The Near Future - Some Thoughts. Fourth Dialogue

Haroldus and Guihelmus

The Near Future -  A Conversation

Technology is advancing really fast - exponentially - and it is hard to imagine what the world will be like in the very near future. Here Haroldus and Guihelmus discuss a few of the implications.

G: The world is changing incredibly quickly  - most people seem to be distracted by supermodels and celebrities, and their eye is off the ball. Politics cannot respond, as we are approaching a world where the 4 year term of the average politician means that the world into which we elected the politician to act on our behalf, will be quite different to the world they end up acting in. Legislation will have a hard time keeping up.

H: Yeah, it is really speeding up. One thing that will change things radically is energy - solar is doubling in capacity worldwide every other year, and the rate at which it is being implemented is increasing. We are only 7 or so doublings away from 100% capacity - that is 14 years from 2013- and it may come even sooner than that. That is just solar, other forms of renewable energy are also on an exponential growth curve.

People underestimate the power of exponential doubling. We think in linear terms,and imagine things going forward as though we were walking sedately along a beach. Our imaginations simply do not deal well with this kind of change, and so we are blind to it.

G: The world will change completely. For one thing, the oil rich countries in the Middle East are on a clock, in terms of their income. So is the entire fossil fuel industry. Not to mention the nuclear one. Not only is the implementation of solar exponential, the cost per unit installation is also falling at an exponential rate, and efficiency keeps on improving. Obviously, the cost cannot drop below zero, but it is going to approach negligible levels.

H: How can a cost of a product approach zero?

G: As automation of manufacture increases, with Artificial Intelligence and robots taking over almost all aspects of the production chain - from mining through to manufacture and installation, and operation of the facilities, the cost will depend largely on the cost of energy. That is about to collapse - once solar and wind reach 100%, and there is surplus capacity, the cost of energy will become zero, or as close to zero as matters. This is going to occur really soon, and the economic implications are staggering.

H: This is also only one tiny part of the picture. Computers are speeding up, and becoming more intelligent. Design and manufacture are forging ahead. 3d printing is expanding its reach, and costs are plummeting there as well. All of these are not advancing in a linear manner, but exponentially. Change is occurring at such a rapid pace that simply keeping abreast of it is next to impossible - only computers can now analyse the volume of research data being produced. A human would not have enough hours in a day to simply sit and keep abreast of the research papers published in their own niche field, let alone across a wider spectrum of knowledge.

G: What will happen to people?To economies? To the concept of work?

H: This is a serious problem. As it is in the West, we already have a large segment of the population who are unemployable - no jobs exist any-more for them, and the pool of jobs keeps shrinking as AI becomes more capable. The concept of unemployment will need to change.

G: Do you think we will need to stop talking about the unemployed, and start a different conversation? Perhaps one where there is a minimum guaranteed living allowance.

H: This is a distinct possibility. As it is, pension age is now on an escalator, or soon will be,as lifespan advances. It will be a bit like the old fuel duty escalator, where fuel duty rose every year by a set amount, automatically.

 One can envision a not-too-distant future where the concept of a pension will cease to make economic sense - indeed, it ceased to make economic sense some time ago, but the political will to do anything about it was absent. It is not feasible for people to work for 30 years, and then spend 20 - 30 years on 50 to 75% of their original wage, index linked. It just isn't sustainable.

G: So, you think that in addition to a minimum living allowance, this will be universal, irrespective of age. Pensions as such will cease to exist?

H: Yes. They may exist administratively, but to all intents and purposes will be indistinguishable from the ULA. This will also result in a massive cull of bureaucracy. If all citizens receive their U.L.A. this can be automated. No need to apply. No need to assess. No need to go to a welfare office. No need to back to work schemes. There may be specialist agencies that deal with people with specific needs, the disabled and infirm - but this would be a much smaller arm of government.

G: How would this be paid for? Through taxation?

H: Yes. One of the paradoxes of the current times, is that employment and productivity, for the first time in history, have become decoupled.

This is a direct result of automation and the application of AI to industry. The large companies are making tremendous profits. Taxation can generate the funds for the ULA.

G: Will people be penalised if they work,or will those wages be in addition to the ULA?

H: The ULA would be just that - universal. If someone earned above it, by taking a job or operating a business, then they simply would have more income.

G: What really amazes me, is how little people seem to be aware of the massive changes that are about to be unleashed on the world.

