Writings on the wall

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.

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

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.

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 “victory”. 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 way”), 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 personal”

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

Naples belongs in Asia rather than Europe. It’s narrow busy streets are exactly like Macau down to the washing hung out each window of the dirty tenements. But if the city is in the wrong continent, via Tribuniale on a Sunday after Mass is a street which is in the wrong century.

Families throng around stalls selling food and trinkets and nearly genuine leathergoods, and most of all the pastries, while motor scooters and cars push through the crowds one by one like the carts and palanquins of old. Musicians play by the fountain for coins. Young bravos strut about for the benefit of the gaggles of young girls, and children and pickpockets run in and out looking for trouble.

We found our way there on a tip from Tamh’s friend in London. 32 via Tribuniale has the best pizza in the city which invented it, he said. We were tired and hungry and the queue was daunting, but administered with imperious efficiency by Mama Sorbello. Her grown son and daughter waited tables and the grandparents’ photos looked down from the walls. Outside pizza dough rolled flat was deep fried as a snack.

Inside, the bustle and clangor included jokey asides from Papa on the loudspeaker as he called out the takeaway orders, a self appointed opera singing evangelist (equipped with his own backing music and two little brass cups to collect donations), and the normal fuss and argument and warmth of the italian family luncheon. Amidst all this brother and sister brought out the huge delicious pizzas of tomato, aged salami, capers, basil, olives, and most of all provolone and creamy fresh bufalo mozzarella. Six euros is a wonderful feast!

Later, full to bursting, we walked back down the street eating Sfogliattelli from a stall – the most delicious custard filled pastries (a suggestion of Pamela Drew, thanks Pamela!!) – before getting briefly lost on the way to the Museo Acheologica Napoli.

Rome is a beautiful, chaotic, dirty, wonderful, run-down, vibrant, and most of all historic city. You can walk for miles through twisted alleys filled with Vespa scooters, tobacconists, and cobblestones. You can also walk along miles of rather anonymous high rise apartment blocks. I’ve never seen a city quite so much like an ant-hill.

It’s also a city of monuments. Grandiose nineteenth and twentieth century structures are piled on top of medieval and roman relics. Two things really amazed me: First, everything is so damn huge! The shrine to Vittorio Emmanuel is the size of a skyscraper, the colloseum is overwhelming, and St Peters is simply the largest enclosed indoor space I’ve ever been in. It’s so big your voice doesn’t echo it just fades off into the distance. It think the place is large enough to have weather. And second, it seems as if there’s more ruins from more eras here than in all the other places I’ve been put together.

Which made me imagine the world fifty thousand years in the future. Humans will probably have been through a few cycles of boom and bust by then. It’s unlikely that anything will have completely wiped them out, but it’s also unlikely that we manage to escape some pretty bad (self-inflicted) disasters, either. So based on Rome I imagine the top few hundred metres of the earth’s surface will be solid human detritus. Bits of concrete, glass, metal and plastic that humans have fashioned into buildings or artifacts. Each with it’s story of a fallen empire, a human triumph, and the ongoing struggle to live and create and mold our environment.

We ate potato pancakes, cabbage rolls, and stew. Drank wine. Tipped the waitress £10. The kids were overjoyed by the icecream. A smiling old lady, mostly blind, was helped to her table by her aged family. Two Polish girls at the next table discussed the American elections.

Warm and satisfied we hunched our shoulders against the rain on the way to the station. It was ten steps past the doorway before I’d calculated the meaning of the pile of overcoats and bags there. This is not going to be an easy night or an easy winter. I went back to put my last £2 in his hand.

Later, waiting for the train, the 9 year old remembered leaving his book at the restaurant. Passing the doorway again I share a smile with its inhabitant. He’s not a runaway, or an addict, or any other category or label. He’s sitting in the doorway on a rainy night, tailor pose, as ready as a person can be for what comes. Human.

