Most of the ills of society are caused by corruption. Corruption in a broad sense, it is true, but still corruption. The Holocaust was corruption in a genocidal form, elite corruption in North Korea has given birth to its nuclear threat, and the poverty in Africa is, in so many ways, a result of corruption. The crisis in Ukraine has been exacerbated by corruption, and China’s amazing rise is gravely endangered by economic and political corruption. Corruption is both a cause and a tragic accompaniment of the Syrian exodus.  Whenever greed and envy get the upper hand, corruption finds its mate!

But let us not despair – let us look at what can be practically achieved. Doing so, we should be ambitious, but not so ambitious as to necessarily fail. In his great book, The Idea of Justice, Amartya Sen argues for practical justice in the sense of doing what most people can agree is right in a specific situation. Better this than to always strive for an abstract ideal on which no consensus can be found and which therefore stands in the way of progress. If we follow this wise advice we should probably first look at what the legal system can be made to achieve in terms of fighting corruption. And this necessitates looking at corruption in the narrower meaning of trading illegitimate favours against monetary gain.

You may well argue that national legal systems have already, over centuries, demonstrated that they cannot be an effective remedy against economic corruption. Societies are woefully unable to fight corruption because those who should are those already carrying the black mark of the disease. Societies are unable to fight corruption because national societies are seen as individual bubbles shielded by sovereignty from interference by global society. Sovereignty, which was intended to ensure freedom for populations, has in many poverty stricken regions been turned into a tool for national elites to enslave the common person of the nations they have been given responsibility for. Global elites stand idly by, either because they themselves are rapacious, or because they hail the ideal of sovereignty without wanting to see where practically it takes many of the populations it was supposed to benefit. There is very little consolation for the starving child in being exploited by a national elite rather than by foreigners. This is the reality we refuse to see, or which we refuse to take action against!

But we could take action, and, in principle, it is easy, even if, in practice, it might be hard. All countries in the world have laws prohibiting corruption. This is surely true even for North Korea! This means that everybody engaging in corruption is clear on the fact that he or she engages in a crime. The feeling of impunity comes from the assumption that the corruption laws cannot be enforced. The most sacred principle of criminal lawyers is nullum crime sine lege, no crime without a corresponding law. Yet, criminal lawyers can sleep easily, because the law is there – corruption is not just an ethical infraction.

There is no equally sacred principle in criminal law giving the criminal a right to be judged only by a court of his or her own nationality. And herein lies opportunity!

The opportunity might not be so big as to assume that every state can punish any act of corruption no matter where and by whom it is committed. This kind of universal jurisdiction could set the stage for a hijacking of the corruption agenda for national rivalry purposes and could be abused by publicity seeking lawyers. Recent attempts at using universal jurisdiction to prosecute the most severe human rights violations have come to grief and in any event such an expansive view of jurisdiction would ignore the admonition of Amartya Sen to seek first and foremost realisable justice.

So what is realisable? The UN Security Council has in the past used its powers to set up tribunals to punish war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and acts of genocide in Rwanda and Cambodia. Yet, sadly, when you look at the membership of the Security Council it is clear that no similar action can be expected for corruption. There is no Security Council backed International Corruption Tribunal in the horizon. The Sen test of practicability cannot be passed.

What we can do, however, is to create an international protocol on corruption enforcement which countries of good will can sign up for. By doing so they would accept that violations of their own anti-corruption legislation can be prosecuted before an international tribunal when national enforcement is found by an international prosecutor to be deficient. This would be similar to the system of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, except that the system would be simpler, because the crimes that would be prosecuted would not need to be defined anew. The international tribunal would just give effect to the law that would apply to the crime in any event.

Perhaps only few states would sign up at the start, but often the best international governance systems are the result of a gradual recognition that something effective will have to be done to combat a societal ill. At the start there might be few – but at the end there might be many, just because the solution comes to be recognised as right and effective.

