The snow and the sun

A powerful combination when it comes to qualia. The sensation of strong sunlight reflecting off the snow was something I only first experienced when on a skiing holiday in 1984, aged 27. Snow, when it came in England, was accompanied by dark clouds, and would melt away all too soon. Yesterday, as the clouds passed, and the sun lit up the snowy scene outside my window, I had the notion to recreate the skiing qualia flashbacks of Val de Whatever in France, and lit a cigarette, not to smoke, but as an incense stick in the kitchen. I also do this (very) occasionally in high summer to recreate Stella-Plage qualia. That increasingly rare whiff triggers those flashbacks far more intensely than visual stimuli alone. Sun, snow and tobacco smoke brings that back as though it were the same moment.

Propelling myself out of the cosy warmth into the snow required little effort this morning; I recently bought a USAF-pattern N3B parka (the long version of the N2B which I've owned since 1980). It's so warm that despite the cold, I had to stop along the way to remove my cardigan. Destination today: Rososz. The small grocery shop, where I can buy provisions for an outdoor lunchtime reverie.

Left: the little lane leading down to Grobice. All the apples are safely gathered in, the tractors have ceased chugging up and down. Here and there, the sound of chainsaws as old branches are pruned.

Below: something new in the neighbourhood – last week I noticed the arrival of the white hut installed in the gap between the turnoff to Machcin II and the path to Rososz. Since then, this plot has been enclosed. I'd expect a new house to pop up here; The hut, I take it, will be used by the builders. Five or six new houses have already built to the east of Jakubowizna's border in the past few years.

Below: on the path to Rososz, passing the edge of Dąbrowa Duża. On the way out, I meet not one single person; on the way back I pass a Nordic walker. Quiet. The way I like it.

Below: most of my journey (5.25km/3.25 miles each way) is through forest. 

Below: having popped into the shop in Rososz, it's time to set back home. With the sun so low in the late-autumn sky, it feels like late afternoon – despite it only being half past midday.

Below: it's time for lunch – feldakohol in the form of a tin of Warka Pstrąg, some kabanosy and salt snacks [I have switched Polish or German brands rather than Lays, as Pepsico has not pulled out of Russia. It still owns and operates its factories there, paying taxes to Putin, money which he uses to slaughter innocent people. Lays actually opened a new salt-snacks factory in Novosibirsk this year. Fuck Pepsico.] Here, I sit and eat and drink and find altered states and inspiration. I watched the clouds chase east. Every now and then one obscures the sun, but the wind is strong and the sun soons pops back out.

Below: just as forecast, an overcast afternoon and evening looms. I'm almost home. The sun is low. In two weeks' time, we'll have the earliest sunset, and by the New Year, the days will have become noticeably longer.

Left: the last few hundred metres, dense unbroken cloud rolls in from the west. The birches and oaks are almost leafless; winter is due. Will it be a harsh one? Or mild?

Below: aviation bonus: This is only the third time I've managed this: getting a photo of an aircraft flying across the moon. (The second time was a speck on a dot as I didn't have a long lens with me.) Here is a Polish medical air rescue (Lotnicze Pogotowie Ratunkowe) Eurocopter EC135, SP-HXG crossing a half-moon. Nikon D3500/ 70-300mm Nikkor zoom, 1/400th sec at f/6.3, 100 ISO. Snaps like this make carrying full kit worthwhile.

Below: less remarkable, but nice enough nonetheless. A Qatari Boeing 797 Dreamliner begins its turn into its final approach at Warsaw Okęcie airport.

During the dark half of the year, every sunny day should be made the most of.

This time five years ago:
Photo round-up, London, Warsaw and Kraków

This time eight years ago:
Poland's North-West Frontier

This time nine years ago:
Cars must fade from our cities

This time ten years ago:
Unnecessary street lighting wastes money

This time 11 years ago:
Warsaw's heros on the walls

This time 13 years ago:
Tax dodge or public service?

