Lonely Planet

Over my last two years of travelling, I have witnessed ‘backpackers’ harshly changing their perspective towards the use of the previously so much appreciated Lonely Planet. Why is that?

Their argument is that by following advices from the Lonely Planet, they all end up in the same places, hence losing that sense of adventure and exploration that more and more often is the reason to travel. In particular, they accuse those travellers who focus their trips on the highlights and the suggested itineraries of the Lonely Planet.

Instead, they travel without a guidebook and rely primarily on other travellers’ feedbacks. The problem with this approach is that they still inevitably end up in exactly the same places (including hostels) as the people who base their travels on the Lonely Planet. The reason is quite simple: the Lonely Planet is written based on travellers’ experiences and the highlights are must see places!

I have a few thoughts to share in this regard. The first one follows the observation that backpacking is becoming more than an holiday trend; it is a modern subculture, just like the punks, emos, new age, or bikers. Consequently, relatively remote places that used to be visited by just a handful of ’real’ backpackers every month, receive now hundreds of visitors per week.

However, solitary backpacking is still very much possible and I would argue that it is much more likely to occur if you travel with a Lonely Planet in your hand rather than constantly asking other travellers where to go. Here are my suggestions:

1. Only a fool would not visit Unesco world heritage sites because they are listed as highlights by the Lonely Planet or because they attract many visitors. You can spend a few days there without ruining your trip. In the end remember that you are also a tourist, so do not think too high of yourself.

2. Mix it up! Embrace the country as a whole. Explore the cuisine, talk to locals, buy food at the markets. You will find that upon your departure, the most profound memories will relate to these moments (tastes, people expressions, situations, misunderstandings, etc.) rather than what you saw at Unesco sites.

3. Pretty much every country has its high and low seasons. Sometimes it is good to travel in low season when, unbelievably, all tourists disappear.

4. There are countries that are still not considered major backpacking destinations. Every year there are HOT picks where everyone has to go to, leaving other countries hardly visited.

5. Alternate hostels with cheap motels/hotels. You will hardly find tourists there, even if they appear on the Lonely Planet…

The Lonely Planet remains a great tool for solitary travellers. The maps are fantastic and if you go beyond the highlights you can find rich information about very remote places hardly visited and the journey to get there is often unique. Of course, do not be restricted by what your guidebook says. It is just a tool, and as such it can be used effectively or poorly!

Racism: education the only cure

I often argue against religion, but religious conviction is just one manifestation of a much bigger problem: race and more precisely race supremacy, the belief that a particular group is superior to others and entitles those who identify with it to dominate, control or rule those who do not.

The idea of race appears to be the root of all evils as the concept has been negatively influenced for hundreds of years by a range of historical, social, political and economic events. As a result, racism today clearly denotes prejudice, violence, dislike, discrimination, and oppression. Racism is a social construct that refers to the classification of humans into groups (ethnic groups) based on various cultural (heritage, religion, language, social practices) and physical characteristics. The world is made up of thousands of ethnic groups. Europe alone counts 87 distinct ethnic minorities, each with a number of subgroups (e.g. Italians differentiate among Sardinians, Friulians, Lombards, Venetians, Sicilians, Neapolitans, Corsicans, etc.)

As people define and disseminate different conceptions of race, they actively create contrasting social realities through which racial categorization is achieved in varied ways. As a result of racial categorization, ethnic stereotypes are born which are generalized representations of ethnic groups, composed of what are ‘thought to be’ typical characteristics of members of the group. The most evident characteristics of an ethnic group relate to physical appearance, something we are genetically assigned and have no say in it!

But why is racism bad, why does it possess all of those negative connotations? Simply because it creates conflict between “us” versus “them”. It is not a coincidence that sporting events are perfect grounds for racism to manifest and prosper.

Racist behavior can take various forms and evolve from one stage to the next.

1. The first phase is when ethnic stereotypes are portrayed in ethnic jokes.
2. Next ethnic slurs (often deriving from jokes) become more and more ‘acceptable’ in the common language to make insinuations or allegations about members of a given ethnicity or to refer to them in a derogatory, pejorative, or insulting manner.
3. Harassment, physical assault, property damage can quickly follow.
4. Racist propaganda and practices that exclude members of particular groups from aspects of society represent significant dangers.
5. Ethnic cleansing and genocide are extreme examples of racist behaviour.

While media often tend to emphasize the undeniable racism of ‘white men’ in Australia, USA, and Europe, there is a tendency to ignore the fact that all peoples are racist and that genocides in the name of race supremacy have occurred all over the world, and quite often among people who share similar physical traits. The list below validates this statement with just a few examples from the last century:

