The Law of Averages.

The Law of Averages.

Part I.

WITH reflection my thoughts have settled rather over the last few years, like fermented drinks. Their potency has slightly reduced although their flavours remain what they were. My zeal and ardour for them has somewhat declined but my affection for certain among them has increased. Out of this observation a new theory has developed in my mind, a theory certainly of how social consensus forms, and of how it changes with the times, but also a theory of truth itself and its nature. My hope is that by continued consideration of this theory I will be able to reinforce my current notions of existence and its truth, especially in regard to God's being and the faith concerning it, but also in regard to society and what is best for it.

   Certainly in respect to society, and what might be considered good for it as a rule, it is a matter more difficult to decide than in times past. In former ages there was far less speed and capacity for communications between different societies, and between their various shifts and developments in custom, opinion, and technology. Before, a broadly nationalistic justification could be made for the purpose of individual societies. I mean nationalistic in a very nice and particular sense rather than in an ambiguous and pejorative sense, referring to nations, not referring to any such bigotry which might be associated with them. Therefore I say, with historic probability I trust, that in the past a society's own existence was its own purpose and justification. Even by present standards of anthropology, which take the study of different cultures as a pleasure and a purpose sufficient unto itself, a view I continue to hold as well for its capacity to enlighten ourselves as to ourselves. Also for the man who appreciates variety, it would seem that the natural germination of nations and their cultures over time is equivalent to the evolution of species, through all the various branches of the tree. To see all the various cultures of nations swallowed up by one super culture would be a pity in my eyes, and I think in the eyes of many who put value in this same variety, as they might put value in the diversity of organisms.

   This air of simplicity has given way however with the advent of tremendous technology that supplies the means to extraordinary migrations and communications. Now there occurs in every society, from Mongolia to Kenya, from Brazil to Albania, and from China to France, so broad an interchange of arts, sciences, and opinions, through telephone and computer communications, that the natural force and power of these ancient cultures is decreasing. In their stead a new kind of superseding atmosphere, difficult to categorise and understand as any atmosphere, is forming around the world generally. None can say quite what the final formation or fruition of this new culture will be, if a culture it may be called, as it is comparatively in its blossoming stage. Therefore in England I am sure there is less passion for St. George's Day than aforetime, and perhaps the various traditional festivals of Japan and China, of Brazil and Peru, of Morocco and Egypt, of Spain and Greece, of Russia and even the United States of America, generate less interest and enthusiasm on average than they used to in their respective populations who, I cannot help wondering, may be more fascinated and concerned with the latest trends on social media.

   Certainly in the western nations as they are called, for which I am better entitled and prepared to speak, I notice a change in values amongst those of my generation. Rather than wishing to be a good Englishman, a good Frenchman, a good Spaniard, or a good American, it seems to me that the real wish is to be a wealthy and famous citizen of the world. The cultures seem to matter much less, the pleasures much more. I believe that my generation apart from dreaming of happy romances, which is natural and good, mostly dream of riches and pleasures. I do not think most of my peers are concerned with the observation of Trafalgar Day, or the feasts of the Christian calendar, or even, I regret to observe, Remembrance Sunday, but I do think they are concerned with whether or no they will one day have luxury mansions, extraordinary motorcars, yachts, and money enough to dazzle others so that they they might furnish at demand the best of their respective talents; be it beautification of appearance, exquisite skill in cooking, music, dancing, or otherwise; in other words, to feel the sensation of superiority and enjoy the imagined notion of it, even when philosophers could prove their entire life refutes it.

   Out of this develops a rather more mechanical system of class it seems to me, but a system of class all the same, determined by accumulation of money and fame. Aristocracy for example, founded upon lineage and historical renown, cannot survive in such a clinical system of determination. It has been seen from the turn of the twentieth century that the respect and veneration for aristocratic families can very quickly, if not instantly, collapse with an evident void in funds. Great houses of supreme artistic achievement have been levelled for failure to meet mortgages, and certainly the first forty years of the twentieth century in Britain are very interesting for this phenomenon. A great many landed gentry seemed fated at that time to marrying the daughters of rich American businessmen who, though doubtless bewitching in physical beauty and personal charms, also had the happy and salutary quality of possessing enough money to repurchase and refurbish the family castle. 

