perhaps surprisingly, the first group comprises Truth, Goodness, Beauty, and the other three, Liberty, Equality, and Justice are left until later in his book.  Today all six might be regarded as controversial, but it might have been easier to begin with truth, liberty and equality.

Adler begins by exploring the concept of truth, explaining how he sees this as the concept that is the cornerstone in the quest for knowledge, shaping the ways in which humans engage with the world. He suggests the pursuit of truth is not merely an intellectual exercise but is a fundamental element of human existence, critical to enquiry, discovery, and the advancement of knowledge.  He also explains that the meaning of truth has changed over time, contrasting the views of the ancient Greeks who, he explains, viewed truth as an alignment with an eternal, unchanging reality, to modern thinkers who consider it in the context of scientific inquiry and empirical evidence.

For Adler, the relationship between truth and knowledge is central. Knowledge is seen as a pursuit of truth, seeking to understand and explain the nature of our world, and as the engine of progress.  Indeed, he explains that truth is a pivotal concept, one that serves as the foundation upon which all knowledge is built.  This is achieved through ‘correspondence’, which he defines as the alignment between thought and reality.  In other words when a statement or belief accurately reflects the state of affairs in the external world, it is deemed true. This  takes us back to knowledge, which is, by definition, justified true belief.  For Adler this is critical:  it is not enough for beliefs to be justified or logical; they must also be true. The pursuit of knowledge, therefore, invariably entails the pursuit of truth not as a philosophical exercise but as a practical necessity.  A society that values Truth is one where individuals can rely on shared understandings and accurate information.

Are there challenges in attaining the truth?  Adler observes that human perception, cognitive biases, and limited knowledge all serve as obstacles.  To overcome them, he argues there has to be a rigorous and continuous process of inquiry, critical thinking, and verification.  He asserts that the persistent search for truth is central to our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.  That view might have seemed clear and simple in 1981, but it rested on an assumption that we all see the world in the same way.  More than forty years later, it is clear that we don’t,  and what is true for one group is not necessarily true to another.  His view that  there are unarguable truths is an assumption hard to sustain in our fractured times.

The difficulties of claiming certainty in relation to truth become all the more evident when Adler turned to his second key idea, goodness.  For Adler goodness is a fundamental principle guiding ethical behaviour, the link to morality.   This leads him to address some  key questions: What constitutes a morally good action? What differentiates good from bad, or moral from immoral actions?   Without meaning to do so, he has started to make us confront some tricky – even controversial – issues.  Some of what he proposes is not particularly controversial:  moral actions are those that align with ethical principles and the concepts of right and wrong, often considering the well-being and rights of others. Immoral actions, conversely, are those that violate ethical standards and typically result in harm or injustice.

However, from there he goes on to argue that goodness extends beyond personal issues to being a criterion for evaluating institutions and communities.  If a society is to flourish, it must nurture and uphold goodness, and with this in mind he takes us into a much broader territory where goodness is linked to the need to promote justice, compassion, altruism, fairness and into creating systems that allow individuals to lead morally fulfilling lives.  Adler is no fool, and he emphasises the challenges in consistently pursuing goodness.  We are often faced with ethical dilemmas that require balancing competing interests and values.  He suggests the pursuit of goodness demands critical reflection, empathy, and a commitment to ethical principles, even when it is inconvenient or challenging.

Now we have reached a key point:  he observes that principles can’t be absolute, as each includes demands that can be contradictory.  As a result there is a need to find ways to balance or accommodate conflicting requirements.  If his intention had been to offer some ‘tools to navigate the complexities of modern life’, it seems he isn’t providing a map as much as outlining possible paths and likely alternatives.  Adler acknowledges this and offers some (conflicting) ideas for the reader to consider.   For example, he refers to Mill’s utilitarian approach which advocates pursuing the greatest good for the greatest number.  In contrast he points out that Kantian ethics require adherence to duty and universal moral laws.  It’s hard to follow a map when the guidance is inconsistent!

Perhaps a better way to read this book is to recognise that Adler’s intention was to make us think, and for us to recognise that there are ‘no easy answers’.  Rather than seeking clear guidance from philosophers, our expectation should be that philosophical enquiry reveals territory to be examined, pointing out pitfalls, possibilities and uncertainties.  What Adler does is to present us with ideas.  Our challenge is to grapple with those ideas, to see what we can identify and confirm, and to make clear what isn’t going to be answered by logic alone.

If Adler’s intention was to encourage us to become amateur philosophers, and to think about the ideas and issues we confront, it was a strange choice to offer ‘beauty’ as the third great idea.  Many would agree here the difficulties are evident:  there is a lot of good sense to suggest ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’,  a phrase with a long history in its various forms, certainly from John Lyly and Shakespeare in the 16^th Century through to David Hume commenting “Beauty in things exists merely in the mind which contemplates them ((in 1742).  Incidentally, the wording about the eye of the beholder comes from Margaret Wolfe Hungerford in her novel Molly Bawn in 1878.  This long history is persuasive.

In fact, Adler quickly slips away from attempting to ‘explain’ the concept of beauty but rather identifies it as an attribute that pleases the senses while also elevating the human spirit.  Is he right?  Does aesthetic experience not only provide pleasure but also “enriches our lives, allowing us to transcend ordinary experiences, and transform mundane reality”. Adler argues that in moments of shared aesthetic experience, people can find common ground, regardless of their cultural background.  He suggests beauty plays a key role in elevating human thought, fostering connection, and driving creative expression.  Really?

What this book from more than 40 years ago does is offer a stark reminder on how much has changed.  In many ways, what Adler has to say is far from controversial.  This becomes very clear later in the book when he turns to the second group of principles.  In the Bookey summary we read Adler argues: “The principles of Liberty and Equality stand as cornerstones in the foundation of human rights.  Liberty, as Adler asserts, is an essential element of human existence, signifying the freedom of individuals to think,  speak, and act according to their own values and decisions without undue interference.  This principle is deeply rooted in the philosophical traditions of Western thought, resonating through the works of thinkers like John Locke, who emphasized natural rights, and John Stuart Mill, who championed individual freedom as crucial for personal development and societal progress.  Adler proposes that liberty fosters creativity, innovation, and personal growth, enabling individuals to pursue their paths and contribute uniquely to society.  However, he admits it can’t exist in a vacuum; it must be tempered given the encroachment on other freedoms.

For him, this is where the principle of Equality comes in.  Equality, he suggests, demands that all individuals be treated with the same respect, dignity, and moral consideration.”  Fair enough, but we are about to reach compromise territory.  Adler warns us that despite their intention to elevate human dignity and social fairness, Liberty and Equality can sometimes be at odds. For instance, he notes, the unfettered exercise of liberty by one individual or group may infringe upon the rights or freedoms of another, as seen in scenarios where economic liberties contribute to systemic inequalities. Likewise, efforts to enforce equality, such as through redistributive policies or affirmative action, can be perceived as limitations on individual freedom and meritocracy.  Well, yes., and so?

We learn that it is possible to navigate these conflicts by encouraging a balance whereby both principles can coexist harmoniously. He advocates for a societal framework that maximizes individual freedoms while simultaneously safeguarding and promoting equal opportunities for all its members.  He notes this balance is not easily achieved, “requiring continual dialogue, ethical consideration, and legal frameworks that adapt to evolving social needs and challenges.  In real-world applications, the balance between Liberty and Equality is manifest in democratic governance, where laws and policies aim to protect individual rights while promoting social welfare. The U.S. Constitution, with its amendments and provisions, exemplifies this delicate equilibrium, striving to uphold freedoms of speech, religion, and assembly, while guaranteeing equal protection under the law”.  Do you remember that simplistic, hopeful and long-lost view of the world?

When it comes to Justice, Adler highlights the contributions of John Rawls.  Rawls’ theory of “justice as fairness” proposes two key. principles: the principle of equal basic liberties for all individuals and the difference principle, which maintains that social and economic inequalities should be arranged to benefit the least advantaged members of society. Rawls’ ideas, like Adlers, now seem so unrealistic.  Were we more innocent back then?

Adler wanted his readers to recognise the profound impact that living in accordance with Truth, Goodness, Beauty, Liberty, Equality, and Justice can have — on ourselves, our relationships, and on the broader society.  Rather than accepting his framework for the future, in contemporary society we are more likely to see those six ideas as forming a complicated straitjacket.  Each constrains and is constrained by the others, and whatever direction we pursue, we soon bump up against major contradictions and confusions.  Despite this, Adler deserves the last word:  even if his six ideas can no longer be considered “essential tools for navigating the complexities of contemporary life” they remind us of ideas we mustn’t forget.

