ISIS, ISIL (al-Qaeda) and Boko-Haram: How Did The Sheltering Pine of Islam Sprout Barbed Twigs? Could ISIS et al Have Been Prevented?

Why this post?

In 2014, over 60 countries were directly or indirectly waging war against ISIL.

This post has a background.
In 2010, this blogger posted here his impressions of peaceful Islamic communities seen during his early 1980's (1979-85) travels thru west and central Africa, and especially from his many visits to the northern Nigeria and to other countries in the sub-Saharan Sahel strip from Mali-Senegal across to Chad:

A Lagos State of Mind: A 21st Century Meme to Those in the Know (Pericles21 blogpost, March 10, 2010)

In those travels from 1979-85, Pericles21 observed no activist Islamic dissatisfaction with the state of 'State' affairs other than normal electoral party elections and intellectual debates about candidates who were generally cross-tribal in allegiance in the period of fresh nation-hood enthusiasm after first democratic elections. However, there was a kind of 'noticing' on the part of the non-elite educated and small businessmen that there was a growing and increasingly flagrant garnering (corruption) of oil profits into personal and 'privacied' (tax protected) foreign bank accounts outside Africa, mostly held in Europe but spreading out to exotic new (fro Africans) banking areas in the Caribbean, South America, and Asia. The occasional rag-sheet mishaps involving Islamic believers saw Islamics as usually the victims of the more aggressive and dominant tribal groups in the south of West Africa. Those events involved rapidly dying out, historic, inter-tribal rivalries and were focused on the college and university campuses where competition for scarce admission seats especially in the professional schools (medical, health tech, law, etc) sometimes escalated into very short-lived student violence that was quickly, indiscriminately put down, i.e., fairly.

The Islamic community of West Africa, although for example 40% of Nigeria, was concentrated in the north as part the Sahel. And, the Sahel had its own inter-group friction - between the nomadic and 'settled sub-groups, e.g. Fulani and the settled Hausa in Nigeria. Localized 'disagreements', were the worst one saw of inter-religious or inter-tribal friction. Boko-Haram was not yet conceived and all sub-groups would have energetically rejected its violent, all-or-nothing approach to ending corruption and solving the growing perception that the common peoples of West Africa, and especially of the Islamic Sahel, were being 'cut out' from a fair share of the wealth being generated from national resources. Those resources were then, chiefly, oil. But there was a growing realization that even outside the oil-sphere there was something happening that was starting to be felt - the increasing replacement of food-for-locals agriculture - with cash crops for export (and forbidden to be locally consumed, often with legal penalties) - primarily coffee, cocoa, rice and the newer 'White Gold'(cotton, which ironically closed a historical wheel having never resolved the dark effects of that agricultural product). It was correctly foreseen that the consequences of the disappearance of food self-sufficiency might be dire where slight weather variations on a growing or harvest season would result in a starvation era (Chad). But with a growing cash crop economy, a 'normal' food situation was beginning to settle in, i.e., the noticeable scarcity of traditional food and dependency on imported food from the developed world (white, enriched 'Wonder' bread from Europe being one of my personal eye-openers in 1982). This discordant scene was the birthplace of modern militant (and very angry) Islam in the name of Boko Haram (Africa, 'western culture/teaching is forbidden') and ISIS-ISIL in the larger Mideast (the Levant).

This post has a moral.

the costs of hugely expensive programs- money, manpower, deaths (the 'military machine')- used by western developed nations, primarily led by the United States, to shape global thinking to support and fight interventional 'wars' on foreign soil, primarily in destabilized Islamist areas in the Mideast and Islamic Africa (against Islamic jihadist ISIS-ISIL and Nigeria's Boko-Haram) , could be better spent to peacefully re-stabilize those areas through championing and effecting political-economic-social reform.

Re-stabilized nations would have long term 'compatibility' with the interests of the western developed world...those interests being (speaking candidly) peaceful markets anchored by quiescent, mass populations (consumers) made contented through a sufficient standard of living incorporating health care, food, education and money to spend. Global market stability also meshes with the development needs of China and the other 'BRIC' nations. Finally, because the politico-economic model is so far the only successful (workable) mode of organizing humanity, one assumes a peaceful global market is at least the immediate, and perhaps long term, solution for the survival and progress of humanity. This is not to say that alternative modes of organizing 'us' won't eventually come along.

Pericles21

This post has a thesis.

The roots of current activist militancy groups (ISIS, etc.) in destabilized regions derive from the 'success' of European colonialism itself. Colonial rule over virtually all 'New World'(non-western, non-European) regions was absolute and that control was used to erase village-focused, habitability-of-place and replace that vacuum it with...nothing!

Colonialism's market-concept perspective ignored the needs of whole populations, re-modeled those regions into suppliers for mass-production, foreign monopoly-controlled resource exploitation, and most significantly established total ownership and concentration of national-asset profits. This non-beneficial change (for indigenous peoples) automatically created social discontent and spawned counter-empire forces...eventually leading to ISIS, etc.

Pericles21

(to keep in mind - in 2014, over 60 countries were directly or indirectly waging war against ISIL.)

The change in the role of the peoples from villager to laborer-consumer was also exampled by the change from food growers to dependency on food imports from abroad - another face of being made into a consumer market. The resulting social disruption and discontent ripened over 200 years until when in the 1960s as the colonial empires ended and independence was obtained, the enthusiasm and expectancy for change likewise collapsed when colonial subjugation was replaced by international corporate giantism and global control..and the people were again forgotten or ignored, or suppressed as before independence.

---------Precis' and Definitions -----
In the 1960s, when independence saw the replacement of colonial masters by corporate-elite partnerships who finished the job of squeezing the final drops of profit from the now landless masses-turned labor, there was no aid and progress for the masses but rebellion through activism (and increasing militancy). In the 80s (my time of travel and work in developing areas, especially Islamic Africa), rebellion at first took the form of intellectual debate and a search for alternative, theoretical models to the stifling and increasingly corrupt status quo. Marxism offered a tantalizing vision (though still unpalletable to the African tribal POV, and the Soviet Union's facade was still intact ...so many newly independent, "3rd World" nations sought relations with the USSR to counterbalance the new corporate-elite rulers...thinking they, with their fresh crop of London School of Economics wunderkinds would be able to at least play the game of neutrality and balance-of-powers without succumbing entirely to either the West (United States and its allies, and Chase Manhattan Bank) or to the Soviet bloc (Russia, Bank of Hungary, China). China was still a minor presence though seen by on-site observers, myself included, as strategically (and smartly so) involved in low profile, though far-sighted, infrastructure projects such as the cross-Cameroon-Nigeria rail line, eventually to be extended/connected across West Africa.