• 1919 – 1920: the Bolshevik regime killed or deported an estimated 300,000 to 500,000 Don Cossacks during the Russian Civil War.
• 1941 – 1945: the Nazi German government's persecuted Jews and nearly 6 million died in the process.
• 1947: during the Partition of India 5 million Hindus and Sikhs fled from what became Pakistan into India and more than 6 million Muslims fled from what became India into Pakistan.
• 1948: the Palestinian exodus of approximately 700,000 people that accompanied the establishment of the State of Israel.
• 1927 – 1949: the Kuomintang Chinese Muslim regime launched extermination campaigns in Qinghai and Tibet against ethnic Tibetans.
• 1949: after the Republic of Indonesia achieved independence from the Netherlands, around 300.000 people, predominantly Indos or Dutch Indonesians (people of mixed Indonesian and European descent), fled or were expelled.
• 1949: in the aftermath of the Durban Riots (an inter-racial conflict between Zulus and Asians in South Africa), hundreds of Indians fled Cato Manor.
• 1957 – 1962: Egypt carried out an Anti-European policy, which resulted in the expulsion of nearly 200,000 Greeks.
• 1960: the official armed force in Congo attacked numerous European targets. This caused fear amongst the approximately 100,000 whites still resident in Congo and led to their mass exodus from the country.
• 1924: the population exchange between Greece and Turkey led to a gradual extinction of the Greek minority in the country, which decreased from 100,000 after the Turko-Greek population exchange treaty to just 2,500 in 2006.
• 1950 – 1970s: the creation of the apartheid system in South Africa involved some ethnic cleansing, including the separation of blacks and whites into separate residential areas, forced removals of non-white populations to reserved lands, restriction of their movement, education and social activities.
• 1962: relentless persecution in Myanmar of "resident aliens" led to an exodus of some 300,000 Burmese Indians.
• 1964: Zanzibar forced ethnic cleansing of Arabs and Indians from the nation.
• 1970: the government of Libya expelled all ethnic 150,000 Italians (18% of the total population).
• 1969: Honduras enacted a new land reform law, which took land away from 350,000 Salvadoran immigrants and redistributed it to native-born Honduran people.
• 1971: during the Bangladesh War of Independence around 10 million Bengalis, mainly Hindus, fled the country to escape the killings and atrocities committed by the Pakistan Army.
• 1972: forced expulsion of Uganda's entire ethnic Asian population, mostly of Indian descent.
• 1978 – 1979: some 450,000 ethnic Chinese left Vietnam by boat as refugees.
• 1984: as a result of Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia, only about 15% of the Chinese population remained in the country. The small Thai minority along the border was almost completely exterminated.
• 1984: the ruling party Indian National Congress supporters formed large mobs and killed around 3,000 Sikhs around Delhi.
• 1987 – 1988: the Iraqi government under Saddam massacred 150,000 non-combatant civilians including women and children, and destroyed about 4,000 villages (out of 4,655) in Kurdistan.
• 1984 – 1985: the forced assimilation campaign directed against ethnic Turks by the Bulgarian State resulted in the expulsion of some 360,000 Bulgarian Turks to Turkey.
• 1989: some 70,000 black Mauritanians (members of the Peul, Wolof, Soninke and Bambara ethnic groups) have been expelled from Mauritania by the Mauritanian government.
• 1990: the mass expulsion of southern Lhotshampas (Bhutanese of Nepalese origin) by the northern Druk majority of Bhutan.
• 1990: the militant Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam forcibly expelled the entire ethnic Muslim population (approx 75,000) from the Northern Province of Sri Lanka.
• 1990: approximately 95% of the total population of Hindu Kashmiri Pandits left the Kashmir Valley in 1990. Around 300,000 have either been murdered or displaced from the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir.
• 1991: Kuwait carried out the expulsion of 400,000 Palestinians.
• 1991 – 1992: political upheavals in the Balkans displaced about 2,700,000 people.
• 1991 – 1995: the widespread ethnic cleansing accompanying the Croatian War of Independence that was committed by rebel Serbs.
• 1992 – 1995: the widespread ethnic cleansing accompanying the Bosnia and Herzegovina war.
• 1994: massacres of nearly 1,000,000 Tutsis by Hutus, known as the Rwandan Genocide.
• 1995: the central government of Botswana has been trying to move Bushmen out of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.
• 1997: in Indonesia there have been serious outbreaks of inter-ethnic violence on the island of Kalimantan, involving the indigenous Dayak peoples and immigrants from the island of Madura.
• 2003: Sudan has been accused of attempting to ethnically cleanse several black African ethnic groups.
• 2008: South Africa Ethnic Cleansing erupted on 11 May. The most affected foreigners have been Somalis, Ethiopians, Indians, Pakistanis, Zimbabweans and Mozambiqueans.
• 2010: the killings of ethnic Uzbeks in the South Kyrgyzstan riots resulted in the departure of thousands of Uzbek refugees to Uzbekistan.
• 2010: the deportation of Roma by France.

As we can see, unfortunately there is no ethnic group that isn’t racist and there is no place in the world that is racism-free. Racism is just not always visible until the social, political and economic conditions are favorable for it to manifest. Unemployment, poverty, crime, etc. all assist the quick escalation of racism and the only way to fight it is through education. Racism prospers where ignorance is deep-rooted!

I do not know if the natural process of mixing different ethnicities, especially through marriage or sexual relations, will eventually result in a blending of all races in the future. What I know is that the problem of racism will not be solved that way. There will always be differences between “us” and “them” and, regardless of how small they are, these could always be perceived as worth killing for if people remain ignorant. Football hooliganism is a classic example.

Confidence through Spontaneity

It is often said that young children are happy, careless, and innocent. In other words they act spontaneously because live in the moment without worrying about consequences of their actions. The Buddha shines inside them!

Unfortunately, the more we grow and the more society forces the original spontaneity of life into the rigid rules of convention. We progressively lose that natural state of unified one-pointed awareness as we learn about duality: to be and not to be, right and wrong, difficult and easy, before and after, etc. However, logic and meaning, with its inherent duality, is a property of thought and language but not of the actual world. In fact duality arises only when we classify our experiences into mental boxes, since a box has an inside and an outside (i.e. opposites).

