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(Thoughts on) Language(s) - Part 4 of 4

The human mind has an extremely intricate and complex structure which, at a scientific level, we understand little about. Little hints here and there succeed in invoking in us extraordinarily rich experience and interpretation, and it is surprisingly uniformly for different people. The only explanation is that it is something rooted in our nature.

Qualitatively speaking, these phenomena are very much as physical growth: the nutrition that is given to an organism is not what determines that it is going to be a human or a bird, but something about its internal structure. And what determines that we are going to be the kind of a creature that can speak and interpret a sign or a line(s) evoking an emotional experience that is in our nature is far beyond what we know how to study that.

Children grow the language that is roughly out of their peers and that is an extraordinary rich system: they do not try, they cannot prevent themselves from doing it, they cannot make it happen. Parents, of course, can enrich children, though at peak periods of acquisition of vocabulary – learning new words – children are peaking them up at a rate of one per hour. If we think of what it means to learn a word on one exposure, the way to understand how amazing achievement this is, is to try to define a word.

Let us suppose we have an organism that is not equipped to learn the words of human language and we must teach it words by training. We would have, firstly, to define a word – what is the meaning of table, for instance. Nobody can do that. What we call definitions are just hints that people who already know the concept can use to understand what is going on.

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(Thoughts on) Language(s) - Part 3 of 4

Why slang exists?

People are very innovative and can and like to do things differently, especially teenage cultures: words that are “in”. People are playing with their languages often. There are a variety of formal conventions humanly created that undoubtably reflect our aesthetic capacities, a framework of humanly imposed rule within which people create. Part of human creative intervention has been to create aesthetic forms which are somehow either appealing to us or challenge our intelligence… we work with them. Painting on a piece of canvas that has a boundary is recent in human history and that itself imposes a framework which determines the kind of art/creation that we can produce. In the literary use of language is everything: from the structure of a novel to the metric character of a poetic form is one or another human invention.

There must be something in human nature, the basic structure of the human mind, which makes certain things comical and other things not, that makes certain things come out to be human language and others not. Part of the fascination of the study of language is that it is one of the few examples where we can get some insight into how it works. Humour, for instance, should be subjected to the same kind of study but so far it has not been clear how to do it.

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(Thoughts on) Language(s) - Part 2 of 4

Why does language have rules (grammar)?

When we are taught rules of our own language at school, the chances are extraordinarily strong that what we are being taught is false – otherwise, we would not have to be taught it. One of the things we learn at school is the literary language. For example, in English the literary standard is not so radically different from English people grew up with, but it is somewhat different: literary standard is not what people learn in the streets – not quite different, but a little different. At school we are taught literary standard which has some principles associated with it, some of which are those of a real language, others completely artificial – they were made up by people who had crazy ideas about language. The reason why we are taught them is because they are not the person’s language – our actual language nobody teaches us, it grows in our heads. The system that grows in the brain is sometimes different from a system which is regarded, for whatever reason, as necessary or appropriated or approved of some prestige dialect. What we call good English is partly artificial, though it is taught to people because it was legislated as good English.

Why is pronunciation and intonation so relevant for a language?

Because we must understand somebody else’s words. Part of our knowledge of a language is a way of decoding noises that we hear and converting them into a system that matches our own representations. Sometimes, for that decoding system to work, the systems must be close enough so that we can do it.

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(Thoughts on) Language(s) - Part 1 of 4

There is no simple measure of how different languages are from one another.

If we look at the languages structurally – the way a linguist would look at them – French, for example, is different from the other Roman languages in a variety of ways, which make it more similar to German and other Germanic languages. In all Roman languages, except for French, we can delete the subject of a sentence – we can say the equivalent of “walks to the store” meaning “he/she walks to the store”. We cannot do that in English, but we can in Roman languages – French is the only Roman language that we cannot do that; it is pretty much a Germanic language in that respect. In Roman languages we can say “I him want to see”, the equivalent of “I want to see him”, but not in French. Incidentally, old French (medieval period) was as the other Roman languages. Something happened to it and made it less as the other Roman languages and more as the Germanic languages.

Keeping a language “pure” means nothing.