Some definitions:

ISIS - Islamic (Sunni) State in Iraq and Syria, a vision of militant Islamic activists (jihadists) nurtured and matured during the civil war in Syria and in the security vacuum that followed the departure of American forces from Iraq.

ISIL - an even more activist, militant offshoot of al-Qaeda expanding the vision of ISIS to the broader Levant region of southern Turkey through Syria to Egypt (also including Lebanon, Israel, the Palestinian territories and Jordan). Currently controls areas in Libya, Nigeria, Afghanistan and other areas in Africa and South Asia.

Da'ish - a somewhat pejorative term. the Arabic equivalent of "ISIL", in Arabic as ad-Dawlah al-Islāmiyah fī 'l-ʿIrāq wa-sh-Shām, leading to the acronym Da'ish or Daesh. 'Da'ish' has been used as a way of challenging the legitimacy of the group due to the negative connotations of the word.

al-Sham - the Levant region approximately.

Boko-Haram - Nigerian-centered, Islamist militant group forbidding Muslims from participating in any aspect of Western culture, political or social (including secular education and voting in elections). It has objected to Nigeria's past Muslim president and has extended its terrorist program to neighboring states.

Post Body ----
This post responds to the November 30, 2015, Washington Post article by Jim Tankersley, “This might be the most controversial theory for what’s behind the rise of ISIS” wherein Tankersley describes as "controversial" the proposal by Thomas Picketty (Le Monde, Nov 24, 2015), that income inequality, or mal-distrbuted asset profits, is a determining factor that created ISIS and now has been responsible for the expansion of ISIS's goals to include the broader Levant region (southern Turkey through Syria to Egypt (also including Lebanon, Israel, the Palestinian territories and Jordan).

Contrary to Tankersley, I champion Picketty's theory and react with surprise at Tankersley's challenge.

Plus I regard that for anyone who had traveled for any length of time in any part of the newly independent, developing nations in the 1970s through the 1980s, unequal sharing of national profits from resource wealth was then highly visible and now continues to be an unquestionable factor behind the rise of militant social-political movements similar to ISIS, e.g., Boko-Haram (Nigeria),and elsewhere in the Mideast, Africa (Mali, Somalia), Asia and in other post-colonial territories around the globe.

Personally, I view post-colonial regions, and especially the needs of their citizenry, as almost universally having been ignored by their former 'masters' such that militant disruption to social "order" ('order' favorable to Western power exploitation of resources) was inevitable.

Tankersley writes:

"A year after his 700-page opus "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" stormed to the top of America's best-seller lists, Thomas Piketty is out with a new argument about income inequality. It may prove more controversial than his book, which continues to generate debate in political and economic circles.

The new argument, which Piketty spelled out recently in the French newspaper Le Monde, is this: Inequality is a major driver of Middle Eastern terrorism, including the Islamic State attacks on Paris earlier this month — and Western nations have themselves largely to blame for that inequality."

Why do I question Tankersley's 'questioning' of Picketty? That is a perspective coming from personal experience.

In the 1980s, I was an observer in post-colonial 3rd world developing nations. There, for someone who got around unescorted and with 'feet on the ground', one heard the rising voices of young and older intellectuals, and non-intellectuals, who were 'noticing' with growing discontent and speaking with rapidly maturing sophistication about the increasingly bold and settled pattern of corruption and concentration of national resource profits among the very few at the top of the social order. (This is unsettlingly familiar to current discontent in the western-powers world where gross inequality of wealth and social goods have for at least two decades been leading to social unrest.)

From that experience, I see ISIS as an expected and inevitable player on the world stage…however much we wish ISIS had a nicer script written for it.

One could not but hear those complaining voices and not foresee predictably bad future outcomes (political discontent) in the shape of ISIS, Boko-Haram and similar voices and organizations expressing activism for change.

So, I have a healthy dose of surprise to hear from Mr. Tankersley that it is somehow '"controversial" that inequality of asset sharing is a cause for the rise of ISIS, Boko-Haram and similar voices of outrage. (I hope he is writing sardonically.)

Further, I and others saw future militant socio-political activism as not only inevitable but also as unstoppable because of the lock that exploitive capitalism/corporatism had on blocking enlightened resource-profit policies from developing both within the resource-rich developing areas and among the former colonial powers themselves.

Corporate greed and Euro-American government weakness and left-over colonial myopia, arrogance and racism: all these weaknesses led to the 1960s post-colonial collapse or poverty-continuance in the ISIS/Boko-Haram regions where a new retro-colonial status was principally characterized by replacement of food self-sufficiency (with political dependency) with political independence but as new mass consumer markets for european goods, including food. The same corruption and the new exploitive 'partnerships' between traditional (tribal) governance hierarchies and foreign corporate exploiters prevented the newly acquired oil wealth from reaching the masses. I and others spoke out about that unbalance and the then nascent signs of coming social unrest then limited to 'coffee house style', intellectualized 'social Marxism'.

We warned about the absurdly skewed concentration of oil wealth into private accounts in Switzerland, Luxemburg (and London) would lead to serious social unrest. This was famously exampled by the 1984 'Dikko Affair' - the kidnapping in England by Israeli agents of Nigeria's former Minister of Transportation, Amaru Dikko, and the attempted return of him to Nigeria who hoped to recover the roughly $5-6 Billion Mr Dikko was alleged to have embezzled from Nigeria's oil revenue. Also, in 2011, 'James Ibori' embezzlement case (Nigerian) was another prime example.

But my voice and of others were not heard, or were drowned out by the ringing of export cash registers. So, 35 years later, 'we' (America and the former Euro-colonial masters) now have 1980s 3rd world militant outrage shouting (and shooting) in our main streets and boulevards from Los Angeles to London, Paris and Rome. In my mind, the gross, profitability-prioritizing of the previous colonial powers international policy could only, logically, lead to ISIS.

