tamplins entire

Racists and Culturists

2012-01-17T10:02:00.003Z

Not so long ago it was acceptable to attribute variations in human ability and achievement to variations in ethnicity. The nineteenth century’s eminent thinkers were content to attribute specific mental traits to specific ethnic groups. Some races, it seemed, were not equal to others. Some were brighter or dimmer, kinder or slyer or more indolent, more violent or less capable of sexual restraint.

Consequently, Europeans (who by good fortune discovered themselves to be the brightest race) used these beliefs to justify their conquest and subjugation of other races. Some races needed saving from themselves. Some races were too feeble-minded to drag themselves out of their primitive state. They were certainly too backward to exploit the riches of the lands God was benevolent enough (yet oddly naïve enough) to have bestowed upon them. The technological superiority of Europe could be explained as a product of biological superiority.

After the racially motivated atrocities of the Second World War such views fell from polite conversation. They are still with us of course, but they are far less likely to be voiced. Now if one has a hunch about the inferiority of a particular ethnic group it is safer to blame the culture of that group, rather than its genes.

This is not say that all who decry Islam are just closet haters of Arabs and Pakistanis, or that all those who criticise Israel are just closet haters of Jews. Some are and some aren’t. Some people genuinely do fear other peoples for their culture alone, rather than their biology. For all his delusions, I doubt Tony Blair is a racist in the biological sense. He is pro-capitalist, pro-western and pro Judeo-Christian – to the extent that he is desensitised to the killing of anyone who challenges the influence of these cultures. People of other worldviews can go to hell, and he spent his time in office sending them there. But I doubt biology plays a part. You can be any colour you like with Tony, as long as you subscribe to his mind-set.

This is clearly not the case with the BNP or the EDL, regardless of their protestations. Theirs is old-style biological racism with the thinnest coat of culturist whitewash. Five minutes in the pub would be long enough to discover that you were in the presence of the master race (as so often with master-races, appearances can be deceiving.)

Between these two poles lies a mass of confusion and inconsistency. Many racists and culturists swap clothes freely, as the argument swings. Most people who attribute social evils to race never quite spit out what they mean at root. One moment it sounds like a criticism of biology, the next a criticism of culture. For the sake of clarity then, it might help to spell out the differences. To take a fictional example, one might imagine the rantings of an Eastasian racist:

The people of Eurasia are born lazy.
The people of Oceania are born violent.

Clearly these are biological traits - genetic, fixed, and irredeemable. While not a recipe for genocide, this it is certainly a key ingredient. These are the first steps in the relegation of a section of humanity to a subspecies, the transformation of humans into animals, and, if history is the judge, the same treatment as animals. They may end up feared and isolated, or patted on the head and an attempt made to train them. Breeding with them might be frowned upon, and any offspring born of such a union find themselves spurned. They might not be accorded the same property rights as full humans, and their land considered ripe for exploitation by the more ‘advanced’ races. At the extreme end they may be rounded-up and enslaved, or rounded-up and exterminated.

Alternatively, the more sophisticated Eastasian xenophobe might take the modern ‘cultural’ line:

The people of Eurasia are merely victims of a worldview that causes them to be lazy.

The people of Oceania are merely victims of a worldview that causes them to act violently.

This certainly is less damning. The implication is that if babies from Eurasia and Oceania were brought to the safety and civilization of Eastasia they would develop and prosper as well as any Eastasian child. For all the cultural loathing, at least everybody remains human. One might hope that this key difference would suggest better treatment, and in some respects it might. Presumably this culturist stance would rule out slavery and mass extermination, at least on racial grounds. It implies that everyone should receive equal treatment before the law, and that no-one should be considered less-than-human on grounds of race.

It seems odd to conclude that hating people for their beliefs is any better than hating them for their skin colour, but that could be just because hating people is always wrong. So we could wind it back to ‘mistrusting people'. Is it better to mistrust someone for their beliefs than mistrust them for their skin colour? Here I suppose the answer has to be yes, at least in some cases. A person’s skin colour doesn't govern their actions. It is our thoughts that determine what we do - how nice or nasty we are to others. We can justify mistrust of someone if we believe they harbour harmful thoughts. If we don’t like someone’s ideology we can strive to keep them out of positions of power and influence. This is the heart of political struggle.

But of course if your judgement of another person’s culture is based on ignorance, then your views can be every bit as dumb as a prejudice based on skin colour. You can be every bit as bigoted in selecting cultural traits as you can be in picking racial traits. Furthermore you can be just as fascist in your treatment of those harbouring ‘enemy culture’ as you can of those harbouring ‘enemy skin colour’.

In contrast to the nineteenth century, the invasions and occupations of the early twenty-first century were not justified on racial grounds. This was a ‘clash of civilisations’ not races, or so we were told. Aside from the lies about hidden weaponry, these were wars against regressive culture, toxic politics, the ‘mediaeval mind-set’. Yet when you look at the consequences the differences are trivial. A country is invaded and its civilian population is slaughtered. Anyone resisting is imprisoned and tortured. A regime is installed conducive to the wishes of the invaders, and the country’s riches are syphoned away. An everyday story of nineteenth century racism, just without the racism.

If your possessions are stolen, is it of any comfort to be told it was done because of your ideology rather than your biology? Would a grieving parent care that their children were killed in a dispute over culture rather than race? While it is possible to criticise culture in a way that is never permissible with race, it is the thin end of a wedge. ‘Culturism’ can be every bit as bigoted as racism, and its consequences can be just as awful.

Children’s Career Aspirations - an exchange with CBBC

2012-01-04T15:43:00.000Z

Dear BBC,

I would like to complain about the contribution CBBC appears to be playing in creating unrealistic aspirations in its young viewers.

As you may have heard, a recent study has detected a marked shift in the career aspirations of British Children over the past 25 years. According to the Daily Telegraph, “Twenty five years ago, youngsters wanted to become teachers, bankers or doctors. But pre-teens today are hoping to find fame through sport, pop music or acting”….”And what they watch on TV is now rivalling their parents as the biggest influence on children's choice of careers”….”Becoming a sports star like footballer Wayne Rooney is the top ambition of today's pre-teens the dream of 12 per cent” or “following in the footsteps of X Factor winner Leona Lewis and making it big as a pop star.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/6250626/Children-would-rather-become-popstars-than-teachers-or-lawyers.html

Now look at a selection from last Saturday’s CBBC schedule, much of which I sat through with my step daughter. (The listings and comments are taken from the Guardian website)

07:40 MOTD Kickabout
Football show featuring stars from the worlds of sport and entertainment
08:30 The Slammer
Four imprisoned entertainers perform for their freedom,
10:00 School For Stars
[speaks for itself]
10:30 The Big Performance
Choirmaster Gareth Malone coaches a group of 10 shy children to perform in public, before they face the challenge of singing for an audience of 40,000 at the London Proms in the Park
11:55 Newsround
Current affairs reports aimed at a younger audience [that is, current affairs heavily weighted towards sport and celebrity]
13:30 Dani's House
Comedy show about the misadventures of a highly strung 17-year-old actress……………

Is it not fair to say such a schedule fuels this worrying trend in childrens aspirations? Isn’t it time CBBC set a good example, and moved away from celebrity culture?

Thank you for your consideration. I await your reply.

Best wishes,

Martin Johnson
Brighton

....................

Dear Mr Johnson
Reference CAS-1061839-S78PDQ
Thanks for contacting us about CBBC.
I understand that you feel programme such as ‘Newsround’ and ‘Dani’s House’ encourage children to want to become pop stars or footballers instead of doctors and teachers. I note that you feel this is the wrong example to be setting for children and you think we need to move away from celebrity culture.
We set out to provide children with a wide variety of programmes in order to cater for their different ages, tastes and needs. We believe we are constantly in the forefront of children's programming, and offer the widest range of imaginative and informative programmes but we do appreciate that not every programme will appeal to every child.
Over the years there has been a substantial change in the style and presentation of children's programmes. However, such changes tend to be a reflection of changes in society. The BBC must remain in touch with its audience and responsive to its needs.
Please be assured the programme makers take their responsibility to our young audience very seriously. Indeed, every effort is made to meet the expectations of parents and children in our audience during this programme and all content is subject to our strict set of Editorial Guidelines.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/editorialguidelines/
Nevertheless I do appreciate that you feel our programme promote celebrity culture therefore please be assured that I’ve registered your complaint on our audience log. This is a daily report of audience feedback that’s made available to many BBC staff, including members of the BBC Executive Board, channel controllers and other senior managers.
The audience logs are seen as important documents that can help shape decisions about future programming and content.
Thanks once again for taking the time to contact us.
Kind Regards
Claire Jordan
BBC Complaints

.........................

Dear Claire Jordan,

Thank you for taking the time to answer. I’m not sure why you chose to highlight ‘Newsround’ and ‘Dani’s House’ – my case is hardly weakened by ‘School For Stars’ or ‘The Big Performance’. These four programs alone constitute over 90 minutes of fame obsessing in one morning schedule. You suggest that there is “a wide variety of programmes” catering to “different ages, tastes and needs”. Can you please send me an example? Where is a program that celebrates any plausible or socially useful role such as doctor or teacher or refuse collector? Where is the truly aspirational scientist, rather than the stereotypical nerd scientist of ‘Dani’s House?’

You also suggest that the “BBC must remain in touch with its audience and responsive to its needs.” But surely there is more to children’s needs than their immediate desires, particularly when those desires are fostered by a celebrity obsessed media. Rather than the need to cry at auditions, or the need to cling to an illusion of fame, what about the need to contribute to a humane society?

No doubt CBBC could serve the immediate desires of many teenagers if it racked-up the sex and violence – just like the evening programming – but quite rightly this would be considered detrimental to the outlook of children. As there is now also compelling evidence to suggest that the media is having a negative effect on the career aspirations of children isn’t it time to put celebrity in the same box? Isn’t it the duty of the state broadcaster to buck the celebrity trend, rather than foster and exploit it?

I’d rather not be added to an ‘audience log’, I’d rather my concerns were addressed.

Best wishes and waiting to hear.

Martin Johnson,
Brighton

....................

Dear Mr Johnson

Reference CAS-1083455-1YBSTM

You complaint has been forwarded to me as the Controller of CBBC.

I’m afraid that I can’t agree with the assertion that CBBC is ‘Celebrity Obsessed’.

We cover a wide range of programming on CBBC and the values that underpin our content include empowering and inspiring children; helping them make sense of the world around them; providing them with positive role models; introducing them to worlds and individuals they may otherwise not experience, and crucially providing them with moments when they can just laugh out loud and be silly.

I take a different view on the shows you mention and do not believe they are focused on ‘fame obsessing’ - on the contrary the values I mention above are evident in many of them.

In The Big Performance choirmaster extraordinaire Gareth Malone takes ten shy children who love to sing but are terrified of performing in public due to the fact that were bullied in the past. He takes them on a journey to restore their fragile confidence and to finally perform in front of the nation on Children In Need night linking up with other children’s choirs across the UK. I’m extremely proud of this show and believe it will have inspired and empowered many children watching at home.

In School for Stars the message is that it takes real motivation, commitment and sheer hard work to succeed in any field. The programme-makers skilfully explain the importance of attainment in both the academic and performance fields and provide an antidote to the idea that success is achievable by just desiring it.

Newsround will continue to cover sports and entertainment in addition to news stories that matter to children and I believe we get that balance right. Over the last year we’ve travelled the globe to help our audience understand the big news stories - we have been to Kabul to explain what it’s like to be a child growing up in a warzone; provided context to the earthquake in Japan; looked at the impact of the drought in Africa. On the domestic front we provided extensive analysis of the summer riots; the problems in the Eurozone; the newspaper-hacking scandal. Our award winning specials have covered subjects as diverse as autism, cancer and how young people’s lives are affected by their parents’ relationship with alcohol.

You asked for examples of shows that ‘celebrate a plausible or socially useful role’ - there are many but I have listed just a few examples below:

Steve Backshall inspiring the next generation of wildlife experts and adventurers in Deadly 60 and Live ‘N Deadly.

Helen Skelton from Blue Peter undertaking immense physical and mental challenges and living up to her mantra ‘impossible is just a word’.

Horrible Histories engaging children with the themes and narratives of history and encouraging them to find out more for themselves.

Richard Hammond passionately bringing science to life in ‘Blast Lab’.

Dick and Dom exploring the work of wildlife rescue centres and vets in Dick and Dom Go Wild.

Six children training with the Metropolitan Police to see what it takes to be a policeman in Cop School.

Coming up we have a number of new series including ‘We Could Be Heroes’ where we follow children training with the emergency and rescue services. We also plan to shine a light on the subjects of biology and medicine in a new series fronted by two very exciting young doctors.

I hope my reply addresses your concerns and if you want I’m very happy to continue this conversation with you on the telephone.

Best wishes,
Damian Kavanagh
Controller CBBC.

Everybody Hates Liberals

2011-12-20T13:16:00.000Z

Across the political divide, ‘liberal’ seems to have become a dirty word. In part this is just due to the multiple meanings that have grown around the term. Nevertheless if we look at the various reasons people give for despising ‘liberals’ some interesting common threads can be found.

Obviously ‘liberal’ in the UK is currently suffering from the Liberals with a big L forming a pact with the Conservatives. To the left this proves an old hunch – Liberals were just closet Tories, all along.

Then there is the US reading of liberal, which is really just a counter to ‘conservative’. A liberal in this sense can mean any form of leftist, socialist or even communist, so plenty to hate there. Confusingly however, since Thatcher and Reagan there have also been neo-liberals to hate. This is liberal in the sense of free-market liberalism – loathing of tax and state intervention, so firmly on the political right.

Then there are the more colloquial usages. There is the woolly do-gooder ‘liberal’, the stereotypical Guardian reader/writer, corduroy-clad social worker or social studies teacher. Close behind is the Fabian socialist, the top-down social reformer who sees the problems of the lower orders as something that can be solved by a benevolent intelligentsia. Many on the left and the right find common reasons to despise these sorts of liberals. Both groups see a self-serving bureaucratic class, patronising, paternalist and naïve, one which fails to address structural problems and instead does rather nicely out of the awful state of things. Rather than urge people to fight their own battles and solve their own problems, these sort of liberals prefer to appoint themselves as saviours, infantilising the downtrodden and robbing them of their autonomy.

And of course there are the ‘liberal interventionists’ the sort who brought liberty to Iraq and Afghanistan – a liberal fig-leaf to hide the diminutive organs of the naked imperialist. Although these liberals might seem a million miles from the woolly do-gooder kind (and many woolly do-gooder liberals would the first to condemn them) it is interesting to note the paternalistic similarities. In both cases an elite of well-educated and well-to-do white folk judge themselves to be in a better position to evaluate and plan the lives of lesser beings. If it so happens that you need to kill most of them along the way then so be it. One can also see a link here to the ‘free-market’ liberals. Anyone who does not wish to participate in the ‘free-market’ may find themselves coaxed towards liberty at the point of a gun.

Such widespread distaste for liberalism might seem odd in a democracy. After all, isn't democracy all about liberty? But of course while most people might claim to cherish liberty there is no agreement on what it is, or how it might be attained. Some see it as something that needs to be carefully engineered by the state. Others see it as the wholesale abolition of the state. In Economics alone, many self-proclaimed liberals are poles apart. Liberal individualists argue that liberty is born of zero tax and unrestricted corporate freedom. Liberal collectivists argue that liberty requires progressive taxation and spending, to create a level economic playing field.

Naively, we might assume that liberty is simply the removal of restrictions, but of course that would leave murderers free to murder and rapists free to rape – hardly a liberating situation for the rest of us. Clearly liberty has more to do with carefully chosen limits on some human desires than it has to do with boosting ‘freedom’ in the abstract. Thankfully, most of us agree on rape and murder, but there is far less agreement elsewhere. For some, liberty would include the right to wear a veil, or take drugs, or slap your children. For others these are infringements of liberty, freedoms that need to be prohibited in the name of higher liberty. And what of the liberty to push your own vision of liberty on others? What about the liberty to make someone else wear a veil, or buy your opium, or host your airbase?

If your notion of liberty boils down to nothing more than ‘free to comply with my notion of freedom’ then you might as well call it fascism and be done with it. But even the most sincere and judiciously chosen freedoms will always seem like gross infringements of liberty to some people. And you can be sure they will hate you for it.

When exactly was The Golden Age?

2011-09-13T13:45:00.001+01:00

In a slight anatomical shift, opinions on last month’s riots and looting seem more like coccyx vertebrae – everybody has several. Rather than add any more, this is an attempt to impose some order on the existing collection.

