Christmas gifts for people who could really use them
Please consider donating to Oxfam Unwrapped and similar charities, this Christmas. Economic downturn or not there are people who desperately need survival aid, especially in Somalia.
Hope that helps, if you wondered what to get me *grin*
Alice Walker’s letter to Barak Obama
the war on terror as the new inquisition
Superstrings
By Michio Kaku
The carp could see rippling shadows on the surface of the pond. The third dimension would be invisible to them, but vibrations in the third dimensions would be clearly visible. These ripples might even be felt by the carp, who would invent a silly concept to describe this, called “force.” They might even give these “forces” cute names, such as light and gravity. We would laugh at them, because, of course, we know there is no “force” at all, just the rippling of the water.
Nuclear power back on the agenda
Greg Palast writes:
So, we’ve got both candidates hawking the nuclear snake oil. But there is one difference between them. A big big BIG difference.
McCain’s ready to spend a hundred billion dollars on nuclear power, no questions asked. But Barack Obama puts a crucial condition on his approval for building new nukes: an affordable method of disposing the new plants’ radioactive waste.
That’s not small stuff. While The New York Times reporters following McCain repeated his line about “inexpensive” nuclear power without question, a buried wire story on the same day noted that the Energy Department is putting the unfunded bill for disposing nuclear plant waste at $96.2 billion – nearly a billion dollars per plant operating today. And no one even knows exactly how to do it, or where. Obama has the audacity to ask about the nuclear waste’s cost. “Can we deal with the expense?” he said on Meet the Press.
Many worlds quantum physics
The Many worlds interpretation of quantum physics - a clever take on why it makes sense and why not much else does:
“That’s right,” Huve says, “He wouldn’t. Ponder that.”
“This is the world where my good friend Ernest formulates his Schrödinger’s Cat thought experiment, and in this world, the thought experiment goes: ‘Hey, suppose we have a radioactive particle that enters a superposition of decaying and not decaying. Then the particle interacts with a sensor, and the sensor goes into a superposition of going off and not going off. The sensor interacts with an explosive, that goes into a superposition of exploding and not exploding; which interacts with the cat, so the cat goes into a superposition of being alive and dead. Then a human looks at the cat,’ and at this point Schrödinger stops, and goes, ‘gee, I just can’t imagine what could happen next.’ So Schrödinger shows this to everyone else, and they’re also like ‘Wow, I got no idea what could happen at this point, what an amazing paradox’. Until finally you hear about it, and you’re like, ‘hey, maybe at that point half of the superposition just vanishes, at random, faster than light’, and everyone else is like, ‘Wow, what a great idea!’”
“That’s right,” Huve says again. “It’s got to have happened somewhere.”
“Huve, this is a world where every single physicist, and probably the whole damn human species, is too dumb to sign up for cryonics! We’re talking about the Earth where George W. Bush is President.”
>
Don’t believe the fearmongers
Worldwide decline in deaths due to terrorism over the last 5 years
The reason this isn’t widely understood is that official figures include civilian deaths in Iraq, which is a war zone and would not normally have been included. Similar conflicts in past years, such as Sudan, have not been included. The actual figures are 20% of the numbers usually quoted as terrorist deaths, therefore.
But this, to me, is the most significant finding of the Canadian study:
“[An] extraordinary drop in support for Islamist terror organizations in the Muslim world over the past five years.”
A worldwide food crisis
Food prices have soared around the world, up 40% since mid 2007. There are 660 million people, equivalent to half the population of China, living on less than $2 per day. These people already spend such a large percentage of their income on food that the increase means they are either starving or in great danger of starving.
We’re already seeing the effects of this, in these poorest nations:
Food riots have rocked Haiti and impoverished Burkina Faso, gripped by a nationwide strike, is the latest African nation to face unrest over the increasing cost of basic foods. Dozens have died in other riots in Africa.
Africa, of course, is hardest hit
Forty people died during price riots in Cameroon in February. There have also been deadly troubles in Ivory Coast and Mauritania and other violent demonstrations in Senegal. Only threats from the government headed off a general strike in Egypt on Sunday.
but Asia will not be immune
Bangladesh and the Philippines, where the poor currently spend around 70 percent of their income simply on food, will be among the worst hit.
There are three main factors contributing to this situation:
- Climate change and local droughts are partly to blame. African deserts are expanding, other countries including Australia and Khazakstan are affected by drought, and storms have damaged crops in India and Bangladesh. The poorest one sixth of the world’s people are also by and large located in regions where water shortages and ecological changes will bite deepest.
- Meanwhile a growing middle class in China are demanding, and paying for, more meat in their diet. Each extra cow uses land and water which could otherwise grow ten times that number of calories in the form of grain.
- In this growing crisis biofuels may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. The UN’s special rapporteur on the right to fuel, Jean Ziegler, called them “a crime against humanity”.
The world is distracted by the Iraq war, the threat of terrorism, and the price of oil, but political stability is critically dependent upon food security - and that is hard enough for all sorts of reasons related to distribution, quite apart from these fundamental production problems.
