Intelligent Design

The Three-in-oNe State Solution

2011-11-23T23:32:00.001+04:00

What if the real purpose of the current state visit of the President of Turkey to the UK was to gain support for a revolutionary proposal to overcome the impasse in Palestine? Intelligence sources have now revealed that the collective of the Bektashi Order of Sufis based in Mauritius has offered up to the global community a cunning plan to revive the ailing peace process. This vision was received during the community’s pilgrimage to Hacıbektaş in the Turkish region of central Anatolia in 2006. However, such a radical solution could only be taken seriously at a time when all other options were exhausted and people feared that the Middle East was on the brink of its final, self-destructive war.

The idea entered the collective’s consciousness from Akasha during a period of profound meditation on the paradox of the three major aspects of the Divine Personality. The God of Abraham, Ishmael and Israel has taken on separate identities in each of the three main off-shoots of the One Tribe. For the Jews, YHWH is the God of Justice; for the Christians the Father is the God of Forgiveness and for the Muslims, Allah is the God of Peace. By focussing exclusively on one aspect, each branch has isolated itself from the others to the extent of being in a state of perpetual feuding, which has often broken out into war. What would it take to integrate these three perspectives and raise the Shekinah – the Divine Presence – from the flat and static descriptions recorded in the Scriptures to Her True three-dimensional, dynamic-in-tension Glory?

The answer is contained in the Hermetic revelation “as above, so below”, here quoted by the Master Alchemist, Sir Isaac Newton:

Tis true without lying, certain & most true.
That which is below is like that which is above & that which is above is like that which is below to do the miracles of one only thing.
And as all things have been & arose from one by the meditation of one: so all things have their birth from this one thing by adaptation.
The Sun is its father, the moon its mother,
The wind hath carried it in its belly, the earth its nurse.
The father of all perfection in the whole world is here.
Its force or power is entire if it be converted into earth.
Separate thou the earth from the fire, the subtle from the gross sweetly with great industry.
It ascends from the earth to the heaven & again it descends to the earth and receives the force of things superior & inferior.
By this means you shall have the glory of the whole world & thereby all obscurity shall fly from you.
Its force is above all force, for it vanquishes every subtle thing & penetrates every solid thing.
So was the world created.
From this are & do come admirable adaptations where of the means (or process) is here in this.
Hence, I am called Hermes Trismegist, having the three parts of the philosophy of the whole world.
That which I have said of the operation of the Sun is accomplished & ended.

At 11:11:11 GMT on 2011.11.11, voting closed in the internet election the New Seven Natural Wonders of the World. While the process has been a shining example of global democracy in action, the collective considers it a tragedy that the incomparable submarine ecosystem of the Great Barrier Reef was not amongst the winners. Perhaps because it is obscured from view by the ocean. Also hidden from global consciousness by the turbulent waves of incessant propaganda of Zionist warmongering was the prototypical cooperation between Israel, Palestine and Jordan to present the Dead Sea as a candidate for one of the Seven. While this too was not selected, it demonstrated that the three brothers can embrace together, in love of their heritage, a common goal and work in harmony for the greater good.

What if they could agree to replicate this success and merge their three bastard states into a legitimate whole and ask UNESCO to become its adopted mother and declare it a world heritage site? This would give the uniquely courageous UN institution the mandate to administer the territory and protect it from any internal or external threat. Who on earth would want to tempt her maternal wrath? What if this region, set apart from the fast becoming obsolete world of nation states, was called the Holy Land? What if it was inaugurated at 12:12:12 on 2012.12.12? Might it not mark the end of the old world order of competition and war and the beginning of the new age of cooperation and peace? Is the “last best hope of man on Earth”? If we do not succeed, the universe may well have to continue without us.

So is this the topic of discussion between the remnants of the last two great empires to administer the Holy Land? If so, do they have Spirit to persuade the rest of the world? More importantly, do the rest of us have the ears to hear such a proposal for peace above the din of discord?

May the Shekinah radiate Her Beauty upon man once more in the Name of Love from the Land of Promise and may we, even as darkened mirrors, fulfil our destiny by reflecting the Imagination of the Divine.