While much of the world was enjoying the schadenfreude, it’s interesting to note that many British commentators exhibited if not pleasure then a sense of vindication. There was a collective holler of “I told you so!” For some, the disturbances were the obvious and inevitable consequence of liberal politics, cultural relativism and the perceived excesses of the welfare state. For others it was equally obvious that they were due to the bankruptcy of capitalism, and the bankrupt morality that accompanies it. As we shall see, finding firm evidence to support either of these strands of argument is intrinsically difficult. But if we accept that the disturbances were born of other causes rather than spontaneous then we have no choice but to try.

Most analysis of the disturbances contains the following three elements: First, almost everyone agrees that they were a very bad thing. Second, everyone has some idea of who or what is to blame. Third, there is the necessary implication that there was a time when our society was healthier, a golden age when such things didn’t occur.

Obviously the third component is very much a product of the second. It can also serve as something of a test. If you to want attribute the disintegration of civil society to Snoop Dogg or Sir Fred Goodwin or the end of National Service, a good measure of your theory would be the state of things before your candidate had any influence. If things turn out to have been every bit as bad then your theory would have been dealt a severe blow.

Proof positive is far more slippery. Even if there was a palpable nose-dive just as your candidate came on the scene it wouldn’t necessarily mean it was their fault, it could just be coincidence. Or it could be that your candidate had some slight contributory effect or colouration of events, rather than any effect worthy of the term ‘cause’. Or it could be that your ‘cause’ and its ‘consequence’ were both in fact born of an independent third or more factor, and in fact had very little influence on each other.

Or you could have things completely horse-before-cart. It could be that your ‘cause’ was in fact a direct consequence of thing you labelled as its effect – you just muddled them because they were happening at the same time. Alternatively, each factor could be the mutual cause of the other - are sneezes the cause of colds or colds the cause of sneezes? Clearly both.

Add to this the fact that many of the rival candidates were working their alleged evil at the same time – so which one caused it? Add to that, these events were only superficially unique. Riots and looting are nothing new, even on these shores. If you want to blame this particular riot on a particular change you will need to identify what was special about this riot, and how that unique feature links to your suggested cause.

So, with all that in mind here’s a far from exhaustive list of suggested culprits to hold up to history: Loss of respect for authority; the global financial crash; thieving bankers; endemic evil; MP’s expenses; gangsta rap; monetarism; 24 hour multichannel television; the internet; video games; the nanny state; the phone hacking scandal; social networking; the media’s idolisation of brutes, thieves and fools; police corruption; poverty of pocket; poverty of mind; the export of meaningful forms of employment; sexual permissiveness; the decline of the traditional family; youth unemployment; the demise of religious belief; criminality pure and simple; consumerism pure and simple.

Some we can immediately cross out as they are not explanatory theories at all, more like yelps. The PM’s early choice ‘criminality pure and simple’ explains nothing on its own. Without some attempt to explain why this unscented form of criminality happened to arise this particular weekend he might as well be blaming himself – after all it happened on his watch. For similar reasons we can strike off ‘loss of respect for authority’ and ‘endemic evil’. Until you add a ‘why’ and a ‘why now’ these are just descriptions rather than testable theories. Note the same does not apply to ‘consumerism pure and simple’ – we can actually put a rough date on that, and then look how things were beforehand.

As for the others, I’m inclined to split them into four types of criticism, with a good bit of repetition and overlapping.

Bad role models

(thieving bankers; MP’s expenses; the phone hacking scandal; police corruption; gangsta rap; 24 hour multichannel television; the internet; the media’s idolisation of brutes, thieves and fools; video games)

When it comes to picking role models, Children’s BBC certainly takes the biscuit. In the aftermath of the disturbances Newsround staff ran all the infamous videos and damned those involved. To back-up their critique, celebrity condemnations of the events were then read out. First up, as one might expect, Wayne Rooney. The lesson here, presumably, is that if you need a moral judgement on the behaviour of materialistic thugs who organise their activities via Twitter the best thing to do is ask one.

In all seriousness, presumably this was an attempt to get potentially errant children onside by quoting one of their ‘idols’. Even so, it does not speak well about the current quality of youth leadership models.

As tempting as it might be, it would be unfair to blame the disturbances on any particular public figure. The public profile of one Katie Price or Andy Coulson or Bernard Madoff does not on its own maketh a riot. Such influences are more likely incremental and additive. One could argue that the current saturation coverage and lionising of the most self-obsessed, violent, ignorant, materialistic people has some cumulative effect, if only because it squeezes out examples of anything better. If a child rarely encounters any other kind of role model it is valid to speculate about how it might affect their own outlook and behaviour.

More subtly, one might speculate how the relentless parade of pop stars and footballers and wannabe celebrities might chip away at the egos of young viewers. A media full of media-obsessed media people works to denigrate normality. Realistic expectations become sidelined, an embarrassment. The only things that matter are fame and stupid amounts of money. Who wants to be a nurse or an engine driver when Simon Cowell can turn you into a ‘star’? Of course only a vanishingly small amount of people actually will achieve fame and wealth. The rest can just grow bitter.

As for our bounty of openly degenerate pop-culture, it’s understandable that some might see it at as a source of degenerate behaviour. When you see the same lupine stare in the faces of the children hanging around outside your home as you see on CD cases and music videos, when you hear the same depressing worldview bubbling from the mouths of the fans and the ‘artists’ it is only reasonable to wonder if one is causing the other. And it is only salt in the wounds to picture of the champagne lifestyles of record executives, safely insulated in their gated communities in California, all furnished by the profits of this glitzy nihilism.

But still, you have to tread carefully when it comes to cause and effect. For all their popularity The Sex Pistols never did bring anarchy to the UK, anymore than Thin Lizzy ever incited a jailbreak. It is just about conceivable that a track called Let’s break into Currys by The iPod Thieves might incite some of its listeners to do just that. But it could just be that people who like stealing electrical goods find it the most fitting accompanying score. More likely still, it could just be a purchasable means for teenagers to annoy and bewilder adults, not least their parents and David Starkey.

Material impoverishment/Subsidised Indolence

(the global financial crash; thieving bankers; monetarism; the nanny state; poverty of pocket; the export of meaningful forms of employment; youth unemployment)

These were not bread riots. No one involved appeared to be hungry, and most of the looting was of luxury goods. For many commentators this fact alone is enough to banish the subject of ‘impoverishment’.

On the other hand their timing, in the wake of near economic meltdown, can hardly be coincidental. Regardless of the morality of the looters, the fact that so many citizens were prepared to stoop so low cannot be divorced from the economy. The ranks of the young unemployed definitely are swelling. The few jobs going are mostly low-paid and tedious. Benefit rates are stagnating, and certainly not enough to cover more than a bare existence. Not a valid excuse for breaking and entry, but certainly an incentive.

Even allowing for such factors does not of course produce agreement, it just shifts the terms of the debate: Why are so many people materially impoverished? Many on the right blame the benefits system itself. Welfare is seen as the real poverty trap, tempting people away from gainful employment, and out-pricing genuine businesses in the labour market. On a fixed state income there is no chance of promotion, pay rise or even a bit of overtime. No surprise that the devil should find other work for these idle hands.

The left will reply by asking who it was that destroyed gainful employment, and left generations of people stranded on benefits. The right will doubtless reply ‘greedy unions’. We are back to familiar left/right arguments about economics.

Moral impoverishment

This one is really the combined consequences of all the others. For many reasons these disturbances were widely judged to be immoral in intent: There was no indication that they were a struggle for justice or liberty. Political motivation was next to zero, the only hunger was for luxury goods. There was a callous indifference to human life and to the social circumstances of the victims. Many of those victims were completely blameless for the perceived social ills of the perpetrators. Many were small businesses that will never recover and never be able to trade again.

As with material impoverishment, blame here tends to split along familiar political lines. Some target the collective evils of social liberalism: Authority has lost its authority. Police and parents have rendered themselves impotent. Multiculturalism and cultural relativism have eroded our values. We have lost the ability to condemn. Nothing can be declared bad any more, only different. The law is tilted in the favour of the perpetrators of crime. Welfare has robbed people of dignity and has destroyed the connection between effort and due reward. Moral decency is impossible without religious belief, and religion has been buried. Atheism is condemning us to hell in the here and now.

Others blame neo-liberalism: It was Thatcher and friends that destroyed our culture and our dignity. Most of the social structures that provided solidarity, pride and purpose to the working classes have been smashed-up, sold-off or usurped by the new ruling elite – the Labour party included. It was the right that transformed citizens into consumers, and every human deed into a cash transaction. It was corporate capitalism that blew away our value system.

Certainly, anyone who wants to defend our consumer society and also condemn the looters does have some explaining to do. Consumerism is all about making people discontented with their lot. People in the advertising industry fully acknowledge this fact. Their aim is to compel people to want things that they don’t need, and feel like crap if they don’t get them.

Aside from the inherent immorality, this seems a sure recipe for social unrest. Human will and desire are awesome forces. If you actively set out to taunt humans with desirable objects when you know full well they cannot afford them, you shouldn’t be too surprised when they grab-out nonetheless. Corporate capitalism wants us as mindless zombies, trampling on each other as we clamber for its products. Tough luck that some of us continue to clamber even when we haven’t got the wherewithal.

Technology

(social networking; 24 hour multichannel television; the internet; video games)

“What would you do with free texts and internet for life?” asked T-Mobile. “Josh [naturally] is starting a Superband”. In reality we can now happily add “Ibrahim is organising a pro-democracy rally”, but also, sadly, “Steve is organising a mass break-in”. After all the inconclusiveness, finally something we can firmly blame. Looting and rioting are nothing new, but the coordinated effort and speed of contagation certainly are. This definitely depended on social networking.

Along with the moral issues, this has to be one of the most anxiety inducing facts. It chimes with broader fears of technology, and its endless unknowns: The barbarians have discovered fire and nothing will ever be the same again. Now the secret is out, can we expect a repeat performance every weekend? It’s like Eve with that apple again. Love it or hate it, we can’t unlearn the internet. One consequence is that miscreants now have an instant means of co-ordinating their misdeeds. How that weighs up against the democratic and moral advantages of social networking is one question that will rumble on.

Likewise, it’s easy enough to find reasons to blame technology for much of our recent material impoverishment. Just in terms of retail jobs and businesses, Ebay and Amazon have decimated our High streets. Most of the money supposedly ‘made’ by e-billionaires wasn’t conjured from thin air. It was the usual process of new and cheaper alternatives bankrupting their competitors. In the main, the reason the e-firms can do it cheaper is because they don’t need to employ many people, and can make use of low-wage workers in other countries. The ‘dot-com revolution’ was possibly the biggest downsizing event in economic history. Nice for the occasional CEO, not so nice for the wage worker.

As for moral impoverishment, well where do we start? If you have any suspicions that 24-hour pornography, gambling and ultra-violent video games might have a negative effect on the outlook of the population, well here are the technologies that made it possible. All now available 24/7 in almost every home in the country.

The pattern continues with role models. Before the advent of day-long multichannel television who would have heard of Jade Goody? It was only the huge amounts of vacant air-time, and the tiny amounts of advertising revenue, that sucked her and her kind into the vacuum. If you want high viewing figures but you can’t actually afford to employ anyone worthwhile, what is the natural choice? Voyeurism – preferably of the loudest crassest most shameless people. It’s just like pornography, which is probably why it so resembles pornography. All made possible by the wonders of 21st Century technology.

So, in summary, a handful of definite culprits, a few more we might grudgingly agree on, and a great swathe of irreconcilable politically-charged competing theories. Certainly no sign of agreement on dating the golden age. In fact the golden age looks like a bit of a golden herring. When you choose an era to cherish it’s all too easy to factor out all the other horrible things that were happening at that time. You can call for the return of National Service, but do you also want the return of Teddy Boys slashing cinema seats, and Mosley’s mobs back on the streets? Or what about the golden age that gave rise to National Service, the one that left most of London flattened? I think most Londoners would prefer to keep the Hoodies than have the Luftwaffe back. Be careful what you wish for.

The demise of another great British tradition

2011-07-13T10:50:00.006+01:00

As the fallout from the News International scandal spreads, it now seems unavoidable that even the formal constitution of British government will be affected.

At the very least, it appears that it may no longer be a prerequisite for those seeking the highest office of UK government to first kneel and kiss the hands of an American tax-dodger. Traditionally this ceremony has been performed behind closed doors, at such consecrated locations as Wapping docks and Hayman Island.

Constitutional experts have expressed alarm at the immoral vacuum this change will leave in British politics, and a parliamentary committee is currently working to devise an alternative scheme. In the short term it is understood that the pornographer Richard Desmond has been approached and offered the opportunity to undertake the role in a caretaker capacity.

Nevertheless, the long-term survival of the ceremony is far from assured. To some critics it has always seemed anachronistic, and even to serve a role contrary to democracy. Indeed the fact that this tradition was maintained for more than three decades may surprise future generations of Britons – as much as it might generations past.

Dying for our sins

2011-06-08T13:58:00.004+01:00

Of the many puzzling inconsistencies to be found in religion one seems particularly relevant at this time: If Christ died for our sins then why is sin still present? If he really did shoulder the whole world’s sins – but in no sense alleviated or eradicated them – then surely he suffered in vain.

One might counter that his suffering only erased the sins present at that point in history. Today’s sin then would just be the accumulation of sins from that point on. But this is hard to support. There is nothing in recorded history to suggest a temporary lull in human misery around two thousand years ago. By all accounts it was just misery as usual.

A more likely explanation is that the church wants to have its communion wafer and eat it. It wants us to believe that the universe is ruled over by a supremely benevolent and omnipotent being, yet needs to square this with an obviously miserable world. If they aren’t careful their God might look like a sadist for not intervening to end all this pain. So instead we witness a sleight of hand. He lifts the burden of sin, and all sin remains, all at the same time.

Such conjuring tricks are not confined to religion. The killing of Osama bin Laden is another example of a thorough cleansing that leaves everything as filthy as before. His executioners are delighted to inform us the world is incalculably safer – while simultaneously warning us that things are every bit as dangerous. It has all the vibe of the VJ day celebrations, only with the war still raging-on, indefinitely.

Much as the church trades on the myth of an omniscient God, the ‘war on terror’ has traded on a mythical devil. We only have to kill the devil for the world to be saved. As we have seen, the devil can take many forms. In Afghanistan he assumed the name Taliban. Then, in an odd convergence with his biblical counterpart, he took the form of a serpent in Mesopotamia, modern Iraq. In fact the devil has managed to show up pretty much wherever Washington’s political and economic strategists have hoped he would.

For all the infantile punditry, the death of bin Laden is nothing to celebrate. It’s just another death, and one that has already led to more death. Chanting “USA! USA!” takes the American public no closer to understanding their country’s role in the world. It just affirms the belief that the US can kill its way to victory, whatever victory might mean in these circumstances.

Like the death of Christ, the death of Osama has been presented to us as a moment of salvation. As with Christ however this is a strange sort of salvation – one where no one actually gets saved.

A More Subtle Pravda

2011-04-25T16:43:00.004+01:00

April saw another condemnation of the BBC’s legendary political bias, this time by its veteran broadcaster Michael Buerk.

“What the BBC regards as normal and abnormal, what is moderate or extreme, where the centre of gravity of an issue lies, are conditioned by the common set of assumptions held by the people who work for it.”

No surprise Buerk was identifying left-wing bias at the corporation. But the sentence works just as well for those of us who see things the other way round.

Here’s one common assumption that grounds every BBC news report: Whatever actions Britain takes in the world, they are always morally well intentioned. Mistaken or badly executed, possibly, but never done in bad faith. This rule goes without saying, and any journalist who questions it is putting their job on the line. Jeremy Paxman, no less, recently had his knuckles rapped on this issue: Clearly it is fine to claim that the Iraq catastrophe was born of faulty intelligence, but biased to suggest that it was born of lies. Evidence doesn’t enter into it.

Such affrays are of course rare. For all the bashing his right ear has endured, I cannot recall an instance in John Simpson’s forty years of ‘heroic’ reporting where he has questioned the moral basis of Britain’s actions in the world. He may criticise methods, or hint that some acts are foolhardy, but he never questions motives.

This might be because Britain’s intentions in the world really are consistently noble. But note that many non-BBC journalists don’t agree. Tariq Ali and Robert Fisk are perfectly happy to address what they see as the cynicism underlying British foreign policy. Likewise, large sections of the general public are confident that Britain’s role in the world is often immoral and self-serving rather than benevolent.

