As well as dallying about at conceptual / philosophical levels with cybernetics and systems thinking in recent decades, I’ve had several abortive attempts at getting some useful tools going. In fact in those decades I was also working with and for software developers / solution providers on “generic” tools mainly in the “capital facilities” business.
Could never get the right levels of abstraction taken seriously in any products, pragmatists are always very focussed on (apparent) immediate business needs … but now I may have the right systems thinking language …
And now, my needs have doubled – I have real selfish need of tools to develop and describe / document the models I’m developing, as well as toolsets I propose for generic wider value to humanity. So …
30 years ago before ontological (graphical) languages were fashionable I was a big fan of IDEF0 – and I still am. I know now the reason for its attraction are twofold.
One – it is process focussed, yes it represents things, but all the links are flows of information and stuff between functional objects. (My whole world ontology is a information process / computation metaphysics these days.) Not surprising quite a few flowcharting tools – yes even Visio – include IDEF0 templates, but what NONE of them have is …
Two – it naturally nests levels of abstraction as sub-systems non-exclusively within super-systems – but NONE of the tools supports this functionality.
Related, but quite independently, diagramming languages have evolved for the information models and ontologies themselves. Express-G and UML – the latter dominating for a long while – but ultimately these are just networking graphics where rules determine what semantics are carried by nodes and edges, either or both. Unfortunately as people have been driven towards standardisation (a good thing), that semantic choice has been baked-in but not necessarily in the best way. So …
The new (ISO) standard for network graphics is ArchiMate and there are already many “Archi” tools, if not many good working examples. The Architectural root of Archi was very encouraging, but the results are disappointing. Unfortunately in the new standard all the semantics are in the edges – generally a good thing – but it means the sub-super-system abstraction (a feature of the nodes) is lost. As with previous ontologies, all the management structures have to be imposed by a meta-data overlay (aka eg “Templates” in ISO15926-p7) representing the “emergent” sub-super collections – but in the real world – not that of the modeller – these are the data that “matters”. We need to re-introduce the IDEF0 functionality to the ArchiMate language.
As well as generic tools for general use (with libraries of standard objects) I now have personal need for documenting the (process ontology) models I am now proposing and describing in my own writing.
Latest candidate tool in a systems thinking / active inference context is cadCAD – complex adaptive system diagrams (with dynamic “simulation” behaviour) … so, hopeful. And that “Active Inference / Markov Blanket” thought gives us a language for what is missing – if all semantics reside in the edges, the nodes have no thingness. See also footnote to previous post. It’s perfectly OK to capture semantics in relations involving the thing, but let’s not lose the thing itself.
Watching this wonderful “Krebs Cycle” RI lecture by Nick Lane – last mentioned him here – and just wanted to note two things for now.
One, there is an obvious topological parallel (*) between (System) Markov Blankets and (Mitochondria) Lipid Membranes at two quite different levels of abstraction – information processes and biochemical processes.
And two, early on he makes quite a few remarks against the informational-computational view and yet highlights the information element when we get to the nucleotide processes.
Fascinating for the metaphysical aspects of which came first – which is of course what his talk is about, the primacy and universality of Krebs Cycles in anything we’d recognise as biological life – from the simplest physio-chemical precursors to the most complex multi-celled creatures.
AND the inevitabilityaspect that once the simplest “chemistry” exists evolution of the complex follows.
(Lots to unpick on further detailed review – but fascinating to note the above on first pass. Also lots of good acknowledgments of the women involved in the research processes.)
(*) He even mentions the topological parallel at the whole earth level!!!
Q&A here too:
And @Mark_Solms right at the end (see video), the idea of affect / feeling as an electrochemical “report” on the categorical / qualitative state of the cell.
LUCA – Last Universal Common Ancestor of both the archaea / bacteria / mitochondria and the eukaryote cells – not unlikely coincidence – everything to so with structure not info – yes, yes, yes system architecture level info, not individual bits.
Wow! It’s all there.
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[Post Notes:
Watching this Luis Razo & Karl Friston talk, extending the topological parallels – beyond Razo’s balloon – even the event horizon of a black hole is a Markov Blanket. Every “thing” to which you associate individual states has a Markov Blanket in “phase space” – whether there is a physical membrane or not. All you need to know about that thing is at (or projected onto) that surface. As he says this is about the definition of using the word thing in any sentence. (Hat tip Active Inference folks.
