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!

Tragedy is upon us! Once again we all become Parisians!

Amongst the many condemnations the one expressing our emotions the best was by Chancellor Merkel:

Die Menschen, um die wir trauern, wurden vor Cafés ermordet, im Restaurant, im Konzertsaal oder auf offener Straße. Sie wollten das Leben freier Menschen leben, in einer Stadt, die das Leben feiert ‑ und sie sind auf Mörder getroffen, die genau dieses Leben in Freiheit hassen.

The tragedy is upon us, there is no question, but an even bigger tragedy befalls us if the horrors of yesterday will mean that the values we love, and which the victims rejoiced in, will be perverted into intolerance, injustice and inhumanity!

Norway was a shining example of how to uphold what we hold truly dear in the face of the foulest kind of cruelty when they in the midst of deep mourning over Utøya reaffirmed their commitment to an open, humanistic society. But what we experience now, a few hours after the Paris tragedy, is that the high priests of chauvinism and social exclusion start to exploit the tragedy for their unsavory purposes. One terrorist may have had a Syrian passport – so all refugees are terrorists is the song.

The response to this perversion was already in my Facebook inbox, I was pleased to see. The response is, of course, that the refugees who take terrible risks to get to safety in our countries are fleeing exactly the same kind of terror in their home countries – the same kind of terror day in and day out. This is what we must always keep in mind, what we must never stop repeating and explaining. Refugees fear the same that we fear! When terrorists strike Paris it is not because they want to export refugees, it is because they want to export terror, and they would welcome nothing more than refugees being turned away and us losing our humanity!

Of course, the terrorists also defend their actions in religious terms. The caliphate against the countries of the cross. This is stupidity, but sadly a refrain that will be picked up by the extreme right in Europe. More and more you hear stories about how there is a war of religions going on – and amazingly you hear this even in an entirely areligious country like Denmark. The slander of Islam is deeply unsetting because it deprives Islam of its deep spirituality, beauty, humanism and civilization, and because it leads to horrible policies. It was Muslim scholars who preserved for the world much of what we have left of Plato and Aristotele, and Islam has given rise to immense learning and humanistic culture. But fact is that all three Abrahamic religions were always at risk of being hijacked by proponents of war and violence (as opposed to Asian religions), and history is full of examples. What we must absolutely defend against is that the intolerance of a small group of Muslim extremists is met by secular or Christian intolerance, or that we conflate the large majority of Muslims with an extreme minority. If that happens then the terrorists have truly reached their goal!

What we must do is to treasure the true values of Islam and give far more room to those who can express those values, and we must live and treasure our own values and culture. This is not only what multiculturalism is about – this is what humanity is about! True culture is strong, never aggressive!

I am spending time in Denmark at the moment. Walks on the beach, strolls though Copenhagen at dusk – not bad, at all. Yet, early November in Denmark is the slightly uneasy time when Nature cannot quite make up its mind whether it is autumn or winter. Remarkably, temperatures are not much lower than in July (tells you something about the July we had!), but there is no doubt that the direction is winter. Soon we will wake up to gardens covered by frost’s embroidery. But we are not yet there! The sun still has authority and trees are still not naked. Unmistakably, this is not New England foliage with its blazing colours. Instead leaves are turning yellow with the tenderness so typical of Danish nature.

One can be upset about the need to wrap oneself in many layers, about the onset of a season which is physically demanding, about the short days and long nights. Despite this I would not want to live permanently in a place with eternal summer. For me the procession of seasons is important. It is a cycle I relate to, a cycle that symbolises something of fundamental human significance.

Perhaps I would like that summers were longer and winters shorter, something which can be achieved by moving further south. But moving to Vienna, I did not achieve exactly that. I achieved that summers and winters became longer, and spring and autumn shorter. Of course, I do not condemn those who choose eternal summer (or eternal winter). Only, for me, seasons are attractive because they provide variety and cyclical repetition.

Seasons represent an overarching issue worth reflecting on. Human lives have their own seasonality, and although we have extended each life season tremendously in the last few decades, we should be cautious with changing the human condition fundamentally. This is a key message of my book.

Over the last sixty years average lifetimes have gone up by 50 percent. These 24 years of additional lifetime we have essentially spread out over youth, middle and old age, but arguably we have been decreasing childhood to benefit youth. With frighteningly early sexual first times, unhindered access to mature information for the immature, and pubescent pop stars peddling youth ideals (or smut) to their peers, we have robbed children of the privilege of letting childhood run its natural course. With a likely lifetime of 80+ years should children really want to become adult with 12? Psychoanalysis has shown us the incredibly formative importance of childhood; we become nostalgic about childhood, and yet we curtail it! The Bible tells us that unless ye ‘become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven’. Seems we are making it harder than it needs to be!

At the other end of youth we try to extend it by all sorts of artificial means with comical if not tragic results. Valentino and Sophia Loren trying to look 30 when 80 are not a pleasant sight. Old age is dreaded even if extended, although in truth many people find old age a blessing in their heart of hearts. So much to digest, so many lives to assist, so many grandchildren to spoil, so much earned freedom and joy, even under the shadow of physical decline and possible illness. The mildness and loving fostered by old age are not sufficiently prized, neither by society nor by those living it.

When earthly immortality comes within our reach, one of our dilemmas will again be how to time the seasons of our lives. Will we do 200 million years as children, 400 million years as youths, and infinity as the middle-aged, thus cutting out old age altogether? For all the attraction of youth, are you sure you want to spend 400 million years there, and infinity as a successful middle-aged lawyer? Are you sure? Really?