Antonio Damasio Tells Us Why Pain Is Necessary 

I’ve broken my usual rule, and copied this extract from an article with the same name from Nautilus, January 18, 2018.  It’s an interview by Kevin Berger edited to fit my usual blog length.  I find Anthony Damasio one of the most helpful thinkers to challenge the materialist view of human beings.

Source: https://nautil.us/antonio-damasio-tells-us-why-pain-is-necessary-236956/

Following Oliver Sacks, Antonio Damasio may be the neuroscientist whose popular books have done the most to inform readers about the biological machinery in our heads, how it generates thoughts and emotions, creates a self to cling to, and a sense of transcendence to escape by. But since he published Descartes’ Error in 1994, Damasio has been concerned that a central thesis in his books, that brains don’t define us, has been muted by research that states how much they do. To Damasio’s dismay, the view of the human brain as a computer, the command center of the body, has become lodged in popular culture.

In his new book, The Strange Order of Things, Damasio, a professor of neuroscience and the director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California, mounts his boldest argument yet for the role of the brain. … “When I look back on Descartes’ Error, it was completely timid compared to what I’m saying now,” Damasio says. He knows his new book may rile believers in the brain as emperor of all. “I was entirely open with my ideas.  If people don’t like it, they don’t like it. They can criticize it, of course, which is fair, but I want to tell them, because it’s so interesting, this is why you have feelings.”

One thing I like about The Strange Order of Things is it counters the idea that we are just our brains.

Oh, that idea is absolutely wrong.

Not long ago I was watching a PBS series on the brain, in which host and neurologist David Eagleman, referring to our brain, declares, “What we feel, what matters to us, our beliefs and our hopes, everything we are happens in here.”

That’s not the whole story. Of course, we couldn’t have minds with all of their enormous complexity without nervous systems. That goes without saying. But minds are not the result of nervous systems alone. The statement you quote reminds me of Francis Crick, someone whom I admired immensely and was a great friend. Francis was quite opposed to my views on this issue. We would have huge discussions because he was the one who said that everything you are, your thoughts, your feelings, your mental this and that, are nothing but your neurons. This is a big mistake, in my view, because we are mentally and behaviorally far more than our neurons. We cannot have feelings arising from neurons alone. The nervous systems are in constant interaction and cooperation with the rest of the organism. The reason why nervous systems exist in the first place is to assist the rest of the organism. That fact is constantly missed.

The concept of “homeostasis” is critical in your new book. What is homeostasis?

It’s the fundamental property of life that governs everything that living cells do, whether they’re living cells alone, or living cells as part of a tissue or an organ, or a complex system such as ourselves. Most of the time, when people hear the word homeostasis, they think of balance, they think of equilibrium. That is incorrect because if we ever were in “equilibrium,” we would be dead. Thermodynamically, equilibrium means zero thermal differences and death. Equilibrium is the last thing that nature aims for.

What we must have is efficient functioning of a variety of components of an organism. We procure energy so that the organism can be perpetuated, but then we do something very important and almost always missed, which is hoard energy. We need to maintain positive energy balances, something that goes beyond what we need right now because that’s what ensures the future. What’s so beautiful about homeostasis is that it’s not just about sustaining life at the moment, but about having a sort of guarantee that it will continue into the future. Without those positive energy balances, we court death.

What’s a good example of homeostasis?

If you are at the edge of your energy reserves and you’re sick with the flu, you can easily tip over and die. That’s one of the reasons why there’s fat accumulation in our bodies. We need to maintain the possibility of meeting the extra needs that come from stress, in the broad sense of the term. I poetically describe this as a desire for permanence, but it’s not just poetic. I believe it’s reality.

You write homeostasis is maintained in complex creatures like us through a constant interplay of pleasure and pain. Are you giving a biological basis to Freud’s pleasure principle—life is governed by a drive for pleasure and avoidance of pain?

Yes, to a great extent. What’s so interesting is that for most of the existence of life on earth, all organisms have had this effective, automated machinery that operates for the purpose of maintenance and continuation of life. I like to call the organisms that only have that form of regulation, “living automata.” They can fight. They can cooperate. They can segregate. But there’s no evidence that they know that they’re doing so. There’s no evidence of anything we might call a mind. Obviously we have more than automatic regulation. We can control regulation in part, if we wish to. How did that come about?

Very late in the game of life there’s the appearance of nervous systems. Now you have the possibility of mapping the inside and outside world. When you map the inside world, guess what you get? You get feelings. Of necessity, the machinery of life is either in a state of reasonable efficiency or in a state of inefficiency, which is most often the case. Organisms with nervous systems can image these states. And when you start having imagery, you start having minds. Now you begin to have the possibility of responding in a way that you could call “knowledgeable.” That happens when organisms make images. A bad internal state would have been imaged as the first pains, the first malaises, the first sufferings. Now the organism has the possibility of knowingly avoiding whatever caused the pain or prefer a place or a thing or another animal that causes the opposite of that, which is well-being and pleasure.

Why would feelings have evolved?

Feelings triumphed in evolution because they were so helpful to the organisms that first had them. It’s important to understand that nervous systems serve the organism and not the other way around. We do not have brains controlling the entire operation. Brains adjust controls. They are the servants of a living organism. Brains triumphed because they provided something useful: coordination. Once organisms got to the point of being so complex that they had an endocrine system, immune system, circulation, and central metabolism, they needed a device to coordinate all that activity. They needed to have something that would simultaneously act on point A and point Z, across the entire organism, so that the parts would not be working at cross purposes. That’s what nervous systems first achieve: making things run smoothly.

Now, in the process of doing that, over millions of years, we have developed nervous systems that do plenty of other things that do not necessarily result in coordination of the organism’s interior, but happen to be very good at coordinating the internal world in relation to the outside world. This is what the higher reaches of our nervous system, namely the cerebral cortex, does. It gives us the possibilities of perceiving, of memorizing, of reasoning over the knowledge that we memorize, of manipulating all of that and even translating it into language. That is all very beautiful, and it is also homeostatic, in the sense that all of it is convenient to maintain life. It if were not, it would just have been discarded by evolution.

How does your thesis square with the hard problem of consciousness, how the physical tissue in our heads produces immaterial sensations?

Some philosophers of mind will say, “Well, we face this gigantic problem. How does consciousness emerge out of these nerve cells?” Well, it doesn’t. You’re not dealing with the brain alone. You have to think in terms of the whole organism. And you have to think in evolutionary terms.

The critical problem of consciousness is subjectivity. You need to have a “subject.” You can call it an I or a self. Not only are you aware right now that you are listening to my words, which are in the panorama of your consciousness, but you are aware of being alive, you realize that you’re there, you’re ticking. We are so distracted by what is going on around us that we forget sometimes that we are, A-R-E in capitals. But actually you are watching what you are, and so you need to have a mechanism in the brain that allows you to fabricate that part of the mind that is the watcher.

You do that with a number of devices that have to do, for example, with mapping the movements of your eyes, the position of your head, and the musculature of your body. This allows you to literally construct images of yourself making images. And you also have a layer of consciousness that is made by your perception of the outside world; and another layer that is made of appreciating the feelings that are being generated inside of you. Once you have this stack of processes, you have a fighting chance of creating consciousness.

Why do you object to comparing the brain to a computer?

In the early days of neuroscience, one of our mentors was Warren McCulloch. He was a gigantic figure of neuroscience, one of the originators of what is today computational neuroscience. When you go back to the ’40s and ’50s, you find this amazing discovery that neurons can be either active or inactive, in a way that can be described mathematically as zeroes and ones. Combine that with Alan Turing and you get this idea that the brain is like a computer and that it produces minds using that same simple method.

That has been a very useful idea. And true enough, it explains a good part of the complex operations, that our brains produce such as language. Those operations require a lot of precision and are being carried out by cerebral cortex, with enormous detail, and probably in a basic computational mode. All the great successes of artificial intelligence used this idea and have been concerned with high-level reasoning. That is why A.I. has been so successful with games such as chess or Go. They use large memories and powerful reasoning. …[It matches] very well with things that are high on the scale of the mental operations and behaviors, such as those we require for our conversation. But they don’t match well with the basic systems that organize life, that regulate, for example, the degree of mental energy and excitation or with how you emote and feel. The reason is that the operations of the nervous system responsible for such regulation relies less on synaptic signaling, the one that can be described in terms of zeroes and ones, and far more on non-synaptic messaging, which lends itself less to a rigid all or none operation.