H: Certainly,those in the political classes, who are aware of this, are playing it down. However, every now and again the media reports on a Parliamentary Committee or a statement is made by a government minister that gets two lines in the mainstream media. I suspect this is largely so, because the reporters themselves are unaware of the issues, and are unaware of the pace of change.

G: They should be more aware - after all, the media landscape has been radically altered in the past few years, and even in the past few months, the application of AI to reader reactions to media stories has changed the pattern of media consumption across the globe. Each media item or youtube video now becomes a product, the consumption of which is driven by big data analysis. So yes,journalists should be more aware of the changes that are taking place.

H: Sometimes they do respond - but what they forget is that just about any change that eventuates, will be transient - things are simply changing too quickly for any sort of stability to be reached. For example, the big data driven surge of Upworthy and sites using similar data driven tactics, is in all probability going to be overtaken by something else entirely that curves in from left field.

G: So,what are people going to do in this new, work-less world? Buddhists can retreat to their Ashrams, and not have to worry about using a begging bowl again. Orthodox Jews will be able to retreat to their yeshivas and immerse themselves in Talmudic study, without having to pay attention to the world beyond. But what of the rest of us? In hunter gatherer societies, the amount of labour was about 15 hours a week. So, human society probably won't collapse if the vast majority of people don't have to work for a living. We can manage it, I suppose. The question is, what will people do? Play music? Art? Sport? Join gangs? Just mess about? Or simply turn their backs on the world, and  lose themselves in the highly developed virtual reality worlds that are just around the corner?

H: Yes, VR is a great concern. Once it becomes realistic enough, the real world will just seem too slow and uninteresting. For many teenagers that is already the case - reality pales in comparison, VR worlds in games are much more active and much more interactive spaces. The real world will not compete, and people,or large swathes of people, may just decide to plug in and tune out, so to speak. And the world will be run by robots.

G: To go back to energy - once energy becomes almost free, water then becomes almost free, as desalination is an energy problem. For that matter, once energy becomes almost free, it will become feasible to start to actively remove CO2 from the atmosphere, using energy-intensive methods. It may even be possible to do currently unimaginable things to help rebuild the polar ice caps. Exponential growth, almost free energy, and increasingly capable AI, means that things that are currently unimaginable, may well become viable.

H: Computing power is  advancing at an exponential rate. Along with the sheer power of the machines, come advances in artificial intelligence, and projects to mirror the human brain's architecture in the machine.

Programmes like SIRI and WATSON-like programs that exist in the cloud are learning rapidly through their hundreds of millions of daily interactions with people, and their algorithms are constantly being improved. They are becoming increasingly 'intelligent'. Software of this type is already being used in medicine and in lab research.  The overall capability of these programmes is also increasing exponentially. SIRI in January 2014 would not be the same programme, with the same skill set, as the SIRI you were using in November 2013. Google's search engine and in-house AI is also rapidly increasing in intelligence and capability.

G: Basically, then, when it comes to even the very near future, all bets are off the table?

H: Not all bets. But predicting technological development under these conditions of growth is difficult.

 I think we'll see 3-d printed buildings in the near future. Entire aeroplanes and cars will be printed, not just selected components as at present. Organic printing will continue to advance. Biotech will continue to advance exponentially. We will see camera in contact lenses. We will start to see bionic prostheses that outperform their natural equivalents. Food will continue to drop in price,as will just about everything else. Employment levels will bottom out, but productivity will continue to increase. Manufacturing will be repatriated to home territory, blunting the edge of  the economic dominance of China.

There will be great social dysfunction unless the politicians can manage the transition smoothly.

G: Will there not be a chance for political instability, as the wealth gets concentrated in the hands of a few?

H: Possibly, if the transition to a post-work society is not carefully handled. Politicians need to change their rhetoric, and stop talking about the lazy unemployed, shirkers, the work-shy and so forth. The dialogue needs to change, or this will breed discontent. In the next few years there will be great unevenness in the advance of these various technologies. The role of government should be to smooth this transition, and reduce the inequalities that will inevitably emerge - as they currently are emerging even now - as we are currently in the first stages of the great transition.

G: Are you saying a more socialist approach is in order?