The robotic BBC response of course is that the corporation must avoid bias. Fisk and Ali are deeply political beings and so not suitable for a strictly apolitical organisation like BBC news. But this claim just exposes its own lie. What could be more political than the root assumption that one’s own country is incapable of moral deviancy? What could be more biased than ruling out the possibility of cynicism on the part of one player before judging the game?

Moreover, if questioning the moral stance of players is a sign of unforgivable bias then why is it acceptable when those players are official enemies? BBC journalists and editors have no trouble questioning the sincerity of Assad or Saddam or Gaddafi. It’s perfectly okay to attribute cynicism to their actions.

Robotic response number two: Some leaders are clearly evil tyrants. The above have gassed or shot or beaten “their own people” so there’s no judgement involved, just the statement of fact. Again this only betrays the lie. The governments of Yemen and Bahrain are currently employing such tactics in their attempts to cling to power. However as client states of the West, to question their morality would risk the accusation of bias. Much safer to focus on Libya and Syria.

Moreover, to suggest the west had acted immorally by furnishing these regimes with the arms they are now using to beat and shoot “their own people” would constitute biased reporting. An ‘unbiased’ BBC journalist would need to pan out a little, factor-in the West’s moral crusade against Islamic extremism, its efforts to protect the Israel-Palestine ‘peace process’.

Deeply hypocritical stuff, but at least it does clarify the true meaning of ‘bias’ in BBC parlance. Bias has nothing to do with favouring one player over another, it is about straying from the officially sanctioned picture, questioning the official bias.

Although more subtle, these are the same techniques employed by Pravda. While it is permissible to portray our leaders as more ambiguous characters than it was with comrade Stalin, the moral motives of the motherland remain beyond question. Like Pravda, BBC news works to constantly recalibrate public opinion, drag it back to blind faith in our nation’s good intent, regardless of the evidence before our eyes. There is simply no amount of arming and bombing and invading that BBC news cannot explain away as well meant.

In consequence, the next arms deal or air strike or ground invasion becomes easier to sell to the public. The BBC’s daily inoculations against the virus of national self-criticism are a key means of keeping the public on board. It is this reinforced sense of national righteousness that lies behind the cry of, “Well what should we do!? Just stand back while he murders his own people!?” which many a well-meaning citizen is heard to holler during the run-up to the latest NATO bombing or invasion of one place or another. The idea that what Britain is already doing might be the problem is off the radar, a core impossibility.

Whatever influence Guardinistas might be exerting in the BBC newsroom, it seems unlikely they could be having as serious a propaganda effect as this.

The ‘Greater Good’ Device

2011-02-16T15:23:00.005Z

For defenders of authority, it seems there is no act so obscene it can’t be counterbalanced by the claim that it serves a greater good:

• Bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved lives in the long run.

• Torture is vital to preventing greater agony elsewhere

• Arming and funding tyrants is a necessary evil if one is to protect the world from barbarians or communists or terrorists, or whoever happens to be bogeyman that year.

• The death of a million civilians is a price worth paying to prevent a tyrant from stockpiling weapons of mass destruction (discretely changed to ‘a price worth paying to depose a tyrant’ when the weapons fail to show up.)

You might notice a potential for conflict between the last two points. But no fear, one can always factor-in timing. While it was for the ‘greater good’ of international diplomacy that Donald Rumsfeld warmly shook hands with Saddam Hussein in 1983 – at a time when he was known to be using chemical weapons – it was clearly a reprehensible gesture after 1990, when he was known to be using chemical weapons.

Presumably if Germany had won the last war and the Reich had lasted to the present we could expect today’s professional commentators to calmly explain away Auschwitz and Dachau as unpleasant necessities. Popular historians would caution us not to judge our predecessors too quickly and to bear in mind the genuine threat posed by world Jewry, Roma, and the disabled.

In reality there is the case of Mubarak’s Egypt. According to a January report by Human Rights Watch:

“Security forces' routine use of torture initially targeted political dissidents, or those suspected of being dissidents, whether armed or peaceful. Torture subsequently became epidemic, affecting large numbers of ordinary citizens who found themselves in police custody as suspects, or in connection with criminal investigations.”

If the US is the champion of freedom and democracy in the Middle East one might ask why it supplied this regime with $1.3 billion in military aid for each of the last 30 years? What moral impulse could have prompted Hillary Clinton to defend Mubarak as a family friend and Tony Blair to laud him as “immensely courageous and a force for good”.

The answer of course is the greater good. As all ‘responsible’ analysts agree, the only way to foster freedom in the Middle East is by bankrolling the indefinite suspension of freedom. The only way to diminish the police state is by active support of the police state. The only way to broker peace is through the sale of weaponry. The only way to prevent terror is to terrorise.

Clearly there are times when the only moral option is to grit your teeth and choose a lesser evil. But this is an easy principle to abuse. All too often the ‘greater good’ is just a means of excusing deliberate policies, ones motivated by less noble desires. It is now clear that the West’s support for Mubarak’s regime was never a means to an end, it was the desired end in itself – hence the muted reactions to its collapse. Like so many other dictators, before and now, Mubarak wasn’t paid by the West to encourage democracy, he was paid to be a dictator, and suppress it.

Why would anyone want to wage war on cancer?

2011-01-09T19:07:00.003Z

For Conservative MP Philip Davies the Christmas run-up was spent distancing the government from Vince Cable’s auto-Assangement. On the BBC’s PM, in a state bordering on bewilderment, he told Eddie Mair:

“I see absolutely no basis for the government......to wage war in any way on the Murdoch empire which has Sky in it’s stable, which has been incredibly successful because it provides its viewers with what it wants. It’s got The Sun newspaper in its stable which is the most read newspaper in the country presumably because it appeals to a wide range of people in the country, you know, why on earth would anybody want to wage war on a businessman who employs lots of people, who is good for the economy and also provides its customers with what it wants?”

Why indeed? Suggestions were certainly not going to come from Eddie Mair. The BBC’s fear of Murdoch ensures that none of its journalists dare to voice what a substantial chunk of its licence-payers are thinking.

For those of us unencumbered by media careers a few things spring to mind. We might argue that Murdoch’s News Corporation has proven itself one of the most dangerous and divisive entities at play in the modern world, and that allowing it to become a larger player than the BBC would be act of national self-mutilation.

We might point out that rather than being “good for the economy” Murdoch is the consummate tax-dodger, a persistent drain on the nation’s resources. We might glance at recent history and see that rather than creating jobs his track record is one of mass redundancies and skeleton staffing.

We might point out that (despite all the dross) the BBC still reliably produces the best programmes in the world, while Fox and Sky are the global leaders in barrel-scraping. We might present twenty years of Fox scheduling and not find a single programme of any depth. We might note that Fox’s single greatest cultural contribution is a cartoon notable for its running jokes about how appalling Fox is.

We might point out that despite its popularity The Sun is a deceitful, bullying, celebrity-obsessed democracy-skewing phone-tapping socially-corrosive bundle of soft-core pornography. And we might draw particular attention to its success in dragging the rest of our media in this direction.

We might look at Fox News in the US – an utterly partisan political organisation, dedicated to pushing Murdoch’s own right-wing agenda. We might witness journalism transformed into tele-evangelism, analysis transformed into jingoism and sport elevated to the status of news. We might reasonably ask if we want these values imported into the UK.

And if we want play the populist card we might look at the fate of our own supposed national game. Once freely available to any TV licence holder – now restricted to those prepared to pay hefty subscriptions to a citizen of the US.

If we consider only the fear that Murdoch instils in the media and in politicians we have good reason for caution. Can it be right that Thatcher and Blair and Cameron had to kiss hands and do deals with an international businessman to ensure he didn’t derail their domestic election campaigns? Can it be right that it was The Sun wot won it?

Presumably these are some of the reasons Vince Cable hoped to block Murdoch’s plans. He is not alone in these fears. John Pilger referred to Murdoch as a “cultural Chernobyl”, and Dennis Potter was compelled to name his own cancer after him.

Clearly a great many of us share these sentiments, but unfortunately the decision has now been handed to someone who does not. Cable’s replacement Jeremy Hunt is soon to announce whether or not the deal will be allowed to go ahead, and there is good reason to believe he will approve it. If like John, Vince, the late Dennis and myself you take issue with this, perhaps you can write him a polite email asking him to consider your objections: huntj@parliament.uk

Email to all Liberal Democrat MPs

2010-11-02T15:56:00.003Z

Below is the text of an email I have just sent to all Lib Dem back-benchers, and copied to their front-bench. I have included the email list at the bottom in case anyone would like to do something similar (I also have it in a more user-friendly form on a spreadsheet so just drop me a line if you would like a copy.)

All the best,

Dear XXXXXX MP,

I am writing to you and all other Liberal Democrats MPs urging you to oppose the coalition’s spending plans. If you are already planning to do so may I congratulate your judgement and integrity, and apologise for disturbing you.

If on the other hand you plan to support this policy I would like you to consider the following points before you vote:

1. Supporting this policy is betraying those who voted for you. Very few would have done so if they had known you would support such cuts. Certainly, any disillusioned Labour supporters who voted for you did so under the impression that your party had shifted to the left of Labour. Aside from the anti-democratic nature of this turn-around, you can be sure they will never vote for you again.

2. This policy is premised on a lie. The reason the country is in debt is not because of welfare spending but because of bailing out the banks. Free-market capitalism created this crisis, not local government.

3. This policy is rooted in ideology, not necessity. Anyone who has read Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine will know the true motives. Time and again economic crises such as this have been seized upon by the monetarist right as an opportunity to attack social gains and bolster corporate profit and power. As a self-proclaimed liberal you may have some sympathy with the idea of a minimised state, but you would be gravely mistaken if you think that individual freedom will be enhanced by these cuts. The real goal here is corporate, not human, liberty.

4. There is an alternative to this policy. In fact there are plenty. Cancelling Trident would go a large way towards writing off our debt – something you were voted into office to secure. In addition there are a mass of corporate tax-breaks and tax-dodges that could cover the shortfall, should a government have the desire and the courage to address them. And what about the bankers who precipitated the crisis?

I’m assured by my acquaintances that it will be futile to write to Liberal Democrat MPs as they will have already been seduced by power. But you must question the worth of this ‘power’. If the Conservatives had won a few more votes they would be merrily pushing through the exact same package without your assistance. It is transparently obvious that Liberal Democratic input into this policy is little more than window-dressing.

Nevertheless, you are in a unique position to exert power if you dare. You can truly make history and represent the democratic wishes of those who voted for you. By voting against this madness you can floor this beast before it ravages our country, and drags us back to the fear and uncertainty of the 1930s.

If you have any questions or take issue with any of the above points I will be happy to respond.

Sincere best wishes,

Martin Johnson
Brighton

Danny Alexander, Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey, 2005–present alexanderdg@parliament.uk
Norman Baker, Lewes, 1997–present bakern@parliament.uk
Alan James Beith, Berwick-upon-Tweed, 1988–present 1 cheesemang@parliament.uk
Gordon Birtwistle, Burnley, 2010–present gordon.birtwistle.mp@parliament.uk
Tom Brake, Carshalton and Wallington, 1997–present braket@parliament.uk
Annette Brooke, Mid Dorset and North Poole, 2001–present brookea@parliament.uk
Jeremy Browne, Taunton Deane, 2005–present brownej@parliament.uk
Malcolm Bruce, Gordon, 1988–present 1 hernandeza@parliament.uk
Paul Burstow, Sutton and Cheam, 1997–present burstowp@parliament.uk
Lorely Burt, Solihull, 2005–present burtl@parliament.uk
Vincent Cable, Twickenham, 1997–present cablev@parliament.uk
Menzies Campbell, North East Fife, 1988–present 1 westminster_office@mingcampbell.org.uk
Alistair Carmichael, Orkney and Shetland, 2001–present carmichaela@parliament.uk
Nick Clegg, Sheffield Hallam, 2005–present nickclegg@sheffieldhallam.org.uk
Mike Crockart, Edinburgh West, 2010–present mike.crockart.mp@parliament.uk
Edward Davey, Kingston and Surbiton, 1997–present daveye@parliament.uk
Tim Farron, Westmorland and Lonsdale, 2005–present farront@parliament.uk
Lynne Featherstone, Hornsey and Wood Green, 2005–present featherstonel@parliament.uk
Don Foster, Bath, 1992–present fosterd@parliament.uk
Andrew George, St Ives, 1997–present hardyb@parliament.uk
Steve Gilbert, St Austell and Newquay, 2010–present stephen.gilbert.mp@parliament.uk
Duncan Hames, Chippenham, 2010–present duncan.hames.mp@parliament.uk
Mike Hancock, Portsmouth South, 1997–present hancockm@parliament.uk
Nick Harvey, North Devon, 1992–present allenmt@parliament.uk
David Heath, Somerton and Frome, 1997–present davidheath@davidheath.co.uk
John Hemming, Birmingham Yardley, 2005–present hemmingj@parliament.uk
Martin Horwood, Cheltenham, 2005–present horwoodm@parliament.uk
Simon Hughes, North Southwark and Bermondsey, 1997–present 1 simon@simonhughes.org.uk
Chris Huhne, Eastleigh, 2005–present chris@chrishuhne.org.uk
Julian Huppert, Cambridge, 2010–present julian.huppert.mp@parliament.uk
Mark Hunter, Cheadle, 2005–present hunterm@parliament.uk
Charles Kennedy, Ross, Skye and Lochaber, 2005–present 2 kennedyc@parliament.uk
Norman Lamb, North Norfolk, 2001–present lambn@parliament.uk
David Laws, Yeovil, 2001–present lawsd@parliament.uk
John Leech, Manchester Withington, 2005–present leechj@parliament.uk
Stephen Lloyd, Eastbourne, 2010–present stephen.lloyd.mp@parliament.uk
Michael Moore, Roxburgh and Selkirk, 2005–present michaelmooremp@parliament.uk
Greg Mulholland, Leeds North West, 2005–present info@gregmulholland.org
Tessa Munt, Wells, 2010–present tessa.munt.mp@parliament.uk
John Pugh, Southport, 2001–present pughj@parliament.uk
Alan Reid, Argyll and Bute, 2001–present reida@parliament.uk
Dan Rogerson, North Cornwall, 2005–present rogersond@parliament.uk
Bob Russell, Colchester, 1997–present brooksse@parliament.uk
Adrian Sanders, Torbay, 1997–present sandersac@parliament.uk
Robert Smith, West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine, 1997–present robert.smith.mp@parliament.uk
Andrew Stunell, Hazel Grove, 1997–present stunella@parliament.uk
Ian Swales, Redcar, 2010–present ian.swales.mp@parliament.uk
Jo Swinson, East Dunbartonshire, 2005–present swinsonj@parliament.uk
Sarah Teather, Brent East, 2003–2010; Brent Central, 2010–present teathers@parliament.uk
John Thurso, Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, 2001–present thursoj@parliament.uk
David Ward, Bradford East, 2010–present david.ward.mp@parliament.uk
Steve Webb, Northavon, Thornbury and Yate, 2010–present webbs@parliament.uk
Mark Williams, Ceredigion, 2005–present williamsmf@parliament.uk
Roger Williams, Brecon and Radnorshire, 2001–present williamsr@parliament.uk
Stephen Williams, Bristol West, 2005–present stephenwilliamsmp@parliament.uk
Jenny Willott, Cardiff Central, 2005–present willottj@parliament.uk
Simon Wright, Norwich South, 2010 simon.wright.mp@parliament.uk

Blitz Season: Valour by Association

2010-09-19T13:26:00.009+01:00

It’s Blitz season again, and it seems to be bigger than ever. The BBC alone boasts ten programmes in the space of a week. That’s aside from news reports and memorials and related features on Antiques Roadshow. Considering seventy years have already passed, it seems safe to assume we can look forward to Blitz season again in autumn 2020 and 2030, with a jumbo special in 2040, long after every active participant and all but a handful of the war-babies have died.

And of course things don’t stop with the Blitz. The great thing about a six year war is that it leaves only four years blank per decade. I don’t know whether the planners at Broadcasting House have drawn-up a timetable yet but I’m happy for them to borrow mine:

***** 2019 2029 2039* ‘Declaration of War in Europe’ season
***** 2020 2030 2040* ‘Dunkirk’ and ‘Battle of Britain’ seasons
2011 2021 2031 2041* ‘Pearl Harbour’ season
2012 2022 2032 2042* ‘El Alamein’ season
2013 2023 2033 2043* ‘Burma’ season
2014 2024 2034 2044* ‘D-Day’ season
2015 2025 2035 2045* ‘VE Day’ and 'VJ Day' seasons

* Bumper centenary editions

Then in 2049 presumably we can start the whole cycle off again.

