Bubbles and stuff

We live in a polarised society.  Within the big bubble of the whole community, people live in social bubbles with invisible boundaries.  These bubbles intersect, and everyone lives in a lot of social bubbles.

New Whig exists in the interstices between the bubbles. Society is like a great foam, full of Social Bubbles.  We are all surrounded by Energy-Fields.  Energy is little understood by Science and even less by most people.  Just as objects of Mass in close contact and moving in unison are equivalent to a single Mass, so people who are socially joined combine their personal Energy Fields.  All Energy is subject to the irrational Wave/Particle Duality, and while we usually think of our Energy being located in a particular spot, namely within our physical bodies, our interactions with other people and with our Social Groups, our Social Bubbles, can only be explained in terms of Energy Fields that exist like bubbles round groups of people.

Foam is the most common structure in the universe.  Indeed, on a large scale, the Universe is a foam, just like the top of frothy, soapy water or where waves break on a sloping beach.  When Astronomers map the zillions of Galaxies that have become visible with orbiting telescopes and whose distance can be quite accurately estimated, we find that it is not an even, grainy distribution, but maps onto huge bubbles, many hundreds of times larger than any galaxy, and while these bubbles appear to be utterly empty, the galaxies we do see are all located in the interstices between the galaxies.  The structure of human cells is very similar: figure and ground.

Where a few bubbles meet there is a multi-filamented nucleus-like blob, and it is within these interstices that galaxy clusters form.  Galaxies can also form along the filaments that exist between three bubbles, some of which are like long tubes, and reach eventually to another blob where another galaxy cluster will form.  How large this foam might be is impossible to say, as our perception is limited to the range in which light can travel before the size of the foam reaches a scale where the foam-expansion exceeds the speed of light.  For indeed, the celestial foam is expanding.  It is like shining a spotlight on a small area of soap foam, counting the zillions of bubbles and then wondering how far the foam extends beyond the light.  We might well imagine that the foam is vastly extensive on a scale that we cannot imaging, and that it, itself is but a speck on the footstool of something yet vastly greater still.   So, Foam is universal.

Within Societies, people (and social creatures including ants and bees) are like the particles in the wave/particle duality, and we all see ourselves that way, but in the real world, there are Energy Fields that interact.  Social Bubbles are made up of groups of linked individuals.  Families are the paradigm. Australia is currently updating its Social Definition of a Family, with some adherents to the Ancient Traditions trying to enclose everyone within their social bubble, while fearing they will either be excluded from what used to be an almost universal social bubble or they will be forced to include within ‘their’ social bubble some elements that are presently outside the impervious barrier.

[Editor’s Note: I came up with this heuristic, mental model of Society decades ago, but it sat on my virtual shelf of un-written books.  It is far too complex to describe in full here, and I suppose my use of some terms has put everyone off. Naum Tered]

The difference between Social Bubbles and soap foam is that the people are within the bubbles.  However, if mathematically we replace all the people, who might be like the non-dimensional, dot ‘centres of gravity’ with the fields they represent, then we have something like the big, open bubbles that make up the universe just like the unseen bubbles in bread and cake. 

Because we all belong to many different bubbles, it is hard to imagine them if they are all transparent, but assigning colour to the bubbles means it is possible to imagine them intersecting with each other.  A two-dimensional version is often used to illustrate Sets and for other organisational reasons and sometimes called Venn Diagrams.  If we want to be really clever we can imagine these bubbles existing in four dimensions where it is possible for otherwise impossible connections to exist, though in some perceptions, seven dimensions is more meaningful.

Politics is like a big balance, where the Social Bubbles on each side weigh up against each other.  Boundaries between the bubbles are not smooth but fractal, and individuals from each side move into the domains of each other, perhaps due to their participation in some other Social Bubble all together, so that they form tendrils that spiral about each other on the boundary. 

3 CR Radiothon

Hi 'Radio for Change',

Today I made a donation to your radiothon of $240-00.

The program that I wish to support of 'Beyond the Barricades' 'Save Albert Park' that has been broadcast at 6pm Mondays for two decades - and still the race usurps a Public Park at great expense, fudged attendance statistics and with administrative secrecy.

