Author: Mark

  • Brighton Science Festival 2012 Review

    Brighton Science Festival 2012 Review

    This was the title of  an all day event I had the pleasure of attending today as part of the Brighton Science Festival 2012.   Brighton loves festivals, whilst the arts festival is the most famous, there are also many other festivals including,  music, cinema, literature and science.  This was my first experience of  attending the Brighton Science Festival and on this occasion  both the theme and the format appealed.  The unifying theme of the day was – how much of our world is a  figment of our imagination?  

    In answering this question we were effectively informed, guided and provoked  by experts and their friends from the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science.  The past year has been difficult for everyone in higher education given the coalition’s ideological assault upon the universities, their students and their staff. Against this backdrop it was great to see academics out of their natural habitats, making the complexities of  neuroscience  and consciousness accessible to lay people such as myself, without preaching they demonstrated why these debates are relevant to wider society and all delivered with a quiet humility which only real  experts can bring to the party.  David Willetts – this is what impact is really about, rather than the spurious values you have shoe horned into your Research Excellence Framework .

    The day ran from 10.00am to 5.00pm with eleven experts each allocated 15 minutes  to enthuse on a  particular theme, with each talk followed by questions and answers.  I  did like the idea of short  punchy talks, rather than longer lectures.  It really worked as a mechanism to provoke thinking and debate.  However, I would have to concede by the end of the day I felt worn out and I had only been listening.  As one of the coordinators suggested we were working with the ‘building blocks of the psyche’. This construction work was meaningful, but given the subject matter it felt very emotive. My own interest related to how a greater appreciation of consciousness might inform our understanding of the management of organizational change. I will offer some selective highlights from the perspective of this viewer, although it doesn’t really do justice to the richness and warmth of this particular day.

    Sam Hutton, Steve Mould and Romi Nijhawan highlighted  how what we see is shaped considerably by what is going on inside our heads.  Multiple perspectives of organizational change exist and this talk helped me to understand the distortions of perceptions and the challenges of communicating change. Andy Field challenged the old maxim that you have nothing to fear but fear itself.  He explained that evolutionary biology had equipped us to experience fear as a survival  mechanism.  In the context of organizational change  a lot of effort goes into addressing people’s irrational fears about change programmes, this talk suggested that they may be a far more rational coping mechanism. Zoltan Dienes impressed me in that he spoke about hypnosis with no script or notes, but perhaps he had induced me into this appreciative state.  He talked about  the different levels of suggestibility within people and I wondered about these levels and people’s willingness to buy into the rhetoric of change programmes. Andrew Dilley explored how we experience pain, again there is an ongoing debate about the role of pain in change programmes.  At lunch time, I enjoyed my sandwiches whilst sat on the pebbles on Brighton Beach.  It was a lovely sunny day for February and children revelled in throwing stones into the sea as they have done for many many decades.  There is something in these tiny acts of defiance which gives me hope.

    After lunch Anil Seth delivered  my favourite immortal quote of the day ‘the “I” behind the eyes’.  Organizational change invariably removes the “I” from the  equation even if the eyes are full of tears. David Osborne as a barrister dealt with truth, justice and law in a refreshingly frank manner.  

    He made the case for the collective action of juries which resonates with the belief in participative/democratic involvement in change. Robert Stovold and Greg Marshall highlighted the  tensions between science and religion. Organizational change  programmes are invariably presented as management science, but in reality they are invariably faith-based enterprises.  Dennis Chan talked on the theme of imagining the  future … and the past, drawing upon the experiences of dementia sufferers and suggesting the  brain processes are surprisingly similar.  

    This is where my head and heart  currently reside. Organizational change is  preoccupied excessively with the future or the  spurious here and now, this is always at the expense of the neglected past. He mentioned that reminiscence therapy had  been effective in treating dementia, could we  use this to help people through the painful transitions of organizational change?  Finally, our belief in conscious  free will which has resided at the heart of our societies was challenged  by Patrick Haggard.  He drew upon neuroscience again to highlight some  of the challenges for society as we better understand how our consciousness is a consequence of brain activity, rather than the driver we once imagined.

    As I reflect back on the day I am reminded of the auditory hallucinations which accompanied the day.  I began hearing voices in the Sallis Benney Theatre, but I could see nobody speaking.  It took a few minutes to realise that the speakers were using radio microphones.  There was a great guy who linked together all the different talks and his microphone appeared to be haunted  by some previous altered state of consciousness.  At times it would communicate with us when somebody else was speaking, almost like the ancestors of consciousness studies were  joining us and commenting upon proceedings through their audible whispers.   It really was odd you wanted to listen to the speaker, but another voice  was requesting your conscious attention.  It added to the day, but it was also a big relief when I realised that I was not the only one hearing voices.  Hearing Voices would have made for a good alternative title for a day that I thoroughly enjoyed.

