Borgus Weems

ASEAN conference 2017 managing a horizontal handshake

Democracy rests on accepting we really do not know how to run a country, that is why we change our politicians every five years. If you think you know how to run a country, if you think your policies are absolutely right and the other lot thoroughly wrong, you are not a democrat. We must understand how people are in a position to consider reason and evidence to be propaganda. Once a flat Earth is accepted then the Apollo missions are all lies, gravity is refuted and everything is refuted. All information counter to your position is the product of the Illuminati, an untouchable group tied to the Knights Templar, the world can be a dystopian nightmare, everything you want.

We can never move into the past or the future because when we get there it is always the present. Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I am unsure about the universe. Albert Einstein.

This follows the BBC series One Pair of Eyes which concentrated on people who were not limited by the chains of convention. The subjects were observers of UFOs and flat-Earth enthusiasts, these passions have generated a dangerous mainstream of crack-pottery. Too often people presenting this view of the world are satisfied they are smarter than the people they are trying to change. Our brain creating these viewpoints is a mouse grey parliament of cells, that dream factory, that petite tyrant inside a ball of bone. Perhaps we could downgrade our consciousness to that of a cat. They eat, they play, they sleep, they use their consciousness to urge a human to buy fish pieces in a rich jelly.

Experiments show the brain decides on decision making before we self consciously know what we are going to do, observers are under the delusion of being in charge, while ultimately powerless - like many democracies.

Finally, the play Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett, may be viewed by people terrified that they may not be understanding whatever the thing is they are meant to be understanding. The play takes an active role in what it means for you. Reality is slippery and probably not ultimately available to us.

The Importance of Being Interested, Adventures in Scientific Curiousity, Robin Ince, Atlantic Books, 2021

The Hand of Borgus Weems, film, forgettable kitsch, 1971