A moral authority

The other morning I stuck up a rainbow flag poster in my window which said ‘chose love’, but I hesitated in case this message offended my neighbours. What I have written here is my reaction to that feeling, which I have chosen to share.

I’m living through my second national debate about marriage equality. Australia is currently having a plebiscite, the UK having had their debate many years ago. I often resist the temptation to publish about politics – I have drafted many unpublished pieces since moving to Australia. However, I decided not to stay silent on marriage quality – because we are not talking about politics – we’re talking about something much more profound – more profound even than human rights….

Arthur C Clarke wrote that ‘the greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion’.

The most well-organised campaigns against marriage equality in the UK, Ireland and currently Australia are from people who identify as religious, or people who get voted into power by the former. However, in my lifetime, it appears that in England, Ireland and Australia - the 'moral authority' has begun to disintegrate of people and organisations of people who describe themselves as ‘religious’. Census results indicate the growing majority of people who don't identify as 'religious' is accelerating. Is this new reality reflected in political power? For example, a party which describes itself as religious is by far the largest in the European Parliament.  

And I use this word power deliberately. As people and organisations of people who label themselves as religious lose 'moral authority' what are they left with?

They are left with something we all have - a personal perspective, utterly subjective, to be considered and balanced with everyone else's perspective – against the objective ideal of human rights and our place within the eco-systems that represent all life.

What we are then left with is people who identify as religious, people who don’t and people who are not described by either of those binaries  - all of whom, have perspectives which, if we chose to, we can consider and balance with everyone else's.

Equally, with equality.

No longer are we seeking permission from those in power, masking it behind religion or morality - for we are not even asking for their permission in the first place - because we don't have to. 

I have literally never asked any one of my elected representatives who they think I should love and marry – would you, honestly, even entertain the idea? It is preposterous. 

Elected representatives are public servants, paid to serve us, asked to help us make informed decisions and then required to reflect our democratic decisions – all together – transparently and accountable. 

At no stage did we, the people, ask them (our representatives) to tell us the answer. If you allow people with control of law, finances or information to encroach into this territory of considering themselves to have more ‘moral authority’ than you, then watch them – and call them out on it. For when you label it, it disintegrates under the weight of it’s own self-evident absurdity.

My perspective, for what it’s worth, is that no one should be allowed to impose their views on others - especially not when it affects human rights. 

So who has ‘moral authority’? Everyone. We all do. All views should be balanced, all decisions weighed.

So what is the best way we have, as a species, of doing that at the moment? It's evidence-based decision making. This is asking collectively, 'what do we know?' (science means knowledge), asking 'what don't we know' and 'what do we need to know' - all while acknowledging what can we never know. 

This is the start of evidence-based decision making. When ‘evidence’ includes data from as many sources as possible – especially ‘qualitative’ research - the 'subjective' (the 'what I feel' – the sense of the qualities something has - opposed to the 'what I'm told’) – then it can be balanced with other kinds of data. This method of constantly asking questions is constantly evolving, and is currently called 'the scientific method'. 

I live in a country where, after recent popular votes, it feels like the plebiscite for ‘marriage equality’ could go either way. What terrifies me most is that some people still feel that legitimate political debate consists of people, who were never invited to do so, telling others what to 'feel' and what to do and who it is OK to love.

Naturally, there have been, are and will be many points in spacetime, where the ‘moral authority’ of the powerful is supreme, whatever label they chose to apply to it. The struggle to overcome that with the rule of law, accountability and evidence-based decision making is an ongoing one in many parts of this planet. Those who feel they are struggling in the other direction, must therefore believe that their personal inner conviction is supreme to others – or perhaps merely use other people’s belief in that to impose their own personal power.

But don’t we all want the same? Love, peace, happiness?

There are many ways up a mountain, each of us should be able to make an informed decision to chose our own path, that is what we sometimes call ‘freedom’.

When I put my poster up in a quiet neighborhood, it took no courage compared to the acts of people in previous movements for human rights, but I did hear that quiet defiant scream of freedom. I want everyone to have the chance to feel that scream of freedom from deep history – the deep sense of universal human rights - from the rule of law, to universal suffrage, from the anti-apartied movement through to marriage equality.

We must feel this and act on it, for what lies ahead is much more important - what lies beyond – is our very balance with the ecosystems in which we all live and upon which we (and all life after us) all depends. There is no 'moral authority' required in these decisions, what we need is evidence-based decision making to prevent the unconscious destruction of life on earth.

Vote with conscience Australia - I hope you show the world you are ready to move forward in hope and love.

