Tesseract
23rd June 2013, 19:28
Iron Baron 1860
The labours of the free men are directed by me
The soot stains their hands but their goggles are clean
They walk in slime and puddles
It is the machines who are free.
With myself behind the levers and a turbine symphony
I turn all the camshafts of this filthy society
The fog over my slaves convulses with energy.
And these dirty hydrocarbons that I drink
Prime the grey ideas machine
Between the jinn that shadow me
The apparitions of hysteria, my wicked company.
The balding miners, I am their mantra
That dust, that ecstasy, in their throats is nothing by me
Their sweat is their pay as it ought to be.
For they are the base metal and I am the stone
Their blood is dense with lead and antimony
And I am the minister for industry
Living large in the year eighteen sixty.
This is a poem that I wrote years ago, about the controlled and, above them, the controller. I’m not a purveyor of literary conceit and the poem was written literally, by someone who is captivated by the romance and dystopia of the industrial revolution. However, to look at the verses now, one could believe that they can serve as some kind of metaphor for society at large.
The majority of society rarely looks up in inquisition of those who control them, or the system that controls them – and unfortunately when they do the view is blotted out by a dense layer of clouds. Thankfully, from time to time, someone up above parts the clouds and affords those below who wish to look up a view of what is going on above. Those people are whistle blowers. Whistle blowers are particularly critical in societies where the common person has a reduced power to reveal information.
It is written that, when fishing, confidence is critical. The statement does not seem true at first – either the fish are present and hungry, or they are not. Surely it is not something that can be influenced by the confidence of the fisherman. However, there is an explanation for why confidence is important when you are fishing. If you’re not really expecting to catch something, you won’t care so much about reading the water, watching your line, and what bait you choose. Very often you will end up just goofing around. When that happens, your chance of catching any fish that are there is greatly diminished.
Regarding whistle blowers, it is important to take what is revealed at face value, and to have confidence in the integrity of the whistle blower. It is important for two reasons. Firstly, you run the risk of missing a critical fact due to your own doubt not allowing your rational mind to process the new information properly, like the fishermen who doesn’t bother to pay attention because of his own pessimism. If we doubt the integrity of released information, or give a vote of no-confidence in the agenda of its release, we put in jeopardy our potential to seize the moment, to make insightful inferences and to make further investigations. It is precisely to create this doubt, to vanquish the benefits of face value, that the blow of the whistle is met with the pelting of mud.
The other reason why whistle blowers should be taken at face value is that if they are not, an environment is created where potential whistle blowers are hesitant to share what they know. We must not be an audience of ungrateful wretches. I might add a third reason too, if we doubt the whistle blower we may fail to protect a very honourable person who is in danger.
Note that giving the benefit of face value absolutely should not be confused with the practice of keeping an eye open for a nugget of truth in a load of obvious non-truths. This type of friendly ear normally is a sort of last-refuge for someone whose unreliability, speciousness or dishonesty has been well established. Whistle blowers don’t usually fall into this category. Unmasked whistle blowers usually only blow the whistle once, because then they get removed from their position of privilege. Their credibility is normally damaged post-exposé only by mud slinging and speculation, the latter I will shortly address further. Any serial whistle blower that does pop up will ultimately lie in the bed that they make for themselves, but at the first instance they must be given all confidence.
There is nothing wrong with minds roaming free, speculation is a part of that. However, humans beings carry the burden of the abstract condition of status, social status that is. This status is affected by innuendo, suggestion, imputation and accusation. To affect a person’s status can be quite damaging for themselves and for their cause.
Regarding the non falsifiable: what is the value of making an accusation or suggestion, directly or otherwise, that can not be proven false? Is it worth making such non falsifiable suggestions when the subject is a human being who carries the burden of social status? Shouldn’t there be a certain etiquette for such matters? If the subject is a whistle blower with the full quota of their de merit points intact, isn’t it especially important to take a hands off approach to their status by avoiding non-falsifiable accusations? It certainly is important. We should at least try to break any such accusation we may have down into a falsifiable version – so that the accused has the power to clear their name.
Let’s not be forgetful of the information, and of the ammunition that was spawned by that information, that modern whistle blowers have blessed us with. We should avoid any recklessness or laxity of thought that casts aspersions prematurely on people who are very likely to be honourable and who need the help of favourable public opinion.
