You're never too old to rock n' roll: happy birthday James Lovelock creator of the Gaia Concept

    A couple of weeks ago I walked into the Totnes bookshop to purchase a book. I had just read John Gribbin's review of it in the July 2019 issue of Literary Review. The book was Novacene written this year by James Lovelock with Bryan Appleyard. James Lovelock is an internationally revered independent scientist who many claim has changed the way we think of Earth and our place in it. He uncovered the impact of chlorofluorocarbons on the ozone layer, and in the 1970s he introduced the concept of Gaia, the theory that the Earth is a self-regulating body.

A single organism

     Usually I write about my younger days, my teaching, residential and social work with children and families, my work in the psychotherapeutic field, or about my reading of poetry and fiction but James Lovelock's book is a scientific treatise though my reaction to it is subjective and emotional and I admire that Lovelock goes against the scientific grain when he insists science like any other endeavour is a subjective one but Novacene has been an inspiration to me and has, for the time being, diminished my desire to wallow in self pity.

    Many reading this will know about James Lovelock and his ideas. It will be clear that I've only just discovered him and them, and on reading Novacene I am captured by the originality and plausibility of Lovelock's ideas. They are all new to me, yet convincing, so clearly developed  and argued are they. He believes that in the cosmos we are alone in having intelligent life. In Novacene Lovelock predicts a future in which new beings will emerge from existing artificial intelligence systems. They will think 10,000 times faster than we do and will regard human beings in the same way as we now view plants - benign, necessary, but very slow acting organisms. These new beings will not be the cruel, violent robotic machines that want to conquer the planet as often portrayed by sci-fi writers and film-makers. They will hyper-intelligent beings as much dependent on the planet as we are. Just as we do they will need the protection of the planetary cooling system of Gaia to guard them from the increasing heat of the sun and since Gaia depends on organic life, human beings will remain partners in the project of continuing life on earth.

Novacene: the coming age

     I read these ideas from the standpoint of a 74 years old man who had a fast developing mindset that I am not - to quote from a Proclaimers song - 'worth my room on this Earth.' I have been feeling fed up about the way the world has been going, and feeling too old and 'past it' to imagine that I have even a modicum of influence left that might change what happens in my daily life in a personal or public way and now I discover James Lovelock is 100 years old today, July 26th.

    The idea of a man still writing groundbreaking books at the age of 100, lightens my weariness and gives me cause for optimism, and if I am fortunate to be spared for a few more years, there are things I can yet do - though hardly on the scale of James Lovelock - that may be of some use to myself and others. I take from Lovelock's ideas the sense that for all time we are all dependent on each other.

James Lovelock: independent scientist

    
     Yesterday I drifted into the Totnes Bookshop again and purchased Lovelock's autobiography  James Lovelock Homage to Gaia: The Life of an Independent Scientist which was first published in 2000 and has been reprinted this year.

     Last evening I was sitting in my room reading the book, with the summer evening light falling on my desk and through the open window I heard what sounded like a Jethro Tull record playing across the air. A hope came to me that there is life in this old dog yet and a desire that my new found optimism for the future will not be dashed too soon. Perhaps I'm not too old to rock n' roll or too young to die. Thank you James Lovelock.

_______________

Notes

'When Computers Rule the World' John Gribbin in Literary Review issue 477, July 2019, p10

Novacene The Coming of Age of Hyperintelligence James Lovelock with Bryan Appeyard, London, 2019

James Lovelock Homage to Gaia The Life of an Independent Scientist James Lovelock Souvenir Press, 2014, re-published 2019

James Lovelock BBC interview with Mishal Husein, 4th July, 2019. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/science-environment-48858692/james-lovelock-on-the-future-of-ai-and-climate-change 

You're Never too old to rock n' roll but you're to young to die Jethro Tull, 1975 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtwMMqRihx0

My mother, Jimmy Shand's band and The Proclaimers : an email exchange

______________

From Noel Howard : 28th September, 2016

Hi Charles,

There used to be a programme on Irish radio in the 50s called Scottish Requests and invariably “The Road to Dundee” featured as well as “The Northern Lights”, and "Sweet Alice Ben Bolt”, among other “hits” of the day with Jimmy Shand always a favourite.

Oh for such simplicities!

Noel

________________________________________

From Charles Sharpe : 13th October, 2016

Dear Noel,

I was interested in your recollection of the Irish radio programme which played requests for Scottish songs and airs. 

You mentioned Jimmy Shand who - though he spent most of his childhood in the village of Auchtermuchty in the Kingdom of Fife  -  became in the 1930s (after a spell in the coal mines), a rent collector in Dundee and he used this job as an opportunity to earn extra money by selling accordions on commission for a local music shop. This was at a time when he was also trying to establish himself as a musician assembling his own band. When he came by my grandparents’ tenement each week to collect the rent he’d let my mother practice on the accordion he brought with him and after a few weeks of this she seemed to be showing promise as an accordionist. 

