When you go traveling you're supposed to find out new things about yourself. I've just been traveling for about a year, and I found out nothing til I got back. I discovered how much I love home.
There's nothing like being in other countries to make you realise how wonderful England is. Disembarking from my aircraft was like surfaceing from an eternity spent under water. Everything was back as it should be:
The t-less accent
The obscenely lush grass and general foliage
The oppressive, grey, chilly August sky
The heaps of "dismal suburbia", as my dad put it
Nice old doddery ladies with curly white hair
Hairless middle-aged men wearing five layers and muttering soft obsenities at the tube train
The creepy ooze that finds its way into the cracks of everything, especially bus windows
Ridiculous teenage girls with scarves and "ug" boots
Steaming cups of perfect -perfect!- tea
Kkkkrazzzy Kebab Shops
Cars that indicate more than half a second before turning
The usual apocalypse blaring out from three-inch high shock-horror headlines (Even the Economist welcomed me with a front page proclaiming Britiain would be electicityless within weeks)
The whole country seems - always has and always will - plunged into a nation-wide psychosis. Everyone is completely delusional. But the reason I love it more than anything in the world is that no matter how insane everything here is, it's so full of soul. The place is palpably deep, heaving with depth. It gives one life force, like a drug.
I swore that I would never be nationalistic enough to love a country, but I LOVE England. Ach bah humbug.
Wednesday, 12 August 2009
Monday, 10 August 2009
We all love to Dance!! -or------Human Objectivity?
When I was studying for something important, I remember coming across some sociologist or philosopher or someone, I can't remember his name, it might have been a chap called Habermas, but it might have been someone else, who had this trippy theory about how if everyone alive and who had ever been alive were brought together in one big discussion room and were somehow able to have enough time etc to talk about things, without any external pressure or predetermined irrational mindsets or anything, we would all eventually come to a solid agreement about what was beautiful and true and good etc etc.
In other words, he thought that everything was ultimately objective, and that subjectivity is just a peculiar human phenomenon resulting from social factors such as upbringing, social norms etc etc.
What's cool about this theory is not that he thought that quality is objective, which is what lots of people think but cannot prove, but that he thought that quality is humanly objective, i.e. the quality of, say, beauty, does not lie inherently in a rose, but rather all of humanity could theoretically be in total agreement that the rose possesses beauty.
I often think that the music I listen to is undeniably, irrefutably, brilliant, and that everyone would agree with me if they were only free of the burden of having been brought up listening to S-Club Seven and the Bee Gees. A few weeks ago I met someone who didn't like the Beatles. I was astonished. I hadn't even realised not liking the Beatles was an option.
But have you ever actually met someone that didn't think, say, that a sunset is beautiful? There are certain natural things like night skies, oceans and butterflies, that everyone, no matter the culture, age, upbringing, gender, etc etc etc agrees are aesthetically agreeable. The extent to which they are agreeable may differ, but nobody is actually repulsed by the thought of, for example, the bluey hue of a cloudless summer sky.
There is also nobody who doesn't like all forms of music. Almost no one is not a sucker for a good story well told. We love art, whatever the form. Aesthetics obsesses us, be they the shape of a car, the voice of an opera singer, the tale of Odysseus or the grandeur of the Taj Mahal.
It's clear therefore that mankind's affinity with what we have dubbed "quality" (perhaps just a product of some quirky twist of brain evolution) is just that: a species-wide phenomenon. No one is exempt from our irrational love of what art.
Whether this translates to the potential of full-blown human objectivity is another question, but it's worth pondering.
---
Side note: One thing I know Habermas DID talk about is communication. Adequate communication may be the one thing preventing us from reaching agreements on this kind of thing. Worth more research, me thinks.
In other words, he thought that everything was ultimately objective, and that subjectivity is just a peculiar human phenomenon resulting from social factors such as upbringing, social norms etc etc.
What's cool about this theory is not that he thought that quality is objective, which is what lots of people think but cannot prove, but that he thought that quality is humanly objective, i.e. the quality of, say, beauty, does not lie inherently in a rose, but rather all of humanity could theoretically be in total agreement that the rose possesses beauty.
I often think that the music I listen to is undeniably, irrefutably, brilliant, and that everyone would agree with me if they were only free of the burden of having been brought up listening to S-Club Seven and the Bee Gees. A few weeks ago I met someone who didn't like the Beatles. I was astonished. I hadn't even realised not liking the Beatles was an option.
But have you ever actually met someone that didn't think, say, that a sunset is beautiful? There are certain natural things like night skies, oceans and butterflies, that everyone, no matter the culture, age, upbringing, gender, etc etc etc agrees are aesthetically agreeable. The extent to which they are agreeable may differ, but nobody is actually repulsed by the thought of, for example, the bluey hue of a cloudless summer sky.
There is also nobody who doesn't like all forms of music. Almost no one is not a sucker for a good story well told. We love art, whatever the form. Aesthetics obsesses us, be they the shape of a car, the voice of an opera singer, the tale of Odysseus or the grandeur of the Taj Mahal.
It's clear therefore that mankind's affinity with what we have dubbed "quality" (perhaps just a product of some quirky twist of brain evolution) is just that: a species-wide phenomenon. No one is exempt from our irrational love of what art.
Whether this translates to the potential of full-blown human objectivity is another question, but it's worth pondering.
---
Side note: One thing I know Habermas DID talk about is communication. Adequate communication may be the one thing preventing us from reaching agreements on this kind of thing. Worth more research, me thinks.
Friday, 24 July 2009
Tuesday, 23 June 2009
The Prophesy of the Four Crows
Of all the indiginous cultures that were anihilated in the name of progress by the Europeans, I've always thought the Native Americans of what is now north-east USA were the most tragic. So I was pleased to be confirmed in my soft spot when I stumbled across this ancient prophesy at an exhibit in UPenn's anthropology museum (navaho language followed by English):
Lomewe, luwe na okwes xu laxakwihele xkwithakamika.
Long ago it was said that a fox will be loosened on the earth.
Ok nen luwe newa ahasak xu peyok.
Also it was said four crows will come.
Netami ahas kenthu li guttitehewagan wichi Kishelemukonk.
The first crow flew the way of harmony with Creator.
Nisheneit ahas kwechi pilito entalelemukonk, shek palsu ok ankela.
The second crow tried to clean the world, but he became sick and he died.
Nexeneit ahas weneyoo ankelek xansa ok koshiphuwe.
The third crow saw his dead brother and he hid.
Neweneit ahas kenthu li guttitehewagan lapi wichi Kishelemukonk.
The fourth crow flew the way of harmony again with Creator.
Kenahkihechik xu withatuwak xkwithakamika.
Caretakers they will live together on the earth.
The random fox bit at the beginning is a tad puzzling, but otherwise I think this prophesy matches exactly with what I would predict. I'd say right now we're around crow #3, though perhaps still suffering some of the remenants of #2.
Lomewe, luwe na okwes xu laxakwihele xkwithakamika.
Long ago it was said that a fox will be loosened on the earth.
Ok nen luwe newa ahasak xu peyok.
Also it was said four crows will come.
Netami ahas kenthu li guttitehewagan wichi Kishelemukonk.
The first crow flew the way of harmony with Creator.
Nisheneit ahas kwechi pilito entalelemukonk, shek palsu ok ankela.
The second crow tried to clean the world, but he became sick and he died.
Nexeneit ahas weneyoo ankelek xansa ok koshiphuwe.
The third crow saw his dead brother and he hid.
Neweneit ahas kenthu li guttitehewagan lapi wichi Kishelemukonk.
The fourth crow flew the way of harmony again with Creator.
Kenahkihechik xu withatuwak xkwithakamika.
Caretakers they will live together on the earth.
The random fox bit at the beginning is a tad puzzling, but otherwise I think this prophesy matches exactly with what I would predict. I'd say right now we're around crow #3, though perhaps still suffering some of the remenants of #2.
Sunday, 10 May 2009
Fate v Chance, the showdown
So the opening remarks of J. M. G. Le Clézio's 1969 novel Terra Amata concern the likelihood of the book which the reader is now reading. Le Clézio asks what is the probability of that particular book being read by that particluar person might be, and he got me thinking about fate and chance again...
I think most people assume that fate and chance are opposites, that we must choose to see the world either in terms of fate - in other words that all our lives are dictated from the outset - or in terms of chance - in other words that what happens is not predetermined but happens spontaneously as we move along the curve of time. Both views agree that we have little control over what happens to us.
But fate is nothing more than chance seen through the lense of time. Chance happens now, and after a given period of time, fate happened then. They are perspectives on the same thing.
The idea that we can influence the odds of what chance throws at us is thus made laughable when we look back at things from the high seat of hindsight, and see that we were all just pawns in the game of fate. People think they can affect their chances, but if they are made to believe that they are actually under the influence of fate, they cease to think that they can affect their fate. The word fate, produces a different - a more hopeless - mindset. If fate and chance are the same thing, then this is a clearly ridiculous attitude.
I think most people assume that fate and chance are opposites, that we must choose to see the world either in terms of fate - in other words that all our lives are dictated from the outset - or in terms of chance - in other words that what happens is not predetermined but happens spontaneously as we move along the curve of time. Both views agree that we have little control over what happens to us.
But fate is nothing more than chance seen through the lense of time. Chance happens now, and after a given period of time, fate happened then. They are perspectives on the same thing.
The idea that we can influence the odds of what chance throws at us is thus made laughable when we look back at things from the high seat of hindsight, and see that we were all just pawns in the game of fate. People think they can affect their chances, but if they are made to believe that they are actually under the influence of fate, they cease to think that they can affect their fate. The word fate, produces a different - a more hopeless - mindset. If fate and chance are the same thing, then this is a clearly ridiculous attitude.
Saturday, 18 April 2009
Bybee blues
Argentina's La Nación newspaper has as its US correspondent a brilliant man named Mario Diament, who writes a fascinating column about American happenings for his Latinamerican audience. Most recently, this article looked at the much-pondered question of why people do cruel things like exterminating Jews or, in this case, waterboarding terror suspects. His piece focuses on one man in particular, a certain Jay Scott Bybee, a Mormon priest and US judge who was one of the many who appended his signature to the document which gave the CIA executive permission to continue with their practises of extracting information through torture. Diament understands why people such as Bush or Cheney might have done such a thing for reasons of politics/evilness/not-knowing-what's-going-on, but he asks how Bybee, a man known for being humble, intelligent and generally pleasant and normal, could join their ranks. Below are the final paragraph's of Diament's article, followed by my rough translation:
Pero el misterio sigue siendo Bybee, quien corrió a ayudar a sus hijos con sus deberes y a lavar los platos el día de su confirmación, un experto en derecho constitucional y procedimiento civil, padre de 4 hijos, ex boy scout y misionero de la Iglesia mormona. En el panegírico publicado por la revista Meridian , se afirma: "Bybee cree que la sociedad funcionaría mejor si la gente demostrase una actitud de reconciliación en lugar de venganza".
En 1961, durante el proceso a Adolf Eichmann en Jerusalén, Hannah Arendt acuñó el concepto de "banalidad del mal" para sintetizar su percepción del acusado. Su tesis era que quienes cometen crímenes atroces, como Eichmann, responsable de gerenciar la "solución final" del problema judío en la Alemania nazi, no son habitualmente fanáticos enloquecidos, sino, más bien, individuos ordinarios, quienes simplemente aceptan las premisas del Estado y las cumplen con extrema eficiencia.
Al elaborar su memorándum, Bybee debe haber pensando, seguramente, que lo que se esperaba de él no era otra cosa que una interpretación legal, un ejercicio intelectual divorciado de su contenido y del efecto sobre sus posibles víctimas, en el que la tortura se vuelve una abstracción.
***
But the mystery of Bybee remains, who went to help his children with their homework and wash the dishes the day of his confirmation [to high office], an expert in constitutional rights and civil procedures, father of four children, ex-boyscout and missionary of the mormon church. In an appraisal published in the Meridian magazine, it is stated that "Bybee believes that society functions better if people show an attitude of reconciliation rather than revenge."
In 1961, during the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt coined the concept of the "banality of the evil" to create her portrate of the accused. Her theory was that those who committ atrocious crimes, like Eichmann, who was responsible for carrying out the "final solucion" of the Jewish problem in Nazi Germany, are not by nature mouth-frothing fanatics, but rather, normal people, who simply accept the edicts of the State and carry them out very efficiently.
To write his memorandum [justifying torture], Bybee must have thought, surely, that what was required of him was nothing more than a legal interpretation, an intellectual exercise divorced from its contents and the effect on its potential victims, in which torture becomes an abstraction.
***
Diament, the master journalist that he is, finishes his article here, and refrains from penning a concrete conclusion to be taken from these musings. The conclusion is, like those famous "rights", self-evident. Evil can happen when people do not feel directly responsible.
A famous psychological experiment was conducted in which volunteers were told to ask questions to actors who the volunteers thoughts were only other volunteers. For each question that was answered incorrectly, the volunteers had to electrocute the actor. Although no current was actually applied to the "subject", they nevertheless acted the symptoms of electrocution. To begin, a small current was "applied", and the actor gave a twitch. The current gradually got larger and larger, and the actor would manifest signs of extreme pain. The volunteer would ask not to continue, but the scientists monitoring the experiment would tell them that it was OK, they [the volunteers] were not responsible for anything that happened, all possible blame would be laid at the feet of the scientists. Most volunteers continued electrocuting their "subjects" until they appeared dead.
This phenomenon, this tucked-away, sinister little part of human nature only becomes real or dangerous when political and social systems contrive to create a situation in which the evil designs of a tiny number of high-ranking individuals need to be carried out by many hundreds of ordinary people in order to occur. Unfortunately, almost every social system in the world is formed in this way. As any sociologist will tell you, the phenomenon of people obeying orders is a direct product of society and the near-total control that it can exert over its members. Social forces are, in this way, often the undoing of the individual.
Of course, it is also self-evident that without society, the individual would be nothing. And if society did not demand fealty from the individual, then it would cease to be: each person would only act for himself, and nothing would join people in the common purpose that is the very essence of society, and the essence of what makes humankind prosperous. But this fealty need not bee unthinking. Just as it is important to feel a common bond with those around you, it is equally important that this bond does not overthrow the rational workings of your consciousness. You should not shirk your share in constructing a great civilisation, but if this construction involves doing harm to others, it makes much more sense to abandon your social ties.