Have you ever noticed that some places are teeming with a great variety of life, while others are featureless and boring? Think about a pond, which has 5 sorts of amphibians, countless dragonflies, beetles, snakes, fish, crabs, worms, eels… and that’s before we start counting waterbird, mammal and plant species. It’s a rich environment. The same goes for a coral reef, a salt lagoon, even the grassland – forest interface to a lesser extent. Pure forest or open ocean or unrelieved tracts of grassland are boring by comparison, and have far fewer species. That’s because edges are fun. They provide a variety of habitats, or as I like to think of it they encourage complexity by breaking the energy gradient over a fractal interface.

I hope I haven’t lost you yet, because this is about London. You see, one of the things I love about Australia is that it’s home to a wide variety of cultures, and London is the same. There are communities who have moved here from the subcontinent, the middle east, the caribbean, and continental europe. There are subcultures including goths, punks, hippies, clubbers, trainspotters, sloane rangers, and royalists. They speak their languages, practise their religions, cook their food. Most of all they see each see the world in an unique way. In the same way that the interface between grassland, woods and water makes a richly complex and productive physical environment, the mix of cultures in this city produces something wonderful too.

On Sunday we visited Camden Market, which primarily has goth/punk stalls selling studded jackets, union jack t-shirts, piercings, black lace corsets and so on. But there are dodgy looking Iranian boys selling sharp suit jackets, Rasta buskers, a large Jamaican matron pushing twins in a pram, and even English soccer fans doing rather obvious drug deals near the market entrance.

If we all bought the same coffee, ate the same food, and thought the same thoughts the world would be very boring. London, on the other hand, puts the cosmos in cosmopolitan. It’s wonderful! Which was this morning brought home to me in the most entirely charming way – once again involving me finding a toilet for youngest son. This one was free, in Leicester Square, and huge because of the nearby theaters. It was filled with the most haunting, eerie, beautiful singing. A Chinese folk tune from the cleaner as he worked.

Postscript:

Somewhat on topic: we were taken to dinner last night – a delicious Indian feast – by the kindest, sweetest man. It was Raat!! Thank you, dear Raat. It was a wonderful meal and I so enjoyed meeting you. I hope we meet again soon!

The photographs I’ve used are from that meal. Check the size of that paper dosa. Wow!

As some viners already know, I’m on holiday just at the moment, far from sunny summery Tasmania in the freezing uncharted wilds of Europe. But being addicted to NV means I can’t just be quiet for 6 weeks so I thought I’d send you all some postcards.

This concerns the stationmaster at Paddington Station – which by the way is a beautiful old industrial age building reminiscent of Monet’s Gare St Lazare crossed with the Hogwarts Express. I’ve just looked it up and that’s no surprise, since it was designed by Brunel in 1854. That was only a distraction, however, because I arrived there on the Heathrow Express at 6.15am, tired out of my wits by a 36 hour journey which included only a few hours sleep, and desperate to find a toilet.

So it’s dark, terribly cold, mostly deserted, and not especially well signposted, and my 6 year old and I were both jogging, since we’d otherwise have been jumping up and down on the spot. We tried first at Starbucks, but while the green and white mermaid might have been easily recognizable at a distance it turned out her establishment was too small to include a washroom. A few escalators, a very slow and futile lift ride, and forcing ourselves to stop and think produced “Gentleman’s toilet and showers.” Except we only had a one pound coin and the change machine helpfully placed near the entrance was broken.

If it were just me I’d have vaulted the turnstile, CCTV be damned, but I wasn’t willing to deal with a small boy and an obstacle course both, so we retreated to the only help and information which could be identified nearby – the Stationmaster’s office. You can imagine the scene as we tried not to run through the doors, tired and frustrated (no one should charge money for such things!!) and as calmly as possible brandished our one pound coin. “Is there anywhere near here I can get change for the toilet?”

What happened next is the moment which can make all the difference in a bad day, and the point of the story. With a friendly smile he pointed to a door behind us and said “You can use the one here.”

Thank you, Mr Stationmaster. For the toilet, but especially for the warmth of your kindness.