Thank you for reading this.

I’m now preparing my next piece for the 2040 vote on ‘equality for trees and all life on earth’.

If you still look down on people who merely hug trees, just wait until the equality laws reach the forest.

Bursting your bubble: UFOs and censored dreams

This is the story of how me spotting a UFO over 20 years ago has reminded me to stop being scared of ridicule, start asking more questions and to start dreaming.

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How did you get to this link? Probably most likely you saw it on Facebook or Twitter – maybe a friend shared it – but most likely you came to this via your Facebook newsfeed.

Recently we’ve all learned the hard way about how our newsfeeds – the lists of what we see and read – are influenced by complex algorithms which, for a price, can be manipulated in sophisticated ways.  Perhaps this in an inevitability – but it seems no one was quite prepared for the enormous impact.

The result of the British referendum to Brexit was the first shock, Trump’s victory the next – one which had people asking questions ‘How did this happen’ – stating things like ‘but every post I saw was people saying exactly the opposite’.

This is the social media bubble, which Obama warned about as a threat to democracy in his last speech as US President. The recent Adam Curtis documentary ‘Hypernormalisation’ articulates this echo chamber of reinforcement in brilliant detail. It’s the modern equivalent of getting all your news from only your neighbours in your neighbourhood, who all live relatively similar lives to you, and who all get their information in the same way.

The danger is that not only are many people unaware of this – but that a few intelligent people are so aware of it that they are already changing the world with this knowledge. A company called Cambridge Analytica used technology that gets to ‘know you’ from your ‘likes’ on Facebook and then targets adverts at you which reinforce what you already believe (this is very simplified explanation of hugely complex algorithms). The company worked so effectively for both the ‘leave’ Brexit campaign and the Trump campaigns that it has even prompted the head of Mi6 to speak out (James Bond’s boss), as it represents a threat to ‘sovereignty’ – that word which means less and less each week in a time dominated by digital information.

But what does this have to do with UFOs?

I saw a UFO

Well, a little over 20 years ago I went to primary school in Leicestershire, in the middle of England. I have a vivid memory that until writing this, I’ve never shared with anyone. I remember standing on the school field on a sunny day, with a few big clouds in the sky. Suddenly, I saw plane flying vertically into the sky, turning slowly while travelling at high speed until it disappeared into the clouds. I shouted and pointed but everyone else was playing football and no one saw (I think I might have been in goal, spacing out). I knew what I’d seen but it being the 1990s, there really was no way for a 7 year old to report or research a UFO sighting. My Mum remembers me telling her, but that was the end of it.

I didn’t think this was alien, at the age of 6 I’d been to the space centre in Florida, knew very well what was possible with technology - but I had never heard of a plane that could fly vertically – we only knew about concord – that was the only object in the skies over the UK we ever got excited about. What I’d seen looked more like something from Thunderbirds.

So I logged this memory and I haven’t told anyone about it, plagued by a fear I'd be ridiculed. This fear is the most important point of this whole piece.

This weekend I watched a documentary that triggered this memory of mine that I’ve not thought about in years. It triggered it as it was almost identical footage of the UFO I saw over 20 years ago.

It was an English Electric Lightning, taking off in an amazing super-sonic vertical climb. While I don’t know for sure this is what I saw, a basic Wikipedia search informs me that until 1992 they were used in the UK to test new radar tracking technology – and some airbases were quite close to where I went to school.

Unidentified Flying Object is a hopeful acronym, in its very name is the assumption it will be shortened to an Identified Flying Object. We expect to know. It took me 20 years to identify mine, but if I saw a UFO now would I post about it on social media?

Social Media Shaming

How many of us would post something they’ve seen but that they can’t explain? I fantasise that my peers would examine it scientifically and invite the serious scrutiny of others. The reality I fear is that many of us would hide, fearing ridicule and shame, as if these are the worst things that could befall us? Yet there is much worse, it is that of cowardice and ignorance, and cowardice to challenge those who may be ignorant to prove they are not so.

I've other friends who have seen UFOs and it has affected them profoundly – inspiring them of life beyond earth and being brave enough to be open about it publicly.

While I’m almost certain life exists beyond Earth, I personally doubt it’s traveled here in spacecraft. But that’s different from saying ‘you didn’t see a UFO’. History has taught us that we often need to trust the people who think differently, at least enough to test their theories fairly.

For example, many UFOs sightings around Roswell were all real (the military testing new aircraft) – with the CIA withholding information - or actively encouraging rumours of aliens to distract people from the truth – that they had an almost bottomless budget to develop and test new classified technology and then weaponise it. It is near impossible to know of the many wonders mankind has discovered that have been ‘classified’ or hidden from the public domain.