This is why it is dangerous when people talk about (for example) feeling pride in their country. Love for one's countrymen is fine, but a such a pride is utterly irrational, and in my view the first step in the more harmful, but equally large-scale irrationality of, say, condoning torture for national security.
Pero el misterio sigue siendo Bybee, quien corrió a ayudar a sus hijos con sus deberes y a lavar los platos el día de su confirmación, un experto en derecho constitucional y procedimiento civil, padre de 4 hijos, ex boy scout y misionero de la Iglesia mormona. En el panegírico publicado por la revista Meridian , se afirma: "Bybee cree que la sociedad funcionaría mejor si la gente demostrase una actitud de reconciliación en lugar de venganza".
En 1961, durante el proceso a Adolf Eichmann en Jerusalén, Hannah Arendt acuñó el concepto de "banalidad del mal" para sintetizar su percepción del acusado. Su tesis era que quienes cometen crímenes atroces, como Eichmann, responsable de gerenciar la "solución final" del problema judío en la Alemania nazi, no son habitualmente fanáticos enloquecidos, sino, más bien, individuos ordinarios, quienes simplemente aceptan las premisas del Estado y las cumplen con extrema eficiencia.
Al elaborar su memorándum, Bybee debe haber pensando, seguramente, que lo que se esperaba de él no era otra cosa que una interpretación legal, un ejercicio intelectual divorciado de su contenido y del efecto sobre sus posibles víctimas, en el que la tortura se vuelve una abstracción.
***
But the mystery of Bybee remains, who went to help his children with their homework and wash the dishes the day of his confirmation [to high office], an expert in constitutional rights and civil procedures, father of four children, ex-boyscout and missionary of the mormon church. In an appraisal published in the Meridian magazine, it is stated that "Bybee believes that society functions better if people show an attitude of reconciliation rather than revenge."
In 1961, during the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt coined the concept of the "banality of the evil" to create her portrate of the accused. Her theory was that those who committ atrocious crimes, like Eichmann, who was responsible for carrying out the "final solucion" of the Jewish problem in Nazi Germany, are not by nature mouth-frothing fanatics, but rather, normal people, who simply accept the edicts of the State and carry them out very efficiently.
To write his memorandum [justifying torture], Bybee must have thought, surely, that what was required of him was nothing more than a legal interpretation, an intellectual exercise divorced from its contents and the effect on its potential victims, in which torture becomes an abstraction.
***
Diament, the master journalist that he is, finishes his article here, and refrains from penning a concrete conclusion to be taken from these musings. The conclusion is, like those famous "rights", self-evident. Evil can happen when people do not feel directly responsible.
A famous psychological experiment was conducted in which volunteers were told to ask questions to actors who the volunteers thoughts were only other volunteers. For each question that was answered incorrectly, the volunteers had to electrocute the actor. Although no current was actually applied to the "subject", they nevertheless acted the symptoms of electrocution. To begin, a small current was "applied", and the actor gave a twitch. The current gradually got larger and larger, and the actor would manifest signs of extreme pain. The volunteer would ask not to continue, but the scientists monitoring the experiment would tell them that it was OK, they [the volunteers] were not responsible for anything that happened, all possible blame would be laid at the feet of the scientists. Most volunteers continued electrocuting their "subjects" until they appeared dead.
This phenomenon, this tucked-away, sinister little part of human nature only becomes real or dangerous when political and social systems contrive to create a situation in which the evil designs of a tiny number of high-ranking individuals need to be carried out by many hundreds of ordinary people in order to occur. Unfortunately, almost every social system in the world is formed in this way. As any sociologist will tell you, the phenomenon of people obeying orders is a direct product of society and the near-total control that it can exert over its members. Social forces are, in this way, often the undoing of the individual.
Of course, it is also self-evident that without society, the individual would be nothing. And if society did not demand fealty from the individual, then it would cease to be: each person would only act for himself, and nothing would join people in the common purpose that is the very essence of society, and the essence of what makes humankind prosperous. But this fealty need not bee unthinking. Just as it is important to feel a common bond with those around you, it is equally important that this bond does not overthrow the rational workings of your consciousness. You should not shirk your share in constructing a great civilisation, but if this construction involves doing harm to others, it makes much more sense to abandon your social ties.
This is why it is dangerous when people talk about (for example) feeling pride in their country. Love for one's countrymen is fine, but a such a pride is utterly irrational, and in my view the first step in the more harmful, but equally large-scale irrationality of, say, condoning torture for national security.
Sunday, 12 April 2009
Johnny Foreigner
I'm really excited about this band I discovered the other day as the support act for Hundred Reasons. They're not really very close to the kind of thing that I would normally consider within the sphere of my music taste, but they have such an infectious sincerity and passion that I fell in love with them instantly. They strike me as an embodiment of everything that's good about the British music scene at the moment. The music is boundlessly creative and emotional, but there is an overpowering sense of realness and just-normal-people-doing-awesome-things-not-because-they're-awesome-but-because-it-comes-naturally. As an example of what I mean, read this bio in their own words:
hello this is the ongoing interactive story of johnny foreigner. there are 3 of us, we come from birmingham, we dont go out too much and we have a tendency to overcompensate. we write noisy pop songs for people what like the same bands as we do. last year we put out two 7" records on Laundrette Records. they both sold out and got played on the rah-dio and stuffs. we were pretty fucking proud. last summer we signed a proper record deal, with cone-tracts and everything, for Best Before Records. we recorded an eepee called arcs across the city at southern studios, it got mega good reviews from magazines we'd almost stopped buying and a lot more people started listening to us. we went to new york to make a proper album at the end of last year, it came out in spring and we had like, 4 months living in a van and peoples floors touring it round the country (with the occasional overseas holiday/show). we spent the summer alternately jetting around the world and vanning around the uk playing festivals. we just finished a yookay tour with some awesome other bands, if you weren't there you so missed out.. junior lost his ipod, alexei went crowdsurfing and kelly got totally bloody.
After that, there was a headline tour of the UK (again) with Dananananakroyd (yay) and then the end of 2008 saw us playing the biggest places we've ever played in support of the Futureheads, who are all amazing, and equally very, very tall. In 2009 - this year - we sat and wrote songs and songs and more songs. Then we did our first tour of Europe with Sky Larkin. That too was good. Show great. Repetition. Show amazing. Repetition. We like gigging. On 8th March we flew from Sweden to Heathrow, we then didnt leave Heathrow and got on another plane to NYC which is where we are right now recording ALBUM NUMBER TWO. You'll be hearing more about that real soon. After we're done we're playing more gigs with 100 Reasons and then... TBC. But obviously it will involve more gigs. Obviously...
Anyway, the plan is to keep playing shows and making records until we explode or run out of fingers. we're permanently achey but its still the best job we'll ever have..we do what we can...
Exactly.
Johnny Foreigner get exactly the right ratio of all the worrying things that make Britain so terrible, and the exciting things that make it so wonderful and inspiring. I am particularly struck by their lyrics to the song "Cranes and cranes and cranes and cranes": we make our own mythologies...if I had the guts I promise I would cut the power lines, tape the letterbox shut...I don't worry about these things, from one grey mess to another grey mess, distance knows a heavy heart less, every single night out...tear down our nightclubs, put up flats, burn down our pubs and put up flats...if I had the guts I promise I would.
I've actually been thinking quite a bit recently about how we live, and I think having guts is possibly much more important than I'd like it to be. What strikes me is that we are so uniform in the way we live. I don't mean that at all in a disparaging or accusatory way - it's just interesting and surprisingly uncommented on. Every alternative-leaning person in the western world, which is the vast majority actually, has heard the mantra of going against the flow, that we should be individuals and should live lives in our own way, not the way of everyone else. But what is assumed - always - is that the difference between being an individual and the ever-victimised "sheep" is a matter of details: trivia like clothes, eating habits and manners of speaking. Nobody even thinks about challenging major aspects of lives, like communication, walking or seeing things. When we talk about eccentric personalities that behave in apparently such outlandish fashion, nobody notices that in the vast majority of important manners of living, even such "individuals" are identical to everyone else.
What about the bubble boy who has such a weak immune system that he has been kept in a disinfected bubble from birth and can have contact with nothing because it would cause rapid death? Now that is a truly different manner of living. People talk of doing something crazy like...moving to a remote village somewhere and raising crops by themselves...wouldn't that be radical!? But you still walk, talk, use normal facial expressions, sleep in a lying down position probably on a soft surface under a roof, get up in the morning and eat and drink in the regular fashion in order to maintain your health. People consider themselves to be making a big statement by playing guitars, wearing colourful clothes, long hair and having sex with whomsoever they want. In the range of things, however, almost nobody has breached a tiny hairswidth of possibilities.
Sure, it takes very little thought to realise that trying to be truly radical in one's way of life will lead to a much less pleasant existence than sticking to the tried and tested means of living that humans have always utilised. We can't decide not to eat or sleep. We can't walk on our head. We live in uniform fashion for a good reason - the strict limits of physics. Even if we were able to be heedless of social pressure, our lives would all work in roughly the same way.
Still, I find it very difficult to concede that I should not try some form of experimentation and boundary pushing with my life. It just seems like something more should be possible. While my heart and my mind are more than content with the incredible range of inspiration to be found in human achievement, my soul yearns to be entirely different, to create something not good, but really really new. There is a part of me that is sickened by even this act of writing in such a normal way, with the conventional rules of spelling and grammar, and even with regular means of expression, as hundreds of writers have used before. Part of me wants to scrawl my messages in primal symbols, heedless of the fact that this would cease to be communication, and fulfill no aim at all. This part does not care about aims, and the normal way of doing something to achieve something else. This part of me rejects effect and cause as something unoriginal --- but even as it retreats into a firelit cave and howls at the storm - or whatever movements that are making the shadows on the walls - this part of me knows that even this desperate rejection of everything has itself been done before, that even it, which is desirous of nothing more than pure originality, is a creature of its inspiration, that it is incapable of not being in some tiny way a product of what it has previously experienced. It dies with the arrow of knowledge through its heart: the knowledge that originality seeps slowly through human history, it is not a thing that is instantly accessible to those who want to escape normal existence. The arrow was fired by another part of me, the part that embraces this system, that glories in inspiration and the slow, painstaking evolution of originality. It knows that what humanity eventually produces will be worth the wait - nay - will be better because of the wait.
---
Well we've come a long way from the raw lyrics of Johnny Foreigner, but the yearning for originality is still far from dead of course - it is immortal, and only grows stronger the longer it is frustrated, no matter how much I know that it is impossible.
I think that we should start with the small things, as identified by Johnny Foreigner. Can I even be original to the extent that people normally think originality requires? Do I even have the guts to live a marijuana-filled life on a Caribbean island somewhere? Or play folk music in tie-dye with friends called Starbeam and Lovesocks? Or give all my money to charity? Or cut the power lines and tape up the letterboxes? To be fair to me, I do have major disagreements with all these means of living, but still: do I have the guts to be even a little bit original? I want to be original in music making - but this requires no sacrifice at all. Every time, I simply take refuge in my inspirations, I live a elation-filled life and ignore the yearning which is defeated by cowardice - or is it actually that I don't want to be original? That I like my life, and really I am content? Now that I dare to think it, this makes a lot of sense. I do enjoy life. I don't want to change it that much. I have fair grounds for failing to be original.
The yearning seeps away into the horrific gaping chasm of anticlimax. But like a bad movie with a sequel, you never see it die.
hello this is the ongoing interactive story of johnny foreigner. there are 3 of us, we come from birmingham, we dont go out too much and we have a tendency to overcompensate. we write noisy pop songs for people what like the same bands as we do. last year we put out two 7" records on Laundrette Records. they both sold out and got played on the rah-dio and stuffs. we were pretty fucking proud. last summer we signed a proper record deal, with cone-tracts and everything, for Best Before Records. we recorded an eepee called arcs across the city at southern studios, it got mega good reviews from magazines we'd almost stopped buying and a lot more people started listening to us. we went to new york to make a proper album at the end of last year, it came out in spring and we had like, 4 months living in a van and peoples floors touring it round the country (with the occasional overseas holiday/show). we spent the summer alternately jetting around the world and vanning around the uk playing festivals. we just finished a yookay tour with some awesome other bands, if you weren't there you so missed out.. junior lost his ipod, alexei went crowdsurfing and kelly got totally bloody.
After that, there was a headline tour of the UK (again) with Dananananakroyd (yay) and then the end of 2008 saw us playing the biggest places we've ever played in support of the Futureheads, who are all amazing, and equally very, very tall. In 2009 - this year - we sat and wrote songs and songs and more songs. Then we did our first tour of Europe with Sky Larkin. That too was good. Show great. Repetition. Show amazing. Repetition. We like gigging. On 8th March we flew from Sweden to Heathrow, we then didnt leave Heathrow and got on another plane to NYC which is where we are right now recording ALBUM NUMBER TWO. You'll be hearing more about that real soon. After we're done we're playing more gigs with 100 Reasons and then... TBC. But obviously it will involve more gigs. Obviously...
Anyway, the plan is to keep playing shows and making records until we explode or run out of fingers. we're permanently achey but its still the best job we'll ever have..we do what we can...
Exactly.
Johnny Foreigner get exactly the right ratio of all the worrying things that make Britain so terrible, and the exciting things that make it so wonderful and inspiring. I am particularly struck by their lyrics to the song "Cranes and cranes and cranes and cranes": we make our own mythologies...if I had the guts I promise I would cut the power lines, tape the letterbox shut...I don't worry about these things, from one grey mess to another grey mess, distance knows a heavy heart less, every single night out...tear down our nightclubs, put up flats, burn down our pubs and put up flats...if I had the guts I promise I would.
I've actually been thinking quite a bit recently about how we live, and I think having guts is possibly much more important than I'd like it to be. What strikes me is that we are so uniform in the way we live. I don't mean that at all in a disparaging or accusatory way - it's just interesting and surprisingly uncommented on. Every alternative-leaning person in the western world, which is the vast majority actually, has heard the mantra of going against the flow, that we should be individuals and should live lives in our own way, not the way of everyone else. But what is assumed - always - is that the difference between being an individual and the ever-victimised "sheep" is a matter of details: trivia like clothes, eating habits and manners of speaking. Nobody even thinks about challenging major aspects of lives, like communication, walking or seeing things. When we talk about eccentric personalities that behave in apparently such outlandish fashion, nobody notices that in the vast majority of important manners of living, even such "individuals" are identical to everyone else.