This time 15 years ago:
Warsaw's woodlands in autumn

This time 17 years ago:
Still here, the early snow

This time 12 years ago:
Another point of view

First snow, 2024

Well, there was a very light dusting yesterday (21 November, tyle co kot napłakał = as much as the cat cried out = cat's tears = next to nothing), but this morning, there was a more substantive snowfall. It won't stay long, as the temperature is +2.8°C at midday. But for the record kept on my blog, it counts.  Below: view from my kitchen table, breakfast time, still below freezing, just.

As usual, the first snow means transport disruptions; my inbox this morning contains an email from Koleje Mazowieckie informing me of utrudnienia ('impediments') on the Warsaw-Radom line, another one saying that KM passengers can use InterCity trains with valid KM tickets (useful if you're travelling from, say, Piaseczno to Warka), and a third email stating that the 08:33 train from Warsaw to Radom is running 90 minutes late. SNAFU, in other words. 

On the roads, things are not good for all the motorists who've not yet changed from summer tyres to winter tyres (a colleague spoke of a five-day wait at his local vulcanisator). I'd expect a spike in road-traffic accidents and much slippin' an' a slidin' going on.

A first snowfall on 21 November is nothing unusual. It's not the warmest November on record, but far from the coldest. The earliest snowfall recorded on this blog (now entering its 18th winter) was in 2009, when snow fell on 14 October. 

Below: a table of all the first snowfalls that I recorded on the blog. Skipped years mean the snow (or lack thereof) wasn't remarkable enough to merit a post. One winter stands out – the one before the pandemic; a weak fall at the end of January was literally the only snow that winter. Otherwise, what's clear from the table is that first snowfalls in October and in the first half of November haven't occurred in Mazowsze over the past 12 years. This squares with my observations of first frosts.

Winter	Date of first snow
2024-2025	22 November 2024
2022-2023	24 November 2022
2020-2021	20 December 2020
2019-2020	29 January 2020
2017-2018	21 November 2017
2012-2013	29 October 2012
2011-2012	21 December 2011
2010-2011	30 November 2010
2009-2010	14 October 2009
2008-2009	22 November 2008
2007-20087	14 November 2007

UPDATE: Afternoon, 22 November. Walk to the shop. Below: Kodacolor Kansas at the end of my lane.

Below: low sun, field at the edge of town.

Below: on the journey back, ulica Jabłoniowa, sunset, berry field, barbed wire.

Below: ulica Torowa, half an hour or so after the horizon had swallowed the sun.

Below: Chy-town station in the snow at nightfall.

This time last year:
An afternoon and evening in Katowice

This time four years ago:
Wola's Joryt building (and its place in Polish popular culture)

This time five years ago:
Karczunkowska viaduct opens to cars, but not to pedestrians

This time six years ago:
Edinburgh's Polish statues

This time seven years ago:
Edinburgh - walking the Water of Leith

This time eight years ago:
Poland's north-west frontier

This time nine years ago:
Cars must fade from our cities

This time 11 years ago:
Unnecessary street lighting wastes public money

This time 12 years ago:
Warsaw's heros on the walls 

This time 13 years ago:
Tax dodge or public service? 

This time 15 years ago:
Warsaw's woodlands in autumn

This time 16 years ago:
Still here, the early snow

This time 17 years ago:
Another point of view

How we look at the future

It struck me as I was walking northward along the road to Michalczew. Walking (as one should) facing the traffic, I could see the back of three road signs ahead of me. All of them triangular – warning signs. And then I imagined the following scenario...

You're driving a car with no windscreen. Just a solid metal panel in its place. All you can see is what's behind you and to the side of you; the image in the rear-view mirror and the two images in the wing mirrors; you can also see out of the side windows. You are driving forward, very slowly, along a long, straight road. The last few kilometres had all been all straight, nothing you can see behind you, or to the left or right of you suggests that the road ahead (which you can't see) won't also be straight. You pass a triangular sign. You can only see the back of it. You know it's a warning sign because of its shape – but what's it warning you of? You can't tell. Then a second triangular sign appears in your mirrors – and then a third. 