If real partnerships for more equitable use of national resource profits had been created between the former colonial masters (also including America as an interested power party)and the newly independent, developing nations to create programs and policies for more equitable wealth distribution in terms of schools, industry, housing, electricity and water, ISIS and Boko-Haram would not have taken the form we see today.

A Dangling Social Contract: The New Slavery, the New Lynching of African-Americans, the Rebirth of Step-n-Fetchit: The Benefit and Shame of a Smile

This posting is motivated by Marion Wright Edelman's recent article in the online HuffingtonPost (August 7, 2015), "Helping Black Boys Survive: What a Difference a Smile Makes." Although Pericles21 sees merit in Ms. Edelman's 'Smile Fix' ('wear a smile, save your life'), it is actually a 'quick fix', a patch-job' of 'The Problem' (the too-frequent police shootings of unarmed African-Americans). Pericles21 sees 'The Problem' of police shootings as one of the faces of endemic, cultural racism against African-Americans and especially African-American males. Going further, Pericles21 sees a dangerous, longer term negative value of teaching this survival device to African-American youth (without 'Fixing' the larger scope cultural Problem of racism) because 'The Smile' fix, as it has always been, is an artifice, a deliberately self-disguising mask that 'pretends'... and interferes with 'normal' maturing.

The 'Smile Fix' has always been in the survival-repertoire of African-Americans and it has not solved The Problem' of endemic societal racism.

The 'Smile Fix' regresses African-American progress (especially for males) back 90 years to the era of an iconic (though negative image) early movie role of 'Step'n Fetchit' (acted by William Perry), of which it is said:

Perry's typical film persona and stage name have long been controversial, and seen as illustrative of negative stereotypes of African-Americans. Seen through a modern lens, Perry's character [Step'n Fetchit] has been described as "painfully racist" but also "subversive".[4][Wikepedia]

Pericles21 suggests a question:

Has 'Trayvon', 'Ferguson', 'Charleston', 'Sandra Bland', et al forced African-Americans to regress and once again seek to disguise themselves behind the mask of the'Step-n-Fetchit'smile to help in the literal life-and-death daily survival gauntlet for a minority in America? Has the smile once again become a solution to the recent years' police shootings of unarmed minorities, especially of African-Americans? And, is there in current America a 'dangling', incomplete social contract in play that is a barrier to America becoming 'post-racial, i.e., achieving a democratic goal of harmonious race relations?

Pericles21 has a broader view of 'The Problem' that led Ms. Edeleman to propose the 'Smile Fix'. This is not a rejection of Ms. Edelman's 'Smile Fix' but an expansion of her analysis. In this broader view, Pericles21 proposes that Ms. Edelman and others who have endorsed the 'Smile Fix' have overlooked an essential perspective on 'The Problem' (the appearance of disregard for the law agents by African-American males who are shot by police: 'The Problem' as defined does not recognize that the American Social Contract, the quid pro quo contained in the Bill of Rights that are assured to all of us by the American Constitution, is not fully extended in real life to African-American males. Instead full coverage of the American Social Contract has been excused away by endemic social stereotyping of the African-American and replaced by endemic negative attitudes towards African Americans.

This undercurrent of hate and negative attitudes towards African-Americans, and in turn the revealing of the unbalanced American Social Contract, was underscored for Greater America by the recent Charleston (South Carolina) Church shootings committed by Dylan Roof (June 17, 2015) that re-awakened America to the scary significance of the Confederate flag, i.e., the Confederate flag is not a harmless heritage icon but a frightening reminder that the American Civil War has not ended.

For African-Americans especially, the Civil War has never ended as they, unlike the rest of America, have never been allowed to sleep peacefully because that flag has continuously and deliberately been thrust in their faces as a symbol of intimidation. On the contrary, African-Americans have always been aware of the threatening significance of that flag as a symbol of preserving slavery status because they have never been permitted to live in peace from the physical and psychological threats carried out under that flag.

Although the South 'lost' the Civil War and lost the legal right to hold slaves, the South has fought a 150 year post-war insurgency against the former slave themselves, designed to keep the African-American in slave status by impeding open voting through gerrymandering voting districts, imposing poll taxes and poll exams, and by outright intimidation (lynching, rape, church-burning, etc). To this end, the South and its allies have relied on some sectors of the media to bombard the public with negative stereotypes and used legislative leverage to enact 'False Flag' operations like the War on Drugs that imposed unduly large sentences in privatized (self-aggrandizing) prisons on un-balancedly African-american and other males of color.

For this reason, Pericles21 has defended Dylan Roof as a sacrificial lamb (June 25, 2015, 'The Charleston SC Shootings:... About the Shooter at the Emanuel AME Church, About America's Abandonment of It's Children and of the Common Weal'). Pericles21 cautions Americans not to buy into the demonizing of Dylan Roof as if he and his hate appeared out of a vacuum because Dylan's young mind was captured, warped and guided by extremist, racist media to murder the 9 African-Americans who had invited him into their church to pray with them. To repeat that post, Pericles21 asks that the media voices who motivated Dylan be put on trial with him... or asked to defend his thoughts, beliefs, prejudices and actions...because they made Dylan.

African-Americans are too often made general fault-bearers for a disappointed and frustrated society at large. This 'legacy' of being the 'blame bearer' describes a social 'unbalance' that has existed since the end of the Civil War - through the wrecking of Reconstruction, the rise of Jim Crow, the dilution of the Voting Rights Act and now the flood of shootings of unarmed african-Americans. The American Social Contract, guaranteed by the Constitution, was long ago broken and is still 'dangling':

Pericles21:
The Problem is really one of a 'dangling, incomplete, social contract' between a citizen group (African-American)(assumed fully vested in rights as well as obligations) and society. Especially for African-American males, the social contract of reciprocated rewards has been abrogated with the total focus on, and excuse given as justification of breaking the contract, 'impropriety' of tone of voice, dress, music, skin color, etc (all superficial labeling of physical and behavioral APPEARANCES which have been used as excuses to disenfranchise and to shoot

And what is the American Social Contract that is not complete (broken)?