Also found on Reader Supported News and WeLuvMu.

Sustainable Development

2010-08-21T23:37:00.004+04:00

Remember the old Chinese proverb?

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

We have been taught that "feeding a man for a day" is a metaphor for "aid" and that "teaching him how to feed himself" is a metaphor for "development". However, this ignores two important questions: "What is everyone else doing?" and "Can the planet support it?"

A new version of the proverb illustrates the point:

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Teach everyone how to fish...and we soon run out of fish!

Sustainable development then is teaching a man "how to feed himself" while being aware of how others are" feeding themselves" and what impact this has on our planet's ecosystems. Each situation will be different and therefore every intervention will be contingent on the circumstances. Truly helping others requires great wisdom and understanding of how social and ecosystems operate and necessitates creative solutions to ensure that they co-operate. Clearly until our social systems move from competition to cooperation, there is no hope of us ever living in harmony with nature.

Economics 101

2009-10-19T06:16:00.007+04:00

Do not try to learn economics from an economist!

Hypothesis: Economists do not understand economics.

Proof: We are in the middle of an economic crisis. If economists understood economics then they could have prevented it. QED

And this is incredible because the fundamentals of economics are amazingly simple. Here they are:

Scarcity leads to ownership
Ownership leads to conflict
Conflict leads to domination

Let's explore how well this model works...

The original humans were hunters and gatherers. There was an abundance of things to be hunted and gathered. There was little work (basically you could hunt or you could gather and without refrigerators there was no point in doing too much of either). When tribes met they were more likely to have sex with each other than fight. And the social structure was quite egalitarian.

As populations increased wild food became relatively more scarce and farming was invented. Or perhaps, because farming was invented, food became even more abundant and populations increased. Whichever way round it happened, there was suddenly a lot more work to do. Since there was a relative scarcity of labour, labour became owned in the form of slaves. Hence, most ancient civilisations, which were agrarian at the core, adopted slavery: Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, etc.

As populations continued increasing, workers became more abundant and land became relatively scarce. Hence, the focus of ownership shifted from labour to real estate. This was temporarily reversed during the period of European colonisation of north America. Because of the massacre of indigenous populations, European farmers had an abundance of land but a shortage of labour. Therefore, it is not very surprising that slavery re-emerged. Nor is it surprising that slavery largely disappeared again as the population increased and land became the focus of ownership (although it may have ended prematurely due to public opinion).

There is no need illustrate that ownership leads to conflict. But there have been various mechanisms of domination to eliminate or at least reduce conflict over property:

Rule by force: dictatorship
Rule by fear: religion
Rule by law: capitalism

In each case, it is the rulers who tend to own most of the property be they dictators, "sons of God" (kings ruling by divine right and supported by high priests) or capitalists. Obviously being at the top of the pyramid is highly attractive to some, leading to coups, assassinations and the invention of new gods and denominations.

Capitalism is most interesting because capitalists have been rather clever in ensuring rule by law. The Greeks of antiquity invented a system whereby the capitalists themselves wrote laws and enforced them by consensus which was achieved in the assembly, i.e. classical democracy. As democracy evolved, more people wanted a say in decisions. Since this was impractical they were allowed to periodically decide who made decisions: i.e. representational democracy. The political class was born.

In today's democracies, capitalists have, to a greater or lesser extent, managed to co-opt politicians to write laws on their behalf and employ civil servants to enforce them. The opportunity to exploit political office to enter the capitalists' ranks is often too great a temptation and so representational democracy is almost inevitably accompanied by corruption. Of course the capitalist class actively support this as it permits them to consolidate their dominant position. Wherever the abuses become too extreme the people tend to revolt. This can only be suppressed by a return to dictatorship.

The great alternative to capitalism was communism. Unfortunately, the communist leaders did not understand the fundamentals of economics. They believed that the problem of gross inequality was caused by unequal ownership which they solved by holding everything in common. They completely ignored the more fundamental principle that ownership is necessary because of scarcity and that capitalist ownership, while not being fair, was at least efficient. Hence, whenever there has been a communist revolution there has been a crisis of food production with the system of central planning being either the cause or the effect.

