Reflecting On Refraction

A couple of days ago I was sitting at my favourite café early in the morning with a freshly brewed hot coffee in front of me. A light shower of rain began to fall. Within a minute or so a rainbow formed its arch across the sky. When I looked downwards at the creek that flows beside the café, I could see the rainbow reflected in the waters. (see photo)

The rainbow and its reflection in the water was a beautiful sight.

I was moved to reflect.

I recalled from my school days learning about the physics of how a rainbow is formed. Light is refracted, reflected, and dispersed into its constituent colours by the drops of rain. Most people know the colours of the rainbow from the initials: ROYGBIV. Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet. These are the classic seven colours of the rainbow. Most of us know that the section of the electro-magnetic spectrum that we see as light is made up of many more colours than these seven. It is though, these seven that we classically associate with a rainbow.

I reflected further.

The rainbow is a pleasing metaphor for life and its myriad forms. Individual lives do not exist in isolation. No matter what animal or plant you can think of in nature, it does not exist without interacting with other animals and plants around it. Together, all the various plants and animals combine in almost unimaginable complexity to co-create whole eco-systems.

Each eco-system supports and sustains all the plants and animals within it. Each plant and animal supports and sustains the eco-system.

We humans are part of these complex eco-systems. We are not isolated beings. Without the eco-systems we are part of we could not exist. We are like one of the colours of the rainbow.

Try to imagine a rainbow without one of its colours. Suppose the colour blue was missing. It would no longer be a rainbow, would it?

Sadly, much of humanity is acting (metaphorically) as if one or more of the colours of the rainbow do not matter. Species (and even genera) of plants and animals are being made extinct as an insane rate.

My reflection continued on.

If light is passed through a prism the entire visible spectrum of colours appears on the other side of the prism. The unity of light (what we call white light) is refracted and dispersed by the prism, and we see the diversity of colour contained in that unity. Unity creates diversity.

Now place another prism after the first prism. But invert it. Now pass the white light through the first prism and then the colour spectrum through the second. What happens?

The colour spectrum is returned to white light. Diversity creates unity.

It is a metaphor worth reflecting upon often, because it can be very easy to forget that everything in the world is co-created by everything else. Nothing arises or exists completely on its own. Nothing is independent of other things, although it may be unique (i.e. it may be the unique colour red in our metaphor).

Next time you see a rainbow think and reflect upon the diversity of life and how that creates the wondrous unity that life is.

Too Damn Close!

Readers who are also cyclists will relate to the parable I am about to write.

Imagine you are riding your bicycle along a road. Suddenly, a car passes by you very close. The car almost hits you. You feel the draft of slipstreaming and almost lose balance. Your heart jumps up a dozen beats. You think to yourself and may even shout it out at the receding driver of the car: ‘Too damn close!’

That’s the response I had a couple of days ago to reading the announcement by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in releasing the setting of the Doomsday Clock.

The Doomsday Clock has been set every year since 1947. Initially focussing upon the threat of nuclear annihilation the clock symbolically indicates how close the world has become over the previous year to existential obliteration, represented as midnight. Over the past 79 years other existential threats have been added to the assessment.

The clock’s first setting (in 1947) was placed at 7 minutes to midnight, in recognition of the threat of nuclear warfare following the dropping of nuclear bombs upon Japan in 1945.

In the time since its first rendition the Doomsday Clock has been placed furthest from midnight in 1991 (17 minutes to midnight) following the end of the Cold War and the signing of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START.) Sadly, with increasing numbers of nuclear-armed nations and other tensions, the clock trended towards midnight so that by 2018 it was set at just 2 minutes to midnight.

Within just two years, with the realisation of the enormity of the threat of climate change and cyber-warfare, the clock was set (in 2020) at 100 seconds (1 minute and 40 seconds) to midnight.

The Doomsday Clock has remained at less than 2 minutes to midnight ever since. In 2023 and 2024 it was set at 90 seconds to midnight. Then last year (2025) the clock moved a further one second towards the fateful hour of midnight.

And this year?

The clock has been set at 85 seconds to midnight.

That is too damn close!

