thelogicalview.co.uk

Tag: common sense

  • Knowledge of the Ancients: Pliny the Elder, (23-79CE), on British farming and the Iran oil crisis

    Knowledge of the Ancients as opposed to Wisdom of the Ancients has therefore been shown as different. There is not a neat available definition of Knowledge of the Ancients, nor of Ancient Knowledge, probably because knowledge is self explanatory. Knowledge of the Ancients and Ancient Knowledge, they hang together around Knowledge as opposed to Wisdom, and Ancient Knowledge is the general term for knowledge passed down through generations. Knowledge, generations, these words are all related to human and societal practices over genetic millennia or centuries at least, for it to become knowledge.

    For the purpose of this purely pagan blog this is good, because humans habit in, or inhabit, on an Earth based existence, and more than that, their generations before have gained their knowledge from centuries and millennia on the same region of land, hence the knowledge, because knowledge comes from observing the land, the the majestic rising and setting of Helios overhead. It does not actually matter who goes around who, but we know that it is Earth which spins around Helios, but either way, knowledge is needed for Earth based existence. Ancient Knowledge is Knowledge on and of the land, for survival basically.

    So Knowledge of the Ancients, which is ancient, is by a human and yet it is what is known which is that useful knowledge. It is and it is not paradoxical. It is both. Pliny the Elder was a human, yet it is his astonishing depth and breadth of geography, natural history, minerals and metals, ethnography and societal practices in the lands around the Roman Empire, both within and outside its frontiers which is the knowledge and information. He is no longer in physical, but the knowledge he imparted does remain. And because knowledge is based on fact, or physical and material reality (which this blog does include psychic phenomena because it is factual and real) how can Pliny the Elder connect with British farming and the Iran oil disruption chaos of 2026?

    In Pliny’s day, the first century CE, he would not now know what we are talking about if we said oil disruption due to American aggression in Iran. Pliny in his wide travels, observation, enquiry and knowledge might well have known of Iran, or Iranshahr, as the natives of the region called themselves. He would well have known the Persians, as called by Greeks and Romans, a constant presence and worry to successive Emperors on the eastern borders.

    Pliny the Elder, born in Italy into the new and optomistic Roman Empire and dying in the eruption of Vesuvius 79CE, when in his official capacity and acting with the bravery which men of service possess, going ashore to enquire of the situation and to reassure terrified citizens. The eruption of Vesuvius was way bigger than any human knowledge, plans, intention, ability, or biology, and a man of great cognitive capacity, experience and observation died along with all other biology, as all biology does under superior forces of Earth or Helios.

    In the unfortunate loss of his many other works, the Natural History remains, and contains a vast range of knowledge, knowledge, not wisdom. Pliny in Book XVII, on Aboriculture, states how the tribes of Britain and Gaul use seaweed as fertilizer and how effective this is. Gaul, modern day France, has a very, very long coastline. Britain, with our complicated geography has an even longer coastline, and therefore even more seaweed.

    In 2026, these few months into the year and the global disruption from the unexpected rush to war over no one is quite sure what, other than the USA is going in hard to a completely different geographical and cultural region, and way of ‘doing business,’ several nutshells have stood out loud and clear. Well, to this writer anyway. One is the stated anxiety within the ‘UK’ that British farming will soon be in crisis because it cannot get the fertilizers needed to …. fertilize the farming land of Britain. Was there ever such a strange juxtaposition?

    It is about 2,000 years since Pliny the Elder put together his comprehensive Historia Naturalis, compiling the intricacies of Ancient Knowledge of human and land. The completeness of human on land, survival over seasons and cycles, years and years, going into 100s, going into millennia, it is a wondrous thing. And Pliny certainly thought so.

    In this nutshell of British farming and the oil crisis in Iran, if this were to be explained to someone like Pliny of how it came to be seen as a problem, what would we say? All the centuries through to somewhere around 1815 when trade had opened up and cheaper imports were available, still of the sea kelp and other seaweed to reduce down for that potash and soda ash, to nutrient rich, but cheaper, British farms used what was plentifully available, and from the ancient knowledge of those who were born, lived, and worked the land and shorelines. That is less than 200 years ago.

