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A New Deal on Data.

20 Wednesday Jun 2018

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Anna Middleton, big data, Collaboration, Consultation, Culture, DNA, GDPR, Genetics, Genomics, Genomics England, Health, Healthcare, Humanity, innovation, Julian Borra, lifestyle, people powered, Precious Data, Science, society, technology, The General Public, Vivienne Parry, Wellcome Sanger Institute

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Articulating the contract between science and people

By Anna Middleton1, Vivienne Parry2, Julian Borra3

ARE YOU WITH US?

For most of us it is hard to unpick the various declarations, assurances and guarantees made regarding the sanctity of our data. Even the General Data Protection Regulation still feels quite far removed from the everyday lives of ordinary people and is seemingly absent of any consultation with them. People need to both see and hear proof that they’ve been listened to. And they will act against anyone who seems to wilfully dismiss or disregard them – with every right to do so. With Facebook recently under the spotlight, there is tangible alarm about the use of our personal information by others. A breach of confidence or inappropriate access to data becomes really sensitive when we consider our most precious and personal information. In a health sense, what is more personal than our DNA? It’s what makes us ‘us’.

We broadly know that scientists, clinicians and academic institutions collect, store, research and share DNA and medical information as part of the global endeavours to understand human health and treat human suffering. As part of this endeavour DNA information bounces around the Internet on an unbelievably massive scale, in ways unknown to the person who donated the data.

We probably expect ‘science’ is gathering, storing, analysing and sharing our data with respect, transparency and integrity. Whilst we hope that there is choice in this and we hope that we have actively consented, have we ever really discussed this as a collective society? Is this even possible?

Is it widely known that particularly for genetic research it is only possible to interpret what a glitch in DNA means if there are hundreds of thousands of DNA glitches from other people to compare it to. So, Big Data and DNA go hand in hand and are necessary for genomic medicine to deliver on its promises.

But, if science is truly going to serve humankind in the best way possible we need to be clear on the terms of the interaction and transaction with people, on their terms. And to do that we need a simple and clear conversation; to be certain that we can fulfil their demands or at least understand their desires and concerns.

The need for a PEOPLE POWERED conversation

THE WHY?

A. The world of data is leaky.

B. Society’ hasn’t yet been part of a clear conversation.

When thinking about A. we have to be honest. Nothing is perfect. No data is 100% secure. No system is flawless. No regulation is absolute. No cache of information is 100% bullet proof – and if anyone promises that, they’re over promising.

This is a given that we have got to accept.

The type of data we are talking about here is the purest most precious kind, fundamental to our identity and existence. DNA and linked medical data – the foundational stuff that makes us who we are. Whilst our data might be ‘de-identified’, i.e. our name and address has been uncoupled from it, ‘anonymity’ cannot be absolutely guaranteed, because health information can always be linked to other personal information that is also on the web, and in our increasingly data-connected world, it is entirely feasible that we could, in theory, be identified from our DNA alone.

Which brings us to the B.

There are a lot of companies and regulatory bodies that broadcast commitments and assurances about data use. But as there has been no collective societal ‘sign up’ – so the pronouncements and commitments could be seen as one-sided. Aside from (relatively small scale) targeted engagement initiatives, there hasn’t yet been a global two-way conversation. No complete consultation. No reciprocity. No serious voice given to the most important people and the principal recipients of the good works undertaken with their data.

This is especially problematic when it comes to trying to get more people to share their precious DNA – their genome – to advance medical research and progress healthcare. Which is why the scientists need to ‘go first’ with starting this conversation.

THE CRUNCH

To move forwards we need:

  • the medical, clinical and academic institutions and the policy makers to clearly articulate the assumptions behind ‘people’s best interests’ and make this available for debate.
  • society to accept the tiny risk inherent in sharing their data with individuals, organisations.

We need the people on both sides to be in this together – mutually accepting and supporting the power of precious data sharing to make life better.

GOING FORWARDS

Drawing up the New Deal

Simplicity is key. Two clear parties. Two clear beneficiaries. And equally mutual rewards.

Consultation

This is a reciprocal people-powered deal that brings both sides together for better. And the people’s voice must be consulted, heard and written into it.

This will require a comprehensive consultation process involving ordinary people from all walks of society.

This should involve Qualitative and Quantitative explorations and interrogations of the topic and the terms of the deal. It should involve experts in large-scale, population engagement techniques.

How do we start the conversation?