... So the model seems to fit the facts. How about using it to build a better society? The mechanism is obviously to create an abundance of the goods and services that we desire. This can be achieved by using the planet's limited natural resources hyper-efficiently. The fact that we are burning or burying so much is evidence that there is a lot of potential for improvement. With intelligent design, we can build systems that efficiently reuse the resources that we have already obtained, rather than disposing of them, allowing us to dramatically reduce and eventually stop our rates of extraction and achieve our goal of sustainable societies.

Of course, this will not please the capitalists...nor the politicians...

The Ultimate Leverage?

2009-10-17T08:07:00.020+04:00

Debt and equity are the two main ways of funding the growth of organisations. But has anyone questioned why corporations pay tax on profit AFTER interest? After all interest is the price that must be paid for borrowing money in just the same way that dividends are paid to recompense equity investment.

One of the main contributors to the financial crisis was the leverage of investment banks. In this sense, leverage was the borrowing of funds to make bets on the future prices of stocks, commodities, currencies, etc and derivatives thereof, in order to magnify the rate of return in the event that the bet was won. When lots of bets were simultaneously lost, some banks could not find the funds to pay back the loans.

A similar situation exists in corporations. Gearing or leverage is the ratio of debt to equity in financing a business or project. It influences the rate of return on investment that can be made. The greater the ratio, the more money investors will gain if the business makes a better return on each unit of capital than the interest rate at which it can borrow. However, the down-side is that the risk of business failure is increased if the profits are insufficient to cover interest payments. In general, a company with a low ratio is more likely to ride out an economic down-turn than one with a high ratio, in other words it is more resilient.

If tax were paid on earnings before interest, then loans would become more risky and equity would become a more popular means of raising finance. The role of banks would then be greatly reduced. Indebted companies would be forced to adjust their capital structure by share issues. Individuals, unable to get interest on savings accounts, could then invest in shares or community managed equity funds. This new shareholding would instantly increase democracy in the economy by diluting the original shareholder base.

Individual and community shareholders could then demand better Corporate Social Responsibility from the companies and turn them from purely profit making enterprises to organisations with an ethical or ecological purpose.

Of course, taxing profits before interest would increase tax revenue but might bankrupt indebted companies, unless the tax rate were simultaneously reduced. However, if the tax rate were not reduced immediately, during the transition away from debt towards equity financing, companies could be allowed to pay part of their increased taxes in shares. This would give the government future dividend income and would permit an increase in government spending/investment or a decrease in the rates of tax-before-profit.

Hence, taxing profits before interest is the easiest and simplest way to democratise an economy, increase company resilience and shift economics from profit to purpose. It would also make a future financial crisis significantly less likely. In the move towards intelligently designed societies, could this be the ultimate leverage?

What is the organisation "We Love Mauritius" about?

2009-10-17T07:04:00.007+04:00

"We Love Mauritius" is a non-profit organisation that will experiment in implementing different elements of the "Intelligent Design". Hence, it turns Mauritius into a laboratory or guinea pig and hopefully a model for the rest of the world to learn from and possibly follow.

This may seem megalomanic, even insane, and perhaps it is. However, it is currently what the rest of my life will be devoted to: it is my purpose and my passion.

What is meant by "Intelligent Design?"

2009-10-17T06:56:00.002+04:00

This is blog named "Intelligent Design", not in the retrospective sense of looking for the hand of a creator god in nature. Rather it is prospective - tapping into the universal intelligence that exists holographically within each of us to develop a model for a more ecologically sustainable civilisation on this planet.

To date human development has evolved driven by various forces. Intrinsically we have a drive to survive and thrive. Societies have evolved that have introduced collective motivators that have also shaped our development: notably our economic systems. Most recently, capitalism has propelled us with the belief that everyone acting in his own self interest will result in the highest common good. This intrinsically provides no sense of direction just a powerful force propelling us forward. The speed with which we are moving is accelerating. Surely it is time to reflect upon this basic assumption?