Both my parents served in the war. They certainly reminisced on it – but probably no more than anyone tends to talk about the events of their late teens and early twenties. They certainly didn’t dwell on it, and define themselves by it, as the media tend to now. One can see several reasons behind this growing obsession. Ostensibly we are told:

We owe it to those who fought and died to remember their sacrifice.

An important lesson was learned by the experience of WWII, and we need to ensure it is not forgotten by future generations.

While there’s something to the first point, the second is a sad joke. Apart from developing a strong mistrust of politicians alighting from aeroplanes brandishing pieces of paper we seem to have learned nothing. More honestly we also have:

It’s an interesting subject

It produces a warm patriotic glow

Again there’s some truth to the first point, but you have to wonder how much this is just a product of the second. After all, we’re not the only country in the world that has come close to being invaded by something nasty. If it’s history we’re interested in then why make such a fetish of our own country’s history?

Given the full historical record point two looks like a very dubious pleasure. Clearly the warmth comes from associating ourselves with a period of courage, resilience and victory. But is it morally right for the people of a country currently engaged in two illegal and catastrophic occupations of other countries to spend so much time with their heads in the Spitfire-filled clouds, fantasising about the courage of previous generations? Wouldn’t moralists and historians be better occupied analysing the crimes of today rather than one six year period over half a century ago?

It takes nothing away from the memory or sacrifices of the dead to recognise that the Second World War has become a very useful propaganda tool. Britain spent much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries invading, enslaving, subjugating and exploiting other countries. Our material wealth rests upon it. Small wonder when it comes to considering our history we cherry-pick the six brief years when we were the plucky underdog, rather than the acquisitive aggressor. ‘Battle of Britain Season’ makes far more comfortable viewing than ‘Fallujah Blitz Season’ let alone ‘Fallujah Cancer Statistics Season’.

Seventy years on, it’s difficult to imagine the event that might shake Britain out of identifying itself with World War Two. One dreadful possibility is another equally appalling war. Fantasising about past victories will not help to avert this outcome. Daring to face up to our country’s current crimes just might.

For Whose Sake Wear A Poppy?

2009-11-06T14:59:00.006Z

It’s a common misconception that propaganda must be consciously created. The campaign posters for this year’s poppy appeal show how good intentions can have deeply ideological consequences.

The simplest form of propaganda is omission. How can you not feel sympathy for someone who has had their legs blown off? How can you not pity the war widow left to struggle on a pittance? The easiest way of course is not to know about them. That's exactly how our pity and sympathy for the victims of our invasions are kept in check. We’re not told much, so we don’t care much.

With the noblest of intentions, one consequence of the poppy campaign is to elicit selective sympathy. It focuses our grief on one specific group of casualties – no surprise, our own. Meanwhile the victims of our invasions slip further from view, perhaps further despised for bringing this tragedy upon 'our boys'.

Exclusive focus on our own soldiers is of course the current media method of dealing with the hell we have made of Afghanistan and Iraq. For those who supported these invasions reporting their true horror and failure would mean admitting complicity. So roll on the squaddies, let the tragedy be theirs. Rather than the criminality of the invasion all attention turns to the plight of Tommy Atkins. Rather than failed states and piles of civilian corpses, the tragedy becomes one of shoddy equipment and shitty living conditions.

It’s Vietnam all over again. You rain hell down on civilian populations and then paint the whole thing as a tragedy sustained by your own side. Hopefully, you eventually withdraw.

For Tony Blair's sake wear a Poppy?

Which brings us to a second sphere of unintended propaganda. Another awful consequence of wearing a poppy is that it may assist the ambitions of those who send armies off into immoral adventures.

The danger is of a sort of morality by association. By honouring all soldiers of all wars, immoral wars are given a boost. While clearly there is something noble about risking your life to save others, it’s far more questionable whether it is noble to risk your life for a lie – even if you sincerely believed the lie. It is simply not true that Iraq or Afghanistan were invaded to bring democracy, or find weapons of mass destruction, or save western civilisation. The fact that many of the invading soldiers believed these lies has no bearing on the matter.

By honouring all soldiers of all wars the line between moral and immoral wars is blurred. Leaders who wage war out of avarice and ego are falsely associated with those who fight and die for more noble reasons. At worst, perhaps the next immoral adventure gets a boost, and more civilian and military lives are extinguished.

Of course it is truly shameful that those who sacrifice so much are treated so badly on their return home. If we do ‘owe our freedom’ to these people then why is this begging bowl approach necessary, why doesn't the state cover the cost? If these invasions are carried out for moral reasons, why doesn't the moral responsibility extend to the dead and injured?

The awful but obvious answer is that governments don't really care about soldiers. They need them for protection of property, and to assist with the acquisition of other peoples’ property, but they are as expendable today as they were to the Duke of Wellington. Sadly there's usually plenty more cannon-fodder to hand.

How to avoid the next monetarist consensus IV

2009-09-06T13:43:00.001+01:00

Celestial Monetarism

It has long been a dream of leftists that the market might one day be eradicated. Not because state control of production is itself desirable, rather that with the right state planning we might reach a point in history where self-interest evaporates from productive relations and renders both state and market unnecessary. Rather than struggling to outdo each other materially we would employ our skills to sustain and nurture each other. Selfless supply would service legitimate demand: From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.

For the monetarist however this is nothing but a seductive fantasy, a hollow but dangerous sound-bite: The chaos and uncertainty of unfettered supply and demand is not an impediment to social freedom but its core. While harsh and painful, the market is the bedrock of wealth, innovation and liberty.

Of course the left don’t hold the monopoly on idealism. We could similarly distil pure monetarism down to something like:

From each according to their desires, to each according to their desires.

As with the previous adage this has an appealing purity. Demand becomes nothing more than the desire to own something; supply becomes nothing more than the desire to meet those demands. Nothing unwanted gets made (well, not for long anyway) and given a large enough demand (to make it worthwhile for the producer) everything feasible is available for purchase, state of the art, and at the best possible price.

As with collectivist nirvana, the belief is that given the right relations of production the state would eventually disappear, or at least shrink out of all recognition. Get production right and we won’t need unemployment benefit or income tax or the NHS, or so many policemen to bash people over the head for not wanting to join in. Society would be more attuned to individual human needs and wouldn’t require the constant tinkering and bullying of a central overseer.

Feasibility is another matter. Clearly this does not describe the current order. Like collectivist nirvana, monetarist nirvana would have to be actively engineered over a period of time. It would require a wholesale transformation of human nature (or the release of the true human nature currently trapped in the social-democratic lie, if you prefer.)

Interestingly, while collective idealism suggests that economic equality would require minimal policing, monetarist idealism makes the same claim for economic inequality. The supposition is that the benefits provided by the unfettered market would be enough to secure the compliance of those who fare less well: No income tax would mean more pay for the lowest earners. No sales tax would mean cheaper living costs. No welfare would mean everyone would have to work, so less devilry from idle hands. Instead, a fully productive society consisting of a multitude of social strata – with all necessary incentives and human fulfilment provided by the possibility of social mobility.

Terrestrial Monetarism

For all its purity this vision does not have evidence on its side. There is nothing to suggest that the unfettered free market can produce a free, just, or stable society. While it has long been is a mantra of the right that “socialism is all very nice on paper but it doesn't work in practice”, we now have three decades of accumulated proof that while Monetarism is all very horrible on paper, it doesn’t work in practice either.

The monetarist promise of social and industrial peace is a fiction. As long as some people live by wages the same tensions will remain – pay, conditions, workloads, hours, leave. Working people will always have good reason to combine and campaign for a decent living. It’s class-struggle as usual, and we can expect the usual response from the state.

The monetarist response of course is to ‘limit’ the scope of the idealism. Withering the state is reinterpreted as the more modest withering the welfare state. Meanwhile coercive state apparatus mushrooms. The invisible hand is reliably accompanied by the iron fist. Rather than becoming an anachronism, ministries of surveillance, incarceration, torture and murder are the hallmark of the 'free'-market economy.

This violence is usually excused as a temporary phase, a necessary evil during the transition to the peaceful stateless society – a Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie to lead us to free-market nirvana. Interestingly, as with the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, it seems that the only way to secure an end to state coercion is through increased state coercion: the only way to rid ourselves of the police and army is through more police and army.

In truth these means are the end. For many free-market advocates violence is a regrettable but necessary means of maintaining the natural human hierarchy. Rather than a crime, many see the juxtaposition of opulence and grinding poverty as the natural order of things, a reflection of differing human skills and capabilities. Consequently those whose poor aptitude leads them to be materially poor are likely to thieve and connive and form unions and labour movements, and so skew this natural hierarchy. Consequently, a powerful coercive state apparatus is a justifiable evil, a regrettable waste of resources, but necessary to keep the dogs at bay and maintain human freedom in other spheres.

If profound inequality is the natural state of being, so be it. For many free-market advocates the natural order of humanity seems to be a super-rich elite, a modest-sized middle class, and a mass of dirt-poor. And, of course, a formidable ministry of violence to keep everything from boiling over. It sounds harsh, and indeed it is harsh, but it’s nothing new. Throughout human history the wealthy have been dreaming-up justifications for inequality, and justifications for using violence to maintain their status. It’s just the latest excuse for business as usual.

What is to be done?

The most important weapon in the fight against the next monetarist consensus will be honesty. The honest truth is that unfettered capitalism does not lead to wealth and freedom. It only further entrenches inequality and powerlessness. Equally however, the left need to be honest about the problems that arise from collective organisation of economics.

The first truth is not something you would deduce from the corporate friendly media. The economic ‘miracles’ reported in Time and Newsweek were just miraculous accumulations of profit for global corporations, and came at terrible cost to domestic populations. From Chile to Russia to Poland to South Africa the story was the same. A monetarist controlled World Bank and IMF blackmailed desperate countries into privatising their economic and social infrastructure; the booty was divided up between multinationals, Mafiosi, and the stooge governments of the host countries. (For the awful details see Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine.)

It’s been a funny game when you pan out a little. Monetarists campaigned to convince every country in the world that it would face ruin if it didn’t embrace the free-market. Thatcher insisted that if we didn’t slash state spending at home we would be out-priced in the global market. And indeed, as long as we were funding good health and welfare how could we possibly complete with the unit cost of production in Taiwan, Malaysia, Mexico and the new China?

The darkly amusing thing is, the reason those other countries had such high rates of productivity was because they had been bombed and bullied out of their own hopes of decent welfare by the very same ideological clique imposing their plans at home. Reagan and Thatcher at one and the same time set out to smash welfare domestically and in the developing world.

Clearly for monetarists the fear is not that any one country that allows welfare will make itself uncompetitive, but that if the whole world adopts minimal welfare standards the general level of exploitation will fall, that is, corporations will make less money out of us as a species. Clearly the national interest of neither first nor third world country is being served by monetarism; it is a third entity, the global corporation that benefits.

Monetarists have contrived to keep the whole world desperate, every nation, business and worker in a state of perpetual fear of the other, for the sake of corporate profit. But we can find hope in this policy of despair. If destroying welfare in one county helps to destroy it elsewhere, we must conclude the opposite is also true: Any country that refuses to treat its population as corporate fodder is cutting slack for others to do the same. The greatest threat to monetarism is the threat of a good example.

Free-market thinkers are certainly aware of this fact, hence the desperate measures taken against any country that falls out of line. Only by insuring that most workers get paid peanuts can they ensure that most workers get paid peanuts.

It’s a counter intuitive after decades of being set at each other’s throats, but it is nonetheless the case. Refusing to participate in the monetarist game is the best way to help other countries to refuse. Every victory for a particular labour movement is a general victory for the entire labour movement. The best way to fight for a better deal globally is by fighting for lower productivity globally, and higher public spending globally.

The second point about honesty relates to the credibility of this fight. One of the most powerful weapons in the monetarist arsenal is the perceived idealism of the left. Just as the ideal total market economy has been discredited, the same must be admitted for collectivist idealism. Wilfully naive monetarism is unlikely to be defeated by an equally naive belief in the collective.

If the left have nothing to offer in place of monetarism but equally dogmatic demands for wholesale common ownership then the prospects for change seem bleak. While it is easy to condemn the capitalism of Haliburton and Walmart, there is little to be gained by lumping all forms of private enterprise in the same bin. A credible political alternative will require careful consideration rather than blanket condemnation. It will involve picking between good and bad examples of market forces.

Consequently we can also forget about setting anything in stone. There will be no end of history, left or right. Progressives will, as ever, push for greater collective action and collective ownership. But we can forget about finding a permanent solution to economics.

It shouldn't really come as a surprise. Economics is such a complex network of interests and desires. There are managers, owners, workers, unions, competitors, products, resources and the environment to consider, and that's before you even get to the desires and ambitions of politician and party. You can see the temptations of idealism – the idea that if you could only lop-off one or more of these heads you might create something stable. But like the hydra, they just keep growing back.

The end of The End of History

Both monetarist and collectivist idealists strived for a pure application of their beliefs. Each dreamed of a world washed clean of the ideology of the other. Accordingly any concession was seen as deadly contamination, the thin end of the wedge, the first steps on the road to defeat. Nothing less than the pure market economy, or the pure market-less economy would do.

Reality, however, flatly refused to conform to the ideal. However harshly market forces were imposed people still combined to get a better deal. They still struggled and protested and campaigned for social justice. Similarly, as fast as the state tried to smother the free-market, the black market thrived. People persisted in selling their goods and services to each other at the going rate, regardless whether the state approved the deal. The market can never really be eradicated, it just moves underground.

The oppressive nature of Chilean-style capitalism and Soviet-style communism can be seen as a response to this refusal. For all the efforts of the state, Soviets still conceived of themselves as individuals, with individual motives and desires. Likewise, Chileans still conceived of themselves as comrades, compassionate social beings with a stake in each others lives. The only means of maintaining the pretence of purity was fear and violence.

Both monetarist and collectivist absolutisms are doomed to failure because both deny the rational basis of the other. The inconvenient truth is that human allegiance is a complex and unpredictable thing. There are legitimate social desires and legitimate individual desires. There are times when we want to co-operate and times when we want to act as individuals. Some of us may veer more in one direction than the other, but we each posses both impulses. The fact that certain people find one or other of these impulses abhorrent has no bearing on the matter.

Without massive oppression, it seems the mixed economy is the only game in town. The only set-up that stands a chance of sustaining democracy is one that tolerates the desires of both the individual and the collective. This is not to say that massive oppression cannot also occur in a mixed economy, only that it is bound to occur in a society that aims to stamp out either collective or individual will.

Of course we will argue forever about the composition of the mix – perhaps that’s what politics is – deciding what we do and don't want to co-operate over? But we can forget about dispensing with the mix.

How to avoid the next monetarist consensus III

2009-09-06T13:36:00.001+01:00

Each of the following responses is rooted in the same observation: There are more important things in the world than economics. Even if everything depends upon economics, it remains the means not the end goal. Even the most hard-bitten monetarist would not argue that the purpose of individual freedom is to maintain the free-market (well, not publicly anyway).

The Limits of Lassez-faire

This in itself places a clear limit on lassez-faire. The market cannot be allowed such freedom that it infringes more basic freedoms. If the cost of maintaining a free-market is fascism, or economic meltdown, or ecological breakdown and the termination of the species, we can safely say that the price is too high.

While there might be sound arguments for ‘letting do’ in some spheres of the economy in many other areas intervention remains essential. Of course it will often be difficult to call, and hellishly difficult to implement. It will never be easy to decide when a company has become too big or powerful to be socially tolerable, and it takes a suicidally brave administration to challenge the corporate beast. Even modest regulation of the worst abusers will be portrayed as arbitrary punishment of ‘wealth creators’. All the power of corporate propaganda and military might will be levelled at those who dare to try.

But such resistance cannot be defended on the grounds of freedom. If the choice is democracy or corporate serfdom, sustainability or ecological breakdown, then the free-market must take second place. If non-intervention is enslaving us or killing us we must intervene, and damn the market.

Productivity

Similarly, we might ask, why do we work? Surely not for the sake of work itself. While one might believe that wealth and liberty are rooted in high rates of productivity, it remains the means not the end. Even Milton Friedman wouldn’t argue that the purpose of human existence is to produce cheap goods, only that the end goals – wealth and liberty – are best served by high productivity.

Consequently, if the high rates of productivity and profit supposedly obtained in a free-market stubbornly refuse to trickle down to the masses then here too the monetarist appeal evaporates. If high productivity just means more wealth and power for the rich then the free-market cannot be sold as the protector of democracy and freedom.

