It's worth listening to the Select Committees: Exiting The EU Committee with Sir Ivan Rogers. It's not worth listening to the shit-for-brains Politicians asking the questions however, which I've tried to capture in the cartoon above. In the EU the phrase "The British Disease" if I remember correctly refers to the idea of British euroscepticism being a possible contagion (attitude or belief) concerning the EU idea or ideology of Supranationalism which so dominates European politics in our current present.
However, in this blog "The British Disease" does not mean that: It means this:-
Identify Change
Establish Problems
Moan about why the change happened and allow that to inform on reactions chosen - not work effectively on solutions.
In actual fact, the major problem of Brexit is the former EU perception of Brexit. Sir Ivan Rogers points out that the EU is based on a "Legal Order not Common Sense" and hence behaves as such. Also the problem with it's own "lack of solidarity" under conditions of change. Whereas our British Disease is summed up by a Scottish MP/SMP or whatever the hell it matters quoting Theresa May, our present Prime Minister: "No deal is better than a bad deal".
Sir Ivan Rogers also points out the perils of nomenclature clouding discussing Migration, which only echoes the larger battle in Maastricht concerning Major requesting the removal of "Federal" from that Treaty: In fact this divergence of conception of what is the EU is raised concerning the Cameron negotiations, itself harking back to the early 1970's...
In all that time the real British Disease has not been a predetermined genetic aversion towards Europe or Globalisation, as if some kind of assumed given order of nature, but this failure to understand change, to accept change for what it really is and work on effective solutions and hence appropriate responses and communication.
As for the EU, The Great Deception really does name their major problem with their chosen disease. I wonder how many people in European nations suffer this misconception, huge numbers; cue the EU budget... just like in Britain.
A bit more Victorian "spunk" should see us safely through.
I've been enjoying reading around/about Mars in various ways recently, such as enjoying The Martian film of the The Martian book by Andy Weir (what a hell-hole!). I've also read a number of other scifi books that relate to Mars variously too, such as The Sirens Of Titan and Man Plus. And most recently there's an interesting boardgame that I may decide to get my hands on called "Terraforming Mars":-
The goal is simple (!!!): make Mars habitable. Forget Matt Damon as the primitive first "Martian"; Terraforming Mars
takes place much further in the future and unfolds over centuries,
ending with a green and blue map of a Red Planet covered with cities,
vegetation, and oceans.
In fact I looked into the scientific investigation of this subject briefly and it's very interesting looking at how damn difficult and how long in scale any such attempt would be to Terraform Mars into a "Living Planet" such as Earth.
If you look at the above TIME magazine you'll note it accurately points out the relevance of the science AND politics of our attempts and interest in The Red Planet (as opposed to our Blue Planet). Considering what a complete headache it would be to make Mars habitable in an ecological sense, is quite useful: Our ambitions reach their limits and we may decide that working on what we already have in front of us, is probably a more efficient option? But for that to happen, we have to have a huge political change in the world's ability to organize as per the wishes of the population and their mentality or world view. Here the "Mission To Mars" does seem to provide a politically useful and tangibly real tool to achieve this mental change at the scale of millions and perhaps billions? In fact all the above scifi books are excellent in identifying this in their various enthralling and insightful ways.
But it's interesting that the initial conception of "Mission To Mars" probably has to start with the explicit will to "go further into the unknown" and "break our limits of knowledge" and perhaps find that miracle that immediately solves all our world's ills, all in one go; that's invariably over the next horizon as opposed to right in front of us??! NASA provides various reasons for the missions to mars:-
Finding traces of Life (despite there being so much to study and understand already on Earth!)
Sending the first people to Mars (after the "lowly" robots!)
There's analogies to the Age of Discovery and not being "left behind" by other Space Agencies in developing "future tech" (that empowers future "PRAW-gress"!)
I'm not against it, despite the displays of irony above; it's quite exciting and one of life's deepest drives. But these ostensible reasons seem more like "cooked up" reasons to match what is already ambitiously and symbolically decided.
