Via Tom Cheetham, an interesting talk from Wade Davis:

Today is the 12th anniversary of Terence McKenna’s untimely death. And this year is certainly a year in which to remember him. My little tribute is over at Dorian Cope’s On This Deity blog.

The Ecology, Cosmos & Consciousness lecture series has been running for a few years now, on the last Tuesday of each month at the October Gallery in London. Organized with enthused chaos by Dr. David Luke, speakers to have appeared so far include Rupert Sheldrake, Alan Moore, Dale Pendell, Erik Davis, Jay Griffiths, Stephen Grasso, Paul Devereux, Mike Jay, Graham Hancock, Christina Oakley Harrington, Mark Pilkington, Andy Letcher, Serena Roney-Dougal, Greg Sams, Patricia MacCormack, Gary Lachman and yours truly.

I’ve been videoing the talks of late, and we’ve just opened a Vimeo account to make them available to one and all on the web. We don’t have all the talks, but we’ll be getting the ones we do have online over the next few weeks – and then, hopefully, making sure that each one from now on is recorded and uploaded. Current uploads include Mike Jay on the history of mind-altering drugs, Charlotte Walsh on plant psychedelics in English law, and Dr Ben Sessa on MDMA psychotherapy. Can you spot a common theme?

Needless to say, there’s no substitute for being there. Come along if you can!

Strange Attractor maestro and weird culture & science magpie Mark Pilkington has started a new blog, The M.O.P. Radionic Workshop. Expect Fortean probings, bizarre snippets, out-there art, incredible science, plus news of upcoming talks, gigs, and sundry publishing gems.

I’m writing about a lot of celestial stuff at the moment—mostly circumpolar stars, but occasionally a planet, and maybe some Sun and Moon too. One issue that’s come up, which is technically minor, but is obviously major enough for me to have a little rant here about it, is the capitalization (or not) of celestial bodies. Specifically, the Sun, Moon and Earth.

Now, Mercury, Venus, Pluto, Polaris, Vega, Mirphak, Zubenelgenubi, they all get capitalized, no questions asked. But Sun, Moon and Earth? I challenge you to find any real consensus on this.

The most common answer seems to be that you capitalize them when you’re talking astronomy to someone, e.g. “The Earth orbits the Sun, and the Moon orbits the Earth.” But if you’re just talking about them in an everyday context, you don’t, e.g. “The sun’s warm today.”

Now, that last instance looks right to me. It’s how most people write. But I don’t see any sense in it. Or any other instance of these bodies being uncapitalized. They’re all proper nouns: “a noun representing a unique entity (such as London, Jupiter, John Hunter, or Toyota)”. There are some variations in the definition of proper nouns—the names of days and months are proper nouns in English, but not in many other languages. Fair enough, they’re abstract entities. But the Sun, Moon and Earth are as proper as nouns get. They’re unique, and very concrete.

There is the fact that these words can also refer to a class of entity, e.g. every star is a sun, in its own context; Jupiter has moons. But surely if you’re talking about the Sun or the Moon, capitalizing them is a way of being clear. I guess that until we start travelling to other planets (or stars), saying, “The sun is warm today” doesn’t need much clarification. But still, the principle holds.

As to why anyone would lowercase “Earth”—I’m lost on that one. Sure, you pick up a handful of dirt, you say, “Look at this lovely earth!” That’s a different meaning of the same word, which isn’t a proper noun, so you don’t capitalize it. Simple. But when you’re saying “the Earth rotates on its axis” or “he’s the most pedantic person on Earth”—why would anyone lowercase it? Because a style guide says so? What reason does it give?

I guess there’s an argument that it’s just the natural drift of language that’s commonly used, like “e-mail” becoming “email”. But I talk about London more than the Earth, and no one has ever started writing “london” (outside SMS and people who don’t write properly anyway).

The thing is, I’ve started coming across excellent books on the history of astronomy, recent books published by reputable academic presses, and they’re lowercasing “Earth” always, even in an astronomical context.

I would say (with tongue in cheek), “It’s XYZ gone mad.” But for the life of me, I can’t think what that “XYZ” even is.

My last post drew a comment that said I hide away too much. I should do more videos and talks.

My response, that I’m in Finland and that it’s nice to be missed, was mostly a polite cover for some very defensive reactions that the comment inspired in me. Aside from the fact that I’m here in a Scandinavian cabin specifically to devote myself to working on a book that, when the vast amount of work it demands is finally done, should generate a few more videos and talks, aside from this—what right does someone who doesn’t know me have to describe me as “hiding”, or assert, even with the best of intentions, that I should do anything?

It’s flattering, of course, that anyone out there wants more of the stuff that I do. But the very act of pondering the notion that some people might feel they have a right to this stuff, that I am obliged to people I don’t know in this way, seems a little much for my usually modest and deferring ego. I recognize the comment as innocent of the weight of all these issues I’m drawing out of it, but they are there. This crazy mess of mass-scale society leaves us with these contradictions. In a tribe, one assumes I would have ended up as some kind of story-teller; or, lacking such vague social roles as are possible in mass society, I would have been forced off the deep end into the perilous vocation of the shaman. In that situation, I would have had an obligation to my people, to create, to perform, to inspire, in the same way that anyone would have been obliged by the skills they contribute to the collective good. Doesn’t everything I’ve written, demanding we be inspired by these pre-modern models of society, indicate that I see myself in that way, and consider my creativity a social commitment?