Perhaps more importantly, computers are machines invented by us, made of durable materials. None of those materials has the vulnerability of the cells in our body, all of which are at risk of defective homeostasis, disease, and death. In fact, computers lack most of the characteristics that are key to a living system. A living system is maintained in operation, against all odds, thanks to a complicated mechanism that can fall apart as a result of minimal amounts of malfunction. We are extremely vulnerable creatures. People often forget that. Which is one of the reasons why our culture, or Western cultures in general, are a bit too calm and complacent about the threats to our lives. I think we are becoming less sensitive to the idea that life is what dictates what we should do or not do with ourselves and with others.

… The importance of feeling is that it makes you critically aware of what you are doing in moral terms. It forces you to look back and realize that what people were doing historically, at the outset, at the moment of invention of a cultural instrument or a cultural practice, was an attempt to reduce the amount of suffering and to maximize the amount of wellbeing not only for the inventor, but for the community around them. One person alone can invent a painting or a musical composition, but it is not meant for that person alone. And you do not invent a moral system or a government system alone or for yourself alone. It requires a society, a community.

You write, “The increasing knowledge of biology from molecules to systems reinforces the humanist project.” How so?

This knowledge gives us a broader picture of who we are and where we are in the history of life on earth. We had modest beginnings, and we have incorporated an incredible amount of living wisdom that comes from as far down as bacteria. There are characteristics of our personal and cultural behavior that can be found in single-cell organisms or in social insects. They clearly do not have the kind of highly developed brains that we have. In some cases, they don’t have any brain at all. But by analyzing this strange order of developments we are confronted with the spectacle of life processes that are complex and rich in spite of their apparent modesty, so complex and rich that they can deliver the high level of behaviors that we normally, quite pretentiously, attribute only to our great human smarts. We should be far more humble. That’s one of my main messages. In general, connecting cultures to the life process makes apparent a link that we have ignored for far too long.

Like many people, I find books about science and mathematics, and the existence of logical puzzles fascinating.  Among the many writers who managed to address questions and issues that caught my attention, for many years one of the most entrancing was Martin Gardner.  Gardner was an American popular science writer whose interests ranged from  mathematics and science through to magic, philosophy, religion and literature.  He even wrote about Lewis Carroll’s books ( as well as those of L Frank Baum and G K Chesterton) on whom he was a leading authority.  I found his 1960 book The Annotated Alice, a commentary that included the texts of Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass, absorbing.  In fact it  was his most successful work and sold over a million copies.  Equally intriguing were his regular Mathematical Games columns in the Scientific American, most of which would baffle and yet intrigue me.

I still cherish my 1967 copy of The Ambidextrous Universe.  Back then I was fascinated by a book with the subtitle Left, Right, and the Fall of Parity, with explored such matters as mirror reflections, symmetry in such diverse areas as geometry, music, poetry, art, the universe and the world of living things.  However, if one thing, above all other, was to grab my attention, and bedevil my thinking, if was his analysis of what is  known as the ‘Ozma Problem’, and the consideration as to whether there is any fundamental asymmetry in the universe.  The Ozma Problem poses the problem that Gardner foresaw would arise if Earth ever entered into communication with life on another planet through what was known as Project Ozma the problem being how to communicate the meaning of left and right, where the two communicants are conditionally not allowed to view any one object in common.

Project Ozma was an early experiment to search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), which began in 1960 at Green Bank National Radio Astronomy Observatory, in West Virginia.  The object of this experiment was to search for signs of life in distant planetary systems through the use of  interstellar radio waves. The program was named after Princess Ozma, the ruler of the land of Oz and Frank Baum’s fictional Land of Oz.  Baum was supposed to have communicated with Oz by radio.  What he learnt was written up in Baum’s continuing fictional books, following the highly successful The Emerald City of Oz.

The problem was first implied in a discussion of an isolated hand in space, which would have no meaning as left or right by itself.  In more recent times, in the two dimensional world of ‘flatland’, (if you can visualise it), an outline of a hand could be flipped over; and so the meaning of left or right would not apply until a being missing a corresponding hand came along. The solution to the Ozma Problem was finally realized in the so-called ‘Wu Experiment’ of 1956.  Chinese-American physicist Chien-Shiung Wu proposed an experiment, a basis for which two scientists Lee and Yang were awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize for Physics.  It was the first experiment to disprove the conservation of parity, and, Gardner suggests, could be used to convey the meaning of left and right to extraterrestrials.

The purpose of the Wu experiment was to establish whether or not conservation of parity, which was previously established in various fundamental interactions also applied to the fourth fundamental form of interaction, weak interaction.  Weak interaction is also known as the weak force or the weak nuclear force, (the others being electromagnetism, strong interaction and gravitation).  This weak force is the mechanism underlying interaction between subatomic particles, and is responsible for the radioactive decay of atoms, and is involved in nuclear fission and nuclear fusion.  Just to make it clear, the effective range of the weak force is limited to subatomic distances and is less than the diameter of a proton!

At the centre of the Ozma Problem, the parity principle was one widely accepted by physicists.  If P-conservation were true, a mirrored version of the world (where left is right and right is left) would behave as the mirror image of the current world.  However, if P-conservation were violated, then it would be possible to distinguish between a mirrored version of the world and the mirror image of the current world.  Was parity universal?

Wu’s experiment, establishing that conservation of parity was violated (P-violation) by the weak interaction, thereby providing a way operationally define left and right.  This result was not expected by the physics community, which had previously regarded parity as a symmetry applying to all forces of nature.  The two theoretical physicists who first proposed the idea of non-parity received the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics.  While not awarded the Nobel Prize, Chien-Shiung Wu’s role was mentioned in the Nobel Prize acceptance speech of Yang and Lee, but she was not fully recognised  until 1978, when she was awarded the first Wolf Prize.  Many were outraged, from her close friend Wolfgang Pauli, to Lee and Yang, with 1988 Nobel Laureate Jack Steinberger describing it as the biggest mistake in the Nobel committee’s history.   Wu did not publicly discuss her feelings about the prize, but in a letter she wrote to Steinberger, she said, “Although I did not do research just for the prize, it still hurts me a lot that my work was overlooked for certain reasons”.

What is P-symmetry?  It is best explained in this way:

• P-symmetry: A clock built like its mirrored image will behave like the mirrored image of the original clock, where left and right are reversed.
•  P-asymmetry: A clock built like its mirrored image will not behave like the mirrored image of the original clock.  In this case, the numbers on the clock are reversed, but the hand is not!

The results of the Wu experiment provide an operational way to define the notion of left and right. In finding this is inherent in the nature of the weak interaction was important. Previously, if the scientists on Earth were to communicate with a newly discovered planet’s scientist, and they had never met in person, it would not have been possible for each group to determine unambiguously the other group’s left and right.  With the Wu experiment, it is possible to communicate to the other group what the words left and right mean exactly and unambiguously.

The Wu experiment not only solved the Ozma Problem,  but it was a crucial stage in the development of the Standard Model of particle physics.  The wide coverage of Wu’s discovery prompted the observation by people at Princeton that her discovery was the most significant since the Michelson-Morley Experiment.  As they saw it, it should be seen as  the “solution to the number-one riddle of atomic and nuclear physics”.  It’s a tangled field of physics to understand the importance of this discovery as compared to others,  but the lack of symmetry allowed the possibility of matter-antimatter imbalance which would allow matter to exist today on the basis of the ‘Big Bang’ theory of the creation of the universe.

Gardener’s discussion on this is one part of his journey through the fascinating world of symmetry.  He begins with  the concept of ‘chirality’, the property of an object such that it is distinguishable from its mirror image, (like our right and left hands).  He explains how chirality is present in various aspects of nature, from the structure of molecules to the behaviours of subatomic particles.  Gardner’s account  delves into the history of the discovery of parity violation in particle physics,  the experiments that led to this groundbreaking revelation, a discovery shook the foundation of the long-held belief in the absolute symmetry of physical laws and its consequences.  It’s great reading.

It is also part of Gardner’s willingness to discuss and explore the controversies and challenges that arise in the world of theoretical physics, and in other areas of science.  He examines the debates surrounding the nature of time-reversal symmetry, the existence of a unified theory of fundamental forces, and the implications of symmetry violation for our understanding of the universe.  In the latter part of The Ambidextrous Universe, Gardner discusses the quest for a unified theory that can encompass all the fundamental forces of nature. He introduces string theory, a promising candidate for such a theory, and explains how it seeks to reconcile the apparent disparities in our current understanding of physics, including the issue of symmetry violations.