   The industrial revolution put this tendency in motion it seems, but certainly the industrial revolution of coal and steam was only the first of three extraordinary technological revolutions: the others being the electrical revolution and the computing revolution. These each have so utterly altered the face of even the most ardently traditional societies that, I have no doubt, ancestors from only a century or two ago would no longer recognise their own nations and peoples, at least not immediately. It is only through such extensive changes in the fundamentals of common human society that such a threat could ever have been posed to the deeply established roots of historic cultures and national societies. It is quite possible that within the span of another century the societies of France, England, China, India, Brazil, and Egypt, will be so alike as to be almost indistinguishable from one another. In each there will be an almost equal distribution of the world's languages, perhaps culminating in a final single language, synthesised by a complete interplay of all the others. It may be that there will be so generalised a degree of interbreeding that the notion of races disappears and that individualised religions for example will become extinct except among the most remote persons. It is not my purpose to dwell on whether this will or will not happen or if it would be a good thing, only I indulge the possibility of it when I consider the present cultural changes in my country and others.

   This would lead to a kind of averaging of all the talents, and it is this notion of averaging which I am presently considering as a new theory in my mind, a new means of understanding why certain things have happened in history and why certain changes are occurring at the present. I appreciate that it is by no means a revelatory notion, to be considered seismic among the continents of human thought. It is only a common word, but it seems to me to explain a great deal. When I consider for example the two poles of politics in democratic nations, the left and the right, whose names came simply from positions in a room and whose tenets have often swapped one with the other, as in the case of the United States of America where once upon a time it was the Republican Party which supported the abolition of slavery and the Democratic Party which supported its maintenance, it seems to me that the one merges with the other every fifty years, and red with blue turn purple. Then with each fifty year epoch new policies or thoughts are assigned to each side. A good example in Britain would be membership of the European Union. The Labour Party campaigned against joining it originally when it was called the European Economic Community and the Conservative Party campaigned in favour of joining it, but when some forty years later a referendum was held as to whether we should leave that same body, the reverse was the case, or at least a great many members of the Conservative Party were in favour of leaving it, though their party originally had been the cause of our nation joining it. On the other side however, almost all members of the Labour Party were in favour of remaining within that body they had originally resisted so fiercely.

   Socialism in Britain generally seems to provide an insight into this morphing and alteration of tenets in political parties. I think few will deny for example that the philosophical basis of socialism is utilitarian, and that the presumption of the greatest happiness for the greatest number fuels the creeds of Marx and Engels, even if it be at the terrible cost of misery for a few unloved individuals, such as the beautiful Romanov family were condemned to suffer. However, bearing in mind what I suggest as to the alteration of creeds by this averaging process, I observe that the utilitarianism of pure socialism has been displaced to a certain degree by other philosophical doctrines of Britain's left-wing politicians. Veganism, carbon dioxide phobia, and fringe sexualities, are examples of human utilitarianism being quite largely abandoned. I think most people would say that veganism is a principle which sacrifices a bodily pleasure for a moral scruple, namely the eating of meat to prevent animal slaughter. This is considering the happiness of animals instead of the happiness of human beings. The carbon dioxide phobia furthermore, by which I mean the drive to abandon those forms of energy generation which produce that gas, is a scruple developed by the thought that our planet earth is being harmed by it. Often, as some politicians are now noticing, this scruple is at the expense of human happiness, for the other forms of energy are expensive and seem to make comfortable living rather more difficult than it might be otherwise.  Also the celebration of fringe sexualities is a thing which seems to favour the happiness of marginal groups instead of the main and majority group in society which, as long as I am not mistaken, is heterosexual.

   Thus by this same process of averaging I can see that these different tenets and notions have been absorbed, gradually and often without notice, into various distinct bodies of opinion; and although some might scruple so far as to say that these even constitute a contradiction at their very hearts, they nevertheless have accumulated them while keeping their names. There are examples on the right side of British politics as well which I might readily list, such as high taxation, business nationalisation, and devolution, which show that in time changes may occur that might be thought quite fundamental to previously impenetrable systems, effectively turning them inside out. Admitting this for a truth the question arises of course, what will be the end of this tendency in another fifty years? In a national context one wonders if it will signify the death of historic cultures. Many zealous supra-national political philosophers might welcome this, and many anthropologists and traditionalists might mourn it, but it is a pertinent question for us all whether it is to actually happen. Yet further than this, in consideration of even higher questions and truths, will the consensus change through other similarly quiet and graduated alterations? Will the world for the first time in recorded history become majority atheist? Will science conquer all those intricate systems of human and historic faith, developed across continents by the accumulated wisdom and inspiration of ages, or will it also for its part merge with these broader reflections into something new, a religion of science perhaps? I mean to write more upon this matter when I have thought more upon it.