What about the bubble boy who has such a weak immune system that he has been kept in a disinfected bubble from birth and can have contact with nothing because it would cause rapid death? Now that is a truly different manner of living. People talk of doing something crazy like...moving to a remote village somewhere and raising crops by themselves...wouldn't that be radical!? But you still walk, talk, use normal facial expressions, sleep in a lying down position probably on a soft surface under a roof, get up in the morning and eat and drink in the regular fashion in order to maintain your health. People consider themselves to be making a big statement by playing guitars, wearing colourful clothes, long hair and having sex with whomsoever they want. In the range of things, however, almost nobody has breached a tiny hairswidth of possibilities.
Sure, it takes very little thought to realise that trying to be truly radical in one's way of life will lead to a much less pleasant existence than sticking to the tried and tested means of living that humans have always utilised. We can't decide not to eat or sleep. We can't walk on our head. We live in uniform fashion for a good reason - the strict limits of physics. Even if we were able to be heedless of social pressure, our lives would all work in roughly the same way.
Still, I find it very difficult to concede that I should not try some form of experimentation and boundary pushing with my life. It just seems like something more should be possible. While my heart and my mind are more than content with the incredible range of inspiration to be found in human achievement, my soul yearns to be entirely different, to create something not good, but really really new. There is a part of me that is sickened by even this act of writing in such a normal way, with the conventional rules of spelling and grammar, and even with regular means of expression, as hundreds of writers have used before. Part of me wants to scrawl my messages in primal symbols, heedless of the fact that this would cease to be communication, and fulfill no aim at all. This part does not care about aims, and the normal way of doing something to achieve something else. This part of me rejects effect and cause as something unoriginal --- but even as it retreats into a firelit cave and howls at the storm - or whatever movements that are making the shadows on the walls - this part of me knows that even this desperate rejection of everything has itself been done before, that even it, which is desirous of nothing more than pure originality, is a creature of its inspiration, that it is incapable of not being in some tiny way a product of what it has previously experienced. It dies with the arrow of knowledge through its heart: the knowledge that originality seeps slowly through human history, it is not a thing that is instantly accessible to those who want to escape normal existence. The arrow was fired by another part of me, the part that embraces this system, that glories in inspiration and the slow, painstaking evolution of originality. It knows that what humanity eventually produces will be worth the wait - nay - will be better because of the wait.
---
Well we've come a long way from the raw lyrics of Johnny Foreigner, but the yearning for originality is still far from dead of course - it is immortal, and only grows stronger the longer it is frustrated, no matter how much I know that it is impossible.
I think that we should start with the small things, as identified by Johnny Foreigner. Can I even be original to the extent that people normally think originality requires? Do I even have the guts to live a marijuana-filled life on a Caribbean island somewhere? Or play folk music in tie-dye with friends called Starbeam and Lovesocks? Or give all my money to charity? Or cut the power lines and tape up the letterboxes? To be fair to me, I do have major disagreements with all these means of living, but still: do I have the guts to be even a little bit original? I want to be original in music making - but this requires no sacrifice at all. Every time, I simply take refuge in my inspirations, I live a elation-filled life and ignore the yearning which is defeated by cowardice - or is it actually that I don't want to be original? That I like my life, and really I am content? Now that I dare to think it, this makes a lot of sense. I do enjoy life. I don't want to change it that much. I have fair grounds for failing to be original.
The yearning seeps away into the horrific gaping chasm of anticlimax. But like a bad movie with a sequel, you never see it die.
Wednesday, 1 April 2009
Song idea #4
I'm currently rereading Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast, probably my favourite book of all time. If I feel up to it, I might do a proper post on it some time. But I just came across this little chant, which I plan to plaigerise at some point as the lyrics to a song:
Hold fast
To the law
Of the last
Cold tome
Where the earth
Of the truck
Lies think
On the Page,
And the loam
Of faith
In the ink
Long fled
From the drone
Of the nib
Flows on
Through the breath
Of the bone
Reborn
In a dawn
Of doom
Where blooms
The rose
For the winds
The Child
For the tomb
The thrush.
For the hush
Of song,
The corn
For the scythe
And the thorn
In wait
For the heart
Till the last
Of the first
Depart,
And the last
Of the past
Is dust
And the dust
Is lost.
Hold fast!
Hold fast
To the law
Of the last
Cold tome
Where the earth
Of the truck
Lies think
On the Page,
And the loam
Of faith
In the ink
Long fled
From the drone
Of the nib
Flows on
Through the breath
Of the bone
Reborn
In a dawn
Of doom
Where blooms
The rose
For the winds
The Child
For the tomb
The thrush.
For the hush
Of song,
The corn
For the scythe
And the thorn
In wait
For the heart
Till the last
Of the first
Depart,
And the last
Of the past
Is dust
And the dust
Is lost.
Hold fast!
Song idea #3
I've been trying to put together an acoustic singer-songwriter type version of Pure Reason Revolution's latest blinder of a single, Deus Ex Machina. I'm justifying this venture not as an attempt to improve the song, but as an attempt to prove it's a love song. Like all PRR songs, DEM is very ambiguous in its lyrical musings - but I think the gist is about ( probably unfaithful) love coming out of nowhere and having disastrous consequences. The song is full of hate, full of bitterness and blame, but there's such a clear passion in it that comes full out in the last line "you'll always be my love". Despite all the damage, the love burns on. My version stays true to the dark feel, but it tries to make the passion a bit sweeter, and bring out the positive side of the very powerful love/hate relationship. It is also not very good.
Raul Juliá, saint and genius
It has long been my firm conviction that there has been no better actor-character pairing in history (apart from maybe Peter Sellers as Clouseau) than the legendary Raul Juliá playing Gomez Addams. I idolise the original 1991 Addams Family movie as one of the most superb comedy productions since the 60s: all the casting is fantastic, with faultless performances by the actors playing pretty much every member of the notorious Family, and some of the non-Family roles too. But the entire thing is stolen by Juliá. He was born to play Gomez.
So you can imagine how pleased I was, after some hardcore googling following another viewing, to find that not only has Raul produced one of the most sublime performances of any film ever, but is also a philanthropist of the first degree. Juliá campaigned constantly throughout his hopelessly too short life to end world hunger, a goal he charmingly believed would be achieved by the end of this century. He made his point by talking about some of the chilling, but obvious facts that I also think should be used more by activists: the fact that we have every technological and practical means of ending world hunger, for example. We only lack the will to end it. "When hunger ends in the planet, we don't know the joy that we'll experience" was one quote that particularly stuck with me. This man and I are clearly on the same wavelength.
Raul Juliá died tragically of cancer long before his time, in a career curtailment that makes Christopher Reeves' fate look like a happy ending. Long may his memory and ideas live, and many thanks for the inspiration.
For a look at the man and his ideas, watch this: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3244182092757863346
For a bit a fun, watch my favourite Addams Family dance routine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOx99cZT9eY&feature=related
So you can imagine how pleased I was, after some hardcore googling following another viewing, to find that not only has Raul produced one of the most sublime performances of any film ever, but is also a philanthropist of the first degree. Juliá campaigned constantly throughout his hopelessly too short life to end world hunger, a goal he charmingly believed would be achieved by the end of this century. He made his point by talking about some of the chilling, but obvious facts that I also think should be used more by activists: the fact that we have every technological and practical means of ending world hunger, for example. We only lack the will to end it. "When hunger ends in the planet, we don't know the joy that we'll experience" was one quote that particularly stuck with me. This man and I are clearly on the same wavelength.
Raul Juliá died tragically of cancer long before his time, in a career curtailment that makes Christopher Reeves' fate look like a happy ending. Long may his memory and ideas live, and many thanks for the inspiration.
For a look at the man and his ideas, watch this: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3244182092757863346
For a bit a fun, watch my favourite Addams Family dance routine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOx99cZT9eY&feature=related
Saturday, 28 March 2009
Us Vs Them; the theory reinforced with external anecdote
One of my favourite bloggers in the world is 538.com, a political website that frequently (though maybe decreasingly so) has mind-bogglingly good good articles, such as this one, from which this extract is a superb anecdote-with-moral:
I have a confession to make: I've been cavorting with Wall Street Bankers. I’m in a fantasy baseball league, in fact, that’s chock full of Wall Street Bankers. And once, several years ago, I was interviewed by some Wall Street Bankers for a Wall Street hedge fund job. They didn’t end up offering me this position (and actually, the job was in Connecticut), but they did take me to a Yankees game and a nice Italian meal.
More alarmingly, my best friend from college is a former Wall Street Banker. This friend, whom I’ll identify only by the pseudonym Vijay, worked as an analyst for Salomon Smith Barney for several years in New York City, although he’s since moved on to private equity and then gone back to business school.
From looking at him, you wouldn’t know that Vijay was a Wall Street Banker. He’s an unassuming guy, into indie rock and cheap beer. He doesn’t eat meat and his politics are fairly liberal, although slightly to the right of mine.
While employed on Wall Street, Vijay routinely worked in excess of 100 hours a week. His apartment in the Financial District, a few blocks away from Ground Zero, consisted of three video gaming consoles, four alarm clocks, and a mattress; he was virtually never home, and so he had little need for anything else. I remember one occasion, when I was visiting my sister in New York City and we were attempting to drink cheap beer with Vijay, when he received a message on his Blackberry and abruptly had to dart off to Kinko’s at 11:30 on Sunday evening to fax a document to a client. I thought this was Extremely Uncool –- my sister and I still talk about the “Kinko’s Incident” -- but Vijay is nothing if not hard-working.
Vijay is a rather inconspicuous consumer, however, still driving the same beat-up Honda Civic that we used to take on midnight runs to Taco & Burrito Palace while in college. Although he was once something of a cheapskate, he has since become generous to a fault: the cheap beer is usually on him. While working in private equity, Vijay took time out of his day to teach inner-city high schoolers about finance and economics, and took a year off in between jobs to see his family and volunteer for the Red Cross in India. Vijay has his vices -- if he didn't, he wouldn't be my friend -- and his prejudices -- an irrational disdain for the borough of Brooklyn, for instance. But it is hard for me, when I read blanket assertions that Wall Street businesspeople are “greedy, selfish and utterly immoral”, not to think of Vijay, who is not really any of those things. True, Vijay is perhaps slightly more motivated by financial considerations than I am (but only slightly so). He attributes this to his Indian-American upbringing, which emphasizes the idea that money is hard to make, and so you do so when you can, and then use it to provide generously for your family and friends. This is his version of the American Dream, which is slightly different from mine, and is probably slightly different from yours, but not something I can find great fault with.
It is quite possible to believe each of the following things -- that the tax code is not as progressive as it ought to be; that high-level executives at major companies make, on average, more than they ultimately generate in profits for their shareholders; that the working class have too little influence over American politics and the upper class too much, and that banks and other financial institutions are inadequately regulated -– without having to demonize the people who work on Wall Street, the vast majority of whom are like Vijay: hard-working and ethical folks, maybe a little money-obsessed, but most of whom voted in November for a President who vowed to raise their taxes.
In English lessons we are normally advised not to make generalisations; when debating we often find them very useful. But generalisations are a direct product of the most harmful aspect of human social-structure: Us Vs Them. Our ability to generalise is the opposite of our ability to empathise. And the reason I love this article so much is that it is expresses very clearly something I feel strongly about. Even if we are right in thinking that capitalism screws our society, for example, it is entirely wrong, not to mention hypocritical, to assign the blame on some conveniently scapegoatable group or stereotype.
Us Vs Them is the farcical falsity that has been the most destructive human force in history. Society, as I've probably observed before, is the single most constructive and destructive force that drives human actions. By being able to bond with each other, we can create much greater works, achieve much more, and generally be a better species. By bonding with each other, but not with everyone in the entire species, however, we make it specially easy for us to hate strangers. Hating strangers is, by its nature, always irrationally and almost always very harmful.
While it may be true that "wall-street bankers cause a lot of problems", it is wrong and, frankly, bizarre to hate an unspecific "wall-street banker" for this fact. He may be entirely innocent. And while it may be true that many people who are identified (by others) as "chavs" also cause a lot of problems, please please don't go hating the next person you see wearing addidas.
I have a confession to make: I've been cavorting with Wall Street Bankers. I’m in a fantasy baseball league, in fact, that’s chock full of Wall Street Bankers. And once, several years ago, I was interviewed by some Wall Street Bankers for a Wall Street hedge fund job. They didn’t end up offering me this position (and actually, the job was in Connecticut), but they did take me to a Yankees game and a nice Italian meal.
More alarmingly, my best friend from college is a former Wall Street Banker. This friend, whom I’ll identify only by the pseudonym Vijay, worked as an analyst for Salomon Smith Barney for several years in New York City, although he’s since moved on to private equity and then gone back to business school.
From looking at him, you wouldn’t know that Vijay was a Wall Street Banker. He’s an unassuming guy, into indie rock and cheap beer. He doesn’t eat meat and his politics are fairly liberal, although slightly to the right of mine.
While employed on Wall Street, Vijay routinely worked in excess of 100 hours a week. His apartment in the Financial District, a few blocks away from Ground Zero, consisted of three video gaming consoles, four alarm clocks, and a mattress; he was virtually never home, and so he had little need for anything else. I remember one occasion, when I was visiting my sister in New York City and we were attempting to drink cheap beer with Vijay, when he received a message on his Blackberry and abruptly had to dart off to Kinko’s at 11:30 on Sunday evening to fax a document to a client. I thought this was Extremely Uncool –- my sister and I still talk about the “Kinko’s Incident” -- but Vijay is nothing if not hard-working.
Vijay is a rather inconspicuous consumer, however, still driving the same beat-up Honda Civic that we used to take on midnight runs to Taco & Burrito Palace while in college. Although he was once something of a cheapskate, he has since become generous to a fault: the cheap beer is usually on him. While working in private equity, Vijay took time out of his day to teach inner-city high schoolers about finance and economics, and took a year off in between jobs to see his family and volunteer for the Red Cross in India. Vijay has his vices -- if he didn't, he wouldn't be my friend -- and his prejudices -- an irrational disdain for the borough of Brooklyn, for instance. But it is hard for me, when I read blanket assertions that Wall Street businesspeople are “greedy, selfish and utterly immoral”, not to think of Vijay, who is not really any of those things. True, Vijay is perhaps slightly more motivated by financial considerations than I am (but only slightly so). He attributes this to his Indian-American upbringing, which emphasizes the idea that money is hard to make, and so you do so when you can, and then use it to provide generously for your family and friends. This is his version of the American Dream, which is slightly different from mine, and is probably slightly different from yours, but not something I can find great fault with.