We need a starting point for that conversation – an ‘in’; and starting with the genome isn’t it. We know from our own research that the vast majority of the broader public have not yet encountered the term. However, more than 90% of the public are online and feeding their data into the grid. Thus ‘data’ is the conversation starter that can take us to DNA.

The binary algorithms that once sat invisibly inside tech tools that serve humanity –- have now become visible – data has become a ‘thing’. Something we can point at, hold up, scrutinise and hold accountable. Data and its big brother, Big Data, are now discussed, interrogated and judged everywhere from the Senate Commission to Mumsnet.

So, Data; our relationship with it; and with those who harvest, explore and administer it ‘on our behalf’ gives us a rich area from which to begin.

The conversation needs to focus on how science and humanity collaborate and win, together.

Communication

Language and Tone are everything. Pub and school gate rules apply (i.e. it can be discussed anywhere and everyone can participate). This is a People Powered Deal. Not a Protocol.This is a simple deal that respects and honours every human’s right to control their own data destiny. And confidently go into an agreement where they believe that the terms will be upheld to the best of everyone’s ability. Which means it must be couched in clear simple terms.

Distribution

We need the New Deal to be visible to all at every level. This will require a robust channel strategy – so we would also need to test best channels for spreading the word. And answer some pretty simple questions: Is it an event based news worthy event? Is it a web based platform for commitment with visible partners? Is it a socially driven call for better – a clarion call where we give the New Deal to the people and get them to use it as a lever to agitate for better – a movement.

 

We feel it is time for science and policy to scrutinise their direction of travel – with less rhetoric about the benefits of research and delivery of science (i.e. going in one direction from them to us) and more about serving humankind, recognising that we are all in this together. We, collectively are a partnership and we need the people of society to feel they sit with the scientists so that the journey into human discovery is one made together.

 

1Head of Society and Ethics Research, Wellcome Genome Campus, Cambridge

2Head of Engagement, Genomics England, London

3Citizen, Founder of Thin Air Factory, London

 

Faith, banter & Living the Dream

01 Sunday May 2016

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catholocism, Dave Allen, eruv, faith, Herman Ze German, Identity, jehovah, Jihadi John, judaism, Life Of Brian, M Theory, protestantism, Religion, Science, sharia law, thugee, Wonga

 

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“Christ on a bike.”

“You can’t say that.”

“What?”

“That.”

“Christ on a bike?”

“Yeah.”

“Just a bit of fun. Think its what the Tommies used to shout in the old days when the Padre cycled past on his way to some bombed out Mass.”

“Bit disrespectful isn’t it?”

“Nah.”

“Like that Dave Allen in the 70s – upsetting all of the Catholics in Ireland”

“Blast from the past. We’ll be getting our knickers in a twist about the bloody Life of Brian next.”

“And with fair reason.”

“What?”

“Well, bit of a hatchet job on old JC wasn’t it. And what about all that ‘hook nose’ ‘heebie’ ‘red sea pedestrian’ stuff?”

“God, I loved that bit! “Oi! Big Nose” “Who you calling big nose?”

“Cant think the Jewish viewers enjoyed it that much.”

“Well, you cant be too sensitive can you.”

“Unless Jehovah is a really big deal for you and your faith.”

“Yeah, OK, but blimey, what next? Rename the next series of Luther because the Reformation Protestant purists are going to get all hufty otherwise?”

“No. I’m just saying be a little more respectful to people of faith.”

“Faith? You mean Religion. Faith is not the sole domain of the Holy you know.”

“Yes it is.”

“Really? Faith comes in all shapes and sizes. Even the scientists need it. That M Theory is a bit of a leap of faith – nice theory but whoops no proof – but I cant see a molecular physicist getting all arsey about Hadron Collider gags.”

“M Theory?”

“M Theory – Hawking – chap in the chair – funny voice – believes that there is one total quantum truth for the whole universe – unifying all consistent superstring theories of the universe.”

“Superstring.”

“Forget the string – all I am saying is that until there is proof, that’s a leap of faith.”

“No need to get funny about it. All I am saying is that some people have a different cultural sensitivity to stuff like this. Things are sacred for them.”

“Oh, you’re not going to get all Sharia on me now are you.”

“Why not. The Jewish community puts up an Eruv. We all respect the significance of that.”

“God, can we just lighten up. All this stuff is just not…just not how we are. We just don’t get that worked up about this stuff.”

“Great. But other people do.”

“You’ll be banning banter next. And that’s just not British”

“What about Jihadi John?”

“What, the lunatic psycho Jihadi John?”

“Yes. Calling him Jihadi John – is that banter?”