The corruption disease attacks most severely weak, poverty stricken countries with poor governance systems. Yet, if wealthy, strong states do not show the way and renounce this particular devil and all his works then surely he will continue his rule! In the final analysis nobody is served by that – not even the corrupt!

The extraordinary tone poem for piano, ‘Vers la flamme’, written by Alexander Scriabin in 1914, seems to presage the disaster of the Great War. The incredible nervous energy translates easily into an image of a sensitive artist who felt that destruction was coming. Yet, the first years of the 20^th century were probably not in general an era of nervous energy or a feeling of impending calamity. In spite of contradictions and dissonant artistic voices, la belle époque was probably understood exactly as that, and its complacent, prosperous societies sleepwalked into the horror of the First World War, as so elegantly described by Christopher Clark in his great book on the lead-up to the war. The dystrophy of Austria-Hungary was widely recognised and the rise of Germany was there for all to see, as was the unease of France and Russia.

The parallels to the current day are evident, with the ailing hegemon, the United States, the rise of China, the unease of India and Japan, the complacency and prosperity of the West. Yet history rarely repeats itself and Henry Kissinger has in ‘On China’ made an eloquent argument for how disastrous great power confrontation can and should be avoided. This notwithstanding it is hard not to read into the current situation a terrible decline of empire (to which Europe belongs) and a temptation of a rising superpower to take advantage. Regrettably, this has translated into a discourse in the ‘West’ about the impure motives of China, rather than a proper analysis of how own decline inevitably whets the appetites of others. The enemy of the United States is not China, but the United States itself. The enemy of Europe is not Greece, the refugees, or China, but Europe itself!

The trouble of the empire of the West is not wealth. Even while we are wringing our hands about our financial distress, the reality is, of course, that we are outrageously rich. The trouble of the US and Europe is our governance systems and the allowance they make for complacency, heartlessness and exclusion.

A system that produces constant stalemate and ultimately allows presidential candidates like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz to be taken seriously is in trouble. And a system that first allows the problems of Greece to almost take down the European project and then starts to descend into mindless anti-solidarity faced with a perfectly manageable refugee crisis is in urgent need of revitalization.

When empires fall it is almost always as a result of internal dissonance, even if it is external forces that ultimately seal their fates. The Visigoths and the Vandals did not bring down the Roman Empire; forces within the Roman Empire did!

One of the lessons that can be learned from history is probably that unless internal destructive forces are opposed and overcome by creative internal forces then empire is lost, because then external forces will fill the vacuum – and mostly this is not a pretty sight. When empires are facing stasis they can either reform or die! But also, if the hegemon cannot accommodate the rising power it will normally collapse or be collapsed! So the empire of the West must find ways to accommodate the legitimate expectations of China, if it is to hang on to its wealth and privilege. And, most importantly, the empire of the West must reform itself internally.

As to the latter, Europe must evidently move towards ‘an ever closer union’. The current direction must be reversed. The Westphalian nation state model has essentially run its course in Europe, and the sooner we understand that ‘union’ is more than trade, and is not even truly about economics but about a culture of peace and human cooperation, the sooner we can play a constructive and creative role in the global community. Guarding sovereignty too jealously will invite violent re-organisation á la French Revolution and Napoleon, foreign overthrow, or a descent into insignificance and cultural and economic poverty.

The curious aspect of governance in the US is that a country that is so fond of change hews unquestioningly to a Constitution that was written more than two centuries ago. Perhaps a country with a relatively short history is more prone to treat a historical document like the Constitution as something almost God-given. Many empires have had inferiority complexes and have sought legitimacy in founding documents and associated ‘exceptionalism’. Overcompensation one may argue.