And indeed, experience bears this out. For all the propaganda, the hallmark of a free-market economy is widespread poverty and lack of social mobility. If you are born in the gutter beneath a monetarist sky then odds-on you will die there too. Social democracies with workers-rights and good welfare provision have a far better track-record for nurturing talent and allowing the materially impoverished to advance.

The reasons are obvious enough, once we challenge the oversimplified economic picture painted by monetarists. For one thing, while higher productivity could translate to higher wages there is no evidence to believe it does. The last thing capitalists tend to do with excess profits is distribute them amongst staff.

Less obviously, while it is true that any benefits to workers amount to lost productivity in the short term, an economy is not a closed loop. While taxes certainly do increase unit costs, if those taxes are spent wisely they have the potential to free-up productivity elsewhere. Education, urban renewal, affordable public transport – all have the potential to enhance productivity by releasing wasted resources.

Of course this is an anathema to the free market purists: By definition, if no capitalist is interested in investing in something then it can’t be worth investing in – we must be throwing money away. But again, experience does not bear this out. Indeed history shows that if the collective doesn’t invest responsibly then nothing will. Left to their own devices capitalists tend to see no further than short-term profit. Health, education, leisure, sustainability and economic diversity are their last concern. Everything the mass of us benefit from has had to be throttled out of capitalism by collective action.

Quality of What?

When is it wise to assist a struggling enterprise? Awful as bankruptcy and redundancy are, no responsible government can bail-out a failing business indefinitely. The mere existence of a particular product or company or workforce cannot serve as an automatic justification for its continued existence. Sometimes, the monetarist cries of ‘propping-up dead wood!’ and ‘throwing good money after bad!’ are a fair assessment of intervention.

To paraphrase Marx, production cannot boil down to, from each according to existing infrastructure, to anyone who’ll have it. However cherished, sometimes businesses need to fail. However painful, sometimes people have to be laid-off. How else could the quality of goods and services be maintained?

Much the same, one can see the potential threat to quality posed by state monopoly. In terms of manufactured goods, particularly, it is hard to deny the advantages of a multitude of private producers competing to cater to a multitude of tastes, rather than the state producing one or two items to fit all. With the best of intentions, no government really knows what people want. Better that demand brings products into being, and lack of demand kills them off.

Nevertheless these arguments have their limits, and any attempt to morph them onto the whole economy is quite groundless. The fact of the matter is that some goods and services actually function better when state-owned or state-subsidised. The privatisation of rail and demutualisation of building societies have been unmitigated disasters. The deregulation of mortgage provision has led to global financial collapse. Are any other examples necessary?

And even where private competition does show merit we must remember that there are more important things than state-of-the art products. The human desire to make things and own things may be limitless, but the opportunity to do so is not. We have lost the luxury of this delusion. The sky is not the limit, the limit is terrestrial, and far more humble. Natural resources are not endless. Sustainability is not guaranteed. The environment is not impervious to our schemes. Quality of product cannot be allowed to trump quality of life, let alone possibility of existence. Nor can it be allowed to trump human liberty.

Whose Liberty?

The more apocalyptic warnings of monetarists are born of a mixture of hysteria and cynicism. While there certainly is a navigable route from the planned economy to the planned society, and on to the planned individual, the full journey is not inevitable.

The Soviets certainly travelled a long way down this path, but then that was the expressed intention. The plan was to plan society and transform the outlook of the individual (or if you prefer, release the true human nature trapped inside capitalist false consciousness.) But this is not a necessary consequence of state control and ownership. The more modest industrial intervention and welfare projects of Western-Europe certainly didn’t end in the gulag. At worst they ended in sluggish production and eventual capitulation to private ownership. Meanwhile social and economic freedom in these states remained as good as any in history.

In fact if liberty is the goal there can be few greater impediments than an idealistic interpretation of lassez-faire. Removing economic rules may sound like a libertarian act, superficially. You can cry ‘liberty!’ as you abolish taxes, and restrictions on trade, and the movement of capital and labour, but the consequences of such freedoms can be far from liberating. In an unjust, unequal world, rules are the only means of ensuring a fair competition. For individuals and nations alike, if the pitch is steeped so unfairly in the favour of the rich, simply removing restrictions will only further entrench inequality. The liberty of the poor can only be secured through restrictions on the wealthy. Freedom for all rests upon limiting the liberties of the few.

All said there is some fire beneath the libertarian smoke. State-ownership of production undoubtedly is a concentration of power. To take an extreme example, if you want to work in a car plant but the state owns all the car plants then you will have no choice but to work for the state. If you want to buy a car but the state owns the monopoly, then you will have to buy a car from the state. These are not small or inconsequential limits on freedom.

Similarly, state control over taxation and public spending, housing, health, education and transport are formidable concentrations of power. Even after decades of monetarism, central government still controls the contributions and spending of millions of us. Just who are they to spend on our behalf?

Unsatisfying as it is, the answer comes down to lesser evils. For all the dangers of collective control, if not the collective, then who?

How to avoid the next monetarist consensus II

2009-05-18T11:55:00.006+01:00

1% Truth?

For some people ‘capitalism’ will always be a dirty word – synonymous with greed and exploitation. In more mainstream discussion the term pulses between negative and positive, in step with history: Good for the first decades of the twentieth century, bad after the depression of the thirties; resurrected by the Thatcherites at the end of the seventies, and all set to be reburied by the current financial crisis.

Notice it’s only the term ‘capitalism’ that has fluctuated in favour. Capitalism itself has remained the dominant mode of production the whole time. But the relative esteem of the term is telling in terms of what is expected of it, and how it is assumed to work. Those who use ‘capitalism’ unabashedly are most likely to be champions of free-market economics. Those squeamish about the word are far more likely to favour state intervention and regulation.

Similarly, while increasing numbers of people are calling themselves ‘anti-capitalist’ this can mean very different things. It doesn’t really matter when you’re protesting. All that matters is the knowledge that the current system is wrong. Being united in opposition is far from being united in alternatives.

‘Anti-capitalists’ vary widely, from those who simply want to rein-in corporate power to those who want complete abolition of property relations. Some fight for a class-free, property-free future, perhaps within this life – a quick revolution followed by a lasting peace. Others have a similar end goal but see it taking centuries – a quick revolution followed by slow trudge to Jerusalem. Five paces forward, four paces back, or worse.

Then there are some who see state-control as the end goal in itself. Some just want state direction of industry and commerce; others go further and want the state to be the major or even monopoly owner of production.

And some simply oppose incorporation and corporate power. They have no problem with a genuine market economy, only with the abuses that arise from conglomeration.

While the goals vary one thing that unites all these schemes is the desire for some sort of democratic control over production. Whether by regulation, intervention or full-blown nationalisation, those calling themselves anti-capitalist demand that government take responsibility for the economy. Or to put it in more positive terms, they want democracy to be extended into the economic sphere. They want business to be accountable to the electorate and the state to protect us from voracious capitalists, rather than sell us to them.

For monetarists this is the key heresy – ‘collectivism’. All evils spring from this supposedly naïve desire. As discussed in part one, the better part of this horror and indignation is in fact cynical, inconsistent and hypocritical. But for the sake of argument let’s assume an idealist monetarist and an idealised model. Here are four points monetarists employ to win hearts, minds and elections. Even if you find them repellent, you will need to have a good answer to each.

1. The Limits of Collectivism

None but the blindest monetarist (there are still a lot about) would deny that privatisation of public utilities has been a disaster. Outside the boardroom and the stock market we are all victims of this theft. Given the impending environmental crises things couldn’t be worse. At a time when it is vital for energy supplies to be in the hands of elected bodies they are instead run as cash cows for international corporations. The last thing these owners have in mind is a reduction in output, or a more equitable distribution of energy resources.

But what about the other end of the scale? How far should collectivism extend into the micro-economy? Some anti-capitalists would answer ‘all the way’, but we have to seriously consider what this might mean.

Does anti-capitalism mean the dissolution of all market relations, right down to micro-transactions? Does it mean the dissolution of even the petit-bourgeoisie? Should independent green-grocers be chased out of town by state-monopoly green-grocers? Should every window cleaner, builder and gardener be paid a set wage by the state rather than negotiate costs with the person employing them?

If your answer to this is yes, fair enough, but you have a lot of explaining to do. Aside from issues of individual freedom, the necessary bureaucracy would make the EU seem like a well-oiled machine, and the necessary monitoring and penalising of those who transgress would make the Stasi seem like the neighbourhood watch.

Then again if you do assent to this level of market relationship you also have to accept that you are in some sense pro-capitalist. Like it or not, if your politics permits this level of market economy you are advocating something on the capitalist continuum. It doesn’t mean you endorse Rockefeller, but it is an endorsement of market economics, and not a superficial one. It’s a concession with deep implications.

Complex questions become unavoidable: How widely should the free-market be allowed to operate? How big should a company be allowed to get before it is deemed antisocial, ripe for dissolution or state absorption? Is it right, sane, or even probable that the state would intervene to dissolve or break-up a business that was booming, punish it for booming?

Moreover, who is in a rightful position to make such judgements? Who is qualified to judge whether a business is still small enough to be socially safe, or has grown so large that it endangers liberty? Some medium-sized businesses are run by model employers and some small businesses are run by tyrants. Why should the moral player in these instances be penalised for their success?

Note that in the monetarist model these problems do not arise. In the idealised free market you strive to become as big as possible through any possible means. Nothing decides the size of your business other than your success in business.

2. Productivity

All capitalism is exploitation. For the self-employed this needn’t be as bad as it sounds. To exploit your own talent and labour for your own profit is respectable enough. The negative connotation only wakes-up when you employ others to labour on your behalf.

In this sense large businesses with large profits can be seen as places where large numbers of people are exploited at the same time. A thousand workers in an office or factory can be simultaneously squeezed; the surplus labour drained off for re-investment, bonuses and enhanced share-value.

Even when a company or organisation is supposedly non-profit-making the same is necessarily true. You are employed for the bit of extra value you produce on top of your wages – clearly no company would want to employ someone whose productivity only broke-even against their wages, let alone someone whose output failed to even cover their wages.

This fact gives rise to what Marxists call class struggle and monetarists call productivity. They really are the same thing. While it is in the interest of bosses to keep wages low, it is in the interest of workers to keep them high. Low unit prices and high profits are in a perpetual battle with fair pay and good working conditions.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch, as monetarists, Marxists and physicists say. Every extra day’s holiday a union secures for workers is a loss in profit for the bosses. The price of the product must rise, or wages be suppressed, or suppliers be squeezed to cover the extra cost of non-productivity. Something has to give.

Success in business is then intimately linked to success in the class struggle. Profitable companies, those that undercut and outsell their competitors, are those that squeeze their workers the hardest, or employ subcontractors who squeeze their workers the hardest. This is the hideous truth behind the astonishing bargains at Primark and Poundland. Treating people badly can be highly profitable. Paying people peanuts allows you to sell your products for peanuts, and thus bankrupt your competitors.

Given this irreconcilable class-struggle it is easy to see the monetarist case against state intervention in industry. Any government taking over control of a business will face a persistent dilemma: Whose side are you on? Whose corner are you fighting? Are you there to ensure workers’ rights at the cost of productivity, or are you there to maximise profits at the cost of workers’ rights? Or are you there to mediate between the two?

Any government assuming the role of boss will find itself torn in two – desperate to balance company books and keep the business afloat, desperate to keep the workers happy.

Workers are, after all, the majority of the electorate. Furthermore any government attempting to run business is likely to be on the left, and likely to be reliant on the votes and support of trade unions. This was certainly the case for the post war British Labour governments. Every attempt to maintain the profitability of nationalised industries was taken as a kick in the teeth by the very people who got Labour into power.

Conversely every government concession to the workforce is a loss in productivity, an increased unit price in a world where other firms and other countries are making their units cheaper, and perhaps better.

3. Quality

In a perfect world quality and demand would be intimately linked: We would desire and choose the best products to suit our needs and our pockets.

In the real world of course demand is no guarantee of quality. Advertising skews demand to sell trash. It turns mundane objects into religious icons. It manufactures false choices like Coke v Pepsi, and Daz v Persil. It encourages us to assess the quality of identical products and then feel good with ourselves for choosing the ‘better’ one.

Less cynically, perhaps, collective ownership and control of industry has its own distorting effect upon demand, and its own negative impact on quality. In both cases there is pressure to sacrifice quality for a higher goal. With advertising the higher goal is profit. With collective ownership the higher goal is social good.

Recent events in the US car industry illustrate both distortions perfectly. Over the last decade marketing was employed to sell preposterously oversized and overpowered vehicles at premium prices. The worst possible vehicles for the 21st century were transformed into sexy necessities. Now, with the economy shrinking and sales plummeting the US government is bailing-out the manufacturers. Subsidies are being injected to keep the factories open and maintain production of these beasts.

Clearly some intentions here are good. The subsidies are intended to protect jobs, stop people being thrown out of their homes. But equally clearly product quality has been compromised. Already an unwanted unit is being pushed onto the market. But more importantly, in the long term there is now less pressure for these producers to maintain standards.

While subsidies do not guarantee a drop it quality, clearly they do create room for it. If the money keeps rolling in regardless of whether a product sells there is more opportunity for quality to drop. After all, what’s the worst thing that could happen? More subsidies?

And note here that a drop in quality is not merely an inconvenience for the consumer, it’s also a very slippery slope for the producer. Outside strictly protected markets (like those once enjoyed by Lada and Trabant) it is unlikely that the fortunes of such producers will improve. If better quality is available elsewhere custom will follow it.

When a business is run for any goal other than making good quality products product quality will be at risk. If pay keeps rolling-in regardless of how well you do your job what’s the incentive to do it well? If your company stays solvent regardless of whether there is demand for its products why fret about quality? If contracts are guaranteed regardless of whether you innovate, what’s the point in innovating?

In the idealised monetarist model this is not an option. Quality is constantly maintained by the invisible hand of demand. Innovation is spurred-on by the threat of bankruptcy. The only products that get made are products that sell. If they don’t sell the business doesn’t get subsidised, it goes under.

4. Freedom

Everybody wants to be free, it seems, but both left and right claim the monopoly on achieving it.

In part this is due to the different emphasis people place on different, sometimes mutually contradictory, freedoms. One person’s liberty is often another’s bondage. An increase in the highest band of income tax is simultaneously an assault on the freedom of the wealthy and a means of liberating the poor. One person’s freedom to unionise is another’s restrictive working practices. Freedom to choose private healthcare and private education is the flipside of poorly funded social medicine and state education.

But things run deeper than interpretation. The difference between collective and individualist methods for gaining and maintaining freedom signal a profound disagreement about the relationship between production and liberty.

Left collectivists tend to see production as something that needs to be tamed, democratised, regulated, if we are to enhance freedom in other spheres of life. The belief is that if we can liberate ourselves from economic exploitation we will be free to enjoy being human.

But to the monetarist this is completely cart before horse. The attempt to introduce ‘democracy’ into economics would in fact render social liberty impossible. The logic runs as follows: The more the state intervenes in production the more power it inevitably places in its own hands. However benevolent its intentions, if the state owns and controls production it does just that. The power to decide what is made is taken away from the producer. The power to decide what to buy is taken away from the consumer. Supply and demand are divorced from human desire and handed over to experts or committees or dictators who decide for us what we want to make and buy.

Given the economic stagnation monetarists see as an inevitable consequence of state intervention, even minor attempts to steer the economy will set us on the slippery slope to serfdom. As the economy falters the collectivist government’s reflex response will be more of the same. It will further crank-up its grip on the economy and on society in general, spiralling on towards totalitarianism. Inside every Tony Benn beats the heart of Erich Honecker. Or so we are told.

Those then are the arguments. I’ll save my own answers for a third post.

How to avoid the next monetarist consensus

2009-05-13T15:11:00.008+01:00

If capitalism survives this crash one thing is certain. The corporate classes will again lobby for the same rules that brought us here. History will be rewritten and it won’t be the unregulated market to blame but the remnants of government intervention. As always with the monetarist religion all errors boil down to the same failing – we didn’t believe hard enough. Again we will be assured that the only root to freedom and economic security is through the economic free-for-all.

Resisting this resurgence will not be easy, any more than last time. The bitter fact is that wealth usually has the power to usurp truth. While it is plain as day that privatisation and deregulation have been disastrous for democracy, liberty and security, the elites that benefit have much louder voices than those who suffer. Monetarist ideology is 99% lies, but its advocates are well connected and have endless resources at their disposal.

The other problem is the remaining 1% - the grain of monetarism that is true. The rational kernel of free-market ideology may be minuscule in comparison to the propaganda that hangs off it, but its logic is potent and appealing. Those who wish to prevent free-market madness from returning would do well to understand that logic.