And Razo’s bio-electricity … significant in the Nick Lane presentation subject of this post! It’s perfectly OK to capture semantics in relations involving the thing, but let’s not lose the thing itself. Curiously – I note Nick Lane is referenced by Mark Solms but Mike Levin is not. Levin is however referenced by Dan Dennett – Tufts connection. Lots in here. Thing-ness is the key – see next post re modelling tools.
“The Everything Crisis” – Globalisation – yes. The problem is the destruction of Markov Blankets, every time we lose a boundary we lose some “thing”. We are definitely on the same page.]
Saw Workington at the weekend, from the 8th tier of English football (Northern Premier League, Division One North West) against our local team Marske United now in the 7th tier (Northern Premier League, Premier Division) in the last pre-season friendly before the new season. (Workington won 2:1, and looked significantly stronger. We just didn’t seem up for it, but that’s not the point of this post.)
All the while I was looking at Workington I was thinking they were a Football League club until “quite recently”. In fact what I hadn’t remembered is that Workington were the team relegated (and voted out) of the league (4th tier / Division) way back in 1977, the year Wimbledon were admitted (promoted from the Southern League) – the team we then followed home and away for 8 seasons – basically until we won the FA Cup and made to the First (now Premiership) Division and things got a lot less fun.
More recently, having been working over in Cumbria for a couple of years, I drove past their ground many times. Small world.
Well I’ve had it a couple of days now and like what I read. As a result of the original “see inside” skim I’d already discovered that Corning’s idea of nature’s magic is SYNERGY, essentially that the whole is more than – something other than -the sum of the parts. (The sum of the parts will also exist at some level, subject to conservation laws, free-energy principles, etc, but …) No argument there. As we’ve all been doing since Aristotle coined that thought – nothing new under the sun – is trying to establish an orthodox scientific justification and explanatory model for why that is the case or else shifting the scientific orthodoxy so that it can be accepted.
Interestingly Corning was writing this (published 2003) at almost exactly the point I was setting off on my own research. Great news he’s not dismissive of Dennett – in fact in passing he uses both his intentional stance on the reality of free-will and his memetic analogy for genetic Darwinian natural selection at the social / cultural / intellectual level. (He references “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea” as well as the much misunderstood and ancient (1991) “Consciousness (Not) Explained“. Like mine, Dennett’s thinking has continued to evolve through “From Bacteria to Bach and Back” (2017) and beyond. Lots of the same reading in his reference bibliography Jablonka, Maslow, Margulis, Penrose, Sperry, Schrödinger, Schumpeter, as well as all the evolutionary biologists Maynard-Smith, Mayr, Szathmáry and more justifying group effects and that still haven’t really been accepted as the orthodoxy at even the genetic biological level, let alone memetic culturally. Interestingly, in 2003, he already includes Laland (now part of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis) Also, obviously given the context, a strong systems and complexity representation. (Philosophically very light, no James, Whitehead, Wittgenstein … anyone really. Haldane (JBS), Koestler and Kuhn in there.)
So what does Corning say that’s new and future-proof?
Good news. As well as the simplest Aristotelian statement of his synergy position, he also – like myself – makes his own statement of non-originality. There is nothing new to be discovered under the sun, quoting both Proust and Dawkins, and all that any of us are doing is finding new words and word-order in order to see differently – share a different view of – what the ancients and aboriginals have always seen in nature in their own ways, with or without words.
Lots of good and wide-ranging examples in his early chapters on the reality and potency of synergies working together. From alloys and amalgams to organisms at every level from the smallest biological to the largest human collaborations and civilisations. As I say – no argument here. So what is his hypothesis for synergy as the engine of evolutionary innovation? Where are the causal mechanisms?
He calls it a Holistic Darwinism. As already noted with Koestler’s “beyond reductionism” – and Dennett’s warning to beware “greedy reductionism” – it’s holistic because it posits the reality and causality of the wholes not being reducible to their parts. Not just the selfish gene, but the selfish (or intentional) genome. He notes the general rejection of such ideas in science, but signs of acceptance of “group selection effects” and “Lamarckian effects” – yet, a stalking horse actually seen as a pariah by the mainstream orthodoxy.