Virtually, every national language and culture, from an European perspective, has a mythology addressing the purity of those languages while the other languages are corrupt. This mythology of the purity, the lucidity and the clarity of those languages is entangled to a certain dominance and appeal of those societies for a time long enough, so these attitudes get established. What does it mean for a language to be pure? In every stage of history language there is no such thing as a language, but lots of different ways of speaking that different people have which are more or less similar to one another. Some of them may have prestige associated with them: the speech of a conquering or a wealthy group or a priestly cast… and we may decide that those are the good ones, and some others are the bad ones. But if social and political relations reversed, we would make the opposite conclusions.

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Have time to close our eyes and sit

The brain is just one more aspect of the body.

When we refer to intelligence, because the word (intelligence) is too generic, we must understand and identify the four (4) parts of it:

intellect In modern societies it is considered as mind, is an instrument of survival that functions on the basis of the limited data gathered through our sensory perceptions - largely conscious data: when we don't remember something, though the memory it is still there, the intellect goes helpless for a period of time.  Intellect is quite a useless thing if we don't have data; without data, the intellect cannot function (permutations and combinations mainly). If we have to use a simple analogy here, we can say intellect is like a knife: the sharper it is, the better is the survival.

identity  The way how we identify ourselves - nation, religion, race, creed, gender... -, that is the way how our intellect will function as a survival process, constantly trying to protect that identity. Identity is far more relevant than the intellect itself because intellect is a slave to the identity that we have taken: what is right and wrong for us is dependent upon how we are identified. Continuing the analogy, our intellect is like a knife, the identity is the hand that holds it.

memory On its eight dimensions: elemental, atomic, evolutionary, genetic, karmic(two varieties: bank of memory and active memory), articulate (conscious) and inarticulate (unconscious)

pure intelligence Intelligence without/beyond memory, i.e., limitless. It is simply there and everything happens because of that. It connects to the basis of creation within us. It connects us with our consciousness.

The profoundness of our experience is determined by how much life we have captured, how significant we feel when we sit - not in the context of society, not with reference to somebody else, not comparing ourselves to somebody and saying we're bigger than somebody.

When we sit this is a very significant life.

Whether others will understand the significance, whether the significance will find expression in the world or not, these are subject to a variety of outside realities. But, in our experience, we are phenomenally significant because we captured such an immense possibility of life.

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(Thoughts on) Religion in Public Life - Part 10 of 10

In a narrow sense, we shouldn't privilege religion in legal ways by having bishops in governments or forcing people to contribute financially to the propagation of religion. As to people should or should not address religious reasons for supporting some law or for voting in an election...  One should produce reasons which are entirely independent of religious considerations. Behind this lies a principle which philosophers discuss sometimes as the principle of public reasoning. Just because some don't believe in GOD this is no reason to others see and believe in GOD and it would be most undemocratic and unfair to object to others from producing comments about believing in GOD just because some can't follow them. The arguments may have a certain complexity to them, but then that is the way with arguments. Of course, all sages of these arguments are disputed and open to argument, as they should. But when we have to vote on a political issue, others are entitled to produce these reasons and to argue on the basis of there is a GOD just as much as some are entitled to argue on the basis of there is no GOD. Both sides have an equal right. Everybody can get it wrong but we should not ban any side. The tragedy of our life today is a climate of fear in which we live and fear breeds repression. Too often, our sinister threats to the built rights, to freedom of the mind are concealed under the cloak of anti-terrorism or something else. People use and abuse this cloak to spread suppression, intolerance and hatred, and the hypocrisy about that would be laughable if only it wasn't so destructive (to people).

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(Thoughts on) Religion in Public Life - Part 9 of 10

The problem is not religion per se rather with those who do not respect those who have differing beliefs or indeed no beliefs, and who use religion to coerce and control. We have seen far many examples of what happens when religious leaders become unaccountable - the dark side of religion - and far more needs to be done to recognize and safeguard against this. Power corrupts and religious leaders are just as available as others. That said, they also have the propensity to model something countercultural and good where their voice can provide a healing balm.

We do not deal with a problem by banning it. If we force it underground, where there is no hope of ensuring proper accountability and where resentment and anger will just simmer and thrive, a society that looks to dictate what and who can and cannot be discussed in public is a society governed by fear rather than one founded on the principles of openness fairness and love. We have to come to accept that there are certain things that we will just never know and what it is possible, indeed critical, to live without certainty and so remain open to new possibilities. Science is not the competition to religion, but it is the means to understanding just how utterly extraordinary the creative power behind our cosmos ultimately is.

