One of my first experiences with the Internet was with some small installation work with one of those huge BBN nodes in the late 1980’s. I had already been installing Packet, Videotext and dial-up networking so I have always had test and development aliases that I have used on public networks.
Late 2005 I’d started to look at a personal concern I had for the future of humanity. I’d spent a number of years looking at different political systems, religions and philosophies. All I have ever done in my life is solve problems with systems and I viewed the nature of what it is to be human and all our societal problems as potentially solvable. I had used forums and BBS for many years for work and social reasons but never used them to examined these existential and philosophical topics that I am expressing here. In 2006 I made a major leap into an unknown and created a user called byofrcs on a forum (Debate Unlimited by Martin Willett). As a username it doesn’t really mean anything and it was picked to have no hits in Google at that time. I have used this to explore and debate these humanist topics. Honestly I should have had these discussions with people 30 years ago but I never did but regrets are pointless here as none of us were born with anything more than the ability to learn.
Firstly just to dispel doubts I am a secular humanist in attitude and a methodological naturalist in approach. If you believe in a god of some kind and are reading this then to you this means I am an atheist. So yes, I am probably your enemy. I don’t see atheism as something you believe in – I have no belief in any god, I have no memory structures about what god is to doubt and so I don’t disbelieve in god any more than I don’t actively collect pond scum, beer mats or postage stamps. I do believe in humanity though.
In parallel we had uprooted ourselves from British society so we were strangers in a strange land in Italy. This was to help break preconceptions of what you are. It certainly wasn’t the easiest of times living in an unheated, small stone building with only a rock path, compared to modern Western centrally-heated living in London but I didn’t want to get to the end of my days and then try and solve this problem of human existence.
I’m with the apocryphal claim (perhaps by Gell-Mann) that the “Feynman Problem Solving Algorithm” was: 1. Write down the problem. 2. Think very hard. 3. Write down the answer.
Step 1 can be very hard to do. What is the problem with humanity ? Western society has never had it better. Well the problem I found is rather crafty and that what we think are the problems don’t actually exist. It’s like driving a car and hearing a funny rattle or noise. You never noticed it before but now it is worrying you.
The traditional Christian religion says that we have an intrinsic problem: Original Sin. Not many others do this so Christianity is the worse here. To them the car is rotten the day it is born. Others say the car falls apart as it is running and point out silly little problems. They generally do fraking nothing about fixing the root cause of the problems. After couple of thousand years we’re no further forward on some fundamental issues of human existence then at the time of Jesus. Islam is an equal waste of time with no practical advance on Christianity, which itself was of little practical advance on Judaism. As studies show strong religious belief helps people but equally strong non-religious beliefs do too. For the broad mass of people religion offers little.
Society certainly does have problems to solve but the groups that say they want to solve them are founded on imaginary places and beings. It is one thing to use your imagination to solve problems and then there is using imaginary beings to solve problems. The 1st works – the 2nd doesn’t.
I document my ideas here and then move them to product and project sites. These are not dogma, these are not fixed in stone. These will adapt and evolve as they should.
These are my views. It brings together how I think we can solve the root causes of real world problems and questions on human nature. Not temporary fixes but sustainable for generations if not millennia. Our Earth is our ark and we have evolved a freedom to realise this.
The Technology of Clothing – Humanity
I like to buy casual-smart clothing from charity events as you can get some good value items at a low price and for a good cause. In this last picture I’m wearing a Loden coat, Karl Lagerfeld waistcoat and a sports jacket. Total cost was around 18 euros.
As an aside, I never used to have a moustache but in November 2011 I decided to just not shave as I had heard of the “Movember“. Rather than it looking ridiculous I got some good feedback so I still don’t shave.
Clothing does form a part of some of my arguments. Our technology is what defines and makes us human and our clothing is but one important part of that technology. Without technology we can’t live in many places on this planet (arguably “Out of Africa” though that’s not the basis of that theory). I had an argument on a forum with a Muslim in Birmingham who pretty well missed the point about what Allah provided given if he walked out his centrally heated house as Allah had created him then he would die of hypothermia within the day. I do find apologetics from Muslims to be somewhat incoherent and on a par with Christian Creationists.
If you want to freeze your culture then you must freeze your technology advances. In this respect the Amish and similar groups have got it right. Religion is simply culture. So if you want to freeze your religion then you must freeze your culture and to do that you must freeze your technology.