The Constitution is admittedly a remarkably sophisticated instrument, with its implementation of the division of powers of Montesquieu’s theory. Yet, its emphasis on checks and balances and therefor on governmental inaction rather than action has become unworkable as institutions have petrified and the need for action has become more pronounced as society becomes more dynamic, complex, specialized and interwoven. Perhaps having the Head of State and the Head of Government rolled into one was a good idea originally, but perhaps it is no longer! Perhaps it is not such a great idea to leave so much legislative power to the courts, even on key societal questions, just because it compensates for the inaction of the legislative. Perhaps the admirable state equality mirrored in the membership of the Senate should be reconsidered in view of the difference between California and Montana.

How a new or reformed Constitution should look is certainly not for me to say, but it would do the United States a world of good to have new constitutional debates almost twelve scores hence. These debates would perhaps not be conducted by the equivalents of Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and Patrick Henry, but even less will do. Democracy gains when it is used, discussed and occasionally reformed, but right now the discussions are frightfully superficial and the true issues of substance not addressed. Reality shows are all the rage, but what about a genuine reality show in which ex-President Barack Obama would discuss the revamping of the Constitution with George Will. Could have a good following and would be infinitely more interesting than the Teenage Mum shows. In fact, such a match-up would not be too far off the Hamilton/Madison/Henry model!

The change-resistant might point to the Magna Carta and its enduring significance after 800 years. But even in the UK, without a unified written Constitution, little of Magna Carta remains on the statute books. Fact is that a traditionalist country like the UK has continuously tinkered with and reformed its constitutional set-up, even on fundamental issues like the distribution of powers between the different branches of government, the way the highest court and the House of Lords are constituted, not to mention devolution. This should serve as an example for a US that did not touch its fundamental set-up and its checks-and-balances since the 18^th century, despite a fair number of amendments dealing with the voting franchise and other important questions, including how senators are elected.

Of course, a new Constitution in the US might be to no one’s liking, much like when the current one was agreed, but it would give democracy a shot in the arm and shake up institutions that have become fat and dysfunctional! And that is a value in itself!

The work is thus cut out for Europe and the United States, and the key question is whether Europeans and Americans will understand the need to reform their societies in time. Not much is pointing in this direction currently. Putting the head in the sand is not only the natural reaction of the ostrich!

Whenever I go to Moscow one of my first stops is a church on the Red Square. Not the onion domed Saint Basil’s Cathedral, but a small one nested at the entrance gate. I go there because it is almost always open, dark and mysterious, and full of babushkas rhythmically making the sign of the cross. I go there because I like the darkness and devotion.

Russian churches are often very intimate, even those of the Kremlin, and the intimacy expresses well a highly personalised relation to God. Early Romanesque churches, with low slung arches might give intimacy as well, but with their white walls they seem to seek the light. God is not cloaked in darkness – God is light. Church architecture, not surprisingly, reflects different perceptions of God.

Over time churches became grander, and in the West the grandeur seemed to inspire a more distant relationship with God. The miracle of St. Peter’s is that it has remained personable despite its unsurpassed grandeur. I think it is the light!

The great Gothic cathedrals, which I love, mind you, tend to be more somber, and seem to me to try to take you up to God, rather than to take God down to us. The pointed arches are like arrows pointing to the heavens, and the great spires reach for the beyond and force us to look up towards the sky. The darkness of many of the Gothic cathedrals may have something mystical, but because of the vast space light seems to be rationed and we are invited to strive for God and his light. In this sense Gothic churches are perhaps presaging the advent of the central state. God is the great and remote ruler, not the close and intimate friend of Russian and some Romanesque churches. God is enigmatic like in Russia, not omnipresent in the sense of overwhelming light. Sainte-Chappelle in Paris, of course, gives lie to all of this, with its splendorous profusion of light, so it is dangerous to generalise, even if I think there is truth to the proposition that Gothic sacred architecture does represent a change in the suggested relationship between God and humans.

The few modern churches that are built tend to be very liberal with light. Yet, the image of God that is conveyed is de-personalised. In fact, quite a few modern churches are hard to distinguish from airline terminals. Sacred architecture tended to influence secular architecture significantly in the past, but we have now, ironically, come to a point where the secular shapes the sacred. Modern churches do neither point to the heavens, nor do they take God down to us. Modern churches seek to make God a rational proposition, and in doing so they may run counter to the central message in religion, which is one of heart above head!