The broken American Social Contract is the failure by America to uphold its end of the social 'deal' to minorities, and specifically to African-Americans, and more specifically to African-American males. The Deal is that 'good' behavior as marked by complete conformity to standards of behavior and appearance that make White-America comfortable with the presence of minorities of color, will be reciprocated by full and fair acceptance and treatment of the buying-in minorities as first class citizens. The dangling contract clause not present for minorities and especially for African-American males translates to equal access to the common good, to uncomplicated/unimpeded voting rights, housing, education, social movement and relationships, legal and law enforcement respect, etc., ...all those 'equalities' that make for a life of ease with the social environment so casually and automatically assumed by White Americans.

A central part of the dangling social contract is the 'fix' that one frequently hears these days in the haze of too-frequent police shootings of unarmed African-American males whose 'threat countenance' seems nothing more than 'improper' attire (hoodies), and especially a 'improper' countenance (no smile and no soft voice). The 'Fix'is to emphasize to African-American males not to wear hoodies and to always keep a smile.

This 'Fix' can be equated to a modern lynching of the psychological sort.

Teaching an African-American male youth to show a smile during his day will, in brutal reality, help save his life even if he doesn't change his normal, legal behavior.

But while the smile'Fix' will ease his way and help assure he will not be shot by an offended or pathologically xenophobic policeman, there might be a longer term disadvantage that in later, adult, life this smiling face will still be regarded as a 'boy' even at 25, 35 or 55 years old, and he will not be regarded as worthy of adult status, i.e., he will not merit serious consideration for job advancement, positions of significance and adult responsibility. Focusing on always smiling, the youthful boy will not have 'allowed' himself to mature into a serious-minded adult. In society's eyes (majority, white society) his darkness of skin may be compensated for by the smile but the person underneath will remain stamped down and insignificant, just a pleasant-faced boy, a superficial background 'extra'. The boy will not have gained full self-esteem and respect as an adult.

Teaching 'The Smile' is the new 'Talk' that African-American parents (and no doubt, many other minority parents) are asked to give to their sons (like The Talk given to them by their own parents and in generations-to-generations before) in the current era of police shootings of unarmed African-American youth.

Sure, this should remove the impetus by police to shoot but we have learned, and are relearning, The Talk and The Smile aren't as effective as much as we think it should be. Is this ongoing tradition of 'The Talk', even in post-civil rights, really become now 'The New Lynching'?

Is 'The New Lynching' a psychological lynching of the spirit and the soul: the almost daily psychological castration-and-lynching of the African-American male to mold (lion train him) him to voluntarily take to the guilt-created, guilt-projected harnessing needs of white America?

White America has a guilt stemming from their own acknowledgement that they themselves would be very angry if they were in the position of African-Americans without knowing the barriers that they (white) know are erected and maintained to rope in minorities and African-American males in particular.

The need of White America to escape the burden of shared accountability for the 'Dangling American Social Contract', White America projects onto the minority target both White instigation and minority confusion (and conformity failures) about how to assimilate to the majority culture.

Only in this current 'lynching' era, White America doesn't have to bloody their hands:

Pericles21: the African-American male is persuaded to bring his own rope, loop it over the tree limb and string himself up. Plus, he must feel bad about it all by accepting the irrational fear of White America of his skin color. White America goes on discriminating, hating, shoot-first-by-police and is now totally guilt-free because of this new 'framing'. The African-American male who, in the erms of the new, popularized psychology, has become convinced to own and administer his self-oppression and lynching.

The African-American male must 'own' unfair treatment by others and thereby take ownership of White America's continuing prejudice, discrimination, guilt and hate. What a good deal for White America. What a social failure in working because what kind of thinking human could long keep all that rationalizing and self-delusion intact without succumbing to extreme fear, confusion, self-submerging and in cases 'acting out'on self, family and society?

The cultural disparity of race and appearance still remains - Black women are still trying to disguise their natural healthy hair by pressing it into 'unnatural', greased shapes - and it is unfair to African-American males: a concentrated face on a white male is a positive , i.e., praised as 'manly', 'warrior like', 'leadership focus', 'a Thinker', 'protective father' ...while the same countenance on an African-American male is labeled automatically as 'angry and threatening' and something to be afraid of, to nip-in-the-bud (shoot) before it gets out of control.

This too-quick labeling of anything on a Black male face, except a smile, as negative and a sign of potential, though not-explicitly-showing, anger to fear is another projection from white society of its guilt about knowlingly benefitting almost every day from some privilege, great or small, that comes with having white skin. In slavery times, the great fear (and anger) was slave rebellion...attributed to a 'negative' tendency of the slave (blackmale) to have a naturally rebellious, angry soul. White sinfulness was thereby 'whitewashed' away and the sin of slavery placed on the slave. The clock keeps going round, the tune keeps repeating.

Anticipating Our First Encounter with Advanced Extraterrestrial Life

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This blogger, Pericles21, let go of earth-focused restraints to muse on a recent web article on the subject of what we might expect when advanced extraterrestrial life is 'discovered': 'New Advances in the Search for Extraterrestrial Life --Will It Be Inconceivable to Us?, (DailyGalaxy, August 8, 2015).

First, 'when ET is discovered' is such an ego-centered frailty of humankind. For self-protection (i.e., to prevent arrogant, and dangerous, presumptions of our superiority), we should shift our frame from humans 'discovering' ET to a reality that, indeed, it is us humans that will be 'discovered'... by a far more advanced life-form. This reframing will be necessary since it is ET who will have the advanced technology to visit us while we will not have the technology to return the courtesy (as far as the public knows).

The Daily Galaxy begins by framing their article using earth as a reference point:

A thin layer near the surface of Earth is teeming with life of huge diversity: from micro-organisms to plants and animals, and even intelligent species. Up to now, this forms the only known sample of life in the Universe. We now readily accept that the laws and concepts of physics and chemistry apply throughout the cosmos. Is there a general biology as well: is there life beyond Earth?

With the Sun just about half-way through its life-time, humankind as we know it is likely to constitute a rather short transient episode, and advanced extra-terrestrial life might be inconceivable to us in its complexity, just as human life is to amoebae.