Fighting words
- discriminate |disˈkriməˌnÄÂÂt|
- 1 recognize a distinction; differentiate : babies can discriminate between different facial expressions of emotion. See note at distinguish .
- • [ trans. ] perceive or constitute the difference in or between : bats can discriminate a difference in echo delay of between 69 and 98 millionths of a second | features that discriminate this species from other gastropods.
- 2 make an unjust or prejudicial distinction in the treatment of different categories of people or things, esp. on the grounds of race, sex, or age : existing employment policies discriminate against women.
A short aside: Discrimination (in the first definition above) is the basis of analysis, and analysis is the basis of inference. That, in turn, is the mechanism by which we turn the basic reification of perception from a catalogue of ideas into a coherent view of the world. It feeds back into itself: the way we discriminate depends on our existing understanding, which creates interpretation reinforcing that discrimination and therefore that understanding.
Lately, in personal relationships, in the media, in politics, and online I’ve been coming across a certain attitude which has been bringing me down. The best way I can explain is by giving some examples from around here, but it could be from anywhere and by anyone.
Anyone who says that Islam is a religion of peace is as evil as those who carry out the bombings and murders!
We mustn’t forget that Mohammed WAS a paedophile; and a mass-murderer.
but that is clearly beyond your ham-handed writing skills
Same old nonsense. My time is too precious.
but underneath the veil of lies they are scheming and multiplying faster than any other people group, in an effort to overtake the world.
This is not about whether I agree or disagree with any particular statement: actually it’s exactly the opposite. This way of talking and this way of thinking is everywhere just now. Well, it’s probably always been this way but some days I seem to come across it over and over, and it gets depressing.
Language is for communication, obviously, but the type of language and the type of thinking behind the language fundamentally affects the outcome of that communication. There are types of language which are designed to engage the listener’s emotion, and types designed to engage reason. Or both! The key word here is engage. It’s an essential part of being human and it brings people together because it works by showing people what they have in common. Wittgenstein or no, we trust that the feelings produced by the world in another are the same as the feelings produced in our own hearts. Exploring that shared experience is what makes life worthwhile, one way or another.
So what about the examples above? They play on fear, which puts up barriers between people, or else they directly push people away by attempting to make them feel bad. Perhaps it’s the election which is putting it all over the headlines. All around me, at the moment, I’m seeing divisions between people.
The problem is, I’m responding in precisely the wrong way. In my own life and especially here on Newsvine I’ve been arguing. I’ve been pointing out with logic and sometimes with ridicule exactly why I disagree with one thing or another. Naturally I think I’m right but by thinking that I’ve badly missed the point. Statements like the ones I’m talking about are not about right and wrong, because they’re not designed for engagement. Constructive language is a type of sharing, and the statements above are not about that - they’re weapons designed to separate people. That’s not because of the sentiments expressed. Naturally I’ve chosen examples I find particularly objectionable but please don’t let that distract you from the point I’m making. Politicians, for example, will often say things with that same intent of separation but in a much more subtle way.
It’s a seductive mindset. I’ve noticed myself falling into it more and more these last couple of weeks. I want to show someone they’re wrong. I want people to see that anyone holding that point of view is stupid. Is that helping anyone change their mind or is it just adding to the discrimination in the world - in the second sense of the word above? If you’ll forgive me a party political example, Obama’s “race” speech was beautiful and moving precisely because it cut through the attempts by the press to divide people and engender fear and mistrust, not by more of the same tactics but by reaching beyond that discrimination in both directions to show us why what we have in common is more important than what separates us.
Look the people in my personal life, and on television, and making those statements above on Newsvine are not bad people. We disagree! No one’s going to change my mind by being mean, so what am I afraid of? It’s not the end of the world that there are things, even important things, which we feel differently about. It’s not exactly a matter of tolerance, even. It’s about keeping things in perspective: in the end, one way or another, we’re all in this together.
Update
Discrimination is about differences, and it’s an essential part of reasoning. But if that’s all there is life is grey and flat. The juice is in realising that the differences don’t matter. Love is about not discriminating, and while discrimination is the basis of language, love is the basis of communication. So. My resolve is to give up responding to fighting words with discrimination and analysis, and to respond instead with love. Bear with me, this is going to take a little practice.
The conservatives and Obama
I do think it’s hilarious just how scared the conservatives are of Obama. I don’t think they’re scared of him because he’s black, or because he might beat McCain. I think they’re scared of him because he’s got principles. Genuinely.
And for people whose principles are slogans designed to provide cover for selfishness, entitlement, and laziness that one thing is terrifying.
Nader: why, and why not
Why?
I’ve argued in favour of Nader in the past. The logic goes like this:
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The US political system is broken. The Democrats and the Republicans have things sown up between them so long as there is not preferential voting. They do not need to represent the wishes of the American people, they just need to make sure they get more votes than the other party. In the case of the Republicans this usually seems to mean convincing the electorate (against all the evidence) that they’re the “party of fiscal responsibility”, or that ignorance is strength, or most of all that war is peace.