The clock has been set closer to midnight this year because of four threats: 1. Nuclear threats intensified and three regional conflicts (Russia-Ukraine, India-Pakistan, and Israel/US bombing Iranian nuclear facilities), threaten to intensify, 2. Climate change outlook has worsened, 3. Development of “mirror-life” carries with it catastrophic risk, 4. Accelerating evolution of artificial intelligence (AI).¹

Compounding these threats has been the rise of autocratic leadership throughout the world, especially within three of the world's superpowers. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announcement notes that, ‘Leaders of the United States, Russia, and China greatly vary in their autocratic leanings, but they all have approaches to international relations that favour grandiosity and competition over diplomacy and cooperation.’

Returning to the parable of the cyclist and the car.

One car may be a scare. The Doomsday Clock announcement, however, indicates that the cyclist is being closely passed by a procession of cars, anyone of which on their own could cause the cyclist serious harm. That is terrifying. All of them together gravely increases the danger to the cyclist.

The drivers of the cars seem to not notice.

We cyclists must call out:

Too damn close!

Notes:

1. The full announcement can be read here: https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/#nav_menu

Winners and Losers: An Unhelpful Dualism

A few weeks ago I watched a clip of a hearing held in the US. There appears to be a fondness for these sorts of hearings in the USA where elected representatives question and grill government employees. During this particular hearing the elected representative was asking about the outcome of previous elections.

In what follows I will briefly summarise the essence of the encounter. However, I will refer only to Candidate A and Candidate B rather than the given names of the candidates for office. Also, the years of the election will only be referred to as yyxx. I have chosen to do this so that this blogpiece does not descend into the very dualism I hope to show as being unhelpful.

What follows is not a verbatim transcript of the encounter, but is very close to it (from memory):

Elected Representative to government employees: ‘Did Candidate A win the yyxx election?’

The government employees prevaricated and hesitated to answer the question with an affirmative or negative answer. When pressed again with the question ‘Did Candidate A win the yyxx election?’ they admitted that the candidate had obtained more votes than Candidate B.

The elected representative then asked a follow-up question: ‘Did Candidate B lose the yyxx election?’

To this question the government employees stubbornly refused to answer.

The questioner became visibly upset, possibly annoyed, and continued to ask, ‘Did Candidate B lose the yyxx election?’ At times verging on yelling the question out.

The government employees continued to not answer this question. They may have chosen to not answer the question because they were employees of one or other of Candidates A or B. Or, they may have chosen not to answer for ethical reasons. For whichever reason, it is to their credit that they did not choose to enter into such a dualistic question and answer debate.

As I listened to this exchange it occurred to me that the attribution of winners and losers in an election is one of the fundamental problems we have with modern-day politics. Not only is the culture of winners/losers a disturbing trend in politics, but more generally in society as a whole.

Politics should not be about winners and losers. Politics (in its truest sense – the means by which we make collective choices) should be a forum in which ideas are presented without animosity and an honest dialogue takes place with a collective (hopefully consensual) decision arrived at.

(I know that sounds utopian and has little place in modern political debate. But, it can be done within a democratic setting. I have written extensively on the theory and practice of sortition and will not cover it further here. Check out my sortition posts by using the Search box.)

Returning to the theme of winners and losers we can trace much of this back to dualistic thinking that gained widespread prominence in ancient Greece with philosophers such as Plato.

More recently the idea of winners/losers in social settings gained popularity from the late 19^th century onwards with the rise of Social Darwinism. Social Darwinism is a now largely discredited set of theories that attempted to apply Darwin’s theories of natural selection to social settings. Thinkers, such as Herbert Spencer, Thomas Malthus, and Francis Galton (the founder of eugenics) misunderstood and misapplied the phrase ‘survival of the fittest,’¹ by suggesting that social arrangements meant that the wealthiest and most powerful should see their wealth and power increase at the expense of the poor and lower classes. Social Darwinism greatly promoted the winner/loser duality.

The mocking sobriquet of “loser” appears to have arisen in US student slang during the 1950s. Being labelled a loser suggested the person so labelled was a perpetual failure and deserving of being mocked, ridiculed, and ultimately, rejected. Such a label can be tremendously damaging to someone’s psyche, especially young people.