It is quite possible to believe each of the following things -- that the tax code is not as progressive as it ought to be; that high-level executives at major companies make, on average, more than they ultimately generate in profits for their shareholders; that the working class have too little influence over American politics and the upper class too much, and that banks and other financial institutions are inadequately regulated -– without having to demonize the people who work on Wall Street, the vast majority of whom are like Vijay: hard-working and ethical folks, maybe a little money-obsessed, but most of whom voted in November for a President who vowed to raise their taxes.
In English lessons we are normally advised not to make generalisations; when debating we often find them very useful. But generalisations are a direct product of the most harmful aspect of human social-structure: Us Vs Them. Our ability to generalise is the opposite of our ability to empathise. And the reason I love this article so much is that it is expresses very clearly something I feel strongly about. Even if we are right in thinking that capitalism screws our society, for example, it is entirely wrong, not to mention hypocritical, to assign the blame on some conveniently scapegoatable group or stereotype.
Us Vs Them is the farcical falsity that has been the most destructive human force in history. Society, as I've probably observed before, is the single most constructive and destructive force that drives human actions. By being able to bond with each other, we can create much greater works, achieve much more, and generally be a better species. By bonding with each other, but not with everyone in the entire species, however, we make it specially easy for us to hate strangers. Hating strangers is, by its nature, always irrationally and almost always very harmful.
While it may be true that "wall-street bankers cause a lot of problems", it is wrong and, frankly, bizarre to hate an unspecific "wall-street banker" for this fact. He may be entirely innocent. And while it may be true that many people who are identified (by others) as "chavs" also cause a lot of problems, please please don't go hating the next person you see wearing addidas.
Wednesday, 25 March 2009
Which came first, the attitude or everything else?
I recently stumbled across this quote by Charles R. Swindoll. How much do I agree with it? I don't know, but it might be useful for study.
The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, the education, the money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company... a church... a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past... we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you... we are in charge of our Attitudes.
Swindoll was (and is) a hopeless evangelical. The more I think about it, the less I agree. Are we in charge of our attitude? Probably not. I don't want to be unhappy, but sometimes I am, and there's not much I can do about it. Swindoll would probably say that, sure, everyone gets unhappy sometimes, but this is not an attitude, it's an emotion, and you can still take a positive attitude in the face of unhappiness.
But it's hard. And even if you can chose your attitude in theory, the forces that affect us often make this choice so difficult that it is basically impossible. As I've posted before, we do not remotely have free will. Even if we do have a small amount of control over it, our will is largely in the hands of fate, i.e. everything that effects us. There's no way the ratio is 1:9, as Swindoll suggests. I would say it's more like 7:3. Swindoll says that attitude is more important that eduction, money, facts, and everything else. But he doesn't see that all this is what affects our attitude. (Though I do agree these things are more important overall, it's important not to reverse cause and effect here). It is entirely unrealistic to say that we can simply pick any old attitude no matter what happens to us. Attitude is a reaction, an instinct, and it is not fully in our control. This is, incidentally, one of the most important things to bear in mind when studying society, because attitude and instinct are what make society possible. We are shaped by society and thus help to shape it. Attitude and society are luck (otherwise known as fate), they are what happens to you, and your response is limited hugely by them, and your own physiology, which is also luck. Not everyone has the necessary will to shape their attitude.
I hate to be the council of doom on this one...and I guess if you're feeling down at the moment it's much more advisable to listen to Swindoll than me. If you can take control of your attitude, then this is wonderful - you certainly should do it - but I think if we assume that everyone can be optimistic at will, then we will let a lot of people down. But if we recognise the power of fate and our largely passive nature, then we can at least work from there, and attempt to thing in more beneficial ways about such questions.
I mentioned cause and effect earlier - this question is more about the effects of causes having their own effects, and becoming causes in their own right. Swindoll says that attitude causes the causes that happen to you (i.e. if you thing positively, positive things will happen in your life), while I say that the causes that happen to you cause your attitude (i.e. if positive things happen in your life, then you will think positively). So in some ways, the whole debate can be seen as, as I recently heard it so succinctly put, buffoonery of the highest order, since we are basically arguing about chickens and eggs. But I still think your viewpoint - whether you look at it as chicken first or egg first - can be important, perhaps determining whether you're fatalistic or capitalistic.
The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, the education, the money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company... a church... a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past... we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you... we are in charge of our Attitudes.
Swindoll was (and is) a hopeless evangelical. The more I think about it, the less I agree. Are we in charge of our attitude? Probably not. I don't want to be unhappy, but sometimes I am, and there's not much I can do about it. Swindoll would probably say that, sure, everyone gets unhappy sometimes, but this is not an attitude, it's an emotion, and you can still take a positive attitude in the face of unhappiness.
But it's hard. And even if you can chose your attitude in theory, the forces that affect us often make this choice so difficult that it is basically impossible. As I've posted before, we do not remotely have free will. Even if we do have a small amount of control over it, our will is largely in the hands of fate, i.e. everything that effects us. There's no way the ratio is 1:9, as Swindoll suggests. I would say it's more like 7:3. Swindoll says that attitude is more important that eduction, money, facts, and everything else. But he doesn't see that all this is what affects our attitude. (Though I do agree these things are more important overall, it's important not to reverse cause and effect here). It is entirely unrealistic to say that we can simply pick any old attitude no matter what happens to us. Attitude is a reaction, an instinct, and it is not fully in our control. This is, incidentally, one of the most important things to bear in mind when studying society, because attitude and instinct are what make society possible. We are shaped by society and thus help to shape it. Attitude and society are luck (otherwise known as fate), they are what happens to you, and your response is limited hugely by them, and your own physiology, which is also luck. Not everyone has the necessary will to shape their attitude.
I hate to be the council of doom on this one...and I guess if you're feeling down at the moment it's much more advisable to listen to Swindoll than me. If you can take control of your attitude, then this is wonderful - you certainly should do it - but I think if we assume that everyone can be optimistic at will, then we will let a lot of people down. But if we recognise the power of fate and our largely passive nature, then we can at least work from there, and attempt to thing in more beneficial ways about such questions.
I mentioned cause and effect earlier - this question is more about the effects of causes having their own effects, and becoming causes in their own right. Swindoll says that attitude causes the causes that happen to you (i.e. if you thing positively, positive things will happen in your life), while I say that the causes that happen to you cause your attitude (i.e. if positive things happen in your life, then you will think positively). So in some ways, the whole debate can be seen as, as I recently heard it so succinctly put, buffoonery of the highest order, since we are basically arguing about chickens and eggs. But I still think your viewpoint - whether you look at it as chicken first or egg first - can be important, perhaps determining whether you're fatalistic or capitalistic.
Tuesday, 17 March 2009
Is everyone good?
I just reread the first Pilate episode from Bulgakov's Master and Margarita. If you don't know the book, it's about various surreal happenings in Moscow in Stalin's era, but one of the characters has a book about Jesus and Pontius Pilate, which differs considerably from the Biblical version (including the names). Bits of this first episode are printed below. It loses much in being taken out of context (also the translation is not my favourite), but the gist is there. When reading, consider the question in the title.
'Do you happen to know,' Pilate continued without taking his eyes off the prisoner, 'such men
as a certain Dysmas, another named Gestas, and a third named Bar-Rabban? [other criminals]'
'I do not know these good people,' the prisoner replied.
'Truly?'
'Truly.'
'And now tell me, why is it that you use me words "good people" all the time? Do you call
everyone that, or what?'
'Everyone,' the prisoner replied. There are no evil people in the world.'
'The first I hear of it,' Pilate said, grinning. 'But perhaps I know too little of life! ...
You needn't record any more,' he addressed the secretary, who had not recorded anything
anyway, and went on talking with the prisoner. 'You read that in some Greek book?'
'No, I figured it out for myself.'
'And you preach it?'
'Yes.'
'But take, for instance, the centurion Mark, the one known as Ratslayer - is he good?'
'Yes,' replied the prisoner. True, he's an unhappy man. Since the good people disfigured him,
he has become cruel and hard. I'd be curious to know who maimed him.'
'I can willingly tell you that,' Pilate responded, 'for I was a witness to it. The good people fell
on him like dogs on a bear. There were Germans fastened on his neck, his arms, his legs. The
infantry maniple was encircled, and if one flank hadn't been cut by a cavalry turmae, of which I was the commander - you, philosopher, would not have had the chance to speak with the Rat-slayer. That was at the battle of Idistaviso, in the Valley of the Virgins.'
'If I could speak with him,' the prisoner suddenly said musingly, 'I'm sure he'd change
sharply.'
...
'Listen, Ha-Nozri,' the procurator spoke, looking at Yeshua somehow strangely: the procurator's face was menacing, but his eyes were alarmed, 'did you ever say anything about the great Caesar? Answer! Did you?...Yes ... or ... no?' Pilate drew the word 'no' out somewhat longer than is done in court, and his glance sent Yeshua some thought that he wished as if to instill in the prisoner.
To speak the truth is easy and pleasant,' the prisoner observed.
'I have no need to know,' Pilate responded in a stifled, angry voice, 'whether it is pleasant or
unpleasant for you to speak the truth. You will have to speak it anyway. But, as you speak, weigh
every word, unless you want a not only inevitable but also painful death.'
No one knew what had happened with the procurator of Judea, but he allowed himself to raise
his hand as if to protect himself from a ray of sunlight, and from behind his hand, as from behind a shield, to send the prisoner some sort of prompting look.
'Answer, then,' he went on speaking, `do you know a certain Judas from Kiriath, [22] and what
precisely did you say to him about Caesar, if you said anything?'
'It was like this,' the prisoner began talking eagerly. The evening before last, near the temple,
I made the acquaintance of a young man who called himself Judas, from the town of Kiriath. He invited me to his place in the Lower City and treated me to...'
'A good man?' Pilate asked, and a devilish fire flashed in his eyes.
'A very good man and an inquisitive one,' the prisoner confirmed. 'He showed the greatest
interest in my thoughts and received me very cordially...'
'Lit the lamps...' Pilate spoke through his teeth, in the same tone as the prisoner, and his
eyes glinted.
'Yes,' Yeshua went on, slightly surprised that the procurator was so well informed, 'and asked
me to give my view of state authority. He was extremely interested in this question.'
'And what did you say?' asked Pilate. 'Or are you going to reply that you've forgotten what you
said?' But there was already hopelessness in Pilate's tone.
'Among other things,' the prisoner recounted, `I said that all authority is violence over people,
and that a time will come when there will be no authority of the Caesars, nor any other authority.
Man will pass into the kingdom of truth and justice, where generally there will be no need for any
authority.'
'Go on!'
'I didn't go on,' said the prisoner. 'Here men ran in, bound me, and took me away to prison.'
...
'I see that some misfortune has come about because I talked with that young man from
Kiriath. I have a foreboding, Hegemon, that he will come to grief, and I am very sorry for him.'
'I think,' the procurator replied, grinning strangely, `that there is now someone else in the
world for whom you ought to feel sorrier than' for Judas of Kiriath, and who is going to have it much worse than Judas! ...So, then, Mark Rat-slayer, a cold and convinced torturer, the people who, as I see,' the procurator pointed to Yeshua's disfigured face, `beat you for your preaching, the robbers Dysmas and Gestas, who with their confreres killed four soldiers, and, finally, the dirty traitor Judas - are all good people?'
'Yes,' said the prisoner.
'And the kingdom of truth will come?'
'It will, Hegemon,' Yeshua answered with conviction.
Now heretofore, I have frequently catalogued my view that mankind is the species of goodness through empathy, and that we are slowly working towards a more perfect expression of this goodness. A species capable of idealising perfection and goodness must be ultimately capable of achieving these ideals. However, at this precise moment in our evolution, there is still a lot of badness that remains in our species from the days when we were animals. I'd basically assumed that a species of goodness can still have plenty of individual anomalies, i.e. bad people, and that part of the evolution is the ever dwindling number of bad people as a percentage of all people.
I have never really believed, or even properly considered the issue, that all individuals are good. But if I am to be consistent, I am starting to think that I must, like Yeshua, consider all people to be good. Was Hitler good? Are the people who slaughter each other across the world good? Am I good?
Yeshua would argue that the answer to all these questions is yes. Hitler may have been a soulless murderer, but he was originally working for his ideals and his people. He had the misfortune of being warped by his upbringing, his society and the first world war. Yeshua would have asked to talk to him for a bit, and would be sure that "he'd change sharply". Anyone who does not act in a good way is simply unhappy, not bad.
I confess that I find this view appealing but very difficult to reconcile with myself. Consider:
1 Logically, is it impossible for everyone to be good, since such a quality can only be relative? For goodness to exist, must there be badness, because otherwise it can only be normal?
1b) Can some people be more good than others?
2 If everyone is good, why is there evil in the world?
Now, before answering slightly pedantic questions like these, I always feel that a disclaimer is needed, along the lines of "we do not necessarily believe that logic is a valid means of answering inherently non-logical questions about the significance of life, God or human-kind." Too many theorists and philosophers tackle questions about crazy deep stuff as if it's a mathematical equation that can be solved by strict application of certain rules.
Now with this disclaimer in mind, I think I can swiftly dispatch with 1 by saying that true, badness is necessary for the existence of goodness, but people can do bad things whilst still being good people. I think this is an important step for me in rationalising Yeshua's belief. I think this also sorts out question 2 fairly comprehensively. I think 1b) is more tricky, since the the whole basis of this idea is that people are good. They just are. That's what people are. Good. It's like people are carbon-based life-forms, and they are good. But they are not better. You can't be more carbon-based than someone else. It's just a thing. So if people can't be more good than each other, does this devalue the nature of goodness? I have to admit that I think it does, but perhaps not too much. I feel it is important to realise, in an entirely non-logical-and-from-the-heart way that people are good, but this doesn't mean that we are in any way deserving of praise, since it's basically in our nature - just like the vast majority of British people don't deserve any praise at all if the team called "Britain" wins the rugby world cup.
As anyone who's read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance knows, musing on the definition of 'good' is the route to madness. Here I think it should not be considered in the traditional sense of just being nice to people - not all people are nice to others clearly. What Yeshua is saying is that people are good in the sense of their state of being, their mindset or their way of thinking, if not necessarily in their actions. Sure, you can see this as a devaluing of 'good', but I think it's still important.
I'm actually quite exited that I've managed to convince myself about this. I don't feel I've been false in wanting to believe something simply because it is appealingly idealistic. I think this genuinely fits with all my other social beliefs. I guess I should thank Jesus!