The purpose of this blog is to challenge our fundamental assumptions and the drivers of our society. Further it aims to create an attractive destination that we can collectively head towards, at whatever pace we deem appropriate. It will explore ways in which we can change societal drivers to assist us in reaching our collectively chosen destination. Hence, our future will no longer be the result of a random walk, but a constantly improving goal that we have chosen for ourselves by the process of “intelligent design”.

This is not the end of evolution but a radical change in the mechanism by which our society develops. Rather than "randomly" evolving, society will move with purpose towards a constantly reviewed, collectively chosen destination that will itself consciously evolve. Therefore intelligent design is both the path and the prize.

George Soros: The Crisis of Global Capitalism – Open Society Endangered

2008-09-03T10:45:00.004+04:00

Soros champions the concept of open society as middle path between closed societies of communism and dictatorships and inherently unstable, laissez fair, free-market capitalism. He defines an open society as one based on the assumption of fallibility with the aim of constant awareness of its weaknesses for the purpose of continuous improvement. He regards closed societies as ones in which an imposed vision of an “ideal” society prevents critical analysis leading to a situation of stable disequilibrium between how society is perceived in peoples' minds to how it operates in a more objective reality. Another example of closed society is the fundamentalist Islamic state.

Inherently unstable societies are those in which societal changes can happen so rapidly that the collective ability to comprehend the situation lags severely behind its actual evolution. Such a situation engenders extreme turmoil, uncertainty and anxiety, increasing the likelihood of revolution in favour of a closed society that offers greater apparent security. Soros classifies modern capitalism as an inherently unstable system because of the following rationale:

Capitalists regard the market as the centre of society and market fundamentalists believe that a free market will meet all societal needs. This in turn is based on the assumption that the common interest is achieved by every individual market participant serving his own individual interest. As globalisation increases, it is inevitable that trade based on local relationships is being replaced by increasingly impersonal transactions. Such transactions promote shorter-term thinking motivated by perceived profit for the individual. This system is the embodiment of a social Darwinian model of ruthless selfishness and results in wealth accumulating to those who have the least altruistic behaviours. Not only that, but the inherent fallibility of the individual to accurately perceive reality leads to reflexive market imperfections.

Because the market is driven by our perceptions of supply and demand rather than their objective values, there is a feedback mechanism which produces herd-following behaviour. For example, if we believe there will be a future shortage in oil, then there will be an increase in the price the in the future. This will naturally lead to stock-piling, increasing the demand and hence increasing the price; a classic example of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Likewise, the future value of a dividend stream is one of the main determiners of a share price and depends on any number of factors which are impossible to predict in advance. However, a strong share price reduces the cost of capital, which, along with the drive to maximise shareholder value by growth and profitability, encourages greater borrowing that in turn increases the riskiness of the venture, amplifying the effects of any future down-turn.

Where borrowing is secured by collateral, such as the value of land, instability is also created. Greater liquidity tends to increase the demand for land and hence the price goes up, which in turn increases the availability of capital. This is one of the drivers for boom and bust cycles in the real-estate markets. The effect of boom-bust cycles is that ownership of resources often reverts to the providers of capital. Since they gain interest during a boom and resources during a bust, they have an overriding motive to maintain an inherently unstable system. [Conspiracy theorists might state that the current financial system was established by key financiers for just such a purpose]

The same can be said for currency traders. Profits tend to be maximised by speculating on currencies that have the greatest fluctuations. Soros has been widely criticised for profiting from massive devaluations in currency that he precipitated by his own trades since many other speculators followed his example causing the very effects that he was betting on. In such circumstances, it is in the traders' interests to promote instability. Hence, the classic assumptions of the markets tending towards stable equilibria have been proven false by history. Even if instability does not cause a catastrophic breakdown of society, it does ensure that resources are accumulated by the owners of capital, hence, social inequality increases and with it the risk of revolution.

Hence, Soros favours a value system based on collective social good rather than individual greed as promoted by market fundamentalism. However, there is a risk of religious fundamentalists determining societies' values in just the same way that market fundamentalists have in the past. The key, therefore, is to have a political system that acknowledges fallibility, invites criticism and seeks continuous improvement. The very values of such a society, once chosen by the society would themselves be subject to critical review and improvement.