    Fast forward another 100 years, and the new world of ‘science,’ and the departure from the real facts of life, the logical way of living, and the cheap, synthetic, fake, chemical fertilizers were offered as an alternative. The devil incarnate. To manufacture the phosphorus, potassium and nitrogen based fertilizers, which sound so natural but are not, requires the use of fossil fuels, oil and natural gas. The chemical process is way above this writer’s ken, and a nutshell does not have space to contain the chemical formulas, mining extraction processes, all the heavy equipment used to create those cheap synthetic chemical fertilizers. How it is all extracted, formulated into a synthetic and toxic fertilizer, shipped to the ‘UK’, and poured onto the land must be a very complicated and energy consuming process. But the end point is cheaper and easier. But than what we ask?

    It is a surprise at finding there is any link at all between British farmland and Iran. Under common sense, if the same materials are still in situ around the same coastlines of Britain as Pliny wrote of 2,000 years ago, and which had existed for at least another 7,000 years before after the melting of the last Ice Age, and the Ancient Knowledge holding as true as ever had been, why is there any crisis in Britain?

    Why has leadership in Britain allowed such a divergence? Why can the government not communicate with all coastal County Councils, including Cornwall (who is not devolved and why not?), Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland to ask who still hold this Ancient Knowledge? There must be a few crofters on the far reaches of Western Isles and Scotland who still live by traditional methods. Why are government officials not hot footing it out to find those people, to ask them, to look to common sense and gratitude in the abundance which lies around us? Why is there not a module inserted into the curriculum of all secondary age pupils on which seaweeds to recognise, how to pick, how to reduce down, how to spread on the land? In the sad facts of State -v- biology in the ‘UK’, the chaos caused in Iran does not have a clearer focus than this. Probably the government has started a billion pound research programme, which will take 10 years, and never deliver (the information, not the seaweed to fertilizer). Meanwhile, ancient cultures retain their link over millennia of old to young, young become old, pass old to young, and if anything this crisis is showing, it is who has the right to opinionate, and who doesn’t.

  • Wisdom of the Ancients: Pliny the Elder (23-79CE) on British farming and the Iran oil crisis.

    What does Wisdom of the Ancients mean? According to the Collins Dictionary, Ancient Wisdom is “pre-Christian knowledge, philosophy and beliefs.” That is two words where the definition encompasses an enormous plethora of combinations and confusions. Some knowledge will have stayed the same, like Helios rises and sets, and that humans need food and water to survive, and other philosophies and beliefs will have morphed into (way too) many since the contrived and cobbling together of the (very many) appropriated images and metaphors to create ‘Christianity’ in the early centuries of the CE.

    Wisdom of the Ancients refers therefore to humans as the focus, it is the wisdom of ‘them.’ Seagulls, earthworms, limpets, snails, lions, beavers, mountain goats, whales and spiders have Wisdom of the Ancients and Moderns, because there is no division in time for them, other than how to deal with the modern human behaviour. There is no Collins Dictionary definition of Wisdom of the Ancients (Collins being a factual and historical publishing house with fine post WWII offices in 13-14 St. James Street, London W1, just as the other real publishers also had houses round about so folks could meet and discuss. Internet screens are not based on anything of any real substance, including this one). When a modern human refers to Wisdom of the Ancients, it is therefore a contrived term, a new-agey kind of catch all for high and divine mystical knowledge derived from any tradition you want it to, regardless of your own culture, ethnicity (genetics of the parents), factual knowledge of those other cultures from having spent time on the ground, or how often you might change your mind and pick and mix another one.

    That short rant over, and having clarified it to itself, this blog post will start again, using the better term of ‘Knowledge of the Ancients.’

  • The Assisted Dying Bill: House of Lords kills the Commons

    …. in attempt to block the humane Bill to allow a peaceful passing of those with a terminal illness facing a bad end.

    It’s a complicated matter this process of the Assisted Dying Bill currently passed by the Commons on 20th June 2025 by the 314 in favour, 291 against. Sure, this is a pretty close vote but still a clear vote for the Bill, but Parliament is not the population of the ‘UK’, England and Wales, Britain, however that is said. This Bill is for citizens in England and Wales, and the same Bill content for Scotland is currently at Stage 3 in Holyrood, where again MSPs are not the population, only the representatives of the function of governance. Within the citizen opinion, including Christians, medical staff, vets of course because with animals that is considered the kindest and most obvious course of action and how barbaric it would be otherwise, some hospice staff, some like Markus Campbell-Savours MP who started as opposing the change in law and then looked at the evidence and the facts and changed his vote, and the so many people who don’t quite know how it would work because it is a change but who have witnessed awful and prolonged scenes of someone they know very well and simple biological normality says that is wrong to prevent someone passing out of hell on earth and into a peaceful passing on to avoid the hideous suffering and forced medical applications and leaving their loved ones traumatised for their own remaining lifespan.