That we do not know everything is fantastic! The quest for knowledge is a defining feature of humankind and curiosity is the greatest gift we have received. Trying for ‘The Theory of Everything’, as the film about Stephen Hawking will have it, is a noble endeavour, but not one that we should hope will succeed. With nothing left to explore one of the premises of human existence would be removed.

The hubris involved in a title like ‘The Theory of Everything’ reflects not only the great strides we have made in knowledge and understanding, but also an implicit belief that we are far progressed in our quest – that we are almost there. I venture that this is a terrible mistake. The recent proof of gravitational waves is a wonderful breakthrough that opens the door to other breakthroughs, but the fact that the proof comes a hundred years after Einstein’s prediction should instill humility, as should the fact that even with this proof we are only a step closer to understanding gravity. Gravity is still a riddle, probably still wrapped in an enigma.

Surveying the landscape of ‘the known unknowns’ we find also dark energy and dark matter, the latter probably constituting the largest part of our Universe if conjecture is to be believed – and we find the possibility of the multiverse, with math being our main clue currently. It is salutary to remember that we are in the prison of our senses and our logic (and there may be other logics) in our search for reality, and that there may be a lot more reality that escapes our grasp, perhaps forever, because of our limitations and evolutionary conditioning.

The reality of causation, of cause and effect, has been a favourite topic of many a philosopher, prominently among them David Hume. But there is an element of this that has not been addressed in a thorough manner, and that is the relationship between belief, as an expression also of desire, and effect. In other words, to which extent can belief be a cause giving birth to effects?

In much Christian theology the basic tenet is that belief is what brings eternal life after death. Belief is the cause bringing immortality effect. Yet, is belief as an autarkic cause only relevant for Christian and Abrahamic religions?

We know that self-belief attracts consequence. The blind faith of Donald Trump in himself astonishingly brings others to have an equally blind faith in him. Trump’s self-belief conditions his actions and manner and in return the reactions of his followers (and detractors) are conditioned. However, such reaction patterns do not establish belief as a quality that in its own right leads to effects, does not make belief akin to dark energy, does not make belief a truly immaterial force. The manifestations of belief are what conditions us, not belief itself. In the final analysis the same can be said of Abrahamic belief. Our belief motivates God to give us immortality. Yet the Gospel According to Matthew can be understood to refer to faith also as a self-standing force: ‘’Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”

Belief as an autarkic force would presuppose that effects could be achieved without direct stimulation of the classical five senses – that belief could bring about a desired result merely qua belief. So, can your belief in world peace assist in ushering in an era of world peace even if the only outward manifestation is your deep prayer for it in a Himalayan monastery? Can a deep belief in your own immortality bring immortality, not because your belief will condition God, but because belief is an autarkic quality that can cause its own desired result (meaning, conversely, that atheism’s finality is a self-fulling prophecy)? Is belief thus a quality like dark energy and dark matter, but even less understood?

A consideration of belief as an autarkic force is not romanticism or obscurantism, but a recognition that we understand so little of our Universe and our lives. We will probably never understand all of reality, but it is worthwhile reflecting more on the forces that shape it. We now know that hygiene brings healthier results. Before this realization we died more. Is it not tragic if belief is conditioning result – and we do not know?

Over the last more than a century workers have been turned into a huge class of consumers. Global wealth depends on this class, yet its importance, also for the 1 percent, is often ignored, as every increase in income inequality shows.

But workers are disunited and that along national lines. Capital has globalized, but workers have been persuaded that international workers’ solidarity is in contradiction with their national wellbeing. Hard to understand how this could be true when capital works on the opposite assumption, but the ferocious opposition to international trade agreements by trade unions show that nationalism trumps international solidarity amongst the weak who exactly could gain strength from uniting globally.