I do not agree with all the programs on 3CR, particularly the racist, Jew-hating, anti-Semitic, fake and false Palestinian 'cause' that denies Israel's right to exist and reverse the re-unification of Jerusalem.  Only Israel wants a two-state solution, that the Palestinians have repeatedly rejected when offered.  Israel unilaterally left Gaza, but instead of gratitude leading to a similar withdrawal from the West Bank, Israel received thousands of deadly missiles from Gaza as well as most of the International Aid to Gaza building tunnels to invade Israel instead of helping the people of Gaza.  I have been to Gaza myself and want an end to the way the people there are kept in poverty by the anti-Zionist Arabs, along with the fourth generation so-called 'refugees' in Jordan and elsewhere, with the claim that it is just a matter of time before all the Jews are pushed into the sea, Israel is wiped of the maps (it already is missing from Arab school atlases) and everyone can finish Hitler's 'final solution'.

There are other programs as well that I consider of dubious worth, but I also believe that people should have the right to speak out and express opinions, even if they differ from my opinion!!

Generally, I agree with the underlying premise of Community Radio of empowering the Community and all individual, ordinary people.  While I am more in favour of individual freedom that some of the Totalitarians I hear on 3CR, and cannot foresee an actual end to the Free Enterprise Economic System, but I agree with all your presenters that we need adequate regulation and supervision.  My own view on Economics is that most people do not understand 'money', which I see as a form of Energy (not yet recognised by Physicists) that is created as the balance to debt, in the same way Positive and Negative Electricity and Magnetism balance each other.  The problem is Interest.  It is no coincidence that all the major religions prohibit interest.  Energy is not like goods and services that can have a price put on it; the 'price of money' that is interest, is a fabrication that leads to problems.  The Chinese a couple of decades ago hit on how they can create interest free debt between Government and Government owned Banks and hence create an unlimited amount of money with which to buy up the rest of the world.  Greece as well as Australia suffers from the limitation ob the Creation of Debt by Central Banks because they have interest added that just grows exponentially as Governments keep having to borrow more to service the loans.  It limits the money supply and is a bottomless pit of unproductive debt.  Fees for setting up loans are a different sort of cost, and are legitimate for banks, but any so called Socialist economic system that still incorporates usury is doomed to fail.

Well there is my rant, to get my money's worth out of my donation.  I would love to have the chance to say it on air, if anyone wanted to phone me any time on 0414 766 825 to chat.

I am also very keen on Reconciliation and applaud the recent Uluru Statement.  Australia still has unresolved guilt, and it is my opinion that this is the cause of the futile and divisive campaign to become a Republic.  Despite its faults that should be addressed individually, our Constitution is excellent and the result of hundreds of years of revolution and dispute. We should be pleased to remain a Monarchy, and instead of attempting Republicanism by Stealth, we should take full advantage of the opportunities that we ignore.  I would love to discuss this too.  The Uluru Statement progresses from Mabo to acknowledge than not only is there continuing Real-Estate ownership, but there is joint-Sovereignty in Australia sharing the Traditions of Country with our British Rule of Law.  Still, most Australians are in denial of one or the other, and few embrace both.  (I received a High Distinction in Aboriginal Cultures through the David Unaipon College of Indigenous Education, but I cannot claim direct ancestry, though I was conceived and born in Wurundjeri Country.)

I would like to see Albert Park and other Melbourne Parks as well as all our ludicrously named 'Nature Strips' permitted to return to natural, endemic bushland, which happens at no cost if you just leave land alone.  'Save Albert Park' is a bourgeois organisation run by middle-class lefties who want a traditional British-style park with lawns and cultivated shrubs, like they want mowed nature strips.  Of all Melbourne' Major Events, the Grand Prix could be a genuine 'working class' celebration, which might justify taking over a People's Park for a few months, but it remains an Elite Sport.  I still support the basic principles of 'Save Albert Park'/'Beyond the Barricades', especially opposition to the secretive way it was imposed, and have not expressed these reservations about the campaign that I think saves the wrong sort of park and excludes the right sort of people.