During the 1970s the field of sociobiology further encouraged the idea of winners and losers by emphasising a person’s genetic heritage, and largely ignoring social constructs of culture and environment.

The neo-liberalism of the 1980s/90s, promoted and championed in the US by President Ronald Reagan and in the UK by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (the Iron Lady) nearly endorsed the notion of winner as being the greatest worth a person could attain. Losers, on the other hand, could be dismissed and given no assistance in a civilisation where ‘There is no such thing as society’ as Margaret Thatcher so infamously announced.

The exchange referred to above between the elected Representative and the government employees is the outgrowth of these notions of humanity. Humanity is nothing more than a collection of individuals all in competitive struggles for resources, riches, fame, and power.

Sadly, the use of the term loser is increasing in our everyday speech. During the 1940s and 1950s the term was used only 0.4-0.5 times in every one million words spoken. During the 1960s usage began to climb and climbed rapidly from 1990 onwards, so that by 2018 the term loser was being used more than twice in every one million words used. That is a 500% increase in just one generation.  

Winners and losers is an unhelpful, and erroneous concept. It leads to low self-esteem, self-harm, aggression, xenophobia, hatred, and ultimately to war.

We should beware of anyone attempting to classify us or our societies as winners and losers.

Notes:

1. The phrase ‘survival of the fittest’ was not coined by Darwin. Nor did he use the term fittest in the sense of biggest, strongest, most powerful. See these blogpieces, here and here.

Smile – It Scares Them

Not far from where I live there is a sign on the side of the road. On the back of the sign someone has written: Smile – It scares them. When I first saw it, I smiled.

The words have a hint of truth about them, don’t they? Some people do seem to be scared of a smile on the face of others. Or, if not scared, perhaps a little intimidated, or nervous.

We live in a world where there is a growing rift between people and that shows up as fear, anxiety, or simply indifference. Occasionally this fear can escalate and erupt as violence and hatred. We saw that this week in Minnesota.¹

The fear that someone may exhibit though, should not dissuade us from continuing to smile. A smile, as Spike Milligan reminded us, can be infectious.²

Why would someone be scared of smiles? A number of possibilities present themselves, including:

• Our westernised culture emphasises success and achievement to a high degree. Seeing a smile can trigger feelings of failure by assuming that the smiling person is successful. The sense of shame inherent in the feeling of failure can be a scary thought.
• Many in our society associate happiness with risk. It can be a risky business to seek happiness. Thus, the smile of another can be scary.
• Happiness can be associated with good fortune and that, in turn, can trigger a judgement of injustice, especially if the good fortune is undeserved. In a world where the rift between rich and poor is growing rapidly, the association between happiness and good fortune can spark resentment and a desire to right the injustice.
• When someone is experiencing depression or other negative emotions witnessing a smile can be difficult. Many of us have heard the phrase, ‘Don’t worry, just get over it. Be happy.’ We also know just how unhelpful that can be. Indeed, such simplistic advice can worsen the feelings of those experiencing negative emotions.
• Within western culture the pursuit of individual happiness is considered to be one of the greatest goals in life. Yet, in many other cultures, other values (e.g. harmony, community, and loyalty) take precedence.

However, smiling may not necessarily indicate this individualised goal of happiness. Tibetans, for example, place higher emphasis on other values. Yet, one will be hard pressed to find a photograph of the Dalai Lama without a smile upon his face.

So, keep smiling, and try to not be scared.

Notes:

1. On 7 January 2026, Renee Good, an American citizen was shot and killed by a federal officer. The incident has been widely condemned as murder. Tellingly, immediately before she was shot, Renee said to the officer ‘I don’t hate you dude.’  The first words uttered by the officer following the shooting were, ‘F***ing bitch.’ This is an example of how smiling can scare someone escalating to violence and murder.

2. Spike Milligan, Smiling is Infectious. The opening lines of this poem are, ‘Smiling is infectious, you catch it like the flu’.

One Small Step – Book Review

One Small Step¹ is a book about running, isn’t it? So, how does it come to be featured on this blogsite? Well, that’s because it is a book about community.

