Ragnarök or Referendum: The Final Battle

Ragnarök: The Final Battle of the Norse Gods: Odin, Thor, Tyr, Freya.

Ragnarök:-

"In Norse mythology, Ragnarök is a series of future events, including a great battle foretold to ultimately result in the death of a number of major figures (including the gods Odin, Thor, Týr, Freyr, Heimdallr, and Loki), the occurrence of various natural disasters, and the subsequent submersion of the world in water. Afterwards, the world will resurface anew and fertile, the surviving and returning gods will meet, and the world will be repopulated by two human survivors. It is as well the end of the world, and the start of eternal winter."

It's not unusual, for various world cultures to independently form:-

• Creation Myth
• Endings Myth (Doomsday or else) 

And given there's many many world cultures, there are hence many many such variations of the above types of story. No doubt in my mind this is the product of the human conscious mind: The tool of being able to think in future time and in past time as well as present time. This has allowed people to use memory to store learned experiences which in turn can be used to estimate risks and make future decisions that allowed people to flourish and here we all are today...

• Monday = Moon Day
• Tuesday = Týr 's Day
• Wednesday = Woden 's Day
• Thursday = Thor 's Day 
• Friday = Freyr 's Day
• Saturday = Saturn 's Day
• Sunday = Sun Day

At the beginning of each week, we look ahead and at the end of each week we look back. We've even named our days of the week from a mixture of the Norse Mythology and the Roman.

There does seem however to be some psychological side-products of this ability: People are more prone to suffering from anxiety and fear of perceived risk or danger when stimulus is intangible such as information inputs eg The Legacy News-Media. In fact some of the most useful current advice is "Mindfulness" and the training of the mind to not uselessly nor unproductively over-speculate about the uncertainties of the future and dwell on what "COULD" go wrong! In fact this is directly training the mind to be able to switch modes of thinking via a disciplined concentration on the present moment and what directly applies over the multifarious indirect thoughts. This "overhead of consciousness" is possibly one of the major drivers in behaviour management, possibly?

However, in our information rich world, we are bombarded with exposure to risks and the natural Fear inducement this leads to. Interestingly this phenomenon was identified in the book:-

 Conscious thought has a high energy cost and a high over-head of risk alertness; automatic "programmed" behaviour or "habit" is far less demanding but in it's own way as useful but also again when correctly applied within narrower contexts: But how can we control the switch between the two?

Why is this relevant to a blog on politics, specifically the politics of EU Membership vs Brexit? Firstly those habitual settings:

Rational Irrationality:

"The concept was popularized by economist Bryan Caplan in 2001 to reconcile the widespread existence of irrational behavior (particularly in the realms of religion and politics) with the assumption of rationality made by mainstream economics and game theory. The theory, along with its implications for democracy, was expanded upon by Caplan in his book The Myth of the Rational Voter."

Some examples:-

• Make-work bias
• Anti-foreign bias
• Pessimistic bias
• Anti-market bias

Books could probably and have been written concerning these subject; the "Make-work" bias I think can be considered in such as "Man's Search For Meaning" or "The Case For Working With Your Hands" etc etc. The one to focus on in this blog is the "Pessimistic bias":-

I was reminded of this "Pessimistic Bias" in an interesting City AM article: Why over-estimating the risk of terror just hands victory to the terrorists ~ Lars Christensen:-

"I believe that there are two primary reasons for these "do something" tendencies in European politics (they also regularly appear in enviornmental discussions).

First of all, psychologists have shown that humans in general are not very good at estimating the risk of very infrequent events and that people psychologically tend to seriously overestimate such risks.

Second we are what the American ecnomist Bryan Caplan has termed Rationally Irrational Voters. Caplan means that, in elections, voters don't really have to make rational assessments, as the likelihood that our individual vote will mean anything for the outcome is very limited - we are, so to speak, ratinally irrational, irresponsible and ignorant.

As a result we are much more likely to give into fears and fantasies in the political process than when we decide whether to, for example, buy a car or make an investment. Politicians know this all too well and are happppy to play on our fears. After all, politicians are rarely elected by presenting statistics to the voters.

But we cannot and should not cave into fear - not in our personal life or in our political decisions. The best thing to do is to "keep calm and carry on".

He said this in the context of terrorist attacks in Europe. But I think it equally applies to our problems with the EU political process and Referendum and Brexit: Communication: The Reaction Barrier

A great deal of which was in evidence once again on BBC's Question Time:-

No, we don't want to "be like Norway", but if it gets us out of the EU...