The other thing to note is that as a thought exercise, I don't have to think about a quick trip down to the shops. It's fairly easy to pack my bags for a trip across country to stay with friends and family. Some more planning for a holiday trip abroad and then again more planning and preparation for moving to live and work somewhere far away from where one presently lives. Perhaps if one is drafted into the military the preparation for extreme environments is much higher? Now imagine a full manned-mission to mars and the exacting conditions involved in that?!
That's well beyond me (though the military environment I have some understanding of what that entails and the commitment and sacrifice) and besides I'm more than happy living in the lush Earth ecosystems right here, particularly with Spring around the corner, too!
As a taster of one small part of making the journey to Mars for a probe:-
There's some really interesting mathematics in evidence here and it shows that even the basic or theoretical conception is a level above of planning the journey than a quick walk down the shops or grabbing an cross-country train ticket from National Rail Enquires... .
The point of pointing this out is to provide a concrete contrast to people making comments about Brexit plans to which it is the equivalent of a loud-mouthed and gobby idiot calling up NASA and blasting them for not following the faxed instructions written on the back of a beer mat to "Get Their Asses To Mars Already!" The other point of contention is to point out that the more complex the journey, and the more outside of our daily experiences, the more rigorous we need to adhere to knowledge domains and the preceding knowledge of what we can rely on in those fields compared to the risk of what can go wrong and what we do not know or cannot account for or can only account for in a limited fashion given our knowledge, experience and current state of competence. Not so long ago, with "Scott Of The Antarctic" being a saying highly relevant in my own father's lifetime.
In my next blog and aimed at a new website platform, I'll choose an area from the dozens of areas that suggests we ARE going to have to rely on what we already know, what we already have got up and running to make an effective and successful Brexit journey in terms of time and space and information change both objective and through politics the subjective transformation of peoples' attitudes: How about making use of what's already in front of us, before planning "day trips" to our neighbouring galaxy, Andromeda?
Then and again, perhaps I've missed the entire point of all this "sharing and caring" in the public discourse, the Brexit discussion in the media with the public and politicians and pundits is exactly the same drama as "football phone-ins" where "Chris or Chad or Chuck calls in putting the two teams to rights by shouting out the riot act!"??
I hope not:- EUREFERENDUM.COM by Dr. RAE North. I've had to reread these several times and often not even looking further at the various links within each. But if you want to have a go at actually "doing the math" as per the math-ed link above in calculating the orbital transfers on paper needed to send a probe to mars... here you go (!), fill your boots:-
Lost Leonardo raises a very very interesting observation in his latest blog: Not Whether, But How:-
"What can one say when confronted with this level of wilful self-delusion? Europe is not the EU. I will keep saying that because it is true and because anybody who attempts to muddy the water on that particular issue is either being manipulative or is so stupid as to warrant no further attention. Many of the people who refer to the EU as Europe are both.
These are not knowledgeable people. These are people who have not troubled to learn anything new since the vote. Their arguments, if one can call them that, are stuck in the past, wishing after a referendum outcome that the British people declined to deliver."
What is an Argument?
An ARGUMENT is a sequence of statements of which one is intended as a CONCLUSION and the others, the PREMISES, are intended to prove or at least provide some evidence for the conclusion (using declarative sentences).
Though the premises of an argument must be intended to prove or provide evidence for the conclusion, they need not actually do so. There are bad arguments as well as good ones.
Building chains of premises based on midpoints being both premises to forward conclusions and such conclusions acting as premises subsequently are non-basic arguments or complex arguments. Those premises and assumptions which form the foundation of such arguments are BASIC PREMISES or ASSUMPTIONS.
If we are careful we define our premises. For example using the above diagram:-
Environment = European Continent
Economics = Customs Union, European Economic Area + Single Market, EFTA, UNECE and more.