H: No, this is not about socialism, nor conservatism, but realism. The world is about to radically change. Even a conservative government cannot keep on with the traditional attacks on the 'welfare state' that worked for it in the 1970s and 1980s, even as recently as the 90's. We are entering a new paradigm, a world where there will be no work for the vast majority of people. Being pro-work and anti-welfare in such a set of circumstances is ideological poppycock.

Conservatives can still be pro-business, and pro-entrepreneur, while aggressively protecting the populace by implementing a ULA. Indeed, as employment becomes increasingly decoupled from productivity, a party that does not have good, sensible policies in place for dealing with this, will possibly be unelectable.

  My concern is that the current generation of politicians, with the exception of a small handful, are unaware of how rapidly the ground is shifting, are unaware of the need for radical policy making.

G: Are you saying that there needs to be more serious thinking going on, the type of thinking currently taking place extra-governmentally, at places like Singularity University?


H: Exactly. As the lady says in the video, technology alone won't save us.

G: I was reading up on self driving cars recently, what do you think about them?

H: Self driving cars will rapidly become ubiquitous....once it becomes clear that they are better than humans, the cost implications will drive regulation, and humans will probably not be allowed to get behind the wheel.

G: that sounds a bit extreme?

H: Not really. Think about it. If humans are more accident prone than the AI in the car, what insurer worth their salt will insure a human driver? If they do, premiums will be prohibitive. The social cost of accidents is massive - in the UK billions are spent treating accident victims: that load on the National Health Service would be relieved, saving billions in tax money. So, there would be pressure from central government to regulate human driving.

G: And if you drive for a living?

H: You won't.

Secularism or Democracy - Which should be the Prime Value? Third Dialogue

Marcus and Benedictus

Secularism and Democracy

Marcus: I believe those elements that are promoting democracy as the highest achievement of Western Civilisation,as a civilisational intrusion, are sorely mistaken.

Benedictus: Why do you say this, Marce?

M: Democracy cannot flourish in a theocracy. Democracy can only exist meaningfully in an environment where the opinions of men hold sway, not the opinions of theologians. In an Islamic traditional Sharia based system ,democracy cannot function, nor could it function in much of pre-reformation Europe. Democracy, as we know it in the West, the so-called 'Westminster System ' of governance, evolved from the commonality of the citizens of the Saxon and Mediaeval City of London, who formed the original Common Council. This was an entirely secular institution, with 100 elected members ( up to 240 at times), which passed Acts of Common Council, making its own laws, and governed the City of London as a completely secular institution. The City of London was, and largely remains, a State within a State. The monarch had no power in the City. Parliament in Westminster was copied from this template. It was always a secular template.

B: So, are you saying that our democracy has nothing to do with the democracy of the ancient Greeks and Romans?

M: On the contrary. The democratic system of government that survived in the City of London was a direct descendent of the structures of Roman government. The city was divided into wards ( a Curia), each ward elected a ruling magistrate (a Senator), and a number of Common Councilmen (tribunes of the plebs) to serve as the Court of Common Council (The Plebeian Council) of that ward. They met at a wardmote, and carried out all the business of the ward - all the details of local governance, such as policing,street cleaning, etc. The councilmen also met at larger monthly meetings, in the Parliament of the City: Commune Consilium. The Senators also met in the Senate (The Court of Alderman).

The House of Commons of the British Parliament , in Latin is also styled Commune Consilium, and the House of Lords, are are essentially carbon copies of one another - and developed from the relict Roman system that had been preserved in the City of London. There was one exception: in the City of London all officials were elected. The House of Lords of the British Parliament to this day is not elected. It is predominantly secular.

B: But please, lets get back to the topic - why do you say that secularism is more important?

M: I say this, because such a system can only exist where church and state are separated. They were in Ancient Rome, to all intents and purposes, and  late Roman, early British and then the Saxon administration, followed by the mediaeval administration of London inherited this Roman system of government, and perpetuated it, right down to its details. Until the 1990's elections in the City of London were annual, just as they were in ancient Rome, in order to stamp out the growth of vested interests and to limit the potential for corruption. There are two Sherrifs, mirroring the two serving consuls,and a Lord Mayor, who functions as the Emperor, but who is elected annually, just as the Consuls were in ancient Rome. But enough of the details of City of London governance.

B: So, you are saying that this particular system can only function if there is free voting,where the elected officials can function unrestricted by the church and clergy?