"I watched the thoroughly repellent Ruth Lea on Question Time last night denouncing the Norway Option, laying down the law that we don't want to be a supplicant of the EU. It was said quite deliberately to try and close down the argument, or at least make it more difficult to advance that argument. And yet somehow, it is we pleb bloggers who are failing to cooperate.
The point of the EEA Efta route (Norway Option) is that it's safe. It is the one means available to us that guarantees the least disruption to trade and industry. The reason being that practically nothing changes - especially if, in the first instance, we adopt the entire body of EU law. As much as anything, that reduces the uncertainty of Article 50 negotiations.
What that means is on day one of being out of the EU things are no better, but no worse either. But we are out of the EU. By advancing that as the plan it takes the sting out of the scares and gives business no real right to intervene. Certainly no just cause. That then gives us all the time in the world to sort out which bits we want to keep and which bits we don't. It could take a decade or more, but there would be no cliff edge. The pace of change would be no different to the normal business of government."

I also watched this; more repellent than Ruth Lea was that odious "Made In China" knock-off imitation of Tony Blair, Chris Bryant (nothing against China) along with the venomous Anna Soubrey.

So I'm going to take unaccountable satisfaction at connecting Norse Mythology which shapes our days of the week with Brexit opting for The Norway Option as the right choice for our Nation to take and pull the V-Sign to the cretins who said "Norway would not suit Britain's Self-Image" or other such "Norway has Fax Democracy" petty pronouncements from petty politicians:-

The Second Coming is a poem composed by Irish poet W. B. Yeats in 1919, first printed in The Dial in November 1920, and afterwards included in his 1921 collection of verses Michael Robartes and the Dancer. The poem uses Christian imagery regarding the Apocalypse and second coming allegorically to describe the atmosphere of post-war Europe.

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

Again, the juxtaposition of the end of World War I with our knowledge of the history of the inception of the EUropean Union as per The Great Deception:-

We know fear was the driver behind the Supranational paradigm for "A New Europe" by it's founding architects: Arthur Salter and Jean Monnet. In fact The Great Deception does a great service to the EU Referendum debate.



Let's construct 3 examples:-

1. LEAVE (vote leave / leave.eu:GO)

"EU wastes £500,000,000 a year promoting itself, with our money. EU red tape is now over 130 miles long. 3600 new laws in three years as EU strangles UK firms. Britain 'will thrive after Brexit': Leaving will boost pay and jobs. Millions face £25 hike in insurance bills after 'disastrous' VAT ruling by hated European judges. Instead of sending £350 million per week to Brussels, we will spend it on our priorities like the NHS and schools. There is a European free trade zone from Iceland to the Russian border and we will be part of it. The heart of what we all want is the continuation of tariff-free trade with minimal bureaucracy. Countries as far away as Australia have Mutual Recognition agreements with the EU that deal with complex customs (and other ‘non-tariff barrier’) issues. We will do the same. Sixth, we will have a sensible regime for the movement of people that allows us to replace the awful immigration policy we have now - a combination of an open door for low skilled labour and convicted criminals from the EU while simultaneously stopping highly skilled people from outside the EU coming to the UK to contribute. The top 100 EU regulations cost the UK economy £33.3 billion per year. Since 2010, the EU has introduced over 3,500 new laws affecting British business.

We will "Take Back Control of Borders"! "They sell us more German Cars than we sell to them!" "They need us more than we need them!" "We can do a new deal and depend on the WTO!" "We can have a bonfire of redtape!" "We can spend all our membership money making every family 699 pounds better off!" "We don't need a brexit plan, we'll have a British Plan!""

Leave Campaign: At a loss as to how to communicate with people: Make it up or Be Rational? Choice: "Erm, Make it up is what people know!!!"

Here are campaigns that are effectively over-selling to the Rational Irrational Voter who they deem can only be manipulated to vote the right way due to the "Communication: Reaction Barrier". What people think other people will think will be popular is effectively the communication or "input" into the EU Referendum from the Leave side to convince people to change our political relationship.

All the above are summarized from the various groups own webpages and/or newspaper headlines. The "Meme" quotes are all quote-unquote reproductions of their favourite slogans.

2. REMAIN (Britain Stronger In; David Cameron and followers)

Why the Government believes that voting to remain in the European Union is the best decision for the UK.

• If the UK voted to leave the EU, the resulting economic shock would risk higher prices of some household goods  

• A vote to leave could mean a decade or more of uncertainty

• Opportunities for you and your children 

• This is the way to protect jobs, provide security, and strengthen the UK’s economy for every family in this country – a clear path into the future, in contrast to the uncertainty of leaving.

You know if you've ever worked on some sort of Scientific Equation and you get data first then wonder if it fits a particular equation...

... AND YOU CANNOT BELIEVE HOW WELL IT FITS IT!!!