Gunns Ltd is Australia’s largest forestry company, and one of the biggest in the world. It is proposing to construct a billion dollar Kraft bleached pulp mill, to process wood chips into the fibre board which is used by paper mills for production of paper and cardboard, in north eastern Tasmania. This mill has been approved by the State government in a process which short circuited normal community consultation and environmental impact assessment procedures, and has recently been given Federal government approval.

Green, community, and wilderness conservation groups oppose the construction of the mill. They say it will

• Accelerate the logging of native forest. The mill is based initially on 80% native timber, with only 20% of its inputs coming from plantations.
• Pollute the ocean and air. This affects Bass Straight fisheries, local beaches, and the air quality in a noted wine growing area.
• Consume 26 to 40 billion litres of fresh water per annum, which will double the water consumption of the whole north of the State.
• Contribute significantly to the State’s CO2 emissions. It is powered by the incineration of half a million tonnes of wood each year, as well as using wood chips drawn from the felling of four million tonnes of wood.

The approval process has been characterised by high levels of government interference. Two members of the original panel resigned in protest at government pressure. Gunns asked that the project be fast tracked, and the government reponded by bringing in a new consultant and giving him 5 weeks to assess environmental impact of the mill. Most public input has been blocked, and legislation used to prevent legal challenge to the assessment or procedure. Federal approval touted 24 strict new conditions which the minister had placed on the project, but on closer examination many of these turned out to be either meaningless or in fact weaker than the minimums previously agreed to by the company.

The rally

Australia is about to go to the polls to elect a new federal government. Groups opposing construction of the pulp mill therefore held a rally today in Hobart to raise community awareness of the issue in the context of the vote next weekend. In fact only the Greens and Democrats (minor parties) have promised to halt the project if elected, but it is possible that these parties could hold the balance of power in the Senate and thereby exert enough influence on the new elected government to block the mill.

It was a rainy day, but just the same upwards of 6 thousand people met at Franklin Square to hear speakers explain their views on the mill. I’ve posted a few photos which perhaps explain the gathering rather better than words. One of the side effects of the ongoing assault on Tasmania’s environment by the logging industry is the wonderful community spirit that has grown up in opposition. The atmosphere was friendly and cheerful, despite the weather – and I wish I’d been able to stay to the end because Bob Brown and Richard Flanagan are both excellent speakers.

In Paolo Coelho’s book The Alchemist, the protagonist is told that there is an emerald on which has been inscribed the meaning of life. Someone pointed out to me that this implies that the secret isn’t all that complicated, but I’ve been thinking that I’m sure what’s written there isn’t spend 2 hours in a traffic jam and then push papers around all morning while you wish your job was more fulfilling.

Bonobos are our closest relative amongst other species, and they spend their waking hours like this:

Foraging: 36%

Resting: 18%

Moving: 32%

Socialising: 14%

Which perhaps means there’s the Bonobo equivalent of a commute. They’re gatherers, after all, and they travel from food source to food source during the day. And it’s not surprising that socialising is important, since our relatives depend just as humans do on the group for survival. Bonding takes time but it pays off in protection, procreation, and even in finding food. Two heads are better than one and a bunch of heads are better than two.

Now I presume that the reason there’s 6 billion humans and only a single valley full of Bonobos has to do with humans being very good at producing food, ever since the invention of agriculture and herding, and protecting ourselves – what with the invention of the AK-47 and the cruise missile and so on. So it would be logical that we got to spend a lot less time on the equivalent of “foraging” and “moving”, and more time on the equivalent of “resting” and “socialising”. Except that we don’t.

What we seem to do instead are a lot of things related to moving money around and keeping track of who owes it to whom. Even in the industries which actually produce something or provide a service much of the actual time people spend working involves keeping records on behalf of the people who push the money around. For every hour spent growing something or making something or cutting someone’s hair there seems to be 3 hours spent keeping records or organising insurance or talking on the telephone. People don’t do very much, they mostly comply with regulations, annotate their compliance, calculate taxes, advertise, report, and get very very bored by it all. I have a sneaking suspicion that if Bonobos worked under a similar arrangement they’d all starve to death without even getting 14% of their time to socialise.