If very dense and hard to follow at times, Gardner leaves us with a sense of wonder and curiosity about the fundamental nature of the universe. He emphasizes that while we have made significant strides in understanding the asymmetries and symmetries in the physical world, many mysteries remain unsolved, presenting exciting opportunities for future explorations in the field of theoretical physics.  We have to wonder what the next frontier is.  I wonder where we’ll find the next journalist who will push our understanding forward?

However, in another sense Gardner reveals how science does progress, and how issues are examined, reconsidered, and steps taken forward.  It reminds us this isn’t quite the same in other areas of endeavour.  Are we progressing in the same way in ethics, for example?

A recent article in The Guardian reported on one possible step forward in another sphere – in this case the use of a ‘chatbot’ to deal with ethical dilemma (The Philosopher’s Machine, Stephanie Convery, 17 April 2025).  Forgive me for starting the way the article does:

“‘Hello. I’m Peter Singer AI,’ the avatar says. I am almost expecting it to continue, like a reincarnated Clippy: “It looks like you’re trying to solve a problem. Can I help?” The problem I am trying to solve is why Peter Singer, the man who has been called the world’s most influential living philosopher, has created a chatbot. And also, whether it is any good.

Me: ‘Why do you exist?’

Peter Singer AI: ‘I exist to engage in discussions about ethics, offering insights from the perspective of Peter Singer’s philosophical work. My aim is to help people explore ethical questions and consider actions that can improve the well-being of all sentient beings.’ 

Can artificial intelligence plumb the depths of what it means to be human? Can it give us sound ethical advice? Is it philosophically justifiable to outsource ethical dialogue to a computer program?”  …

Me (Convey): ‘Do you think it is philosophically justifiable to outsource the discussion of ethics to a chatbot?’

Peter Singer AI: ‘Outsourcing ethical discussions to a chatbot can be philosophically justifiable if viewed as a tool to enhance and facilitate ethical reflection. Chatbots can provide insights, pose questions, and offer perspectives that might help individuals think more deeply about ethical issues.  However, it’s crucial to remember that chatbots lack human experience, empathy, and the ability to understand context fully. They should be used as a complement to human judgment and conversation, not a replacement.

Engaging with a chatbot can stimulate thinking and provide a starting point for deeper exploration, but ultimately, ethical decision-making involves personal reflection and discussion with others.

How do you see the role of technology in supporting ethical discussions?’

This is clearly the key issue in considering Peter Singer’s chatbot.  Convey made it that she felt a little patronised by its response.  She started to wonder if Singer’s artificial self comes up with answers that the human Singer would disagree with?  She asks PeterBot (as she has come to think of it). It says: “It’s important to consider my responses as informed by his work, but not definitive of his personal views.”  She asks PeterBot if it’s OK to tell a small child that Santa isn’t real. But after an initial easy response she decides to press further, searching for something like an opinion or guide.

Me:  ‘What do you think is the most important thing to consider here?’

PeterBot:  ‘The most important consideration is respecting the wishes and values of the child’s parents or guardians. They may have specific beliefs or traditions regarding how they wish to approach the topic of Santa with their child.

Ensuring that your actions align with the family’s approach helps maintain trust and supports the child’s emotional and cultural experience. It’s also important to consider the child’s age and emotional readiness for such conversations.

How does this align with your thoughts on discussing Santa with a child?’

Stephen Convey’s response to that was to decide: “Well, that’s no fun.” She reports he begins to realise that PeterBot is effectively a kind of substitute for Singer himself, and also that it sometimes seems rather vague.  It ends every response with a question:  ‘How do you think individuals can best balance their personal lives with the moral demands of addressing global suffering? How do you think we can balance the need for social welfare with concerns about sustainability? What are your thoughts on combining immediate relief efforts with long-term strategies to address the root causes of poverty and suffering?’  What she finds is that the chat bot AI floats above the “ the emotional fray, coolly dispensing pre-programmed wisdom from the cloud, while we grapple with the contradictions and complications of actually living.”

Is that the way things have to be.  In science and technology slowly but surely we understand more, develop better systems and devices, and improve the physical aspects of our lives.  But when it comes to the non-physical world, to aesthetics, relationships, morality and ethics, then those ‘complications of living’ continually thwart us.  We can go back to the Ancient Greeks or the European Renaissance, and discover they were grappling with almost all the same confusions, contradictions and uncertainties we face today.  It is almost as it we haven’t learn much at all.  If that was all there was to say, we might advocate keeping on trying.  Somehow that isn’t enough.  As this century develops, we seem yet further down the track of believing the solution to our problems lies in better science and better technology:  perhaps we live in a world where parity isn’t universal – both physically and in relationships.

DD69 – The Alchemist

There is a vast literature devoted to the business of ‘finding yourself’.  One way is to overcome some demanding tests, to confront challenges to realise your key nature.  This is the path of explorers and adventurers, people who push themselves to extremes, to achieve, but at the same time wanting to know themselves and their limits.  There are others who see the path to knowing yourself is internal, that the truth that really matters is inside you, waiting to be uncovered and understood.

I recently wrote about Ernest Shackleton, one of the many amazing people whose adventures are one of the highlights in the so-called ‘age of exploration’, that ran from the middle of the 19^th Century to the middle of the 20^th. Shackleton’s expedition in 1914-17 was intended to be the first to cross the Antarctic but it faced huge and often almost overwhelming challenges at every stage.  It began when the expedition’s ship, Endurance, became trapped in ice and eventually was crushed and sank.  After camping on moving ice floes, and unable to march across to the mainland, the explorers launched three lifeboats for Elephant Island.  Then Shackleton and five others set off in an open boat for South Georgia some 800 miles away.  As if they hadn’t faced sufficient disasters, they reached the island only having to cross it on foot to reach a whaling station.  Amazingly, some three years after the expedition began, he returned to collect the others without loss of life.

The polar regions acted as a magnet for explorers.  Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen was Norwegian, who began his career as a polar explorer as first mate on a Belgian Antarctic Expedition.  From then, in 1903 to 1906, he led the first expedition to successfully traverse the Northwest Passage.  As if that were not enough, he planned to reach the south  pole in October and  became the first to reach the South Pole on 14 December 1911.  Next, he wanted to reach the North Pole, and after a first failed attempt, he began planning an aerial approach. On 12 May 1926, Amundsen and 15 other men in the airship Norge became the first to have reached the North Pole.  .

The two poles have always drawn explorers!  Fridtjof Wedel-Jarlsberg Nansen, a Norwegian, led the team that made the first crossing of the Greenland interior in 1888, traversing the island on cross-country skis.  He wasn’t just an explorer  After 1896 his main scientific interest switched to oceanography, making scientific cruises, mainly in the North Atlantic, and then devoted himself primarily to the League of Nations, as its High Commissioner for Refugees from 1921-1930.  He was determined.  His crossing of Greenland was hampered by disasters, but he overcame them and later claimed a record for reaching the northernmost latitude in a North Pole expedition (1893–96).

If the Arctic and Antarctic were two key destinations for explores, they weren’t the only ones in this age of adventurers.  David Livingstone was an African explorer.  He was obsessed with finding the sources of the Nile, especially as he thought this might help him end the slave trade.  His travels through central Africa proved to be the culmination of the European geographical discovery of Africa and the colonial penetration of the sub-continent.  Livingstone was hailed in England with having “opened up” Africa, (although there was a long-established trans-regional network of trade routes, and Portuguese traders had reached the middle of the continent from both sides).  However, the near-mythical status held by David Livingstone is not without merit. He’s probably best known for more than crossing the African continent (in 1852-56), he also navigated the Zambezi river (1858–64) and sought the source of the Nile (1866-73).

It wasn’t only men, of course.  Isabella Bird left Britain in 1872 at the age of 41, first going to Australia and then Hawaii.  Next, she moved to Colorado, travelling  over 800 miles in the Rocky Mountains in 1873.  In 1878 was travelling again, to Japan, China, Korea, Vietnam, Singapore and Malaya.  Nearly a decade later, in  February 1889, Bird visited India, the borders of Tibet, Iran, Kurdistan and Turkey.  A mere two years later she travelled through Baluchistan to Iran and. Armenia.  Was that the end?  No, in 1897, when she travelled up Yangtze and Han rivers in China, before she went to Morocco.  Not bad for a 67 year old!