Some danger is clearly approaching. But what it is, you can't tell. You slow down anyway, and concentrate your entire attention on what you have just passed. Can you observe any patterns? You look left. You look right. Is the kerb moving away from you? Or towards you? This would suggest that the road is starting to bend one way or the other, and that you'd have to turn the steering wheel appropriately – and slow right down.

Such is our view of the world's unfolding timeline. 

The current scientific view of spacetime – the Einsteinian paradigm – defines our reality in four dimensions – three spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension. But time is the odd one out in this quartet. We can move up or down along the Y axis; left or right along the X axis; and backwards and forwards along the Z axis. And at variable speed. But when it comes to time, we can only move directly forward through it, at a steady one second per second.

We can look in all directions spatially, but we can only see backwards in time. We remember our past; we can only guess our future. Our relationship with time, compared to space, is extremely limited.

I am minded of this when I receive, as I do at this time each year, The Economist's The World Ahead. Journalists, commentators and analysts weigh in to describe the key trends that will define 2025. Yet despite the brain-power that goes into this publication, it's often overtaken by events by the end of the first quarter of the year in question.

An innovation in recent years is the inclusion of a panel of 'superforecasters', who answer a series of geopolitical and macroeconomic questions relating to the year ahead. The weighted results of this poll is more accurate than the musings of individual experts showcasing a pet theory. The aggregated wisdom of the crowds, especially if the crowd consists of individuals outside of the big institutions, without commercial or ideological agendas, is more accurate. But only if the right questions are asked. Questions for 2025 are quite bland; China's inflation rate, Nvidia's share price, Germany's ruling coalition. That sort of thing. 

The Economist's superforecasters got four and half out of eight with their forecasts for 2024, correctly calling the UK election, continued conflict in Ukraine, no clash between China and the West, and no euro-zone recession. But global GDP growth outpaced their forecast of 1.5%-3%; they said Narendra Modi’s alliance would win at least 300 seats in India’s election (it won just 240); and they wrongly predicted a Democrat would win the US presidency. But beyond asking a panel of superforecasters, looking ahead at 2025, The Economist raises some interesting outlier possibilities; among that of a supervolcano exploding or a new pandemic, two are intriguing – a lost text from antiquity is discovered; and evidence of alien life is detected.

Here I'd like to touch on the role of intuition in guiding us towards the future. All the intellects on earth, all the analytical powers, can sift through potential scenarios; they can work through the known knowns, the known unknowns and guessing the unknown unknowns – and still get it wrong. But if one is open to the power of intuition, a inspired glimpse into the future can prove as accurate as that a forecast based on pure analysis.

The butterfly effect – one seemingly trivial incident leading to a major event through a cascade of causal links – makes it impossible to empirically plot a future timeline that will inevitably happen. Even the most powerful supercomputer, even Laplace's demon, is unable to write the news headlines for, say, 10 August 2025. This makes an intuition-led seer's premonition just as valid as any professional forecaster.

Given the bind that theoretical science is currently in, as the physicalist/reductionist/materialist paradigm runs out of road, it would make sense to investigate what's currently considered flaky woo-woo and look more deeply at the role of our intuition in gauging the future.

I'd suggest starting locally with some n =1 experiment, to see whether we can intuit what happens to us over the next week. The key thing: don't overthink it.

This time last year:
First snow, 2023

This time two years ago:
The Algorithm of Fate

This time three years ago:
Non-local consciousness - science and spirituality

This time four years ago:
Fenced in at last

This time seven years ago:
Poznań's Old Market

This time eight years ago:
Brexit, Trump and negative emotions

This time 13 years ago:
Premier Tusk's second exposé

This time 14 years ago:
Into Poland's former Heart of Darkness

This time 15 years ago:
Commuter schadenfreude

Surviving the gloom

My first all-darkness long walk (12,750 paces) as Poland slips from the fifth season of the year to the sixth, namely from golden autumn to gloomy autumn. In case you're asking, the remaining four are deep winter, przednówek (after the frost and snow has gone, but before the rebirth of spring), spring itself, and high summer.

