My brain’s revenge

Years ago I had to take leave of the woman who -so far- took the largest chunk of time out of my life: six years. It was an unrequited love that somehow still felt good. We got along very well and she knew exactly how to keep her distance. She did this so well, that I didn’t even mind, even though I deplored that distance dearly of course.

Eventually she moved out of my life completely and I had to find a way to deal with being cut off completely. I’m not sure if I ever did. I am now used to being cut off, but I still miss her. Seven years later I met my girlfriend, and even then I still missed her. I particularly missed being able to tell her I had met the woman of my life, that I was happy.

During the time that I had to adjust to being cut off, my brain played a trick on me. A very nasty one if you ask me. One morning, at a moment somewhere between sleep and being awake, I suddenly saw her face before my mind’s eye. It was an extremely clear ‘picture’, so vivid I could have drawn her face in detail had I been wide awake.

Instead I woke up nauseous and threw up. I have never been able to remember her features since then. I can still recognise her when I run into her (that happened once), but there is no way that I can recall her face. The mind is a rebel, and a mean one at that.

Quote of the day (9)

Reasons have causes.

Love, as we know it

The man who coined one of my quotes of the day, was middle-aged, rich and an avid collector of antiques. He was also a bachelor, but not out of conviction. Now and then he dated women, but it never worked out.

Until he met one that stayed with him for a long time, she too was an avid collector of antiques. Plans were made, a house was sought, invitations were prepared. When they had to figure out how to merge their collection of antiques, my middle-aged friend was not prepared to separate himself from a particular set of antique Louis XIV china. And then he realised: this meant he did not love her.

Louis XIV china is not more important than the woman you love. He broke up with her. Not because of the china, but because he had realised that for someone you love, you should be willing to give up everything that’s important to you.

Years later he eventually met the woman he later married. There was no need this time to get rid of any antiques. ‘But for her, I could have chucked all my china right out the window.’ He later said.

While it would probably have been a bad idea to really do so, the fact that he could entertain the idea of giving up all he cared for, indicated that he really loved her.

I have never heard a better description of what love is than this story about someones china. Love as we know it has very little to do with romance or romanticism: it’s about hard-core choices.

Quote of the day (8)

Rational thinking, provided it is applied with perseverance and determination, can ruin every relationship.

the Bomb

A lot of people in the west worry that the Iranian nuclear program will eventually lead to an Iranian bomb. Given the nature of the present regime (religious) the fear that this bomb will also be deployed seems more than justified. Will they attack Israel? Will there be a nuclear war between the two?

I think yes, but not as we know it.

If Iran ever gets a bomb -which seems just a matter of time- the regime cannot afford to use it in a conventional way. One of the goals of the state of Israel is to afford Jews a safe place to live, to ‘never let it happen again’. They’re pretty religious about that. Retaliation from the Israeli side will be disproportionate and -if possible- genocidal. If it wouldn’t be, the state of Israel would not serve its purpose. Iran would also face threats or retaliation from the US and maybe even other nuclear states, whose primary goal would be to get Iran back in its place.

Even if Iran would win the conflict and succeed in driving Israel ‘back into the sea’, effectively ending the Jewish state, the Iranian regime will not survive the retaliation. Surviving Iranians will take over and institute a new regime that is not at war with the world any more. They can count on massive support from the rest of the world, most probably not only of a moral nature. Using the bomb on Israel amounts to suicide for the Iranian regime.

There is a solution to this problem: deliver the bomb in such a way that it remains unclear where it came from. If it is doubtful whether Iran is behind a nuclear catastrophe, there won’t be political support for Israeli retaliation, which would make that retaliation less likely. This is where terrorists come in. If you give them a bomb, they may develop the means to smuggle it into Israel. Eventually this will succeed, it’s just a matter of time. After detonation, everyone can deny responsibility, except of course the useful idiots that did the dirty job. Retaliation against them is either useless, or doesn’t require the bomb.

If Israel would be so dumb as to retaliate in a conventional way against such an attack by directly attacking Iran, they will be seen as the aggressors. They’ll be the ones that the rest of the world wants back in its place, they’ll lose political support and only bring the eventual demise of their state closer. They might even give Iran an excuse to conventionally ‘retaliate’.

Luckily the same option that is open to the Iranian regime is open to the state of Israel. If a nuclear bomb would detonate in Tehran and the Mujahedeen-e Khalq -to name just a side-street- would claim the attack, it would be very difficult for Iran to construe this as an act of war by Israel.