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(Thoughts on) Religion in Public Life - Part 8 of 10

We are not just brains on sticks nor are we just sexual beings on legs.  One of the wonders of our human form is that we are emotional sexual physical mental and, yes, spiritual beings. All the great faiths recognize this although it can at times be difficult to see this in people, who appear to have their minds so clearly set on heavenly things, that they seem completely detached from the realities of everyday life. Over the past few years, there has been a resurgence and an interest in all things spiritual. This is often different from organized religion although the growth of the wellness industry and the use of mindfulness techniques, both in the workplace and the Health Service, indicate how important it is to exercise and appreciate our spiritual muscle.

People are increasingly being put off by organized religion because of what they receive to be hypocritical practices that talk about the love of GOD for all and then proceeded to put in place barriers that exclude and judge certain groups of people. Even in this age of diminished allegiance to institutional religion, we cannot ignore how Christianity has shaped the language, the literature, the learning, the leisure, the laws, the liberty and the landscape of the Western culture: when our nations grieve, we do so still by coming together for acts of corporate worship; after national tragedies, it is to our spiritual homes that the vast majority retreat (laying flowers, signing condolence's books and seeking, if we are so minded, consolation in our faith that one day there will be no more mourning or crying or pain for the former things have passed away); similarly, we come together to mark acts of celebration too.

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(Thoughts on) Religion in Public Life - Part 7 of 10

Control

Religion's core aim is to control, specifically to control the inner workings of people's minds.

Religion worms its way to people's heads by offering false promises of bliss and the hereafter, and thereby seeks to thwart their secular aspirations. As people see through its claims, as increasing numbers actually do, so religions increasingly resent how it intrudes into law and becomes embedded into the structure of government. Thus, the religious claim for the sanctity of human life (being GOD's gift), then - built on that foundation - a denial of the right to abortion and the continuation of hopeless painful illness. Likewise, the religious claim that they are the way the truth and the light, then - built on that self arrogation of hubris - the propagation of their particular brand of superstitions in the socially divisive foundation of faith schools should be removed forthwith from government and regulated in education.

There are those who will claim that religion provides a moral compass to guide governments through the turbulent seas of national and international poverty. We should ask ourselves whether the compass needle always points in the best direction. Perhaps the apotheosis of religious infestation of government was the Middle East's ISIS. Look at the role of religion in Israel where its very being as the presumption that GOD promised it its land. Look at the Taliban in Afghanistan to see what religion let loose on government can achieve in terms of misogyny and despair. Look at the remnants of power in Northern Ireland where religions obsession with control and intrusion into individual lives still plays its role in the diminishing of happiness and personal freedom. To claim greater moral responsibility for those free of religion as if only they (superstitious people) could claim how to distinguish right from wrong and guide the ship of state through the minefield of decisions. Remove GOD from government, they will say, and we will have a moral cesspit - for example, Hitler and Stalin. Hitler and Stalin are indeed warnings to us all to ascribe their actions, as due to their purported atheism, is to misrepresent the consequences of the acquisition of unlimited power: they were all absolute power, both god-soaked and god-free.

The role of religion is to quench aspirations in this life to ensure a greater more blissful reward in the non-existent next life. It is morally contemptible to quench aspiration in this only life and helpful lie (to those in control): belief in an afterlife for the reward to be reaped. Surely no one wants their aspirations quenched by allowing religion to influence our laws.

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(Thoughts on) Religion in Public Life - Part 6 of 10

Superstition

By superstition, I mean beliefs in which there is no evidence, perhaps even evidence against. Superstition is the soul of religion. There are some who say that religious faith goes beyond superstition; indeed it does, but only in the sense that religious faith is institutionalized superstition.

It is inevitable that there will be a spectrum of faiths amongst members (Parliaments) of any community. We have to accept that our legislature and executive mirror society and that, to some extent, patterns of voting and the propagation of laws will reflect those private prejudices.

Should the state itself be a sponsor of superstition? Should superstition be formally welded into the fabric of society?

Religious belief demands religious privilege. There should be no such privilege for those who base their lives on superstitions. If superstition is the fuel of religion, the engine is control.

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(Thoughts on) Religion in Public Life - Part 5 of 10

What religion in public life really is?

Should the 6 billions of theists of this world be forced to discuss their religion in private concealed spaces? Should an athlete perhaps before is bidden from seen a prayer before a televised - maybe a cross on a necklace or a hijab - must now be ruled illegal?

