Note:
The ideas developed here were prompted by my reading a recent blog.
Thank you Becky Jungbauer.


What you are reading is a mix of whimsy, ethics and philosophy applied to a problem in politics.  It does not offer a solution to any specific problem. It may direct the attention away from what is unimportant in current debates about evolution.
One can only live in hope.


An Essay Concerning Wings

Once upon a time, Sithopholis Farkworthy attended a lecture on the Ethical Principles of Umer. It was a meeting of like minds.  The lecturer didn't understand the half of what he was talking about, and Sithopholis Farkworthy wasn't bright enough to absorb more than half of anything he heard.  Thus, Sithopholis Farkworthy only understood about 25% of the principles.  This was of course a statistical anomaly: most attendees at lectures are nowhere near so attentive.  Next day, the lecturer was burned at the stake as a heretic.

Sithopholis Farkworthy emigrated and set up his own religious enclave: the Neo-Uniformity Theologic Settlement, or NUTS.   After he was burned at the stake, some of his followers started teaching that he 'must have' been right at least in parts because the establishment had gagged  him - and then some!  These followers set up the movement called the Neo-Uniformity Theologic Settlement of the Second Unity, which flourished so well that soon, its name was heard in every farm, village and town: NUTS2U !
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Some centuries later, a great thinker attended a lecture. He took in what was being said, but intellectually rejected much of it. He set up the Neo-Objective-Exclamatory movement, known far and wide as NO! He evaded being burned at the stake by sailing to the Neo-World of Arkadia with his loyal followers.   He was followed after a lapse of some years by two larger religious groups: the NUTS and the NUTS2Us and their followers.

Other settlers soon arrived in the NWA and found that the good soil, clean air and religious freedom suited their constitutions, so they got together and formalised some rules to live by. These rules were know informally as the NWA list of things that suit our constitution, but the linguistic rule of parsimony held sway and it was known from that day on as the Constitution of the NWA.

The rules of the Constitution were so well scientifically researched, and so well written that even a small child could understand them. They were good rules to live by, and the people did indeed live by them.

Here is a small sample of the rules.

rule 1 - These rules were made because we who write them believe that the human mind is a wonderful thing that flourishes best where freedom of inquiry prevails.

rule 2 - If you think you know better than us, and want to change these rules, you'd better have a darn good reason which the people can understand and approve of, otherwise - well, just watch it buster!

rule 3 - a corollary to rule 2:  if it ain't broke, don't try to fix it.

rule 4 - we the people agree to keep our noses out of religion and we the religious agree to keep our noses out of politics.

rule 4 If you don't steal my toys, I wont steal your gun.

The draft Constitution contained a dress code requiring long-sleeved garments for all citizens. The section was removed when a pragmatist pointed out that long sleeves were a hindrance when the country was defending itself against savage natives such as the Bloatish. The whole section was replaced with a single rule granting to all citizens the right to bare arms.

Living by these rules caused the NWA to rise in the esteem of other nations. But no human enterprise can be perfect. There were a few mis-judgments. It was only after it was discovered that tea has deleterious effects upon the brain that the political high ground was ceded to the ethical taxation party by the tea party.   But in general, the NWA tended to get things right.
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Once upon a time in the NWA some brilliant scholars discovered that the invention of weaving did not date back to 1758, as had previously been believed. It was, according to some scholars, an invention of about 1522. other scholars thought perhaps a lot earlier than that even, but they tended to get laughed at a lot - after all, these were the same guys that thought phlogiston wasn't real, fer cryin' out loud!

Now, the real date of the invention of weaving was seized on as a bone of contention by a religious sect. The origin of this sect may be of interest. The Institute of Theodynamics had investigated the whole angels thing and had made it a matter of doctrine that angels slept with their head tucked under their wing. Now of course, no rational person would deny such a thing, would they? It makes a lot of sense. The only remaining problem for great minds to solve was: which wing? And so began the great 'left-wing' 'right-wing' debate which has never been settled to anybody's satisfaction to this very day.

And so it happened that the resources of a whole nation came to be bogged down in a futile left-wing versus right-wing religious arena. A well know scientist, attending these proceedings in the public gallery, observed that the voting was always about 49% NUTS, 49% NO! and 2% NUTS2U. When one speaker suggested that the nation should amend the constitution to settle the matter for all time, a member of the public was heard to shout out loud: "Well, if that don't cap it all!" From that day on, the name 'Cap-it-all' somehow stuck to the debating chamber.