Although he doesn’t mention ergodicity – see previous post – he does clearly see history as part of the holistic mechanism. One argument against reductive determinism (the end state of every part determining the state of a whole) is that their process / path through time and space is also “part of” the whole. We’d get no argument over the idea that both means and ends matter in a socio-cultural context (as I’ve said many times) but orthodox science really doesn’t accept this possibility. (Also – as per the Woodstock reference in the previous post – he’s prepared to cite the likes of Stewart Brand / Kevin Kelly “Whole Earth Catalogue” in support of his case. Alternative / Eastern worldviews against the western orthodoxy.)
I have to say, Corning’s whole case – in his tying up loose ends & conjuring the future concluding chapter – reads more like a plea than an actual hypothesis – that we must accept the masses of evidence of “group effects” and “system effects” even though the orthodoxy rejects them (for their very lack of reductive objective determinism). And it’s a plea reinforced – like so many other writers – with a warning about how much we’re getting wrong in the world because of this ignorance. It’s where I started.
I see now that Kevin Laland may have gotten the inspiration for his book title from Corning who refers to “Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony” – though Laland makes no reference to Corning – maybe there’s was a common source?
We’re all on the same page – but what’s missing so far is that the scientific orthodoxy has no place for the holism – the causal intentionality of wholes as complex adaptive systems. Fortunately more recent systems thinkers do now have “computational” mechanisms for how this emerges – but it involves both metaphysics and subjectivity.
A metaphysics that says the fundamentals to which the entire cosmos may be reduced does not stop at the physical (spacetime, material and energy, their properties and laws) but that physics itself emerges from information – the stuff of computational processes. And, a subjectivity that says the causal intentionality of wholes emerges systematically from that same stuff.
Science can either continue the denial, defending and living within its orthodoxy, or accept the changes above. Given the massive 21st C investment in science-led objectivity in everything human, science and its STEM sponsors may find it too big a risk to be seen to contemplate such change? If it won’t there needs to be a new naturalism beyond science. Something has to give or we continue down that path to hell in a handcart.
Corning’s book is a great contribution to the argument that the current orthodoxy is missing something massively important – synergy as holistic Darwinism – in the progress of humanity in the natural world. This remains true, even if I don’t see any solution here beyond his plea. If you’re not on that page yet Nature’s Magic will be worth a read.
I’m a big football fan and a big feminist.
(Written at length about both over the years.)
Been keeping my thoughts to myself, but for the record, I’m not particularly a fan of The Lionesses and didn’t follow their Euro campaign, though obviously I support the equality benefits their success might bring. But, already fearing all the talk of growth, financial growth of the women’s sport. If ever a sport needed levelling-down, it’s football.
It’s nothing to do with them being women. I stopped following “elite” football – premiership (clubs) and international (club & national teams) – around the time England appointed Eriksson and Chelsea were funded by Abramovic – despite our originally investing in the Sky Sports TV franchise. (We maintain a Sky subscription solely for the Golf, since elite football is over many more channels these days, though with the LIV disruption, I fear the golf will now also lapse.)
The level of hype created by the over-funded TV and press coverage means the human sporting/club/team element gets pushed out. I sincerely hope The Lionesses maintain what they obviously have in that department, but already the signs are there. They all play for the same elite clubs as the men, already talk of their legacy, sell multiple replica kits, and already display the same lack of respect for referees and the spirit of the rules as the rest of elite football. The saving grace may be that the younger and female fan-base gives them a less tribal starting point than the men’s game, but they’re already well and truly under the pressure of the elite sport hype. (Same is true for all elite sports, even the world athletics and commonwealth sports.)
I wish them well, but fear the worst.
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Post Notes:
Here we go – 2 days later and the England keeper interviewed on BBC R4 Today news: Great benefit is the level of TV production – many different cameras, multiple angles views, ultra-slo-mo, graphics – keep people talking about contentious incidents for weeks, years (!). Did I mention VAR earlier? Another disaster. Sport is in the moment – legendary “I was there” moments and talking points come from personal experience, not invented by pre-planned repeat TV scheduling. Jeez – this is not about football, women’s or otherwise, not even about sport. It’s about buying & selling media attention.
I’ve been mentioning Systems and Systems Thinking increasingly as I explicitly formalise the metaphysics underlying my world-view and my various writing projects, technical synthesis and creative fictional narrative.
And I’m in “just write something” mode after 20+ years of intense reading and research trying to minimise distractions from what is now effectively my post-retirement day-job – still adding to an enormous reading list (115 unread book entries), but rarely obtaining new reading material at the moment. However, several dialogues around the work – often whilst physically sitting in the pub – have thrown up some interesting stuff I just want to capture for now.