'Do you happen to know,' Pilate continued without taking his eyes off the prisoner, 'such men
as a certain Dysmas, another named Gestas, and a third named Bar-Rabban? [other criminals]'
'I do not know these good people,' the prisoner replied.
'Truly?'
'Truly.'
'And now tell me, why is it that you use me words "good people" all the time? Do you call
everyone that, or what?'
'Everyone,' the prisoner replied. There are no evil people in the world.'
'The first I hear of it,' Pilate said, grinning. 'But perhaps I know too little of life! ...
You needn't record any more,' he addressed the secretary, who had not recorded anything
anyway, and went on talking with the prisoner. 'You read that in some Greek book?'
'No, I figured it out for myself.'
'And you preach it?'
'Yes.'
'But take, for instance, the centurion Mark, the one known as Ratslayer - is he good?'
'Yes,' replied the prisoner. True, he's an unhappy man. Since the good people disfigured him,
he has become cruel and hard. I'd be curious to know who maimed him.'
'I can willingly tell you that,' Pilate responded, 'for I was a witness to it. The good people fell
on him like dogs on a bear. There were Germans fastened on his neck, his arms, his legs. The
infantry maniple was encircled, and if one flank hadn't been cut by a cavalry turmae, of which I was the commander - you, philosopher, would not have had the chance to speak with the Rat-slayer. That was at the battle of Idistaviso, in the Valley of the Virgins.'
'If I could speak with him,' the prisoner suddenly said musingly, 'I'm sure he'd change
sharply.'
...
'Listen, Ha-Nozri,' the procurator spoke, looking at Yeshua somehow strangely: the procurator's face was menacing, but his eyes were alarmed, 'did you ever say anything about the great Caesar? Answer! Did you?...Yes ... or ... no?' Pilate drew the word 'no' out somewhat longer than is done in court, and his glance sent Yeshua some thought that he wished as if to instill in the prisoner.
To speak the truth is easy and pleasant,' the prisoner observed.
'I have no need to know,' Pilate responded in a stifled, angry voice, 'whether it is pleasant or
unpleasant for you to speak the truth. You will have to speak it anyway. But, as you speak, weigh
every word, unless you want a not only inevitable but also painful death.'
No one knew what had happened with the procurator of Judea, but he allowed himself to raise
his hand as if to protect himself from a ray of sunlight, and from behind his hand, as from behind a shield, to send the prisoner some sort of prompting look.
'Answer, then,' he went on speaking, `do you know a certain Judas from Kiriath, [22] and what
precisely did you say to him about Caesar, if you said anything?'
'It was like this,' the prisoner began talking eagerly. The evening before last, near the temple,
I made the acquaintance of a young man who called himself Judas, from the town of Kiriath. He invited me to his place in the Lower City and treated me to...'
'A good man?' Pilate asked, and a devilish fire flashed in his eyes.
'A very good man and an inquisitive one,' the prisoner confirmed. 'He showed the greatest
interest in my thoughts and received me very cordially...'
'Lit the lamps...' Pilate spoke through his teeth, in the same tone as the prisoner, and his
eyes glinted.
'Yes,' Yeshua went on, slightly surprised that the procurator was so well informed, 'and asked
me to give my view of state authority. He was extremely interested in this question.'
'And what did you say?' asked Pilate. 'Or are you going to reply that you've forgotten what you
said?' But there was already hopelessness in Pilate's tone.
'Among other things,' the prisoner recounted, `I said that all authority is violence over people,
and that a time will come when there will be no authority of the Caesars, nor any other authority.
Man will pass into the kingdom of truth and justice, where generally there will be no need for any
authority.'
'Go on!'
'I didn't go on,' said the prisoner. 'Here men ran in, bound me, and took me away to prison.'
...
'I see that some misfortune has come about because I talked with that young man from
Kiriath. I have a foreboding, Hegemon, that he will come to grief, and I am very sorry for him.'
'I think,' the procurator replied, grinning strangely, `that there is now someone else in the
world for whom you ought to feel sorrier than' for Judas of Kiriath, and who is going to have it much worse than Judas! ...So, then, Mark Rat-slayer, a cold and convinced torturer, the people who, as I see,' the procurator pointed to Yeshua's disfigured face, `beat you for your preaching, the robbers Dysmas and Gestas, who with their confreres killed four soldiers, and, finally, the dirty traitor Judas - are all good people?'
'Yes,' said the prisoner.
'And the kingdom of truth will come?'
'It will, Hegemon,' Yeshua answered with conviction.
Now heretofore, I have frequently catalogued my view that mankind is the species of goodness through empathy, and that we are slowly working towards a more perfect expression of this goodness. A species capable of idealising perfection and goodness must be ultimately capable of achieving these ideals. However, at this precise moment in our evolution, there is still a lot of badness that remains in our species from the days when we were animals. I'd basically assumed that a species of goodness can still have plenty of individual anomalies, i.e. bad people, and that part of the evolution is the ever dwindling number of bad people as a percentage of all people.
I have never really believed, or even properly considered the issue, that all individuals are good. But if I am to be consistent, I am starting to think that I must, like Yeshua, consider all people to be good. Was Hitler good? Are the people who slaughter each other across the world good? Am I good?
Yeshua would argue that the answer to all these questions is yes. Hitler may have been a soulless murderer, but he was originally working for his ideals and his people. He had the misfortune of being warped by his upbringing, his society and the first world war. Yeshua would have asked to talk to him for a bit, and would be sure that "he'd change sharply". Anyone who does not act in a good way is simply unhappy, not bad.
I confess that I find this view appealing but very difficult to reconcile with myself. Consider:
1 Logically, is it impossible for everyone to be good, since such a quality can only be relative? For goodness to exist, must there be badness, because otherwise it can only be normal?
1b) Can some people be more good than others?
2 If everyone is good, why is there evil in the world?
Now, before answering slightly pedantic questions like these, I always feel that a disclaimer is needed, along the lines of "we do not necessarily believe that logic is a valid means of answering inherently non-logical questions about the significance of life, God or human-kind." Too many theorists and philosophers tackle questions about crazy deep stuff as if it's a mathematical equation that can be solved by strict application of certain rules.
Now with this disclaimer in mind, I think I can swiftly dispatch with 1 by saying that true, badness is necessary for the existence of goodness, but people can do bad things whilst still being good people. I think this is an important step for me in rationalising Yeshua's belief. I think this also sorts out question 2 fairly comprehensively. I think 1b) is more tricky, since the the whole basis of this idea is that people are good. They just are. That's what people are. Good. It's like people are carbon-based life-forms, and they are good. But they are not better. You can't be more carbon-based than someone else. It's just a thing. So if people can't be more good than each other, does this devalue the nature of goodness? I have to admit that I think it does, but perhaps not too much. I feel it is important to realise, in an entirely non-logical-and-from-the-heart way that people are good, but this doesn't mean that we are in any way deserving of praise, since it's basically in our nature - just like the vast majority of British people don't deserve any praise at all if the team called "Britain" wins the rugby world cup.
As anyone who's read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance knows, musing on the definition of 'good' is the route to madness. Here I think it should not be considered in the traditional sense of just being nice to people - not all people are nice to others clearly. What Yeshua is saying is that people are good in the sense of their state of being, their mindset or their way of thinking, if not necessarily in their actions. Sure, you can see this as a devaluing of 'good', but I think it's still important.
I'm actually quite exited that I've managed to convince myself about this. I don't feel I've been false in wanting to believe something simply because it is appealingly idealistic. I think this genuinely fits with all my other social beliefs. I guess I should thank Jesus!
Wednesday, 11 March 2009
Thoughts on revolution and the romantic idealist
Lately I have had the honour to hang out with several people who have far greater revolutionary credentials than I can hope to lay claim to! These people struggle everyday to make the world a better place. They are not violent, they have an almost indestructible sense of right, and they have almost no hope of ever achieving their aims in their lifetimes. They live in a corrupt and evil country in a corrupt and evil world, and they always have their ideals at the forefront of their mind. True, they don't always remember that Che Guevara was a killer as well as an inspirational reformer, and they might sometimes get a bit carried away (let's not talk about the 1st of January 1994...) But these people are bringing the revolution to Mexico.
And it's not just the zapatistas. Across the globe there are millions who hope fervently for change and are actively promoting it with every resource available to them. And many more do the same when a notable event, such as the Obama campaign, for instance, prompts them to.
At ever stage of history, there have been those who have pushed the barriers of human progress, and taken us another step towards the true meaning of humanity. At the same time, there are those who take us several steps back towards our animalistic origins through their unbelievable acts of evil. Never once has sudden revolution made any more change to human nature or human existence than the gradual revolution that takes place naturally every day across the globe. In many countries, slavery, that great pillar of the egocentric half of human nature, is already unthinkable.
These are the various and disconnected thoughts that I have about revolution. Idealism cannot be flawed unless it misunderstands the theory of evolution. Our progress is slow, but one day idealism will be all that we know. Romantics and Idealists know that Love and Respect are the foundations of true humanity, and they know that hope and idealism are the cement with which the house will be built. I hate when people say that all we need is love, but this is because I fail to understand what love is. Love is empathy, and empathy is human nature.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Love is empathy, and empathy is human nature
PS: on a slightly related note, I'd like to say that we do not rebel against a capitalist system that was created on purpose for the rich to beat down the poor. There is nothing purposeful about capitalism, as my good friend Weapons of Mass Destruction supposes, nor is there anything purposeful about socialism. They are merely reflections of the two sides of human nature. True, capitalism is far better at creating wealth, but this is only because our animal half is far better at doing things for oneself...and though many have tried to justify capitalism because it accidentally has positive effects for everyone, it is still only possible in a society that clings to the original egocentricism over the emerging altruism of empathy. True, a true and well informed altruist might select capitalism over socialism because it will create better living conditions for more people. But what percentage of humanity makes a personal decision about which economic template they follow? Society makes the decision for us, and we have no choice but to bow to social pressure, not having free will of our own on such issues (see my previous post about this) There is nothing intrinsically wrong about the omnipotence of society, nor about our lack of free will. It makes sudden revolution impossible, of course, which is a shame. But ultimately the final incarnation of human society will be socialist. It cannot help but be so. Whether it will work or not is up for discussion. I pray it will, because if not, humanity is a failed species.
And it's not just the zapatistas. Across the globe there are millions who hope fervently for change and are actively promoting it with every resource available to them. And many more do the same when a notable event, such as the Obama campaign, for instance, prompts them to.
At ever stage of history, there have been those who have pushed the barriers of human progress, and taken us another step towards the true meaning of humanity. At the same time, there are those who take us several steps back towards our animalistic origins through their unbelievable acts of evil. Never once has sudden revolution made any more change to human nature or human existence than the gradual revolution that takes place naturally every day across the globe. In many countries, slavery, that great pillar of the egocentric half of human nature, is already unthinkable.
These are the various and disconnected thoughts that I have about revolution. Idealism cannot be flawed unless it misunderstands the theory of evolution. Our progress is slow, but one day idealism will be all that we know. Romantics and Idealists know that Love and Respect are the foundations of true humanity, and they know that hope and idealism are the cement with which the house will be built. I hate when people say that all we need is love, but this is because I fail to understand what love is. Love is empathy, and empathy is human nature.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Love is empathy, and empathy is human nature
PS: on a slightly related note, I'd like to say that we do not rebel against a capitalist system that was created on purpose for the rich to beat down the poor. There is nothing purposeful about capitalism, as my good friend Weapons of Mass Destruction supposes, nor is there anything purposeful about socialism. They are merely reflections of the two sides of human nature. True, capitalism is far better at creating wealth, but this is only because our animal half is far better at doing things for oneself...and though many have tried to justify capitalism because it accidentally has positive effects for everyone, it is still only possible in a society that clings to the original egocentricism over the emerging altruism of empathy. True, a true and well informed altruist might select capitalism over socialism because it will create better living conditions for more people. But what percentage of humanity makes a personal decision about which economic template they follow? Society makes the decision for us, and we have no choice but to bow to social pressure, not having free will of our own on such issues (see my previous post about this) There is nothing intrinsically wrong about the omnipotence of society, nor about our lack of free will. It makes sudden revolution impossible, of course, which is a shame. But ultimately the final incarnation of human society will be socialist. It cannot help but be so. Whether it will work or not is up for discussion. I pray it will, because if not, humanity is a failed species.
Wednesday, 4 March 2009
The subjunctive, the Joker and the three literary references
To start with, what is grammatically wrong in this sentence:
It is important that she goes to London every month.
That's right: it should be using the subjunctive. "It is important that she go."
The subjunctive is a truly wonderful thing. I just had a great conversation with a Spanish teacher and some other linguists about its cultural significance. I only know two languages, but it is fascinating sociological/anthropological practice to compare them and the different cultures they represent. The subjunctive in Spanish was originally part of the Moorish influence that permeated the new Spain for many centuries after the last Muslims were kicked out of Iberia in the middle ages. Islamic culture is a brilliantly fatalistic thing, in which people believe that events might only occur (did you notice the subjunctive there as well?) if Allah wills them to. Thus the Spanish word Ojalá, which is actually a twist on an Arabic word meaning "God willing". Ojalá is always followed by the subjunctive.
The subjunctive "mood" expresses some kind of uncertainty, and it really moulded well into the new Hispanic-mesoamerican culture that was created by Spanish colonialism in Latinamerica. The same fatalism that was present in the rampant Catholic-Islamo determinism of Southern Europe fit in perfectly with the god fearing indigenous way of life. The subjunctive had a field day. It is important to note, however, that the subjunctive culture is not simply one of superstition. It is a means of living; a form of belief that recognises that we really have no idea what is going to happen to us tomorrow. Life happens to us; we don't control it.
At this point I am going to use the first of my literary inspirations on this topic. This is a little story in the first chapter of Mikhail Bulgakov's masterpiece The Master and Margarita, in which two atheists find themselves in an argument with a stranger about the existence of God. The atheists explain that there is no really valid proof of God, so logically we cannot say he exists. The stranger says but in that case who controls everything, who causes events to happen the way they do? The atheists explain that humans have mastered everything and we can have control over our own lives. The stranger replies, but you don't even know what's going to happen to you tonight! One of the others replies, I do know; I'm going to a meeting at x place at y time etc etc, and storms off and promptly is run over by a tram.
It is a lesson to us all: use the subjunctive to express doubt about your future doings.