Cheers,
Naum Tered

A Big J Story

There was the time when Big J suggested I join a Service Club, and suggested Apex.  I had heard of it but knew nothing of Service Clubs.  I agreed, with some enthusiasm.  And went to my first meeting, one early evening, I think from memory.

As soon as I walked in, someone recognised me and called everyone's attention to who my Father was.  He praised Big J for a long time, listing  a few of the many things he had done for the Community in his three decades as a Civic Councillor, and Olympic Sportsman and a Captain of Industry.

Then, he turned to me and said something like, 'Welcome! We're expecting a lot from you.'

I heard calls from a few of the faces that were all turned towards me of, 'Have a drink,' but all I could do was depart immediately and silently, never to return.

I wasn't me, whoever I was.  Instead I was the son of Big J.  I don't know how other people cope.  Well, some live up to expectations, but then, they weren't dropped on their heads by their Big Whatevers when they were three, and blamed for being a malingerer for suffering because everyone was in denial that there had been an accident or I had been hurt at all.  

Now I think about it.  I don't think he told my mother what had happened, but instead carried my unconscious body to my bed and said I had a chill, or something.  My Grandfather had died of Pneumonia a year before I was born, so it was a genuine concern.

I woke up and didn't know/remember anything.  I had retrograde amnesia, but three year-olds aren't expected to remember much anyway.  I know I had forgotten, because I remember three years later going with my Brother to the Kindergarten that I had attended myself and not remembering anything about it at all.   

After that, I was genuinely sick, with every cold and flu that came our way, and measles and chicken pox.  It was nearly always in mid-summer when everyone else was playing on the beach.

Even when I was well, I was confined to bed in a room without ventilation and overheated.  I was over-fed starchy food.  The best thing would have been for me to lie in the sun and bathe in the sea, but even when we rented a house by the beach near where cousins had also rented, and where my cousins, of whom there were many, played together, I was prevented from going out, and no one would visit me because they all thought I was a malingerer who was too timid to play sports.  

I recall lying in bed at another time in the new house, and hearing children playing outside.  I think I went once to meet up with them, on a rare occasion when I was deemed 'well', the weather was warm and dry, and I had all the right clothes on.  They were going down the hill on a billy cart.  I may have had the opportunity to try it, but declined, because I was timid.  I often fell over because I was clumsy, having grown up sick in bed, and I usually hurt myself.  I still wonder how sportspeople can dive for balls or tackle each other without injury.  

A couple of times I was invited to a neighbor's party.  One time, being in the early fifties when they were still playing war music and movies, and the lady of the house, the mother of the child I barely knew, who lived at the end of my street, asked me what my Father did in the war.  I was totally confused, as I didn't know what anyone did in the War.  My Mother's young brother was killed in the RAAF just before the end of the war, after seeing me once just after I was born, but of course that memory was wiped by the bump on the head.

A lot of it came back to me when I was knocked unconscious in a Motor Bike Accident. (Instead of going where the sign pointed, I rode into the sign, something a lot of people do metaphorically according to the Buddhist analogy, but I did literally.)  I had retrograde amnesia, and completely lost the preceding six weeks.  It was very strange as I had not long before moved into a bramble-covered cottage in the Adelaide Hills on the edge of the forest and had met lots of wonderful people.  Later I kept running into people I didn't know who claimed they knew me.  Eventually I started asking when I had met them, and it was always within that six weeks, so I could apologise and explain.  Even my earlier life was initially forgotten, but gradually came back to me, as if drifting in from a distance, but included with the returning memories were some from the first time I was knocked unconscious.  I have seen this in a couple of movies, films and videos where it can be used to comic effect or to propel the story with something remembered, but it is based on fact, because I have experienced it.

Those Apex people might have had high expectations, but none more so than my own dear Father.  Big J had made it on his own, despite great adversity, or perhaps because of it. He expected me to do the same, without his help.  Unless, you call throwing me into the lion's den like that Apex meeting 'help'.  He was forever criticising me for not doing things that I hadn't known he expected.  If he told me in advance I might have tried, but when I complained he said I had no initiative. 