Fortunately there was some sanity left in the country. Groups of drinking friends around the country got together and trained as a militia. These infantrymen became known as the Guzzlers and Imbibers, or for short, G.I.s. The militia marched on the cap-it-all. Even as the militia approached, the debaters ran away, screaming: "The militia's coming! The militia's coming!"  Elections were soon held.   Known religious fanatics were allowed to vote, but kept from standing for office - by the conservatives - by means of liberal application of tar.  For a long time afterwards, the nation prospered once more.
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For a very long time, the schools taught that scientists weren't entirely sure exactly when weaving was first invented, but it just had to be some time between 1758 and 1522, or vice-versa, according to the best scientific evidence available. This did not suit the left-right extremists, who were still poisoning each other's drinks over the whole angel-wing thing.

The militia, meanwhile, had not disbanded. Why disband? Why not just stick together as brothers in arms. Is there, anywhere in this wondrous cosmos, a better excuse for a drink?  So the extreme religious left-right wing-party had no real access to politics.
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Interlude:

Now, all of this hoo-ha stemmed from the Ethical Principles of Umer, badly presented by a lecturer, and badly absorbed by a listener. Repeated down the ages. The basic principles of Umer are these:

1 your neighbors are trying really hard to be as perfect as you are, so cut them some slack.
2 - there may be some greater entity beyond the cosmos that we know and he may have created the cosmos for all we know but we can never really know.
3 - see Pascal's wager.
4 - season your good deeds with humility, do not look upon your good deeds as bragging rights.
5 - season your knowledge with humility, do not look upon the gift of reason as an opportunity to become great in the sight of others.  When asked a question, do not give the answer immediately, even though you know it, but, as a gesture of humility, say um and er a lot, and be like others in this, since nobody likes a smartass.
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Once upon a time, a left-right religeous activist noticed that

a: children can easily be manipulated into believing fairy stories and
b: teaching school isn't seen as politics.

Not being a person to miss an opportunity for self-aggrandizement, he, or she, history does not record it, tried to force the schools to teach that perhaps maybe after all, weaving was invented in 1892. Some calculations based on the ages and known ancestors of the inhabitants of Weaverville, as recorded by the poet Weft the Waffler pointed to that exact date.

The schools had no objection to the introduction of this new idea - after all one theory is just as good as another until one of them is shown to be utterly wrong, right!   Wrong!   Due to this 'let's play fair boys and girls' policy in education, a whole generation of kids grew up thinking that weaving was invented in 1892.   Can you imagine anything quite so crazy?

Today, the children of those children walk barefoot to the fields to glean corn, happy in the knowledge that they are wearing exactly the right kind of homespun that was invented in 1892.   Happy or not, there are frequent fist fights over the wing thing, which is why not much work ever gets done, which in its turn is why all the factories closed, which is why the kids go barefoot.   But, for the adults, thanks to the repeal of the child labor laws, there is more leisure time to discuss the important issues of the day such as  the urgent problem in hydrotheology:  did Noah's ark wallow, or did it bob?   (Current theories are heavily in favour of bobbing.)
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Meanwhile, the Bloatish savages had learned the methods of applied science.  Bloatish children were encouraged to paint their faces bright red with a white cross, so as to scare away the Riemann soldiers.   This has been shown by science to be very effective.   Any impartial observer visiting Bloaten will be exceedingly unlikely to see a Riemann soldier.

Bloaten is now the spiritual home of the pragmatist.  Ask any person, on any street, if they know when weaving was invented. The most common response to that question will be: "Who gives a &$%",  in its multifarious forms.   This 'who cares' attitude actually can be turned around in schools.   Ask a Bloatish kid what they learned in school.  You will almost never here the 'who cares' answer.  It is more likely that they will say something like: "I learned how to download free ringtones for my cellphone."

The Bloatish, being perhaps overly pragmatic, have a propensity to adopt a 'who cares' attitude to science itself in many arenas of scholarship.  In Loonsdown, ask any person holding a bunch of keys if they know when the lock was invented and they will likely say "Who gives a &$%".   But rest assured, such a person is artisan enough to know how to duck below a car's window level,  pick the lock and dive into the driver's seat.  It will likely be your car.
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In a parallel world, somewhere, somewhen, there are two political entities called the NWA and Bloaten. They are currently at war in a bitter dipute over the possibility of having a common ancestry and language. The Narcadians and the Zotralians have demonstrated their superior intellectual skills by taking sides. The parallel world's only nuclear superpower, the Izle of Widget is about to umpire the matter.   Permanently.
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In conclusion, the following observations may be of some statistical significance.  Or maybe not.
Bloaten prefers ducking and diving.
the NWA favours bobbing and weaving.

I think it is obvious which one is really right, don't you?