The Democrats, who in another country would be a party of the centre-left, chase the Republicans over to the right in an effort to poach their voters. They get in bed with big business and try to be “neocon-lite”. After all, they have nothing to lose. The voters are picking between bad and worse and the Democrats bet they won’t choose “worse”.
In a country where five corporations control the majority of the media, it’s not easy to rock the boat. This by itself would drag the Democrats to the right, but in countries where representative democracy is a little more democratic, they’d nevertheless have to keep the left on side simply to prevent minor parties eroding their support base. In the US no such incentive exists. The main erosion of support is to voters so disaffected they stay home.
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There’s actually no solution to this. Citizens can lobby the Democrats to change their policies, but it’s in the interests of the party to pay lip service to social needs while keeping the media and the corporations as friendly as possible. Getting the media offside could result in truly disastrous press bias. The corporations are not one monolith, but just the same party funding is the basis of any election and every congressional constituency is vulnerable if there is a perception that jobs are at risk. Corporate capitalism is all about manipulating influence to gain competitive advantage. Elections depend on money. It’s a natural match.
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Or rather, there are two possible solutions and neither is very likely. The first is represented by Nader and the second is prevented by Nader, so I’ll come to it under why not?.
Nader can’t win. He’s up against the electoral system, the media barons, the corporations, and the Democratic party itself. What he can do is take votes away from the Democratic party. If he does this effectively it’s because he’s been able to gain support for his vision of a non-corporatist, socially compassionate, ecologically sustainable America.
The cost is Republican presidency, in the short term. In the long term, if he does it well, he forces the Democrats to adopt many of his policies to stop the rot. Now there’s a chance this prevents the Democrats from winning office. Perhaps the power of the media is such that a “green Democrat” is unelectable. But the voters have the final say, so long as Diebold doesn’t become too common and Jeb keeps his fingers out of the Supreme Court. In any case nothing is possible if the average voter doesn’t start looking for a little truth beyond the propaganda machine.
So I could imagine a situation where the Democrats were forced to really become a center-left party instead of right-centrist the way they are now. But it would take time and it would rely on the Republicans disgracing themselves while the Democrats rebuilt. I think we can always rely on the Republicans to disgrace themselves, I’m just not so sure we can rely on the public to notice.
In a nutshell that’s my pro-Nader argument. We have to keep the Democrats honest, and it may be worth the short term pain in order to do so.
Why not?
This is easier. The Democratic party can reform itself from within.
There has always been the possibility that good men and women would reach office on a Democratic ticket and push against the tide of money men and strategists to create policies which meant something. By doing so they could draw socially conscious caring people in to the party and displace the time servers and the vested interests. A revitalised party would make some headway against the media and Washington’s corporate corruption.
Obama is no lefty. He doesn’t even have the politics of Kucinich. But he does have the vision and the charisma to begin a new direction. I also think he hides his true agenda under a bushel, so as to avoid scaring people. He could make a difference.
I want to give Obama a chance, and I want to do so with a united progressive voice, not splitting it with Nader. I’d love to see Nader campaigning, but campainging against the ills of the Republican mindset rather than campaigning against Obama. [By the way if it were Clinton I'd have a quite different view. I think she represents the worst of the corporatists in progressive clothing who have so damaged the Dems].
So I’m a Nader supporter, but I’m saying don’t do this, Ralph.
The ethics of publishing the Danish cartoons
Newspapers in Denmark have recently reprinted the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad which caused controversy and violent protest in 2005 when they were published in Jyllands-Posten. This came about after the arrest on Tuesday of three people on charges of plotting to kill the creator of the cartoon, Kurt Wesergaard. One of the three was later released, but two - both Tunisian citizens who had lived in Denmark for many years - were deported. The newspapers reprinting the cartoon said that they chose to do so in order to take a stand against self-censorship. In other words they wished to show that intimidation could not succeed in silencing them.
This highlights a complex ethical situation in regard of human rights. Hate speech is illegal in much of Europe and in fact in much of the world, and yet free speech is an essential part of any democracy. Are those two things compatible? Where is the border between them?
Certainly I believe I have the right to say what I want about my culture’s religion, Christianity. I might even make fun of it, simply for my own amusement, but I would not do that if I thought it would cause serious offence. That’s simple courtesy. And some people are more likely to be hurt than others. If I meet your deeply religious grandmother I’m no more going to say something mean about Christ than I am going to tell her that her hat is ugly. I don’t think this constitutes any limitation on my freedom of speech.
Legislating against hate speech is something fraught with difficulty, however, because you are really making a law against intent. A swastika in a historian’s book is quite different than one painted on a synagogue, or found (reversed) on the facade of a Hindu temple. In fact we do legislate intent all the time; it is the difference between manslaughter and murder, for example. When the intent is to intimidate, harass, or incite violence against a particular group then it becomes, in many places, illegal.