99% Lies

The first point is plain enough. While monetarism is sold to us as freedom it is in fact a strategy to neuter democracy. All the talk of liberty and free competition is propaganda. The real objective is to keep politics and economics out of the hands of the citizenry and in the hands of the super rich – and it’s worked a treat.

It is bitterly comical to recall that Thatcher won power in 1979 as the champion of the small business. Thirty years on and every high street is reduced to the same cluster of national or global chains. Thirty years of ‘free competition’ culminates in us all being fed by four supermarkets; independent butchers, bakers and greengrocers outnumbered by homeopaths and palmists.

The monetarist might argue, well that’s the free market. There was a fair contest and these four won. But of course the competition never was fair. Obviously those with huge cash reserves can buy and sell cheaper, and bankrupt smaller competitors. But this shows no talent in business only a talent for ruthlessness. And the end results are the antithesis of freedom and competition.

If the consequence of a competition is four indistinguishable businesses and no real choice then clearly there was something wrong with the rules of the game. Any government truly interested in the benefits of the free market would break these behemoths up and run the competition again, with rules to protect the smaller retailers from such vast accumulations of capital (that’s any government truly interested in the benefits of the free market.....)

Similarly the privatisation of public utilities was nothing but corporate theft of public property. Such a grand heist required a thick smokescreen. The propaganda version was that this was a democratic extension of share ownership. A portion of shares were sold, undervalue, to the general public. Those lucky enough to afford a few then saw the share price rise sharply and so sold them on – to the usual suspects. So a tidy profit for those members of the public who already had a few quid handy, and a swift transfer of ownership and control to unaccountable multinational corporations. If you see Sid, tell him.

Similarly, how can a market be free when some of the competitors are lobbying government or bribing government, or actually serve in government? Corporate propaganda, or as it re-branded itself, ‘Public Relations’ is an immense industry with tentacles in every corner of business and politics. No string is left un-pulled to ensure wealth stays with the wealthy, and that democracy never poses a threat to profit.

The central plank of monetarism is that government should keep out of business. For this to have any useful meaning the opposite must also be true – business must keep out of government. Politics cannot be democratic when wealth is allowed to skew opinion and skew elections. A market cannot be free when ministers awarding contracts end up on the boards of the companies that win them. (For the whole horrific history of back-scratchers, businessmen, lobbyists and politicians see Miller and Dinan’s A Century of Spin.)

Finally, the lies that triggered the current crisis, a deceit transparent enough for a child to see through: It doesn’t matter how bad your credit record because property prices just go up and up indefinitely. And no one ever loses their job. What can possibly go wrong?

How ever did such lies and idiocy become the orthodoxy? It all comes down to self-interest, self-delusion, and a wilfully naïve interpretation of ‘laissez-faire’. This monetarist slogan roughly translates to ‘let do’, specifically, ‘let the economy do’; let business run itself, with minimal state intervention. Monetarists argue that this is the key to prosperity and security, and indeed the only way to protect individual liberty.

The validity of this belief will be the subject of part-two. To finish here, it can be seen that the lies and chaos of the past thirty years can be traced back to this naïve interpretation. To mix the Frenchisms, ‘laissez-faire economics’ was translated as ‘carte-blanche for capitalists’. Everything for sale to the highest bidder. From bin-collection to building societies, the only relevant qualification to own or run anything was money.

And should anyone query this wisdom a reflex answer was to hand: Stop interfering. The market will provide. Anything else will lead to low productivity, un-competitiveness, perhaps even lead to another Stalin or Hitler.

Although the lie was vacuous and transparent, as long as enough of the right sorts of people were doing well out of it there was nothing to stop it spreading. To the last minute government and media were still nosing it along. As calamity loomed dissenting voices were still labeled heretical, part of any problem, snuffed out.

Only when the banks failed did the expressions change. Brows once fixed in certainty now feigned surprise: Who would have thought unrestrained corporate slash-and-burn could result in economic disaster?

Overnight, heresy became necessity. Suddenly it was fine for governments to intervene in business, essential in fact. All talk turned to checks, balances, interventions and bailouts.

The monetarist ‘consensus’ was just a confidence trick. The scam held as long the economy could bear it, but the game is well and truly up. The artists and their shills are laughing on the beach. The mugs, the great mass of us, prepare to meet the costs in tax, employment, housing, public services, health, hunger, warfare, ecological breakdown and a swathe of other uncertainties.

The free market promised wealth, security, and liberty and then led us to the abyss. But all will be forgotten should the economy ever recover. We’ve been here before, after all. Monetarism will re-emerge, probably under a different name, but making the same demands. It will be advocated by the same self-interested parties and have the same financial backing. That’s the self-generating power of privatisation. It makes some people very rich. They can then use those riches to campaign for more privatisation.

Nevertheless there’s one weapon in the free-marketeers arsenal with more to it than wealth and power. Mention of it is likely to prompt more cries of heresy, this time from the left. It’s the 1% of monetarist ideology that is merits examination, and that’s the subject of part two.

Propaganda through Ignorance: The Case of South Ossetia

2008-09-22T08:18:00.002+01:00

For a great many of us the term Ossetia is new on the ear. It’s the sort of noise one might hear briefly on mainstream news in the context of an earthquake or flood or ‘senseless’ war, before returning to the reality of London or Hollywood. Only with Russia’s recent incursion has Ossetia become worthy of elevation into media and public consciousness.

Such background ignorance is a gift to propagandists. The less we already know on a subject the more scope there is to bend or invert our understanding. If we have no will or desire to probe any deeper the message on Ossetia is simple: It’s the bloody Russians. They have invaded Georgia, a neighbouring sovereign state. They have broken international law.

All other details then take the form of supporting evidence. We can be reminded of Russia’s history of invading its neighbours – Afghanistan, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and of course the baseless cold-war fear of Russian tanks rolling over Western Europe. The invasion of Georgia fits perfectly with this rekindled world-view. Russia is simply up to her old tricks.

Likewise the West can be painted in its traditional colours, as the defender of freedom. The only questions to be asked relate to our integrity in standing up to this criminality. “What can we do to contain Russia?” implore the leader-writers. “Countries need to know that their territorial integrity is absolutely secure” insists the British Foreign Secretary, “Bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century” adds the American President” both presumably with straight faces. Russia, we are told, must face the consequences of this “blatant aggression”.

You could leave it there – and to the great relief of our government and media many do. But pan-out a little and certain absent facts modify this simple moral landscape. A hint comes from Russian mainstream news. According to these propagandists the Russian invasion was a humanitarian intervention to protect the people of South Ossetia from Georgian war crimes. Naturally “humanitarian intervention” should ring alarm bells for anyone familiar with modern history. Invading to protect has been the cynical pretext for war-crimes from Czechoslovakia to Vietnam to Iraq. Nevertheless it is a testable claim.

Firstly, regardless of Russian motives, it certainly is a fact that Georgia was pummelling the people of South Ossetia prior to the Russian invasion. No mention or condemnation of these war-crimes from Milliband or Brown.

Secondly, the people of South Ossetia certainly have voted by an overwhelming majority to become independent of Georgia (99% in favour with a turn-out of 95%). This fact seems particularly pertinent and particularly suspicious by its absence in western news reports. After all, haven’t we just been told that breakaway autonomous states are a good thing? Haven’t we just been sold the wonder of Kosovo’s autonomy from Serbia? If that was a miracle of democracy and self-determination, why not so in South Ossetia?

Even if Russian motives are wholly cynical surely these facts could only add to public understanding. Instead, on the odd occasion we hear of the Ossetian referendum it is only in the context of its supposed invalidity and illegality. South Ossetia is not recognised by the “international community” i.e. the UN, NATO the EU and all the other international bodies that can usually be relied upon to rubber stamp western interventions and atrocities.

And it doesn’t stop there. Another potentially illuminating but suspiciously absent fact is the enormous oil pipeline running through Georgia. Might this not be helpful in explaining the West’s indifference toward the wishes of South Ossetia’s inhabitants and its toleration of Georgia’s crimes? Likewise the fact that the West is pushing for Georgia to enter NATO – in strict violation of promises made to Russia. Might this not be useful in explaining Russia’s actions more than its supposed malignant desire to begin a new cold war? (For these and copious other inconvenient facts see Chomsky here.)

No doubt such thinking will be written-off as paranoid nonsense. To even entertain such thoughts is to be suckered by Russian propaganda. But note that nothing here is in dispute. You don’t have to believe anything Vladimir Putin believes that Condoleezza Rice wouldn’t also admit to. It’s only that our government and media have decided that these particular facts are not relevant to our understanding of the situation. For one reason or another ignorance of these topics is seen to be preferable to knowledge of them. We can only wonder why.

Knife Crime: New Hoodies for Summer ‘08

2008-07-22T17:59:00.008+01:00

Like the paedophile summer of 2000 and the hoodie summer of 2005, 2008 seems all set to be forgotten as the summer of knife crime. Rather than pit-bulls or perverts this season’s ephemeral terror is the blade.

Which is not to mock the horror of reality. If ownership of knives really is on the increase it’s a genuine cause for concern. What does deserve ridicule is the political and media response. As discussed in this post written during the great hoodie terror of 2005 such moral panics have little to do with solving social problems and a great deal to do with selling newspapers and furthering political ambitions.

As suggested at that time, the fact that these vital crusades are dropped as soon as something else comes along is a good measure of the sincerity of those leading them. Judging by the date, the London bombings were soon to blow the hoodies off the headlines. By the time the dust settled the threat posed by jogging-tops was long forgotten.

Hopefully it won’t take anything as awful as the London bombs to remove ‘knife culture’ from the front pages, but in the event of slow news summer (i.e. no large quantities of dead westerners) we can still fully expect the issue to wear-out and slip from the public eye. As a threat with a long pedigree, and a long list of personas (teddy-boy razor gangs, skinheads with flick-knives) it will surely re-emerge in time, with a suitably macabre new name. But for the meantime it will be consigned to the same scrapheap, or rather recycle bin, as mad dogs and trampoline photography.

In the midst of a given panic such observations will likely encounter indignation. Some will contend that even if such campaigns are short-lived and insincere they are better than nothing. But it’s a difficult position to defend. In most articles the growth of ‘knife culture’ is attributed to two factors, fashion and fear: Some children see knife ownership as an essential part of seeming tough while others claim it's necessary for self-defence. If this is the case then saturation media coverage can only exacerbate the problem. The press are actually cranking-up both the sinister glamour and the perceived threat.

And even if evidence could be found that a saturation of ‘knife culture’ articles really does reduce knife crime, wouldn’t this imply negligence of other topics? The fashion for reporting every single dog attack on every single news bulletin has long passed but the attacks continue. Should we assume that the current crusade is causing more children to be mauled by diverting our attention onto knives?

The only possible beneficiaries it seems are those breast-beating from the bandwagon. Cherie Blair must be hoping for a bit of the Princess Diana landmine factor to rub off on her. Perhaps it’ll help to detract from the great lake of children’s blood her husband has spilt. The media on the other hand always enjoy a firm moral stand when there’s no risk of its own implication. British newspapers don’t have a history of excusing children for stabbing each other like they do for excusing governments that drop bombs on children. A convincing moral crusade should always focus on the guilt of others, the last thing you want on board is uncertainty about your own deeds.

Two thoughts on the recent BNP victories II

2008-06-20T10:12:00.005+01:00

Media

Comical as it might seem most news outlets maintain the pretence of sticking to the following journalistic principles:

1. Strive to tell the truth.
2. Strive to reflect opinion.

At first this might sound worthy and sensible enough, the only obvious problem being the sincerity of the striving. How hard does the Murdoch press really strive to tell the truth about anything in the world?

However this masks a deeper problem, one well-illustrated by the recent BNP victories. What if principles one and two conflict? What if a section of the public starts believing something mistaken? Is it still the media’s duty to reflect it back at the rest of us, perpetuate the error? Shouldn’t principle one always trump principle two?

The standard defence against this is context. The BBC would argue that it makes clear when its output is fact-based and when it is ‘just’ opinion: Newsreaders read facts, Question Time panellists express opinions – and the public is fully aware of the distinction.

Certainly if you ask the producers of Question Time why a fruitcake like Melanie Phillips is persistently invited back they wouldn’t dare suggest it’s because she speaks the truth. You’ll be told that it is because her opinions reflect the views of a substantial section of the British public. Likewise there is no suggestion that the hang ‘em and flog ‘em brigade who dominate Radio Two phone-ins are painting an accurate portrait of Britain in the twenty-first century, only that they speak for millions of Britons.

Whatever the truth of this it remains highly problematic. Broadcasting or publishing falsity is still allowing falsity to calibrate the agenda, even when the audience is advised to take it all ‘with a pinch of salt’. Worse still as bogus opinion often yields a larger audience than painful truth frequently it is allowed to actually set the agenda.

It’s certainly possible to defend a great raft of lies like The Great Global Warming Swindle by citing principle two, but not without jettisoning principle one. For those who wish to continue driving and flying and consuming without restriction it was music to the ears. The delightful idea that the scientists had got it all wrong had wide appeal and led this ‘documentary’ to be sold across the globe, attaining audience and pundit attention the truth could only dream of.

But for all this interest it remains what it always was – a raft of lies. The fact that a sizeable audience is keen to hear that humans are not causing rising temperatures has no bearing on the wealth of evidence that we are. The fact that some lies are more palatable and saleable than the truth doesn’t make them any truer, or excuse passing them on.

Likewise, the fact that the BNP is gaining support doesn’t make its outpourings any more accurate or valid. Like Melanie Phillips, Nick Griffin would have us believe there’s a danger of Islamism sweeping to power in Britain. Sad to say a growing number of people seem to believe this too. But does that make it true, a valid concern?

Similarly, like Melanie Phillips, Nick Griffin sees multicultural Britain as a failed experiment, and the root of most social evil. Crime, it seems, is a recent import. The BNP want a return to the good old London prior to mass immigration, the London of Hogarth and Dickens, free from gangs, drugs and prostitution, safe for a lady to walk unaccompanied at night.

A great many evangelicals believe that Satan stalks the earth but few serious broadcasters would make that the starting point for debate. While it’s everyone’s right to wallow in fantasy there is nothing democratic about broadcasting falsehood, even when falsehood is gaining popularity. As with global warming there is probably a keener audience for bogus interpretations of social history than those that might cause the viewer to question their own country’s role in the world. Patriotism is far easier on the eye and ear than imperialism. The benevolence of Britain and the ingratitude and ineptitude of her colonial subjects makes far more comfortable viewing than tales of colonial brutality and ongoing exploitation. But comfortable isn’t the same as true.

While it would be unrealistic to suggest that Britain is slipping into fascism the methods of the far-right remain the same: Scapegoating sections of the community and playing-on existing prejudices. Like unscrupulous mainstream politicians, unscrupulous journalists and editors may see opportunity rather than danger in the new terms of debate. Rather than countering the lies they will assist in the beating down of a wider terrain of idiocy. Any criticism can be countered by citing principle two – their duty to reflect public opinion. The price of such talk will be high for many citizens, but worth paying for increased circulation and higher ratings.

Two thoughts on the recent BNP victories I

2008-05-30T13:37:00.004+01:00

Politics

The BNP’s success in the May elections is clearly a matter of concern for the main parties. Condemnation rains down from all sides. To be fair some of this may be genuine, motivated by fear of what this nasty little clan might actually get up to. But then again it’s hard not to hear naked party/self-interest lurking behind the outrage. Just as powerful a motivation for the condemnation is the simple desire to snatch those votes back.

More darkly and quietly then we can also expect some effort to adopt the ‘appeal’ of the BNP (if that can ever be the proper term!) Politicians crave votes and they are usually not too choosy about how they acquire them. Clearly the BNP are saying things which chime with a section of the British public, one large enough to secure a hundred local government seats. Shrewd councillors, MPs and PR staffers will now be working overtime to ascertain the BNP’s electoral appeal, and working out ways to soften it and slip it into their own language and manifestos.

It won’t be the first time. While Margaret Thatcher certainly was a racist race was never really an issue in her vision of a new order. Thatcherism was about breaking unions, cutting welfare, dismantling the NHS and getting industry back into private hands. But when a swell of traditional Labour and Tory voters drifted towards the National Front she and her advisors saw the perfect opportunity to feign concern about immigration, and steal those votes back. She could raise the vague “fear of being swamped by people of a different culture” to gain power, and then get on with the unrelated business of monetarism.

The politics of gaining power needs bear little relation to political agenda. Government is about economics. Gaining office is about foetal rights, marital fidelity, prohibitions on flag burning, and of course the delicate application of racism.