"Be no concerned with right and wrong. The conflict between right and wrong is the sickness of the mind." (Hsin-hsin Ming)
"When everyone recognizes goodness as good, there is already evil." (Tao Te Ching)

While the argument here is against the categorization of actions I am not prescribing fatalism as the way of life, but rather intuitive wisdom, called prajna. Wu-wei is the art of arriving at decisions spontaneously, by letting one's mind alone and trusting it to work by itself. This unconsciousness is not coma, but a state of no-mind, wholeness in which the mind functions freely and easily without the sensation of an ego standing over it in control. When body and mind achieve spontaneity, the Tao is reached and universal mind can be understood.

The centre of the mind's activity is not in the conscious thinking process as we become accustomed to believe. No mindedness is employing the whole mind as we use the eyes when we rest them upon various objects but make no special effort to take anything in. Te is the unthinkable ingenuity and creative power of man's spontaneous and natural functioning - a power which is blocked when one tries to master it in terms of formal methods and techniques.

Although the process of conformity to the rules of society is clearly detrimental to our spiritual growth, it is nevertheless socially required to have order in the world. Therefore we must accept the fact that we will struggle to undo the inevitable damages caused by the rules of convention in trying to restore and develop the original spontaneity (tzu-jan). The process of re-finding the lost spontaneity is professed by Taoism, which is a way of liberation and therefore in sharp contrast with the aims of Confucianism.

Where to Live Post 2010?

Should I remain in Australia, go back to the U.S.A, return to Italy, or move to a different country? This is a question that has repetitively popped into my head over the past few years and to which I am getting close to give a definite answer. Since this is a topic of discussion often considered by emigrants, I'd like to share the conclusions I have reached so far.

Step_1: Italy is a great country to live in (especially if it is your motherland). Food is unique with its flavours and variety, arts and history can be admired everywhere and not just in a few museums, the language is beautiful and can be highly intricate and sophisticated but also warm and simple through its many dialects, the Mediterranean Sea is warm and hospitable over summer, and the Alps are capped with snow in winter. These are some of the things I miss the most! However, the high cost of living, horrible burocracy, economic downturn, and devastating politics have all contributed over the years to make life in the country unbearable for the middle class. In my view, a life in Italy today is worthwhile only for rich retirees.

Step_2: Australia, a welcoming nation that gave me a lot, is a great place where one can afford to live reasonably well with little effort. Here it is easy to grow a family, while maintaining hobbies, and not being consumed by work. On the other hand, the country does not offer greatness in any form: food is average, history is close to nil, natural beauty is not unique and hostile, inventions are scarce, the economy does not facilitate the creation of substantial wealth, etc.

Step_3: The U.S.A. is no longer the land of opportunities that used to be! With its unique mixture of positive and negative aspects it sits in between the situation already outlined for Italy and Australia. In reality, similar conditions apply to all 'first world' countries, whose capitalistic democracies were aligned with the United States during the cold war (Canada, New Zealand, most of the EU, and Japan). Some nations sooner than others, but they all have reached a high cost of living, inflated real estate markets, strict government controls/regulations, etc. which significantly limit individual freedom within invisible but established societal boundaries.

Step_4: Most countries from the second world (former communist nations) and third world (neutral states) enjoy today a favourable position as they benefit from a growing economy, an increasingly stable political environment, low costs of living, proximity to developed nations, etc.

Step_5: It remains quite difficult for citizens of first world countries to benefit from the booming of second and third world economies. Usual barriers are: (1) English not being commonly spoken; (2) foreigners having significantly restricted rights in regard to property ownership and other types of investment; (3) unrecognized dual citizenship; etc.

Step_6: However a small group of second and third world countries offer great opportunities also for first world citizens because they either are about to enter the EU, consent double citizenship, allow foreign investors to acquire real estate, have low taxes, etc.

What is your favourite colour: white, black, or grey?

While some of us choose between black and white, hence striving all their lives towards the extremes of self-denial or self-indulgence, others get satisfied with something in between. A grey area that Buddha called the Middle Way and that is represented by a life of moderation lived between the extremes of sensual indulgence and self-mortification.

In Buddhism, Nirvana can be attained by following the right actions revealed in the Noble Eightfold Path, together with abstinence from addictive sense-pleasures and self-mortification. I totally disagree!

First of all, by avoiding both these extremes, the individual cannot gain the necessary knowledge required to accept the Middle Way as the ideal path. Therefore the sensations of calm, insight, and enlightenment are false.

Second, the addiction of self-denial and self-indulgence are temporary. Soon enough the individual seeking the right path will get bored, feel incomplete, raise doubts, and certainly look for something different.

To sum up, the two extremes have to be practiced without fear of addiction. Following the Middle Path by practicing abstinence from extremes cannot be the solution. Only first hand experience can lead us to improve our human condition. It is not by reading the words of the Buddha that we can become enlightened, but by living as freely and with an open mind as he did (he was in fact the first one to experience both a luxurious life and exaggerated asceticism).

I don't believe a true seeker should worry about life-long addictions to indulgence of sense-pleasures nor to self-mortification, as he will eventually come to his senses and break free. Through the strenuous process of self-realizing that one form of extreme lifestyle is not 'right' the individual arguably escapes towards something drastically different, the other extreme that will eventually also prove to be inappropriate. It is my belief that the back and forth motion between opposites (i.e. black and white) eventually leads to a midpoint (i.e. grey).