    Those against the Bill use a lot of air time and press space and Parliamentary time and now the House of Lords time to give their own personal opinion. Amongst the general public, the overwhelming percentage is for this facility to be available, and it is through the Commons, just required to be scrutinised in the Lords (and Ladies), but under the umbrella of the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949, the role of the Lords is only to scrutinise what is moving through, not to take hijack.

    If anything has shown up the strange state of affairs in the ‘UK’, the devolved ‘countries’, the power that ‘medicine and science’ now has, the departure from realities of a biological human being, the new power of the individual opinion over the power of an individual to say they’ve had enough suffering, and the question of governance in where does that yes or no exist in practice, then this Bill has it all.

    You’d think that any MP, MSP or HoL member on the left of centre (that’s how ‘UK’ politics is defined) would be very against this Bill because the State now has full control over an individual and is kind and prevents all suffering etc., and it would be the ‘right’ who still understand functional processes who would be on block behind it, but this Bill has had every cross reference and juxtaposition possible. Lord Charlie Falconer, with the solid government legal career and the long time brains and philosophy behind the Parliamentary processes of this issue and Kim Leadbeater MP who has succeeded to at last reach this common sense of the Commons and a vote For, both are in the Labour camp. The Conservative Leader of the House of Lords has said, ‘Peers are entitled to scupper the defective Assisted Dying Bill,’ and the usual vocal range of individuals who are dead set against it for religious zealot or ‘disabled protectors’ are not looking at the function of scrutinising a Bill to make implementation as well worked as possible, but the opposite, no matter what the Parliament Acts say, now matter what the majority of citizens want, no matter the vote in the Commons June 2025, the House of Lords are declaring they are not part of the parliamentary process but their own empire. How bizarre a juxtaposition is that. Because in trying to find every blocking move possible, from time to objections to fake questions on more clarity, to make this Bill die a quiet and low key death (just what the Bill wants to give genuinely suffering terminally ill people), the Lords are killing the parliamentary process itself, and even if this Bill does make it through the hijacking of the Lords, still the parliamentary process will be shown now to be made up of individuals out for their own agenda.

    This perilous situation could show a constitutional crisis if really scrutinised, which is probably not a good idea to do, the evidence and reality is too awful to contemplate. The Island of Man in March 2025 completed its process, with citizens, both Houses of the Tynwald Parliament all pretty much on the same page. After years of debate yes, but the process was smooth, the upper house agreed some amendments, the Bill had been brought by a GP himself, and good clarity is written in and all ready to go. Ready to go that is for the folks of the Isle of Man, but go that is for final assent because the Isle of Man is a Crown Dependency therefore the Crown of the ‘UK’ is going to be granting the final permission for what has already smoothly moved through the Tynwald.

    Furthermore, the approval of Assisted Dying law in Jersey’s State Assembly in May 2024 and a draft law published last September 2025 and which is now undergoing the usual scrutiny and discussion which is the job of those in governance, and hardly likely to have the same scenes of the House of Lords, Jersey also will be waiting patiently with their large parchment, waiting for that Royal Seal of Approval.

    How curious is this under constitutional law. The Crown has power over Crown Dependencies in matters of military and international relations, and Assisted Dying for somebody pretty much there already is you would think hardly a military matter and definitely nothing to do with international relations. Quite the opposite really, it is the most domestic, most basic, most biological and natural thing possible, way below politics or the bigger picture of society. So what a curious situation that the smooth passage of the Isle of Man Assisted Dying Bill is just waiting for King Charles to give his assent, while the famous Palace of Westminster and the House of Lords are in this difficult political balance, and the Scottish Holyrood Parliament have also the individuals who cannot think outside of their own heads and lives and would very much like the Stage 3 to be killed and not become law. What a strange situation.

    If King Charles signed the document and gave it a great big wax seal, pressed his ring into it and said, ‘Well done guys, you’ve done a great process there, lucky citizens in the Isle of Man,’ what would happen in the House of Lords and in Holyrood opponents? It would highlight the really really tenuous historical basis within the ‘UK’ and in these times of the collapsing ‘world stage (only a Shakesperian fiction and yet another fiction the ‘UK’ built its modern framework on) the governance of the physical land area of Britain in the general sense and those 3 Crown Dependencies of Isle of Man, Guernsey and Jersey.