The sun has not shone since 5 November and the sun set today at 3:45pm; another 20 minutes of daylight will disappear from the evenings between now and the winter solstice. But my habit of going to bed early and ignoring the time change has kept my spirits up. As has my resolution not to watch or listen or read any news or engage in any political social media between now and January 2029. The mental-health hygiene equivalent of not fingering faecal matter before touching food.

Anyway, the changes of seasons is when the anomalous qualia memory flashbacks I get are most frequent and most intense. I felt several on my walk today; each gives me a little tingle of elation, a sense of continuity, a sense that there's more to the subjective conscious experience than what's bound by our biological lifespan. The silence of the fog-shrouded forest; the row of street lights reflected off the wet tarmac of a long, straight road;  the station in the distance, a commuter train rushing past (below)...

That great feeling, intuitive, powerful, genuine and restorative, of knowing that the soul – consciousness – lives on. The process of dying might not be pleasant physically or mentally, but death itself scares me not. 

Another summer gone, another winter on the way. A different way of living, coping with the darkness and cold, icy pavements, and above all, those short days. I have to make more of making the most of them.

Below: the Punctual Arrival at Chynów of the 19:12 Service to Warka.

Time and tide, everything moves on, nothing is permanent. There is progress, there is decay. On the progress side, a new pavement is being built alongside ulica Wolska, one day soon pedestrians will be able to walk safely from the railway line all the way from the far end of Widok. Below: level crossing, ulica Wolska, Chynów.

This time last year:
Edwardów, south of Chynów, at dusk

This time two years ago:
In which I realise I'm living in old Michałowizna

This time three years ago:
Dealing with the Hammer of Darkness
(Go to bed an hour earlier – ignore the time change)

This time seven years ago:
Poland's dream of a superconnector hub

This time eight years ago:
The magic of superzoom

This time 12 years ago:
Welcome to Lemmingrad

This time 14 years ago:
Dream highway

This time 15 years ago:
The Days are Marching

This time 17 years ago:
First snow, 2007
(It's 5.1°C outside right now)

Back into the Esker

I first made my acquaintance with this geological feature in late September, visiting it three times in a week. Since then, the earth's tilt has moved us in the Northern Hemisphere closer to the winter solstice than equilux, when I was first here. A public holiday meant time for  an extended walk. Back – into the Zone. The Esker Zone.

Below: the checkpoint has fallen, the gate swung open. The quest for a zone of my own continues.

Below: through the gap and into the Zone.

Below: proof of visitation.

Below: swept aside.

Left: at the edge of the forest, approaching Wola Pieczyska. Autumnal pics are flooding social media, mostly with their colour saturation and vibrance cranked up to max. So I publish this set of photos 'as was', out of the box as it were, simple .jpg files rather than worked-on .raw files.

Over 17,000 paces today.

This time three years ago:

Sunny holiday local check-up

This time four years ago:
Zamienie is changing

This time six years ago:
Thoughts on the 100th anniversary of Poland regaining its independence

This time seven years ago:
Globalisation in retreat

This time 11 years ago:
Leeds, a city made uglier by crooked developers

This time 12 years ago:
Węzeł Lotnisko (now Węzeł W-wa Południe) – works continue

This time 17 years ago:
Its Independence Day

Michalczew, church and cemetery

I noted last week while mentioning the church in nearby Dobiecin that the parish had been founded by Father Tadeusz Stokowski, the same one who was murdered in Michalczew in 1990 – the case remains unsolved.

The All Saints' festival prompted me to (albeit ten days later) to visit the church and the cemetery at Michalczew, to have a closer look than during my previous visit in April of this year. Then, the church gates were locked; this time I'd arranged my trip by train to arrive while Mass was going on, allowing me access to the grounds. Below: front elevation, view from the street; the Church of the Holy Family – Michalczew's own Sagrada Familia.