M: Yes. Systems such as a Sharia system, or the pre-Napoleonic Jewish legal system that was allowed to function in Europe (until swept away by Napoleon), by definition restrict themselves to revealed scripture for governance. Such systems lead to theocracies, not democracies. They lead to limitations on personal freedom. The mistake made by the West has been to trumpet democracy as a prime value in and of itself. Democracy however, requires a particular ecosystem in which to function.

B: So you think a secular dictator is better than a 'democratic theocracy'?

M: Yes, I think a secular dictatorship, such as that of Saddam Hussein, or Bashir Assad,  has more in common with Western Civilisational values,  than a theocratic democracy. If the West had supported Assad from the outset, the revolution in Syria would not have taken the form it did, and fewer lives would have been lost. We would not now be facing the prospect, if Assad were to lose, of yet another theocratic state arising in the Middle East.

 Perhaps in time such a dictatorship as Assad's can be moved to increase elements of democratic decision making in governance, while enforcing a strict separation between church and state. However, that is less important than enforced secularism. A secular state allows for freedom. It allows for women's liberation, sexual minority rights, and other things that would be intolerable in a theocratic democracy.

B: I suppose a case in point would be what happened in Gaza once a semi-theocratic regime won an election?

M: Yes. The Palestinian  Fatah organisation, despite its faults, was secular. Hamas is emphatically not. Under Fatah, and the dictatorial rule of Arafat, there was a degree of personal freedom. Christian bookshops could open safely in Gaza, women could dress as they pleased, alcohol was available, and other minorities were not openly persecuted - although life was not easy for them. There was freedom of the literary press, although political press freedom was still restricted to some degree. Hamas, on the other hand, censors books or prohibits publication.
From 2007 to 2011 the population of Christians in Gaza has halved.
Under Hamas the education system in Gaza has become theocratic. Traditional dress (the hijab) is increasingly enforced. The Christian Arab minority was openly persecuted and obstructed. in 2013 UNWRA decided to cancel the annual Gaza marathon, as Hamas refused to allow women to run in the race. Women have also been banned from smoking shisha in public, and must cover their heads when entering government controlled buildings. Mixed gender socialising has been restricted.

B: So, you are saying, that from the perspective of the West, it would have been better not to allow elections at all, but to continue to support the unelected, secular Fatah government, as being more in line with Western Civilisational values?

M: Yes, emphatically so. Indeed, I think that is why there is currently no pressure on Abbas in the Palestinian Territories to face re-election. His democratic mandate has expired, and he is in functional terms now a dictator or despot - but he is a secular despot. There is no pressure from the West to remove him, and no move to call for elections. Perhaps what happened in Gaza has taught an object lesson. Furthermore, voices are starting to be heard that a secular Assad is perhaps better than a democratically elected theocracy, which would almost inevitably arise, should Assad fall.

B: This is paradoxical - that denying a freedom - a freedom to select your system of government - can end up giving the individuals in a society more freedom?

M: Yes.  I can understand the call for democracy from an absolute moral perspective, but we do not live in a perfect world. I also do not think that democracy is the greatest gift that Western Civilisation has to offer. I think it is secularism. Napoleon was hardly a democrat - he came to power through a coup d'etat, yet it was his imposition of the Napoleonic Code that by and large created the secular Europe we know today. Napoleon himself was a Deist - believing in a God who was largely absent from the direct works of man and the world - an Epicurean God, who did nothing and performed nothing. The affairs of the world were in the hands of man. The secularism developed along different lines in England, but was essentially the same animal as the secularism that was imposed on Europe by Napoleon.

B: So, you are saying that the West should support the Napoleons of this world? Men like Assad, and Saddam Hussein, who ruled despotically, but with a secular, not theocratic ethos? Men like the Shah in Iran should have been supported?

M: Yes. Unequivocally. The West should have applied pressure to encourage reduction of excessive repression, while supporting secularism. I think that would have been more in the interests of the West. For example, the current Egyptian regime is secular. Its interests are closely aligned with those of the West, in civilisational terms. Yet, for some reason, America is rejecting it. American foreign policy appears to be placing democracy as a higher value. I think this is a major error, a major misunderstanding about what values actually underpin Western Civilisation.

B: Surely you can argue that in time, once a democratic mechanism is put in place, a more enlightened society will arise?