“That’s the Sun for you!”

“Jihad is a religious reference.”

“Yeah but no. Just a bit of name-calling. You’re in taking-the-piss-land mate. Get over it.”

“It’s a bit thuggish though isn’t it?”

“What?”

“You know, all a bit lock stock and two smoking shashlik kebabs. Jihadi John. Cos he’s a Jihadist. Turkish cos he’s Turkish.”

“Well if you’re going to be like that, don’t say Thug.”

“Why not?”

“Thugee – Indian cult.”

“That’s not religion! They were a criminal cult.”

“Look. All I am saying is that, you know, chill out. its a sign of a civilised society. Rising above all the voodoo and the mysticism.Being able to look at it and laugh. I mean its nuts some of it.”

“So a few billion people are all nuts?”

“Yeah. But to be fair most of them are so bloody poor they need some fantasy to believe in don’t they. A thinking person with a decent education – going to see the funny side of all that blood and wine and 70 virgins.”

“Oh OK. Got it. So by your reckoning profound soul searching faith is commensurate with poverty.”

‘Yup. Face it mate, the more stuff we can get a hold of in this life the less we need to negotiate our entry into the next. Why should I worry about 4 Hail Marys, Stamping on a glass and facing East”

“Blimey. So a couple of credit cards, a few fancy holidays and a new sofa and all forms of religion can get binned? You’ll be telling me that Wonga Loans and spirituality are conflicting belief systems next”

“God, you’re a right bag of laughs. Have you got a saddle for that very high horse you’re on? Speaking of horses; I’m hungry.”

“Yeah; Im starving come to think of it.”

‘What about that Herman Ze German. Hot dog & beer place. Wurst sausage I ever had!”

‘Now that’s funny.”

“Hallelujah. He has a sense of humour. Schnell.”

 

 

Living the Dream is a project that seeks a more meaningful and inclusive narrative for what good looks like by exploring the underlying narratives in everyday peoples lives at the intersection where prosperity, consumption and values collide.  

 

 

 

Sustainable Human Existence, The D Word & Treading carefully

02 Saturday Aug 2014

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Brian Cox, cary Grant, China Dream, D Ream, Dream catchers, Dream In A Box, Freud, gramsci, Identity, John Stuart Mill, Loveboat, Mad magazine, Martin Luther King Jnr, Morpheus, Peggy Liu, Philosophy, Science, Sustainability, The Ancients, The Civil Rights Movement, Transforming Desire, Walt Disney, Yeats

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Funny things dreams. Profound to some – sophistry to others.
So please mind your language!

I used the word Dream in a presentation once in the UK. Won’t be doing that again in a hurry any time soon: certainly not without a lot of qualification.
Let’s just say I had not realised how ‘spooked’ grown ups can get by a word.

Equally, it served to remind me that my own slap dash use of language and bumbling naivety could do with some heavy spanner work and a healthy dose of tuning fork.

To be fair the D word popped up in very particular circumstance – a discussion about a methodology called Dream In A Box.

The methodology endeavours to reuse and recycle old wisdoms, contemporary cultural signposting, local idioms and vernaculars to write a new narrative – to re-imagine prosperity, reframe sustainability and transform desire – the consuming kind particularly – to a more enduring and sustainable model; all this in pursuit of a more sustainable human existence.

The D word was chosen for its particular resonance with and reference to ‘the American Dream’ and the staining nature of its most recent variant on our beleaguered planet. Not that it was always thus.

The American Dream was one under which all men (and, sure, yup, women, and ok, eventually, if you’re going to push it, with a civil rights movement for example, Afro-Americans) were equal.

In the heady industry-rebuilding, economy-expanding (where waists would surely follow) post-war rush to create the perfect American thriving, surviving white-picket society, that dream took a few toxic turns, until finally, it eventually settled on the perfectly trimmed lawn of the idyllic all-consuming sub Urban lifestyle that we know and love.

Cue Cary Grant movies. Loveboat. Doris Day. And the chirpy satire of Mad Magazine.

It was a dream promising the consumer citizen infinite growth, financially, spiritually, socially and collectively; all merrily based upon an apparently infinite, fecund and plentiful pool of glorious ‘Godly’ resources; material human and physical.

The patently obvious and accelerating realisation of how wrong that immaculate assumption actually was aside, the feeling in the Dream In A Box camp was that the Dream bit of the phrase was reasonably off set by the In A Box bit.

