Food for Thought, Not for Consumption

Excerpt taken from the CERN public website -

"CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is a particle physics laboratory based in Geneva, Switzerland.

A huge innovator and user of technology, the lab was designed primarily to provide the particle accelerators and infrastructure needed for high-energy physics research.

In total, CERN operates a network of six particle accelerators and a decelerator.

CERN is funded by 20 European member states, and is currently the workplace of 2600 full-time employees, as well as around 8,000 scientists and engineers”.

The discoveries made by CERN are hoped to be of potential benefit to us all; to help us understand our universe and how we came to be. Over six billion dollars of combined funds was spent on building the newest particle collider (the LHC), not including the ongoing costs of continued research and development. 2,600 employees and 8,000 scientists and engineers can't be cheap to keep.

How will understanding our universe help us improve our daily lives? What difference will knowing the building blocks of existence make to the starving millions, the war torn countries, the political desecration of the planet we inhabit?

Scientific research, whether we are comfortable to agree or not, is largely for the benefit of the privileged few; those who have access to the soon-to-be even bigger, better and faster world wide web and the increased data storage that CERN has most notably developed for our benefit, for instance. There is much on the CERN website to explain what experiments are taking place, but little to tell us how the findings will be sold back to us in bid to improve the daily life of humanity.

Perhaps the collision of particles will help us build a new world, to rid us of all forms of illness and travel the space-time continuum into other dimensions where war, starvation, political and religious divides don't exist. Perhaps we will be able to travel to other planets and dine with our alien neighbours. Perhaps we can all get into a great big spaceship and visit God.

Great Britain is one of twenty member states funding the CERN project, the UK having pledged hundreds of millions of pounds since becoming a founding member in 1954. If each of the twenty member states pledge anything like a similar amount to the UK, CERN has historically reaped hundreds of billions of dollars for scientific research. We also contribute additional amounts to separate space programmes costing millions of dollars per launch, as well as other scientific, technological and medical research not undertaken by CERN.

Are we getting value for money?

The CERN website takes great pride in informing us of the benefits of the 17,000 particle accelerators it has helped to develop for use by a world that is currently populated by over 6 billion people. We are advised that over half of these accelerators are used in medical treatments such as imaging and therapy, so lets be generous and imagine that this might account for 10,000 of the 17,000 accelerators. We are told that 'only a few' accelerators are used for fundamental research. The remaining accelerators are used in industry - to aid the the quick-dry ink labelling of consumable products, to measure the wear in car engines, to coat air craft engine components with chrome, and to aid the development of airport scanners and ground survey equipment.

News that will no-doubt delight those who are waiting for, or do not have access to the ground-breaking technology which might hasten their hip replacement, heart transplant or bring clean water for their children to drink.

When we have discovered how to extract water from the moon, will we then find a way to irrigate Africa?

“One thing is certain”, says CERN, “the LHC will change our view of the universe”.

It isn't the quandaries of the universe at large we should be examining, but the nature of human kind which hosts this and any alternative paradigm we could hope to develop. We already have enough of everything we need to feed everyone on the planet, to power our travel, to provide non-polluting energy, to maintain peace - whether you believe that this is through the gracious provision of God or the universal bounty of the particles already invisibly colliding before us, powered by cosmic rays. It is the application of existing brain power, rather than future scientific development which would be most beneficial to us as a human kind today. Perhaps we should utilise a different kind of energy to make the world a better place, an energy the likes of which could never be replicated in the laboratories of CERN.

When our panicked global leaders ask us if we would prefer to see cuts in health or education in order to keep our [false] economy afloat, maybe we should respond with our desire to see cuts in scientific exploration – for now, anyway. When we have cleaned up our own back yard, we might be better prepared for any marvellous discovery which is yet to be found. Or are we happy to greet our God, our alien or parallel neighbours and present ourselves as a species that kills one another, starves one another and seeks only to advance the few?

For the conspiracy theorists among us, of which I am one, I suggest the following; if there IS to be a New World Order, a one world government, one law, one truth, then the only way to achieve this is by the removal of the notion of God in all His interpretations as the supreme creator, whether His name is Allah, Jehovah, Elohim, Buddha, Ganesha, Yaweh or Jah. A global unification can only be achieved through the belief that we are subject to the mercy and grace of those living beings among us who have access to knowledge and understanding that we, as the ordinary person do not have and are not able to implement. Despite our vast technological advancement, we spiritually regress thousands of years to the time and mindset of the Pharaohs.

Whatever our personal interpretation - based on religious beliefs, insight or scientific understanding, the question is this; How can we have the audacity to endeavour to understand the origins of our being, when we have no notion of how to 'be'?