I could elucidate this discussion with examples that concern matters of the heart (single vs. married), money (rich vs. poor), setting (megalopolis vs. wilderness), etc. but I’ll use weather instead. If we are born in a cold country that has just 2-3 months of summer, we will always look forward to the warm season and dream of a lifestyle that would allow us to travel to exotic countries or even better to spend six months of summer in the northern hemisphere and six in the southern, enjoying the sun all year round. However, give this lifestyle just a few years and we would surely enough begin to dislike the heat and miss the cold weather. But after having lived in a cold country for some time we would again yearn for the warmth, and so forth… Only with time we would eventually learn to appreciate the beauty of each season and perhaps come to realize that spring and autumn offer in fact the best weather conditions!

Doubt – Why does it exist? Is it good to have? Should it be resolved?

Personally I live constantly doubting everything around and about me. I always wonder if who I am, what I have, where I live, what I do could be changed for the better. How healthy or harmful is it to wonder about all this?

Doubt arises from asking questions on the current state of things and basically from questioning whether a particular thing, situation, fact, or action could be further improved. Doubting leads to change! A doubt is the spark that leads us to seek alternatives and it is not instead – as some might think – the consequence of having alternatives on a table: that is uncertainty.

If doubt is perceived as a natural and necessary mechanism to constantly improve ourselves and our lives, then it is healthy and should be welcomed. Those who do not have doubts believe, with great illusion, that their choices are always the best, hence are not open to discussion, research, challenges, and dialogue.

Doubt, however, can also be dangerous and lead to unhappiness, in which case it is arguably better not to have any. The problem arises when a doubt does not lead to its next stage, when it does not mature and alternatives are not identified or pursued.

If we accept the idea that anything is always improvable, then doubt can only be temporarily solved because a new one will arise soon after. With this in mind, pure constant happiness becomes unattainable. This does not mean that we are destined to live in misery, but rather at different levels of subjective happiness, which varies depending on both the individual’s mind and the importance and number of doubts addressed and resolved.

Interestingly enough, the happiness of him who has no doubt, because convinced of his perfection, is probably higher than the one who admits its limitations and strives to improve. It appears thus to be true that “happiness lies in ignorance” (Giacomo Leopardi).

In summary, doubt emanates from intelligence, it is good and healthy to have it, but it does not have to remain stagnant.

Another important consideration is that while looking at the past is critical to bring forth a doubt, this should always relate to the future. Doubts about the past are symptoms of regrets!

Explained the nature and meaning of doubt, some fascinating considerations about man-made devices to eradicate doubt emerge:

• Faith: the faithful by definition cannot have doubts. Otherwise he would in fact be labelled an agnostic and not a believer.


• Marriage: whether regarded as a religious practice or simply a civil contract, it is a bond intended to be indefinite.

The evident failure of both practices in modern society may be arguably attributable to the fact that forcing the denial of doubt is contrary to human nature!

I am not sure about faith, but there surely are other important reasons to support the idea of marriage. The problem is that not many people today really try to understand them, while also accepting all the necessary sacrifices.

Is Time Real?

Time is part of the fundamental structure of the universe, another dimension added to height, depth and width to give meaning to the physical principle that two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time.

Time has no meaning in and of itself. It must be part of the physical universe in order to exist. That is why scientists (Einstein, Hawkins) call it the "Space-Time Continuum" and why they argue that before the Big Bang time was not there.

The modern scientific understanding of time is surprisingly very close to the mystical idea that time is in fact just an illusion.

Time as illusion is a common theme in Buddhist thought (Suzuki) and several thinkers from different time periods and cultural backgrounds (e.g. Parmenides, Zeno, Eckhart, Maharaj, Ibn ‘Arabi) have also reported similar ideas, arguing that realized spiritual masters do not perceive the passing of time from present moment to present moment because just an artefact of our psychology.

If you drop out of the wheel, all change disappears. Then you are here and always here. That state is the real search of all true seekers: how to get out of this wheel of birth and death, how to enter into life eternal where no birth ever happens and no death either, where nothing begins and nothing ends, where all simply is -- how to enter into this God. Just the other day, I was saying God means 'that which is'... how to enter into that which is? These are the sutras by which to enter into that which is. (Osho)

Therefore, time does not refer to a container through which events move, nor to an entity that flows, but rather part of a fundamental intellectual structure, together with space and number, within which humans sequence and compare events.

Going back to science, special and general theories of relativity bring significant substance to support the claims that time is not an absolute truth.

Special theory of relativity shows how time changes with motion. This theory says that space and time are really aspects of the same thing: spacetime. When you move through spacetime at a speed, relative to other objects, close to the speed of light (i.e. 300,000 kilometers per second), time goes slower for you than for the objects/people you left behind. You won't notice this effect until you return to those stationary things.

Because time is relative to the speed one is travelling at, there can never be a clock at the centre of the universe to which everyone can set their watches. Your entire life is the blink of an eye to an alien travelling close to the speed of light.

General relativity theory – the current description of gravitation in modern physics – unifies special relativity and Newton's law of universal gravitation, describing gravity as a geometric property of spacetime. According to it, gravity warps time: the greater the gravity the more rapidly time passes.

There is a lot about time that we still do not know nor understand, and possibly never will. To me, the interesting aspect of the all discussion is that once more, science and philosophy (here intended more as spirituality) are converging even though they stated from different premises, used different approaches, and evolved over different periods.