Comparing notes with Ant McWatt about reading and writing when sitting in the pub, we found we’d both had both experiences – interruptions that were essentially distractions and/or those that provided creative dialogue. In fact it was his own distraction (by me) from multiple writing projects we were originally talking about and Robert Pirsig’s version of the “just write something” advice his therapist gave him.
“Reading is a distraction from writing.”
– Robert Pirsig
It turns out, when I’d mentioned my topic of Cybernetics, that another regular, retiree Dennis Finlayson – retired from leading roles in international development – pointed out he too had a long-standing interest in Systems. After a bit of Stafford Beer and W Ross Ashby, turns out he’s a long-standing active member and past president of the ISSS (International Society for the Systems Sciences).
Well that is Sacred Naturalism if ever I heard it. Dennis’ “synergy” is a complex emergence beyond immediately reductive objective science. It even includes a recommendation for Karen Armstrong’s “Sacred Nature“. (I too have followed Armstrong over the years, but I hadn’t noticed those words in her latest title – also intriguing that the subtitle in that piece is “back to the garden” – Woodstock again. Fascinating when a plan comes together.)
Spotted a tweet from the Guardian overnight advertising their recent “Dine Across the Divide” sessions, including:
Billy Bragg <> Tim Martin
Diane Abbott <> Katharine Birbalsingh
Rufus Hound <> Geoff Norcott
Rev Richard Coles <> Richard Dawkins
Lo and behold, this morning Dennis shared the Coles <> Dawkins session, which I had resisted since I have little time for either these days. Much more sophisticated thinkers on both science and theology. However, it has the sub-headline:
[Dawkins] “The problem is [Coles] is
not swayed by evidence but by feeling”
Which neatly reflects where we’ve already got to many times before.
That statement hinges on what we mean by evidence, and said that way (by Dawkins) it means the orthodox – objective, repeatable – kind. ie the rules as set by science (*). The very sentence discounts “feeling” (or any subjective affect – “spiritual” direct experience of nature) from scientific consideration. And obviously it does so because the orthodoxy still has great difficulty agreeing “scientific” explanations of these, because it excludes their consideration, because … and so on – a strange loop.
The problem IS exclusion of the subjective by orthodox science and at best its reduction to the identifiable objects that lie behind subjective experience.
Reductionism is fine to analyse all the objective components from which the subjective arises, in logical causal chains from the most primitive observables. But greedy reductionism does more than that. It excludes any higher evolved, emergent systems as having their own causal influence (or will) independent of these primitives. Simple is good, most elegant generally (although even Occam has his pitfalls) but, with Systems Thinking, simplest doesn’t mean most primitive, it means simplicity at the most appropriate systems architectural level (John C Doyle etc.)
Anyway – Dennis describes his holistic / synergy view of the direct “spiritual” experience of nature – that sacred naturalism – in the spoken piece above. I think we agree already, but Dennis suggests I read Peter Corning (ISSS) “Nature’s Magic” for his holistic / synergy view. (Ordered naturally, despite the distraction. I hope to find something I’ve missed but I’m sceptical. Be great if someone could point me at a summary of Corning’s thesis.)
Interestingly – in Corning’s prologue (courtesy of Amazon’s “see inside”), he opens with Koestler’s “beyond reductionism” and goes on to use that formulation – essentially the synergy that the whole is more than the sum of the parts – or in my words, emergent objects (and subjects) have their own existence and causality in nature, beyond the reductively limited orthodoxy of science. There is more than reductionism. (Be interested to see if Corning succeeds in a scientifically accepted explanation for HOW that synergy creates more than the assembly of parts, that the emergent patterns / systems have their own reality and natural causality without appealing to the same “crossing the Rubicon” arguments as Friston / Solms? Don’t see Ergodicity in his index – one reason things are more than the sum of their parts is that their functional / process history affects the end result, not just the state of their physical components. Anyway – Synergy or Emergence – the word doesn’t matter, it’s the “how” explanatory argument that matters, how the “assembly” – a process – creates stuff that didn’t previously exist.)
[(*) Dennett – “if you agree to argue only on your opponent’s basis, you’ve already lost” – lost the opportunity for agreement – the basis of the dialogue itself has to evolve through that “strange loop”. Dennett is significant here because, like Dawkins, he was one of the four horsemen in the polarising God vs Science wars, he’s just so much more sophisticated philosophically when he’s not at war.]