The In A Box part of it made the following particular point: unless you can find a way of containing the otherwise intangible, lofty, unreachable and mildly frustrating dimensions of a Dream and make them real in ways that are meaningful and valuable to everyday people in the everyday thread of life, you are merely peddling opiates.

Even so, for some it smacked of an over simplified homogenous hideous social chimera. A one size fits all piece of social bullying or bluff that was fundamentally anti–social in its anti-individualist bent.

But this vehemence is not a feeling reserved exclusively for the more square cornered sustainable analysts, scientists, engineers underwriting the operational truths of supply and value chains everywhere.

Dreams generally enjoy a dynamic polarity in many people’s minds.

Dreams seem to inhabit a similar place to things like religious fervor, faith and Walt Disney for many of the reason and rationality junkies out there.
To the nay-sayers and doubters, the idea of having a dream (a phrase preferably spat out or sneered through) verges on criminal self delusion and puffery.

The intangible what if nature of them seems to fill them with some form of existential dread.

There is no place for dreams in a reasonable world, especially a scientific one and certainly no place for reason in dreams  – so what if Brian ‘Mine’s Hadron Collider’ Cox’s band was called D.Ream. Doesn’t mean he ascribes to them.

The reoccurring theme seems to be that Dreams, like faith, are dangerous things – dark instruments. Dreams obfuscate the real raw nature of our human existence and all of its incumbent challenges, puzzles and conundrums.

The realm of Morpheus is a confection that far from enlightening us is seen as one that diminishes us.

Its almost as if Dreams are flawed in some evolutionary way: rendering us incapable of basic human survival; stupefied by our hazy, twinkle-filled and fantastical view of the world.
A small rummage around the point counter point arguments of, on the one hand, the evolutionary benefits set out in Anttii Revonsuo’s Threat Simulation theory, and Flannagan’s concept of Evolutionary epiphenomena (dreams as a state that lacks any form of adaptive function) on the other clearly inform us that the evolutionary jury’s out on this one.

And the case for Dreams as a scientifically proven improver of our human condition is never helped in the eyes of the scientist by the presence of Dream Catchers and other juvenile voodoo bric a brac in the windows’ of student houses and hippy retreats.

Perhaps the most virulent critics spent one long night too many at college or university pretending to give a crap as the fragile teen sitting opposite them bleated their dream stories in some desperate effort to seem windswept, deep and interesting.

Equally the phrase ‘to follow one’s dreams’ doesn’t help, in that it implies a sheep-like loyalty: a subservience in service of something intangible beyond your control. And we know how rationalists like a smidgen of control. 

Whatever it is that causes the anger and disdain; it is a powerful and quite corrosive emotion.

But, for the Dream believers, Dreams are a way of allowing people to transcend the bleak sharp cornered truths of what is and embrace the brighter potential of what could be. Dreams allow us to rise above the deterministic absolutes of any given situation and envision something better.

Martin Luther King had a dream that succeeded in helping to shift millions of black Americans from a position of sub human species needing to know its place to a powerful ethnic constituency in search of a spiritual homeland and tangible human rights and respect.
I doubt even the fiercest doubters could ridicule or set aside the power of that dream to change lives and human existence for the better in some shape or form.
There is a sense that, in the USA of the 1960s, the political power elites, intellectual tribes, state collectives, regional advocates and community activists all jostling for position on either side of the colour divide would never have convened their mighty voices into that one immutable, immoveable and deafening roar without the focus of that Dream, voiced so eloquently and publicly.

But equally, John Stuart Mill found the idea of galvanising and socialising a nation through a singular collective idyll – an idea or dream of better – was at best childish and naïve and at worst an aggressive act of hubris and societal hegemony – a social tyranny.
He believed in the axiom that ‘man should judge everything in life based upon its ability to promote the greatest individual happiness’.
“the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling is more formidable than many kinds of political oppression …leav[ing] fewer means of escape … and penetrat[ing] more deeply into the details of life. ”The “tendency of society to impose … its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and if possible, prevent the formation of individuality, not in harmony with its ways”

There is a sense in this view that an individual Dream is fine while it is held safe and unsullied in the heart and the mind of an individual. It is a beautiful and highly personal wonder, broadly uncorrupted though perhaps a little influenced by the dreams of others.

(It is worth reminding ourselves that Martin Luther King Jnr. said ‘I have a dream…’; not ‘We have a Dream’. It was his; it just had the potential to move many others within it.)

It seems that while in its unadulterated individual state, that which is most emotionally proximal to its originator, a dream is widely lauded as the profound generator of poetry, music, art and literature.