To replace a large swathe of the population seems entirely unreasonable. People should be able to discuss their religion openly. Freedom of religious expression is an inalienable right. Religious views have been persecuted for centuries, from King Awad's expulsion of the Jews in 1290 to the Irish penal laws, attempts have been made by various political leaders to remove religious views from public life and they have failed. Every single time. The moral framework of the vast majority of religious teachings is generally a force for good and leads to a better society. Religion is hardly a moral framework that merits being banned from public life. Religion often deserves a bad reputation: acts of indiscreet extremism inspired by radical creatures; the horrifying actions of religious cults; the wars waged across the ages in the name of one GOD or other.   The benefit to our community of religious celebrations and holidays is what we must closely associate with religion. The whole idea of family and friends coming together to celebrate is surely central to religious teachings around the world around these holidays.

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(Thoughts on) Religion in Public Life - Part 4 of 10

Religion whether it is constitutionally enshrined and forms a major part of the government or whether it simply dominates public discourse. It is for these reasons that faith should be confined to our private lives. Let society advance as it should, bringing with it renewed acceptance and discovery, allowing us to disregard the inequality and division previously imposed upon us, allowing humanity to live in equity regardless of whom we love and promoting a healthier longer living populace. It is not that they are entirely incompatible, but that the consequences of the merging of the two are simply not worth bearing. When combined they create too great a burden for society and they prevent humanity from achieving its greatest potential. Let us finally admit that religion should not be accepted as part of public life and move forward with an understanding that one's faith is between them and their GOD.

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(Thoughts on) Religion in Public Life - Part 3 of 10

The increasingly blurred line between religion and public life is draining society, holding back societal progress, and if we were to sever religious ties to public life we could advance much faster. There is no doubt that religion has acted as a drain on society. In the past, religion has opposed the majority of great scientific discoveries and has acted against the furthering of scientific knowledge - Galileo himself was imprisoned by the catholic faith and died under their house arrest. This stance continues in the modern-day: stem cell research is opposed by all major religions, despite its capacity to save thousands of lives, and modern religions also stand opposed to blood transfusions - some even oppose vaccinations. Not only religion holds back scientific progress, but it also opposes major social advancement: arguments against gay marriage which previously proliferated society were grounded in conservative religious thought, as were the arguments against abortion. While some may argue that religion can be a progressive force, this is not the norm and far too often religion acts as a deeply conservative force in society. However, these issues are truly only a problem when religion is a major part of public life. When churches command such power and authority that they can dictate policy and regulation, and when legislators are such devout members of their congregation that they cease to legislate from reason and begin to legislate from faith, in these cases religion acts as a barrier to progress and change preventing science and society from advancing.

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(Thoughts on) Religion in Public Life - Part 2 of 10

The us-versus-them mentality that religion encourages is divisive and exactly the sort of thing we should be avoiding in modern politics. Religion is inherently divisive. By its nature, it separates society into two groups: believers and non-believers. When religion becomes a large part of public life, this division is enhanced and it can quickly turn ugly with people viewing those who do not share their religious perspective as flawed or failing or at risk. We have had enough of divisive politics. Why are we so keen to accept yet another reason to divide our society? When religion remains private, when our faith is between us and our GOD, there is a limited chance for it to divide, as our religious stance is not a matter of public knowledge, and society remains whole.

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(Thoughts on) Religion in Public Life - Part 1 of 10

In regards to the imposition of a moral framework that religion demands and how, while on a personal level it may be beneficial, on a societal level it is extremely damaging. Religion inherently commands that its followers obey an often highly restrictive moral framework. It judges that some actions are right and others wrong based on religious teaching and ancient texts. On a personal level, this is our decision: we can follow a religious lifestyle because of our personal faith - and we all accept this; no one can prevent us from doing so: from choosing a lifestyle that we believe brings us closer to our GOD. But the key aspect of this is the deeply personal nature of religion. Issues arise when our beliefs stray into public life, when we start forcing others to conform to our moral standards - and it often has disastrous results - and religion, by its very nature, has this effect: attempting to convert people who do not agree with its moral framework and condemning those who continue to disagree with them. By what authority do we claim to force others to abide by our world view? Simply because we appeal to divine supremacy does not make it right. Surely the sheer number of GODs and religions across the world are testimony to this, and even still, who is to say that our GOD is the true GOD? And even if we accept that assumption, who is to say that our church or we particularly have interpreted his her or their teachings correctly and have formed the correct moral basis? This lack of knowledge and of legitimate truth makes the entire notion of forcing others to conform to our worldview abhorrent and is precisely why religion should be severed from public life. 