The youth of the world is in a similar state of disarray. German youth, so extravagantly privileged in many respects, does not see the commonality of interest with the youth of Spain or Greece, and more surprisingly the youths of Spain and Greece do not see their shared destiny. The outrage of Syriza had a young face, but was in the final analysis an instrument for the outrage of the older generation. To a lesser degree the same is true for Podemos of Spain, and the youth of Italy seems to suffer mostly in silence. The young generation in Germany and Austria might be right that they have little to win from showing solidarity with the youth of ‘the periphery’, at least in the short term, but as they have nothing to lose from supporting their less-privileged brethren there is at least an issue of morality.

The sad reality is that the opposition to austerity policies masks very opposing interests between the various stakeholder groups. When Syriza defends the interests of pensioners in Greece it is at the expense of the interests of the youth. For the youth the reform of society should be a priority and the opposition to austerity measures should be an opposition to the strangling of industries that could give jobs to the young, an opposition to the underfunding of the education system etc.

When trade unions march in protest it is more about those with jobs than about the young without employment. Trade unions have become an instrument of the possessed, not of the dispossessed! Workers’ representation in firms or elsewhere does not distinguish between the interests of elder workers and that of the youth, partly because also the young with jobs see their first interest to be protection of those jobs, rather than fighting for jobs for their fellows in the rain.

The President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, spoke quite movingly about the unemployed being a 29^th state in the Union when he presented himself to the new European Parliament, and he drew particular attention to the plight of the young. Yet, his Commission is organized like a national government when it comes to the interests of the young. There is a Commissioner for employment, including youth unemployment, and there is a ‘Commissioner for education, culture, youth and sport’. Such a structure means that the youth does not have a true advocate within the Commission, in the sense of a Commissioner who sees the interests of the youth as the overriding brief. There is no Commissioner who pursues the interests of the young across the multitude of portfolios, no Commissioner who with single-minded determination seeks to avoid the tragedy and disaster of a lost generation.  The Commission has many worthwhile initiatives in the area of youth unemployment and education, and many are exclusively targeted to the young. But at the Commission level there is no dedicated Project Team on youth or youth employment (and there are more issues than just unemployment).  The desperate situation of the youth in many EU countries deserves more than that. It deserves a forceful voice!

Lobbying is big in Brussels, as in most capitals of this world. Yet, the youth is woefully lacking lobbying power as well. Surely any mid-size industry has more lobbying influence than the youth and that is true worldwide. Trade unions, yes, they are there, the youth is not! And how many NGO’s are dedicated to youth concerns, and how forceful are they? Nothing comparable to Greenpeace exists!

The baby-boomer generation has always been good at setting the global agenda, and we are certainly not young anymore! It is time for the young to step up to the plate! The Occupy movement is not addressing the central concerns. Indignados are there, but the voice, never strong, never just centred on the young, is fading.

It sounds boring, but it is time for the young to create structures that will carry their banners, and to demand that the rest of society creates structures that will serve them – the future of our societies. It is not enough to have demands, institutionalized power is necessary. That is what can be learned from trade unions, from the successes of capitalism and socialism.

The youth must understand that in all current institutional set-ups (where is the UN Youth Organisation?) the interests of the young are mixed with the interests of many other stakeholders with better organization, and their voice will be often drowned out.

Without being too Hobbesian, it can be said that there is nothing new in the fact that social groups must fight their own battles. Nobody else will! It is high time for the young to learn this fundamental lesson. So, youth of the world: unite! Youth of the world: organise!

You may be surprised to hear that Immanuel Kant, Bill and Melinda Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan belong to the same school of thought. Their shared belief is that each life has equal value. This belief is the foundation of Kant’s categorical imperative and the motivation behind the good works of the Gates’s and the Zuckerberg/Chans. Chancellor Merkel seems to be a fan.