Yeat’s Cloths of Gold directs the listener to ‘tread gently for you tread on my dreams’. They are presented as the purest, most precious things he has to offer the world.
Mamma Cass’s ‘California Dreaming’ protested a desire for a sunnier brighter life far removed from the cold emotionally bleak east of Fall and Atlantic swells. It is her dream and hers alone: just one that happened to be shared by a generation.

The problem it seems is that when mobilised, industrialised and socialised at scale, a dream becomes The Dream – the Mother of Suppression of the Individual in hot pursuit of the collective good. The Dream quickly becomes the destroyer of intelligent dissent and the brutal editor of different orthodoxies and philosophies that did not quite ‘fit’ ‘The Dream’. It becomes all that John Stuart Mill berated and warned of in his view of one dimensional models of collective happiness as some conjuring trick played on the masses.

Dreams also have an ill-judged and reoccurring tendency of turning up at the very heart of large orgiastic excursions into nationalistic and hubristic megalomania.
Dreams of Empire whether by Georgian and Victorian Britain, Imperial Japan, Fascist Italy or the German Third Reich always seem to bear out the truth of Mr Mill’s perception.

To use a singular Dream in this way is to squash the very diversity and healthy human tension the enables us to evolve as a species. Dreams are a recidivist and controlling mechanism that are worthy of deep suspicion.

The pollutant seems (as so often is the case) to be somewhat rooted in what man has done in the name of dreams; not in the condition of dreaming which in itself is a pretty confounding experience. They are after all an axial mechanism of our deepest mind.

Dreams at their most basic level are the powerhouse of our emotional computing.
They are the synaptic equivalent of taking the big data from every facet and corner of our existence and atomically mixing it up with the narrative skills of Lewis Carroll, Dickens, Spielberg and Plato.

Dreams are the super processor of individual human potential.

They are the transcendence mechanism in us – they are the ‘reach’ mechanism that compels us to perhaps stretch beyond what seems immediately possible or probable to test the edges of what could or might be.

Science clearly sets out the power of our sleeping computations in regards to cognitive ability and capacity.

But given their sleep hosted ‘madness’, flaky associations, the abstracted corollaries that exist within them and Freud’s rather particular take on them, it is easy to set Dreams aside as garish hyperemotional gibberish – or reinvent them as some twist of needy or proving self-identification and elevation.

Most people find the sharing of what one dreams an immature act of identity assertion; usually by those who feel there is little social or intellectual mystery or magic about them. Given that it is a habit that one usually hopes dies out with the arrival of slightly greater intellectual and spiritual surety, perhaps the mere sight of the word makes them run for the hills screaming.

There is a theory that dreams exist in the sleep-scapes of REM Rapid Eye Movement and NREM Non Rapid Eye Movement and do so with a very clear function.

It is believed that the process of sleep to encode and transfer data from the temporary memory store in the conscious mind accesses and activated in NREM sleep to the long term memory store in the subconscious mind accessed and activated in REM sleep – and the continual activation of this flow is what stimulates dreams. So in that way they are a robust and meaningful process of our body science and an enricher of our more adaptive cognition.

It is not just the science of the brain that frames the arguments and beliefs around dreams and their role.

Human history and the texts of the ancients are riddled with expansive philosophical treatise and frameworks. From the ancient Mesopotamians, Chinese, Upanishads, and Babylonians, to the Egyptians Greeks and Romans, the powerful nature of dreams have always held a deep and profound place in our collective social memory.

In some ways perhaps the truth of Dreams lies as with many things somewhere between the two; at the point at which these two distinct perspectives overlap and stitch together; neither being the predominant force but both represented as balanced and weighted in a perfect symmetry with each other. This duality might offer us a more productive way forwards.

Gramsci invites us to apply Pessimism of the Intellect and Optimism of the Will in all things. Perhaps this is the filter through which we should view Dreams and everything to do with them in regards to the ambition of transforming the more toxic desires of the average consumer.

Certainly in regards to the Dream word being used as a way to frame the spiritual social and material vision of a more sustainable form of consumption, Gramsci’s invitation would help balance the two dimensions.
The pessimistic Intellect – the science – interrogating the truths of how we engineer and support these more sustainable lifestyles while the optimistic Spirit – the philosophical – compels a more transcendent human nature be applied at every opportunity – a higher human purpose that might take everyday humanity beyond the impenetrable science and just doing enough to scrape through.
This would liberate the word and the language around it to be both rooted in the deep science that will be required to reinvent our standard forms of consumption and yet elevated by the optimism of a collective human endeavour lived in real time in the real world.