One Small Step, authored by the founder of parkrun, Paul Sinton-Hewitt, is a book about the building of community using running as the building blocks. It is also, and a bonus, the autobiography of a remarkable man.

The book is almost 300 pages long, yet it is not until you get almost to the 200^th page when Paul writes of the first ever parkrun (at the time known as the Bushy Park Time Trial). Paul spends most of the first 200 pages writing of his life and experiences growing up in the apartheid era in South Africa.

In many ways it is possible to read Paul’s childhood and teenage years as difficult, even sad and depressing years. His mother was mostly absent, both physically and emotionally. His father was no better. He and his brother and sister spent much of their educational years in boarding schools or orphanages. During much of this time Paul was bullied. Running allowed Paul to find some relief from these times. He grew to enjoy the activity.

These experiences, as an isolated youth, and growing up in the apartheid system, left Paul with at least two guiding values that he later brought to parkrun – fairness and inclusivity.

That first time trial in Bushy Park (in south-west London) had thirteen participants and five volunteers (including Paul). Twenty-one years later this small beginning has grown to more than 2,000 events in twenty-three countries. A total of almost 400,000 attend these weekly events with 10 million parkrunners being registered worldwide. Each parkrun is attended by volunteers who marshal, give out finishing tokens, record times, and administer the background practicalities. Each week, almost 50,000 people globally take on one or other of these roles.

Paul’s two values alluded to above (fairness and inclusivity) are reflected in the events. Participation in a parkrun (no matter where in the world) is free and no-one is turned away. Many who turn up walk the 5km route, whilst others participate by being wheeled in their pram. Although each participant is provided with a time, the accent is on participation rather than competition. The smiles and laughter before and following events attest to this being a community event, rather than a sporting event.

One Small Step is highly readable and engaging. Paul’s background and life experiences are honestly, and almost painfully, revealed. By giving the reader this insight into his life, Paul allows the reader to appreciate how this worldwide phenomenon came about, and also why it enjoys so many enthusiastic participants each week.

At the end of the book Paul relates an endearing story of being a parkwalker (one who walks as a volunteer toward the rear of the field to accompany others) and his engagement with a 5-year-old girl and her grandmother. It was the girl’s first ever parkrun. At the end of the 5km the grandmother said to Paul, ‘Thank you, from all of us.’

Paul’s reply was, ‘It’s been my pleasure. I enjoyed every step of the way.’

The reader is left in no doubt that Paul wasn’t referring to just that parkrun on that day.

Notes:

1. Paul Sinton-Hewitt, One Small Step: The definitive account of a run that became a global movement, MacMillan, London, 2025

Gaia’s New Year Resolutions

Today is the day that traditionally people write (well, at least think of writing) a New Year’s Resolution list. I started thinking of some for myself whilst walking along the beach this morning. Then I wondered, what New Year Resolutions might Gaia make?

In Greek mythology Gaia is the personification of the Earth. In the 1970s Lynn Margulis and James Lovelock proposed the Gaia Hypothesis. This hypothesis (aka Principle, Theory, Paradigm) recognises the entire planet as a synergistic, intricately interwoven and entangled, self-regulating system. This theory posits that each and every part of the Earth are co-dependent upon all other parts in a complex way that is impossible to fully comprehend, let alone describe.

As I strolled along the beach (one of the Earth’s many ecosystems) I wondered what resolutions the Greek personification of Gaia might come up with? If, as some suggest, humans are the Earth’s way of expressing herself through consciousness, then maybe I could come up with some possible Gaia New Year Resolutions. Here are some possibilities:

1. Make alliances with those humans who are the original human inhabitants of places to protect those places from exploitation, extraction, pollution, and destruction. Some places to start would be; the Amazon jungle, the Taiga (or Siberian boreal forest,) the Congo rainforest and all it’s inhabitants (including the chimpanzee and bonobo – humankind’s closest relative,) and the Atacama Desert.
2. Attempt to remove the massive dams impeding many rivers and disrupting the lives of many fish and other aquatic creatures that depend on the smooth flow of the rivers.
3. Try to plug the bores tapping oil and gas beneath my surface. Many humans are doing this with perilous results. Perhaps I (Gaia) can somehow seal these bores.
4. Continue to create beauty where and when I can. Rainbows, spring flowers, sparkling waterfalls, Auroras, moonlight, rolling waves are all spectacles and wonders I can craft.
5. Endeavour to ease the plight of hundreds of threatened species, some of whom I know will become extinct very soon.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly,