Over a period of years I’ve posted a fair bit on the “TERF Wars” (*) not because I have any skin in that game, but because (a) it’s a perfect example of divisive “identity politics” polarising a should-be-caring set of technical and human issues and values under sloganising ideologies and (b) that as well as lesbians, gays and trans, the most massive group of people undermined by it are over half the population – women.
Rebalancing feminine structures in the epistemology and ontology of human systems in the world – dominated by the male heritage and power structures in (say) science and philosophy – is one of my daily drivers, and identity politics of all kinds is clearly a strong ideological corruption of human understanding of such complex real-world systems, corrupting key institutions like the university and the media. I may not have skin in that particular game but I am passionate about how we resist and reverse the damage it causes more generally.
Today judgement was passed on Allison Bailey’s case of being discriminated against by her employer on the advice of Stonewall, that she could not hold and express “gender critical” views (like mine above) against Stonewall’s advice. She had no case directly against Stonewall, of course, but the judgement was clear that:
“gender identity theory as proselytised by Stonewall is severely detrimental” to women, and to lesbians [and gays, and trans, and humanity generally]” (**)
“Proselytised” notice – pure ideology. Well done Allison. Her employer was found liable and on the wrong side of human rights law for following Stonewall’s ideological advice. Enough, onward and upward.
🥳 #ThankyouAllisonBailey for winning your case! Let Organisations who put ‘Stonewall Law’ before Equality Law or seek to silence others from lawfully voicing criticism of Stonewall beware they may be acting unlawfully & liable to damages #AllisonBaileyWinshttps://t.co/b8RXYbPA2N
If you listen to Stonewall and it all goes wrong, you will be left paying the damages while Stonewall stands aside and says ‘nothing to do with us’. https://t.co/fOUTB5XriG
— Debbie Hayton 🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈 (@DebbieHayton) July 27, 2022
[A] system in which scientists
and social justice advocates
are fighting in ways that poison
the soil on which both depend.
(**) These are Allison’s own words quoted in the summary judgement. Obviously, Allison had no claim directly against Stonewall, it was her employer who failed her by – like so many other organisations – following Stonewall’s advice. The value in funding the case – suing Stonewall – was to get all of that out in a court. The full judgement is worth reading. The winner is caring common sense.
And two days later all media still glowing with activity against TRA Ideology.
Seriously. If this isn’t the time for a no-holds barred journalistic dive into the totally amoral, ideologically bonkers racket that is Mermaids, I don’t know what is. They held the Tavistock ransom for years. They are still going. They are crazy. Children’s bodies are at stake. https://t.co/nl3MxprPT3
“Arguably the most shocking part of GIDS was that, despite its supposedly pioneering approach in this brave new world of gender identity, it failed to keep accurate records of what happened to all these children it treated once they grew up.” @TimesLucyhttps://t.co/MiEHzo0nhp
— Professor Alice Sullivan (@ProfAliceS) July 29, 2022
Lots of good stuff in The Times piece.
Here are some thoughts on the announcement of the impending closure of the Gender Identity Development Service at the Tavistock in London, England.
1. Disclosure: I consider myself a colleague of several of the senior members of the GIDS, including its founder, Dr. D. Di Ceglie
After Beery and Buzzy Mindfulness, this thought of Piecemeal Mindfulness comes from the god-talk around Iain McGilchrist. How to capture the sense of the divine or sacred in the real, natural world beyond any left-brained intellectual model of it. It continues to be the main and knottiest topic readers are left grappling with, even in the Discord discussion forum set up around the writer’s work. Any discussion inevitably involves the left-brain manipulating symbolic language, even when the active, embodied participation of the right-brain is the matter at hand and even where the language requires rhetorical or poetic interpretation beyond objects and logic. Some “things” are inexpressible, or only obliquely expressible, in language.
[And incidentally, it entirely parallels behaviour in the (now defunct) Robert Pirsig MoQ-Discuss forum – where ongoing use of a subject-object model in language remained a stumbling block to progressing the topic of dynamically experienced – radical-empirical – qualitative aspects reality, in the group discussion. As I said in my own sign-off, there’s only so far you can go with recycling discussions and eventually you just have to life the life.]