Which is not to say all the apparently meaningless activity doesn’t have some purpose. It’s there to solve a simple problem in a very complex way. By the banks of the Nile is the archaeological remains of a village which had been inhabited by scribes, 3500 years ago. They painted writing for the Pharaoh, and also decorated his mausoleum. For this you need records of how much painting had been done, how much they were to be paid for it, who owned the land the village was settled on, and so on. If you didn’t have those records someone might cheat someone else./p>

As I see it that’s what it’s always boiled down to. When your brother needs help putting the engine back in his car you turn up on the Saturday afternoon, help out for a couple of hours, and he gives you a beer at the end and says thanks. You know that when you’re moving house he’ll come around with the truck and help shift boxes. Those scribes, on the other hand, were working in a system where there was less trust and less goodwill. If I asked my brother to help out painting the mausoleum he isn’t going to be too happy when it turns out there’s not a spare coffin in there for him.

So what I’m saying is that our big complex society of strangers works because we spend an awful lot of our time covering our arses against being ripped off. We don’t trust people beyond what can be enforced by law, and the law starts where goodwill has stopped. Maybe that’s why there so much law and so many regulations and why we spend so much of our collective time covering our collective arses against so many possible ways of being bad to one another. But it is a waste of time. We would, if we could, rather spend our time socialising, resting, and most of all doing something which doesn’t figure on the Bonobo’s list at all – being creative.

We can make our lives a great deal richer, but to do so we have to find a way of doing without some of the laws and regulations and record keeping. That is going to require a culture of generosity replacing our current culture of protection and fear and getting away with anything that isn’t nailed down in some contract somewhere.

There’s another thing we also spend a lot of our time and energy on, and that’s being bossy. Chimpanzees are hierarchical in the same way as humans, but Bonobos are bloody hippies by comparison. Good for them, I say! Think about the amount of money we spend on government and on the armed forces. The alternative, as I see it, is to allow people more freedom and more responsibility. It’s not a simple change – if you have less “Occupational health and safety inspectors” and less thick books of regulations for them to enforce, for example, then that requires for the people that they’re currently inspecting to be thoughtful and well informed and care about the consequences of their actions.

We have a system of government, an economy, and a whole society built around making sure that people can’t get away with being too selfish or mean to one another. There’s no way to change that overnight, but the conditions required for it to change are that we start acting in such a way that all this effort becomes unnecessary. Being kind, being generous, putting the interests of strangers at least up in the same ballpark as our own.

The benefit is immense. We can double or triple the number of hours each day that we get to spend doing the things which truly make life worth living. Socialising, resting, and being creative. Having fun, in other words.

The wealthy waste our resources, corrupt our institutions, and distort social norms and expectations.

From 3 quarks daily.

Turn off your MP3 Player and your phone. Take off your sunglasses. Close your computer. Remove any unnecessary coats and hats – you won’t get cold or sunburnt in the space of a few minutes. Now walk out into the garden or the street. There’s nothing you have to do right this moment.

Feel the air on your skin. Feel the sun or the moonlight and the touch of moisture or dryness. Listen to every little sound you can hear, not to identify it but to absorb the quality and nature of the sound. Look around at the colours and shapes; the stillness and the movement. Let your mind rest on the curve of this leaf or the powdery unyielding surface of that wall. Let everything fall away to just the senses. A jumble of shapes and sounds and colour and feeling.

Don’t be frightened. You have the time, you’ll be back in your head soon. But for now just take a few breaths. Be still. When your mind wanders bring it back to the senses. What can you smell? Is it changing, are there textures and layers to it? Relax again and let all the mess of stuff wash in and out of you.

Breathe deep. That’s all around us every moment of our lives and we so rarely take any notice of it. I’ve had a cold the last few days and for some reason I find that leaves me in my thinking head and cuts me off from the world. Perhaps it’s because I’m sufficiently woolly headed that thinking takes a lot of concentration. Then today is blustery and sunny and full of springtime, and I noticed how much of our lives is spent plugged in and shut off. Protected in our cars and houses and clothes and phones and computers and the constant thrum and presence of our fellow humans. Animals don’t live like that. They don’t have a pane of safety glass between themselves and their lives.

