German E. coli Karma

03 Jun 2011

Long ago prophets tried to explain outbreaks of disease in terms of karma and consciousness change. Alas the Christian Priests failed miserably with the bubonic plague, they never made the connection between the plague and whatever it is in the consciousness of peasants that allows them to enjoy unsanitary urban squalor. Plato would joke the Christian giants had a very poor sense of smell, and the Confucian Gods would have done a much better job. So the plague dragged on and in England it took the 1666 Great Fire Of London to bring reformation to society.

Hardly anyone today believes in karma; nor is the German e coli outbreak, so far at least, an event of profound sociological significance such as the Japanese Earthquake which really merits a proper discussion of karma. Nevertheless, just for fun: What do you think the karma of German e coli would be?

How would you figure that out if you were an Ancient Greek philosopher? For example, it is said that in 600BC the famous philosopher and mathematician Thales of Miletus couldn't get anyone to take him seriously so he set out to demonstrate the value of philosophy. He wasn't a psychic, he didn't rely on dreams, he claimed to have a conscious sense of the big picture mind-body-universe connection which allowed him to prophesise into the future. In the same way that people talk about a mind-body connection in alternative medicine, likewise weather patters are supposedly connected to human consciousness, but their subtlety requires great philosophical skill. For example, plants and animals can react to weather changes or even earthquakes in advance, why is a scientific mystery, but perhaps they are tuned into this changing consciousness. So the weather is not randomly chaotic, it follows what New Age types might call psychodynamic energy patterns composed of an evolving mixture of four principles called by the Ancient Greeks <water, earth, fire, air>. Perhaps we could say if we think that 2012 is going to be 'fiery' then the weather will hot and dry. So in this sort of a way Thales supposedly worked out that the next year's weather would be favourable and pre-booked all the olive oil presses. Low and behold the next year there was indeed a bumper olive harvest and his cornering of the olive press market made him famously rich. He didn't care about the money, he just did it as a demonstration. Explaining the weather is supposedly the mark of a real philosophical genius who can see the evolution of human life with God like clarity.

So karma (Plato called it the "straying cause") is physical world challenge that forces life to evolve. The challenges of life aren't random, necessity is in tune with our spiritual evolution. So to guess at the cause of an event you have to grasp the mind-body-universe connection, you have to see how that event forces the people in question to evolve. We don't need to imagine these events as actually dreamt up by interfering Gods looking down on us from the heavens, imagine instead the world as a sort of marvellous synchronistic symphony of evolution in which the mind-body-universe connection runs through everything automatically. Imagine yourself as a child watching a film living in the here and now with no idea what is going on because your viewpoint is so narrow. Ancient Greek philosophers, on the other hand, were adults who had opened their mind to the big picture, they enjoy the film not for what it is in any moment, but for how it evolves. That's why the child can watch the same film one hundred times, because it's an emotional ride, not a conscious evolutionary experience which gets boring if you have seen it before. For the evolutionary thinker what is doesn't matter, it's what is not but will become that matters. So imagine Thales as your father giving you advice: Look my son, if you want to live an interesting life you must try and widen your viewpoint. So instead of treating all the things that happen in the world as random, pick out some of the big events and try to explain them.

One way to try and figure out the German e coli crisis is to think about why the Germans created the event, another way is to think about what the event will do to the Germans. Looking at the first route, have the Germans committed an injustice? If they have, think about the psychology behind that injustice, finally the sort of environmental challenges that would fix these psychological flaws.

So what's the most unjust thing Germany did in May 2010? That's pretty obvious, Germany's nuclear U-turn was an absolute shocker. Even if you only think about this move in the very short term, it's not just the Germans who suffer, it impacts her neighbours both politically (because it drives the anti-nuke debate) and technically (everyone's electric grid is connected).

But the bigger picture politcs is more fascinating. Greece is having to implement austerity plans against the will of their electorate and, to some extent, for the sake of German manufacturers. I am not saying the Greeks don't have a lot of bad Karma of their own, but they are working on their their psychological problems. Now the German tabloids are full of stories about ill disciplined Greeks etc, yet at the same time Angela Merkel is capitulating to irrational domestic political pressure. So you see she is hypocritically doing precisely what she criticises Greek politicians for doing. Yet Germany is the most successful state in Europe, she is supposed to set an example and lead Europe etc. Instead she is heading straight into the dark. This is a serious injustice.