Ragnarök or Referendum? Politics or Religion? Our "Political gods" now fight for the fate of the world as our divine representatives - mere mortals cannot comprehend the magnitude of such words and deeds! But they can tremble in fear at the possibility of the coming end!! Leave or Remain? The forces of darkness vs light!!

In the last night's BBCQT:-

We had Chris Bryant assimilating "genuine sentiment" to use as a mask for his own agenda. This technique of using the veneer of truth to cover the traces of deceit is especially poisonous political communication:-

"I just want to see the facts".

Later on,

"Sick and tired of the Out side only going into process points and avoiding the substance of the matter."

There is again some truth in this. But in both cases: On a population and frequency scale of measurement: Are people being honest? Are the Leave Campaigners being sincere to people?

"We achieve more on our common endeavour, the big issues that face us as a country... [SEE LIST] ...we need to be permanently cooperating with our closest allies in Europe, and that's why I will be fighting every day of my life to stay in the European Union."

• Climate Change
• International Terrorism
• International Crime & Drugs
• China (later on)

 Brexit: Looks a helluva a lot like Ragnarök, apparently (The Final Battle) to me: It's even got Jörmungandr (The world ending serpent in the form of China's Red Dragon!); cataclysmic "Fire & Ice"; War between good and bad, and the eruption of the underworld... almost a perfect fit.

So we see very clearly, how Remain is using a very ancient human tendency to manipulate people's emotions and frighten them like little children...

3. "Not 1. Nor 2."

Scribblings From Seaham responds to my previous blog: The Stoic Minority: and it's taken a lot of thought (all the above) to reply to a simple question:-

But...

Red Cliffs of Dawlish kindly pays me a great compliment in this post; but I have to ask just who is the ‘Stoic Minority’ (stoic: seemingly indifferent to or unaffected by pleasure or pain; impassive) – those of us seeking a re-assertion of democracy, who are in the minority, or those of the minority who wish to impose their views on the majority? Just asking, RCofD ………

It's easier to answer within the context of this Referendum, namely "NOT 1. Nor 2." above! But to embellish "If Not, Then What?"

1. Prepared to start learning & educating processes at the beginning ie with people.
2. Prepared to not look for short-cuts to " quick, successful results" (eg Short-circuit popularity via either deceptions: Hope (leave) or Fear (remain).
3. Work towards the goal not for personal promotion (ego) but towards increasing the use of working knowledge; being applied by people in making decisions (superego).
4. Understand the difference between what could be achieved ideally compared to what can only be done realistically in the present with the present conditions and people; towards promoting democracy now.
5. Finally, not making the same mistakes as our EU politicians and our UK politicians: Any decision must "bring the people along with it at the same time" and not attempt to circumvent their decision-making input "for the greater good" or "the ends justifies the means".

In all these, the idea is to not allow Deception to enter into the decision-making.

• On the "input" side (looking forwards to the future) we have "Leave" hoping for change that will be postive.
• On the "output" side (looking backwards to the past) we have "Remain" fearing for change that will be negative.

• In the middle we have: "Process"; which, requires conscious effort to understand what actually "is" and hence how we can actually know how to effect change from "was" to "will be"; which I think is a perfect way to describe:-

The Market Solution: OUR VISION

"Our vision is for a United Kingdom as a self-governing, self-confident, free trading  nation state, releasing the potential of its citizens through direct democratic  control of both national and local government and providing maximum freedom  and responsibility for its people.  The history of Britain for a thousand years has been as a merchant and maritime power playing its full role in European and world affairs while living under its  own laws. It is our view that the UK can flourish again as an independent state  trading both with our friends in the EU and the rest of Europe, while developing  other relationships throughout the world as trading patterns evolve. 

For an age, the United Kingdom has freely engaged as an independent country  in alliances and treaties with other countries. It has a long history of entering into  commercial agreements and conventions at an inter-governmental level. We wish  to uphold that tradition.  The ability of the people of the United Kingdom to determine their own  independent future and use their wealth of executive, legislative and judicial  experience to help, inspire and shape political developments through international  bodies, and to improve world trade and the well being of all peoples will only be  possible when they are free of the undemocratic and moribund European Union. 

The prosperity of the people depends on being able to exercise the fundamental  right and necessity of self-determination, thus taking control of their opportunities  and destiny in an inter-governmental global future with the ability to swiftly correct and improve when errors occur. 

Within the United Kingdom, our vision is for a government respectful of its people who will take on greater participation and control of their affairs at local and national level. Our vision fosters the responsibility of a sovereign people as the core of true democracy."

The Stoic Minority

 Marcus Aurelius is one of the well known Stoics

I was happy to see on the blog roll that Scribblings From Seaham had written another blog after a pause of about a week: The Silent Majority:-

"The American people cannot and should not be asked to support a policy which involves the overriding issues of war and peace unless they know the truth about that policy (emphasis mine)." [...]