Before I take you on a virtual tour of the church and its grounds, here's a recap of the story for new readers. Fr Stokowski was parish priest in Michalczew since October 1957, having been tasked with creating a new parish for the nine villages between the existing parishes of Warka and Chynów. The communist authorities blocked construction of a proper parish church for over 20 years; Mass was held in a wooden hut. Permission was finally given in 1978 after the election of Cardinal Wojtyła as Pope, which led to a thaw in relations between communist state and Catholic church.

Designed by Fr Stokowski in person, the church was built by parishioners with their own money and labour during the materially challenged years of the late communist era. It was consecrated in 1982. 

On the morning of Sunday 3 June 1990, parishioners were gathering for the annual Confirmation ceremony. The church had been specially decorated for the occasion. A bishop from the Warsaw diocese had just arrived – but where was Fr Stokowski?  People started searching. Within minutes, inside the presbytery across the road from the church, they discovered the dead body of his housekeeper. And no sign of  the parish priest. The Mass went ahead, officiated by the bishop, but without the ceremony.

Later, while feeding the sheep that Fr Stokowski kept in a barn behind the presbytery, neighbours found his dead body under a pile of hay. The police determined that he had been strangled. Though money and commemorative coins were found lying around on the floor, there was no sign that anything had been stolen from the presbytery. Nor were there any signs of a break-in; the housekeeper seems to have let in the murderer. Fingerprints were taken, but despite extensive efforts to find the killer or killers, no suspect has ever been arrested. The mystery endures to this day.

Left: Fr Stokowski's body resides in the church grounds, rather than in the parish cemetery. Flowers and candles on his grave suggest his parishioners still revere him.

Below: the headstone reads: In holy memory of Father Canon Tadeusz Stokowski Lived 66 years In the priesthood 40 years Murdered 2 June 1990 Founder and Parish Priest, Michalczew.

Below: one of three grottos in the grounds, this one being the Grotto of the Annunciation.

Left: western facade. The barrel-shaped roof is most unusual; does it reflect Fr. Stokowski's aesthetic vision, or is it the result of the building materials available at the time? The church has two altars inside, one accessible from ground level, the upper one being accessible via an aerial walkway, visible in the pic below.

Below: the church viewed from the rear; the rows of benches visible in the foreground face the church's third, outdoor, altar. The base of its rear elevation is decorated with eight bas-reliefs depicting various scenes from the Old Testament (the white rectangles). 

Below: "Joseph is sold by his brothers to Midianite merchants" (Genesis 37:28)

Below: The dying Jacob blessing his 13 sons over Judah spoke of the prophecy of the coming of the Saviour. "The sceptre shall not depart from Judah until tribute come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be." (Genesis 49:10). [I must say, the text somewhat departs from the Scriptures...]

Below: bas-relief on the front of the church – "Moses miraculously led the Israelites across the Red Sea to the Promised Land. Through Holy Baptism, God leads us from this earth to Heaven."

Dan Brown fans and conspiracy theorists would no doubt be scouring the church grounds for hidden meanings – symbols and ciphers that could offer clues into the reason for the parish priest's murder, and the identity of the killer or killers.

Left: again, from the rear of church, showing the ramp leading up to the upper-level hall. The roof's unusual shape is nicely presented from this angle.

On to the cemetery, 300m away. The shape of the cemetery chapel nicely reflects that of the church. Below: the front view. Under the image of Jesus the words "I am life and resurrection".

Below: looking back the other way; the rear of the chapel is inscribed with the words: 'I was taken to heaven with body and soul" and an image of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Walking around the cemetery, I was struck by the fact that the men here died at an even younger age than in Chynów, with plenty of headstones giving age of death as late 40s and 50s.

Next, I shall have to pay a visit to the actual church itself, pop inside and check out the vibe. How is it decorated?

This time two years ago:
Paranormal, supernatural and metaphysical

This time three years ago:
Governments' actions and climate change

This time nine years ago:
Cultural differences - PL & UK in the country

This time ten years ago:
Schadenfreude! The downfall of Hofman & Co.

