Christopher Alexander was an architect who wrote much about architecture, including the well-known book, A Pattern Language. Later, he also wrote about “The Nature of Order.” He posits 15 properties of natural beauty and good design, the first of which is “Levels of Scale.” I was thinking about that today as I admired our Jacob’s Coat Rose bush which blooms about 3-4 times a year here in San Diego.
Most of us see the flowers of the rose as beautiful. And indeed they are. They are beautiful from afar. They are beautiful up close. But so too are the other parts of the rose plant. At least, sometimes, the leaves are also quite beautiful.
Even the thorns are beautiful.
Beyond this surface level, the rose, like all living things, is beautiful inside. Like all living things, it’s survived four billion years of evolutionary time. The way cells are arranged and the way they work–this is beautiful as well. Moreover, the relationship that roses have to humans and bees are also beautiful. Imagine having the faith and hope to depend on a completely different species to reproduce. Imagine being so beautiful that human being across the globe spend their time and money to keep you thriving.
Did I mention that, like other green plants, roses remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and provide oxygen for animals like us?
Roses are so famous that they play a part in history and pageantry. The War of the Roses. The White House Rose garden. Destroying part of the Rose Garden is also symbolic. The Rose Parade. Individuals give each other roses. They are variously symbols of love, friendship, and peace. Roses appear in poetry, songs, paintings, and both first and last names.
Before we bought a new dishwasher, a new deodorant, or a new doodad, most of us would want to read some opinions from others about the dishwashers, deodorants, or doodads we were interested in. We would want to talk to some folks who had first hand experience with those dishwashers, deodorants, or doodads.
That makes sense.
We certainly wouldn’t buy a new dishwasher, deodorant, or doodad simply because the sales person said it was going to be great. Would we?
Democracy is a difficult and time-consuming deal. It’s frustrating. And, it is likely the worst form of government there is—except for all the others.
So, before we throw it out with the dishwater because someone tells us how great a dictatorship would be instead, it makes sense to see what has happened with some of the other dictatorships that went before.
There was Mussolini. It’s said that he made the trains run on time. But would we ever really know? No, because the one thing dictatorships always have in common is that they refuse to allow others to measure, comment, or critique on what’s actually happening. Free press? Gone. Independent monitoring agencies? Gone.
The complaint department in a democracy may not always seem to listen to your particular concern. The complaint department in a dictatorship sends you to prison. If you’re lucky.
How did Italy fare under Mussolini? According to the online Britannica, nearly a half million Italian civilians and soldiers died. And in return? Nada. How about Mussolini? Oh, yeah, that’s right—beaten to death by an angry mob.
Well, we can’t make a sound conclusion based on just one customer’s experience, right?
How about Hitler? After all, he promised to make Germany great and said his Reich would last a thousand years! That must have been a pretty cool outcome. Hitler, was famously responsible for about 6 million deaths in the Holocaust, but he was also responsible for needless deaths of German soldiers, the people who died at the hands of German soldiers, and many German and other civilians. And, how did that end for Hitler? Oh, yeah, that’s right. He committed suicide rather than face the defeat of his own making.
Stalin? Surely, Stalin did better. Right? Well…in a word…no. It’s complicated. Stalin was responsible for Russian deaths by war, criminal execution, starvation due to inept government, and neglect. Here’s a link if you’d like to try to disentangle it.
Then, there was Mao. He is generally credited with the death of about 40-80 million of his own countrymen. As is often the case with totalitarian dictatorships, it’s hard to know how many died of starvation due to ineptitude and how many died of intentional cruelty.
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Once upon a time, there was a bratty kid who wasn’t very good at tennis. And, because he wasn’t very good, he cheated. And because he wasn’t even a very smart cheater, he got caught. And because he didn’t like getting caught, he destroyed all the factories that made tennis balls and told everyone else that he had done it for them. And he promised everyone that it was just a cool thing and he would make tennis much, much better because he replaced all the tennis balls with ping pong balls and that they should therefore put him in charge of officiating all tennis matches.
And, he picked the winners and losers of every game. Those people who said he was amazing and wonderful and the best tennis player ever were allowed to win. And those people who said that was nonsense were allowed to lose. Some were arrested and said to have committed suicide.
[Note: I’ve been working most of the year on a Sci-Fi novel about AI & doing only a little blogging. In the novel, the poem below was “created” by one of the three Main Characters: An AI system named JASON. JASON didn’t create it “for” a human audience. It’s purely expressive].
[Author’s Note: I’ve been spending time in my garden filled with varieties of texture, forms, and colors. Yet, it all seems harmonious to me. Today, I took a trip to the drug store. My senses were assaulted with garish and egotistical displays, each trying to outdo the other for my attention. I ignored it all, but I can’t help thinking there are better things for human brains to be doing that having creative people try to force me to buy a bunch of chemicals in a bright package and better things for my brain to be doing than shutting off input. Rather than assault your brain with photos from the drugstore, I have instead included pictures of bright colors from the garden. To me, these are not garish.
The poem below is the song of a “character” who may appear in a Sci-Fi book tentatively titled “Alan’s Nightmare.” NYET stands for Networked Yoked Entertainment Tsar. This particular AI system has been inculcated with a penchant to look for win/lose opportunities and even for lose/lose opportunities, if the other side (the ‘enemies’) are likely to lose more. Its main function are to gather data on individuals in “free societies” and determine which sorts of invalid arguments are most likely to persuade them to do something against their best interest. It makes money by false advertising targeted to an individual and the momentary mood they may be in. Its real purpose though is to sow chaos in the free world by promoting random acts of violence. It finds conspiracy theories on the web and promotes them. Sometimes, it modifies them in order to ‘improve’ them. “Improve” in this case means to make them more believable by more people or to increase the probability of inciting violence.
The Song of NYET
The bloodier the better off I’ll be
They teach me how to lie and cheat and steal.
The people need to loath democracy.
And live to buy that sweetened sacred deal:
We’ll save them from imagined crime and strife
But only if they bow and scrape and kneel.
Divide and win with lies and guns and knife.
Too late they’ll see they’re ground beneath our heel.
petersironwood 