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Is the Future in Space? Part 3 of 3

I will go out into space and utilize the knowledge that we gained from science over the years - the use of the space between our ears coupled with tools which let us extend our senses in creative ways. If I had the opportunity to take a new grade I would choose physics because, for a person, such as myself, who is curious about how everything works, science is the racket for it.

To be able to see planet Earth from 200 miles up, give or take, we would mostly testify that it is a very special planet. Looking down at planet Earth with its resources, beauty and sustaining possibilities compared to anywhere else, why we even think of interpreting the future of humanity gives in space (in terms of immigration and colonization)? In a few billion years, shortly after our galaxy has collided with the Andromeda galaxy, the Sun will have burnt out the hydrogen in its core and it will begin to turn into a different kind of star - a red giant - as it will begin to burn helium in its core and, as a result, it will begin to swell to the point where planet Earth will be engulfed in the outer atmosphere of the Sun - planet Earth will not be a very good place to sustain life at that moment. So, should we, as a species, be looking these billions of years ahead and trying to figure out whether we can go somewhere else. I argue that is an interesting thing to think about and maybe an interesting thing to play with, but we are referring to billions, not millions, of years. We, as a species, have only been around for thousands of years...Change is essential if we are to survive. We were raised in an atmosphere of greed and fear, of prejudice against the other, and when we were small tribes separated by large spaces that didn't work too badly, but it has worked very poorly in the most recent times. What we need to work at is not how to immigrate from planet Earth to somewhere else. We need to work on being better humans. If we look at the issues that make life on planet Earth miserable for many people, they are not going to be changed by investing the space program money in some other endeavours. they are going to be changed by learning and by becoming better humans. And we better work at it because we can't even agree on things that are obvious, such as climate change.

So, YES for Space Exploration but NO for Space Immigration.

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Is the Future in Space? Part 2 of 3

We just celebrated 50 years achievement of humans walking on the Moon. We have had a continuous presence on the ISS for nearly 20 years. We have visited nearly every planet in the solar system. The two Voyager spacecraft are now soaring through interstellar space and they will outlast planet Earth; they are in their own orbits around the galaxy for five billion years or longer. Our future is literally in space.

From the inspiration that encourages children to pursue a career in STEM to the innovative breakthroughs that happen every day from space-based or space-tested technology, space exploration plays an essential role in opening up new domains in science and technology. It drives discoveries and innovations that may have once seemed impossible.

As humans, we yearn to explore the great unknown. Space exploration satisfies this desire to see what is on the other side of the mountain, the ocean, across the cosmos. We have been exploring our universe with robotics and human explorers less than a century and our knowledge about what lies beyond our planet, our solar system, our galaxy has increased exponentially in that time - for example, we know that every star in the night sky likely has a planetary system around it and we are confident that we will find habitable, if not inhabited, planets around other stars. By studying the atmospheres of other planets, the dynamics of other solar systems, volcanoes on other worlds and ultimately life originated elsewhere, we know and understand better the context in which we exist.

The work done on space missions has an endless impact beyond just the exploration and knowledge of space, as it affects everything we do. The breakthroughs that come with the space exploration challenges improve and protect our life on planet Earth: cameras small enough to fit on a spacecraft allowed us to walk around with cameras in our pockets; insulation from aluminized polyester used in spacecraft is now used in our homes; even the dustbuster that we use to vacuum our houses has its routes at NASA (a Black and Decker develop); the basic human need for access to clean water is aided by software created by geologists to find water (in 2013, 66 trillion gallons of water deep beneath the surface of NW Kenya was found, a region that is desperate for water), by simplified bacterial tests for water quality (for use on the ISS), by improving the quality of water via recycling and purifying it (at the ISS, this is extremely important because it costs so much to send water up to the station) and commercial versions are used to quickly and affordably clean available water for people who live in the parts of planet Earth where water is either scarce or contaminated. Our future is in space because it leads to innovations that improve our lives. We can do research on planet Earth to address our own issues, but the very nature and the unique challenge of space mean we develop technologies we may not have considered at home.

We are always looking for the next great adventure - the need to explore and go beyond is within us: George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why he wanted to climb it and he said because it is there; in the 16th century we wanted to see the world and Magalhães and Elcano sailed the globe; in the 21st century beyond we have no choice but to set our sights on the cosmos.