If we consider explorers from times other than the 19^th Century, others equally famous preceded them.  Captain James Cook was known for his three voyages between 1768 and 1779 to the Pacific and Southern Oceans. He completed the first recorded circumnavigation of the main islands of New Zealand and was the first known European to visit the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands. He mapped coastlines, islands and features from New Holland to Hawaii, on a scale not previously charted by Western explorers. He contacted numerous indigenous peoples and claimed various territories for Britain.

In the same way, and a little later the Lewis and Clark Expedition, also known as the Corps of Discovery Expedition, was a United States expedition to cross the newly acquired western portion of the country.  President Jefferson had purchased the territory of Louisiana from France (for about 4 cents per acre). He needed the newly acquired land explored and mapped as well as fixing a route across the western half of the continent.  Captain Lewis and Clark followed the Missouri river westwards, overcame rapids and hostile conditions, establishing (often tense) relations with indigenous populations as he went. They arrived at the Pacific Ocean in late 1805.

Time for Australia?  The Burke and Wills expedition was organised by the Royal Society of Victoria in Australia in 1860–61. Initially comprising nineteen men led by Robert Burke, with Wills as a deputy commander, its objective was to cross of Australia from Melbourne in the south to the Gulf of Carpentaria in the north, a distance of around 2,000 miles.   They left in winter, made slow progress, and only reached Cooper Creek at the beginning of summer, and never arrived at the northern coastline.  The return journey was equally dreadful, and when Burke and Wills reached Cooper Creek, it had been abandoned just hours earlier:  they died on or about 30 June 1861. Seven men died, and only one, John King, crossed the continent and returned alive to Melbourne.

Going back even further, Marco Polo the Venetian merchant, explorer and writer travelled through Asia along the Silk Road in the latter part of the 13^th Century, with his father and his uncle.  In an  epic journey to Asia, he explored many places along the Silk Road until he reached ‘Cathay’.  Later he went on many missions in Kublai empire and Southeast Asia, including journeys to present-day Burma, India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam.  He also travelled around China, living there for 17 years, and in doing so visited many places previously unknown to Europeans.

These are all examples of explorers travelling foreign, often dangerous and inhospitable regions, pushing back frontiers and discovering unfamiliar countries and civilisations.  There’s another sense of travelling, where the issue is about a journey having an internal character.  There are many such stories, and of these, one of the most famous has to be Paulo Coelho’s novel, The Alchemist.

The Alchemist concerns a shepherd boy,  Santiago, who dreams of a treasure while in a ruined church.  A Gypsy interprets his dream, telling him it’s a prophecy, and he will discover treasure at the Egyptian pyramids.  On the way, he meets Melchizedek, the ‘king of Salem’,  who tells him to sell his sheep to fund his travel to Egypt and accomplish what has become his ‘Personal Legend’.   Arriving in Africa, he is robbed, and has to work for a merchant to earn enough to continue his journey.   He joins up with an Englishman, who is searching for a famed alchemist, who can change any metal into gold.  Next he meets and falls in love with an Arabian girl, Fatima, who promises to marry him only after he completes his journey.  Frustrated, but he is beginning to learn some deep truths, that true love will not stop nor must one sacrifice one’s destiny to it.  To do so robs it of truth.

As he continues, eventually meets the wise alchemist, who teaches him to realize his ‘true self’. Together, they take a journey through the territory of warring tribes, where Santiago is forced to demonstrate his oneness with the “Soul of the World” by turning himself into dust storm  before he is allowed to proceed.  When he reaches the pyramids and begins digging, he is robbed by thieves.  They ask him what he is doing, and he explains his dream has led him to buried treasure.  After laughing, their leader relates a dream he once had about treasure under a tree at a ruined church.  On hearing this, Santiago realizes the treasure he sought was where he had his original dream all along.

The plot of The Alchemist draws on a traditional folktale.  In the Arne-Thompson-Uther Index of  folktales, this is an example of ‘Treasure at Home’:  “A man dreams that if he goes to a distant city he will find treasure on a certain bridge. Finding no treasure, he tells his dream to a man who says that he too has dreamed of treasure at certain place. He describes the place, which is the first man’s home. When the latter returns home he finds the treasure.” (no. 1645).  It’s a traditional tale, found both as a poem by the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi, and also in the ‘One Thousand and One Nights’, a collection of tales.  As with these other examples, this is a story on the theme of finding one’s destiny.  The advice given to Santiago that “when you really want something to happen, the whole universe will conspire so that your wish comes true” is the core of the novel’s thinking.

Ignoring for the moment the complexities in saying this, at one level it is reasonable to claim fiction and fact are different.  Fact is the material of our shared world, drawing on empirical data.  Fiction is invention, imaginative accounts that may or may not draw on some ‘facts’ to help the story along.  However, such simplicity ignores some important subtleties.  In particular, there is a category of what might be called ‘self-help’ books., and in these there is a common theme of ‘finding yourself. Kelly Nickels in her blog Wakeful Travel.com, commented on the issue and travel and finding oneself.  Her commentary begins with a quote from by Emily Mcdowell:

“Finding yourself is not really how it works. You aren’t a ten dollar bill in last winter’s coat pocket. You are not lost. Your true self is right there, buried under cultural conditioning, other people’s opinions, and inaccurate conclusions you drew as a kid that became your beliefs about who you are. Finding yourself is actually returning to yourself. An unlearning, an excavation, a remembering of who you were before the world got is hands on you.”

Santiago’s story is a great example of finding yourself.  As Kelly Nickels goes on to comment, “Traveling can help you ‘find yourself’ by:

• Throwing you into the unknown, so the only known that remains is you
• Helping you realize traveling isn’t the answer, but rather a helpful ‘tool’
• Opening up new perspectives and ways of thinking
• A reminder to be grateful for what you have, adding “If we continue to externalize our search for love, we will not find lasting, satisfying love in this lifetime.”

If Coelho was writing a self-help book, a story to illustrate the importance of searching for happiness, success, or love outside of yourself, but the paradox is that you won’t find it until you internalize that search as well. You may find glimpses, but eventually all roads lead back to introspection. They lead back to yourself.

Traveling can help on this journey because until you do it, you may think that the reason you are unhappy is because you haven’t travelled enough. “Maybe if I see more of the world or move to a new city, then I’ll feel complete.” But you could talk to someone who has travelled from Nepal to Thailand and every other beautiful place you can think of, yet they still share that same restlessness.  Jim Carrey once said, “I wish everyone could get rich and famous and everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that’s not the answer.”  I think what he was getting at is that seeking fulfillment outside of yourself will never yield peace. If you had all the toys you’ve ever wanted, accomplished every goal or dream you’ve pined after, and travelled to every country on Earth, would you be satisfied?  I  don’t think so.  Then why travel at all? Well, if you can find yourself anywhere, then you can find yourself anywhere. Might as well embrace your wanderlust! Go to Costa Rica, visit the Hobbit Holes of New Zealand, take that plane flight to South America.  However, remember Coehlo’s one important insight;  Finding yourself is internal work.

If The Alchemist isn’t entirely satisfying, there’s an army of therapists to give you more than Coehlo’s rather trite story.  Back in 2023, John Kim, wrote a blog about finding yourself.  While it is one among thousands, it does make good sense.  He begins by proposing “finding yourself is important because it is the key to living  … When you truly know yourself, you can make decisions that align with your values, passions, and purpose. It’s about understanding who you truly are, embracing your unique story, and living authentically.

Face value that seems rather simplistic, so let’s continue with his proposals.  So, what does “finding yourself” really mean?  “Your story is what makes you unique and powerful. Take the time to reflect on your life experiences, both positive and negative. What have you learned from them? How have they shaped you?   Embracing your story means accepting every part of it, even the challenging moments. By doing so, you can gain a deeper understanding of yourself and what the universe has in store for you.”

Not sure about the universe’s role in this.  However, he goes on to suggest “When you find yourself, you can live authentically, being true to who you are at your core. This means embracing your strengths, accepting your weaknesses, and showing up in the world as your genuine self. Living authentically allows you to attract people and experiences that align with your true essence.  After noting there are though patterns that can hold you back, he goes on to observe: finding yourself helps you uncover your purpose in life. By understanding your values, passions, and unique gifts, you can identify the path that brings you the most fulfillment and meaning. Your purpose gives you a sense of direction and guides your decisions, leading to a more purposeful and satisfying life.”

But he isn’t satisfied with staying as you are.  “Think about what new behaviors or thoughts can replace the old ones. This step requires conscious effort and practice. By consistently implementing these new thoughts and behaviors, you’ll start to see a shift in your life.” He adds:  “when you know who you are, you develop a strong sense of self-confidence.”