I wonder how often humans reach their end rather surprised, suddenly thinking they might have missed something important.

Cerridwen posted a seed today called Ethics of the in between which forced me to set some order to a whole mess of thinking I’ve been doing over a period of several years, about the difference between what you might call theoretical and practical ethics. So go read the seed. It’s got some ideas which are more direct than mine, and the emphasis is a little different.

I heard a radio interview the other day with a Seventh Day Adventist minister who had been working in Africa to combat AIDS. He mentioned that the “flock” in had the same rate of HIV as the general population; his very reasonable response to this was that we’re all human, and whatever beliefs we have we can’t escape this, but that he hoped that in the end those beliefs would be expressed in action and therefore lower the spread of HIV among believers. But it highlighted the distinction between what people think they should do and what they actually do, and in particular it calls into question the purpose and value of encompassing ethical frameworks like Christianity or for that matter secular liberal humanism. If it doesn’t change what you do, then what does it matter what you think?

The world is in the grip of what seems at one level clash between fundamentalist Islam and bible belt Christianity. Think about this for a moment: neither religion sanctions the use of violence in this way. Both faiths have been hijacked to justify the evil actions of power hungry men. And lest you think I’m singling out religion for this, remember that bringing freedom and democracy, the cause of liberal humanism, was used to justify an oil war and an occupation which has driven 4 million Iraqis from their homes and caused half a million deaths.

So overarching moral philosophical frameworks have the disadvantage that they can be co-opted. If I say I’m a Buddhist, that most peaceful of belief systems, I’ve made a label which can be used for propaganda. Someone else identifying as a Buddhist can try to claim my loyalty or support. Likewise I can fool myself, substituting cliché and slogan for well thought through moral position. Even worse I can fool myself by saying that since I am a Buddhist the things I do must have good motivation.

Getting back more to the point raised in Cerridwen’s seed, trying to be perfect easily makes one judgemental, towards others and towards oneself. It’s a type of pride, and a sort of control mania. It’s not what you ‘are’ (if there is such a thing) which matters, it’s what you do in this moment. How you care and help and challenge and enjoy and engage with this moment. Everything else is the mental construct we call the past and future.

My take on free will is that we have a lot less than we suppose. You’ll realise this if you try to give up smoking, or even if you’re really really hungry and someone puts a plate of hot chips in front of you. A lot of what passes for choice is in fact justification for choices already made by our hindbrain’s desires. But that justification is often in the form of using some idea or label from our ethical creed as an excuse for action which our “whole mind” – hindbrain as well as considered emotion and reasoning – would not wish to do. Take a step back and think it through and you may not want that cigarette. Grab it, and as you’re going to light it you think to yourself “I should have this one, I’m too tense and angry and that’s bad.”

Because in my view the root of forgiveness, of love, of joy – of every action which is good in whatever religion or philosophy – is selflessness. Acting from a standpoint outside the ego. Whereas the ego’s strength comes from a set of beliefs about the world and about oneself, a set of memories and labels and ways of seeing oneself and ones actions in the past. I say I am an x and y and z. I have done this and I will do that. It’s all second-hand. A picture of how I do act and how I should act. Of course it’s me right? And I’m a good person. I believe that I am a positive benefit to those around me and that I act out of good motives. But all that is in between the moment and the action and the choice I make right now. It makes a structure which can justify and explain and stand in between what my whole focussed in the moment mind would want, and what action I actually take. It’s like putting the words “freedom and democracy” in place of the truth of what happens in Iraq right now.

If you have thought though and understood the situation, and then with complete mindful attention act according to the dictates of now, then all labels and excuses are left aside. There is long term planning – it doesn’t make that impossible – but there’s no pretence. We’re not used to living in a world without excuses and the result can be shocking. That’s especially the case because our actions are so much less motivated by self-interest. It’s very interesting just how much of what we do is all circled around reinforcing and sustaining the pretence we build up around ourselves all our lives. Going without this is terribly frightening but also terribly liberating.