Magna Carta Mundi

Is 'carpe diem' the way to live? I have always thought so, at least at an individual level. Yet, seizing the day can often imply selfishness, disrespect for the laws of society and definitely neglecting the future.

It can be reasonably argued that this kind of behavior, although not alone, has contributed to plunge humanity into its current state: people running around like headless chickens in a world that is becoming less sustainable every day.

Mmmhh... so although we should continue to enjoy the moment rather than living a life of continuous planning for a future in which we might not be a part of, we must also carry out our lives in a way that fits with a master plan aimed at constantly improving the human race. An evolution that unlike the Darwinian concept, it involves a growth in consciousness. An advancement towards perfection that reminds us of Nietzsche's superman.

The problem is that such a master plan currently does not exist! The UN is virtually a joke and so are the IMF, the WTO, and so forth. There is no coordination in the way nations and therefore humanity should evolve. We need the UN, or a replacing entity, to take a stance, to be recognized and respected for what it represents, and to be granted the powers of enforcing a responsive as well as proactive plan aimed at resolving the many crises we face. I honestly think that, unless major changes occur in this direction, we will either end up at the mercy of some terrorist group seeking to wipe out humanity and restart on a blank sheet, or even worse consuming everything we got while destroying our planet.

The master plan should concentrate on the following:

1. have both short- and long-term goals with proper milestones and monitoring systems in place. Best practices for project management have evolved significantly over the years and they can facilitate the smooth running of highly complex projects when coupled with capable people, proper resources, clear responsibilities, and a good organizational structure. We need a way of applying the same principles on a world scale, while simultaneously eradicating corruption.


2. be "flexible" because while the original plan should be based on our current knowledge, it should also be open to a continuous flow of new information. In fact knowledge is not to be mistaken as a constant value, hence the master plan should be an alive document that adapts over time.


3. enforce drastic measures at the start of the implementation phase because time for change is running out. We are still moving in the wrong direction, regardless of all the hype of the past few decades surrounding global warming, wildlife extinction, pollution, drugs, crime, etc. Everyone talks about these things, but not nearly enough gets done and the individual alone can do too little without the support (and pressure) of appropriate laws and organisms in place. The need for radical changes is necessary to reverse the trend as well as to create a good basis from where to move forward. I believe the vast majority of existing democratic systems are not properly structured to drive such a change because (a) they leave too much space for opposing views to raise (and these are always present regardless of how important the issue under consideration is) and (b) because they entail extremely long burocratic practices.

Intertwining of Philosophy, Religion and Science

While this post starts off by condemning organized religion, its real aim is to assess the role and responsibility of science in today's society. After giving a brief historical overview of how modern science has gradually evolved out of philosophy and it has struggled for centuries to overcome the restraining power of religion, I raise the case that science instead of persevering on a pointless fight against religion should concentrate its efforts on knowledge dissemination. In addition I contend, although not as vocally as some epistemological anarchists, that modern science is becoming set to exercise an authoritarian and unjustified dominance in society, which risks preventing the growth of knowledge rather than promoting it.

Throughout the centuries the purpose of religion has always been to answer some of the same fundamental questions that are also shared by metaphysics (an important branch of philosophy). These include: "what is the nature of reality?" "what is man's place in the universe?" “what is the origin of the Universe?” “what is its first cause?” “is its existence necessary?” “what are the ultimate material components of the Universe?” “what is the ultimate reason for the existence of the Universe?” “does the cosmos have a purpose?” However, because existence of god can only be demonstrated by faith all great philosophers (including those who believed in a first cause of the existence of the universe and have called that "god") have been quick to also point out their uncertainty. Doubt that god(s) exist is the basis of agnosticism, hence philosophers can either be agnostics or atheists, but rarely religious. Of course some exceptions exist (e.g. Kierkegaard and Christian Existentialism).

Until 400AC religion and philosophy had managed to coexist without greatly limiting one another. This occurred regardless of religion having repeatedly been used for political reasons given its power of influencing the minds of the masses by instilling fears of death, after death, and the unknown.

However, peaceful coexistence between faith (i.e. religion) and reason (i.e. philosophy) ended with the Middle Ages when the evolution of human thinking literally froze for a thousand years. Ignorance and superstition ruled and only around 1,100AC a distinction started to emerge between religious subjects (sapientia of the monks) and reason (scientia of the intellectuals) with some philosophers promoting early secular ideas by stating that human activities and decisions, especially political ones, should be based on evidence and fact unbiased by religious influence.

But in 1,200AC the Inquisition was still carrying out witch hunting, and the Church was selling absolutions to acquire wealth. It was only in the 1300s that Renaissance Humanism started a cultural and educational reform in Italy with advancements in the arts and science that strongly responded to the challenge of Medieval scholastic education.

Starting around 1,500AC, European civilization began to undergo changes leading to the scientific and industrial revolutions. As a result Europe radically transformed itself and developed an overwhelming impact on other continents and other cultures. With the likes of Copernicus, Galileo and Newton a new optimism about the benefits of learning had arisen among intellectual elite, in conflict with the old and common belief that the world was a mystery never to be fathomed by humanity. This was the Age of Reason which preceded Enlightenment, a period where the Church was often tagged as the number one public enemy (Verri, Beccaria, Genovesi, Voltaire, Diderot, Locke, Jefferson, etc.). Materialists such as La Mettrie, Claude-Adrien Helvetius, and Paul-Henry D’Holbach stressed that man was not a creature of God but only the result, quite imperfect, of a chemical and mechanistic process occurred millions of years before. No soul or after life existed according to them.