The more I think about it, the more I am sure he kept it a secret that he had dropped me on my head doing gymnastics in the bathroom.  I must have heard some people talking about it, perhaps him and a Medico, because years later, when I was in my twenties, I asked him about it.  He was a bit surprised I knew and remembered, but agreed that it had happened, but quickly added, 'It was lucky nothing permanent happened.'  He was in total denial.  We never spoke of it again, as we continued to have too much else to argue about.  We used to shout at each other all the time.  Perhaps he thought it was like verbal fencing, because I had been too feeble to learn to fence so we couldn't actually face up to each other.  Pity!  The arguing was very destructive and made me very depressed.  If he did it deliberately, he did me a great wrong, because it totally destroyed any belief that anything I did or said could be right or worthwhile, as he argued against everything.  Often he would say, 'Don't be stupid!' so I grew up thinking I was stupid, and was surprised when I was about forty to discover that I was actually vastly more intelligent than most other people and the reason I couldn't understand other people was not because I was stupid but because they all were - by comparison.  I was a fool to not know, but what hope did I have? 

After I did some Psychodramas I was able to stop him calling me 'Stupid!' and we became good friends for the last few years of his life till he very suddenly got sick and died.  But that is a different story.

Am I alone in my musical appreciation?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RENk9PK06AQ
It is billed as the world's ugliest music. 

A long lecture by a mathematician explains the principles of Harmony and then argues that it is because of what he calls 'repetition'  that gives all Art, including Music its 'beauty' presumably the only interesting aspect of Art.  Then he explains how something that is not just random, but even more 'dissonant' in that it avoids all repetition must be 'ugly'.  The resulting succession of notes is played on a piano.  No pair of notes have the same interval.

Among all the negative comments attempting to ridicule the music, presumably comparing it to Pop, I wrote:

Dare I admit that I enjoyed it very much. It was the unexpectedness of the progression that delighted me. It must be possible to generate 'harmonies' by this method so the 'music' or 'soundscape' has genuine dissonance. 

He was a terrible Father.

He was a terrible Father.  To start with, he dropped me on my head doing gymnastics in the bathroom when I was three and a half, possibly just before my Brother was born.  I was knocked unconscious and had retrograde amnesia, had a partially dislocated neck and spent most of the next few years in bed.  However, my dear Father was in denial, and I was always in bed because I was sickly, though without any exercise or fresh air it is little wonder I became asthmatic and susceptible to every cough and cold.  Years later, I found out the reason I never had any visitors was that my Family all believed I was a malingerer and did not want to encourage me.  I asked him about it when I was in my Twenties, because I must have remembered people talking about, and he agreed that it had happened, but added, ‘Fortunately, there was not lasting damage.’

When I was Six I was sent to the Mercy Hospital for a Tonsillectomy that was supposed to cure my susceptibility to illness.  I don’t know how susceptible I was, but I do remember that nearly every year, even when we rented a house down the Peninsular, I would only need to sneeze once and I would be confined to bed and the local Doctor called.  My room had all its vents sealed, the windows were never opened and the Central Heating (one of the first in Melbourne) was always turned up.  While there, I was abused by the Sisters of Mercy, but could not tell anyone and became even more introverted than I had been.  It was sixty years before I blurted it out to a General Practitioner who sent me for Counselling.

He was a man of great personal self-confidence and unassailable initiative.  He expected the same of me and never forgave me for my lack of initiative and a raft of other personal failings.  While other Fathers, particularly Jewish Parents, put pressure on their children to achieve, he kept telling me I could do anything and he wasn’t going to be like other Fathers, as long as I did something Professional.

He did not take me into his business as an adolescent during vacations or whenever, when I could have learnt useful skills, because he did not want me to work ‘in Trade’ or whatever he called it, though I don’t remember him referring to anything.  He was himself largely Class-free, and dealt equally with everyone man-to-man.  I think he saw the world as a meritocracy based on personal achievements, and he had risen to hob-knobbing with Princes from peniless refugee, and expected I could do the same, without his help.

