Do You Believe?

I saw a brilliant program years ago. We missed the first few moments of the broadcast (hence I will never, ever go into a film that has already started…ever!) and we were captured and engaged by what appeared to be, an audio recording of the first Mars landing and its failure. Yes, I said Mars, and maybe that should have been a clue, but, as I argued then (all eleven years old and well informed), I had been reading other sources who were suggesting very strongly in scientific terms, this was going to be an event in the near future anyway. The program continued, before going into the core of the documentary. The ‘brain drain’ currently being experienced not only in Britain and the United States of America, but worldwide. The program explained the loss of many essential key personnel, scientists and important thinkers. They interviewed people who names were familiar to us, including a person introduced as Neil Armstrong (Neil Armstrong had never given an interview after landing on the moon) and bearing in mind that there was still world wide suspicion as we (the major international powers, not ‘we’ the family), were engaged in the cold war behaviour (those of you who have never learnt any history might need to look that up as well). It was informative and it was quite frightening (The program, not just the cold war behaviour).  It turned out to be an April Fools joke. But raised many ideas and arguments in our house. Someone’s idea had stimulated us very quickly. We had all engaged. We were entertained, but also fooled. We believed what someone else had shown us. As mentioned yesterday, Rene Magritte in 1929 with one painting, explained a concept of the treachery of images.

Hence, (I say this to all current generations) there is never anything quite as satisfying as reading a good book. It is a personal dialogue between yourself, the work of the actual author and your imagination. When you improve ‘your’ understanding of somewhere else, something else or someone else. They also state if it is a novel, or non-fiction. (usually, just inside the cover). One of my favourite quotes was ‘if a man can read, he can learn anything”. I thought it was in Taylor Caldwell’s historical ‘novel’, ‘Captains and Kings’ (read around 1974) but without reading it again, I may be wrong. I do know Robert Heinlein, whom I also read a lot of in my youth, said “Span of time is important; the 3-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with these three, you can learn anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them, you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots”. Wow! I did not want to be a peasant with dung on my boots (even if we did stand in the odd cow pat growing up – later in another blog). But unlike many young Europeans, we were only made to learn the one language and any other, was a choice made in later higher education. Fortunately that has changed in Australia the last twenty years.

(Continued tomorrow)