George Soros (1998) The Crisis of Global Capitalism – Open Society Endangered Little, Brown and Company, Great Britain

John Kenneth Galbraith: The Good Society – The Humane Agenda

2008-09-03T10:15:00.003+04:00

Galbraith seeks to improve the lot of the poor, both within and outside the US by promoting socialist policies to regulate a quasi free-market economy. Starting with the assumption that the economy must grow, he compares a situation with high unemployment but stable prices and one with nearly full employment and high inflation. Inevitably he favours the latter. While recognising and permitting the motivating power of pecuniary reward, he insists on a progressive taxation regime to support a comprehensive welfare state.

Instead of addressing the root causes of cyclic behaviour of the economy, he proposes to mitigate the consequences of economic down-turns by temporarily increasing public expenditure in those projects that produce a long-term return for society and providing a safety net for those who cannot or choose not to find employment. Fiscal prudence is ensured by having a budget deficit only for those investments with a future return. Current expenditure, including education, must be met with current tax receipts. Further he questions the value of much current spending, including the budget for the military and direct and indirect subsidies to specific industries such as energy and arms.

He notes the inequitable political influence of the financial elite and the industrial-military complex and suggests that it can only be tamed when the poor classes exercise their democratic right to vote. This may be encouraged and society improved in general by promoting quality education for all. Further regulation is necessary to curtail the self-seeking actions of those at the helm of major corporations and to prevent exploitation of workers and the environment. Some responsibility must be taken for the state of poorer countries in the world by their ex-colonial masters, to allow their peoples to improve their lot in situ or by controlled immigration to richer nations.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1996) The Good Society – The Humane Agenda Sinclair-Stephenson, Great Britain

The Clay Tricks Reloaded

2008-09-03T10:08:00.002+04:00

The generations passed but nothing of very much interest happened. Everyone gossiped about nothing much in particular. One group of plates carried out lots of rituals invented by their imaginative high priest, which the other group copied, about a generation later. The contemplative plate continued meditating on what it meant to be clay.

Suddenly he had a flash of insight and proclaimed without thinking:

“Hear me yea lumps. I have been thinking. The high priests tell us that they were made in the image of the Potter. If this is the case, then the Potter must be made out of clay too. Since we are all made out of clay, then we must all be in the image of the Potter, pots and plates alike.”

There was silence. The pots were a bit surprised; to be honest their pride was hurt. The plates on the other hand felt the idea was a great one and very timidly started to agree with the contemplative plate and praised his wisdom. But before anything got out of hand the imaginative high priest pot shouted:

“It is true. What the plate says is true. The Potter showed this truth to me in a dream, but He asked me to keep it a secret. He is indeed made from clay. But it is pot clay, not plate clay. We pots are in the image of the Potter because He made us out of His Own essence – pot clay. You plates are merely copies made out of inferior plate clay. I did not tell you this because I did not want you to feel bad, but it is true. And from now on only pots can call the Potter by His name. You must plates can only refer to Him as the Sun.”

There was spontaneous applause from the pots. The other high priest felt very insecure and wondered why the Potter only met with his rival. He had been wondering if his rival had been making up the new rituals each generation. Now it seemed that the Potter really was teaching him. What if the Potter told his rival he was an impostor?

The plates on the other hand were distraught. How nice of the high priest to keep this sad truth a secret. But now it was out, they felt even more inferior and vented their wrath on the contemplative plate. He didn’t care so much any more and returned to his silent meditation. Nobody thought to ask where the plate clay had come from.

A few generations later, a rather unexpected thing happened, at least from the perspective of the clay – it evolved. Up to this point, whenever the sun set, the clay would become inactive, a bit like a dream state, which it would snap out of at dawn. As often happens, much to the embarrassment of modern science, evolution took a leap. Instead of just one lump randomly mutating and remaining aware during the night time, it more or less happened to all of them simultaneously.

This was a bit disconcerting for the lumps as their only experience was basking in the sun. But nobody said anything. Everyone was waiting for an interpretation from the high priests. They were the most silent of all because it seemed that the Potter they were worshipping simply disappeared for a while. Where had he gone? And what was that strange lesser god that took His place?