To return to the analysis of subjunctive culture, it is of course particularly interesting to compare it with our western indicative culture. While Spain and France were still asking God for permission to continue with their lives, the Protestant revolutions of Northern Europe left the subjunctive lying in the dust. As good old Weber famously explained, Protestantism goes hand in hand with capitalism, and the culture of control, despite its early flirtations with predestination. To be a capitalist, you have to organise yourself, and do things the way you want them done. The puritan free-marketeers of Northern Europe and America do not think that life happens to them, despite all the evidence that it does. They seek to control their surroundings and become frustrated and psychotic when they cannot. It is particularly significant that English speakers have largely forgotten that the subjunctive even exists, as illustrated by the sentence at the top of this post. We always use the indicative, even when it is grammatically incorrect; everything for us is real and beyond doubt.
Compare this once again with Hispanic culture. In Spain itself, where the Moors left several hundred years ago and the Church's importance has declined drastically since Franco's demise, the subjunctive has started to be used less and less. But in Latinamerica, where the power of indigenous tribal religions is still subconsciously prevalent, the subjunctive is doing very well. My Spanish teacher was telling me how Mexicans cannot comprehend the idea of the diary or timetable. It seems completely bizarre to them to be planning in such detail events which we have know way of knowing will even occur. To them, capitalists like the Americans and Japanese are - in the immortal words of the Joker - schemers ("Schemers trying to control their worlds. I’m not a schemer, I show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are." - for an excellent analysis of the subjunctivism of the Joker's philosophy, see here).
Latinamerican culture is ruled by the fatalism of the subjunctive. This is particularly well demonstrated by my second literary reference for today (only one more to go!): García Márquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold. In this novelette, the protagonist, a certain Santiago Nasar (significantly of Arabic origins) is murdered by the brothers of a women he is alleged to have slept with out of wedlock. Apart from the fact that the crime is motivated by the cult of virginity that is just as much a product of psycho Catholicism as the subjunctive culture is, the book is relevant because of the way it is told. The reader is informed from the beginning that Nasar will die at the end. The events of the tragedy are then unfolded in GM's typically dry, disinterested way, despite their extraordinary nature. Every inhabitant of the town is fully aware that Nasar will be killed, and they know the murders, the method and the time. They even let the murderers take the weapons with which the crime is committed. The murderers themselves don't even want to do what they do. The only person in the town who doesn't know the sequence of events in advance is Santiago Nasar himself, and nobody tells him because they believe there's no way he can't know about it. Indeed, Santiago is seconds away from salvation (still in his ignorance) when he finds the door of his house miraculously locked, by a freak chain events, thus forcing him to remain outside at the mercy of the killers. Everyone, including the murderers and the murdered, leave everything up to fate - they don't even try to overcome the inexorable events that unfold before them, unappealing as they are.
An sublime analysis of Columbian culture, the book makes us question the benefits of subjuntivism in excess, but it is my belief that a lack of any kind of fatalistic mindset is also incorrect, if not dangerous. And I feel that this post is as good a time as any to write down one of my pet theories that I find hugely interesting. That of fate.
When I say that this is my theory, I am being blatantly plagiaristic. Yet again, my theory is inspired by/taken from others. Inspired, in fact, almost in its entirety by our final text, Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. A terrific novel, a historical analysis, a romance, a social commentary, a 19th century equivalent of a war film, there are very few genres that are not covered here. But the really inspiring bit comes in the epilogue, with Tolstoy's foray into historical philosophy. His question, which I regard as the bedrock for all sociological study, is simply: "what is the force that drives nations?" Tolstoy attacks the common view of historians that historical evens occur because of the actions of certain protagonists, like, in this case, Napoleon or Tsar Alexander or Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Do thousands upon thousands of people march hundreds of miles across an entire continent, raping, pillaging and murdering as they go, simply to get slaughtered, endure miserable conditions and then march back again, simply because someone who calls himself an emperor tells them to? Clearly not. Each man goes for his own reasons, be they money, fear or pleasure. Yet even this is not the real reason why they go. There are very few people, even in 19th century France, that can be induced to kill other people merely for money. People become soldiers because of the force that drives nations: society.
But the important thing for our purposes here is not Tolstoy's sociological insight, but his point that we have not yet discovered a method for predetermining these social forces that drive the events of history, and probably never will. This is because humans do not have the free will that they think they have. Here Tolstoy really gets philosophical, and it's brilliant. No one doubts that we should aim for freedom for all people. Yet this is clearly an impossible situation. For a start, we are limited by physics. We cannot fly, we cannot stop ourselves being crushed by falling buildings when there is an earthquake. We cannot live in the sea. Secondly, we are limited by society. We cannot go around killing people at will, because we will be locked up. Thirdly, societies are limited by other societies. If we want a patch of land, we will encounter resistance from its owners. There are a whole catalogue of other limits on human activity, those are but the most obvious. As Tolstoy explains (I'm paraphrasing): we say we have free will, and we lift our arm to demonstrate this. But could we have not lifted our arm in that moment? To prove that we could not have, we leave our arm motionless for a few seconds. But at the time when the arm was lifted, is there any way we could have exerted our free will and not have lifted it?
In short, the message is that we should recognise the role of fate in our lives a bit more. It's dangerous to think that we can control everything, when we are but one element in a massive universe of happenings. We should see the demerits of our indicative culture, and perhaps remember next time to say "it's important that she go" (inshalla).
It is important that she goes to London every month.
That's right: it should be using the subjunctive. "It is important that she go."
The subjunctive is a truly wonderful thing. I just had a great conversation with a Spanish teacher and some other linguists about its cultural significance. I only know two languages, but it is fascinating sociological/anthropological practice to compare them and the different cultures they represent. The subjunctive in Spanish was originally part of the Moorish influence that permeated the new Spain for many centuries after the last Muslims were kicked out of Iberia in the middle ages. Islamic culture is a brilliantly fatalistic thing, in which people believe that events might only occur (did you notice the subjunctive there as well?) if Allah wills them to. Thus the Spanish word Ojalá, which is actually a twist on an Arabic word meaning "God willing". Ojalá is always followed by the subjunctive.
The subjunctive "mood" expresses some kind of uncertainty, and it really moulded well into the new Hispanic-mesoamerican culture that was created by Spanish colonialism in Latinamerica. The same fatalism that was present in the rampant Catholic-Islamo determinism of Southern Europe fit in perfectly with the god fearing indigenous way of life. The subjunctive had a field day. It is important to note, however, that the subjunctive culture is not simply one of superstition. It is a means of living; a form of belief that recognises that we really have no idea what is going to happen to us tomorrow. Life happens to us; we don't control it.
At this point I am going to use the first of my literary inspirations on this topic. This is a little story in the first chapter of Mikhail Bulgakov's masterpiece The Master and Margarita, in which two atheists find themselves in an argument with a stranger about the existence of God. The atheists explain that there is no really valid proof of God, so logically we cannot say he exists. The stranger says but in that case who controls everything, who causes events to happen the way they do? The atheists explain that humans have mastered everything and we can have control over our own lives. The stranger replies, but you don't even know what's going to happen to you tonight! One of the others replies, I do know; I'm going to a meeting at x place at y time etc etc, and storms off and promptly is run over by a tram.
It is a lesson to us all: use the subjunctive to express doubt about your future doings.
To return to the analysis of subjunctive culture, it is of course particularly interesting to compare it with our western indicative culture. While Spain and France were still asking God for permission to continue with their lives, the Protestant revolutions of Northern Europe left the subjunctive lying in the dust. As good old Weber famously explained, Protestantism goes hand in hand with capitalism, and the culture of control, despite its early flirtations with predestination. To be a capitalist, you have to organise yourself, and do things the way you want them done. The puritan free-marketeers of Northern Europe and America do not think that life happens to them, despite all the evidence that it does. They seek to control their surroundings and become frustrated and psychotic when they cannot. It is particularly significant that English speakers have largely forgotten that the subjunctive even exists, as illustrated by the sentence at the top of this post. We always use the indicative, even when it is grammatically incorrect; everything for us is real and beyond doubt.
Compare this once again with Hispanic culture. In Spain itself, where the Moors left several hundred years ago and the Church's importance has declined drastically since Franco's demise, the subjunctive has started to be used less and less. But in Latinamerica, where the power of indigenous tribal religions is still subconsciously prevalent, the subjunctive is doing very well. My Spanish teacher was telling me how Mexicans cannot comprehend the idea of the diary or timetable. It seems completely bizarre to them to be planning in such detail events which we have know way of knowing will even occur. To them, capitalists like the Americans and Japanese are - in the immortal words of the Joker - schemers ("Schemers trying to control their worlds. I’m not a schemer, I show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are." - for an excellent analysis of the subjunctivism of the Joker's philosophy, see here).
Latinamerican culture is ruled by the fatalism of the subjunctive. This is particularly well demonstrated by my second literary reference for today (only one more to go!): García Márquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold. In this novelette, the protagonist, a certain Santiago Nasar (significantly of Arabic origins) is murdered by the brothers of a women he is alleged to have slept with out of wedlock. Apart from the fact that the crime is motivated by the cult of virginity that is just as much a product of psycho Catholicism as the subjunctive culture is, the book is relevant because of the way it is told. The reader is informed from the beginning that Nasar will die at the end. The events of the tragedy are then unfolded in GM's typically dry, disinterested way, despite their extraordinary nature. Every inhabitant of the town is fully aware that Nasar will be killed, and they know the murders, the method and the time. They even let the murderers take the weapons with which the crime is committed. The murderers themselves don't even want to do what they do. The only person in the town who doesn't know the sequence of events in advance is Santiago Nasar himself, and nobody tells him because they believe there's no way he can't know about it. Indeed, Santiago is seconds away from salvation (still in his ignorance) when he finds the door of his house miraculously locked, by a freak chain events, thus forcing him to remain outside at the mercy of the killers. Everyone, including the murderers and the murdered, leave everything up to fate - they don't even try to overcome the inexorable events that unfold before them, unappealing as they are.
An sublime analysis of Columbian culture, the book makes us question the benefits of subjuntivism in excess, but it is my belief that a lack of any kind of fatalistic mindset is also incorrect, if not dangerous. And I feel that this post is as good a time as any to write down one of my pet theories that I find hugely interesting. That of fate.
When I say that this is my theory, I am being blatantly plagiaristic. Yet again, my theory is inspired by/taken from others. Inspired, in fact, almost in its entirety by our final text, Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. A terrific novel, a historical analysis, a romance, a social commentary, a 19th century equivalent of a war film, there are very few genres that are not covered here. But the really inspiring bit comes in the epilogue, with Tolstoy's foray into historical philosophy. His question, which I regard as the bedrock for all sociological study, is simply: "what is the force that drives nations?" Tolstoy attacks the common view of historians that historical evens occur because of the actions of certain protagonists, like, in this case, Napoleon or Tsar Alexander or Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Do thousands upon thousands of people march hundreds of miles across an entire continent, raping, pillaging and murdering as they go, simply to get slaughtered, endure miserable conditions and then march back again, simply because someone who calls himself an emperor tells them to? Clearly not. Each man goes for his own reasons, be they money, fear or pleasure. Yet even this is not the real reason why they go. There are very few people, even in 19th century France, that can be induced to kill other people merely for money. People become soldiers because of the force that drives nations: society.
But the important thing for our purposes here is not Tolstoy's sociological insight, but his point that we have not yet discovered a method for predetermining these social forces that drive the events of history, and probably never will. This is because humans do not have the free will that they think they have. Here Tolstoy really gets philosophical, and it's brilliant. No one doubts that we should aim for freedom for all people. Yet this is clearly an impossible situation. For a start, we are limited by physics. We cannot fly, we cannot stop ourselves being crushed by falling buildings when there is an earthquake. We cannot live in the sea. Secondly, we are limited by society. We cannot go around killing people at will, because we will be locked up. Thirdly, societies are limited by other societies. If we want a patch of land, we will encounter resistance from its owners. There are a whole catalogue of other limits on human activity, those are but the most obvious. As Tolstoy explains (I'm paraphrasing): we say we have free will, and we lift our arm to demonstrate this. But could we have not lifted our arm in that moment? To prove that we could not have, we leave our arm motionless for a few seconds. But at the time when the arm was lifted, is there any way we could have exerted our free will and not have lifted it?
In short, the message is that we should recognise the role of fate in our lives a bit more. It's dangerous to think that we can control everything, when we are but one element in a massive universe of happenings. We should see the demerits of our indicative culture, and perhaps remember next time to say "it's important that she go" (inshalla).
Saturday, 28 February 2009
Social extremes
So the same woman who gave me the plot for my new novel (girl X in the previous post), today told me about a little party she's having this weekend...she's going out to lunch with "only" (I kid you not) about 100 friends. And they're all women friends. Normally a classic party can have 600 people, maybe 1000 if it's a biggy. And they're all good friends.
We Brits are friggin introverted.
We Brits are friggin introverted.
Tuesday, 24 February 2009
Book idea; inspiration mexico style
OK, so this is the plot for my novel I'm going to start writing.
It's 1962, and Fidel Castro and Che Guavara are invading Cuba from Mexico's gulf coast. (Was that 1962? I can't remember...) There's a thirteen year old girl (call her X) living in Oaxaca, Mexico. She receives a postcard that's part of a chain message, designed to get young people writing to each other around the world. She starts writing her own postcards, and one of them arrives in the hands of a young woman (girl Y, say, about 19 years old) recently moved to Havana from Mexico with Castro's revolutionaries, a member of the cultural corps. She's passionately dedicated to the communist cause, and works hard to establish cultural exchange programs around the world on behalf of the new Cuban government.
Girl Y replies to girl X, who also replies. Their letters become more frequent. Over the years they tell each other about their boyfriends, their husbands, their work, their homes. They are best friends and they've never met. Finally in 1982, Girl X goes to Cuba. They meet, deeply moved by the power of their friendship. The meet in Cuba three more times. Then in 1995, Gild Y's son who is now a famous salsa musician moves for a year with his band to Mexico, thus enabling Girl Y to get permission from the government to travel abroad to be with her son. X and Y live together for a year, and Girl Y gets to explore Mexico, the country of her childhood and of her dreams.
In 2008, Girl X, on a whim, googles the name of Girl Y, to whom she now writes emails every day, instead of letters. Turns out that girl Y is a famous writer, public figure and general philanthropist, known for her patronage of charitable works, her colour poems and her unwavering support for the Castro regime. Girl Y had never breathed a word of her fame to Girl X.