That each life is of equal value is an absolute truth, one of the few existing, and one we tend to honour in the breach. The lives lost to starvation are as precious as ours, and although we could avoid such losses with virtually no impact on our own lives, we allow the dying to continue.

Although the principle that each life is of equal value is an absolute, the concept of doing good is fraught with relativity. The best illustration of this is the well-known question, most recently addressed in the film ‘In the Heart of the Sea’, as to whether the ship-wrecked can resort to cannibalism if this is the only way some of them can survive. Kant would have said no, I would say yes, because in the clash of two absolutes the result cannot be that both are lost.

But the most interesting feature of the relativity of good is not when it dents the absolute. The most interesting feature is that the requirements on us as individuals and as a society must become stronger and stronger as our wealth grows. In the past it was perhaps unavoidable that some would die from hunger, today it is not and hence there is a moral obligation on us to avoid it.

Sadly, the relativity of moral obligation has been turned on its head in the face of the overwhelming European refugee crisis! Instead of accepting that our affluence gives us much opportunity to help the stricken, we argue that if helping will affect our affluence significantly then we cannot help. Even those with the biggest hearts are starting to talk about ceilings on the number of refugees that can be allowed into the individual European countries. Yet, if we accept that each life is of equal value it is not acceptable to argue that we save some but not all, only because it starts to hurt.

Our prosperity gives us immense possibilities to help, and we are obliged to do so even if it strains the fabric of society! The Cologne sexual crimes that were perpetrated also by refugees is seized upon to argue that refugees should not be helped to the maximum extent. This is a fallacy! These crimes are unforgivable and should be punished severely. But you do not punish the innocent refugee for the crimes of the guilty one. Even in a crisis, the presumption of innocence applies, and for the great majority of refugees it is, indeed, true!

Moral imperatives aside there is also an egotistical reason for helping even when it hurts, and that is, that in the long run empires that are closed to the outside will fall. The Roman Empire was so durable because it allowed non-Romans to become Romans. Whether we like to think about it in this way or not, Europe is an empire of prosperity. Those not part of the empire, and particularly those who are willing to risk their lives to become a part, are looking carefully at our humanism, or lack thereof. If we are inhuman we will be repaid by inhumanity in the future. If we show compassion we will most likely be repaid by compassion. ‘He who sows the wind shall reap the whirlwind’ remains a fundamental wisdom. Do we want to reap a whirlwind of sympathy or a whirlwind of hate?

New Year ’s Eve is not a good night for the lobster species. Multitudes never experience the new year, but rather end the old one by being boiled alive for our pleasure. The effects on our individual and collective karma I dare not think about!

The reason we give for putting a quite sophisticated animal through such torture is first of all that we do not consider it so sophisticated. And then we argue that such animals probably do not have the same perception of pain as we do. Yet, anybody having heard and felt the desperate banging on the lid of the pot should know that the latter assumption is wrong and also that death does not come quickly, because the long struggle is a consequence of lobsters having been so successful in building their shielding armour. Tragic irony, is it not? As to sophistication it is, of course, true that a lobster is not a refined creature compared to a human. But this argument is of little consolation because it only raises the question why we believe that we humans are the measure of everything, not only in terms of what we consider large or small as addressed in my last blog post, but also in terms of pleasure and pain, in terms of intellectual capability, in terms of the ability to love.

We seem to lose the general wisdom of the relativity principle very quickly. The pain of an ant might be negligible by our standards, but by ant standards not. The pleasure of the day fly for a day should not be considered valueless just because humans might have many days of pleasure. If your whole life has an arc of one day only, the pleasure of that day becomes the only measure. Still, we believe that our utmost pain is the utmost pain possible and that our utmost pleasure is where the scale ends. Same with intellect, same with love. Towards ‘lesser beings’ this is wrong, because it ignores relativity, but also it might be wrong because it disregards the possibility that there may be ‘greater beings’ than humans, who might outperform us both in terms of pain, pleasure, intellect and love.

