Replying to LO25155 --
For my beloved "Poppy"
Dear Judy,
"The King hath note of all that they intend by interception which they
dream not of."
Henry V Act II Scene II [Engraved into a stone tablet ;-) at the entrance
to the library at Bletchley Park.]
>Shalom Andrew, At and All,
>Andrew, you mentioned Bletchley Park and Alan Turing in one of your
>previous mails (have you been there, already?). While reading your moving
>words about TRUTH and the way it is both, given once AND revealing itself
>in our experience (emerging), and while meeting your rhetoric question,
>At: "Is Truth a becoming, rather than merely a being?" it re-occurred to
>me that Turing actually simulated (by the famous Machine, bearing his own
>name) the nature of such emergence of TRUTH in the reality called Number's
>Theory.
"I believe in the sun, even when it doesn't shine. I believe in love, even
when I don't feel it. I believe in God, even when he is silent."
[Inscription on the wall of a cellar in Cologne where some Jews remained
hidden for the entire duration of the war.]
>To a certain degree I see an analogy between Turing's Machine (a lot more
>can be told about this machine, Alan Turing and even A. Church) and what
>we actually do as we are learning (be-coming): We reveal TRUTH by our
>deeds - and NATURE provides us with feed-backs, one at a time.
>Unlike any machine (even if well bread) we are equipped with consciousness.
>Unlike Turing's Machine we pre-tend to search for TRUTH but tend to "prove"
>the same theorems again and again (even odd mathematicians prove a theorem
>only once).
>How come?
>Andrew, I assume you needed room for new "T"s - how courageous of you!!!
Judy, the location was called "Station X". It was not well signed en route
from my home in Oxfordshire and I had wanted to arrive with precision
according to time;-) but I arrived three minutes late (rain and no
dedicated signs). When I did arrive my hosts were still locked in
'conference' in the library, so I wandered freely around and looked at
some of the documents and memorabilia that now 'openly' fill the place.
"The King hath note..." Hmmm. Ossager cross inductions;-) ¦..Churchill had
a problem that he referred to as his "Black dog" (depression) and he often
took self-care;-) of the pain by means of alcohol. (Roosevelt was often
loath to trust Churchill for this reason.) Churchill was an artist with a
keenest sensibility toward culture and history. Common pattern; greatness
born from earlier hard failures. Creative collapses? Goes back to
Confucius. Another pattern. - To make a mistake and not change: this is
what one calls making a mistake. [Reflections of Confucian Analects.]
Hitler was a less significantly mature artist than Churchill. His works and
understandings of 'force fields' and 'flows' were linked IMHO to altogether a
more shallow and uncreative appreciation of needs and wants... His own;-)
Hitler had directed that the total invasion of Britain was not to commence
until the air war was won. August 14th was the day this intelligence
information was received and distributed by the Inter-Service Intelligence
Committee. This was the day after "Eagle Day", 13th August- assigned by
the Nazis as the start of an 'all out' attack by air on British defence
systems. Hundreds of much needed defence/attack aircraft (Spitfires and
Hurricanes) were destroyed on the ground at various British airfields with
a few days. For some it looked like the Nazis were in the ascendant;-).
But patterns were emerging, albeit at breakneck speed;-).
What became clear was that the (knowledge of) Nazi over-commitment to the
'one conditioning stratagem' i.e. to destroy the Royal Air Force meant
that Sir Hugh Dowding could only increase future capacity by avoidance of
"all out air battles", not simply because of any projected shortfall in
plane production but because we had so few capable combat fliers. At the
height of the Battle of Britain the life expectancy of pilot was measured
in the sweep of the hour hand over the watch face. Even so the 16th August
saw every single combat squadron in the air! Nothing in reserve. The
pattern of future success was however written in the skies. The pilots of
the Royal Air Force were shooting the Luftwaffe out of the skies at a
superior rate of three and four to one. On August 18th the Luftwaffe lost
71 planes to 27 lost by the RAF. By the 25th August the German commanders
had re-directed bombs to fall on the docks at London. Churchill, it seems
to me from my meagre leanings;-( understood Hitler's mind almost as
clearly as his own and he ordered bombing raids for the first time on
German armament factories in German cities. The Germans (over) reacted ;-)
to the threat by the continual bombing of London and Coventry. This
"tactical error" according to the archives of Bletchley was the pivotal
German error in the critical period when democracy stood at the edge.
Maybe if Hitler were better at practicing the art of apprehending 'delay
loops' of systems thinking the outcomes could have differed.
I cannot but help see a 'foreground' and a 'background' as living
'both/and' at work in those times Judy. The background was in part the
hidden and quiet creativity of all the intelligence services and then in
another part the boisterous creativity of the pilots and support teams
that put them into the skies time after time to meet the front line
challenges. The truth of most human endeavour seems often in my limited
understandings to issue from impossibly complex actions and reactions in
the midst;-) of living in both the backgrounds and the foregrounds. Life
is as becoming/being something of a continual movement for me. A miasma of
TRUTH among truths. Ultimately a beautiful and fitting enigma. ;-)
Inscribed on Turing's drawings;-), providing materials for the solution to
decoding the Lutwaffe Enigma code was the nomination of the machine as
being "Agnes", and wrote on the these sheet drawings "Agnus Dei".
What did I tell those few ;-) delegates to a small 'leaders forum' at
Bletchley Park in my considered way?
"Seventh, beauty and truth are two such cardinal values that I discovered
working with you. Alan Turing cracked the 'enigma code' at Bletchley Park
and invented a Truth Machine. We can and do create all manners of machines
in order that we do not have to spend our lives endlessly repeating
ourselves, and so that we can become free to evolve in ways we truly
desire. I sometimes wonder if we have forgotten that within the context of
our fast emerging technology?
Finally, if you said to me, "Andrew, I will never want or wish to be an
artist, so what is the value to me and my company of producing what may
seem 'silly' drawings..¦?" I would respond, "To remind you whenever you
need the reminding that you are essentially free, and your freedom resides
in choosing not to repeat yourself and that we can each and all create
unending new truths among ourselves and in that we are all ultimately
Truth Machines."
Let me join some things for you in an as yet undisclosed and subtle
visioning called 'dreaming'.
"Buddhist practitioners do not 'realize' all at once. They 'catch'
glimpses that encourage them to make further efforts."
Looking yesterday in my ancient church at four hundred and five hundred
year old glass I was informed by a graceful lady;-), "Andrew, look the
glass is not so still, so completely crystallized that it is entirely
stabilized, so moving it may well be thinner at the top than the bottom.
[Having stood so long upright.]"
Judy, I was once informed that Jesus bent down to 'write' just once and
then it was in the sands of the deserts. For me that is a beautiful vision
of truth, Truth and TRUTH.
I sense theyareoneandthesamething. That is not so difficult 'code' to
make/break, is it?
Some 'tears' like our realisations just take longer to fall. That is all
;`-)
Love,
Andrew Campbell
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