The learning point here is that what those people saw was real – however, it is likely that their theory to explain it was incorrect.

Trust your senses?

Do you trust is your own ‘a priori’ knowledge, your own senses? In an age of digital information, we have been pushed into rejecting even these. Second-hand recorded videos could be computer generated graphics, data can be edited – and so we question what we see – unsure what or who to believe.

What we must teach the generation growing up on this internet is to trust the process of asking questions themselves. Some people call this the scientific method, critical appraisal – I call it asking questions.

It's taken me over 20 years to realise I'm not mad, and yet I'm only just beginning to see the deep, deep delusion of a culture which shames fringe thinkers into silence, before the questioning process has even begun.

It is not conspiracy to say how much tax is spent on ‘defence’, in secret and unaccountable to the public. Members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alone make up 70% of global military spending. Global military spending in 2016 was $1.69 trillion, research and development $1.48 trillion.

It is not conspiracy to say that much of the mass media is owned by a small few, billionaires, each with an agenda and much to lose. It is not conspiracy to say that these people influence our elected representatives and that very few of them do not have policies for sale. It is not conspiracy to say the defence budgets serve to protect the already powerful and the already rich, who can afford to ‘influence’ (bribe or blackmail) the those who can buy the most weapons. The military-industrial complex is real. This is all fact.

Therefore the questions we all need to start asking now, as a species, are – who and what are we ‘defending’.  Ask ‘why is THIS story being told to me, and by who?’.

If these people claim to be helping save us – we need to start asking who will save us from ourselves? This is the ‘hypernormalisation’ of which Adam Curtis speaks, the knowledge that things don’t make sense, but a paralysis of knowing how to do anything about it.

You’ve read this far – and that’s a modern miracle

We can all be involved in moving out of this bubble. For the first time in a meaningful way, our reality can be shaped beyond mass media – we can all write, read, think and dream together – in real time.

Yet at this glorious time of potential, the party predicted to win the next UK general election pledges in their manifesto to regulate and censor the internet. This is an unforgiveable assault of the highest order on human communication. 

So take control of your own feeds – burst your bubble - talk to strangers, join groups you’d never join. Find someone you completely disagree with and have a cup of tea with them.

We know that it is knowledge, love and compassion that save us from ignorance, hatred and fear. We know we need more than just weapons to defend the lives we want.

Imagine if everyone, collectively asked, ‘what kind of world are we making’. Imagine politicians being elected on policies of shifting some ‘defence’ budget to a ‘science’ budget. 

It was interesting, hearing a leader of a political party in the UK (Jeremy Corbyn) suggest leading the world by example in nuclear disarmament. Watching that reaction to even having that suggested –seeing the ridicule that was met with even within his own party – as if nuclear weapons are an endlessly sensible option to solve anything. Why is nuclear disarmament such a taboo? It is a self-fulfilling prophesy to doubt that we can do it.

If we wish, we can shift money, collective mental energy from developing weapons to developing peaceful technology. Simultaneous, synchronised mass-disinvestment is a genuine tool that could be used much more effectively

This is all possible. And 'you may say that I'm a dreamer'  - but I no longer fear this as ridicule. Truly, which world would you want to dream into reality? 

We are all in a shared waking dream in this digital age, and we must all begin to ask more questions. Then we may dream together. If you dream it, then it becomes so.

Piano Man

Last night, something happened in bed which hasn't happened to me since I was a small boy.

I'm almost certain it's exactly not what you're thinking....

Here’s a short story about it with links to a forthcoming 4K virtual reality video thrown in for good measure.
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I grew up with a piano in my house and as soon as I was able, I started playing and composing. It was one of the happiest parts of growing up at home - sitting down at a piano and just playing when the mood took me.

I left home at 18 and I'm now 31 and have never lived in a house with a piano since. In London I VERY nearly lived with an old lady who was Oxbridge and ex-MI6 because she had a Steinway grand and lived in Sloane Square - but she told me she wanted 'more than a tenant - I want a companion'. I'm still not quite sure what she meant, but I walked away from the deal. I love the piano, but I guess I have my limits.

A couple of years ago my parents decided to give away their piano as no one at home played it anymore and someone else might as well have it. Despite living at the other end of the world, I still got sad knowing it had gone and kept going to play it when I was back visiting - forgetting there was just an empty space there.