In fact, we might be part of a greater being. Religious thought will often have it that way. Humans as part of the divine being rings true to deistic religions. But the consequence of such a view is that the human is not the measure of all; the measure of pain, pleasure, intellect and love of the divine being should be infinitely bigger than ours – but does that really make our pain and pleasure irrelevant? Ah, relativity!

Relativity has a cousin called karma, and let us reflect on this as well. The idea of karma assumes that good and bad deeds are paid back in some way or another. Yet, even in rebirth scenarios it is hard to believe that anybody deserves to be boiled alive, hard to believe that even those boiling others alive deserve to be boiled alive in return. An eye for an eye is in most respects an idea of yesteryear. Yet, even if one does not assume that there is a karma scoreboard on the individual level it is easy to believe that pain and hatred, and on the positive part of the ledger, pleasure and love, have transcendent effects in a more general sense.

Physicalists assume that pain and pleasure are neurological consequences of input stimuli. Lobster gets boiled, it feels pain, it dies, and that is that! Pleasure, pain and love are qualities we understand as self-standing occurrences or states, and it is mind’s matter entirely.

Yet some people will argue that there is more to spirit than the physical as we understand it currently. Spirit might be a unique quality, and, as part of spirit, so may pleasure, pain and love. Spirit as a quality may be as little understood as dark energy or anti-matter, and may, I guess, be a quality that can be subjected to scientific analysis much like dark energy. But it does not mean that spirit, pleasure, pain and love, are all just electric impulses of the brains of beings.

Does it, in fact, not resonate better with our general understanding of existence that doing good and evil reverberates in our world in a fashion that cannot be explained just by cause and effect relative to the ones involved?

Hence, is there not credibility to the belief that the suffering of the lobster is not just the suffering of the lobster, but also part of a universal spiritual texture that influences the lives of all beings?

Would the world be a better place, not only for the lobster, if we did not boil it? – Would the world be a better place, not only for the ones we love, if we would love more? Sounds about right to me!

Man’s measure is Man itself. All living beings capable of measure will always measure against themselves. For the ant the forest will be immense, for the fish the ocean will be gigantic. And it works the other way round as well. For the elephant the ant will be tiny. For humankind it is no different. Quarks are miniscule and the Universe incomprehensibly great.

All understanding is per definition subjective, and with subjectivity goes that we measure everything against ourselves. Must be so!

For the reasoned beings that humans are our assumptions on size have been proven wrong throughout history. When we thought that our tribe and neighbouring tribes were all that were we were wrong. When we thought that Egypt and its neighbours were the whole story we were wrong. When we thought that the Earth was the centre of a firmament that existed just for the Earth and hence was narrowly bounded we were wrong. If we think that the Universe is the only Verse we are most likely wrong. Even if we accept the multiverse, or different types of multiverses, we are probably still wrong to believe that they constitute the ultimate extent. The multiverses are apt to be part of a superstructure, that itself is part of yet another superstructure that is part of a further superstructure! A potentially endless chain!

The same in the other direction! When we believed that all that existed could be seen by the unaided eye we were wrong. When we thought that the molecule was the smallest measure we were wrong. Same for the atom, same for protons, neutrons and electrons. We now believe that quarks are the smallest things. But we are almost certain to be proven wrong. And wrong again!

In my book I propagate that a first principle of epistemology should be that reality is almost always wilder and more complex than we think. This principle should probably go hand-in-hand with another fundamental principle, namely that the measures of humankind are almost always too limitative! Reality tends to be both smaller and larger than we think. And this will remain true even as we continuously redefine our measures. Smaller will continue to get smaller and bigger continue to get bigger! This is a relativity we better get to grips with and make an absolute truth. At least for the time being!

Anthropologists like to explain that tradition, ritual, seeks to strengthen belief, to allay anxiety, to structure communication, and is a means of social control. But surely there is more to it than that. It is true that repetition gives a feeling of continuity and hence steadies nerves and provides structure, but tradition also makes you revisit feelings and issues at regular intervals and thus facilitates immersion, depth of feeling and knowledge!