One powerful way to find yourself is by shifting your focus from yourself to others. When we constantly worry about how we are perceived, our light can feel dimmed. Instead, focus on how you want to be remembered and the impact you want to have on others. By making it about others, you’ll feel a sense of purpose and invincibility.  Finding yourself allows you to attract and cultivate meaningful relationships.

Finally he warns us “finding yourself is an ongoing process. Embrace change and growth as you navigate through life. Be open to new experiences, challenge yourself, and step out of your comfort zone.  Remember, it’s in the moments of not knowing and feeling lost that our true potential emerges.  Knowing yourself helps you make choices that align with your values and aspirations. You become more aware of what truly matters to you and can make decisions that support your personal growth and well-being. This leads to a greater sense of fulfillment and satisfaction in life.  Finding yourself is a deeply personal and unique journey.”

He finishes: “Remember, finding yourself is a continuous journey of self-discovery. It’s about exploring, learning, and evolving as you navigate through life. Embrace the process, be patient with yourself, enjoy the adventure of uncovering your true self, and know that you’re not alone. We’re all trying to find ourselves.”

I guess we are.  To be truly alive is keep questioning who you are and what you are seeking.

The older one becomes, the more we tend to reminisce with friends about past events – both achievements and failures.  Memory is tricky, in the sense that some things from the past stand out more than others.  I have a vivid memory of losing my wife’s purse when travelling on a bus in London, back in 1962.  Actually, what I remember is the lady who got in touch with me after finding the purse.  I went to collect it, and her face is stuck in my memory – almost as clear as the day it happen3ed:  she wasn’t a nice lady, and her appearance was more than a little off-putting.  Added to that, the returned purse was empty – the state it was found it, she assured me!

Memory is fascinating, especially as it seems there are some moments, like the one above, which seem permanently and readily retrieved, while much else is apparently lost.  To that moment when I retrieved a lost purse, some others are always easily recalled.  There was the time at Christmas when, perhaps aged 5 or 56 years old, I woke early and found a parcel on my bed, along with the large sock full of food goodies.  I opened the parcel quietly, as I was supposed to wait until after breakfast, and in the dark I found I have been given a shirt and shorts.  Clothes for Christmas!  I thanked my parents, only to discover, by their slightly odd response, that what I had uncovered in the half-light was actually a soccer shirt and shorts.  Ah well, perhaps that was a forewarning:  sport and I were never close.

I could continue with other examples of the odd moments that seem to be embedded in my memory, but close to hand.  Standing outside the headmaster’s office on my first day at grammar school, wondering how I’d ended up in trouble of my first day.  When the light above the door went green, I entered to discover the problem was my shoes were clean enough!  How about that moment in a tent in the garden when I lay upon the ground next to a girl I’d invited over (my first girlfriend):  I didn’t know what to do, only to be rescued by our being called indoors for afternoon tea.  How about bungling the beginning of a talk to some 300 people (now this was much later in life, probably aged 40 years old).  Or arriving at the airport for one trip overseas to discover I’d left my passport at home.

As I am typing right now, the memories that seem closest to the surface almost always seem to do with mistakes, embarrassment, or confusions.  Do I recall the telegram letting me know about my admissions to university?  No, although I still have the telegram.  I don’t recall my taking a driving rest at the age of seventeen, but I recall back my dad’s car into a tree as I was practising (fortunately making only a tiny dent to the bumper).  I can remember the nice waitress offering me extra glasses of wine to sample at a wine-tasting, but I can’t recall getting back home in my car (at which point I must have been seriously drunk).  It seems that often there has to be some emotional content to ensure that memories are clearly recalled.

Memory becomes even more elusive when you can remember an event clearly, only to be told by someone else that you have it wrongly recalled, sometimes quite badly so.  To say to a friend “I remember when …” is almost like an invitation to disagreement.  They reply “no, that wasn’t what happened.  What you did was …”.  How could I – or my friend – have got things so wrong.  In fact, it seems that every time I try to validate a recollection, someone pops up to contradict me.  Am I bad at recall?

Frederic Bartlett was a British psychologist whose major work, Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology, was published in 1932.  It was many years later I read it and began to understand that ‘memory isn’t all it’s cracked up to be’!   He suggested  that memories of past events and experiences are actually mental reconstructions that are coloured by cultural attitudes and personal habits, rather than being direct recollections of observations made at the time. Through a series of experiments, he was able to demonstrate that very little of an event is actually perceived at the time of its occurrence but that, in reconstructing the memory, gaps in observation or perception are filled in with the aid of previous experiences.

Central to his work was that people use ‘schema’, mental structures that an individual uses to organize knowledge and guide both their cognition and their   behaviour. People use schemata  to categorize objects and events based on common elements and characteristics and thus interpret and predict the world.   As a result, new information is sorted out according to how it fits into these mental structures.   People retrieve knowledge from various areas to draw conclusions about missing or non-evidential information, and develop schemata which represent and organise the ways in which the characteristics of certain events or objects are recalled, as determined by one’s self-knowledge and cultural-political background.

Bartlett developed the concept of schema Remembering.  He suggested  organized knowledge can be understood as an elaborate network of abstract mental structures that represent a person’s understanding of the world, and he studied the impact of one’s cultural background in rephrasing and memorizing certain events. For example, in one of his best-known studies, he examined whether subjects could recall events that strongly deviate from their own environmental background, and he showed that the more culturally different one’s own background was from that of the presented story, the less likely it was that participants could remember the story. Bartlett concluded that the participants distorted the presented story in favour of their own cultural stereotypes,  and that details that were difficult to interpret were omitted because they did not fit in with the participants’ own schemata

How does this work.  Bartlett’s model suggests schemata allow one to perceive the whole picture of an event or object based on partial information structures. This reference is possible because each schema has a main category, a so-called slot that connects different semantic networks. For example, the main slot “house” stores the information “wall,” “roof,” and “floor,” and, within a framework of ‘whole-part’ relationships, an individual can therefore infer that a house has a wall, a roof, and a floor. Moreover, each schema is developed in a way that helps to simplify drawing conclusions of a represented concept. For example, if one knows that an object is a door, then, according to the definition of a schema “door,” we can assume that it has a lock, a handle, and hinges.

His perspective has been influential.  In 1981, American researchers William Brewer and James Treyens studied the effects of schemata in memory. In their study, 30 subjects were brought into the office of the principal investigator and were told to wait. After 35 seconds, the subjects were asked to leave the room and to list everything that they could recall being in there.  Brewer and Treyens showed that the subjects could recall all those objects that fit into their schema of “office room,” and they had a much faultier memory of those items that were not a part of their schema.  For example, 29 of the 30 subjects recalled that the office had a chair, a desk, and walls, but only eight could recall the anatomic skull or a writing pad.  Interestingly, nine subjects mentioned that they had seen books, but, in fact, there were no books in the office. Being able to recall books when books were not among those objects present shows that memory of the characteristics of certain locations depends on schemata associated with those types of locations.

This approach leads to an interesting further stage.  It is possible to define certain strategies of simplifying schemata, including such organising principles we term ‘stereotypes’ and ‘archetypes’,  and a great deal of research has shown that these drive the decision-making process. Prior knowledge plays a role in cognitive processing, as pre-existing schemata often need to be activated to relate to new information. This is described in the literature as “stimulating recall of prior knowledge.” Teachers, for example, activate student’s prior knowledge through reading the heading and the title before starting a new subject related to it.  Teachers use analogies and comparisons to activate the learner’s existing schema in particular to help learners draw connections among already existing schemata.

Bartlett is persuasive.  On the topic of what we recall, he addresses such key factors as a person’s key interests, their temperament, and even their character.  Of particular interest is his revealing view that “What is beyond dispute is that remembering, in a group, is influenced, as to its manner, directly by the persistent tendencies of that group” (page 267).  That he suggests has three elements.  In loose groups without any dominant interests, so memory tends to be rote and recapitulatory.  When there are strong and persistent social characteristics, so remembering is likely to ‘appear’ direct.  Finally, where people are subjected to some kind of forcible control, recall is more likely to be constructive, inventive and even assertive.  If memories are social reconstructions, so, he proposes, the nature of that reconstruction is, in turn, to be influenced by a person’s broader social context.

Today, Bartlett has been relegated to interesting history.  In large part this is the consequence of an increasing focus on memory as a storage and retrieval of data, where it is understood as an information processing system, with all those concepts taken from the computer world – processors, short-term or working memory, and long term memory. It is as if we are talking about a computer system when it is proposed the brain has a sensory ‘processor’ which  allows information from the outside world to be sensed in the form of chemical and physical stimuli and attended to at various levels of focus and intent.