    As I trundled home on  bus the sun was setting over the sea.  The most beautiful sunset I have seen in a long time, the sky was  marbled and  the sun gracefully slipped down in front of this marbling.  Whilst consciousness science is important, football is more important and Arsenal thrashing Spurs 5:2  is as good as it gets.  Also, I am certain that it is real, but I will still check the evidence in a few minutes time on Match of the Day 2.

  • Baka : A Cry From the Rainforest

    Baka : A Cry From the Rainforest

    Baka: A cry from the rainforest came unexpectedly crashing into my life last Friday evening. About twenty five years ago I watched Baka: People of the rainforest and almost half a life time ago it made a big impression upon me. It featured people living  in the rainforest of South Eastern Cameroon living a simple life,  free from the technology and industry of modern life. It was a very tough life even then, but there was something different and superior to our modern life. What stood out was the Baka’s connection with nature, for them nature was life or death.  Their medicines came from the forest, their food came from the forest.  Equally diseases and predators came from the forest. I was more naive and romantic back then, but at times it really appeared to be  idyllic.   Their songs stood out, music  made from instruments that  they crafted themselves.  The sheer joy in the children’s singing. At the time I purchased Heart of the Forest (The music of the Baka forest people of South East Cameroon).  I am listening to it now and on this quiet Sunday it still sounds uplifiting.

    In the last twenty five  years my life has evolved in good and bad ways like everyone else.  I guess on Friday I had hoped it would be business as usual for the Baka.  Unfortunately Phil Agland the film director had to tell a far  more tragic story.  Modern life was increasingly encroaching upon this part of Africa. The Baka were now banned from parts of their own forest which were being developed by the government as nature reserves. Other parts of the forest were now being forested  by the logging companies who were  after the mahogany.   They were now prohibited from hunting the bush meat which had been an important part of their diet.  Accordingly they were  working on farms of the Bantu people.  Often they were paid in strong alcohol made out of  fermented bananas. Despite the scale of the other threats it was this alcohol which was doing the most damage.  Some of the Baka women  were  drinking heavily whilst pregnant, leading  to foetal deformities which they did not have the infrastructure to deal with. Equally the  men who drank the alcohol were being damaged in the process. The title of the film captured the scale and nature of the challenge.

    The most dramatic element of the film was the screening of the previous film to the Baka people of today. The film was screened in the forest on a large projection screen.  The Baka people were fascinated to see themselves and their ancestors and requested repeated screenings each night. They glimpsed what had been lost in the passage of time and they even attempted to return to old ways of living, but in fairness they were swimming against a tide of progress which cannot be resisted.  The optimism was conveyed in a young girl called Ambi who was going to study in a nearby Bantu village.  There was light and hope in her eyes that suggested  at least for some of the Baka people something more.  Beyond this it was difficult to envisage in twenty five years the Baka tribes existed in anything more than a tourist theme park.

    Baka: A Cry from the Rainforest
  • Saltdean Surf’s Up

    Saltdean Surf’s Up

    Saltdean surf’s up – over recent months, sunsets and sunrises have caught my imagination like never before. Apart from birth and death, they are the most visual and symbolic endings and beginnings in our lives. Literally the day begins and the day ends.  Whilst what comes in-between is often just noise, sunrises and sunsets are always a performance. I watch them closely in a vain attempt to capture the spectacle.  Even a cloudy sunset or sunrise goes through a series of unique acts,each with high points and low lights.  It is as if some otherworldly director is directing the production.  It is easy to understand why earlier civilisations organised their societies around such natural forces.

    My focus has been trying to capture such changes in skies using  a simple camera.  This has been a learning curve and continues to be  a learning curve. I love the forests, but at this time of year they are sleeping, but come  March and April they will awaken again and I hope to be there, part of nature. As I took the photographs the tide was coming in and the sound was captured and echoed by the cliffs.

    As the skies changed the sounds changed, it all felt very primordial – magic happens.

  • Dead Peasants Rest In Peace

    Dead Peasants Rest In Peace

    Last night I settled down to watch Capitalism: A Love Story on More4. I was introduced to the dead peasants label, watching the film seemed appropriate given all the Murdoch related news this week.  It ran from 10.00pm until 12.45am which was a little too late for me.  I ended up watching two-thirds before retiring to my bed before the end. I didn’t complete watching what was a good film for three reasons.  I was tired and it was late. I enjoyed the investigative journalism, but the outcome was inevitably depressing. Finally, I knew how it would end and probably that was the most depressing bit.

    There was a sad episode which merits sharing.  Michael Moore highlighted how certain American businesses (high street names) take out secret life insurance policies on employees.  If the employee dies the American business benefits, but the next of kin and family of the deceased person see nothing of this payout. Invariably the first they know about these policies is upon the death of their loved one.

    Apparently the most lucrative policies are those taken out on young women as this age group are least expected to die and consequently if they die the American business receives a particularly large payout. Michael Moore interviewed the bereaved inevitably tearful about their loss, yet unable to find peace when they subsequently learnt that businesses were profiting from their loss.  It certainly wasn’t capitalism’s finest hour, but the sad epitaph was the use of the ‘Dead Peasant’ label that the American capitalists used for these policies.