So, the original publication of a cartoon Muhammad with a turban which looked like a bomb deeply offended a large number of Muslims around the world. Perhaps Islamic religious leaders are partly to blame for inciting the violence which followed, causing around a hundred deaths. For that reason it was discourteous and probably also unwise. Was the publication necessary to advance free speech? I don’t personally see how. Was it intended to intimidate or incite violence against the Muslim population? I’m not sure, but it can’t have helped.
Now, when a possible plot is discovered against the cartoonist, newspapers react to what they see as an attempt to intimidate them into restricting what they will publish. They show their defiance by once again provoking violence. Is this an effective blow for freedom of the press? What does it really achieve? What are the costs in violent reprisals and in increasing racial tensions in Europe?
Personally I’m strongly against any legal limits on freedom of speech. I think the laws which already exist to prohibit threatening behaviour, incitement to violence, and so on should be enough. But although there should be no legal sanction, I think that individuals or media which choose to say things which are offensive, provocative, or likely to increase divisions and hatred within the community are acting in a very unethical way.
Using free speech to cause harm is something which should only be done if there’s a very good reason. There should be no other way. Abusing this most necessary privilege endangers this most basic of our human rights.
Update:
Please take a look at Gideon’s comment here, and the contrast between these cartoons and Rushdie’s book on the one hand and Piss Christ on the other. When I wrote this I was trying to think of good examples to bring a range of worthwhile and non-worthwhile free speech cases to the table, but wasn’t able to do so.
Electricity
In the air and space
I’m too far apart
Bright like a contrail
that drifts in perfection
But down inside my sadness
it’s dark
it’s cool and humid
I remember anguish and the hard road
My heart swells
at your touch
sweat
Your blue eyes are full of light
and joy
Between the earth and sky
lightning strikes
I have always loved you
Acceptance
There’s a natural tendency to idolize those we admire. If you’ve ever watched a child’s attention being drawn by any slightly older child in the vicinity you’ve seen the beginnings of it. Learning by emulation is built in. We quite unconsciously study those whom we think have strategies and attributes which are successful.
It does lead to hero worship. We get people out of proportion, and then they don’t live up to our expectations. This all came into my head because of Obama, for better or for worse, but there’s something deeper here, to do with acceptance and forgiveness of ourselves.
That way of putting people on a pedestal is not real. Part of the seduction of it is that if I make someone into an image, a cypher for what I want to be (or what epitomises “what a leader should be” or whatever), then I’m denying the essence of their humanity. And the reason that’s attractive is that it keeps me blind to the parts of myself I don’t want to examine.
The truth is that it’s our flaws, our humanity, our hangups and warts and all that make us beautiful - or rather the struggle to overcome those flaws and love in spite of them. So acceptance and compassion, starting inward, can let us truly love those around us without falling into the trap of worshipping their graven image. The real flesh and blood is so much warmer than the white marble or the gold.
Best of all, such true love of who the person is and what they need and care about has the effect of allowing them to be who they are. It gives them freedom rather than the chains of expectation. It encourages growth, and before you know it people are blossoming everywhere into something amazing. Something which makes mistakes, feels and causes pain, needs and shrieks and gets angry and suffers in its attempts to love and give. But something which not despite but because of that is deeply wonderful.
It does start within. Don’t cover over the things which make you wince. They hurt - so kiss them, show them air and sunlight. Let them heal. Each heart has its share of pain and shame and harm, and can be with acceptance stronger for that. More real. More warm. More whole. Less afraid and hard and closed.
I want to tell you that it’s not a struggle. Don’t force it, if you let it then it will happen. But most of all I want to say: I love you.
My dream of anarchy
People think of the word “Anarchy†as meaning chaotic disorder, or else they confuse it with a sort of extreme libertarianism. The bomb throwing Bakunin or John Galt in a backwoods cabin. Neither view is wrong but I want to coöpt the label for a utopian vision of my own. Whereas most political ideas come with the notion of imposing a change on society so as to improve people’s lives, my suggestion is for a process which would improve people so that a better society evolved naturally. A process of individual transformation over a long period of time, leading to a world which can’t be reached by either revolution or the institutionalised self interest of the market.
A digression: why the top down approach fails.
[This is very long. Skip to “My hippie dream..†If you want the shorter version.]
In 1793, following the Revolution, the French state ate itself. Between twenty and forty thousand people were executed  seventy percent of them peasants or workers  for their political views, on suspicion of plotting treason, or simply because someone had something to gain by denouncing them. At the climax of Le Terreur there was a pogrom against Catholicism, grain was requisitioned from farmers without payment, and dissent became a capital crime. It was a time of totalitarian repression in the name of liberty, caused at least in part by the weakness and factionalism of the state.
This demonstrated that the overthrow of a manifestly brutal and burdensome system was not by itself sufficient to bring about the equality, brotherhood, and freedom dreamt of by the revolution. The destruction of the power of the feudal lords and the church brought forth a crop of cruel leaders who exploited the disorder and the rhetoric of the altruists for their own benefit.