M: One could argue that.  However, I doubt the democratic system would survive the election of a theocratic regime. That election would be the last free election, and the only means of regime change would be revolution, as occurred in Egypt.

B: I still want to look into this matter in more detail. Perhaps we can continue this conversation another time, as I am still in doubt. None of this conversation leaves me feeling entirely comfortable. I also want to clarify further what exactly you mean by Western Civilisational values. Do you mean Christian values,or a form of secular Epicureanism? Democracy is something that I believe should still be fostered and promoted. But perhaps you are correct, in the short term;  the West should be protecting secular regimes, regardless of their political structures, if they protect personal freedoms, the rights of women and minorities. Perhaps the west should be applying soft diplomacy to expand and reward increases in personal freedom within these dictatorial secular regimes. I also want to look into the question of how the West might best approach those societies currently in the hands of theocrats. Should such societies have revolution fomented within them, to give rise to a secular despotic regime? That is an interesting question worthy of discussion.

Should secularism be our highest value, and should we be encouraging it within  those societies, so that they will allow freedom of religion and personal rights, including the liberation of women and other minorities?

Is something wrong with the Internet? Second Dialogue

Lucius and Petrus

P: Is the Internet Broken?

L: No, I don't think it is broken, but something is amiss. Not with all of it, but with large parts of it. I'm not talking about NSA snooping, but something else entirely. It is tied up with the decline of the large publishing houses, and the frailty of human nature. Primarily, however, it is a problem with algorithms, and until those get fixed, things don't look too healthy.

P: What exactly do you mean? That sounds pretty obscure to me.

L: Well, look at my, or your Facebook Feed, or your feed on any other site you subscribe to. Something has happened to it in the last few months - the quest for virality has skewed everything, and truth, such as it exists in our world, has increasingly become a victim. No-one publishing in the popular press bothers to fact check anymore - a story needs to be published, and to hell with the truth. If you don't publish it first, someone else will. And then, if it swims, you'll lose out, because the guy who pushed it first will get the hits.

P:  You mean, someone has realised that news feeds are dominating everything, people are simply clicking on things that are thrown up on their news feeds? So, everything is now packaged for virality? What makes something go viral, isn't a story's veracity, or actual importance in the scheme of things, but its emotional resonance. The punters are being played like so many fish on a line. The content of what is being shared does not matter,what matters is the fact that is is being shared. This is all data driven. Whatever will generate a share is fair game.

L: Exactly. Shareworthiness has overtaken objective importance. Even mainstream news organisations are repackaging their stories to fit the model. They have no alternative. It is do this,or wither away and die. Packaging is key. Not actual content. Tobacco companies and soft drink companies - indeed, almost all commodity companies - have known this for a long time. Because of the advent of social sharing, information can now be unitised and treated as a commodity - packaged, so to speak. Consumption is sharing. Because of this, the headline has overtaken the importance of the actual content. If you want to, you can hear Sara Critchfield talking about this here:


P: Surely, though, this is a temporary phenomenon? Upworthy and sites like it could be destroyed overnight if Facebook decided to tweak its algoriths? The same goes for other emotive viral media?

L: Perhaps, but I doubt it.  I think what might happen is that there will be a rebellion against this plague of vacuity that has been unleashed on us all. I hope so, as it is distorting our perspective and view of reality. What is more likely though is that everyone producing content on the internet will start to follow the same model, and saturation point will be reached. Maybe the model will break. Maybe people will just become really adept at interpreting these types of manipulative headline. Maybe we will all simply become desensitised, we will get overload as everyone jumps on board, and this blatant emotive manipulation will stop working.

P: Something else might happen. I believe it already is happening. I think people can detect when they are being manipulated, and dislike it. Younger people, those with less invested in Facebook, are already moving away from this manipulated environment - for example, to Whatsapp, Kik messenger, and Instagram. BBM Messenger is also seeing fast growth. Facetime using apple and Google Hangouts are also becoming very popular. These are seeing tremendous growth in the teenage sector, and other pared-down services. These offer less functionality when taken individually. On the other hand, they offer less opportunity for manipulation.

L: Are you saying that people primarily use services like Facebook to socialise and communicate with each other, and are only prepared to put up with a limited amount of distraction from the core need, which is to socialise?

P: Exactly so.