One thing that he is NOT advising is a piecemealaddition – decoration – of one’s life with (say) 30 minutes of mindful practice each day – or any other “just do this or that ” advice. Very much the reason he wrote the book that it is – and therefore the reason to recommend reading it – is to take on board the whole of it into the whole of life. A whole change of consciousness, a new vision of who we are – values, purpose and direction. And it is a rational, logical (left-brained) argument – using inspired language – for why it is not simple minded to pursue it, to attend to it, to be receptively open to it. That attention is a moral act. Seeing the world through the different lens – a left-right integrated view – provided by reading the book.
END
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Original rough notes:
(Lots on Christian religious symbology & metaphor …) (More on Scheler again – hierarchy of levels of value and virtues – seems well reflected in Pirsig, Maslow etc.) (And the need for religious view – signalled in the introductory clip – with purpose as the “pull” to higher things.) (Panentheism again – and the Apophatic view – in his final chapter.) (Something like consciousness as an ontological primary – consciousness and matter as manifestations – phases – of the same primary) (Whitehead again – the divine as “processual” – things as merely “nominal”.) ( TMWT – precisely to lead people by logical steps to the open position – active receptivity / attention – that it is NOT simple minded to see the sacred beyond the reductive materialism. Attention as a moral act – Simone Weil and … Getting people to this state is more than / better than a recommendation (say) to take up mindful practice. Mission-accomplished in people writing to him about the life-changing effect.)
On a relatively short walk (~5m) over the moors the other day, bright and warm with very little wind, starting by 9am to beat the worst of the heat and other people …
… faint but very noticeable was the continuous sound of zillions of bees going about their buzzyness across the miles of heather. Even whilst on the move it was possible to focus attention on that – and one’s footsteps – alone.
(Quite different to the “buzzing booming confusion of paradox“.)
I share the same story with BrewDog co-founder James Watt about drinking Sierra Nevada “West Coast” IPA and realising there was more to beer than bland big brands (*). Except for me it was 2005/6 in the US before it was imported to Europe / UK. In fact in those (eventually) 3/4 years in the US I was knocked-out by how many independent US brewers there were beyond the Budweisers and Millers of this world.
So when I came back to the UK (2009/10) via Norway (2008/9) the craft beer “revolution” had started whilst I was away. It was the guys in Norway that made me aware of BrewDog and “Equity for Punks”. I’d skipped the original 2007 Punk IPA and went straight to Tokyo and their Dark Horizon collaboration with Norwegian brewer Nøgne Ø (**).
[Declaration of interest. I am a BrewDog “Equity Punk” since EFP2 and 3.]
Anyway, relevant to the Psybertron agenda is this interview of “Captain” James Watt by a sympathetic Steven Bartlett (of Huel and Dragon’s Den fame). It’s a long interview that stands by itself but in the last 2 or 3 years it’s been a rocky ride for BrewDog as the growth from zero to £2bn in 15 years – and the transition from 2 men and a dog to 3000+ people international company – has exposed the limitations of the individual James’ determined single-minded passion in terms of management style and consequent culture. Like all such mega-entrepreneurs, the “Ellon Musk” can be a bit weird, intimidating and socially inept when it comes to people management. There will be tears, and there have been. BBC Scotland has documented these in a mostly factual way, but without any evident sympathy for the wider reality. For me rather than legal proceedings, this latest interview stands as the response to those documentaries.
(Like all mythology, not everything is literally true, that’s the point.)
Given all the recent McGilchrist left-right-brain & sacred-naturalism topics here, what is fascinating in the interview are two points. One, the recent admission of potential “autism” and therapeutic investigation thereof as part of problem and solution, telling in combination with James’ emphasis on “objective” targets and on the “scientific” advice they were getting on their green ambitions. And two, the use of “mindful” breathing therapy as part of dealing with the immediate stressful engagement with the physical world.
The evolution of an organisation is natural. The sooner more organisations and institutions – like BBC journalism – value the spiritual, sacred, right-brained elements of nature beyond an autistic fixation with the objectively rational the better for all of us?
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(*) There were always “real ales” and Belgian beers, but these stuck to very “traditional” standards. Declaration – I’m a CAMRA member too 🙂
(**) Nøgne Ø (like Haand another small Norwegian brewer) is a microcosm of the industry and why BrewDog remain different. Nøgne Ø Still operate from their own relatively small brewery with their own branded products, but sold out as businesses – owned by Hansa in Norway, in turned owned by the Royal Unibrew drinks conglomerate in Denmark.