It also demonstrated that any attempt to achieve a good end by evil means is likely to backfire. The French revolutionary state had real enemies both within and without its borders. The reign of terror was a success in that it preserved the government, and yet it created awful suffering and led to the empire of Napoleon. Mao showed the process, horrifyingly, with the cultural revolution. An attempt to transform society and stamp out the social norms which reinforced the old empire, its disastrous cost produced not the workers’ paradise but a totalitarian oligarchy.
But the most successful attempt to produce a free and just society by fiat is certainly the United States. Its founders did not seek to become “fathers†of their people, in the style of Mao or Castro or Robespierre. Power was devolved largely to the people, and for that reason and the geography of the new country it was perhaps as much as a century before wealthy individuals were able to significantly wrest it from them. However, that did happen and today the corporations rule like feudal overlords. That we have a better status than that of medieval serfs is largely because the mechanics of the modern western state demand a relatively wealthy, educated, and free population.
So what am I saying by all this cynicism? Well first, that power abhors a vacuum. It’s also clear that human beings are capable of amazing kindness and self sacrifice, but when they are fearful or in pain or inflamed by greed they become terribly selfish and cruel. Political systems recognise this and take advantage of it, channelling people’s energies in directions which are either generally positive or else reinforce and perpetuate the system. So simply imposing freedom by fiat will not work. Doing so is an invitation to Darwinian selection among methods of concentrating power in the hands of those who would exploit it. The robber barons of 19th Century America and late 20th Century Russia show how that works  and by the way give a demonstration of the outcome of reliance on the “invisible hand†of a deregulated market. Strongmen and what amounts to organised crime manipulate the legal system and create monopolies to their own benefit. The market is distorted and government corrupted, and a kleptocracy develops.
These days we’re caught up in the retarded religion of the neocons  which I would reject even if it could work because of the soulless and cold world it envisages. The things which make life worth living are love and creativity; human interaction and culture. Reducing all value to what can be bought and sold is a tragedy, and hoping that compassion and fulfilment would “trickle down†from the rich man’s table has proved futile. In any case the worship of money is founded on the blindness of the west to the cost of corporate neocolonialism in the developing world.
There you have my objection to structural, top down approaches to political change. They’re inherently flawed because they attempt to compel people to act well. It works to a certain extent so long as bribery is used in preference to force, but the cost of the bribery is greed and a terrible distortion of human potential. Our much admired western democracies have some good qualities, but in essence they seduce the middle classes with baubles, oppress the poor, and enslave the developing world. Power is held by institutions, corporations, and the very wealthy. Most of all they’re a criminal waste of the energy, creativity, and especially the compassion of the world’s people.
My hippie dream of change.
The grassroots approach is to catalyse a change in individuals, without any time scale or exact goal or even expectation of “victoryâ€ÂÂ. One by one wake people up to the idea that they are already free, and have the innate ability to engage with the world on their own terms, and attempt any goal, without limitation. The world is in fact made of love, not fear or greed or pain, and humans are an excellent vehicle for the realisation of this perception. But it requires trust rather than direction or manipulation.
You may be wondering about the semantic content of that last paragraph, so I’ll to give examples. When a new car or a new pair of shoes are a pleasure rather than a desire, then they won’t be sought at human cost. When selfishness and anger are seen as childish affectations, then they quickly become boring, both in others and in oneself. Most of all, when you treat others as adults and demand to be so treated, then compassion replaces pity and respect replaces arrogance. It sounds a lot harder than it is, because it’s a way of seeing the world which can be taught just by example. It becomes impossibly difficult, however, when there’s not enough food or your family is under threat of violence. People are understandably compelled by real fear, but that’s an incredibly inefficient way to run a state, and quickly descends to poverty and chaos. Cambodia, Zimbabwe, Burma - the jackboots and guns regimes are disastrous but fairly short lived.
Instead politics runs on bribery ideology (religion; nationalism; hope of advancement; or “truth, justice, and the American wayâ€ÂÂ), and the threat rather than the actuality of physical sanction  with the last backed up by just enough reality to keep people properly frightened. The greatest threat to most totalitarian (fear based) regimes is that their people will wake up and call their bluff. Tienanmen shows the potential of this and how it can go wrong. The first troops ordered to the square would not fire on the students, and so a unit from the far west of China, who did not speak the same language or identify with the students’ stand, were brought to the capital. The old men knew that if they failed the empire would be shown to have no clothes.
I dream of a day when soldiers will only agree to pick up their weapons as a last ditch defence of innocent lives. When no accountant or bank manager will foreclose on the needy and no doctor will turn away the uninsured sick. Much of what seems inescapable and necessary is only actually so because we buy into the distorted view of the world which creates and maintains the power and wealth of a few. We’re all complicit in propping up a system which does few of us any good, but we go along with it because there’s not something better.