Finally the ambitious high priest asked his rival what was going on. The imaginative high priest listened quietly and suddenly had an idea. He told the other to keep silent and so they said nothing to the rest of the lumps. Then one day the contemplative plate broke his silence and asked the high priests to explain about the strange time when the Sun disappeared and seemed to be replaced by a lesser sun. The imaginative high priest answered:

"Listen yea lumps to this question from the evil plate. It seems for him that there are times when he cannot see the Sun and he sees a strange thing in His place. I tell you that we high priests have never had such an experience but the Potter explained to us what is happening and again we have kept it a secret from you.

Long ago before the Potter made us, He created a special being to be His companion in the heavens and named him the Teapot. As well as the Teapot he created many lesser beings and named them teacups. For generations everything was perfect and the Potter enjoyed many tea parties with the Teapot and the teacups.

Then one day the Teapot became jealous of the Potter because he wanted to pour the tea in the tea parties himself and he immediately turned into cheese. He persuaded all the teacups to join him in rebellion against the Potter and they turned into cheese too. There was a great battle in the heavens and eventually the Potter won. He cast the Teapot and the tea cups away from His presence.

Then the Potter made us. One day he wants us to be with Him in the heavens forever but He wants to be sure that we will choose to be with Him. Therefore, He has left the Teapot to roam the earth and tempt us to turn into cheese and join his rebellion. Once everyone has chosen there will be another great battle. Then everything that is made of cheese will be thrown in to the hole of mice and there will be great squeaking and gnashing of teeth.

But those pots who remain true to the Potter will be taken into the heavens. We will be with Him forever and He will fill us with heavenly soup. So beware. If you can see the Teapot in the sky then know that he is tempting you to join him and become cheese. It will not be easy but you must resist."

All of the lumps were silent. They had not heard of the Teapot, teacups, tea parties or cheese before. They did not know what the hole of mice was but heavenly soup sounded much, much nicer than squeaking and gnashing of teeth. Apart from that, it did seem to make sense. There were times when they could not see the Sun and the Teapot did seem to be tempting them to worship him instead.

The imaginative high priest was exhausted. Although he was pleased with the wonderful story that he had made up, he was sure he wouldn’t be able to remember it in the next generation. So he spoke alone with the other high priest and made a deal with him.

“I know that you are tempted by the Teapot just like the others. I know that the Potter has never met with you but I will speak to Him on your behalf. In return, at the beginning of each generation, you must remind everyone of the lesson I have just taught.”

Of course the ambitious high priest readily agreed. It was a great deal but still he didn’t feel he could trust his rival. He needed a back-up plan. The other pots wondered how they could ever resist the temptations of the Teapot but they knew they must try, they put their trust in the high priests to help them – they were so wise.

The plates on the other hand had no hope. There was no way for them to get to heaven and be filled with heavenly soup; they were made from different clay to the pots after all. Perhaps it was worth the risk of joining the Teacup, worshipping him and hoping that he could beat the Potter in the end. If he could then surely he would let them join the tea parties and fill them with tea, whatever that meant.

So it went on. The pots worshipped the Sun like before. When it set they struggled to ignore the Moon, I mean the Teapot, so that they would not turn into cheese. The plates on the other hand put their lot in with the Teapot. They were quiet during the day and worshipped the Moon like crazy as soon as the Sun set. This nocturnal behaviour was not completely natural for lumps of clay and on occasion one would go over the top and become ecstatic- and the other plates called him a lunatic. The high priests explained that this happened because the clay had changed completely into cheese and when it matured it became possessed by an evil teacup.

Without doubt it was more fun to be a plate of cheese than a clay pot. The lunatics were the happiest and the high priests the most miserable, but they put on false smiles to keep up appearances. The contemplative plate ignored all this – he was sure it was all a load of nonsense and just enjoyed being the same old clay day and night. How could the Moon be made of cheese? And while he watched it, he pondered its real relationship to the Sun…

The Clay Tricks

2008-09-03T09:35:00.005+04:00

Deep in the Negev desert you can find a large deposit if clay. For most of the year it is dry and cracked, but when the annual rains come it becomes moist, expands and joins together again to become a basin where the rains collect for a few weeks before evaporating away.