L: What also worries me is the mixing up of what is called native advertising with news stories. Once upon a time these used to be easily distinguishable. They had a bye-line "this is an advertisement". No longer. Now, you read what seems to be a regular article,planted in your regular news outlet, and find it is actually trying to sell you something. This cavalier approach is also breeding resistance, and trust in news outlets - even mainstream sites such as The Guardian do this regularly, and with increasing frequency - declines. Each time someone comes across a native advert, their trust in the news platform that serves it declines. Just as the FaceBook News Feed became a poisoned environment, so too, the 'news feeds' of the major newspapers and content providers are risking the same thing.

P: Are you saying that the newspapers online are morphing into news feeds, chasing views and shares?

L: Yes, that is exactly what they are doing. Shares are more important than views - and will remain so as long as people access individualised news feeds,such as the type served up by Facebook. But I think this model is starting to show cracks, and will break, as users abandon it. Ultimately, I am an optimist, and have faith in human nature.

P: What really concerns me, even more than this phenomenon,which,as you say, might be transient,  is the Balkanisation of the internet. That seems to now be a more permanent feature. You only get to see what your friends see and share, so you live unchallenged in your comfortable little bubble. If you or your friends have extremist tendencies,these simply get amplified, as everything in your personal universe is reduced to cartoon like outlines. If you live in a religious community,you only get exposed to shares from those in your community. The same goes for people with particular political viewpoints,etc. In this fragmented, Balkanised world, your thoughts are seldom challenged, seldom contradicted. So many stories that are flying around out there are also just plain wrong, baseless, without factual grounding. Interest groups deliberately manipulate facts to advance their agendas, and this is now easier than ever to do, with viral stories attractively packaged to appeal to your particular vice or prejudice.

L: Yes, but this phenomenon also depends on the existence of news feeds. The younger generation of web users are moving away from that model, to a more fragmented experience - one that is more active, more dispersed, and less what we could call 'traditional browsing'. But what you say remains largely the case in the current web environment. It may well be that the factual support structure people rely on to formulate opinions about reality is becoming skewed. For many people, perhaps elements of their reality are as skewed as a mediaeval person's misapprehension that the world is flat. We might all just become emotional junkies, consuming a diet of piffle. The people will have its bread and circuses, virtually. People who want to know what is really happening in the world will continue to subscribe to the Financial Times, and the handful of outlets that will remain immune to this malaise that is afflicting us.

P: Are you saying that the only reliable media left will be publishing houses that produce information on which investment decisions are made?

L: Exactly. That information needs to be accurate, as investors are making decisions about millions of dollars based on it. Everything else in the media, unfortunately, is becoming increasingly suspect, as the stories are being subtly or overtly manipulated to increase their virality. If you want to have your world view evidence based, it now takes much more hard work than ever before, and you have to be more consciously selective about what you read, and where it is sourced from, than you did only six months ago. But I also think the FaceBook type news feed  will continue to decrease in importance, as the new generation of web users abandon this format, and socialise online using a more dispersed ecology of applications.

P: Do you think anything else is driving this change in use, apart from resistance to manipulation?

L: Increasingly, I also think the change that is occuring is structural. Younger people increasingly access the internet through their phones, using discrete apps. WhatsApp, FaceTime, Hangouts, Instagram for picture sharing, and Snapchat are just icons on the home page screen of the user's phone. Flipping from one to another for a user is easy. Each one serves a specific purpose and answers to a particular need.

 The brief ascendancy of the newsfeed that is to all intents and purposes parasitic on the social aspect of facebook - the chat interface and picture sharing - might be over. Newsfeeds are increasingly a polluted environment. Logging into Facebook these days is like visiting a beautiful Carribean Beach before the cleaners have arrived to pick up the trash. Increasingly, mainstream news sites, which have modelled themselves after the FaceBook Feed, additionally engaging in self mutilation through the use of indiscriminate native advertising, are providing a similarly degraded user experience.

Molendinarius and Benjaminus First Dialogue

Molendinarius and Benjaminus

M: For some time, I have wanted to write, but have held myself back. I keep returning to the idea of writing using the vehicle of the dialogue.

B: What exactly drew you to this, and what held you back from writing plain prose?

M: For one thing, I can seldom make up my mind on a topic, I usually have several strands of thought and these flow together, twisting and turning, sometimes congruent, sometimes in opposition. The format of a dialogue might allow me to more clearly express myself.

B: Are you simply not admitting defeat, that you are, in some way, weak minded?