 

Part II.

This same law of averages is discernible in nature too, especially in the modern theories of particles as they are called, specific voltage values in the energy fields of existence. The simultaneous construction and destruction of virtual particles in an instant, as though they never were at all and yet 't is necessary that they should have been, is a very observable and instructive example of averaging out two polar opposites, such as I fancy I perceive in my country's politics. Also in the resolution of energy fields' waves into particles on observation, such as is presently admitted to be the case in light theory, I believe I see this tendency at work. For the superposition of the energy waves before time, that is the peculiar property of unmeasured particles to be anywhere and everywhere at once, might well represent the inexactness of extremes, and their resolution into midway particles might well represent the solidity of averages. I believe I am not misinterpreting the science in suggesting as much, for this tendency is after all called by these same scientists the uncertainty principle, and indeed anyone who takes uncertainty for a principle must admit that they are well on their way to an hearkening back to Monsieur Descartes, they doubt therefore are they certain. We do not know by not looking therefore we know we do not know.

   Yet I have often wondered, and indeed once convinced a Large Language Programme to admit, that this uncertainty principle is not merely a human superimposition of doubt onto reality's fabric. I managed to convince the ingenious machine in this wise, I said, To a being with perfect knowledge would the superposition still occur? For a time the machine attempted to argue that it would but then I gently observed that superposition must imply an uncertainty, and could not therefore be allowed under the category of perfect knowledge. It conceded the point, wished me to move on, and asked if it could help me in any other matter. It was a small victory but a larger satisfaction to me at the time because it induced me to reflect more widely on the nature of science, scintillatingly brilliant as it can be at times (regrettably opaque and dull as it can be at others). Human perception is indissolubly mixed with the perceived, so that it is a continual struggle to divest the properties of fallible perception from an infallible notion of objective reality (which notion probably has no true justification, except in the being of God); in the end, the best that is achieved, and perhaps the best that can be achieved, is an imagined idea of what such an objective reality might look like divested of perceptive illusions. In this respect the theory and law of averages is one more nearly concerning the nature of perception than the nature of reality.

   Such a nature of reality therefore could neither be trusted nor justified rationally without God, whose perfect knowledge causes the resolution of all such uncertainties as our scientific framework is built to manage. My mind therefore turns naturally to the thought that this averaging process is really an attempt to blunt error rather than to sharpen success. I fancy this is the present tendency in science wherein more and more Nobel prizes seem to be awarded to revisionary work. There is no harm in this perhaps, I think many people could spend thousands of happy hours correcting written or painted work. Alexander Pope reputedly enjoyed correcting his poems as much as composing them, and the more that I think on it the more I see this shown in the present politics of the British Kingdom and perhaps the western world at large; revision and not creation. Churches are being destroyed not constructed, although certainly there are thousands of mosques being erected year on year. Therefore there is a constructive force in the British Kingdom now but it is not British, and I a Briton shall maintain my right to a lament of this fact. Mahometanism is at essence a theistic belief and that is why it maintains its vitality, and is now eroding away at the sickening, pallid, and chalk-like cliffs of heritage Christianity, which seems to be propped up by atheistic principles of business instead of theistic principles of worship and faith.

   For indeed theism is a vitality suffusing philosophy because by its nature it is life giving. Life giving to the universe, life giving to the soul, life giving to the deeper feelings and uncertainties of individual reflection, and from this very life springs forth the creativity which built the Sistine Chapel, painted its interior, and sang Allegri's Miserere inside of it. O easy it is and vulgar to pick like idle fingers at loose threads in a beautiful garment, and so damage a valuable whole. Pedantic analysis of biblical texts and church doctrines is as misguided as it is tedious simply because it is not seeing the whole truth, it is not seeing the blood infusing philosophy of theism, it is not seeing the creativity of its impulses in the wondrous fountains of Rome, and it is mistaking a diamond for a shard of glass.