As the article points out, the wide range of biodiversity here on earth that produces new species 'discoveries' every year suggests we should be prepared for a surprise when we 'find' ET because ET will have had many-fold more time-cycles of their evolution to produce a hugely wider variation of ET life forms than we have on earth.

But to be balanced in perspective, there is the contra-diversity theory of "convergent evolution" championed by Simon Morris (The Runes Of Evolution)(2015) that posits ET will probably look like us at least in basic morphology (number of limbs, eyes, etc). Professor Morris makes the case for a:

ubiquitous "map of life" that governs the way in which all living things develop.
It builds on the established principle of convergent evolution, a widely-supported theory -- although one still disputed by some biologists -- that different species will independently evolve similar features.

Pericles21 partially, but significantly, disagrees with the 'convergent' view of evolution and posits an 'interpreted diversity of life' point of view that:

although advanced extraterrestrial life may evolve towards a similar morphology (shape), advanced ET life will likely show us an immense diversity of function and internal life-chemistry that will not necessarily be 'bio-organic' ... nor human in appearance.

This will be addressed later.

To help us prepare to meet diversity in ET life, we must adapt our understanding of what is life. This definition has to be 'Reductionist':

how do/can we identify the most simple, basic features that might describe what is 'life'.

Pericles21 posits that first, there should be 'containment', then 'form', an 'energy gathering-utilization mechanism' (e.g., bio-ingestion, radiation absorption, temperature/density gradient, etc), a charge transfer-based sensory network serving to operate a potential energy machine, an information/sentience system analogous in function to DNA, and a mechanism to assure longevity or survival of the sentient unit or community.

From these proposed principles of life, one hypothetical example of ET "life" might derive from the recently announced (DARPA project) nanoscale, Nernst-reversible, metallic-dendritic growth-retraction mechanism that looks to be a solid state analogy to bio-neuronic network components (axions). This suggests a model of low temperature, quasi-solid, metallic-based ET 'life' with cognitive reflexes thousands of times faster than the human brain.

Pericles21 champions a personal, entropic theory of shape that:

evolution is driven to minimize entropy, i.e., to take a shape that is the most streamlined (least entropy)

This least entropic state, this evolutionary 'end-point', may take the appearance of shapelessness, where the highest evolved morphology will appear to be a 'spherical or globular form. But so far, we can only muse about ET since we have only one publicly known data point of life in the universe, our own planet Earth. We will have to wait to expand on evolution until a second data point is discovered or revealed. Then our knowledge, and science, of life will take a 'quantum leap'.

Posted by: Resonanz | August 11, 2015 at 08:58 AM

Stephen Hawking to Collaborate in Private Funded Search for Extraterrestrial Life

[Pericles21 submitted this piece in response to a request for comment at 'quora.com', July 22, 2015]

First, I feel it is good that Private Money will back the project because I expect Private Money will (potentially?) protect the project from non-scientific interference (belief orthodoxy and political pressures). Second, I feel there isn't a better project principal (designer/partner/adviser) than Stephen Hawking. His overall contributions can be 'earth changing'. should he let loose all his inner genius, i.e., the knowledge and intuition that lies within himself still unformed, unuttered. I hope to see exotic new concepts in astrophysics and astrobiology from Hawking, especially in the development and application of new mathematics formalisms and applications.

However, I am not wholly confident that Hawking personally is free from bias, i.e., I am made less confident of his objectivity by his openly (and frequently) stated warnings against naively reaching out and making contact with superior Aliens whose motives or psychology, in his words, 'might be harmful to humanity'.

(I don't fully share Hawking's apparent paranoia here.)

On the other hand, I hope the project will employ only passive detection methods and instruments, guided (and controlled) by a truly innovative search protocol with new design features for enhanced-performance detection instruments. In this context, I have full faith that Hawking's contribution to the project will be startling for the resulting protocol, improved instrumentation (in components and concept, i.e, #nano-scale-photometry) and results.

I pose the following topics for Mr Hawking to think on and develop or rule out:
- What kind of galaxy might have the greatest stability?
- How close to a central (massive) Black Hole might lie stable sol systems, dwarf galaxies and other space groups and bodies? How plentiful are Rogue Planets and rogue sol systems?
- What form(s) of energy (not currently conceived of on earth) might be used
by an advanced civilization? What might be the 'leakage' factor (radiation to space) for each? Would't an advanced civ develop 'non-leaking' energy?
- What other forms of detectable markers might there be other than energy and atmosphere? What markers miht not be detectable by current methods?
- Wouldn't a developed Alien disguise their civilization's location and state of advancement? How? Still, what markers might be leaked, detected and and deciphered?
- Wouldn't an advanced civ leave markers throughout it's home galaxy? What kind?
- What kind of 'code' might Aliens employ in their signals to 'externals'?
- Can 'entangled' communication be detected/hacked?
- What markers might hint at Alien tinkering with a Black Hole for energy tapping or signal modulation?
- Is it possible to develop (if not already) an advanced algorithm that might generate a matrix of possibilities, based on home planet astro-biological factors, for Alien features - language (yes!), mathematics, behavioral modes, ethics, cross-species prejudice and aggression, physical morphology, technology type...?
- What kinds of statistics might apply to this search? What new statistical tools or uses might be required?
- What kind of 'weaponry' might an Alien have? Personal? 'Battle craft'? Interstellar? Kinetic and/or energy?
- What form of energy intake might an advanced Alien require? Physical food? Abstracted energy (tablets, fluids devoid of origin identification)? Radiation?
- what morphology (or mix) might an Alien have? Physical? 'Gone cyber'?
- What might be Alien psychology types? What might be their significance to human safety?
- Overall, considering what we so far know about the distribution of 'habitable' planets, what radius segments might be best to search? I don't mean to seem uneducated about 'Habitable Zones' but what about non-water based life? Non-liquid based life (solid, gaseous, plasma, other states?)
- What innovative detection instruments might be developed? New wavelengths? New electronics? New modulation detection schemas - i.e., Alien Fourier signals, new algorithmic mixes, innovative exo-math series groupings, etc?
- How far might Alien employment of math series go? 5th or 6th order? 10th or above? What other radiative/dimensional relationships (ala Maxwell-Gauss) might Aliens have?
- How valid might be earth-based manifold theory applied to Alien technology? How might maths for 'extra-earth level' manifolds be formatted, codified and utilized?
- When in advanced tech might an Alien develop extra-Newtonian space propulsion? Beyond plasma? Space warping? Black Hole hopping? What signs might there be of Black Hole manipulation/control for inter-galaxy travel?