In a rapidly changing world tradition is an anchor that keeps you connected to your past. Those who reject tradition might be very secure human beings without need for anchors, yet without anchors are you not adrift both emotionally and morally? If you only seek the new without judging it against your past, if new is always better simply because it is new, then you may be a terrific learner but are you wise, are you a full human being? As a terrific learner you may remember all you learned in the past, but if you only learn and never digest all depth would appear to have been lost.

Our society puts tremendous stock in learning, and that is good, but it does so often at the expense of wisdom, and that is bad. In a society of plenty surely we need to prize wisdom, and make sure that time is given to reflect. Tradition is not the only means to further reflection, but it is a potent one. In Christendom Christmas is the epitome of tradition. Christmas gives us the light versus the dark, the cold versus the warm; Christmas allows us to breathe freer and to rediscover the child in us, it is the reign of beauty and joy! Christmas is the time to take stock – and to digest, both physically and spiritually.

Endless repetition may be bothersome, as explained in my book, but for human lives as they are now no Christmas can be too many. So embrace Christmas, treasure your privilege, reflect, and be charitable towards the many who are left looking in from the outside. Generosity of spirit is a first principle of humanity, and it is good that the Christmas tradition reminds us about this again and again!

‘But’ can be a venomous word. An evident truth may be expressed only to be overturned by a ‘but’.

Well-meaning Germans may acknowledge the need to help refugees, only to add ‘but we need a plan’. That we need a plan is as self-evident as our obligation to help those in distress. Yet, ‘but’ turns deadly when the implication is that we need a plan before we help. Unfortunately the latter is normally what is meant. ‘Please try not to die while we are pondering our plan’.

Angela Merkel is no stranger to conditionality, yet in the refugee crisis her support has been unwavering and no caveats have been allowed. Her enemies are now seizing on this, trying to convince us that the cautious Ms. Merkel has suddenly become a ‘careless skier’. Nothing of the sort is true – Ms. Merkel has only accepted that there is a humanitarian imperative and that no dithering is allowable. When Nansen issued his famous passports after the Russian civil war and the First World War there was no plan; when millions of ethnic Germans had to resettle in the Bundesrepublik after the Second World War there was no plan, only hunger and despair for refugees and hosts alike; after Hungary 1956 there was no plan; when the Iron Curtain was pierced there was no plan; and when German reunification took place there were only fragments of a plan. Still, the crises were always managed in some way or another.  Fact is that when seismic shifts take place very rarely time is given for proper planning. But this does not make it acceptable to close one’s eyes to disaster, only to open them again when a good plan has been agreed and everything can proceed in an orderly fashion.

So it is hard to understand how ‘but’ can be justified in the refugee crisis but it is equally hard to understand why those who agree with Ms. Merkel do not jump to her defence. ‘Progressives’ are a funny bunch because they tend to find much happiness in criticising, and little happiness in defending their standard bearers. Defending Ms. Merkel is extra uncomfortable because progressives are unaccustomed to her being their standard-bearer. Yet Angela Merkel deserves utmost respect, and all those agreeing that humanitarian concerns must come first must try very hard to avoid that her reward for doing the right thing will be the loss of power.

In the last few days we have started experiencing a further lethal ‘but’. Many people (and some high-ranking politicians) acknowledge that the Syrian refugees are fleeing exactly the sort of tragedy we saw in Paris and Beirut, only to follow this by ‘’but even if most refugees are not terrorists we need to start closing our borders’ in order to keep out the rotten apples. That is conditional humanitarianism of the worst kind.  ‘We will not give you sanctuary because those who persecuted you continue to abuse you even after you have left your home and your country’.

The response to the terror in Paris should not be a ‘but’. It should be a ‘we understand even better what you have been going though’. We are part of the same family and we are in this together! This is a time for action – a time for solidarity, even when it hurts!