You can guess what happened. Jimmy approached my Granda Jackson and said “John, ye’re lassie’s a braw player. If she were tae ha’e  an accordion I’d be happy tae ha’e her in my band.” My mother who was 12 or 13 at the time, was very excited about this but Granda Jackson couldn’t afford to buy an accordion, so Jimmy didn’t get his sale or any commission and Chrissie, my mother, didn’t get an accordion and never became the only woman to play in Jimmy Shand’s band. 

That’s how the story’s told in our family anyway.

It may only be coincidence, but Charlie and Craig Reid, the Proclaimers, though born in Leith spent most of their childhood in Auchtermuchty.  There may be something in the air in Auchtermuchty if you can afford your instrument.

Best wishes,

Charles


––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

From Noel Howard : 13th October, 2016

Really recalling those simpler times of childhood and aspects of it, like the radio programme Scottish Requests, always makes me grateful for the memory of the simple security that such occasions huddled around the radio brought as a family.

Keep in touch. 

Noel

A letter from America : there's aye hope

I wrote this blog about 24 hours after the results of the 2014 Scottish Independence referendum had been announced. I couldn't post the blog then, my feelings were too extreme.  To say I was "gutted" about the result doesn't express the half of it. I've severely edited what I originally wrote because it may have upset some people, but here is what is left of it. The extreme passions my words imply have assuaged but I will not lose touch with my underlying desire and belief. 


A friend who for a while has been living out in Chicago, Illinois, recently sent me an email saying that she was surprised to find how many citizens of the Land of the Free thought that Scotland was already an independent country. If only it were so. It was because Scots people were not free on the land that they worked and which should have been theirs that so many of them were forced to leave for  North America in the first place.

The railtrack from Miami to Canada : New Orleans to Chicago

And now that Scotland has had its referendum and the majority have voted for Scotland, a) to remain in the union, b) to support nuclear warfare, c) to take part in the bombing, killing and terrorising of innocent families in the middle east, knowing full well that there is no likelihood that they will ever be in a position to send aeroplanes and troops to bomb and slay us, d) to allow its national health service to be privatised so that poor people can't afford it, e) to accept that the working conditions ordinary trade unionists have struggled over 100 years for are now turned in a period of less than five years into zero hour contracts and fake jobs, where do we go from here ?

I may have been reeled dizzy by the result of the referendum, but in the occasional instant of stillness  I am left to wonder what the result might have been if the referendum had been a fair contest. For instance how would things have turned out if the BBC had fulfilled its responsibility to be neutral. I try - even if I fail  on some occasions -  not to make extreme judgments on anyone or anything in this blog but on this occasion moderate expression won't surface. I have trusted and relied upon the BBC a great deal for what it provides on the television screen, on the radio and on its website. I have particularly enjoyed its sports coverage on Radio 5 live but its reporting throughout the Scottish referendum campaign has left me distraught. During this time the BBC acted as Westminster's propaganda machine. As if the YES campaign had need of any other obstacles placed in its way, what with the continuous blasts of shelling from the howitzers of the entire British and Scottish mass media outlets (with the exception of the Sunday Herald) directed upon it. OK, to an extent we can accept that  privately owned mass media outlets, are free to peddle prejudice as if it were news,  but the BBC....  Oh! dearie me.  I do hope the BBC reflects upon its unfortunate and lamentable reporting of this the most important event in Scottish history for over 300 years and that it will now work hard to take the long steep climb back to what used to be its exceptional standards.

BBC public service broadcaster or Westminster propaganda machine ?

I'm too emotionally knackered to write at length about Gordon Brown strutting around like a goose shouting out that the Labour Party would never privatise the National Health Service when it was he and his predecessor Tony Blair who ushered in the the privatisation of the NHS. He has told us that we should believe the promises the three stooges from Westminster gave when they made their farcical appearance in Scotland a couple of days before the vote and vowed to give Scotland winning lottery tickets in perpetuity if it voted "No".  What's sad is that a part of the Scottish communal psyche was taken in by them !

Nevertheless it has been pleasing to hear that people from all over the world are congratulating the Scots for carrying out the referendum so peacefully. There have been a few skirmishes around the fringes but certainly when I was in Scotland over August I did not experience any worrying incidents even though the discreet yet visible badge I was proudly wearing had a clearly printed YES on it.

Since the result of the vote was announced many of my English friends and acquaintances have sympathised with me knowing that I had supported the defeated side. A number have said that they are pleased that Scotland has voted to remain within the union but, at the same time, they believe that the referendum is stirring up England. People in the regions of England are beginning to say, "We want more control of our communities".


Once I'd  got up from my bed on the morning of September 19th, I was elated to find that the people of the City of Dundee, the city where I was born, where. over centuries, courage, love,  imagination, hard work and creativity in the face of all kinds of adversity have always been the order of the day,  had voted more emphatically for independence than any other place in Scotland !

The vote in Dundee, as well as in those other regions which voted YES reminds me that there's aye hope.  Let's put right our sense of timing, let's not wait too long, let's not get things wrong : Lochaber again, Sutherland again, Skye again, Lewis once again, Bathgate once more, Irvine once more, Linwood once more and Methil just once more.

The Auld Steeple, a symbol of Dundee's courage and steadfastness

With acknowledgement and respect to The Proclaimers,,1987. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yy9GmieAEaQ
"