M: There are perhaps some who might argue that. In this initial dialogue, I am not hiding myself behind fictitious characters, and the views expressed are clearly my own.

B: Are you saying that the views you are ascribing to Benjamin in this dialogue are vacuous?

M: That would be for the reader to determine - whether Molendinarius truly represents myself, or is a literary device? I would say that both characters in this dialogue are aspects of myself, yet perhaps neither of them represent my own thoughts, just possible thoughts I might have entertained. The dialogue allows a certain freedom, it is a format that I find highly attractive. For some years I have had this genre in mind as a vehicle for expression, but ....

B: But?

M: But I felt I didn't want to express myself. I felt that my thoughts on any matter were of small consequence. Why bother? All men are worms. Of what consequence are the thoughts of a worm?

B: That may be so, but are not all men also only slightly lower than the angels, creative agents in their own right, creators of worlds?

M: That is the paradox we live with. Just as scientists experiment with nematode worms to unlock the secrets of our genes, so too, perhaps, this worm might put itself forward as an experimental subject.

B: Tell me more about why you are drawn to writing dialogues, and not essays, or novels? Or indeed, poetry?

M: I used to write poetry, once,when I was young. My blood runs colder nowadays. I am more clinical. Poetry no longer suits me, unless it is the dusty kind. I like dryness, dustiness,and hard argument. I have always had an argumentative streak.

B: Dialogues used to be all the rage once, no? They were a mainstay of European literary expression for hundreds of years....yet now almost no-one sets out to write dialogues, on any topic? Why?

M: Perhaps dialogues suited the turmoil of the Renaissance, and the Age of Enlightenment. Great arguments raged across Europe, arguments of faith, arguments about the very nature of what should constitute Western Civilisation. Once a modus vivendi was reached, once the great argument ceased, and religion in the West retired to a comfortable armchair, the impetus for debate faded away. Culture became monolithic. There was no room in it for this artform. Thousands of books of dialogues were printed in Europe during the Renaissance, amounting to hundreds of thousands of dialogues. Many were written in Latin, but a great number were also penned in the vernacular.. Most of their authors are now forgotten, and their works remain unread.

B: Maybe. Maybe it was simply that literature at this time period was still held close in the arms of the ancients,and Renaissance authors were simply experimenting with ancient models - the dialogue, from the time of Zeno of Elea, being a mainstay genre of classical literature. Just as the novel was resurrected, and the theatre, with new art forms derived from it, opera and such like - so too, we could simply argue that Renaissance authors were using this genre because it had been used by Plato, Socrates, Cimmias, Seneca, Tacitus, and so on? Just about every genre of ancient literature was resurrected during this period. Some flourished, others faded away. The dialogue certainly was rejuvenated as an art form, and flourished for hundreds of years, right through to the late 1700s, when it suddenly faded away. Whatever the case may be, it is arguably the case that humanism and the dialogue go hand in hand.

M: Do you then think that writing dialogue is in itself a political act of sorts? That this genre is an expression of humanism?

B: I think that could be cogently argued. We are living in an age where debate is increasingly being closed down. This is particularly the case where it comes to the interaction of some of the sects of Islam with the West, where there is a concerted effort to close off debate, just as the Catholic Church attempted to close off debate in the past. The parallels are striking. Perhaps the format of dialogue as a literary genre will enable a real engagement with these issues, an engagement that would not otherwise be possible using more conventional literary forms, which are possibly too polemic, or confrontational. Dialogue allows for a multifaceted argument, and at times, these issues are so complex, that a single point of view cannot encompass or map the territory of the argument. This is particularly the case where it comes to the confrontation of values that has arisen between some sects of Islam and some Islamic thinkers, and the Epicurean philosophy that underpins the modern culture of the West. This is an age old battle, it is nothing new. What is new, is that after a period of dormancy, it has begun to rage yet again.

M: Yes, I agree. Certainly, for myself, this genre allows me express myself, I feel a freedom in writing that is absent when I attempt to engage with these matters as an essayist, or a writer of articles, or standard blog entries.

B: Well, I wish you good luck in your endeavours. I am curious about what you will come up with. Will this be a patch of infertile ground, or a fecund meadow? Will thorns grow here, or marigolds?

M: I would hope that there would be thorns and flowers in equal measure.

B: Cura ut Valeas, Amice.

M: Vale et tu.