In 2008 many in New Labour and the Conservatives are not even racist in their personal lives – some are even members of the dreaded ethnic groups. But if they hope to win power and get the chance to implement their radical and distinct political reforms (breaking unions, cutting welfare, dismantling the NHS and keeping industry in private hands) then the temptations of populism will beckon. Condemnation of Mr Griffin’s shabby little gang will continue for sure, but we can also expect mealy-mouthed appeals to its logic, vague talk of flags, Britishness, armed forces days, and when they dare, the fear of being swamped by foreign cultures. The price of such talk will be high for many citizens, but worth paying if the righteous are to gain office.

Second thought in progress...

Authority and Obedience

2008-04-29T16:33:00.003+01:00

Innate Levels of Obedience

Dissent isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. While some find it natural others find it excruciating.

Some feel it’s wrong to complain in the first place, wince at any challenge to authority, wish that everyone would just shut up and put up with things as they are, as they do. But even among those who want to push for change many find the act itself uncomfortable. Full in the knowledge that justice can only be attained through protest many of us squirm at the prospect. While accepting that every cherished liberty was secured by people who refused to be cowed by power and authority it can still seem a lot easier to keep your head down.

Some of this seems innate or at least sewn-in so early it appears so. Throughout life some people exhibit an ingrained awe of power while others find it all a joke. Some children struggle with tears outside the headmaster’s office, others struggle with laughter. Some adults go cap in hand to their bosses, others are happy to shout and thump the table.

For most of us however deference levels rise and fall with the particular situation. It all depends on who it is we actually respect or fear and that can vary greatly. Some children are rude to their parents but in awe of their peers. Some adults are happy to spit in the face of a prince but still squirm at foul language in front of the priest.

In an ideal world it would all boil down to legitimate authority – we would only acquiesce to the authority of those who truly know better – but it isn’t as simple as that. In this unjust world many of us have to feign respect for cynics and bullies just to hold onto our jobs, or avoid a punch.

And even when there is no such clear threat we can still be cowed by the psychological social hierarchy we each carry within. As a time-served customer-service drone I’d like think I treat each caller equally, but I can’t deny the change that comes over me if it turns out I’m addressing a police officer or MP or minor celebrity, particularly if they try to ‘pull rank’ – “do you know who I am?!” While I can find no rational reason to modify my behaviour towards these people I can’t deny the pressure their supposed status exerts.

Origins of Obedience

The roots of such conflicts become clear if we consider the origins of authority and obedience. As social beings there really are times when it’s best to accept the authority of others and times when it’s best to rebel.

Children certainly must accept the authority of responsible adults if they are to grow up well adjusted, or get to grow up at all. But just as crucially they also need to learn to assert their own rights and desires if they are not to be crushed and cowed by others. The persistent power struggle between parent and child can be seen as the exercising of this capacity. Children test our will as a means of testing their own power in the world. They are constantly feeling their way around the power structure they find themselves born into, checking what they can get away with, deciding when it’s time to throw in the towel.

Like it or not this process of standing-up and climbing-down continues throughout adult life. Although some of us might tend to veer towards rebellion and others towards conformity every well-adjusted adult is someone who has learned to exercise both strategies. The spoilt child and the bullied child both grow up with inappropriate notions of their own power and importance. The perpetually rebellious and the perpetually subservient are skewered on opposite poles. Neither can lead a happy or useful life.

Pressure to Conform

Even for those with a well-developed sense of justice it can still be a struggle to stand up to the powerful. Power is by its nature intimidating. It instils fear, not least the fear of getting into trouble. While we often despise it we usually remain dependant upon its patronage. Power holds most of the cards and is in a prime position to punish those that challenge it. Organising a strike or sit-in always carries the risk of reprisal – loss of pay or promotion, a beating, or even loss of life. Keeping in the good books of the powerful is a major incentive to tolerate injustice.

Similarly loyalty and sense of belonging bind many to powers that are not in their interest. Ingrained faithfulness to church, royalty, military and country are all blocks to rational thought and rational dissent. Questioning the powerful can involve questioning the things we are taught to hold dear, an internal conflict prone to cause nausea. This effect is by no means the reserve of the working-class Tory. Even those who consider themselves progressives often cling to something or someone long past reasonable support, perhaps a hero politician or nation state. It is these sorts of loyalties that lead supposed socialists to defend Stalin or Mao or even the current Chinese regime as it batters Tibet.

And of course power is in an excellent position to propagandise on its own behalf, much more so than those who seek to challenge it. The corporate media is one long advert for the legitimacy of the powerful and the impertinence and blind idealism of those who dare to challenge it. Arms manufacturers, rapacious oil companies and tax-exempt media moguls can paint themselves as the rightful guardians of the world. Those who campaign against them are presented as idealistic fools. Who wants to be in that gang?

Such propaganda also fuels another strong pressure to conform – peer pressure. The Sun, Mail and Telegraph don’t just sedate their readership, they also serve to crush the spirit of colleagues and acquaintances. For every progressive in the workplace there are a host of naysayers, waving their tabloids and dampening dissent. The deferent will always be on hand tell you you’re being a troublemaker or associating with troublemakers, and that besides, resistance is futile.

Pressure to Rebel

In part this is driven by embarrassment at their own inaction. Once someone has decided not to fight for their rights the last thing they want to watch is someone else try. Better to throw cold water on it. For in truth, just as there is a strong impulse to conform to power there is also a great deal of respect to be gained by standing up for yourself. And just as there is a fear of being singled out by power as a troublemaker there is also the opposing threat of being seen as a ‘yes man’ or ‘yes woman’ by one’s colleagues.

It is this opposing pressure that leads to many of the tall tales one hears in the workplace. Those renowned for tugging their forelocks are usually the first to claim they take no crap from the management, forever recounting the times they confronted the boss. Conveniently enough these magical transformations always seems to occur when there is no one about to witness them – “You should have seen me in there!”

While most of us want to avoid trouble nobody likes to be thought of as a carpet. Self respect and a will to protect the rights of others is widely recognised as a virtue, even amongst the powerful. The mere act of challenging authority can earn its respect rather than its punishment, even earn its promotion. The shrewd underling is the one who knows when to say thus far, and no further. Bosses (both shrewd and stupid) often respect and value such individuals (if they don’t send them to the gulag.)

Doing the Right Thing

Worthwhile disobedience takes some thinking about. Unchecked, the dissenting mind is prone to wander into utopia. It’s easy to overestimate the potential for change, particularly after a small victory or rousing rally. Many a wannabe progressive has seen the seeds of global revolution in an anti-war demo or local pay dispute. While such visionaries do little to affect change they are a great target for those who seek to paint all dissenters as blind idealists. Small wonder so many ultra-leftists end-up disillusioned and arguing on the right.

Alternatively the unchecked conservative mind can become complicit with all sorts of injustice. The mere existence of an institution or organisation does not justify its existence or justify compliance with its rules. While it’s fine in principle to love the state what if that state is corrupt? What if its leaders are unelected kings or generals or emperors or chairmen? What if they are formally elected but in league with robber barons or psychotic corporations or Mafiosi? What sort of natural order is that to defer to?

Progressive dissent walks a thin line. Naïve revolt and naïve deference are gutters either side. Naïve progressives can glibly claim the whole system is irredeemably corrupt whatever it is. Naïve conservatives can counter that this is the best of all possible worlds and that to rebel is to meddle with the natural order. The best course of action must surely lie somewhere between the two. The question is, where?

Switching People Off II

2008-01-28T09:39:00.000Z

Much is made of the virtue of disregarding the lives of some in the name of others. It’s a real tough-guy decision, fetishised in popular culture: Do you have the guts do sacrifice the few to protect the many, or protect the higher ideal?

Less attention is paid to the fact that this is also the starting point of the whole cycle of woe. For all the supposed virtue of principled violence it is also the basis of everything we are supposed to despise. Such cool calculation is the trademark of our folk devils.

Every Al-Qaeda atrocity is born of the conviction that some lives can be sacrificed, discounted, switched-off, in the name of a higher cause. Every Mau-Mau, IRA and ETA killing was committed by people who firmly believed that there were more important things in the world than this particular group of humans. Like the bombers of Dresden and Hiroshima they didn’t necessarily despise their victims, they just judged their lives less important than their own cause. Like Western military strategists they calculated it was worth wasting one group of innocents to supposedly save another.

It doesn’t take a moral genius to invent situations in which it is right to kill another human: A thousand babies are about to be electrocuted by a psychopath. Would it be morally right to shoot him before he had a chance to throw the power-switch? For the vast majority of us of course it would. Nearly all of us would be happy to kill or sanction the killing of one maniac if it prevented the killing of masses of innocent humans. I hope I’d find the courage to do it myself.

But as history shows, it’s a slippery slope. Noble as some acts of violence can be, they set a dangerous precedent. The clarity of the philosophical mind-game slides swiftly into the murky morality of combat and on to the abyss of genocide. Defence is easily converted to proactive defence, bearing a striking resemblance to attack. Counter-terrorism is frequently just a euphemism for state terror.

Self-defence can be interpreted as broadly as the strategist’s imagination. Once a state or organisation awards itself a licence to kill it is easily extended to cover anything or anyone it chooses: We had to invade Afghanistan to prevent terror at home. We had to blow up the Arndale Centre to free the Falls Road. We had to build death-camps to prevent the death of civilisation. We had to bomb the village to save it.

Likewise, once a state or ideology has been labelled the enemy there is no end to the tortured logic that can excuse mistreatment of its innocent. Whatever new misery is inflicted upon the people of Iraq we are assured that this is better than the alternative: Better this than life under Saddam. Better this than risk the lives of our boys. Better this than another attack on home soil. Even children are not exempt from the book balancing: Better the school is bombed than the ‘insurgents’ escape. Once enemy lives have been reduced to statistics every cruelty can be justified by the claim that it prevented greater cruelty elsewhere.

Like the threat of death, the threat of enemy ideology can also tip the moral scales against the lives of the innocent. Over the centuries the threat of Catholicism, Judaism, Protestantism, Islamism, Nazism, Communism and decadent western capitalism have all been cited as good reason to take-out millions of innocent people. (It was sad that they had to die, but look at the alternatives….)

The trick here is guilt by association. Once you have persuaded people that it is morally right to kill to prevent Communism you can then call anything you dislike Communism, say, nationalism. You can then carpet bomb the peasantry of Vietnam, install a Shah in Iran, and train death squads for Latin America. Of course many innocents will die, but no matter. They die for a greater cause – anticommunism.

Once you have persuaded people that it is morally right to kill fascists you can then label all your enemies fascist, and even use this to defend your own fascistic excesses. Montgomery and Rommel, two white Europeans squabbling over whose right it was to exploit North Africa. One however was engaged in a moral war, a war against fascism. Harris and Goering, two white Europeans engaged in a competition to out-mutilate the other side’s civilian population. But of course the German civilians died differently, they died for good.

‘All’s fair in love and war’ is a dictum applied selectively. It’s fine for absolving one’s own violence, but you rarely hear people using it to justify violence against themselves. Note that those who still insist the bombing of Hiroshima was justifiable are the same who scream the loudest about Al-Qaeda targeting civilians. Terrorising our citizenry into submission is a war-crime. Terrorising their citizenry into submission is legitimate strategy.

As much as governments and groups are responsible for initiating indifference to suffering, once in motion it tends to multiply by itself. Viciousness is a vicious cycle. Switch someone else’s life off, treat it as statistical, and they’ll likely do the same back to you.

Empathy with the enemy drains the moment the bombs start falling, replaced by bitterness and a further cranking-up of the madness. While the war in Europe was always going to involve some aerial bombardment did it have to sink to the depths of firebombing civilian areas? Did it have to reach the lunacy of millions of British and German civilians assembling munitions only for them to be dropped on each other? Why didn’t they just drop them on themselves and spare the aircraft? (Perhaps those who defend Hiroshima as a humanitarian exercise could do the calculations, see if that would have ‘saved lives in the long run’?)

Likewise in the Pacific. Both American and Japanese forces had it drummed into them that the enemy was subhuman, brute, void of feeling. Each army went into battle convinced of the unique savagery of the other. You can imagine the consequences. War will never be a pleasant thing, but these lies paved the way to hell.

Killing always requires a higher cause. You have to value something more than the life of the victim before you can extinguish their life. A mercenary or thief must value the booty above the life of the victim. A soldier must value the victory of his own side above the lives of the figures in his sights, or cowering in the buildings below. Journalists, commentators and politicians must convince themselves something greater is at stake before they can convert bleeding burning bodies to collateral damage. In all cases empathy with the victim must be broken before the killing can take place or be excused. It must be replaced by the higher cause.

It is crucially important for states and organisations that we maintain this ability. We must be ready to turn each other into statistics whenever it is politically or economically expedient to do so. If we can’t be persuaded to drain the humanity from a chosen enemy we won’t be able to kill them, or condone their killing. There can be no crusades, pogroms, Somme, Belsen, Dresden, Twin Towers or Fallujah if we doggedly cling-on to the reality of each others lives, and refuse to switch each other off.

Switching People Off

2007-12-27T13:50:00.000Z

If media attention is the measure, some civilian deaths are less tragic than others. Six years on and the three thousand killed in the attacks on the world trade centre continue to generate more breast-beating than the million subsequent deaths in Iraq. While many commentators still shoulder unspeakable pain and indignation about the former event, little is said about this far larger human catastrophe.

No doubt many would retort that the deaths in Iraq are not the responsibility of the invaders but of the same Islamic fundamentalists that perpetrated 911. Regardless of the curiosity of this claim it still doesn’t answer for the disparity of remorse. If both 911 and the million dead in Iraq really are the fault of Islamic militants why is the second toll less shocking and less worthy of comment than the first?

It could just be racism – most mainstream commentators don’t empathise with these foreigners like they do with the American kind. But things are probably more complex. I suspect the key difference is that they still see the invasion of Iraq as a righteous act. Whereas the slaughter in the twin towers was plain evil, the ongoing slaughter in Iraq is an unfortunate consequence of good intent. Even with a death-toll three-hundred-times greater than 911 the motive behind the invasion renders it the lesser of the two evils.

It’s a bizarre view but not unfamiliar. As educated westerners we are trained to suspend the humanity of certain humans when a supposedly higher cause is at stake: We had to shoot one passenger to save the others (even when it’s the wrong man); Bombing Hiroshima and Dresden actually saved lives in the long run; Flattening Cambodia was necessary to free Asia from communism.

Aside from of the veracity of these claims it is interesting to note the transformation they bring about in the victim. It’s as though a switch is thrown, transforming them from human to statistic, person to unperson. All the joy, sadness, ambition, hope, birth, marriage and death that make up a normal human life are snuffed-out by the higher motive.

While a nod to the tragic side of such deaths is permitted, it must remain a nod. Any sustained attempt to resurrect the lives of those transformed from humans into gaming chips will be attacked as treachery. You can describe the suffering in Coventry or the East-end of London in fine detail. Every midnight stroll to the bomb-shelter, every anecdote about rationing or discovery of a neighbour’s disembodied head – all can be combined to create real humans, true people capable of suffering. No external references necessary, context would be perverse. Just real people enduring perpetual fear, death and destruction, none of it of their own making.

But try the same with the civilians of Dresden or Berlin you will swiftly find yourself driven from the subject. You’ll find yourself referred to Auschwitz, Dunkirk and the treachery at Munich. With enemy dead context is everything, their lives nothing. Such people must be switched off if you are to remain a patriot. They can only be allowed to exist as data.

Second part in progress…

The Natural Excuse

2007-11-27T18:45:00.000Z

Celebrity trivia is only natural, some would have us believe. Humans have an innate urge to gossip and there’s no better subject than the great and good. Hello! and OK! are the modern woman’s way of gossiping within a mass society, just as her ancestors did in their smaller hunter-gatherer groups.

In fact a good deal of respectable opinion does support this view, at least at root. Gossip is seen by many evolutionary theorists as an adaptation, a feature of the human condition. As social beings our lives are built on trust. Reputation is vital and there are few better ways to assess the reputation of others than by discussing them in their absence. Gossip serves us by keeping us abreast of who is and who isn’t trustworthy.

But of course gossip often exceeds the useful and fair, and veers into the gratuitous. This can also have informational benefits. Excessive gossiping indicates lack of integrity. It’s a fair bet that anyone who always has muck to rake does so behind the back of supposed confidants. People who win the shabby name of ‘gossip’ send a signal to others not to trust them.

In other respects however gratuitous gossip is clearly a vice. Dishing dirt for its own sake is degrading to all concerned. That dished out by the women’s weeklies certainly falls into this category – pure tittle-tattle. Celebrities are venerated and spat upon in rotation, often within the same editions – build them up just to knock them down.