"In the ‘run-up’ to the referendum in June this year we are inundated with articles and speeches by, to name but a few, Boris Johnson, Peter Bone, Nigel Farage, David Davis, David Cameron, Jeremy Hunt, Nicky Morgan, Matthew Elliott and George Osborne; all of whom give the impression, to those who have any understanding of ‘matters EU’, of not knowing one iota about the forthcoming referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union." [...]

"The Silent Majority are not just those who do not voice their opposition publicly, they also comprise those who are unable to voice their opposition at the only opportunity presented to them on whether which bunch of crooks deserves ‘buggins turn’ due to our system of representative democracy."

I always enjoy reading Scribblings From Seaham, and would recommend it to as many people as possible more insistently, except for the thought that sometimes checking your own enthusiasm is a more prosperous way of recommending something to others to possibly read! The previous blog is also topical and concerning one composition of this "Majority": The Young: The Education of Young Minds. This is a subject that has drawn some discussion recently, driven especially by the observant and entertaining, Semi-Partisan Politics with subjects such as "Tales From The Safe Space"; and also from Dr. RAE North: EU Referendum: I don't give a damn. Coming back to Scribblings From Seaham when he was writing at Witterings From Witney: The Forming Of Young Minds:

“And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber-stamps.”

H.L. Mencken

“People would never be convinced about the value of being a member of the EU if we do not start early enough with the young people, before they form prejudices and are misinformed by sources.”

EU Official, Teachers Trade Fair – Birmingham, 2010

In general, The "silent" and the "young" do have certain tendencies as groups of people that render them impotent in politics more than not, as group categories that is. But my view is that "silent" or "young"; individually what matters might be what we can take from reading from the Stoicism:-

"Make for yourself a definition or description of the thing which is presented to you, so as to see distinctly what kind of a thing it is in its substance, in its nudity, in its complete entirety, and tell yourself its proper name, and the names of the things of which it has been compounded, and into which it will be resolved. For nothing is so productive of elevation of mind as to be able to examine methodically and truly every object that is presented to you in life, and always to look at things so as to see at the same time what kind of universe this is, and what kind of use everything performs in it, and what value everything has with reference to the whole."

— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, iii. 11

My observation is that there seems to be few in the context of the EU Referendum who are truly "Stoic"; but it's these people who will lead the process of revolution if there is to be such a culmination. For most of the time, for most people, "The Silent Majority" applies and that is perhaps a fact of politics? Something those who would seek for positive change but cannot enact it. This result then seems to this "silent majority" to be proof that being Stoic is too much effort, requiring too much disciplined attention to a challenging subject to "to see distinctly".

I personally have benefitted in learning from the various blogs in the blogroll here a lot more than from:-

s

 Learning less in a decade than 1 evening's conversation with a "stoic"

Even books have their problems:-

 A number of new titles out in time for the Referendum, including Daniel Hannan's "Why Vote Leave" on the RHS 2nd shelf down. Longer books, more information than a scrappy news paper article...

I get the feeling a lot of these books, the readable ones that is, to most people, are written in a Conversational: Surely anyone would agree with that?" but entirely lacking a "philosophy" behind such propositional statements. The thing as with Hannan's latest book the more you know, the more you can flip through these books and quickly pick the valuable information.

But that takes a lot of dedication and effort to be able to have that ability. Something I'm acutely aware of considering I have had an idea for a book in my mind for a few years now, but realize I'm far away from the full expertise to be able to select and assort:-

They (Stoicism) held that there were four categories.

1. substance (ὑποκείμενον): The primary matter, formless substance, (ousia) that things are made of
2. quality (ποιόν): The way matter is organized to form an individual object; in Stoic physics, a physical ingredient (pneuma: air or breath), which informs the matter
3. somehow disposed (πως ἔχον): Particular characteristics, not present within the object, such as size, shape, action, and posture
4. Somehow disposed in relation to something (πρός τί πως ἔχον): Characteristics related to other phenomena, such as the position of an object within time and space relative to other objects

 Additionally and/or alternatively:-

 The Minority

To be very honest: I'm painfully aware that my own blogs aren't up to standard of many of the above blog and in not making the technical grade for detail, analysis and hence genuinely valuable insight and ideally education and useful conversation. I can point qualitatively select however (no mean result!):-

A quick recap: The Market Solution: Bite-Sized Chunks

Or Roland Smith (White Wednesday): The Liberal Case For Leave

Or John Ashford: The Betrayal of Britain's Fisheries

Or Dr. RAE North: FLEXCIT: The Market Solution (pamphlet) 

Or The Boiling Frog: Article 50: An Explainer

And so on.