Society = Various European Nations (see venn diagram of variable relationships) including a European Union.
Politics = Variable national demos as well as international and supranational and intergovernmental and global institutions.
"I thought it was better to stay in the European Union than not." (NON-BASIC PREMISE or INTERMEDIATE CONCLUSION).
"Partly for economic reasons, being part of a big trade block." (PREMISE).
"And partly because we're in a world of power-blocs." (BASIC PREMISE or ASSUMPTION).
"And I think for all the weaknesses and deficiencies of the European Union, it's better to be part of that big power-bloc, in the world. (CONCLUSION 1).
That is the order of his argument as it is said. To rearrange into the correct argument order:-
"And partly because we're in a world of power-blocs." (BASIC PREMISE or ASSUMPTION).
"Partly for economic reasons, being part of a big trade block." (PREMISE).
"I thought it was better to stay in the European Union than not." (NON-BASIC PREMISE or INTERMEDIATE CONCLUSION).
"And I think for all the weaknesses and deficiencies of the European
Union, it's better to be part of that big power-bloc, in the world. (CONCLUSION 1).
"Personally I voted To Remain" (CONCLUSION 2).
It's worth noting that the visible majority of coverage of Bercow has been on point 5 his final conclusion in context to his SOCIAL ROLE IN OUR SOCIETY.
However it's worth a lot more to note his "basic premise" or assumption and what this foundation to his subsequent argument and conclusion and hence decision and hence information value input into this subject; is worth or worthless:-
Let's repeat it:-
"And partly because we're in a world of power-blocs."
IF we are in a world of power-blocs then as a single nation we must be part of one of those power blocs.
IF 1 is true and observable THEN which power-bloc derives?
IF we are in EUROPE (which is self-evident) then the only legitimate/sensible power-bloc or powerful or relevant power-bloc or best power-bloc is the EU.
Here Bercow has defined the model of our reality, our environment through IMPLICIT ASSUMPTIONS within his basic premise or 1st assumption of his argument. From this defintion of reality he then creates a model or concept of what this means in his next PREMISE:-
"Partly for economic reasons, being part of a big trade block."
Not only are 1-3 unquestioned and untested, but his economic concept of the EU as a "big trade block" is a bad argument. It firstly appears to define the EU as predominantly economics derived from our environment and not from our politics which it always was. You might mistake world wars as environment-driven conflict between European nations... but Anthony Scolefield's comment at EUReferendum.com - Journey Into The Unknown is powerful counterbalance to this view in mere representation of a huge other argument that exists but which is not propounded here (see below):-
Secondly it also excludes the exploration of economic and trade relations with Europe and the EU and the rest of the world without EU Membership or assumes that such is so deleterious to our economy as to be a void choice even if categorical in possibility. Thirdly that such a decision being void now must always be void or void as long as is invalid and/or not viable either.
Fourthly it assumes that the EU "trade bloc" not being a political creation (see point 1) is a successful "economic" or "big trade bloc".
"The terms of the Armistice of 11th November are quite interesting.One historian put it very well
'The
Allied statesmen were faced with a problem:so far they had considered
the 'fourteen commandments'(Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points) as a piece
of clever and effective American propaganda,designed primarily to
undermine the fighting spirit of the Central Powers,and to bolster the
morale of the lesser Allies.
Now, suddenly, the whole peace structure
was supposed to be built up on that set of 'vague principles', most of
which seemed to them thoroughly unrealistic,and some of which,if they
were to be seriously applied,were simply unacceptable'. So in a few days punitive armistice demands were cobbled together which laid the basis for another war."
"I thought it was better to stay in the European Union than not." (NON-BASIC PREMISE or INTERMEDIATE CONCLUSION).