To the extent that I’ve received positive feedback, I do. At the same time, a part of me that is unavoidably here, now, in this society, dealing with its reality, says, “So fucking what?” Who cares if I never write or create anything ever again, if that’s what pleases me? Is anyone entitled to care about this? Magnify this little dilemma, caught between the very real social obligations that are felt by anyone with a scrap of talent, a scrap of conscience, and a moment to set modesty aside, between these obligations and the alienating disconnect that is felt when people you’ve never met feel they have some say in your life… and you start to sense the notorious agonies of fame, which most of us are too dazzled by fame’s glamour, or bitter about our lack of it, to see. Makes me appreciate the blessings of relative obscurity.

The fact is, though, that not writing or creating anything is not what pleases me. Truth be told, I believe it pains me in ways I’ve not fully addressed. And I’ve felt able to rant a bit about the legitimate aspects of my defensiveness because I’ve just about managed to recognize the fear-ridden aspects of my defensiveness. Even resolving with gratifying self-righteousness that no, no one I’ve never met has any fucking right to say anything about what I do with my life, even if I managed this, the reality remains that I do hide away too much. I took far too long to get round to public speaking, and maybe I should do more. But while life—even a highly creative life—need not hinge on public appearances, I still hide away: from those closest to me and, even though the sense of cliché makes me wince as I type it, from myself.

This doesn’t make me too unusual. Which is a shame, because when I read the news recently, I get the distinct sense that many of the veils we hide behind, if they aren’t forsaken voluntarily with grace, may soon be torn away.

Some of us we hide away
Some of us we don’t
Some will live to love another day and some of us won’t
But we all know there is a law
And that law is love
And we all know there is a war coming
Coming from above
There is a war coming

— Nick Cave

Psychologist James Hillman died yesterday, from complications of bone cancer. He was aged 85.

The New York Times obituary ends with this quote from 1976:

Some people in desperation have turned to witchcraft, magic and occultism, to drugs and madness, anything to rekindle imagination and find a world ensouled. But these reactions are not enough. What is needed is a revisioning, a fundamental shift of perspective out of that soulless predicament we call modern consciousness.

However else Hillman has inspired me—and he’s inspired me very deeply—I just have to admire someone for whom witchcraft, magic, occultism, drugs and madness are “not enough”. Obviously he didn’t take the path of trying all of these and going through the other side. And obviously I don’t agree with him if he’s dismissing them outright (I don’t think he is). But it’s an important message for all of us mad druggie occultists. Something more is necessary.

An essential film. Thanks to Mark Pilkington for switching me on to it!

CC licensed image by David Shankbone

The phone hacking scandal in the UK is moving quickly. Senior media and police resign, and the storm starts gathering around Downing Street. The immorality of the gutter press is shocking but unsurprising; their illegal dealings with the police is likewise no news to anyone half-awake. The fact that it’s all been aired in public at last, with some genuine repercussions, seems astonishing. What’s happening seems somehow far more important than a general election in terms of shaping the political landscape of this country.

But John Pilger reminds us that a far greater Murdoch scandal remains mostly hidden Down Under:

The most enduring and insidious Murdoch campaign has been against the Aboriginal people, who were dispossessed by the arrival of the British in the late 18th century and have never been allowed to recover. “Nigger hunts” continued into the 1960s and beyond. The officially-inspired theft of children from Aboriginal families, justified by the racist theories of the eugenics movement, produced those known as the Stolen Generation and in 1997 was identified as genocide. Today, the first Australians have the shortest life expectancy of any of the world’s 90 indigenous peoples. Australia imprisons Aborigines at five times the rate South Africa during the apartheid years. In the state of Western Australia, the figure is eight times the apartheid rate.

Political power in Australia often rests in the control of resource-rich land. Most of the uranium, iron ore, gold, oil and natural gas is in Western Australia and Northern Territory—on Aboriginal land. Indeed, Aboriginal “progress” is all but defined by the mining industry and its political guardians in both Labor and coalition (conservative) governments. Their faithful, strident voice is the Murdoch press. The exceptional, reformist Labor government of Gough Whitlam in the 1970s set up a royal commission that made clear that social justice for Australia’s first people would only be achieved with universal land rights and a share the national wealth with dignity. In 1975, Whitlam was sacked by the governor-general in a “constitutional coup”. The Murdoch press had turned on Whitlam with such venom that rebellious journalists on The Australian burned their newspaper in the street. [...]

Using the language of its soulmate the London Sun, the Australian derides the “abstract debate” of “land rights, apologies, treaties” as a “moralizing mumbo-jumbo spreading like a virus”. The aim is to silence those who dare tell Australia’s dirty secret.

Read the full article here.

I’m on a trip to Germany this weekend, so sadly I’m going to miss the philosophically nomadic and ever-engaging Erik Davis as he whizzes through London for a couple of fascinating gigs.

On Friday May 20th at 6:30pm he will be on a panel at the British Library as part of their new Science Fiction show.

And on Sunday May 22nd he will be reading from his new book Nomad Codes and the new edition of Strange Attractor Journal at the Horse Hospital, Russell Square, along with sonic and other contributions from Dreamflesh contributor Stephen Grasso, Christos Fanaras, and the Raagnagrok Allstars.