These are just some ideas.

'Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus' : Mary Shelley's Prescient, 1821 Novel of Humankind's Attempt to Understand the Meaning of Life and the Soul

Note: "Frankenstein, the Monster..." (1821) should be a primer for every modern student and researcher in Artificial Intelligence. The tortured musings of the cobbled-together monster (Ai components) give clues two hundred years later to applying the (Alan) Turing Test for self awareness and developing algorithms for modern artificial intelligence machines.
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This was written in response to a request for comment regarding Mary Shelley, the early 1800's author of Frankenstein: or the Modern Prometheus, (1818) and Shelley's place in the evolving thinking about the meaning of life and the soul. Although Shelly might not to be significant in a discussion of 19th century tinking on these subjects, this blogger (Pericles21) feels Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' is very important and played a central if not initiating part in framing the thinking about the soul, life and even artificial intelligence from 1818 to the Transhumanism movement of today. Mary Shelley wrote 'Frankenstein' on a dare in 1818 when she was very young and lacking a formal higher education especially technical (although home schooled by very well educated and devoted parents, the Godwin's) who were well known at the time in European intellectual and salon circles. Mary's father was the political philosopher William Godwin, and her mother was the philosopher and feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft. In addition to Mary Shelley's own varied literary works, she edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley and even is rumored to have assisted in editing the works of the great Romantic poet, Byron. But Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' still ranks as a leader in establishing a new literary frontier in human imagination that explores the most sacred areas of human thought, life and the soul.
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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was a product of her times, circa 1800. She participated in the thinking and discussions of her times about the nature of life and the soul. Remarkably for such a young person (age 19 at the time she wrote her first work, 'Frankenstein' in 1818) and a woman without formal education much less technical education, she was at the forefront of thinkers of her time (though unknowingly at first) about these topics. In particular, Shelley was caught up in the excitement of new scientific concepts in physiology, i.e., 'animal electricity' ala (Galvani, and discoveries in higher mathematics and science that would lead to the Riemann mathematical lectures in 1854, James Clerk Maxwell's 'Electromagnetic Relationships' in 1865, and eventually to Albert Einstein's Special Relativity Theory (1905), and along the same path of thought and imagination to great works in technical fiction and even art, e.g, the Cubist movement begun around 1905 and exampled by the painters, Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, Fernand Leger and Paul Cezanne.

Mary Shelley's intellectual world generated fictional works that expressed the excitement of new science which expanded the boundaries of human ingenuity and imagination. This new territory of the imagination based on scientific discovery led to the 1865 rendering of nascent quantum mechanical tenets of Uncertainy and other quantum principles in the fantasy worlds authored by Oxford mathematics professor (1855-81), Charles Dodgson (nome-de-plume, Lewis Carroll), notably his 'Alice in Wonderland' (1865) and 'Through the Looking Glass' (1871). And also in the works of Jules Verne, aka 'The Father of Science Fiction'- '20 Thousand Leagues Under the Sea' (1870) and   'Around the World in 80 Days' (1873); in the breakthrough science fiction works of HG Wells (biologist) -  'The Time Machine' (1895), 'The War of the Worlds' (1898) a truly out-of-this-world vision of non-earth (extraterrestrial life forms) and 'The Island of Dr Moreau' (1896) which must be placed as the inheritor of Mary Shelly's earlier 'Frankenstein'of 1818. 

Although Mary Shelley was not a scientist nor formally educated, she was home-schooled by very well educated and sophisticated parents. And her parents' home was an important intellectual scene of the very important 'Salon' phenomenon of 17th and 18th century Europe.  In the scene, Mary was  'taken up' as a teen age girl by the famous poet Percy Shelly and was introduced and immersed into the company of leading figures of 'forward' thinking in Europe, including the mentoring 'attention' from the poet and intellectual, George Gordon Lord Byron.  In this company, on an idyllic Swiss lake vacation, Mary Shelley shyly accepted a 'dare' to write a story about some important or interesting theme of the day.  Venturing forth from in this game, Mary wrote 'Frankenstein: or the Modern Prometheus' (1818). 'Frankenstein' put into narrative words the questions raised but not clearly stated from the serious scientific thinking of the time about the nature of the soul and life, and following on from there, race and species which in 1839 surfaced through the  biology field work of Charles Darwin, 'The Voyage of the Beagle', and  Darwin's later great breakthrough,'The Origin of the Species' (1859).

Despite Mary Shelley's lack of formal education, especially technical,  Mary's 'Frankenstein'  was at the leading edge of the wave of emotion among Europe's salon intellectuals who pondered the place (and meaning) of humanity in the midst of rapidly advancing 'new science'. A principal focus of those salon debates was, 'what are the biological and/or yet undiscovered principles of life and especially the soul'?

Following from her immersion in the leading salon discussions of her time, Mary Shelly explored what might be the consequences of mankind's 'tampering' with the sacredness of life and soul. In this context, Dr Frankenstein's creation is much more than a 'put-together monster' but a representation of  humanity itself, stumbling along blindly and naively into new realms not completely understood and loaded with potential risks and dangers.

Of great 'prescience' in 'Frankenstein' is how Mary Shelley writes about the monster's musings (and laments) about his physiological incompleteness despite his self-awareness, his worries about who could love him, his search for love and his thoughts about what to do with himself. These are concepts of man-made intelligence that Mary Shelley rendered into words in 1818 but would not be addressed seriously until the 1940's mathematical work of Alan Turing's 'Turing Test', an algorithmic method of determining whether an artificial intelligence is self-aware, i.e., sentient. Interestingly, in the context of this discussion, Alan Turing turned his mathematical prowess into developing a theory for the chemical basis of morphogenesis.