And perhaps if we liberated the word – set it free from the shackles of an Either/Or model of determinative application we might find something richer and more human again in Dreams.

If perhaps we also recognised that in regards to visionary models of human consumption, Dreams can be nuanced, shaded and culturally meaningful even at a meta level.

In the Dream In A Box initiatives undertaken so far we already have 5 Shades of Dream – Emerging; Latent; Resurgent; Extant; Evolving – starting to reveal themselves in regards to formulating desirable and enduring lifestyles of consumption.

I am certain that more will present themselves before we are finished.

So here’s to those turbulent, intangible, flaky, studenty, inspirational, nation-shaping, scientist irritating things called Dreams.

If for nothing else they should be considered eminently remarkable purely on the basis that they can elicit so much passionate debate and discourse purely by their mention.

As long as each Dream is considered on its merit – not on some preconceived concept of what it does not fulfil, or on some etymological witch hunt dressed up as rigour and realism we’ll perhaps be fine. Until then…

As Stephen Tyler sang: ‘Dream On’

Creativity, the Cosmic Fizz & the storytellers of science and faith

14 Friday Feb 2014

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Cosmic Fizz. Atoms Never Die, Creativity, Evolution, faith, Greek Philosophy, Human resilience, Infinity, Life Of Pi, Morality, Mythology, Nihilism, Nirvana, Omar Khayyam, Optimism, Oscar Wilde, Philosophy, Romanticism, Rubaiyat, Science, Sentimental data, Spinal Tap, Story telling, Sustainability Experts, Transcendental Meditation

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Adult Pi Patel: So which story do you prefer?

Writer: The one with the tiger. That’s the better story.

Adult Pi Patel: Thank you. And so it goes with God.

Writer: It’s an amazing story.

I love this piece of writing from the Life Of Pi – because it goes to the heart of everything I believe in as a storyteller by trade and by passion.

It also points to the most sublime collision of existence and creativity for me.

The brutal truths of everything we are, that we come from, exist amongst, experience, endure and prevail upon are in themselves poetic and beautiful. But there is something so human about our need to embellish the flat dry expanse of these truths; to make them greater, more fantastic: our need to story tell around them. There is for me a perfect conflicted symmetry: of both hubris and humility in our need to do it.

That we want to use our consciousness, and the gifts of existential self-perception that it brings to ‘big ourselves up’ in the species department is par for the course. The ascending arrogance of increasing predominance is so expected as to be almost dull.

But in seeking to story tell around such profound and all enveloping concepts: of existence, creation, death, belief, faith, survival – we are also admitting that the base nature of them is simply too overwhelming to us to comprehend in their pure form, too complex and exceptional for us to divine without reduction and simplification. (Sustainability experts take note!!)

So story-tell them we have. Between Reason and Faith, the scattered facts and dynamic data of our human condition and the absolute nature of our relationship with the world in which we bear it are rendered.

In the parables, cautionary tales, prophesies, miracles, fairy tales, wisdoms, mythologies, metaphors, legends, monoliths and dream catchers, we find storytelling that is wonderful, hopeful, brutal, yet optimistic – transforming the data of our reality into ‘the one with the tiger’.

The giddying ascent of some of these ‘tiger stories’ as I will now call them into regional and world movements of dogmatic faith inevitably has seen them dragged into service as the spiritual slings and arrows of marauding armies. In doing so they have both exported a negative arrogant shading of their ‘tiger story’ while importing a culture of cruelty, violence and division into the heart of it.

It is unclear to me whether this conflicted nature is inherent within the cosmic fizz or purely a product of it. Regardless, in the evolution of these ‘tiger stories’, they have proven themselves wholly capable of extreme polarities of positive and negative outcome: the Atomic Bomb and The Inquisition being two such glorious (western) examples.

I would venture though that it is the base corruption of the storytelling concepts – and the flags and actions that they are seen to have resided over that despoils them, not the nature of the story itself or the faith or reason upon which they are built.

As Oscar Wilde pointed out quite rightly – there is not such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all. The storytelling is not where the problem lies.

It is the questionable moralities of human interpretation and subsequent actions undertaken in the name of something; be it science, faith or any other where the spoiling starts. A wantonly childish and proprietary approach it seems: It’s my toy so I’ll smash it if I want to.