It would not be like Israel to not have thought already about this option, not at all. The Mossad must have thought about this long before I did. So if you ask me, the question ‘does Iran have a bomb?’ should be answered thus:

‘Iran already has a bomb, they just don’t know about it yet.’

Quote of the day (7)

Avoid people with problems. Before you know it, you’ll have them yourself.

Good food and the love of animals

Years before Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn was killed by an animal rights activist my dad already warned us to avoid people with an excess love of animals. He didn’t know about organisations like Earth Liberation Front or the Animal Liberation Front. He just knew some people in his wide circle of acquaintances that loved animals and he had noticed how they behaved and thought. Somehow he had come to the conclusion that an excess love of animals could harm other people, even though I’m sure nothing detrimental ever happened among the people he knew.

Now it seems there’s another ideological goal that has inspired people to become harmful to others: good food. Alan Dangour, a scientist working at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine did a meta-analysis of 55 studies into the composition of biologically raised food products. He concluded that biologically raised foodstuffs did not differ from ordinary food when it comes to nutrient content. They are not ‘healthier’ that is.

His article in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition raised hell. Our scientist got hundreds of emails, quite a few of which were abusive. There were more reasonable reactions to his article, even one about taste, but the abuse is what hit the news.

Nobody has died yet. Pessimists will wonder whether this is just a matter of time, but that’s not really important. The point I’m trying to make is that so far we’ve always thought that for good people to behave badly one needs religion, or at least an ideology close to it. Now, in our increasingly secular society, it’s becoming clear that nothing of that stature is necessary: good food and the love of animals are examples of convictions that are neither religious, nor ideological enough, but still inspire evil.

Divorce hypothesis

Rumour has it that three quarters of heterosexual couples that break up do this on the woman’s initiative. The usual explanation is that women tend to expect more from relationships, so they’re disappointed sooner. Another explanation I’ve heard is that women tend to take more initiatives than men when it comes to relationships.

At least in the West, this needs some correction. In the case where children are involved, women in the West can more or less count on staying in care of the children. Men cannot take this for granted, hardly ever.

This means that when children are involved, the choice to leave your partner is a totally different one for the man than for the woman. The woman only has to decide whether to leave her husband. The man needs to decide whether he wants to leave his wife and his kids. Surely this would account for a greater reluctance in men.

Quote of the day (6)

I sometimes like not having text, text is so complicated.

Carice van Houten, Dutch actress, on the television program ‘Zomergasten’ on August 16th, 2009.

Synesthesia

There’s a useful concept among atheists called ’semantic atheism’. It refers to a result of the process whereby the God of gaps is slowly pushed back by advances in science. Basically God as an explanation for the unexplained is increasingly unnecessary. Soon there is no need for a concept of God in an explanatory sense.

As a consequence of this gradual pushback there’s increasing stress on the notion that any discourse about God essentially belongs to a realm outside that of logic and reason. This idea itself is old, but to the more logically inclined among us it makes very little sense. If  the concept of God does not fall inside the realm of logic and reason, how will we ever be able to talk about it? More importantly: how can we ever be sure we’re talking about the same thing?

‘God’ as a concept in this view is a semantic void, a meaningless word that can be inserted in language, but that doesn’t really mean anything nor refers to anything. Even though God might actually exist, the concept simply does not and cannot refer to Him and we should still all be atheists, even if only semantic ones.

I disagree up to a point. Talking about God can be compared to synesthesia, even if the comparison is slightly slanted. Synesthesia is a condition where someone perceives a stimulus of one sense in two or more. For the synesthete a particular shape may have a color or taste. A musical interval may taste sweet or a particular sound can be cold. These associations are consistent within one synesthete, but not among synesthetes. Not all of them experience the number 2 as ‘red’, or a minor third as sour. There are no rules for the population of synesthetes as a whole.

Every synesthete is therefore a synesthete on his or her own, there are no shared experiences. But that doesn’t mean that the phenomenon itself cannot be communicated. In fact: a synesthete can communicate about his condition with a non-synesthete. The latter may not be fully able to sympathise, but that does not prevent some understanding between the two.

I myself (a non-synesthete) once pointed out to a friend who was unaware of her condition that she was a synesthete. After she did some googling around for herself I heard nothing but cries of recognition and relief.

The experience of God, just like synesthesia, may be a lonely and lonesome experience and essentially incommunicable, but still people seem to understand each other quite well when they’re talking about it. Semantic atheism still is a good and useful concept, but it’s too strict and logical to accurately describe human experience.