Hi Mr. Willett,

I recently came across your corner of the web by way of... actually I'm not exactly sure how I got here, but I'm glad I did.

In the interest of keeping this short and sweet, I'd like to say that I agree with you on most of not all of your ideas. I have yet to read everything on your site. So far I've knocked out the "Atheism Zone and most of the "Politics Zone". I wish I could find something that I massively disagreed with, but (un)fortunately, I can't.

Here's something we can discuss. I believe you said you anticipate the colonization of space. I think we need to take care of the situation here on Earth first, i.e. overpopulation and total disregard for the environment. We should not live on other planets because the Earth is uninhabitable, but because we have learned to live sustainably here and want to do it elsewhere, too. I think the religious, especially the christian view is that this planet is here for man's benefit and nothing else.

I look forward to hearing back from you.

Thomas Willetts

PS Nice last name, too. Maybe we're distantly related. Who knows.

On the surname question there is a reasonable prospect that we are related, although our most recent common ancestor might not have been on either of our male-only side of our family trees.

Willett and Willetts undoubtedly come from the same root, diminutives of the first name William, or Will, but there is no reason to expect that there was just one Will. It is more likely to be parallel evolution of the name, but it could also be a mutation from a common original. If it was I suspect that the s was an addition rather than a subtraction. William came over to England from France as a name (with the King in 1066) but surnames did not become fixed until a few generations later.

What do you think of my theory about English-Americans; the English Americans search for ancestors and graves but ignore their living cousins.

Home Sweet home

Earth is our home. We are safe here. We can live without special equipment. We can walk out of our jobs and walk away from our commitments and we do not instantly suffocate. We can sit at the side of the road and beg. Beyond the biosphere that safe way to walk away from trouble does not exist. It is not safe to get into a spaceship with either a capitalist or a communist. That simple truth should be repeated again and again. Earth is our only safe home environment.

I did subscribe to the idea that the purpose of our intelligence was to spread lifekind to other environments. But that is ridiculous teleology. We don't have a purpose so why look for it? We should get on with life here at home and do our best to keep our planet habitable for as long as there is life to enjoy it.

My sentiments exactly. I am alarmed, however, at the current mass-extinction and dwindling biodiversity. Were you aware that the current extinction rate is estimated to be between 1,000 and 10,000 times what it was before human civilization and it's ability to wreak havoc on the ecosystem?

http://www.iucn.org/info_and_news/press/species2000.html

I read an example of how reduced biodiversity is detrimental to life itself.

One day a group of hyenas gains sentience. They look around and say, "We eat gazelles, but so do lions. Let's kill off all the lions so we'll have more gazelle to ourselves." They kill off the lions, eat more gazelle and multiply, but they're not satisfied. They see that other animals eat the same grass as their prey, so they kill off all competition the gazelle face for their food. The gazelle have more food, so they increase in number and so do the hyena by virtue of having more food available. One day the hyenas realize that other plants are competing with the grass the gazelle eat, so they kill all plant life except the grass the gazelle eat. All the populations grow. The entire biosphere consists of one type of grass, gazelle and hyenas. A drought occurs and life ceases to exist.

I realize the above scenario is entirely fictional, but it is frighteningly similar to what humans are doing to the world. I'm only nineteen so I don't have much firsthand memories of the Reagan years, but I recall something to the effect of him saying not to worry about the hole in the ozone layer, we'll fix it later. You say "We should get on with life here at home and do our best to keep our planet habitable for as long as there is life to enjoy it." Any ideas on how to go about doing that?

Thomas Willetts

Good question!

The only full answer has to be a world government. To get there we need to start thinking about it, talking about and agreeing about it. I don't expect it to happen in a decade or two, it is a longer term aim. International co-operation and agreement must be the short term aims. International treaties and agreements focused on our shared global concerns. Allowing free markets to become sacrosanct is a very bad idea. Governments must assert their power to require the market to play within rules that allow economic growth and development to occur in ways that are not damaging to the environment. There have to be International ecological statesmen, men who can trade ecological benefits as shrewdly as Kissinger traded military interests, this is in complete contrast to the current crop of statesmen who work for the selfish interests of nations and local economies. We need a new breed of politicians, motivated by global concern but with the instincts of bulldogs rather than lay preachers. Unfortunately most ecologists are bedwetters not natural leaders.

Surprisingly I think I have come up with an example of the kind of person we need, and nobody is more surprised than me, we need people like (gasp) Margaret Thatcher. The general point is that it probably easier to make a good tough politician with a scientific background into an ecologist than to make an ecologically minded person into either a scientist or a capable statesman. I don't think we should rely on converting right wing politicians while in office but we should look to promote scientifically literate politicians only.

If you want some general advice as to what you can do I suggest that you join a mainstream political party and become active. Nobody can ever agree with a party totally, so you will have to choose carefully a party that does not make you vomit your disgust too often. All parties are coalitions of ideas. Once in the mainstream you can work towards a better future. Get in there, do your best to promote reason and reasonable people.

Martin

I would definitely join the Democratic party if I could find the time. I wish I could say something about the moron <cough> Bush! <cough> we have in the White House, but I am deeply ashamed to say that I didn't vote back in November, not that it would have mattered. I seem to remember Bush winning Georgia by a large margin. Is voter apathy as prevalent in England as it is here? What do you think of the travesty of an election we had this time around?

I just saw on the news that Georgia is the first state in the Union to institute a uniform electronically tallied ballot. It's about damn time. I just hope this radical new idea of corruption resistant voting catches on. Notice I didn't say "corruption proof". Someone will always find a way to tamper with the results one way or the other. At least when voting is done on a computer you can't have a Republican mob storm the counting office and disrupt the count.