This time 11 years ago:
From the Mersey to the Tyne

This time 12 years ago
Autumnal Gdańsk

This time 13 years ago:
What Independence Day means for Poles

This time 14 years ago:
Words fail me: what's the Polish for 'to fail'?

This time 15 years ago:
Autumn in Dobra

This time 17 years ago:
Autumn ploughing

Memory, memes and dreams

My brother sent me a link to an outstanding podcast with biologist Michael Levin, whom I consider one of the most groundbreaking scientists of our time. I first encountered him on a podcast with Lex Fridman, talking about planaria worms (which de facto live forever); you can cut these in half and both halves will grow back into perfect versions of their former selves. And you can continue doing this over and over again, each half will grow back. Levin is studying the implication of this for life in general, of particular interest are the applications for human longevity. [Incidentally, which half of the planaria work retains its personhood, identity, memories and consciousness? Are the two worms duplicates of one another? Or does each bisection result in one new creature and the other half continuing as a version of its former self? Which half?]

Now, in a more recent paper, Levin has turned his attention to memory, considering it from the point of view of agency; the idea that memories – and the thoughts that convey them – have a will, have intentionality. He suggests that just like biological organisms, memories by their very nature want to survive and replicate. And as with evolution, it is survival of the fittest; it is our best memories that survive, through the narratives that we structure around them to carry them forward. "All good agents are good storytellers," he says.

Does the butterfly remember being a caterpillar, asks Levin. Does its consciousness retain memories of the taste of specific leaves, vestigial muscle memory of how to move as a caterpillar? Within the butterfly's brain, are memories from its former caterpillar-self even necessary?  Are they experienced in the form of qualia flashbacks, no longer relevant but still very real?

Levin likens our reality as being bow-tie shaped, with a funnel to the left representing our past experiences, the narrow part in the middle being the present moment, ever sliding forward at the rate of one second per second, and the other funnel to the right of that representing all future possibilities. Over on the left we have our memories, which, being biological rather than digital, are imperfect. Much detail is lost as we try to retrieve them for use in the present. And when we do bring out those memories into the present, what we can't remember with certainty, we confabulate. We create narratives.

And we define ourselves on the basis of those narratives. We construct narratives about our past – our childhood ("idyllic"/"troubled"), our careers ("wise moves", "bastard bosses") etc. And as we tell these stories, we note the reaction of our listeners; versions of the stories that go down best get reinforced in our memory, some details get dropped as irrelevant, new details get confabulated into the narrative, morphing them into more memorable stories. [Ancient flood myths across multiple civilisations that persist to this day – Noah's Ark. Repeat, simplify, add new bits on, turn it into a didactic story.]

Memories, says Levin, are like DNA in that they 'want' to strive to replicate, to survive in their environment, to remain relevant and to persist into the future.

The notion of a thought or a memory having agency brings me to consider this theory in the context of memetics; the survival of the fittest when it comes to ideas. The notion of the meme, devised by Richard Dawkins and Susan Blackmore, is that of an idea, behaviour, fashion, joke or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture. The more resonant the idea within that culture at that time, the more likely it is to spread, like a virus. We can see this in today's online culture, the idea of an internet meme going viral.

Levin mentions research which suggests that thought affects the thinker – persistent obsessive thoughts, for example, can actually change the structure of the thinker's brain. 

The stories we tell ourselves. We are "self-justifying apes." Levin mentions a woman with a brain disorder that causes her to start laughing uncontrollably for no reason. When asked why she was laughing, she would say "I had just remembered something funny."

On to dreams. I watched a couple of podcasts on dreams by David Eagleman (he of Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlife]. He talks of the ephemeral nature of dreams, the way our memories of them evaporate after we wake, and likens this experience to what it's like to have Alzheimer's; victims' waking memories evaporate the same way as dreams do for everyone. Keeping a dream diary (only for the most salient ones), I notice that while memory of the dream narrative fades on waking, the qualia memory of the atmosphere or klimat of the dream tends to spontaneously resurface in a flashback in the first hours of being awake. 