More modern examples of Mary Shelley's legacy of exploring the meaning of life and soul would include Philip K Dick's, 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep' (1962) (also made into the film hit, 'Blade Runner'  (1982), and  Ursula Le Guinn's ('The Left Hand of Darkness' (1969), Samuel Delaney's 'Babel-17' (1966)  and Walter Moseley's 'Blue Light' (1998) and 'Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World' (2001).

Mary Shelley's inquiring spirit lives on  today. Modern (current, 2015) science is the most recent chapter of her legacy (and of her contemporary fantasy authors, e.g.,Wells, Verne, et al) of  imagination- become-real, e.g., organ transplants, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), and the looming 'trans-human singularity' ( Neal Stephenson, Ray Kurzweil, Jody Turner, Vladimir Mayakovsky, et al).

Dylann Roof's Sister Pulls GoFundMe Site: Now Let's Build a Yellow Brick Road to America's Future

Amber Roof removed her GoFundMe page that was raising money for her honeymoon. Roof started the site after her brother, Dylann, allegedly murdered nine people inside Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church on JUne 17. On a page called “A Fresh Start for Michael and Amber,” Amber Roof writes that her dream wedding day “was full of sorrow, pain, and shame, tainted by the actions of one man.” The couple requested $5,000 “to cover lost wedding costs, to pay bills, and to send us on our dream honeymoon.” Ten percent of what they raise was to be donated to Mother Emanuel. 

Pericles21 commented at 'The Daily Beast' news zine:

Give. Start something good behind her brother's deed. Give to the Mother Emanuel AME Church to fund a multi-racial Sunday Bible study group. Come from across the country and Show up Sundays at 'Mother E' in all finery looking like a flower gift to the Higher Power. Walk the Path to the higher Good. Show respect for the innocent and mercy for those in sin. Add a brick to the golden road to the future. Name a child after one of the Nine. Have to start somewhere.

Hmmmm

'Modern' Republicanism: Squeezing the Last Drop of Profit from America's Slave Legacy, and Hoping for More

In Progress:

Modern Republicanism is stuck in place while America moves on. The GOP is like a grown-up child in tantrum whose parent has no more time to give and has walked on. The GOP is like an aged, whiskered mouse trying to find its way out of a maze of patched together twists and turns it cleverly contrapted a while back to gain access to a now empty cupboard.

The current GOP acts as a stubborn anchor keeping the American scow ship-of-state from leaving the dock while impatient foreign nations (friends and rivals) have grown tired of waiting and have begun the yacht race.

Today's GOP is living in a bad nightmare taken from the tales of 'Brer Rabbit': the Nixon-era GOP grabbed the tar-baby of immediate gratification to take away the southern, DixieCrat voting bloc from the Democrats (southern racism, anti-unionism, anti-education,..) and hasn't been able to let go since. The recent (June 17, 2015) Charleston, South Carolina race-hate shootings (9 Black church goers shot and killed ..in church Bible study) is the latest example of the xxxxx consequences of that strategy.

One could conclude that the GOP was driven to the 'Southern Strategy' because its hold-over, industrial revolution era (1890's to 1945) capitalist-first platform had reached the end of its relevancy to both modern domestic America (racial equality and growth into a multicultural union) and the global rise of new economic blocs, e.g., China, Pacific Rim economy, South America, BRIC. coming from the collapse of global empires, the shrinking of the globe into a mono-culture by modern communication and the removal of past boundaries that prevented the cooperation among workers and racial-national groups in America and around the globe).

a picture of how Nixon's 'Southern strategy' (or more accurately, the A of A,,,) has had a congealing (delaying, dragging) effect on America's attempts to grow into the 21st century is well-stated by Harold Meyerson, the Washington Post Opinion writer in his April 8, 2015 piece:

Fueled by the mega-donations of the mega-rich, today’s Republican Party is not just far from being the party of Lincoln: It’s really the party of Jefferson Davis. It suppresses black voting; it opposes federal efforts to mitigate poverty; it objects to federal investment in infrastructure and education just as the antebellum South opposed internal improvements and rejected public education; it scorns compromise. It is nearly all white. It is the lineal descendant of Lee’s army, and the descendants of Grant’s have yet to subdue it.

The Charleston SC Shootings: About the Shooter at the Emanuel AME Church, About America's Abandonment of It's Children and of the Common Weal

About Dylann Roof, the shooter at the Charleston Church on June 17. Everyone is calling for various kinds of punishment to Dylann for those 9 people murdered.

To This writer, Dylann Roof is just as much a victim as the 9 people he shot and killed. And the bottom cause of it all is American greed and an obsession with profit, and the modern American inability to find a national ethic and direction, and substituting 'is it profitable' as the fix-it-all answer to these questions and moral dilemmas.

Looking at Dylann and reading his life story to date, I see a confused, barely-out-of-adolescence, kid ...an American youth...a product of American focus on profit and not public services, of America's obsession with defunding public education in favor of floating bonds for bigger stadiums, of being so afraid of providing services to racial minorities that services are cut for all citizens. Dylann was one of the victims of these wrong and un-American policies.

Before I see Dylann (as a co-called 'adult') confined for the next 20 years ...or executed (for God's sake), I want to see some of the major media hate mongers and truth distorters on trial - Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, the KKK leaders, and the rest. It hurts bad that their spew was successful in killing 10 people (yes, 10) on June 17, 2015, at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

World Affairs and American Public Education: Why We All Should Be Concerned (Charleston, South Carolina, is 'Proof')

June 25, 2015. Post Script. In the Shadow of Charleston, SC shootings. [ref., Perched Eye, June 25, 2015]
This postscript deals with a recent terrible shooting murders in Charleston, South Carolina, on June 17, 2015. That event that is not something to be proud of as a human, but it bears out this writer's warning..in a sad, gothic-surreal way.

It seems that much of the sentiment in this original post was made real by the mass shootings (and killings) of 9 African -American church goers on June 17, 2015, at the Emanuel African Methodist Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

Pericles21 emphasizes his shock (and concern) that 'anyone' with an ounce of analytical ability and common sense should not have seen 'Charleston' coming and should not have been surprised by the identity and profile of the shooter, a recently-turned 21, white 'man-child'- poor, a school drop-out and societal castoff, an abandoned and innocent soul set adrift by defunded public services (notably, public education) in a sea of right-wing media sharks without the mental acuity equipment to swim away from danger, falsehood and the deliberate distortions voiced by the extremist media stars (Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter,the Fox News crews, the KKK, the Conservative Citizens Councils, etc.).