About your English-American heritage idea: Personally I would be very excited to meet any living relatives in England or anywhere. However, until recently this was not the case. My mother's maiden name is McCullough. I remember my aunts (no direct uncles on that side of the family) and grandparents talk about how nice it would be to travel to Ireland and visit McCullough Castle and see the beautiful countryside and meet all the nice people. The Willettses never talked much about our English heritage. I knew the name was English but I was never much interested beyond that. I think this has a lot to do with the way England is portrayed in popular American Culture. I suppose it would be nice if I could back that claim up substantially. The only example that pops to mind is "Braveheart". The Scots were a noble people who just wanted a little piece of land and the freedom to do what they want with it. The English were savage and brutal oppressors of the Scots. It's only a movie but if the vast majority of people here believe a magical pixy in the sky listens to them, they will believe anything. Is life on your side of the pond as good as it sounds to someone living in redneck infested, "if'n you ain't Baptist, you ain't right", Podunkville Georgia?

Thomas Willetts

Sorry for the delay in replying. My workload is getting on top of me. It is all self-inflicted, I want to write new web pages and communicate to everybody, it sometimes gets a little out of hand, I have been having a bit of what you might call verbal constipation, I am taking a lot in and not passing it out at the same speed.

You are right to feel a little ashamed for not voting. Plenty of people have fought for that right. It is in a way a selfless act, very few people cast a vote that really decides an election but we should all take part in the process, a government without a community behind it is a tyranny. How can there be a community unless you act together? Voting is a kind of symbolic act of communion. If nothing else it gives you the right to complain when things go wrong, at least you have tried to make a difference.

I haven't enough time to express my feelings for the US electoral process.

In England the electoral process is probably as clean as anywhere on Earth. I am proud to say that. Our political system works. Voting irregularities are very rare, we have a political culture that is fundamentally fair and democratic, no politician would seriously consider asking anybody to conspire to cheat. The ballot is fair. The campaign, well, maybe not quite so fair. I have gathered quite a few stories about sharp practice, and I have been involved in a few myself, but only of the most minor level, gamesmanship. No thuggery or corruption.

On one occasion in a pub in Peckham (South London) I was told to pretend to be a Liberal MP and talk to a couple of blokes who were smoking cannabis in the corner, so I pretended to be an MP. I convinced them that we were in favour of legalizing cannabis, and proved it by sharing their joint.

How far back does your family history go? Mine vanishes into the mists of time in the middle of the nineteenth century, there are a few of my ancestors of this time that I have heard vague stories about but nothing beyond this time. I would imagine that most people in America of English origin are related to original migrants of an even earlier age. But migration is a big story, it is bound to be passed down the generations more than the usual tales of shotgun marriages, widowers taking young brides and deaths of children. I would expect migrants to have more of a depth to their history. The other factor in the perceived loyalties and identification of migrants is the distances involved. The Atlantic was an ocean that only the richest people could cross more than once in a lifetime, except as sailors. The vast majority of the earliest migrants to America knew they were taking a one way trip and so had no option but to assimilate and become American. Only the aristocrats and the wealthy had the option of remaining English while making a living in the colonies.

Only in the last generation or so has it become truly possible to move from one continent to another and choose whether or not to assimilate in the new culture. Cheap air travel (cheap enough to travel once a year without having to earn above average earnings) good telephone and postal contact makes living in one continent but feeling that you belong in another a viable proposition. Pakistanis live in Canada or Yorkshire and still feel Pakistani. Most top stars have homes in at least two continents. Assimilation is an option. For your ancestors it was not. When they crossed the Atlantic they might as well have been dead as far as their families left behind were concerned. But there are a few people on this side of the Atlantic that feel something for those family links. Until I began to see it from the point of view of the descendants of the migrants I did feel a little betrayed by the indifference to England shown by many Americans.

Braveheart is as historically accurate as Disney's Pocahontas. Only the names of the principle characters haven't been changed to improve the story.

There is a lot of Celtic myth about. The Scotch, the Irish and the Welsh have to hate the English for the simple reason that there is nobody much else around to hate. Fear, jealousy, envy and a desire not to be swamped by a powerful neighbour are common ideas across all cultures and times. Mexicans and Cubans don't hate and fear Belgians or Mongolians, do they? In contrast the English don't bother as much about our smaller neighbours. We have quite enough to concern ourselves with the French and Germans. In past times we used to care about the Spanish too, but not any more, we now have the whole world to care about. But the Celtic fringes of Britain still cannot see past their culturally powerful neighbour.

Celtic myths and the stories of resisting the oppressor strike a chord with many people. The story of King Arthur is a story about the Romano-British Celts resisting the Anglo-Saxons, and yet it is now as often told with relish by the descendants of the Anglo Saxons as by the Celts. It is a good story, like The Alamo or Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. But most people alive today are the descendants of those who perpetrated genocide and oppression rather than the victims, it doesn't take much intelligence to work out why.

I have no idea which side, if either, the bulk of my ancestors lined up on in the English Civil War but I can be fairly confident that there were far more on the side of the Anglo Saxon invaders than there were in the armies of Arthur (if he existed) and the Celts. I would guess that my genes would have been divided over the battle of Hastings, and that some would have been cheering for the home team and some for the away side with the battles between the English and the Vikings and Danes.

As siding with the victims is so much easier to your conscience than siding with the aggressors it is very easy to understand why American culture is so prejudiced against the English, and yet at the same time so heavily influenced by the English. Just as now so much of world culture is so heavily anti-American in sentiment, but so heavily influenced by America in practice. Coke bottles full of Texaco gasoline form a large proportion of the missiles thrown in anti-American riots.

Is life better over here? I have no idea. It is better in one way, not everybody believes in KRIST JEZUS as their saviour but that doesn't mean they are more rational, they just have a wider variety of wrong beliefs.