The turmoil of ideas that Europe had experienced in previous centuries continued into the 1800s, with advancements in the sciences, medicine and technology. A few Europeans continued the attempt at putting it all together under the ‘philosophy’ umbrella term, but natural philosophy had gradually begun to separate from moral philosophy.

Before the development of modern science, scientific questions had in fact been addressed by that portion of metaphysics that fell under natural philosophy. The word ‘science’ itself already existed and meant knowledge of epistemological origin, but was the widespread use of the expression “scientific method” that made natural philosophy an empirical and experimental activity, and by the end of the eighteenth century it had begun to be called "science" in order to distinguish it from the rest of philosophy. Thereafter, metaphysics became the philosophical enquiry of a non-empirical character into the nature of existence.

My feeling is that since the proclamation of modern science, many metaphysical disciplines (cosmology, ontology, philosophy of the mind) have been harshly classified as pseudoscience…or worse religion!

It is true that metaphysics has been contended in history as vague; similarly to religious views, it has often been defined as not provable (Hume, Kant, and Popper) as neither empirical observations nor logical arguments could falsify metaphysical statements to show them to be true or false. So, does this mean we should stop seeking reasonable metaphysical answers because not empirically testable? I think metaphysics is too important to be discarded as it investigates principles of reality transcending those of any particular science. It is concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the universe: ultimate questions without which we’ll never be able to develop a theory of everything. Furthermore, in some cases subjects of metaphysical scholarship have been found to be entirely physical and natural, thus becoming part of proper physics (e.g. theory of relativity).

I reckon it is interesting to note how Einstein (1879-1955), while making it clear that he did not believe in a personal God, also argued that a legitimate conflict between science and religion cannot exist. Even though the realms of religion and science in themselves are clearly marked off from each other there are strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies. Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. Metaphysics represents those relationships and dependencies.

While I strongly argue against any sort of organized religion and hope they will all die out eventually as more and more people acquire knowledge and lose interest in the absurd teachings of fundamentalist groups, I also fear the possible implications of a growing number of 'scientists' quickly branding as meaningless or false concepts and ideas that deal with spirituality and that cannot be fully grasped by science or tested using standard methods. My fear is that such a trend could eventually lead to a new form of Inquisition.

The battle of science against religion has already been fought and won 300 or so years ago. Of course organized religion still carries its risks and negative features, but so does science. Is fear of a terrorist attack by religious fanatics any greater than the potential consequences of a malfunction in a nuclear plant, misuse of genetics and viruses, advanced weaponry, etc? Even in terms of ideologies, are the religious implications of moderation, authority, emancipation, and punishment much worse than what we got from capitalism, democracy, materialism, individualism, and other social outlooks that in one way or another have derived from the process of modernization set in motion by Europeans during the scientific and industrial revolutions?As Hitchens states, eradication of religion is not a plausible option because we are still evolving creatures who haven't yet got past the fear of death. Than what should we do? My suggestion is a twofold approach that implies a wide dissemination of scientific knowledge as well as the assimilation of metaphysical and epistemological questions by the domain of science.

First of all, it is essential to educate the masses with the dissemination of scientific knowledge in forms that are simple and understandable by everyone. Once an individual finishes high school there is a real difficulty to keep up with science - even when there is a genuine interest - given the fast pace of new discoveries, the complexity of some fields, and the fragmentation of knowledge across a myriad of disciplines. My feeling is that regular updates at least in some fields should be readily available to anyone. The selection below is based on the belief that discoveries in each one of the areas listed has the potential of carrying substantial metaphysical and/or epistemological implications for the basic questions of philosophy (and therefore also religion).

• physics (quantum mechanics, theoretical physics, nanotechnology, space physics, astrophysics, physical chemistry, biophysics, energy, nanotechnology)
  
• chemistry (biochemistry, geochemistry, astrochemistry)
  
• astronomy (astrobiology)
  
• biology (genetics, evolution, neuroscience)
  
• psychology
  
• sociology

Secondly, it is imperative to acknowledge that science's success is not solely due to its own methods, but also to its having taken in knowledge from unscientific sources. There are well-known cases of fields that were originally considered pseudoscientific, but which are now accepted scientific effects or valid hypotheses, for example, continental drift, ball lightning, and radiation hormesis. In turn the notion that there is no knowledge outside science is a 'convenient fairy-tale' held only by dogmatists who distort history for the convenience of scientific institutions. Feyerabend went as far as saying that there are no useful and exception-free methodological rules governing the growth of knowledge. The idea that science can or should operate according to universal and fixed rules is unrealistic, pernicious and detrimental to science itself. Examples that support his argument include ancient practices such as acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine which do not conform to modern scientific principles, but are not pseudoscience because their proponents do not claim the practices to be scientific according to today's standards of scientific method.

All reasonable pseudoscientific beliefs, whether they currently lack strong supportive evidence or purely rely on unmeasurable propositions, should be studied in unison by philosophers of science and scientists in well respected institutions, rather than letting self-proclaimed wizards and prophets discredit the disciplines and once again - as organized religions have done in the past - profit by influencing the minds of simple people. Astrology, mysticism, and occultism are here to stay and, unfortunately or not, are in the process of replacing established religious beliefs. The questions they seek to answer remain the same metaphysical questions of the past concerning man, the universe, existence, etc.