I believe that if we took the smashers from all sides – the pedants, the inquisitors, the lunatics and the absolutists – the ‘my book’s better than your book and oh, by the way it’s the only book’ crowd and the equally intransigent and nihilistic ‘faith is the great cop out, the great excuse’ polemicists and shoved them in a large room and closed the door we might start the conversation again.

If we did, I think we might find that the people of science and the people of faith are connected at a deeper level than either their rigour or dogma would like to admit – and the immutable truth of that fact is being obfuscated by what is in fact on deeper interrogation a stylistic disagreement – like the one that exists in the land of storytellers between the purveyors of muscular contemporary prose and those of classic highly mannered poetry.

There is a tremor of violent agreement that runs between them that remains unnoticed (to themselves certainly) probably due to the deafening and cacophonous nature of their own ‘combative noise’.

When particular men of science call religion a fiction the only issue that arises in that emphasis for me is the inference that it is a fiction rooted in no factual or reasonable truth. Well, I am currently jury’s out on that absolutism and here’s for why.

In my wish to not polarize or propagandise my children and in answer to the question “what is heaven daddy?” (the inconvenient inquisition of children is the most brutal of examinations) I have netted out at this story-teller’s logic, and it begins with science:

Atoms never die. They just reassemble re-task and reintegrate themselves in a new form.

So, we are all one great big mass of finite circulating particles. Amazing.

In which case, if we were, theoretically at least, able to pull focus on the physical world in which we exist to reveal that great big mass of finite chaotic swirling particles; to reveal its sub and supra atomic nature, we would perhaps reveal a singular phenomena – the cosmic atomic fizz of everything. (Eat that challenge Google Glass!)

133,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms swirling around dynamically, condensing clustering conflating and coagulating for a brief while in every visible and invisible material thing we know and many we don’t, before deconstructing and reconstructing themselves somewhere else along the way.

Now your brain might be so huge as for there to be little issue for you in contemplating the jaw dropping magnitude of this, but (certainly for my tiny self absorbed brain) this is a concept so vast so complex and so overwhelming to the average human being that we would struggle to grasp its meaning.

And we hate that, us humans, the ‘can’t quite get it’ thing. It makes us feel a little small, stupid and out of control, so, we use storytelling to simplify and sort the problem. To order the cosmos. Bring ourselves closer to it.

In this instance I think we’ve effectively taken the jaw dropping magnitude of the cosmic particular mass, stuck a beard on it and called it Norman.

This is not to say that the creation of the mass, how it got there, what drove it and what the point of it all is doesn’t exist in the pantheon of life’s big questions, but I’ll leave that to David St Hubbins of Spinal Tap to ask that question for all of us:

“If the universe is indeed infinite, then how…what does that mean? How far is all the way, and then… if it stops, what’s stopping it, and what’s behind what’s stopping it? So, what’s the end you know, is my question…to you”

The moment where human interpretation and the nature of our existence meet is at the moment we decide to call the infinitely finite cosmic particular fizz a name, embody it in some divine yet recognizable (like us) form, allow it to take human form, or simply see itself at work in ourselves and in all things around us.

But if we’re tooling down the storytelling pathway of the immortal atoms, lets round out the characters first shall we.

That the breath of Moses, The Christ, Buddha and the prophet Mohammad are still in the world, atomically speaking, is an incredible, philosophically charged and mind-boggling thing. But in that we must also accept that so too are the breath of Hitler, Genghis Khan and Jack The Ripper.

Our simple survival evolutionary selves have spent millennia trying to identify filter and prioritise the data of danger, relentlessly, restlessly seeking clarity around what might hinder or hurt us. So even the earliest storytellers will have been thinking of and framing our existence in very simple structural terms predicated on understanding the simple signs that guide us:

Crisp bright coloured plant: tasty and makes me feel perky = GOOD

Dark brown stinking plant: Whole village dead from soup of it = BAD

Large Screaming Drooling Sabre Tooth: Ate my mother. Ugh = BAD

Small trembling rabbit like creature: Ate for supper. Yum = GOOD

I sense the same simple storytelling principle has been applied to the cosmic fizz.

That the particular nature of the cosmic fizz can cluster and form into larger entities beautiful, brutal or otherwise inane and inert (read Turner, the Terror, Trousers and Taramasalata) demonstrates that the cosmic atomic fizz is indeed nuanced positively and negatively in ways far more cognitive and philosophical than just how those particles are charged

So, it’s no surprise that some of the earliest storytellers will refer to similarly complex concepts in the simplified form of perhaps good things and bad things, nice place not nice place, or a heaven and a hell perhaps.