One interesting fact that scientists have yet to discover, because they haven’t bothered to look, is clay has a primitive form of memory. Each time it dries out it tends to crack in the same places. Hence, our deposit forms almost identical shapes each year after the rains have evaporated.

As well as primitive memory, clay has a very simple sense of awareness, the ability to communicate, sort of telepathically, and even the basics of imagination. Clay is only active in the sunlight when it is dry and if it gets wet it goes into a deep sleep – a form of hibernation and forgets much of what it knew before. Only when it has finished drying out and cracked does it wake up. You may find this hard to believe but scientists will prove it one day, trust me.

Anyway, one year a camel came across the basin just after the rainy season and stopped for a drink. As it walked away it had a bowel movement. Now this camel must have been pretty constipated because its excrement was quite hard and fell onto the soft clay in lots of small balls. These balls made indentations in the clay where it landed. The sun shone and everything dried up as usual and the camel dung was blown away in the wind. But the indentations remained.

It was rare that the clay had anything important to say to itself. It simply basked in the sun making idle gossip, most of which it made up. Long ago it had been generally accepted that each shape formed by the cracks was an individual, called a lump, and each yearly cycle of waking up from hibernation was called a generation. That was pretty much the extent of its philosophising.

These indentations were something strange and none of the lumps knew why they were there. However, one lump with an indentation was a little more imaginative than the rest and told the others this story:

“Hear me all yea lumps and I will tell you how we came to be as we are. We have believed for many generations that we were created by a great power above, that’s why we are sun-worshippers. In a dream the sun came down from heaven and met with me in person and He revealed the truth to me. Now you will notice that some of us have indentions while most of you do not. Henceforth, those lumps with indentations shall be known as pots and those that are flat will be known as plates. The sun revealed to me His name. He is called the Potter and we pots are His special lumps because He has made us in His image.”

Obviously this revelation caused quite a stir amongst the lumps. It seemed self-evident that the pots were indeed different from the plates and their indentations were in the shape of the Sun. Of course, the pots were very happy to learn that they were the Potter’s chosen lumps and accepted it straight away. The imaginative pot became their high priest and invented all kinds of rituals. The plates on the other hand felt quite inferior and from then on kept themselves to themselves.

One day, of course, the rains came and the lumps fell asleep. The clay became moist, the cracks disappeared and it became a basin again. As happened every year, the water washed away most of the clay’s memory and started to erode the indentations too. When the clay dried out again, it cracked to form the familiar shapes and the lumps awoke from their deep slumber.

As usual, the lumps could not remember much except, somewhat hazily, the great truth about the pots, the plates and the Potter. The imaginative pot had a particularly poor memory, but still he proclaimed himself high priest again because he liked the feeling of importance. That year it was harder to tell who was a pot and who was a plate, and because it felt better to be the Potter’s chosen lumps, many plates converted to become pots.

Another ambitious pot proclaimed that the Potter had told him in a dream that he should be the high priest and that all those fancy rituals were meaningless. This caused more than a little confusion, with many pots not remembering at all who had been the high priest of the previous generation. In the end, the ones closest to him accepted him as their high priest, especially those who had just converted from being plates. From then on there were always two high priests.

And so it continued year after year. The plates stopped converting into pots because they just didn’t feel right about it – they were used to being plates and accepted that as their fate. Then one year a very meditative plate, who didn't gossip very much, proclaimed bravely:

“Hear me yea lumps. For generations we have been separated into pots and plates. And the pots split themselves into two groups under high priests who claim to know the Potter. I ask you – why? The pots tell us that only they are made in the Potter’s image, but I ask you who is this Potter? I don’t know him. Are we not all made from the same clay?”

The pots, especially the high priests, were furious with him. Even the plates told him to be silent and keep his place. That plate became withdrawn and instead of gossiping with the other lumps simply contemplated the meaning of being clay...