The labours of the free men are directed by me
The soot stains their hands but their goggles are clean
They walk in slime and puddles
It is the machines who are free.
With myself behind the levers and a turbine symphony
I turn all the camshafts of this filthy society
The fog over my slaves convulses with energy.
And these dirty hydrocarbons that I drink
Prime the grey ideas machine
Between the jinn that shadow me
The apparitions of hysteria, my wicked company.
The balding miners, I am their mantra
That dust, that ecstasy, in their throats is nothing by me
Their sweat is their pay as it ought to be.
For they are the base metal and I am the stone
Their blood is dense with lead and antimony
And I am the minister for industry
Living large in the year eighteen sixty.
This is a poem that I wrote years ago, about the controlled and, above them, the controller. I’m not a purveyor of literary conceit and the poem was written literally, by someone who is captivated by the romance and dystopia of the industrial revolution. However, to look at the verses now, one could believe that they can serve as some kind of metaphor for society at large.
The majority of society rarely looks up in inquisition of those who control them, or the system that controls them – and unfortunately when they do the view is blotted out by a dense layer of clouds. Thankfully, from time to time, someone up above parts the clouds and affords those below who wish to look up a view of what is going on above. Those people are whistle blowers. Whistle blowers are particularly critical in societies where the common person has a reduced power to reveal information.
It is written that, when fishing, confidence is critical. The statement does not seem true at first – either the fish are present and hungry, or they are not. Surely it is not something that can be influenced by the confidence of the fisherman. However, there is an explanation for why confidence is important when you are fishing. If you’re not really expecting to catch something, you won’t care so much about reading the water, watching your line, and what bait you choose. Very often you will end up just goofing around. When that happens, your chance of catching any fish that are there is greatly diminished.
Regarding whistle blowers, it is important to take what is revealed at face value, and to have confidence in the integrity of the whistle blower. It is important for two reasons. Firstly, you run the risk of missing a critical fact due to your own doubt not allowing your rational mind to process the new information properly, like the fishermen who doesn’t bother to pay attention because of his own pessimism. If we doubt the integrity of released information, or give a vote of no-confidence in the agenda of its release, we put in jeopardy our potential to seize the moment, to make insightful inferences and to make further investigations. It is precisely to create this doubt, to vanquish the benefits of face value, that the blow of the whistle is met with the pelting of mud.
The other reason why whistle blowers should be taken at face value is that if they are not, an environment is created where potential whistle blowers are hesitant to share what they know. We must not be an audience of ungrateful wretches. I might add a third reason too, if we doubt the whistle blower we may fail to protect a very honourable person who is in danger.
Note that giving the benefit of face value absolutely should not be confused with the practice of keeping an eye open for a nugget of truth in a load of obvious non-truths. This type of friendly ear normally is a sort of last-refuge for someone whose unreliability, speciousness or dishonesty has been well established. Whistle blowers don’t usually fall into this category. Unmasked whistle blowers usually only blow the whistle once, because then they get removed from their position of privilege. Their credibility is normally damaged post-exposé only by mud slinging and speculation, the latter I will shortly address further. Any serial whistle blower that does pop up will ultimately lie in the bed that they make for themselves, but at the first instance they must be given all confidence.
There is nothing wrong with minds roaming free, speculation is a part of that. However, humans beings carry the burden of the abstract condition of status, social status that is. This status is affected by innuendo, suggestion, imputation and accusation. To affect a person’s status can be quite damaging for themselves and for their cause.
Regarding the non falsifiable: what is the value of making an accusation or suggestion, directly or otherwise, that can not be proven false? Is it worth making such non falsifiable suggestions when the subject is a human being who carries the burden of social status? Shouldn’t there be a certain etiquette for such matters? If the subject is a whistle blower with the full quota of their de merit points intact, isn’t it especially important to take a hands off approach to their status by avoiding non-falsifiable accusations? It certainly is important. We should at least try to break any such accusation we may have down into a falsifiable version – so that the accused has the power to clear their name.
Let’s not be forgetful of the information, and of the ammunition that was spawned by that information, that modern whistle blowers have blessed us with. We should avoid any recklessness or laxity of thought that casts aspersions prematurely on people who are very likely to be honourable and who need the help of favourable public opinion.