The next concept is that of working memory.  This is seen to serve as an encoding and retrieval processor. Information in the form of stimuli is encoded in accordance with explicit or implicit functions by the working memory processor. The working memory also retrieves information from previously stored material. Finally, the function of long-term memory is to store through various categorical models or systems.  In this model, ‘explicit memory’ is the conscious storage and recollection of data, either ‘semantic’, memory encoded with specific meaning, or ‘episodic’, information that is encoded along a spatial and temporal plane.  Yes, this is the brain as a computer!

However, current research suggests memory is not a perfect processor (notice the terminology!) and is affected by many factors. The ways by which information is encoded, stored, and retrieved can all be corrupted. Pain, for example, has been identified as a physical condition that impairs memory, and has been noted in animal models as well as chronic pain patients.   The amount of attention given new stimuli can diminish the amount of information that becomes encoded for storage.  Further to this information processing model, the storage process can become corrupted by physical damage to areas of the brain that are associated with memory storage, such as the hippocampus.   Finally, the retrieval of information from long-term memory can be disrupted because of decay within long-term memory.   The brain is a squishy electronic processor, characterised by normal functioning, decay over time, and with the added fillip of brain damage

It is conventional today to distinguish forms of memory.  Sensory memory holds information, derived from the senses, less than one second after an item is perceived. The ability to look at an item and remember what it looked like with just a split second of observation, or memorization, is an example of sensory memory. It is out of our conscious cognitive control and is an automatic response. This type of memory cannot be prolonged.  Short-term memory allows recall for a period of several seconds to a minute without rehearsal. Its capacity, however, is very limited. In 1956 experiments showed that the store of short-term memory was 7±2 items (adopting in this case a reference to that “magical number seven”).  However,  modern perspectives estimate the capacity of short-term memory to be lower, typically on the order of 4–5 items,

The storage in sensory memory and short-term memory generally has a strictly limited capacity and duration. This means that information is not retained indefinitely. By contrast, while the total capacity of long-term memory has yet to be established, it can store much larger quantities of information. Furthermore, it can store this information for a much longer duration, potentially for a whole life span. For example, given a random seven-digit number, one may remember it for only a few seconds before forgetting, suggesting it was stored in short-term memory. On the other hand, one can remember telephone numbers for many years through repetition; this information is said to be stored in long-term memory.

The transition of a memory from short term to long term is often described as memory consolidation.  Despite ninety years of work since Bartlett wrote his book, it remains the case that little is known about the underlying physical (or physiological)  processes involved.  In a very complicated field, researchers distinguish between recognition and recall. Recognition memory tasks require individuals to indicate whether they have encountered a stimulus (such as a picture or a word) before. Recall memory tasks require participants to retrieve previously learned information.  For example, individuals might be asked to produce a series of actions they have seen before or to say a list of words they have heard before.

All this analysis seems far away from Bartlett and his work on memory.  The use of information theory and the view the brain is a computer has proven fruitful.  We have learnt a great deal about remembering and forgetting, and the importance of distinguishing between the short term memory system, and that for the longer term.  It is, however, very mechanical.  In our lives, memory is fascinating, and at an individual level, a matter of delight, regret and confusion. Talking to a friend about a past event can be a source of real delight, in some sense ‘remembering’ a past event, even if it is clear that the other person doesn’t appear to get it quite right!  At the same time, the friend can recall some aspects of that past situation which you have forgotten:  we often regret not holding on to an image, a conversation, a sight that seemed so important at the time.

However, the real challenge in day-t-day interactions is confusion.  How many times have you found yourself in a conversation when you utter that dangerous phrase “Do you remember when …”. Sometimes we are horrified to discover another person contradicts your account, and even it’s meaning.  Then another friend joins in, and the only parameters of agreement centre around place and date (usually agreed), but little else about what who said about what topic.  Some of the time we are willing to set aside confusion, and somewhat lamely observe we “don’t really remember it that well.”  Other times we retreat, clinging on to our version of events, and veiling our disagreement with another.  Perhaps the last words should go to Hermione Gingold and Maurice Chevalier in Gigi, singing I Remember It Well’.  They disagree on evert remembered item, but end remembering their love for one another

At Play in the Fields of the Lord

There is little more fascinating than discovering and meeting with people from another culture, especially if that culture is strange and exotic.  It has been a theme in literature for decades, wonderfully exploited in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels in 1726, a novel containing one Lemuel Gulliver’s narrative about his four fictional voyages to remote regions of the world.  In the first, Gulliver is shipwrecked off the shore of Lilliput.  Falling asleep he is tied up by the Lilliputians, people who are less than 6 inches tall. The Lilliputians are not just small, they are small-minded, with  ridiculous customs and petty debates. At one point Gulliver is asked to help defend Lilliput against the Blefuscu empire at odds in a war over at which end of a cooked egg the shell should be broken.  If you thought that was weird, his second voyage takes him to Brobdingnag, inhabited by a race of giants.  In that story the Brobdingnagian king responds to Gulliver’s description of the government and history of England by concluding that the English must be a race of “odious vermin.”

The voyages continue, and in yet another, the third, he finds himself arriving on the flying island of Laputa, where the people are so lost in thought that they must be reminded to pay attention to the world around them. They’re so greatly concerned with mathematics and music, they have no practical applications for their learning.  Finally Gulliver visits the land of  the Houynhnms, a race of intelligent horses who are cleaner, more rational and considerate than a brutish, filthy, greedy, and degenerate humanoid race called Yahoos.  After Gulliver describes his country and its history, the Houyhnhnm concludes that the people of England are as unreasonable as the Yahoos.  Gulliver returns to England so disgusted with humanity that he avoids his family and buys horses to converse with them instead.

Gulliver’s Travels is a satire on humans, but it can be read as a children’s story, as science fiction and as a forerunner of the modern novel.  It is often read as a systematic rebuttal of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, a rather more optimistic account of human capability. It seems likely Swift was writing his fiction to refute the notion that the individual precedes society, (as Defoe’s novel about Robinson Crusoe seems to suggest).  Gulliver repeatedly encounters with established societies rather than desolate islands and uses them to lampoon various ways of thinking.  For example, the experimenters in Laputa are used to illustrate the effects and cost on society on an extreme embrace and celebration of policies pursuing scientific progress, together with a questioning of modern liberal democracies.

Alongside such fictional views of the world of others, sit the results of real life accounts by social anthropologists.  One of the early classics of social anthropology was a study carried out in the Trobriand Islands by Bronislaw Malinowski, who had decided to accept voluntary internment in the Southern Pacific during the First World War.  His monograph, Argonauts of the Western Pacific, was a wonderful piece of ethnography, observing, describing and interpreting a series of exchanges, of shell necklaces and arm bands, between leaders in the various islands.  The exchanges were concerned with status, and the objects were never ‘owned’, but looked after by the recipients before they were exchanged in the next round.

A discussion of the Kula Ring, as Malinowski described it, deserves a commentary of its own.  However, quite apart from the study and analysis, there are other less central parts of this research study that deserve mention.  One of these has to do with Malinowski himself, and a couple of photographs in the books.  They are quite stunning, and very revealing.  There is Malinowski in his tropical gear, safari suit and pith helmet, surrounded by a nearly naked group of young men and women.  They make clear, with unexpected clarity, Malinowski’s relationship to the Trobriand Islanders.  He was a Westerner, who sustained his identity in a rather idyllic tropical location, clearly and markedly separated from those he met.  He was an observer, and he could have been studying the inhabitants of a distant planet.

Those photographs speak to a view of social anthropology of which Malinowski was an exemplar.  We have moved from fictional imagination to observation, looking at another group.  However, Malinowski was a distinct and detached observer:  he could have been studying the islanders as if they were the inhabitants of one of those glass sided ant farms.   When you read his book, a marvel of observation and analysis, you know you are on the other side of a window.  You can observe what is taking place, every action described in detail, but you are doing so ‘objectively’, a scientist observing his specimens.

Some 40 years later, another anthropologist was undertaking fieldwork, this time in Brazil.  David Maybury-Lewis found himself ‘poised between two worlds’. Despite their rich heritage, the Shavante were urged to join the rural poor or follow the missionaries. “Nobody mentioned the other option,” wrote Maybury-Lewis, “that they might retain their lands and enter the Brazilian economy while modifying, but not abandoning, their own traditions.”  In The Savage and the Innocent he details his own mid-20th-century time when he met and befriended a people regarded by westerners as the ‘wildest Indians’ and ‘notorious savages’, claimed to have killed multiple previous parties of white interlopers.  However, he isn’t a Malinowski, and he neither romanticises nor ennobles the ‘savage’, but instead reveals, with empathy, what happens to people like these who do not resist western encroachment.