(continuing from the basic premise) Fifthly it assumes that the UK could not have been successful outside of
this from the start (remaining in EFTA(-EEA) as a non-viable powerbloc) or that sixth a transition
depending on time-frame may be more successful eventually. Here the definition or bad argument reaches it's final crystallization: For economic reasons Bercow prefers Remain. This statement does fit the apparent stupidity of May's White Paper and hence his comments gain political intra-logical coherence thus appearing deceptively self-evident and/or correct. But that is a product of the assumptions behind his initial basic premise.
Following this chain of logic and concluding that John Bercow has made a bad argument may have appeared laborious at this point. But the core concept of this blog is arrived at and named
Bercow's Law
The use of political argument to appear to be environmental or "reality" informing our context or conceptual understanding which surrounds future arguments in the political arena or argumentation. In fact his argument is a DEUS EX MACHINA argument of Politics and politicians manipulating and controlling the level they abstract (derive) from: SOCIETY:-
"Nietzsche argued that the deus ex machina creates a false sense of consolation that ought not to be sought in phenomena."
THAT IS THEIR RELATIONSHIP to which they are obsessed and driven concerning. Effectively once this is repeatedly done and becomes orthodoxy of political belief-systems; it's self-reinforcing: Hermetically sealing off data and research which in turn drives logical relationships which in turn should drive arguments which in turn should drive societies choices through political engagement.
Let's alight from such lofty heights for a moment and come back down to earth with a personal anecdote: I had opportunity to assist some students with their English learning as they had to make speeches. I noticed that curiously they tended to pick subjects such as gender politics or racism and other such moral Aesop bolted on one-liner style topics. It took some persuasion to ask the students to consider speeches on: One something they know a lot about and perhaps are skillful at carrying out (!) and Two something they find genuinely interesting to themselves which they personally picked as individuals (!) - not apparently important as per what they can always without fail find to watch on the news shows daily... . My final thoughts from the English lesson were that young students when learning English Language seem to imitate their proximate authorities (schools themselves suffering the moral hazard of education by law and thus by force of either threat of sanction/fine or imprisonment) as opposed to learn their actual relationship with the world through the relations which we discover when learning from Logic used in argument?
The purpose of this blog is a task completion: "Find the most relevant political information from the preceding week on the subject of Brexit which provides the most helpful overview to people who are interested in understanding the politics of Brexit at the present moment in time."
Assumption: To provide a source of information which is helpful to the above task completion to people who still consider themselves as learning more about this subject but suspect that most sources of information are either inadequate or error prone to the extent of ostensibly appearing to be sources of information but in fact are some form of social activity for example propaganda being one category amongst many.
Considerations:-
Learning involves the skill of filtering relevant information from irrelevant and erroneous information to increase focus and reduce distraction.
Learning involves increasing the "stamina" of the above activity in progress to be able to deal with lots of new information which may often be unfamiliar in form and structure and content.
Learning increases in effectiveness when the ability to spot errors in the above filtering is developed further: This provides sources of questions.
Often learning only starts with finding the sources that fit the first criteria most reliably. For example EUReferendum.com in the case of Brexit.
Efficiency of learning develops when automation of the above as a process is created or stored: To speed up the actual focusing on the actual relevant information.
From this each individual will develop their own particular skills to understand the information.
A framework of conception of the subject starts to develop.
A lot of repetition and study is required for the full learning process.
The above is a rough account of my own learning about the politics of Brexit, so it's far from a formal set of principles but perhaps a few helpful pointers for others interested in how people might learn more more effectively here.
Some of the problems, learners will have to contend with in the above talk with Ivan Rogers:-
The questioners in the committee appear to me to not have a conceptual framework: Namely the people asking questions appear not be fully functional learners of the subject they think they have the competence to pose questions about (see the 3rd point about learning). I believe this as I find their questions hard to establish a connection with what Ivan Rogers is saying (who himself does skillfully manage to make connections from the obscure questioning) as I cannot easily work out their context in relation to the subject. Compared to this, I find I easily do understand the multiple dimensions of context Sir Ivan Rogers involves in his answers.