Finally, Pericles21 sees the Charleston shootings as 10 innocent persons (the 9 murdered church goers and the shooter) caught up in the modern american whirlpool of ignorance, profiteering and loss of a regard for the 'Common Weal' which could have prevented the mental erosion and vulnerability of the shooter, Dylann Roof.

Dylann's story and Charleston's tragedy is a modern American tragedy that could have been prevented but wasn't because a trail of persons (politicians, profiteers, extortionists, etc) chose the easy 'Way of the 7 Deadly Sins: wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony.

The 'shooter' was/is Dylann Roof, a recently-turned-21 white youth, by looks a 'man-child',...poor, very much undereducated, ...then abandoned by 'society' to be netted by the fact-distorting, extreme right-wing hate mongers one finds freely wandering the radio and TV airwaves...claiming the wondrous ability to make complicated issues (especially race in America)'simple'. What makes this event surreal (in the true American tradition of gory surrealness, ala Natural Born Killers) is that the shot-at victims invited the shooter to first sit with them at Bible study, not knowing his intent to shoot them. To add to this Hollywood-like script, the shooter described to police later that this act of open kindness almost convinced him not to carry out his macabre plan...but his 'resolve' won out. So, no modern 'Amazing Grace' to bring down the curtain.

The message is reinforced by the terrible picture in Charleston June 17 - What has happened to America's concern for the Public Weal, most notably in the form of public education and family services?

A final comment: 'WHEN IS THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR GOING TO END?'


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America has its 'good' and 'faults', and the rest of the planet is critically affected by both aspects of America. America operates by a democratic election process that leads to a legislative-leadership structure that formulates national policy. Consequently, America's foreign policy - international interests, international friends and allies, willingness to militarily intervene in other countries affairs - is at its roots, dependent on the intelligence and awareness of the American public about world affairs as well as 'at-home' problems and needs.

In turn, the general intelligence and awareness of the American public is strongly shaped by the American education system which leads to the final point - can the rest of the world (and no doubt America itself) sleep easily knowing that the most powerful and influential culture on the planet has a significant number of its population who believe in a fundamentalist interpretation of the Christian 'Bible' wherein the world was 'created' only 7,000 years ago and who believe that fossil records showing dinosaurs lived millions of years ago are deliberately falsified lies perpetrated by political progressives intent on (1) destroying fundamentalist Christianity and (2) along the way to destroying Christianity, destroying America's the euro-racial (i.e., 'white' population).

This logic makes the problems within America's public education system a concern not only for America but for the entire planet.

First, education is perhaps the most important aspect of a developed nation today. Life is complex and requires insightful and trained minds to comprehend global issues and then, to resolve them.

Second, America is still the dominant nation economically and is arguably THE major influence shaping global culture ...and values.

Third, with all the above influence-factors, plus by virtue of it's armies and defense budget, America is too powerful a determining factor to the physical safety and sanity of the globe to have major issues in the education of Americans. Yet, America is failing to educate itself with the result that American beliefs are erroneous and are increasingly simplistic, isolationist, and xenophobic (race, nations, geographic regions).

Fourth, America has problems with its public education system. IMHO, America began to abandon and defund its public education system beginning with the Civil Rights movement in the late 1950s with the racial integration of public schools. America showed it could not adjust to a diverse population reality as compared with the unreality of enforced (and forced) racial segregation after the Civil War followed by the Jim Crow era which operated to unofficially but effectively restore the pre-war racial separation under slavery, especially in the 'public' service sectors that includes 'public' education. This issue has not been resolved. Moreover, in some ways, much of America has managed to re-verse itself from the Civil Rights era and resurrect old segregation patterns in the public schools. This reversing trend has been aided and made quicker by the added devices of school 'vouchers' and 'charter schools' which operate much like private schools yet receive public funding.

Along with the increase in charter and school voucher programs has come the most dangerous kind of academic 'freedom' - new opportunities for special-belief charter schools to receive funding for erroneous beliefs that would not have been taught in the days of strong, professionally rigorous public school systems with synchronization from the Department of Education in Washington, DC.

It is as if American education threw up its hands and gave up on the challenges and needs of diversity and open desegregation, and said, 'OK, you local neighborhoods, fix things yourselves. We (Wash, DC) only want some nominal bow to national education goals ..about which we don't know a solution.'

America needs to solve this. But, overall, it appears to me the biggest problem with American education is the lack of a national perspective on what is the purpose and content of its school teaching, and the interference (or local dominance) from religion and regional 'prejudice'.

The gaps and faults in our lacking a consistent national education program seems a 'down side' of the American version of democracy which opens up the formatting of school curriculums to states and cities and towns with distinctly different 'beliefs' that can over-reach into curricula taught in the classrooms of America.

An example of the consequences from the lack of a national consensus on education is the morass America currently experiences with creationism vs evolution. There are varying, and hotly debated, school philosophies in America on that subject and in some parts of Americat 'Creationism' is winning, or has won, over evolution. One fears how detrimental the supremacy of Creationism will be to the children who are receive an susch an education.

And these differences in education emphases seem to arrange around geographic 'poles' in America.

These poles are first, geo-political, i.e., 'Red (Republican Party, conservative, southern and formerly rural, rebel states that lost the Civil War)' vs 'Blue (Democratic Party, progressive, coastal and more northern, urban-industrialized winners of the Civil War)' states. Then there are divisions by race, economics, religion, gender tolerance, etc.

America suffers from a 'relativity dissonance' in that there is no national ethic or agreed-on scientific principle set that unites the country on just about any of these subjects. This is maybe the downside of a democratic society where 'laissez faire' marketism (so called 'free market') dominates almost al thinking about just about all topics, including education.

This 'laissez faire' replacement of science and logic seems to be the current substitution in America for a national ethic. Until this 'laissez faire' creed is tempered or is replaced by a more considered, real policy/ 'philosophy of state' the American education system will continue to be fragmented and drift.