He prevented me from more than a career in Industry, though ironically I was streamed into Commerce at High School, presumably based on my Father’s occupation, not on his aspirations for me.  He also prevented me from turning a childhood hobby of Puppetry into a career in Entertainment.  So it was all stopping me from what he did not like, but never helping me or encouraging me or indicating what he did want for me.

I saw all my cousins under pressure to into Law or Medicine, but I had no such pressure; I could do anything, which to my mind was the same as nothing because ‘nothing’ and ‘anything’ are both ‘not something’. I grew up thinking I was rather stupid anyway, mainly because I was away from school a lot and never seemed to know what they were learning about when I went back after being sick.  I have report cards showing I was away more than I attended some years in Primary School.  Of course it didn’t help when he was always telling me I was stupid.  Whenever I didn’t do something that I hadn’t known he wanted me to do, or started to do something in some way he hadn’t expected, he would say, ‘Don’t be stupid.’  After some Psycho-Drama at Augustine Centre when I was in my Forties, I eventually convinced him to stop saying that, and we eventually became good friends for the last few years of his life.

He had fallen out with his own father who had died a couple of years before I was born.   Although my Grand-Parents lived in the same street in St Kilda, they belonged to Synagogues on different sides of the Highway.  My Maternal Grand-Parents were part of the British Establishment. My Grand-Mother was proudly British, with siblings born throughout the Empire and a birth in London’s East End.  My Grand-Father never lost his Yorkshire accent or his love of Cricket.  Australia was mostly half Anglican and half Irish, Roman Catholic, but unlike other countries we had social harmony because there was no overt display so everyone looked the same in public, and in that environment, Jews could remain equally public and religiously anonymous.  Everyone knew we were Jewish but the only difference from everyone else was that we had different holidays, didn’t eat certain things and went to Synagogue on Saturday instead of Church on Sunday.  I think that was it.  We kept a wishy-washy sort of Kosher, avoiding forbidden meats, but not worrying about the rest.

My Father’s Parents belonged to a traditionally Orthodox, European Synagogue, where my Grand-Father had been a community leader.  Not long before he died, he had been part of a break-away group that later grew into one of Melbourne’s leading Orthodox Communities.  I don’t think he was exceptionally religious, and I reject epithets like ‘ultra-Orthodox’ for people who are just traditionally Observant.  My Father wanted none of it, and being in Business and active in sport, was as secular as he found the rest of the community.  This must have started when they lived in Montreal before coming to Australia.  Anyhow, my Father had fallen out with his Father, but I did not know this as a child.  I occasionally saw my Grand-Mother, who died when I was about eight, but visits to her were often tinged by the presence of refugees from the Holocaust.  Australia had joined the rest of the world in turning its back on the plight of European Jews, which was already quite well known in military and government circles, even if not widely discussed publicly.  Australian Jews were Patriotic, fighting in the Australian Defence Forces, but were noticeably not Zionists.

I had a minimalist Religious upbringing, with a Bar Mitzvah that was form without content.  A few years later, when my Mother died after an agonising illness of ‘Women’s Disease’, I was quite unprepared for the religious expectations that came with a Jewish Funeral, and missed out on everything that might have come at that time.  I was always very introverted, remember, so I could not go out of my way to learn or participate, but needed to be included and wanted, which I was not.  I blame my Father for growing up without any sense of belonging.  He had done it, as a child-refugee, but I had not had his experiences, lying in bed dreaming of adventures at the early age when he had been having them.  For example, lined up in front of a firing squad and being sent away at the last moment because he was but a child.  Did I ever have a similar sense of my own impending demise, while I was lying in bed with Asthma, unable to move or breathe, thinking I was at my end?

One thing in his favour was his attitude to punishment.  I don’t know where I got my attitude to Morality, but I don’t think I ever did anything wrong deserving punishment.  There was one occasion, perhaps a year or so after we moved, so eight or nine when for something that I cannot recall at all, he announced he was going to smack me.  I was terrified as he had never behaved like this before, usually ignoring me.  I recall running into my bedroom and round the back of the bed.  I don’t think any actual hitting occurred as I was by then hysterical and the whole thing was stopped by my Mother.  I have no idea what evil I perpetrated.