We have ample evidence of where the commonalities of our beliefs, philosophies, reasoning, values and mantras – the cultures of science faith, culture and philosophy – meet, in turn finding little to differentiate or choose between them. In The Picture Of Dorian Grey the collision of ancient greek texts and philosophy, Christian morality, Islamic beliefs, eastern mysticism, Romanticism and the mind of the scientist and mathematician we find in the author’s use one of the texts from the Rubaiyat Of The Omar Khayyam (translation: the shoulder of Faith) is to me the most perfect of examples:

“I sent my soul through the invisible

Some letter of the afterlife to spell: 

And by and by my Soul return’d to me, 

And answer’d: ‘I Myself am Heaven and Hell”

Storytellers from every shape and shade of tribe and belief have either knowingly or unknowingly reshaped and molded the brutal nakedness of this atomic dynamism into concepts of things, beings, feelings, spirits or forces, eternally alive within everything, including ourselves.

Over time we have come to believe that our ability to connect with these forces – the ability to feel them, see them, understand them, call on and capture the essence of them – is representative of a higher state of being and existence – something to aspire to and yearn for – as an elevation out of the brutal reality of survival.

Trans-substantiation, The essential Fire, The Holy Spirit, Nirvana, Reincarnation, The Great Spirit, Sacred texts. Every one of them resides at the junction where the storyteller sits. But to simply dismiss them as ‘spun’ fictions is to mitigate what they intend to communicate, the beliefs they contain or what they are seeking to point to, however clumsily or fantastically the critic might feel they are doing it.

I believe that these stories are part of what makes humanity more resilient (not always a good thing). They exist because our evolutionary gene-pool need to prevail and the traits and tools that we need to endure in extremis require far more than just physical attributes.

It demands a strength of mind that perceives itself far greater than the sum of the physical parts it controls. An absolute belief in ones ability to complete an action, test or challenge, come what may, is what enables us to prevail against all odds.  These examples of shared and disseminated storytelling enable human beings, social by nature and with an innate sense of collectivism, to transcend the confines of their physical truth. To prevail is to be optimistic (a form of positive delusion or illusion perhaps but no less powerful because of it), disposed to expecting the best of things.

But Optimism needs to be written, because it is not innate.

We all understand the brutalities of existence. Fight or Flight is innate. Primal ferocity as a predatory or defensive mechanism is innate (learned gleaned or forced over time) a living echo of all previous experience of our ancestors. We all understand that science is emotionally inert: it carries no sentiment other than through the emotional human impact of its comprehension or application.

Our emotional nature as seen through the scientific lens is simply a transportable cache of sentimental data – a form of big human data collated and conflated over millennia; cross related through social memory and learning by us to create what we believe to be a conscious, feeling aware creature with inbuilt reflexive and intuitive responses.

But the positive halo of optimism – a mannered elevating way in which we choose to capture the positive outcomes of the brutal innate truths – is in itself a lever and generator of resilience in regards to human existence and our ability to prevail.

Story telling, especially that which is designed to be passed down and around is a massive factor in predisposing fractured scattered battered tribes and communities towards constructing more positive outcomes for themselves. The shared beliefs that storytelling can engender is testament to that.

Storytelling is where the resilience of humanity lies. Even in the realm of science and the learned institutions, I would venture that there is a marked difference between those professors who light a fire in the heart and minds of the students who seek to learn from them and those that don’t regardless of both academics singing from the same curricular song sheet. The education that stays with you is that which is shaped to be remembered, not learned to be forgotten. It is only through the stickiness of more enlightening communication that we ascend and improve and bolster ourselves against the odds.

Is the culture of ‘stories spun’ open to abuse? Yes: The speed at which storytelling can moves from parables, myths and cautionary tales of improving and guidance, and of things greater than ourselves to being a corrupted propagandised text with the sole intention of suppressing, controlling and excusing untold inhumanities and predations is all too clear across history.

Should it, for that very reason, be set aside and simply forgotten? Should we make do with the less dramatic, less shiny, less embroidered version of our existence? What surrounds us and is within is us is certainly beautiful and amazing enough (though some would argue even our driest concept of self has been brilliantly inked to some extent by millennia of human storytelling)

Should we look at ourselves in the mirror without gods, tigers, and miracles to obfuscate the view? Some would argue most certainly.

Nonetheless, I would not (and given my trade could not) dismiss the story teller from the court of human existence. I could not contemplate a life without ‘tiger stories’. I believe that humanity would be less capable of great things and less resilient without them.

And rest.

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