Presumably with the end of the Castro government, the friendship is somehow broken (I may have to wait till Castro dies to write this book...).
And where did I get this idea? It's a true story, recounted to me just a few minutes a go by a charming Mexican lady who is currently hosting me here in Oaxaca. W.O.W. Didn't I tell you inspiration can come from the most amazing places!
Talking of Mexico and inspiration....I've had quite a few 6th gear moments here in the South of North America.It's a pretty incredible place; lots of good thinking opportunities. ¡Hasta luego!
It's 1962, and Fidel Castro and Che Guavara are invading Cuba from Mexico's gulf coast. (Was that 1962? I can't remember...) There's a thirteen year old girl (call her X) living in Oaxaca, Mexico. She receives a postcard that's part of a chain message, designed to get young people writing to each other around the world. She starts writing her own postcards, and one of them arrives in the hands of a young woman (girl Y, say, about 19 years old) recently moved to Havana from Mexico with Castro's revolutionaries, a member of the cultural corps. She's passionately dedicated to the communist cause, and works hard to establish cultural exchange programs around the world on behalf of the new Cuban government.
Girl Y replies to girl X, who also replies. Their letters become more frequent. Over the years they tell each other about their boyfriends, their husbands, their work, their homes. They are best friends and they've never met. Finally in 1982, Girl X goes to Cuba. They meet, deeply moved by the power of their friendship. The meet in Cuba three more times. Then in 1995, Gild Y's son who is now a famous salsa musician moves for a year with his band to Mexico, thus enabling Girl Y to get permission from the government to travel abroad to be with her son. X and Y live together for a year, and Girl Y gets to explore Mexico, the country of her childhood and of her dreams.
In 2008, Girl X, on a whim, googles the name of Girl Y, to whom she now writes emails every day, instead of letters. Turns out that girl Y is a famous writer, public figure and general philanthropist, known for her patronage of charitable works, her colour poems and her unwavering support for the Castro regime. Girl Y had never breathed a word of her fame to Girl X.
Presumably with the end of the Castro government, the friendship is somehow broken (I may have to wait till Castro dies to write this book...).
And where did I get this idea? It's a true story, recounted to me just a few minutes a go by a charming Mexican lady who is currently hosting me here in Oaxaca. W.O.W. Didn't I tell you inspiration can come from the most amazing places!
Talking of Mexico and inspiration....I've had quite a few 6th gear moments here in the South of North America.It's a pretty incredible place; lots of good thinking opportunities. ¡Hasta luego!
Tuesday, 10 February 2009
Cosmic coincidences
So I recently went to the site of a once-mighty Mesoamerican capital, complete with massive pyramids, arenas and ridiculous amounts of staircases. This empire, it turns out, started as a small village in about 600BC, rising to become an important city by about 200BC, reaching its zenith as an Empire in about 400AD, eventually falling into ruin in about 700BC, largely as a result of corruption and invasion. Remind you of anyone? This timeline is almost identical, give or take a few centuries, to that of the Romans, several thousand miles away, two empires that were massively important and basically contemporaries, that didn't even know of each other's continents.....
It's got me thinking about central american ancient civilisations. For example, why does no one point out that it's a miracle that they even exist? For there to have been people in America before the European discovery, humans must have crossed over from Russia. Now, forgive me for thinking this, but even if this was physically possible because the two continents were connected by ice during the last ice age, what the hell were people doing in the remotest regions of Russia in the first place? Why would anyone ever think it was a good idea to cross hundreds of miles of barren ice? How could they even have survived this? Before the ancient civilisations arose, people didn't even come in groups of more than 30. How could such a tiny number of people have made it into America? It's the same in Africa: humans originated in the tropics of middle-Africa, so in order for them to have populated the rest of the world, they must have at some point crossed the Sahara desert. How did they know how do survive in such conditions? What are the chances that DNA was ever created in the first place?
Anyways, back to Mesoamerica. It strikes me that European civilisations have some of the least developed scientific cultures in the pantheon of ancient civilisations. Look at the Mayans, the Persians, the Chinese - all of them were fascinated with cosmic occurrences, with the greater significance of life, with interesting images and motifs that are subconsciously at the heart of everything important for humans. Whereas in Europe, all anyone cared about was wealth and machines. Artwork is for aesthetic sake only, it doesn't attempt to put humanity in perspective or challenge our imagination in any way.
Perhaps this is why European-based art (and music and literature etc etc) is probably the best in the world....but it's probably also why we're so damned greedy and capitalistic. There you go.
It's got me thinking about central american ancient civilisations. For example, why does no one point out that it's a miracle that they even exist? For there to have been people in America before the European discovery, humans must have crossed over from Russia. Now, forgive me for thinking this, but even if this was physically possible because the two continents were connected by ice during the last ice age, what the hell were people doing in the remotest regions of Russia in the first place? Why would anyone ever think it was a good idea to cross hundreds of miles of barren ice? How could they even have survived this? Before the ancient civilisations arose, people didn't even come in groups of more than 30. How could such a tiny number of people have made it into America? It's the same in Africa: humans originated in the tropics of middle-Africa, so in order for them to have populated the rest of the world, they must have at some point crossed the Sahara desert. How did they know how do survive in such conditions? What are the chances that DNA was ever created in the first place?
Anyways, back to Mesoamerica. It strikes me that European civilisations have some of the least developed scientific cultures in the pantheon of ancient civilisations. Look at the Mayans, the Persians, the Chinese - all of them were fascinated with cosmic occurrences, with the greater significance of life, with interesting images and motifs that are subconsciously at the heart of everything important for humans. Whereas in Europe, all anyone cared about was wealth and machines. Artwork is for aesthetic sake only, it doesn't attempt to put humanity in perspective or challenge our imagination in any way.
Perhaps this is why European-based art (and music and literature etc etc) is probably the best in the world....but it's probably also why we're so damned greedy and capitalistic. There you go.
Sunday, 8 February 2009
Film idea #2
A parallel world where everything is the same, except for people can't show emotions. They have the same emotions, but haven't figured out facial expressions 'n' all that....
Monday, 2 February 2009
New cool bands, #s 5-7
This Town Needs Guns, Joni Mitchell, Mimas
The first is a blippy, very-fast-indie-guitar-plus-techno math-rock type affair (Norwich, I think), the second speaks for herself (widely known to be among the greatest song writers ever - though more striking to me is her sublime proficiency on piano and guitar), and the third is a post-rock oceansize-meets-radiohead-meets-hope of the states, loud v soft thingy (UK). All well worth taking a peak at.
The first is a blippy, very-fast-indie-guitar-plus-techno math-rock type affair (Norwich, I think), the second speaks for herself (widely known to be among the greatest song writers ever - though more striking to me is her sublime proficiency on piano and guitar), and the third is a post-rock oceansize-meets-radiohead-meets-hope of the states, loud v soft thingy (UK). All well worth taking a peak at.
Sunday, 1 February 2009
The philosophical plane
One of the feelings I love most is when my brain clicks into 6th gear. I may be going along at a respectable 3rd or 4th, maybe contemplating a run to 5th if I'm feeling ambitious; sometimes I'm just in neutral when it happens. But suddenly I start thinking like crazy. It's like my brain is full of different colours, a weird surreal landscape where thoughts that belong in no sane thought-pattern maraud around and get taken seriously. It's a nice buzz, really.
This different plane of brainwaves normally has a little overlap with the normal dimensions of thought in which I had been existing previously. For example, just now I was thinking about the inspiration stuff from my last few posts, and also about another little thesis I'm planning to add to these records soon, when suddenly I thought: if we could harness philosophical or academic thoughts and employ them in real life, how would we live?
Or rather, I had an instantaneous explosion of synapses and so on that cannot be expressed in a satisfying way through words, such is the complexity and bizarreness (bizarrity?) of the phenomenon. Often, stretches in 6th gear can be partly translated into normal-sounding ideas, such as the one I just had (this particular idea will be the subject of the next entry), but most of the time they are extinguished at their demise, like a dream you thought was really good/interesting but cannot remember for the life of you.
My life exists in two spheres. The normal one, where everyone exists, and the one where I have really crazy thoughts, sometimes about god and the significance of existence, sometimes about pure thought itself, sometimes about cups of tea, but always in a new plane of brain activity, the philosophical plane, 6th gear. Where I....philosophise. And I'm fairly confident that everyone exists in this plane too, not that I can test this theory.
Philosophy itself is an interesting concept. People tend to think of it as 'thinking about things' or trying to work out the answer to life's great questions. I used to be under philosophy's spell; I used to be adamant in my belief the most important thing in the world is that everyone has a good think now and again - and I still think this has a lot of truth to it. Philosophy use to be my god, I used to aspire to be someone who could think really well. But now in my old age (hur hur) I tend to see more of the pretentious and pointless side of things. Lots of philosophers are particularly arrogant folk, and their ideas seldom achieve anything or even have much interest. Nowdays I tend to think that you should think about stuff that interests and impacts you without giving it silly names. It's not exactly a change for the cynical - by any standards my beliefs are still very idealistic and don't look like changing in a hurry. But I do think that a lot of people need to realise that - while thinking for its own sake is more than justified - they shouldn't feel a requirement to be artificially deep. Life isn't particularly deep. But deep thoughts are great fun when they do come along.
So, I have my two spheres of life, as do (I believe) all people save the most crass (those who never think hard) and the most pretentious (those who always think too hard). When I have a good think, I will often find myself exploring ideas that have no bearing on reality, and this is all well and good. But when I'm living my life, I return to the all-familiar world of, to be honest, equal silliness - all the things you do and then regret, all the falseness and airs, all the glorious little sparklings of emotion. And while I do believe that it is important, if you are given to bouts of grandiose thinking, to be able to return to normality for most of the time (after all, this is where a huge number of the great experiences lie), I also cannot but feel a tinge of sadness at the thought that none of our great thoughts from the philosophical plane can be put to use in changing the normal plane for the better.
Or can they? That question was the subject of my last Big Thought, and of the next post.
This different plane of brainwaves normally has a little overlap with the normal dimensions of thought in which I had been existing previously. For example, just now I was thinking about the inspiration stuff from my last few posts, and also about another little thesis I'm planning to add to these records soon, when suddenly I thought: if we could harness philosophical or academic thoughts and employ them in real life, how would we live?
Or rather, I had an instantaneous explosion of synapses and so on that cannot be expressed in a satisfying way through words, such is the complexity and bizarreness (bizarrity?) of the phenomenon. Often, stretches in 6th gear can be partly translated into normal-sounding ideas, such as the one I just had (this particular idea will be the subject of the next entry), but most of the time they are extinguished at their demise, like a dream you thought was really good/interesting but cannot remember for the life of you.
My life exists in two spheres. The normal one, where everyone exists, and the one where I have really crazy thoughts, sometimes about god and the significance of existence, sometimes about pure thought itself, sometimes about cups of tea, but always in a new plane of brain activity, the philosophical plane, 6th gear. Where I....philosophise. And I'm fairly confident that everyone exists in this plane too, not that I can test this theory.
Philosophy itself is an interesting concept. People tend to think of it as 'thinking about things' or trying to work out the answer to life's great questions. I used to be under philosophy's spell; I used to be adamant in my belief the most important thing in the world is that everyone has a good think now and again - and I still think this has a lot of truth to it. Philosophy use to be my god, I used to aspire to be someone who could think really well. But now in my old age (hur hur) I tend to see more of the pretentious and pointless side of things. Lots of philosophers are particularly arrogant folk, and their ideas seldom achieve anything or even have much interest. Nowdays I tend to think that you should think about stuff that interests and impacts you without giving it silly names. It's not exactly a change for the cynical - by any standards my beliefs are still very idealistic and don't look like changing in a hurry. But I do think that a lot of people need to realise that - while thinking for its own sake is more than justified - they shouldn't feel a requirement to be artificially deep. Life isn't particularly deep. But deep thoughts are great fun when they do come along.
So, I have my two spheres of life, as do (I believe) all people save the most crass (those who never think hard) and the most pretentious (those who always think too hard). When I have a good think, I will often find myself exploring ideas that have no bearing on reality, and this is all well and good. But when I'm living my life, I return to the all-familiar world of, to be honest, equal silliness - all the things you do and then regret, all the falseness and airs, all the glorious little sparklings of emotion. And while I do believe that it is important, if you are given to bouts of grandiose thinking, to be able to return to normality for most of the time (after all, this is where a huge number of the great experiences lie), I also cannot but feel a tinge of sadness at the thought that none of our great thoughts from the philosophical plane can be put to use in changing the normal plane for the better.
Or can they? That question was the subject of my last Big Thought, and of the next post.
Friday, 30 January 2009
Treatise on Inspiration (inspiration and originality; conclusion)
So far I have explained why the best form of creation is that which leaves most to the audience. But the underlying cause of this fact lies in the secret of inspiration, which is linked to human nature and the social instinct. In the modern world, we poor humans so frequently find ourselves having to combat the woes of society, the woes of our instinct to conform and be accepted by others (and the terrible affects this has on our individuality), that we are constantly coming up with desperate theories to provoke a change of course - often at the expense of inspiration and influence. There is an unfortunate knock-on effect from the social world to the creative one.
Anyway, the message that seems to have been used as the battering ram for the alternative movement (a movement as old as conformity itself, and always of equal strength) is 'don't go with the flow'. Express yourself. Be who you really are. Lots of other sad, meaningless gestures. But the overall tone is one which crushes inspiration. Other negative side-effects include the widely-noted phenomenon that originality is elevated to such an extent that it itself becomes a social force, a focus point of cults and social groups, and being an individual becomes the basis for society. Sometimes irony is a very sad thing.
But the important thing to note for our purposes is that going against the flow is all very well when it's going in the wrong direction, but is not a mantra to be followed in all situations. Thousands upon thousands of people in history have done very good things. These should be emulated. Creators should replicate the best bits of previous creation.
Ultimately, inspiration is the driving force for almost everything good, and, interestingly, for almost everything new.
Take Pure Reason Revolution, for example. PRR are one of the greatest users of inspiration that I've ever come across. They use stuff from Romantic poets, 70s proggers, 60s TV shows and tacky harmony singers. They are also an expression of the new-prog and electro movements of the current era, and use all the latest technology. The reason why their output is of such high quality is that they are able to use all the best bits from all these different sources, combining them in such a way as to make something entirely new and unparalleled. So ultimately (again), originality and use of inspiration are not mutually exclusive. Inspiration can be used in original ways. PRR are not the only example of course. Iliketrains and Terry Pratchett are other good ones. As well as hundreds of others (and to a certain extent, all creators ever).