For people totally used to the news-media format, the above will test their stamina of understanding probably exactingly. The density of information will be challenging to parse, to pattern, to arrange in mental conceptions in relation to further contexts, it will remain a very dense lump of heavy substance to use a word picture and effect of exhaustion on comprehension.
The more familiar with the actual subject the more usefully one can filter out the "hackneyed" redundancies in language ie phrases and such like that are empty of information value and reflect much more the struggle of the people attempting to communicate ideas with each other; often through mixed and confused motivations; around a subject they don't have a strong grasp of (instead of through it).
The motivations of people mix the real ABC's of this learning exercise. Let's use some examples in the talk: On one side you have Kinnock making value-laden conclusions about the risks of Brexit not "being worth it" and on the other side you have Bill Cash acting as the high priest of "the people have spoken and will not be deterred from their absolute right to sovereignty" as based upon the Referendum result. Before stating what "ABC" means, which should be familiar to everyone in a different form, to investigate not the A as here, but the C as per this week's EUReferendum.com:-
In the EU Referendum Campaign there were two notoriously full of BS flags held aloft by each side the Remain and Leave official campaigns:-
"£350m to spend on the NHS saved from wasting/thieving on the EU."
"The demons of FUD will get you! if the UK leaves the EU."
If we all assume most of the time that all of the adults voting in politics are mostly rational, why do we allow such BS to to be the flags around which each group rallies around and fights these political battles?
To communicate to millions of people, in films there's a device known as "Anvilicious"; helpfully provided from TVTROPES (everyone should be so familiar with by now):-
"A portmanteau of anvil and delicious (or possibly vicious),
anvilicious describes a writer's and/or director's use of an artistic
element, be it line of dialogue, visual motif, or plot point, to so
obviously or unsubtly convey a particular message that they may as well etch it onto an anvil and drop it on your head.
Frequently, the element becomes anvilicious through unnecessary
repetition, but true masters can achieve anviliciousness with a single
stroke.
Heavy-handed for the new millennium. Extreme polar opposite of subtle.
Most people as Dominic Cummings rightly points out in his long blog
post on the subject make value-laden decisions, often resorting to
their tribal chieftan or other (anthropolitically-the-same-thing) "belief leaders" (be they politicians or celebrities)."
Most people don't learn, they believe instead. And that means believing what your mother-surogate or dominant-group-father-figure tells you is good for you. It may or it may not be but if you don't know, you rely on those who you often fall back on to rely on, trusting they're looking after you as "one of their own" and visa versa.
As it stands at the present, this is the past description of domination of the argument as value-laden "so-called democracy". The present "negotiations" or phony war as Sir Ivan Rogers calls it, can be characterized by another heavy object: Anchoring:-
Anchoring or focalism is a cognitive bias
that describes the common human tendency to rely too heavily on the
first piece of information offered (the "anchor") when making decisions.
During decision making,
anchoring occurs when individuals use an initial piece of information
to make subsequent judgements. Once an anchor is set, other judgements are
made by adjusting away from that anchor, and there is a bias toward
interpreting other information around the anchor. For example, the
initial price offered for a used car sets the standard for the rest of
the negotiations, so that prices lower than the initial price seem more
reasonable even if they are still higher than s what the car is really
worth
Cash and Kinnock hold arguments that only fall into the above behaviour in evidence, by the way. Hence so much of the talking of Brexit is at this Behavioural level only stems from dictating each groups' own particular brand of gospel ie coded language singing to the belief systems of large groups (hence why each side cannot fathom the other's strange and WRONG! tribal customs and beliefs), leading to very little explanation - merely consternation at bizarre behaviour of people interacting with each other that seems to so obsess so many people unproductively (another example the incessant obsession in the news-media with anything related to Trump; amusingly Robert Harris in the Evening Standard suffars from this without seeming to have seen it in Blair or Mandelson during their particular political hay-day). We have moved on from the A at the start considering people's value-laden basis A For Attitude to decision-making roots, to the behavioural descriptions operating, the B For Behaviour. Lastly the C:
I've removed the other blog posts which point out the aberrant behaviour level and left the Cognitive areas that are supremely useful if we can avoid distractions and not be beguiled by our more innate habitual biases...