6. Convene a meaningful and all-encompassing conversation with the majority of my human inhabitants. The topics of this conversation will be to spell out the unhealthy and inconsiderate manner in which many humans are treating me and all those who depend upon me. I (Gaia) would also like to suggest to these humans that if they were to slow down, be mindful, consider others, reduce their dependence upon gadgets and trinkets, then they would find greater peace and harmony within themselves.

These are some of the possible Gaia’s New Year Resolutions that came to my mind while walking along the beach. There are, no doubt, dozens of others. You, the reader, may come up with a few more.

I know that these are my personified resolutions of Gaia, however, it may be worth all of us considering, on this New Years Day, what the Earth might like for herself.

The final resolution above – a conversation between Gaia and us humans – might be a way for us humans to approach the way in which we live. Perhaps before we do something, individually and collectively, we could sit down and converse with Gaia.

Conversations with Gaia reminds me of Council of All Beings workshop that is utilised in Deep Ecology retreats. The workshop is ably and fully described by Joanna Macy and Pat Fleming in the book Thinking Like A Mountain.¹

How about we all add this resolution to our New Years Resolutions this year: To hold meaningful and all-encompassing conversations with Gaia.

Notes:

1. John Seed, Joanna Macy, Pat Fleming, Arne Naess, Thinking Like A Mountain: Towards a Council of All Beings, New Society Publishers, Philadelphia, 1988

Stand Still Day

Today is solstice. In the southern hemisphere it is the Summer Solstice, in the northern it is the Winter Solstice. Many cultures over many millennia have marked solstice with various rituals and celebrations.

In an era in which many people are constantly on the go, continuously busy, and ever on the look-out, perhaps it would be fitting to inaugurate a new ritual for the day of solstice.

It could be Stand Still Day, and it would occur twice a year; once on the December Solstice and again on the June Solstice.

It would be easy to remember the dates because solstice literally means sun stands still.

Our busy westernised lives expose us to anxiety, frustration, hyper-vigilance, angst, worry, fear, and a plethora of other stresses. Timetables, deadlines, expectations, schedules, wars, and physical violence all constrain us and force us into a chronic state of stress.

Studies and research carried out over the past few years consistently show that negative feelings amongst people from all over the globe are on the increase. More than one-third of people say that they felt sad or had been worried on the day before being interviewed. Similar numbers reported that they felt angry. Moreover, the proportion of people reporting these feelings had increased compared to a decade earlier, often up by 10% or more.

During the same decade, the proportion of people reporting positive feelings (such as enjoyment, being able to laugh or smile, and being well-rested) remained steady, with no appreciable decrease or increase in the proportions.

A number of explanations for this increase in negative feelings have been put forward: lack of peace, the pace of life, and the threat of environmental collapse amongst them.

How can we deal with this?

What if, on the two days of the year on which the sun stands still, we also stood still?

If we all simply stopped and stood still for an hour (say) on two days a year – December solstice and June solstice, what might happen? Some possibilities include:

• Firstly, noticing that our breathing slows down and our heart rate drops.
• Realising that our bodies do have the capacity to relax.
• Understanding that our frenetic day-to-day activities are undermining our health.
• Finding that we have time to talk with our children, our parents, and our neighbours.
• Appreciating our surroundings. Perhaps we look up at the sky for the first time in a long time and watch birds flying past.
• Comprehending the vastness of the cosmos.
• Becoming conscious of our inner psyche (our soul).

At first it could be just one hour, twice a year. Two hours out of the 8,766 hours each year provides us with. Surely, that is possible. After a few years we might be able to simply stand still for a few hours twice a year.

If the Sun can do it, and it has been alive for billions of years, then so can we.