The irony here is that everyone uses inspiration naturally. The conclusion of this treatise is that it is inspiration which drives both conventional and alternative society; it drives humanity. As humans and individuals, we are little more than products of what we absorb and emulate. As children, we are better able to absorb inspiration, but as adults we should try to keep our faculties of absorption in tact. For it is the inspirational force more than any other that pushes the progressive boundaries of mankind; it is our ability to be like those who came before that makes us able to show the way for those who will follow. Inspiration allows us to be intelligent, and it allows us to be original. The inspiration chain has been our mainstay since the conception of our species, and from this glorious game of trial and error, of continuing what is good and leaving behind what does not inspire us, we shall eventually build utopia.
Anyway, the message that seems to have been used as the battering ram for the alternative movement (a movement as old as conformity itself, and always of equal strength) is 'don't go with the flow'. Express yourself. Be who you really are. Lots of other sad, meaningless gestures. But the overall tone is one which crushes inspiration. Other negative side-effects include the widely-noted phenomenon that originality is elevated to such an extent that it itself becomes a social force, a focus point of cults and social groups, and being an individual becomes the basis for society. Sometimes irony is a very sad thing.
But the important thing to note for our purposes is that going against the flow is all very well when it's going in the wrong direction, but is not a mantra to be followed in all situations. Thousands upon thousands of people in history have done very good things. These should be emulated. Creators should replicate the best bits of previous creation.
Ultimately, inspiration is the driving force for almost everything good, and, interestingly, for almost everything new.
Take Pure Reason Revolution, for example. PRR are one of the greatest users of inspiration that I've ever come across. They use stuff from Romantic poets, 70s proggers, 60s TV shows and tacky harmony singers. They are also an expression of the new-prog and electro movements of the current era, and use all the latest technology. The reason why their output is of such high quality is that they are able to use all the best bits from all these different sources, combining them in such a way as to make something entirely new and unparalleled. So ultimately (again), originality and use of inspiration are not mutually exclusive. Inspiration can be used in original ways. PRR are not the only example of course. Iliketrains and Terry Pratchett are other good ones. As well as hundreds of others (and to a certain extent, all creators ever).
The irony here is that everyone uses inspiration naturally. The conclusion of this treatise is that it is inspiration which drives both conventional and alternative society; it drives humanity. As humans and individuals, we are little more than products of what we absorb and emulate. As children, we are better able to absorb inspiration, but as adults we should try to keep our faculties of absorption in tact. For it is the inspirational force more than any other that pushes the progressive boundaries of mankind; it is our ability to be like those who came before that makes us able to show the way for those who will follow. Inspiration allows us to be intelligent, and it allows us to be original. The inspiration chain has been our mainstay since the conception of our species, and from this glorious game of trial and error, of continuing what is good and leaving behind what does not inspire us, we shall eventually build utopia.
Treatise on Inspiration (significance)
Meaning comes from the audience. So, the job of the creator is not to put across a message, since this message will normally be misconstrued by different audiences and end up meaning entirely different things to different people (just look at the Bible...) The really good creator will aim to create something from which the maximum number of meanings can be drawn. And the quality of these meanings is determined by how significant they feel to the audience which draws them.
As an example, I will take the Coopers again, because they demonstrate my point precisely. If you write a song called "the same mistakes", then, when a lover listens to it, he'll think about his romantic history; when a politician listens to it, he'll think grand thoughts about the democratic process he has conspired against; when a philosopher thinks about it, he'll draw conclusions about the nature of humankind. Whereas, if you write a song called "anarchy in the UK", a certain (small) percent of people will become fanatics, while the majority gets nothing from your work at all. In the first instance, you have been the causation for hundreds of excellent new ideas across every type of individual, while in the second, you've been the causation for one new idea in one type of person. For followers of inspiration, this is a very important lesson.
As audience, we should always strive to be inspired and emulate what inspires us.
As creator, we should always strive to inspire others.
Now for my suggestion that "the quality of these meanings is determined by how significant they feel to the audience which draws them". This is why ambiguity is such an important tool in the creator's toolbox. The best kind of writing is the writing which says very little, but suggests an awful lot. If you can conjure images and feelings, then the appropriate meanings will follow. And the more ambiguous and suggestive the writing is, the deeper these meanings will be.
As an example, I will take the Coopers again, because they demonstrate my point precisely. If you write a song called "the same mistakes", then, when a lover listens to it, he'll think about his romantic history; when a politician listens to it, he'll think grand thoughts about the democratic process he has conspired against; when a philosopher thinks about it, he'll draw conclusions about the nature of humankind. Whereas, if you write a song called "anarchy in the UK", a certain (small) percent of people will become fanatics, while the majority gets nothing from your work at all. In the first instance, you have been the causation for hundreds of excellent new ideas across every type of individual, while in the second, you've been the causation for one new idea in one type of person. For followers of inspiration, this is a very important lesson.
As audience, we should always strive to be inspired and emulate what inspires us.
As creator, we should always strive to inspire others.
Now for my suggestion that "the quality of these meanings is determined by how significant they feel to the audience which draws them". This is why ambiguity is such an important tool in the creator's toolbox. The best kind of writing is the writing which says very little, but suggests an awful lot. If you can conjure images and feelings, then the appropriate meanings will follow. And the more ambiguous and suggestive the writing is, the deeper these meanings will be.
Treatise on Inspiration (premise)
If you guessed that what they have in common is that they were all composed by the Cooper Temple Clause, then well done, you are correct. But the other correct answer, is that all three had the capacity to inspire.
I've used the Coopers here, because I think they illustrate particularly well the point I want to make. Read the passages. Do you have any idea what they mean? What are they trying to say? Do they have a message? What's glorious here, and absolutely essential, is that the answers to all these questions are entirely ambiguous.
Some people may find meaning here, others may not.
I know how we all love our French academics, so it's nice that it was one such individual, Roland Barthes, who first coined the phrase Death of the Author. Barthes thought that any creative output should be viewed by the reader/audience/listener/admirer in a completely detached way - i.e. it should be the work itself that puts across any meaning or significance to the audience, and not any biographical or contextual knowledge we may happen to have about the author/creator. What ole' Roly was saying was that we should strive for meaning in an objective and uninfluenced way.
Now, I disagree with some of this argument. Occasionally, the author's life, and in particular his influences, are very important. Huge amounts of meaning can be created through use of reference. But what I really like about the Death of the Author theory, is the idea that meaning comes from the audience.
I've used the Coopers here, because I think they illustrate particularly well the point I want to make. Read the passages. Do you have any idea what they mean? What are they trying to say? Do they have a message? What's glorious here, and absolutely essential, is that the answers to all these questions are entirely ambiguous.
Some people may find meaning here, others may not.
I know how we all love our French academics, so it's nice that it was one such individual, Roland Barthes, who first coined the phrase Death of the Author. Barthes thought that any creative output should be viewed by the reader/audience/listener/admirer in a completely detached way - i.e. it should be the work itself that puts across any meaning or significance to the audience, and not any biographical or contextual knowledge we may happen to have about the author/creator. What ole' Roly was saying was that we should strive for meaning in an objective and uninfluenced way.
Now, I disagree with some of this argument. Occasionally, the author's life, and in particular his influences, are very important. Huge amounts of meaning can be created through use of reference. But what I really like about the Death of the Author theory, is the idea that meaning comes from the audience.
Monday, 26 January 2009
Treatise on Inspiration (Introduction)
What do the following passages have in common?
You might wanna duck before you lose your head/It seems we're the ones who've got the guts to bleed/It's not numnber one who will come out alive/It's the freak in the corner with his eyes on fire
It's in the way that you look/It's in the books that won't read/It comes and goes like a friend/It's with me right til the end/It's in the memories I've lost/It's concentrating too much/It's breaking down of relations/And it's the beat of the clock/It's not being able to be explain/Or get your feelings across/It's in the pain that won't leave you/It's coming straight back for us/It's in a new lease of life/And a search that ends well/It's in finding that change/It's being happy again
And so it has to change/The notebook's now in pieces /Words we'll never sing/I know you'll say i've simply jumped the gun/And that they've won/But you can't keep making the same mistakes/You see i've had this thought/It took its time in coming /But now won't be denied/I'd always gone about these things all wrong/But not this song/Coz you can't keep making the same mistakes/No you can't keep making hte same mistakes/Can't jump ship just yet/There's no one at the wheel/Someone has to steer/Get a hold of yourself/Keep your head /there's no time to waste/You'll see it soon enough/But all is not forgotten/And now's no time for tears/Coz though that boy has died this one still lives/And now there's life/And a change to make up for all those mistakes/But please don't get me wrong/Coz everything was honest/True and from the heart/There's still the same old hang ups so don't fret/Its not safe yet/And who knows there's always time to screw up again/But maybe we'll be cool/Coz you were made an offer/You could not refuse/You made me come alive and see my face/See my grace/And we grow or do we just haul it around?
You might wanna duck before you lose your head/It seems we're the ones who've got the guts to bleed/It's not numnber one who will come out alive/It's the freak in the corner with his eyes on fire
It's in the way that you look/It's in the books that won't read/It comes and goes like a friend/It's with me right til the end/It's in the memories I've lost/It's concentrating too much/It's breaking down of relations/And it's the beat of the clock/It's not being able to be explain/Or get your feelings across/It's in the pain that won't leave you/It's coming straight back for us/It's in a new lease of life/And a search that ends well/It's in finding that change/It's being happy again
And so it has to change/The notebook's now in pieces /Words we'll never sing/I know you'll say i've simply jumped the gun/And that they've won/But you can't keep making the same mistakes/You see i've had this thought/It took its time in coming /But now won't be denied/I'd always gone about these things all wrong/But not this song/Coz you can't keep making the same mistakes/No you can't keep making hte same mistakes/Can't jump ship just yet/There's no one at the wheel/Someone has to steer/Get a hold of yourself/Keep your head /there's no time to waste/You'll see it soon enough/But all is not forgotten/And now's no time for tears/Coz though that boy has died this one still lives/And now there's life/And a change to make up for all those mistakes/But please don't get me wrong/Coz everything was honest/True and from the heart/There's still the same old hang ups so don't fret/Its not safe yet/And who knows there's always time to screw up again/But maybe we'll be cool/Coz you were made an offer/You could not refuse/You made me come alive and see my face/See my grace/And we grow or do we just haul it around?
Sunday, 25 January 2009
More AnnaSophinspiration (charity)
Thankfully, I haven't done any more stalking since the last post about Ms Robb. But one of the things that her site got me interested in was the idea of CHARITY.
AnnaSophia visited India to bring aid and Western generosity to the impoverished and hopelessly poorly treated Dalits of India. Read her account here (pdf). No really, read it. It's very good and thought provoking, and even manages, just about, to transcend the blandness of the normal "Westener visits [3rd world country] to bring aid and comes away realising that poor people are a lot nicer than rich people" idea (even though this is the theme).
So thats all well and good. The Indians have a joyous few days and AnnaSophia and pals come away spiritually fortified. Many of the poor kids might even, as a result of the visit, manage to break out of their horrific caste. But empirically, even if every kid she visits is able to have a decent quality of life from then on, you've still only helped less than o.1% of all the affected people.
Charity to me seems futile. But there's always a nasty conflict in my mind, revolving round the issue of what is the best thing to do if you want to get rid of misery in the world. Part of me knows that simple giving can never eliminate poverty while we live in this robustly capitalistic (i.e. animalistic) world. If you give to one poor person, you achieve nothing, because wealth is relative. Someone else will merely slip beneathe the average poverty line. The poor will always exist, even if they have millions, because they will be relatively worse off than those with more. So your stuck with having to change the system, which is famously impossible. I personally believe that given enough time, mankid will naturally evolve to be genuinely egalitarian, but certainly not for a few thousand years.
Then there's the other part of me that says, "fuck off, these people are DYING ON THE STREETS, don't you social theorise at me! Any help they can get should be administered immediately, and conventional charities, preferably on a much larger scale, are the best means of doing this, even if it achieves very little overall."
No, says the first part of me, we need political action, starting with leaders who aren't handicapped by caring about only their own electorate.
What? says the second, How can you say that when you know that this is extremely unlikely to happen, and while you're prancing around with your revolution, people are dying on the streets?
Who should I listen to?
The other conundrum is whether, if I chose to give money to charity, I should seek to be personally successful in order to give more, if I know that being personally successful involves, at least to start with, keeping as much money (and time) as I can for myself. I just don't know. More thought required.
AnnaSophia visited India to bring aid and Western generosity to the impoverished and hopelessly poorly treated Dalits of India. Read her account here (pdf). No really, read it. It's very good and thought provoking, and even manages, just about, to transcend the blandness of the normal "Westener visits [3rd world country] to bring aid and comes away realising that poor people are a lot nicer than rich people" idea (even though this is the theme).
So thats all well and good. The Indians have a joyous few days and AnnaSophia and pals come away spiritually fortified. Many of the poor kids might even, as a result of the visit, manage to break out of their horrific caste. But empirically, even if every kid she visits is able to have a decent quality of life from then on, you've still only helped less than o.1% of all the affected people.
Charity to me seems futile. But there's always a nasty conflict in my mind, revolving round the issue of what is the best thing to do if you want to get rid of misery in the world. Part of me knows that simple giving can never eliminate poverty while we live in this robustly capitalistic (i.e. animalistic) world. If you give to one poor person, you achieve nothing, because wealth is relative. Someone else will merely slip beneathe the average poverty line. The poor will always exist, even if they have millions, because they will be relatively worse off than those with more. So your stuck with having to change the system, which is famously impossible. I personally believe that given enough time, mankid will naturally evolve to be genuinely egalitarian, but certainly not for a few thousand years.
Then there's the other part of me that says, "fuck off, these people are DYING ON THE STREETS, don't you social theorise at me! Any help they can get should be administered immediately, and conventional charities, preferably on a much larger scale, are the best means of doing this, even if it achieves very little overall."
No, says the first part of me, we need political action, starting with leaders who aren't handicapped by caring about only their own electorate.
What? says the second, How can you say that when you know that this is extremely unlikely to happen, and while you're prancing around with your revolution, people are dying on the streets?
Who should I listen to?
The other conundrum is whether, if I chose to give money to charity, I should seek to be personally successful in order to give more, if I know that being personally successful involves, at least to start with, keeping as much money (and time) as I can for myself. I just don't know. More thought required.
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