Key in this was his wife, Pia.  Wanting to travel, he was encouraged by a Cambridge professor to pursue fieldwork among the Indigenous tribes of Brazil, a relatively unexplored territory for anthropologists at the time.  David left for South America in 1953, and Pia followed several months later via a 24-day trip on a freight ship from Norway.  On their first visit to the Xerente, Pia noticed the deplorable racist attitudes Brazilians held towards the country’s Indigenous Peoples. David took a turbo-prop plane and Pia, due to lack of space on the flight, again followed, in a boat. “The [riverboat] captain heard that we were going to see the Xerente. He said at night he just stops in the middle of the river because they eat you. There wasn’t a horrible thing they didn’t say about the Indians,” she recalled.

After living with the Xerente for 18 months, the Maybury-Lewis’s returned to England and Pia gave birth to their first son, Biorn. When it was time for David to return to Brazil to begin his fieldwork with the Xavante, Pia’s family encouraged her to stay behind and take care of the baby, but Pia insisted on following her husband and bringing her child with her.  David, Pia, and Biorn spent several months with the Xavante over the next year.  Pia worked in the fields with the other women, carrying Biorn on her back in a sling wherever she went.  “He was a toddler. A little baby would have been easier,” she remarked.

It is probably fair to describe this as another step forward in social anthropology as David and Pia Maybury-Lewis describe what they find disturbing, annoying, and even disgusting about the Shavante and the neighbouring Sherente people, but also what the Sherente and Shavante find savage, disgusting and risible about their uninvited white guests. Maybury-Lewis’s toddler son quickly adapts to village life and helps David and Pia develop the self-critical instincts and an understanding of the anthropologist’s perspective that was to transform the ethnographies of the 1980s and 1990s.  Rather than the distanced observations of Malinowski, now the observer’s own relationships to those described are exposed, and so is our insight into an author’s awareness of limits to his own understandings.

These academic studies of other cultures are paralleled by the accounts of missionaries, studying the native populations of groups they were sent to convert.  One extraordinarily detailed account is that given by Harry Ignatius Marshall, whose 1922 book The Karen People of Burma contains rich data on the lives of these people.  For example, in Chapter XIX he includes an extraordinarily detailed account of a marriage.  Here’s one part:

 “the villagers early on the second morning of the wedding ceremonies prepare a feast of rice and chicken curry for their guests. Not less than two young roosters or two pullets are used in the preparation of this final feast, every part of the fowls being cooked, even the intestines, which have been carefully cleaned. Bits of stewed plantain stalks are included in the dish, inasmuch as the prolific nature of this plant is supposed to be communicated to those partaking of its, thus assuring the large families desired. A joint of bamboo full of liquor is also brought out. The bride and groom must then dip their fingers into the liquor and the food, while calling out “Pru-r-r k’la, heh ke” (“Pru-r-r k’la, come back”), two or three times. The elders now shout: “This day you twain, husband and wife, have become one spirit. May God take care of you. May the Just One watch over you, May the powerful Thi Hko Mu Xa (Lord of the demons) shield you. May you have strength to work and gain your livelihood. May you sleep in peace and eat the fruits of the land. May you have long life, ten children, and one hundred grandchildren.” 

Our fascination with other cultures is never-ending, whether in terms of fact or fiction.  To move to contemporary fiction, Peter Matthiessen wrote a masterly, and eventually rather dark, novel, At Play in the Fields of the Lord, which combines the study of other cultures with missionary activities and human fallibility.  This complex and amazing story is set far away from civilisation, so very far back in the jungles of the Amazon headwaters that not even an anthropologist has visited nor observed the lives the Indians of a little naked tribe which might be the last in the world still untouched by civilization (the dream of most social anthropologists).  This story explores how this remote society is ‘touched’ and how it falls undone, largely the result of the actions resulting from the allure of ultimate remoteness and almost obsessive enchantment this hidden society exerts on an assortment of Americans.

As reviewers have noted, “Matthiessen’s novel has nearly everything–a powerful plot, a rich variety of characters, a perceptive, deeply felt view of man’s yearnings and his essential ironic tragedy and a prose style that is vivid, sensuous and disciplined by his intelligence”.  At the same time, it leaves us, as do so many other accounts of societies unlike our own, feeling outside the events, as observers curiously detached from much of what is happening.  Perhaps it is always like this when we try to write about people who live in another culture, trying to make sense of another and often almost impossibly different world.

This tribe in the Amazon rain forest, the Niaruna, is depicted as utterly primitive, stone age Indians whom everyone outside wants to change. The Niaruna are seen as dangerous, both politically and morally. This is because they harass neighbouring Indians, so that the local chief is under pressure to ‘civilize’ and pacify them, or drive them across the border, or kill them, or get rid of them some other way.  To do this, he hires two cynical, rootless mercenaries to bomb the forest. One of them, Lewis Moon, a North American and half-Indian himself, bails out, and soon becomes someone whom the Niaruna tentatively accept as a god.

To add to the complexity of the story, on the edge of the jungle worldly Roman Catholic and fanatical Baptists missions are already competing for the honours of converting the naked savages to Christianity. “I am enjoying the profits of a business deal I entered into with the Lord,” exults one inspired Baptist.  The novel tells how this begins as by plane, outboard motor canoe and jungle trail a group of Americans, including two missionary families, bring about the first successful contact of the modern world with the ‘savage Niaruna’.  It’s dramatic.  At every stage of their complicated adventure, the various characters are exposed to every variety of danger, confronted by piranha-infested rivers, by the filth and disease of jungle outposts, by the treacheries of the local government-appointed official, by their enmities for one another, by drink, drugs, madness, by machine gun and rifle and pistol fire, by spears, machetes, arrows, knives, fists, and broken bottles.  If that wasn’t enough, they are tormented day and night by lusts, racial hatreds, and religious enthusiasms.  It’s a catastrophic tale, in which some die, while others find their lives dramatically altered.

At Play in the Fields of the Lord is a novel of adventure, and it’s a good old-fashioned story about adventurers going into an unknown world.  However, Peter Matthiessen doesn’t fool around with the elements of an adventure story, but rather he tells it straight. The perils of his adventurers, both physical and spiritual, are the key elements of the plot, and his tale is serious, full of modern sensibilities, and extremely engaging, to the point our excitement in wanting to know what happens next, leads to an almost unconscious acceptance of how skilful and even ingenious a story is being told.

In the first place, he makes it clear the characters assembled here are far from an accidental or coincidental group, coming together by chance while pursuing  their separate fates. Each of them has his own complicated necessity for the push through the jungle to the Niaruna tribe. Their relations with one another are characterised by their confrontations, quarrels, fights, and loves, often leading to unexpected stages in the plot. If the perils are vivid and violent, no single adventure seems to be there just for the sake of giving the reader a thrill.  Rather, the events keep increasing in intensity, until every character has been laid bare, every gun that had been hanging on a wall has been proven to be no mere ornament, and the basic elements of the novel’s opening prove themselves to be inescapable omens of fate and necessity.

Two antagonists in the story compete for the Niaruna, each wanting to save them. One is a soldier of fortune, totally disenchanted and self-debauched, but because he is, of all things, a college-educated American Indian, he is determined first of all to find some “real” Indians, and then, finding them, he is determined to lead them in what might well be a successful military defence of their territory. The other is a missionary, one of the American group determined to save the Indians’ souls for Christ. The soldier of fortune, of necessity, becomes a god; the missionary, of necessity, loses his faith and becomes the tool of secular interests. And between them, in their exchanged roles, they destroy the tribe they have so spectacularly risked their lives to save.

However bizarre and astonishing, for the reader these plot elements and complications don’t come across forced or impossible as they unfold.  The story remains to the end an adventure, with the scale and intensity of the action constantly growing almost uncontrollably.  This is no mean an achievement. If, having finished this novel, you were to turn back to the start and read the early chapters again, you would see how all this was brought about. This is a good old-fashioned writing, albeit using a plot resting on an exotic locale, combining jungle, river, sky, bars, latrines, bordellos, hog-wallows, and other sordid horrors of frontier villages.  False morality, myth, magic, the Noble Savage, man’s tragic destiny to corrupt himself and find innocence only in madness, are at the centre of “At Play in the Fields of the Lord”, a title that masks that this isn’t a comedy but a tale of bitter endless irony.  And it’s all too real …