I believe there should be a system in place to treat justifiable pseudoscience in a consistent way. The search for extraterrestrial life, parapsychology (telekinesis, telepathy, biological healing, life after death), vitalism, and perhaps a few other disciplines should continuously be monitored and linked wherever possible to areas of natural science. On the other hand, search for the BigFoot, vampirism, and metamorphosis can probably wait...

By saying that natural sciences need to remain connected with metaphysical and epistemological questions of philosophy I am not suggesting anything new. In fact numerous subfields of philosophy of science already exist and the main ones include: philosophy of biology, philosophy of chemistry, philosophy of physics, philosophy of psychology, and neurophilosophy. Although most practitioners are philosophers, several prominent scientists have contributed to the fields and still do. Other scientists have felt that the practical effect on their work is limited. Perhaps so, but it is important for them to manifest their support nevertheless, so that humanity can see a sole and united front that leads the search for new knowledge and eventually will derive a theory of everything.

A Response to my Previous Post (Is Reincarnation a Possibility?)

I thank my brother, Andrea, for providing a detailed feedback to my previous post “Is Reincarnation a Possibility?” and giving me the chance to expand some arguments. His points are well substantiated and I am sure some readers will feel closer to his views than mine (which I don't see too far apart). That’s absolutely fine as I am not claiming to know anything for certain – my views change continuously as I explore deeper my inner self – and because I am not here to preach but to initiate discussions over issues that I feel are important regardless of how diverse the views of my readers might be. The aim of this Blog is not to seek approval but rather to exchange ideas in a way that eventually will lead us to improve the formulation of our own individual theories, which in the end will have to satisfy only us!

ANDREA: The first problem I find is the insinuation that reincarnation and scientific observation could somehow coexist, or even benefit mutually. This is simply not true. Despite vague ad-hoc examples, there is no scientific evidence whatsoever that reincarnation exists beyond what most biologists and scientists would describe as a continuation of the energy cycle. There has never been a conclusive study that was able to elevate reincarnation from its current condition of pseudoscience, a place it shares with alchemy, astrology, and phrenology among others.

REPLY: Some could argue that the absence of valid scientific evidence supporting the philosophical idea of reincarnation is due to the matter not being a subject of modern science. Nevertheless, being reincarnation an experience, it is absolutely scientific and perhaps psychotherapy will come up one day with a convincing method by which anyone will remember past lives... Until then we can only rely on the experiences of great minds of the past and present such as Pythagoras, Gautama, Laozi, Kanada, Plotinus, Plato, Origen, Mahavira, Yogaswami, Yogananda, Adi Granth, and many more…

ANDREA: On the other hand, there are innumerable studies showing that in no instance would you find a continuation of the cognitive processes beyond the natural death of the organism that produces them. In other words, the death of the brain signifies the death of the mental processes it produces.

Many "spiritual" people lack an understanding of even the basic tenets of world religions and philosophies (two very different subjects pertaining to more or less the same basic questions), and this has generated great confusion. Most people who seek consolation in Buddhism because it grants them a certain continuation to the very natural tendency of all living things to die, would be quite disappointed to learn that the Buddha categorically denied any possibility of the permanence of the soul, the mind, or the self.

REPLY: Spirituality is not measured by how educated we are about religions, philosophies, or science. Actually it is arguably the opposite as the more we rationally try to understand existence, the less we free our mind to experience it. While many seek comfort in existing systems of belief (misinterpreting them or otherwise), many others simply follow their feelings and sometimes these result to be closely aligned with some basic tenets of religions or philosophies.

ANDREA: Siddharta Gautama was unequivocal: when you die, you die. In Buddhism, death and life are often compared to two candles. We can be a dying candle lighting another, thus creating the condition for the light to perpetuate, but we cannot become the other candle.

REPLY: Right in saying that Buddhists don't believe in the soul intended as a spirit or ghost, but they (including Gautama) do believe in rebirth.

Also appropriate is the metaphor of the two candles to illustrate the lack of a constant self, although I don’t think it clearly depicts the continuum of the life cycle in Buddhism, a conception which is by the way not too far-off from the continuation of the energy cycle you acknowledged previously. Instead of the two candles I prefer Osho’s view of a single candle whose flame constantly changes never being the same twice but always connected. The flame changes incessantly disappearing into smoke with a new flame replacing it each moment. The first flame of when you light the candle and the last of when you put it out are different but are part of one chain. For lack of better words, I have referred to what keeps each flame connected as the soul, but perhaps we need a different term to describe that continuum.

ANDREA: What made the Buddha such a pivotal figure in the history of mankind was that he was one of the very first scientific minds of the East. He tried opulence and asceticism, and readily rejected them when he found them not to work. He had been introduced to the concept of eternal soul of Hinduism (and the consolation it brings), but decided to follow his observations instead. On is deathbed, he urged his disciples to always question everything, and to submit every idea to the test.

REPLY: I believe the test he was referring to was not a lab experiment but the test of ‘experience’. Wealth and asceticism did not work for him as paths to increase his consciousness but eventually he found his way through moderation and meditation.

ANDREA: Let us not forget that this happened more than 2500 years ago. Clinging on to ancient theories when our knowledge has improved so vastly is a nonsensical endeavour, and one that would make the Buddha himself ashamed. He made the best of what he had. If only he had known about galaxies, atoms, cells, and energy! How would he test his ideas today?