Getting back to the environmental debate, realise that climate change is likely to kill billions of people in the distant future, and a German u-turn on Nuclear Power will go down in the history of climate change as a truly landmark event. Think about that sentence, don't let it wash over you. Realize that Merkel is literally killing millions upon millions of people for the sake of her personal popularity. Angela Merkel will rot in hell, and that's long been the case; but it's not just about her, it's about the German people too. Germany isn't some tin pot country that doesn't matter to world, it's up their lights. Primitives can get away with being irresponsible, but the Germans can not. Therefore Germany's irresponsible u-turn carries a deadly karmic price.

So whilst I have long been a big German fan (see article), the karma of this nuclear u-turn is truly appalling. This u-turn testifies to a deep corruption in the German soul, a corruption which must be fixed. Resistance is futile, as Socrates said in the Apology, the lessons just get harder and harder until you learn. You can't escape evolution, if you really screw up you will die and then end up working on the same problem in your next life. So wake up Germany or die.

Back in March 2011 (on my news page) I wrote about the Japanese Earthquake:

The question everyone wants to know is what are psychological the lessons of the earthquake? Now suppose radiation covered Japan, how could life go on? Not by looting, fleeing the country, buying up everything in the shops, or skipping work. Civilization could only survive if the people put aside their individualism and went on as normal, in other words even though they know they might die, they have to carry on living life as normally as possible. Imagine mankind, like the Band on the Titanic, playing his part to the last. This is not in fact the stoic idea of individual discipline, it is something more, less heavy, more beautiful, more Spartan. If you think about the psychological affliction of Japan and the West [eg Japanese teenagers who never leave their bedroom], and the nature of the response needed to the crisis, then the 'Karma' is obvious. Remember that the Gods keep hurling down the psychological lessons until we evolve, how much death and disaster it takes before we get it is up to us. Based on the journalistic commentary I have seen we have a very long way to go!

Today political scientists in Japan are beginning to talk about the earthquake in Japan as a consciousness changer (still embryonic). People in Japan are talking about greater social cohesion, greater co-operation, greater professionalism and all the other things New Age Philosophers such as myself talk about.

Also in March 2003 (in my nuclear article) I wrote:

Fukushima is vastly more serious than Three Mile Island, it might conceivably end up killing more than the 4,000 people Chernobyl killed. So Chernobyl is now no longer alone, there are now two very serious accidents in the history of civilian nuclear power nuclear. How does this fact alter the debate?

This accident reminds us that the risk of a nuclear accident is always non zero. It could happen during a war, or by some catastrophic act of God. The question is are the positives greater than the negatives? This disaster reminds us that human life hangs by a thread, there are many ways thousands, millions or even billions of people could die, eg in an earthquake, meteor strike, war, revolution, plague, pollution, climate change etc. At the end of the day, even if Fukushima killed a million people, it would be a drop in the ocean compared to fossil fuels.

What are the implications for the Nuclear Industry? In the Ukraine people actually became less fearful of Nuclear Power after the Chernobyl accident because they understood that their worst nightmares weren't grounded in reality. Combined with post crisis power shortages and a greater sense of communal idealism and discipline developing in response to the terrible tsunami, I expect the Japanese public will eventually become less fearful of Nuclear Power as a result of this accident. But outside the Ukraine Chernobyl had a big impact on public perceptions by feeding populist nightmares. Countries with strong pragmatic government like China, Russia, Turkey, Brazil etc are going to ignore this disaster. The big problem lies in Western Democracy which is already reeling from higher oil prices, poor education, political gridlock, inefficient economic models and out of balance economies. An irrational move away from Nuclear is yet another nail in the coffin of Western Liberal Democracy. It's a big problem for Germany, a country that needs cheap power for manufacturing and is the only remaining really successful economy in Western World (countries like Norway, Australia and Canada have such huge natural resources and low population densities that they could be run by monkeys and still thrive).

So lets go back to German karma. Where is German headed? In an old article of mine (here) I wrote:

Germany needs to rediscover herself, to feel the Ode to Joy running through her veins, to find her new Otto von Bismarck. Intellectuals around the world are beginning to see how destructive democracy is, soon German politics will be itching to forge a new path. China's example will inspire them, and the world will be transformed. When Germany politicians embrace Nuclear Power, either by ignoring their stupid voters, or making them intelligent through control of the press, you know Germany is on the path to greatness.