So what use is philosophy, religion, theory? Rather a lot – I just think we cling to it too long and don’t trust ourselves naked of it.

Belief systems change the way we perceive the world. That’s terribly important. We need a consistent, sensible, encompassing framework into which to fit experience so that we can draw meaning from it. We need to be constantly reevaluating and expanding on this framework so as to form a deep understanding of our universe. It’s only from this understanding that our choices, in the moment, make sense. But in making each choice we have to keep all the labels and language and systems out of our heads and be instead just in the world of experience. The meaning we have extracted from the belief system remains, but if we were to focus on the system it would obscure both the experience of the world and the essence of the meaning.

I respect high ideals. I think values are worth talking about. But it’s what you do not what you say that makes who you are. Each moment of each day we make choices, and most of these thousands of choices are made according to a formula – as if a robot is acting according to a pre-set program. Many of the outcomes of that program are perfectly good, but many are not. I want to ask you this: next time you deal with someone at work and you’re about to say “I’m sorry but that’s the procedure, we have to do things this way” – then think again. Next time something is “unavoidable” because “that’s how it’s done” ask yourself if it’s best instead. See how it works out. Apply the same requirements to political leaders. No one should get away with saying that bad outcomes are inevitable, or that suffering is necessary, or worse still that we must do bad things to achieve good ends.

In 2006 the Tasmanian Government invited the Law Reform Institute of Tasmania to investigate how human rights could be best enshrined in law in Tasmania. I wrote about that here, and made a submission to the LRI’s inquiry as detailed here.

Well they have laboured mightily and produced… something pretty reasonable, actually. Called A Charter of Rights for Tasmania (2.7Mb pdf) it runs to 258 pages including Addenda, so I’ll give you a precis. It’s going before Parliament and I honestly have no idea how it will be received – that may depend on the balance of “good press” versus “legal incovenience to current legislation and pet projects like the corrupt Pulp Mill approval process”.

A Charter of Rights for Tasmania

The Charter would be an ordinary piece of legislation, but this legislation would place responsibilities on government in the enaction of all other legislation. All legislation would be scrutinised to check that it was compatible with human rights. The courts would be instructed by the Charter to interpret laws as far as possible so as to be compatible with human rights. Where laws were found to be incompatible, the government would be required to either repeal the law, change it, or issue a statement saying that they were happy that the law breach human rights.

That doesn’t sound as if it really compels government to do the right thing, but in practise it’s quite effective because the bad publicity involved in incompatible legislation has been shown to mean that governments rarely go down this route.

Public authorities will likewise be bound by the Charter, and any person whose human rights are infringed by either the government or a government authority can seek redress through the courts. The Charter establishes a Human Rights commissioner to monitor the operation of the Charter and educate the community about it, as well as being party to proceedings involving he operation of the Charter.

The Rights

• To life, liberty, security of the person, and protection of the family and children.
• To humane treatment when detained, to a fair trial, compensation for wrongful conviction, and for special treatment for children by the criminal justice system.
• To privacy and reputation.
• To freedom of movement, conscience, thought, religion, belief, expression, association, and assembly.
• To equality before the law and equal protection of the law.
• To freedom from discrimination, and to the right to enjoy ethnic religious and linguistic minority culture.
• Indigenous Tasmanians have the right to maintain distinctive identity, culture, kinship ties, and their relationship with the land.
• To freedom from torture and cruel inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and from genocide.
• To freedom from slavery, forced work; the right to work and have just conditions of work.
• The right of children to not be exploited economically or socially.
• The right to adequate food, clothing, housing, physical and mental health, and education.
• The right to not be deprived of property except on just terms.
• The right to a safe environment and the protection of the environment from pollution and ecological degradation.

Certain rights, such as freedom from torture, genocide, slavery, and the right to be recognised as a person before the law are considered inalienable, and cannot be overridden by government fiat.