These are fascinating areas of scientific endeavour. I intend to cease watching any and all current affairs and news programmes on YouTube for fear of going off into a Trump-inspired rage. Science, history, the arts, anthropology, archaeology, UFOlogy, ancient mysteries, religion and spirituality – enough to be getting on with for the time being.

This time last year:
Fully automatic – intuitive intelligence

This time three years ago:
A deeply spiritual experience

This time four years ago:

Poland experiences its first wave of Covid

This time seven years ago:
Gliwice's new station

This time nine years ago:
Reanimated – my father's car 

This time ten years ago:
Defending Poland against hybrid warfare 

This time 11 years ago:
Another office move

This time 13 years ago:
PiS splits again - Solidarna Polska formed 

This time 14 years ago:
Tesco vs. Auchan

[Since then Tesco has left Poland and I'm still boycotting Auchan – let its owners choke on their fucking roubles. It's Lidl for me today!]

This time 17 years ago:
My father's house

The pathetic fallacy – are creatures sentient?

While walking to the station the other day, I passed the small farm on the corner where free-range chickens roam. I was in a hurry, brisk pace, so the chickens moved away from the road, clucking as they fled. But the rooster didn't. The rooster continued to watched me and  started advancing in my direction. The rooster was protecting his hens and demonstrating to them his bravery in this situation. I was looking at him, his gaze was fixed upon mine – and then his foot slipped on a clod of freshly ploughed earth. All of a sudden, he felt somewhat foolish. I could sense the shame in his galine face. The proud defender of his brood made to appear clumsy by a misstep.  I stopped for a moment. He turned away, the literal picture of 'crestfallen'.

But am I merely imposing human ideas of emotion upon a creature that's a mere automaton, devoid of soul, lacking in what we would call consciousness? This, in literature and art, is the notion of pathetic fallacy – conferring human attributes to non-human entities.

Yet I certainly would confer personhood upon creatures. When a pet-owner makes eye contact with their cat or dog, they feel certain that their pet is sentient, that it subjectively experiences existence, that their pet is for itself (just as you are to yourself) the centre of the world. Eyes are indeed windows to the soul, and just a fleeting moment of eye-to-eye contact lets you intuit the state of an animal's consciousness; anger or irritation, fright or anxiety, contentment or bliss. In the case of this rooster, I sensed annoyance and embarrassment; a small misfortune that made the ruler of the roost appear uncoordinated and maladroit; no longer was he a challenger but an unsteady bumbler.

The rooster may not make much sense of his surroundings; there are the people that feed it, the barnyard, the henhouse, the strangers that walk past where it lives, there are boxy objects moving around like little metal huts, there's ample food, many hens to tread, no natural predators (foxes are a rarity round these parts) – existence is good. Intellectual attainment, however, is not what chickens have evolved for; humans have bred them for food for the past 8,000 years. 

I ponder for a while about the nature of consciousness; I deeply believe that it is something far more than a mere emergent property of neural matter, the product of evolution. The leap from non-life to life has yet to be explained or replicated artificially. Moments such as this make me suddenly realise that consciousness exists in other living beings too. The fact that they are bereft of human-level intelligence does not mean that they are unaware of their own existence, although they are probably not aware of being aware.

Science and spirituality continue to develop along separate pathways, but ultimately I feel they will converge, though the road be infinitely long and the setbacks will be many.

******************************

The prospect of Trump returning to the White House fills me with dread and existential anxiety for the future of mankind. Another four years on a knife-edge. I cannot bear to switch on the news. Kiss goodbye to Net Zero. The zloty has lost 2% of its value to the dollar in a few hours. The market senses that this part of Europe is likely to be thrown to the wolves; the dangers of an authoritarian turn are clear to all people of goodwill and reason. I had been fearing this moment. Hopes are dashed. Evil triumphs, as it did in 1933.

This time two years ago:
Sunny Sunday meditations

This time eight years ago:
To Dawidy Bankowe, Łady, Zamienie and back

This time 13 years ago:
Town planning and the Sublime Aesthetic

This time 14 years ago:
On the long road from Zero to One

This time 15 years ago:
Łódź Rising