Well at the moment there is nothing better. If we gave up the idea of ownership, greedy people would steal. We’re trapped in jobs we don’t enjoy, pushing around records of who has what an who owns what, because it’s at least better than the alternative. We’re not ready for a power vacuum because evil men will replace a system which at least moderates the activity of other evil men. But this system costs us nearly everything that’s best in life. How much time do the inhabitants of the most privileged society in the world have to spend creating and caring and experiencing the world? The system and our own blindness costs us sunlight and love and beauty and purpose.
It’s too soon to change the system, but it’s not too soon to take off the blinkers. Choose to be your own person and choose to give and to love rather than to take and desire and fear. It’s an infectious idea, and I want to explain a little more about how to go about it.
“The political is personalâ€ÂÂ
Whatever political system you’re living under, one of its functions is to enforce a certain degree of fairness in the dealings between people. This can be more of an illusion than a reality, and there’s also institutionalised privilege and inequity, but the system makes things bearable. That was the reason for the 60s catchcry “the personal is political† by bringing to light the individual injustice against this black man or that woman, it could be seen that a political solution had to be found for all African Americans and all women. But the cost is a loss of autonomy. By seeing oneself as suffering a systematic inequality and seeking redress from government, a person gives up self regard as and becomes imprisoned by entitlement and relative thinking. It is true, though: political change is needed and there must be pressure on the government for equity and fairness.
While living within the system we do our best to make the system work well. Each person is not only a political actor but also an individual, however. Live, as far as possible, in your ideal world. Take back your autonomy by acting according to your own belief in how others should be treated. Be compassionate and just and ask others to treat you the same way. That’s what I mean by saying the political is personal.
Anarchy, to me, is about choosing complete personal autonomy. I act as I think best, not allowing any authority to overrule my own heart. I believe all human beings have this right, and consequently there are two ways to sabotage this state of being. The first, obviously, is to believe oneself dependent (or worse, entitled to dependence). It’s a childlike way of life, subject to the anger and selfishness and shortsightedness of children.
If you treat others as a creatures to be manipulated and exploited, then you are in fact acting as a baby, not an adult. But babies at least have their priorities right. They want love more than they want food. It’s only their innate selfishness which prevents them giving, and thereby truly engaging with those around them, and that’s normally something which is learned, bit by bit. Sociopaths, (some of them highly placed in society, since ruthlessness is valued in an inherently cruel system) live in a world in which all those around them are machines. They may “win†their game but it’s a lonely and futile victory.
A more subtle lack of autonomy is the second sabotage; to deny the autonomy of others. This puts one in the role of parent and forces them into dependence. At the very least it denies their creativity and humanity. In an abstract sense this is the problem of any sort of political state, however well intentioned. It takes the role of parent and reduces the autonomy of its subjects. The approach is prideful and arrogant. Things given from this point of view are given begrudgingly and accepted without gratitude. True communion between people is lost. Possession and ownership, of things and people, become a primary focus because they demonstrate dependency and subjugation. A parent proved his value by giving. Gratitude is enforced by engineering need.
So my dream is of a future where authority is neither needed, to compel people to care for one another, nor accepted, by a people who have individual self possession and the ability to love unselfishly. Systematic political rule-based solutions are not required because problems are solved according to the particular needs of each situation. Not everyone has to be perfect to make a perfect world, but evil men must meet resistance rather than complicity. Henchmen must be outnumbered by the generous. Nor is there any need to decide the exact details of this future utopia. The whole point, after all, is to have reached a point where trust can be safely placed in the predominance of goodwill over greed.
Postcard from Paris: The Museum of Invention
There is a marvelous museum in Paris. So much so that I’m writing this postcard not as an analysis or some attempt at sociological insight, but simply as a fan. It’s the Musée des Arts et Métiers, and it was founded in 1794 as a result of the efforts of Abbé Henri Grégoire, an enlightenment scholar, anti-slavery campaigner, scientist and humanist.
In 1798 he was able to have the Abbey of Saint Martin des Champs set aside for the use of his new institution, and it’s been there ever since, although the buildings have now been extended. The purpose of the museum has always been both conservation and education. Teaching takes place alongside the models, with the help of expert demonstrators. There is a documentation room which has study areas and gives access to relevant current journals in the field. This results in a really high standard of curation, even to my eye. And I love the way that the museum is old but still strong. There is the pressure measuring equipment from the laboratory of Lavoisier; there are glass cases of miniature seventeenth century machinery - the cases themselves so old and fragile that they cannot be touched for fear of shattering the glass. But there are also robots from 1970 and a complete Renault Elf formula 1 racing car.
Nor is it thrown together at random. Each section: materials, scientific instruments, construction, communication, energy, mechanics, and transportation take the visitor through a survey of ideas, history, and progress in human ingenuity. There are original pieces, models (many quite old), hands on displays (modern), and audio-visual guides. Whether you thought you were interested in technology or not, the place is captivating.
I can’t pick favourites. The pictures here are some things I found especially interesting but this leaves out some better pieces I could not capture well on film.