After a little bit of moping and looking to the past, it struck me that I'm 31, and if I want a piano, and am dreaming of a piano, I should get one! We recently got kicked out our house in Fitzroy as the landlord wanted to move back in - so found ourselves in a slightly cheaper area, with a slightly bigger detached house. Time to get a piano I thought!

For those who think this might be quite a lot of trouble to go to (why not just use an electric keyboard etc) I recently realised that a significant proportion of my friends don't know the following things about me:

1. I play the piano and cello
2. I compose music and record it (hence needing a real piano)
3. I have my first album coming out in a few weeks (all being well!) on the Atlantic Jaxx label

Having a way to record piano in my own home means I don't have to beg or borrow time on other pianos and can spend more time 'composing' rather than improvising and hoping that one take I managed to do is usable.

So I get online and find a ton of free pianos and manage to get hold of a beautiful Australian made piano and arrange the delivery online.

The night before the piano is due to arrive, I can't get to sleep. This happens to me occasionally, like most people - and almost always after doing something just before bed that involves my pre-frontal cortex and a bright screen.

Usually by 3 or 4am I get off. Last night I didn't get off until 6am, about an hour before the alarm! I couldn't figure it out - I hadn't have caffeine - what was it? Then I realised - I was TOO EXCITED to sleep! I was actually so excited about getting a piano that I couldn't sleep - like that feeling when you're a kid and it's your birthday or Christmas or a big exciting holiday the next day! It had been so long since I'd felt like that I'd forgotten it could happen to adults!

The Comedy Delivery

So at 8am, sleep deprived and not in the best state, I'm greeted by the delivery people with my piano in the back of a truck

The first thing they say is 'we didn't know it was stairs'. I said I didn't know I needed to tell them there were stairs - this being Melbourne, a city with houses that have stairs. I had offered all the information the company requested - and had perhaps naively assumed that piano movers would be equipped to deal with a flight of 5 steps up a porch.

'It'll be an extra $100 as there are stairs'. What can I do but agree? They've got my piano hostage in a truck.

So we take the fence down - and then they deliver the news that I have to help them move it.

I get talking to them, they are international students trying to make a living - both from Amritsar - a fine city, and I told them of my visit a while back to try and build rapport. So we start trying to move the piano.

It becomes apparent very quickly they're not professional movers. One of the guys simply isn't strong enough to lift it - and I'm not a strong man, hence paying removal people! What I have here are the Punjabi Laurel and Hardy. Sadly, I'm the punchline! They're counting in punjabi and I figure out when they say 'jar' I need to lift. But apparently at one point my Punjabi wasn't up to scratch and I mistime a lift, get it half up the step, land it on my foot and cut my hands and hurt my back.

I manage to convince them to count in English so we can synchronise our lifting. This plan would have worked perfectly - if any of us were actually strong enough to lift it. Now, I'm all for diversity and equal opportunities in the workplace - but there are certain expectations when paying for hired muscle, that, well, you've hired some muscle.

We get stuck. We simply can't get it up the final step. We try for ten min, damaging the bottom of the piano in the process, sweating in the heat of the summer day.

Then, like a mirage of tanned muscle, a couple of Australian delivery people spot us. They ask if we need some help (the most rhetorical question I've heard all year) and the two of them proceed to lift it up onto the final step for us as we were all exhausted. I was very grateful, and they wouldn't take a dollar and wished us a good day. I decided this was quite an Australian thing to happen.

Once we'd wheeled the piano into the house the removal people asked for payment, including the extra $100. As you might imagine, I was slightly less enthusiastic about paying the extra money, having done a fair share of the heavy lifting myself.

What followed was rather awkward, as essentially, we'd all been put in this shitty situation by the bad management of the company - them quite fairly being told not to leave without being paid and me, quite fairly, not happy about being essentially mugged in my own house and made to do a job I'd paid other people to do - that they had then outsourced, for free.


The guys were getting quite aggressive, and let's just say I wasn't in the best of moods being sleep deprived - but we parted on good terms and bonded over being students while they helped me reassemble my fence.

Coda and album 'spruiking'

So the coda to this tale is that I now have a piano in my house for the first time in over a decade. Most importantly, I can now start serious work on finishing my second album.

For anyone who is interested, my first album 'Blue Sun' will be released in the next few weeks - here are a couple of places you can subscribe to or following for updates:

• soundcloud.com/jacksnunn
• https://www.facebook.com/jacknunnmusic/
• Subscribe to the Youtube channel and watch that space for a 4K virtual reality 360 degree balloon ride
• https://twitter.com/jacknunn
• https://www.instagram.com/jacksnunn

More soon - thanks for reading!