These to use a picture are the SECTORS of our economy and society and state and the mix between all these - where for people we have strange organic patterns as of a surreal dream, for this we have some more neat and tidy engineering systems little circuits buzzing like so much plumbing, for illustration purposes and visual representation only (not accurate due to time requirements):-
Each slice is a "SECTOR" and within each "sector" there is numerous legislation for repatriation, and from that each "bit" of legislation has sub-divisions that need analysis. Not only that but each "bit" itself links to other "bits". For example:-
Obviously, with some regulations, there will be no problems. For example, we have Commission Regulation (EU) No 1129/2011, "amending Annex II to Regulation (EC) No 1333/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council by establishing a Union list of food additives". This is a straightforward technical regulation and as long as we keep it in force, our trade with the EU will not be interrupted by virtue of disparities in rules on food additives.
On the other hand, there are the more complex laws that cover policy issues related to economic activity, and include the regulation and coordination of the actions of Member States and the Commission – plus other EU bodies. These might be considerably harder to integrate into UK law without, at the very least, substantial amendment.
One such example might beRegulation 1380/2013which sets out the current parameters for the Common Fisheries Policy. If Ministers think they can simply re-enact this at a UK level, they may be rather disappointed.
The crucial point about medicines for human use is that their manufacturing, distribution and sale is currently an EU competence, and heavily regulated by a considerable number oflegal instruments, many of great length and complexity.
Even with the best will in the world, full separation from the EU, and restoration of independent control over medicines is not going to be easy, although there are elements that could make returning UK control easier than in some other sectors.
In this short piece, though – continuing a theme introduced in several earlier posts – we look at the post-Brexit supply of medicines in the context of the UK Brexit strategy which is largely reliant in the short- to medium-term on the Great Repeal Bill, repatriating EU law and applying it as UK law.
The idea generally is that we can simply pluck EU law out of its context and re-apply it with a UK label but, as we saw with fishing and other sectors, this may not be as straightforward as is imagined.
This is just a sample of the productive level of learning and understanding once the barriers below this level have been removed, which are so innate:-
And perception of fairness on those Brexit negotiations:-
That all said, for people, the layer below behaviour which animals exhibit is based on our formation of our values and hence our attitude which informs are basic behaviour - BEFORE - we even begin the more challenging task of learning and growing our knowledge through more cognitive means. Eg as per Dr. North at EUReferendum.com considering the legislation as one form of measurement of scope for action in a very complex and very large operation in scale (time and space).
But even the above animals exhibit some basics here eg Fairness. I think the more people can learn about the subject, the more they will be persuaded to think in terms of fairness as being the most practical method of how to work Brexit successfully, be that for London, Scotland, Ireland, any of the European countries, whichever of the plus 30 sectors which are integrated into the Single Market and so on.
I looked at the usual offerings: The newspapers, the tv and the sheer quantity of this material which mixes up the ABC's of Brexit constantly only reinforces the idea that for people politics is some sort of specialist activity for experts, when so much of it is based at such low levels of behaviour masquerading as intelligent and rational decision-making. To begin learning it, separate these layers and focus on the Cognitive sources and raise the value and input of the national conversation on our politics.
Even Sir Ivan Rogers, who knows a lot about the EU and Brexit makes an error in saying that the EU was more of a market and now is more of a political thing. Yes it's true in one sense, but he fails to point out the origins of the EU idea were always of a Supranational Institution and this purpose seeking an audience to subdue instead of serve by means of gaining power in Europe. See Christopher Booker and Richard North's The Great Deception history. As Dr. North points out: Curiously those who supported this narrative now attack the narrative of FLEXCIT, their values at odds with their cognitive understanding dictating their monkey like reactions (see above).