Postcard from Vienna: Art and abandon
Vienna is the most fantastic city for art. Its many museums, housed in magnificent palaces or outrageous and wonderful modern structures (KunstHaus Wien!) have at every turn the famous, the obscure-but-great, and in the end the just overwhelming. There is the Venus of Willemheim, Portrait of a young girl
by ??, and Schiele’s The Embrace
to pick just three out of so many thousand my head is still spinning.
All of which set me thinking about why people make art. At the heart of it I don’t think there is a reason amenable to words. Creativity is a natural part of being human. It’s our response to “being in the reality of existence” in the same way that a plant’s response to sunlight and water is growth. But the form which that creative urge will take is shaped by particular aspects of the environment and the psyche of each artist. This is obvious in the trivial: bishops, nobles and kings commissioned works designed to connote their piety and power. Portraits were painted for sentimental reasons and to allow distant subjects to recognise their ruler. Paintings of bible stories were for the education of the illiterate.
From here on it’s worth deeper consideration. Both artist and patron use visual means to explore topics of personal interest. Naturally pornography is common throughout history, sometimes cloaked in “acceptable” guise. Also common, especially in combination with the first, is philosophical allegory. A way aside from language for the investigation of ideas and meaning. I’m sure there are themes and reasons in pre-modern art which I’ve forgotten or failed to notice, but there’s one which particularly takes my attention - either because it was of special interest at the time or because it is of special interest to me. I suspect both.
This is abandon. By that I mean the sexual or ecstatic or mortal extremis which prompts the subject to relinquish normal constraint and propriety. More: a mutiny by the deckhands and the engine crew which tosses the captain and navigator overboard and leaves the ship stripped of sails and flag running wild with wind and current.
Humans have always had an uneasy relationship with abandon. Shelley’s Anarchie
puts the fear in political terms; the mob risen without rule or curb. The Church takes the subtle approach - celebrating that which it would control. This is no longer an age of saints and miracles, of the passion of the Christ, but of measurement, bureaucracy, and video surveillance.
It’s the antithesis of art.
I read a lovely article in the Boston Globe this morning about the Grand Inquisitor’s questioning of Jesus from the Brothers Karamazov. Wishing to preserve the people’s bodies, and protect their minds from chaos, the Inquisitor would crush the spiritual wellspring of creativity. We fear to but yearn to kill that technocrat within us. To give in to our love and passion. Dostoyevski’s Jesus killed him with a kiss.
Postcard: Death in Venice
Here in Vienna it is bitterly cold. I’m sure it would be worse if it were windy, or snowing more than the occasional icy flake, but it’s enough to be a palpable force - something each inhabitant must push against with coats and gloves and hats, both physically and mentally, in order to function each day. It drives some to drink, perhaps, lured to use artificial warmth and energy against the psychic paralysis of the cold. It certainly tempts others to fashion disaster: earmuffs? And those damn hats which include artificial black or brightly coloured hair poking out the top.
The city is grand. The boulevards are wide and sweeping and faced by eight story residences which would be “palazzo” or “manor” anywhere else. The fading glory of the Hapsburgs is writ large here. Huge. But there are surprisingly few echoes of the next, aborted, empire. The futurist decal on the glass and metal elevators in the subway. Something in the lines of the Westbahnhof. Italy, especially in the north, remembers the 1930’s well (although perhaps not well enough to keep Berlusconi out of office), but here the heroes are Mozart and Klimt, and the infrastructure is glass and metal modernism.
You can tell by now that I’m rambling. Well really I’m stumbling toward a question I’ve been thinking about since Naples. I’m not even sure I’ve thought this through clearly, but it concerns cities, order, life, and a woman I saw eating breakfast. Here goes.
Naples is hopeless. There’s crime and chaos and the infrastructure is nearly completely broken. It’s full of refugees from Albania and Africa begging and grifting in the station and the piazzas. Half its population live in unsanitary firetrap highrises stuffed ramshackle into neighbourhoods without work or amenities. It’s under the shadow of a volcano which is going to erupt and destroy the place some day. But it’s also vibrant and alive in a way I absolutely love.
Vienna, on the other hand, is everything a modern city should be. The subways are perfect. It’s the second safest city in the world. It’s clean, productive, and pleasant. There are good services, wonderful museums, and a devotion to music and the arts. The people are friendly. So what’s not to like?
Obviously it’s not that I object to things being well designed and functional. Honestly it’s a relief to be able to easily get from one place to another on time, to be able to drink the water (perhaps it’s not poisonous in Naples but it tastes that way), to easily find a working phone booth or toilet. The Viennese, I’m sure, would not want to swap their housing, transport, bureaucracy, or even their cafes, Opera, or parks with the Neapolitans.