    King Charles, and his late mother, are people who understand the natural world, despite the royal birth both understand biology and the practicalities of running rural life and the inevitability of birth leading to passing on because that is what existence is within this atmosphere on the spinning mass of Earth, so what would happen if in this bizarre stand off, King Charles was to seal his great Seal on that straightforward legislation in the Isle of Man, and have the wax warmed ready for Jersey to present their parchment? For the sake of the present confusion in the ‘UK’ this would be a very simple solution to end the impasse and to show the facts.

  • A Blog

    Assisted Dying, who is the relevant person here?

    Assisted Dying, that current heightened subject in the ‘UK’, has been passed by the Scottish Parliament today, to move on to Committee stage. The media channels, and especially BBC Radio 4, gives the matter central air time and not from the decision of a Parliamentary vote in favour. The subject is dying, and we are all going to die, because all humans are part of the life zone on planet Earth, just one of the bodies held in gravity around Helios. Because we live, we die, it is just a fact of life, no pun intended. The fact of life is also the fact of death, which in this question means physical matter death. The realm of spirit is different again, and one which evidence proves is as natural as life and death of physical matter, but spirit dimensions and ‘life after death’ are not the subject of the Assisted Dying debates going on in the present day.

    Each time this question meets the public sphere, as it certainly does when a Parliament votes to move it forward, as Westminster and Holyrood have now both done, and the Isle of Mann, and Jersey, but let’s stick with Westminster and Edinburgh, while strangely the go-ahead Welsh on language and respect for landscape features such as Yr Wyddfa (and you’d have to be a native Welsh speaker to pronounce that one, wouldn’t you!) have less room for discussion on the matter of assisted dying, because it is really Westminster and Edinburgh which BBC Radio 4 follow. Again today, again, because the subject of assisted dying is public news, the reflex is to give air time to someone in a wheelchair. In England that person is a well-known sportswoman, and in Scotland today, that person is an MSP. If it was said, what’s it got to to do with them, then accusations of discrimination against disabled people would fly, both are women so accusations of misogyny would soon follow, and everything heads to the usual shut down of any real discussion or relevance.

    What is missing in this debate on assisted dying, it could be said,(as one must say in this age of near paranoia of offending someone), is that it is nothing to do with anybody except the person errr……dying. In a logical blog it is the height of illogicality to interview anybody on the subject of assisted dying – with the stated framework of a likely 6 month expectation of life, before a certain death (which we all will have), in England at least but still the same principles are in the motion in Scotland – who does not have a terminal illness that is very likely to lead to a bad end, a painful end, a traumatic end for them and all around them, and a period where life is not the lovely exchanges around a bedside as someone gently slips away. Some people have that, the one who is dying and then those around them, and what a lovely way to go. For others who will not be having a peaceful ending with perhaps a bit of pain relief at the end but nothing too grotesque, how incredibly disrespectful is it to have BBC Radio 4 interviewing people who use wheelchairs. To use a wheelchair must be unbelievably frustrating, but it is not a terminal illness. Nor is mental disability, nor is old age, nor is depression and nor is anything else except a terminal illness which is only going one way.

    Why is it in this age of individualism, the ‘person centred’ obsession, the empathising and all the sugary psychological talk, that a person in bad pain, bad failing of bodily functions, possibly weeks or a few months, bad psychological state of having all the caring people staring at them 24/7, a person asking, begging, to be helped to move on, and which has no other interpretation than what they are saying, often someone who has lived a life to the full and not sat around, someone who is in a network of loving caring people who also do not want to see this unfolding horror of their last few weeks or months, why is it that they have to hear media channels holding a theatrical debate on everything but the obvious?

    Since the unfortunate case of Harold Shipman despatching many people under the job title of doctor in the NHS a certain paranoia has risen, that anyone talking about death means they want to kill people. The Christians have always had their own rationale, based on beliefs which are not logical – as measured to Earth and Helios – and no doubt other religions also have their reasons. The NHS believes citizens live in it, from cradle to grave, and to reject the NHS is not far off the Christians in their belief of salvation and hell. Isn’t it strange that there is an obsession of crime writing, crime films, crime research in the ‘UK’, where literary festivals not put on a crime event because that is the one which will sell out on opening sales, while history, geography, natural history, the makers and observers are lucky to fill part seats. Put against the obsession with crime, murder, problems in life, why does something as natural as assisted dying, for someone who is only going one way and which any physician with any basic understanding can see, why is this subject such a public spectacle in the ‘UK’?