One of the main flaws with the whole "we can't quite explain this yet, so… god (or fairies, or spirits) did it!" is that it does nothing to improve our odds of understanding a concept. How would an unobservable, unmeasurable, and even indescribable entity ever solve any problem? Certainly science does not have an answer for everything, but that is no excuse to put a deity in there.

REPLY: I also did not mention God anywhere in the post and I totally agree that deities should not be used to cover holes in our understanding of the universe and its laws.

ANDREA: It is true that we don't exactly know how the first prokaryotes came into being, but we have sound, workable theories. Some of these theories will undoubtedly prove to be false, and others will take us one step closer to an answer. But we certainly shouldn't give up so easily, and believe that a "soul" would be a grand explanation (or even a remotely plausible hypothesis) of how inanimate matter could have turned into life. Give that idea a chance, and you'll have to give it to any other idea anybody will ever come up with!

The fact that you can't disprove something does not make it real. You can't disprove an invisible unicorn lives at the bottom of the sea, but you wouldn't waste a minute of your life pondering that possibility. "But many people have had an experience of reincarnation," you may say. Well of course, what could a unicorn at the bottom of the sea do for you? Clearly, believing that your dead loved ones still hang around is slightly more powerful (but raises all kinds of embarrassing questions). I submit to you that most people who were born in Baghdad have had visions of Mohammed, and that Christians love nothing more than being visited by the Lady of Fatima, but not by their ancestors reincarnated in a child.

REPLY:
As a general consideration I’d say it is fine to generate ideas to explain events that science cannot yet explicate; especially when you seem to agree that “certainly science does not have an answer for everything”. The big problem is when people blindly keep following religious views that have been thoroughly disconfirmed.

My suggestion that a soul could explain how inanimate matter has turned into life is in fact an idea just as the invisible unicorn. However, considering that ‘something’ (called soul or anything else) is carried forward from a previous death to guarantee the continuum of the life cycle is perhaps not as absurd especially when we consider that “most biologists and scientists already recognise a continuation of the energy cycle”.

I do not doubt the importance of nurturing our scientific endeavours which perhaps one day will have enough substance to disprove the main tenets (including rebirth) of great philosophies that have lasted the test of time. But so far, science is still throwing wild guesses to fabricate a possible TOE (Theory Of Everything) that is not much less absurd than the invisible unicorn idea.

ANDREA: Had we applied this method of explaining the unknown with whimsical conjectures instead of observable evidence, we would still be taking hearts out of sacrificial victims every morning to propitiate the Sun's rising. We would still believe in burning bushes and great floods. Excuse me, but I find the immensity of space, the swirling of galaxies, the wonderful trees and animals, and the fact that we are made of stardust much more appealing.

REPLY: It is in fact a very appealing portrayal and perhaps not far from the truth. But the immensity of space, the swirling of galaxies, the wonderful trees and animals, and the fact that we are made of stardust can all very well coexist with rebirth.

ANDREA: And finally, on the subject of life on other planets. The possibility of life on other planets even within our own solar system is being recalculated almost daily. Observations from Titan, Europa, Mars, and other corners of our small cosmic backyard suggest that life could indeed be everywhere.

Why have no green man ever contacted us? First of all, we must understand the difference between life and intelligent life. Intelligent life might be much rarer than micro-organisms. There has been life on this planet for more than 3 billion years, and yet we have been able to send signals out into space only for the last 60. This is a tiny, tiny window of opportunity that might not necessarily coincide with the same window of opportunity of other civilizations, if indeed they exist.

Secondly, the distances are so great that if the green men's civilization did happen to coincide with ours, and managed to send a signal just in the right direction, and in a form we could identify as artificial (and that's a lot of ifs), it might take tens of thousands of years for that signal to get to us.

REPLY: It is precisely because of the belief that life can exist on many planets, combined with the young age of our solar system (4.58 billion years) – when compared to some far away corners of the universe (13.7 billion years) – that we should by now have been contacted/invaded by green men. Assuming that several other planets in the universe have followed an evolutionary pathway similar to ours, there should be a few civilizations out there with technological advancements several billion years ahead of ours. I think it is biased to place extremely complex capabilities to communicate at the same level as signals we sent out 60 years ago!

Conversely, if we start saying how special our solar system is, how special Earth is, how special life is, and how special intelligent life is, then it is a natural and perhaps correct consequence to declare that we are unique in the universe and why not that we have a purpose: we might be the ultimate peak of evolution of consciousness and through the symbolical Buddhist cosmology we strive to move up from one world to the next until we reach Enlightenment.

Is this much crazier than what science states? Theoretical physicists don’t know where to turn their heads and suggest totally unsubstantiated theories of parallel universes to explain what came before the Big Bang…

ANDREA: Are we all connected? Of course we are. We are all made of the same elements that once formed stars, and supernovas, and other living creatures. How is this less appealing and mystifying than an unsound theory of reincarnations, body seeking souls, and hungry ghosts?

REPLY: Whatever the ‘real’ answers might be to the questions we raised in this discussion, we are still far from the truth. I am mostly certain that science will not be able, at least during our time on this Earth, to develop the ultimate TOE. Therefore it makes sense to me to search that understanding through meditation and elevation of consciousness. That being said I continue to support science in all of its forms and I monitor its developments with anticipation regardless of whether new findings will support or confute my current beliefs.