Keep that image in your head while I tell you about the lady at breakfast. This was in the charming Hotel Abbazia in Venice. She sat quietly, by herself, and ate a bread roll and drank tea in a composed sort of way. I would guess her to be in her late 50s, and she had neat grey hair and frameless glasses. She daintily removed crumbs with a napkin. As the kids polished off their second croissant and orange juice I made up a story about her, which I’m completely aware is most likely wildly off-mark. In my imagination she had been the dutiful older daughter who looked after younger siblings when her mother worked night shift. In school she had worked hard and obeyed the rules. She was never a troublemaker; never a risk taker. She did what was expected of her, and was rewarded with a steady job. Perhaps she was a librarian. I imagine her liking Agatha Christie, marrying the right sort of fellow, never having children. She would be dependable, a bit bossy, seen by her subordinates as something of a stick in the mud. And now, having retired from the Library, she has come to Venice since she always thought it sounded fascinating and exotic in “Death in Venice”, what with the steamer trunks and the Panama hats.
She finds it crowded, a little intimidating, and just as wonderful as she had hoped - except in her most secret dreams, where she hoped for adventure and romance. Sure, the prices are a little exorbitant and it can seem that the foreigners outnumber the Italians, but it’s unbelievably picturesque and at every turn there’s history and beautiful glassware and sights and smells which make your head spin.
So I’m not criticizing Vienna, and especially not the lady at breakfast (even in my imagined version). But I’m saying sometimes you can tie up the strings too tight. It can be better to let your hair down a little, to not keep everything under control, to let a bit of chaos have it’s place in your life or in your city.
My question is: can modernism achieve this, or is it by it’s nature too technocratic and rigid? Is Vienna the ultimate city or can we keep a little of the Naples in it? And personally: where is the balance between chaos and prudence?
Postcard from Italy: Mountains
Today I passed a hundred mountains; snow covered or with groves of olives and oranges. Some were rock and erosion, some wild, others bearing ancient hill towns or cut through by the tunnels of the autostrade.
Each has a history, a geography, a name. But names evaporate like the dews of summer. Even geology need only wait for time to erase it. Once seabed, then the battleground of bronze and elephants - the world blinks and Appenines are become sand.
All mountains know their name in truth is earth.
Postcard from Gallipoli: the old men
This postcard was going to be about the old men of Italy, but it’s turned out to be first about communications and how we’ve come to take good infrastructure and easy access to information for granted. Several things happened at once - we hired a car which we drove to Gallipoli, a tiny medieval town in Puglia. The day we made that 7 hour journey the truck drivers went on strike, which we knew about mainly because on the way down there were long queues of semitrailers parked next to groups of drivers waving their arms in discussion. But we didn’t know much because Gallipoli is without an internet café, (or at least without one we could discover without the help of Google), and the Italian television news stories were of limited help.
The next day we drove to Lecce, a larger town 40km away, on a mission to read our email, newsvine, and most of all to make contact with our daughter in Japan. No dice. For hours no sign saying Internet. Finally brief access to a pirate WiFi signal which allowed only the most basic email check. But we did finally find a WiFi point we could use: closed for lunch. At this point things looked reasonably sane, except that something normally simple had spiraled out of normal proportion - as often happens while traveling.
But by evening the strike had run stations short of benzine and we were grounded. In a futile search for fuel in the rain and dark I’d picked up a stranded Italian motorista and learnt that the whole country was pretty much out. In daylight we discovered that neither Tabbacci nor Poste could sell us an international phone card, and three different banks had no one euro coins for the payphone. Finally we made a brief call to Japan with a large handful of half euro coins wheedled out of the third bank.
It feels like being blind. Over the last decade I’ve become so used to near-perfect connectivity; to being able to talk to anyone, find out anything, see a map to anywhere! It’s very strange to have this enforced separation from the world of information and the society of my friends.
Centuries ago - like 1990 - social interaction was primarily with family, neighbours, and work-mates. Information was, before television, primarily in the form of gossip. Nowdays my friends are on the other side of the city or the other side of the world, and to be cut off from telephone and internet, especially in a non-english speaking country, is to take a vow of silence and join a monastery.
Gallipoli still functions in the old way, and the masters of gossip are the old men. Some old men are farmers, and drive tiny three wheeled trucks with produce on the back. The old women are busy with shopping and home, they don’t seem to have so much time. But every convenient sunny bench is populated by gaggles of old men, gossiping as they wait for 10am when the bars open. Or else they’ll go to the nearby Associatione to play dominos or cards or simply drink until 1pm. There are infinite numbers of little clubs with official sounding names like Society for Professional Fishermen. But whatever the name on the door, it closes for lunch and the old men leave their philosophy or dominos and go home to eat. And at four of five the old men are again sitting on the steps near the fishmarket making the most of the afternoon sun.
They’re in near-perfect connectivity with no need for facebook or newsvine or google. Gossipnet. A short range but effective system of great antiquity.
I have hopes that the world-wide interconnection of people which the new media provides - once the language barrier is overcome - will bring people together in such a way that war becomes impossible. That’s the one problem with gossipnet, it’s easy to convince people who don’t know anyone more distant than the sound of their churchbell that the people in the next valley are different or evil or covetous of the wealth around here. When you personally know several of those people you’re less inclined to believe the rumours and the sermons.