Unfortunately Germany right now is headed in the opposite direction. Angel Merkel is increasingly hated but there is no True German party in Germany which idealistically talks about social cohesion and anti-liberalism, instead the anti-incumbent reaction in Germany is headed in a 1970s direction. It's vital for the future of this world that this be stopped and the Germans develop in a more positive direction. You see the Germans are potentially great people, but today they are sort of heavy children who eat too much pickled cabbage, and even though they are anal about external hygiene, they are long haired hippies when it comes to personal hygiene. The Germans used to be the most intellectual people in the Western world, Otto von Bismarck would be horrified to imagine his aristocratic fatherland had filled up with a bunch of naive holier than thou pacifist Greens. This is not the Germany of Fredrick The Great, it's the Germany of Angel Merkel, and it's giving us indigestion.

Germany's psychological flaws are clearly connected to post second world war pacifism. I am not a neo-con, Western military intervention in the Middle east has been disastrous and Germany has done the right thing all these years by sitting on the sidelines, but the point is it did the right thing for the wrong reasons. Germany is still hung up by the things it did seventy years ago. What Europe needs is leadership, but German attachment to pacifistic liberalism is holding up Europe's recovery.

Back in December 2010 Wolfgang Schäuble said "Sometimes it takes crises so that Europe moves forward. In this crisis, Europe will find steps toward further unification... In Europe the nation state as the sole level of policy-making has exhausted its effectiveness... I am not the last pro-European in Germany, perhaps I'm the first European of the 21st century." But Schäuble also said "You can't just command European states and their populations. We have learned democracy – even we Germans, belatedly – and it means the people are sovereign. You have to respect that. You have to win majorities."

How can you say you have to respect democracy on the one hand, and say you need to build a less democratic technocratic union on the other hand? The latter means sovereignty isn't sacred, wisdom is sacred. I am all for paradoxes, but this isn't a paradox it's an irrationality. Until people like Schäuble learn that the challenges of life are more important than liberalism, Europe is dead. It's Schäuble fear of what Germany once did that keeps him locked in an irrational liberal position and prevents him forcing better government on the Greeks. Because his philosophy makes no sense, is failing abjectly, and is out of sync with what he believes deep down, he is withdrawing inside himself, turning his anger into bitterness toward the world, and embracing ever more absurd and chaotic decision making. "Know thyself" said the Greeks, anyone who ignores this message ends up corrupting and perverting themselves.

The irony is that the Second World war was build from exactly this same kind of elite liberalism post the first word war, destroying public support for the elite, and propelling Hitler into power. Schäuble is acting like a Weimar Republic leader, in fact I think he is repeating a mistake that has plagued the country for hundreds of years. I think it comes out of Germany's perfectionism, and out of that a sort of deep seated frustrated anger if unfulfilled, and then fear of that anger.

Germany has to wake out out of this nightmare, it needs to start taking the challenges of life more seriously that liberalism, it needs a new cosmopolitan world view, and it needs to let it's idealism and elitism rip. Germany, once as aristocratic as Japan, has spent hundreds of years in a civil war which regularly explodes into dangerous populism. The clock is ticking, the sand is running out, the people aren't going to wait forever. Perhaps a plague killing a lot of Germans is just what that big doctor in the sky called God would prescribe, I don't know but something must be done. Note that karma doesn't kill elected politicians, it's up to the people to change them. Politicians have a special place in hell waiting for them when they die, Angela Merkel is the walking dead, her fate doesn't interest the Gods.

Any more ideas? Sometimes karmic lessons are comic, it's the very silliness of them that wakes us up. Everything about the e coli scandal screams comedy. It was "lethal cucumbers" from dirty Spanish farms the Germans wrongly claimed. The high tech Europeans couldn't find the problem and had to rely on the Chinese who, we have now learnt, have the most sophisticated disease response operation in the world. The Americans accused the Europeans of wrongly worrying about antibiotic resistance and causing panic. Antibiotic resistance is the big one every doctor is terrified of, and the excessive use of antibiotics in agriculture promoted by the Americans is infinitely more dangerous than nuclear, but no one notices. Then Europe flew into a panic and now vegetable prices have collapsed. It's a modern comedy.

This article is tongue in cheek, but I am saying it is worth thinking about strange things like this seriously, even if the lethal cucumber story is a waste of time philosophically, karma isn't.