Even if there was a trace of honesty or sincerity in these ‘stories’ their use in the evolutionary sense would be nil. There is no social connection between the subject of the gossip and the audience, bar the gossip itself. The average office worker of London or Los Angeles will never meet Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie. There is nothing to be gained from a deeper understanding of their relationship or their sincerity as individuals. This is not beneficial gossip, the sort that might help us better understand those we actually encounter.

While the readership of OK! And Hello! is almost exclusively female, a similar case can be found in such men’s magazines as Penthouse and Asian Babes. Once again criticism is frequently deflected using the ‘natural’ excuse. I recall one of Britain’s leading pornographers justifying his products along these lines: Sex is natural, people want sex, and porn is just sex.

As with gossip there is some truth here. It’s certainly true that sexual desire is something natural and that this natural desire creates the market for porn. However, desire is pretty much the limit of the connection. The alluring gaze of a naked woman really isn’t the same on a page as in the flesh. It might send similar signals and provoke similar reactions in the viewer, but that’s the end of it. It is not the prelude to love or sex or procreation, it’s just a wind-up.

While human nature is undeniable the reflexive use of ‘natural’ is usually just a means of excusing a behaviour. The key is to cherry-pick those aspects that suit your argument and ignore everything else. Pete Stringfellow once justified his legendary womanising in this way. It was, he explained, simply a man’s nature to stroll casually from female to female, like a male lion servicing the savannah.

But of all animals, why did he pick the lion? There are a multitude of different reproductive strategies in the animal kingdom. Some species pair bond, some lead solitary lives, some have multiple partners. Some of our closest relatives live perpetually two minutes from an orgy. To varying degrees all of these behaviours can be found in different humans – so who can say which is our nature?

Like pornographers and gossip magazine publishers (interestingly enough, one and the same in the Daily Express owner Richard Desmond) Stringfellow was only interested in those aspects of nature that suited his argument. He simply picked the animal he wanted to be. He didn’t fancy the monogamy of a swan but even he would blanch at the promiscuousness of the bonobo. Lions were the goldilocks option, appropriately enough.

The diversity of nature provides a wide spectrum of behaviours which we can transform into our own ‘nature’ should it suit our view of humanity. Warring chimps and rapist dolphins for the pessimists, vegetarian gorillas and meerkat cooperatives for the hopeful. Whatever your view of human nature there will always be some analogue in the natural world. Whether the comparison is an appropriate one is quite another matter.

New racism, old uses

2007-11-03T12:11:00.000Z

Global inequality demands explanation. Regardless of political outlook, we all have some theory of why the world is so materially imbalanced – some explanation for the profound differences in wealth between different lands and people.

Not long ago biological explanations were quite acceptable. Those who conquered and carved up the nineteenth century felt free to claim it was their racial destiny to do so. Bolstered by a dire misreading of Darwin, Europeans imagined it was their biological superiority that underwrote their global dominance. Verbal accounts of European ministers, officers and troops are shamelessly racist, deep into the twentieth century. Empire was clearly a God-given right, the natural dominion of the superior over the inferior. There was a moral obligation to ‘intervene’ in the affairs of ‘lesser’ peoples, to save them from themselves.

Of course such views are far from dead, often lurking only inches below the surface of more politically correct verbiage. Now however it simply doesn’t do to attribute inequality to biology. Since science disproved such explanations, and Nazism discredited them, different reasons have had to be found to justify global inequality. The current rendering is that it is the culture of the poor that holds them back, in this great meritocratic game of life. While different races may be endowed with the same capabilities biologically, some social groups remain culturally stunted: Tribal loyalty, voodoo, medieval Islamism, ingrained respect for demagogues, Gansta Rap – these are the new acceptable reasons to blame the poor for being poor.

This new claim of western culturally supremacy is justified using the very same tautology employed by the old-school racists: The west must be best because the west has won. Nothing more needed. If it isn’t the case that non-Europeans are biologically inferior then they must be culturally inadequate – how else would they have come out of things so badly?

Before accepting this conclusion however a vital question has to be asked – was the competition a fair one? Firstly, did each competitor have an equal start, or did external factors favour the chances of some parties? Secondly, whatever the game, some rules of conduct must apply. Few would accept the victory of a football team that resorted to using firearms on the pitch or took to kidnapping and torturing its opponents, whatever the final score.

Unless the great game of life is simply a slugging match there must be some rules of play. Bullying and forming alliances with tyrants must be ruled-out before one can justly claim that merit won the day. Indeed this surely is the concept of superiority the new supremacists would like to claim for the west. While many quietly admire the ‘order’ brought to society by fascism, generally such tactics are scorned. The ‘might is right’ of Rome and Nuremberg is not the path to honourable victory, victory on merit. The patriotism that puffs western chests is the thought that success came from superior planning and a superior moral outlook, rather than rape and pillage.

Regarding head-starts there is little doubt. Prehistorically, each human group simply did not start out with equal external opportunities. As Jared Diamond spells out in Guns Germs and Steel the geographical location each race found itself in 11,000 years ago varied massively in terms of opportunity for growth, sharing of technology and eventual dominance and exploitation of other peoples. Climate, crops, livestock, the very shape and axis-orientation of the different continents – such factors biased the world in the favour of the humans of Eurasia, rather than Africa and the Americas.

And once the ball was rolling in Europe’s favour other factors followed in turn. The first mass societies of Eurasia experienced the first mass epidemics of disease. Although devastating at the time, surviving generations had far greater immunity to such disorders. More than guns and bayonets, this was the most lethal weapon in the white-man’s arsenal. Mere contact with the invaders was enough to devastate the populations of the Americas, and any other isolated populations they encountered.

And of course technology begets technology. Once you have steel you are that much closer to steam, and bayonets, and bombers – should you choose. A small head start can quickly be consolidated, particularly if its advantages are ruthlessly seized.

Which brings us to the second test of fairness: Did the west play by the rules? Did it win on merit? By any meaningful standard, clearly not. To this day every attempt by poorer nations to compete fairly has been met with an iron fist. Every effort has been made to smash democracy and self-determination in the developing world. From Saud to Saddam, Somoza to Suharto, the west has maintained its dominance through brutality, not cunning.

It would be hard to find firmer proof than the treatment afforded Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah during his state visit last week. The very same British government that blames Islam for the state of the world then bows and scrapes before this Wahhabist autocrat, and arms his regime to the teeth. As Iran discovered in 1953, the last thing the west wants is democracy near its oilfields.

Global inequality is perfectly explicable without recourse to biological or cultural inadequacy. The claim of cultural inadequacy is just a means for supposed progressives to support old style imperialism. The main factors that ensure western dominance today are the same as in the nineteenth century – military superiority and alliance with the most brutal elements within client states. The west is not so much standing proud on the winner’s podium as scrabbling up a greasy pole, only staying on top by kicking the heads of those below. It is not superior culture but clinically applied barbarism that keeps western capital in control of the world.

Against Heaven II

2007-09-09T13:29:00.000+01:00

The Problem with Heaven

The problem with heaven is that it’s an important fallacy – a false belief about something very important. The fact that there will be no second chances is vital information, something that should ground every human deed. If these few earthly decades really are all we get we should concentrate our efforts on them, and on the earthly decades that follow. The last thing we can afford to do is take our eyes of the ball and start musing and fretting about a non-existent other world.

It’s difficult to know who to blame, but easy to see who benefits. In a sense you can blame the idea itself. It’s the definitive viral meme – an idea which gets itself propagated to the detriment of its host. Its origins lost in time it spreads by mouth, or lurks in books, poised to skew the outlook of subsequent generations. With no basis in fact, and a handful of threats, heaven infects billions of minds.

Over the centuries it has picked-up some robust self-righting mechanisms, should rationality flip it on its back. Like a chain-letter, heaven dares us not to believe: Doubt its existence and you definitely won’t get in – you’ll surely go to hell. This is a great one for keeping hedge-betters on board: What’s to lose by believing? At least you stand a chance of getting-in if it does turn-out to exist.

In truth there’s a lot to lose. Such a fundamental flaw in perspective leaves one open to all sorts of abuse. Which brings us to a second set of beneficiaries – certain humans. Not everyone loses out from heaven belief, not economically anyway. The Church of England and the Church of Rome have grown fat on the promise of heaven and the threat of hell, as have the Bakers and the Moons.

Heaven is one of the grand deceits employed by the rich to control the poor. Even when the preacher truly believes the consequences are the same. The have-nots are persuaded to care less about the inequality of this world on the promise of a pay-back in the next. The wealthy and powerful gain a more submissive workforce; the church gains an effective means of blackmailing and milking its congregation.

Rather than an eternal holiday-camp heaven is just a lever humans use on each other, in the here and now. It’s a means by which some people get other people to do things for them, often unspeakable things. The most fashionable example is suicide bombing. While any fair critic can see that social and political injustice is the primary motive for such deeds, the role played by religion is equally clear. To whatever degree such acts are coaxed by the promise of heavenly reward this is a stark example of one group of individuals using the myth of an afterlife to get another group to do something appalling. Less fashionably, how many Christians seek comfort in the prospect of heaven as they risk their lives bombing the residents of Baghdad, Kosovo, Dresden or Coventry? God is on their side, after all.

The “moral-worth” defence of heaven evaporates under the light of such examples. Indeed, morally the whole scheme seems to be missing the point. As intelligent moral agents we already know that trust, honesty and good conduct are vital to a functioning society. We know that violent and selfish behaviour are things to be discouraged. Of course you shouldn’t cheat or steal or rape or murder, not because you’ll go to hell but because you’ll create hell in the here and now. These are basic moral truths, ones that all responsible parents drum into their offspring. We reward and punish to instil these values, and condemn those parents that don't.

The morality wielded by heaven and hell is just an extension of these eternal human truths, an exaggeration of the nice and nasty here on Earth. Heaven is just an exaggeration of a pleasant life born of pleasant behaviour; Hell is just a celestially intensified Earthly misery, born of misconduct.

Rules of compassion and fair play are part of our make-up as social beings, predating all metaphysical threats and incentives. Ignored and abused as they are they are the cornerstones of human society. We make our own heaven and hell here on earth, through our moral conduct, here on Earth.

Heaven is a special and especially dubious kind of belief – the lie that’s supposedly good for you. Rather than a necessary myth it’s a corruption of a universal moral principle: Act unpleasantly and you will create an unpleasant future – plain and simple. Add-on mystical incentives and penalties are at best superfluous and more often an opportunity to corrupt this basic principle. Don’t do it because you’ll be in trouble after you die? Don’t kill because of what God will do to you? Is that really what should concern us?

It seems odd then that a life without heaven-belief is so often dismissed as ‘meaningless’. Surely there is more meaning to a life that strives to connect conduct to outcome, rather than to a meaningless, non-existent afterlife? Why divorce behaviour and consequence from reality? Why not ground them in the here and now – what could be more meaningful than that?

Against Heaven

2007-07-20T09:25:00.002+01:00

Heaven is the place the worthy go to after death, rather than to hell. Heaven is a land of eternal pleasure and happiness, hell is eternal agony and fear.

Of course ‘worthy’ is open to interpretation. It often just means faithful, a true believer. Any amount of bad behaviour can be atoned if you really believe. More importantly you can’t get into heaven by being good on its own. A selfless life is but a ‘filthy rag’ in God’s eye if it isn’t accompanied by blind faith. No matter how kind and compassionate you are, you won’t get through heaven's gate if you don’t believe in it.

Whether I like it or not, my idea of heaven is intricate and complex. Something I categorically do not believe-in is rich in detail. It’s the result of being raised in a culture steeped in Christianity. While I can’t pretend to be greatly influenced by it I still resent the fact that such patent nonsense holds such a prominent position in my worldview.

Many otherwise shrewd people become uncomfortable at this point, and try to deflect the argument onto one of definitions: It all depends what you mean by heaven. Can’t heaven be a place on earth?...and so on, so for clarity I’ll pose it this way – Is there any evidence to suggest that another world follows this one, be it a western heaven or eastern reincarnation?

The answer of course is no. There’s far more evidence to suggest that our sentience dies along with our bodies, sometimes sooner. A product of the flesh, it rots with the flesh. Senility is the precise analogue of bodily decay, the mind following in the body’s wake. Far from eternal our sense-of-self is very much an earth-bound entity, with but a short time to live. There really isn’t much else to account for, certainly no grounds to wheel-in an afterlife.

So then the question of heaven becomes purely pragmatic: Is there any earthly justification for perpetuating myths about an afterlife? Clearly some think so. Some argue that the heaven myth provides strength and comfort to the living, notably the bereaved. People derive comfort from the idea that loved ones are alive and well in another dimension, possibly to be reacquainted upon death.

But of course this cuts both ways. Just because some derive comfort doesn’t mean all do. Perhaps some feel angry and indignant that their God took their child or lover away, rather than sad chance. Perhaps others worry the loved one didn’t make it into heaven at all, or might even return to haunt them – hardly comforting beliefs.

Moreover is it always a good thing to be comforted? While heaven might help some to get back to the business of living, presumably other recoveries are retarded by it. Perhaps some feel such loyalty to the spirit of the dead that they forego seeking a new lover or new child. While they dream opportunity slips by.

After comfort, the next defence is the supposed moral usefulness of heaven: Even if heaven and hell don’t exist we still need to believe in them if we are to act morally on Earth. Without the threat of hellfire, and the reward of heaven, we would will rape and pillage and invade each others countries.

But of course these things do happen and heaven-believers are often the worst culprits. As with comfort, there isn’t a shred of evidence to suggest that those who believe in hellfire are less likely to create it on Earth, and reams of examples to the contrary.

There is no reason to assume the net effect of heaven belief is an increase in human happiness. There is no reason to believe it is a force for good in general. When you look at all the things your mind has to sacrifice in order to believe in heaven its value seems dubious in any sense.

Part II in progress...

The New Easter Islanders

2007-06-11T18:54:00.000+01:00

“Now you see it and it’s up to you to choose.
It sure looks funny for a new dinosaur to be in an old dinosaur’s shoes.”
(Captain Beefheart - “The Smithsonian Institute Blues”)

Like anyone stuck out on a cold remote rock, the Easter islanders needed trees for timber and firewood. But they also needed them to roll and drag those huge stone heads about on, and they kept carving and rolling those damn heads until the last tree had been chopped down and the last bit of topsoil had washed off.

Jared Diamond’s Collapse is subtitled How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive. It documents the likely causes of the decline of Norse Greenland, the Maya, the Anasazi and those enigmatic ancients of Easter. It then draws parallels with our own plight.

In the above account the Easter people sound barking but of course from a similar distance so would we: Both clans seem intent on destroying their own habitat. Rather than reduce production as catastrophe approaches they swing more axes, step harder on the gas.

But of course it doesn’t look like that on the ground. Collective madness doesn’t require mental illness or stupidity. The fact that a society becomes addicted to an insane idea doesn’t demand insanity on the part any given individual. The tragedy of Easter society and modern society is their mutual adherence to a suicidal logic, or rather something that grew into a suicidal logic. For one reason or another, the imperative to keep living in a certain manner came to override basic survival.

Blind faith is a madness that frequently afflicts the sane. Presumably the Easter people earnestly believed that however bad things got they would only get worse if they stopped carving and dragging the statues, and offended the spirits of the ancestors they represented. Better to cut the last tree than offend the god is a sensible dictum for any true believer.

The western economic religions of monetarism and consumerism are turning out similarly suicidal. Presumably, twenty years ago, some people really did believe that selling-off public utilities and mutual assets would produce a world of happy shareowners – but that wasn’t the way things panned out. Whatever the original intention the fact is three decades of privatisation have left global corporations in control of human destiny. We run our lives to suit corporate logic and corporate logic is to maintain profits at any cost, whatever the consequences. You don’t have to be mad to labour-away night and day for global catastrophe, you just have to be a good CEO. That’s what the bonuses are for.

Consumerism is a related god, brandishing a similarly destructive set of commandments:

Worry you haven’t enough possessions.
Worry your current possessions are outdated.
Throw away perfectly good things when new versions are released.
Fear what people will think of you if you don’t own the latest things.

– this is the logic that drives Asia’s twin miracles of industrial slavery and global-destruction.

Again it sounds like lunacy, but it’s more an induced bewilderment. The fraction of humanity wealthy enough to actually practice consumerism is subject to relentless propaganda. Advertisers strive to sow insecurities into our minds, encourage us to think we can’t be happy without the product.

In truth consuming doesn’t make us happier; shopping trips to New York don’t make us happier, children are no happier for owning flashy toys. Going out is actually less fun with mobile telephones. Imelda Marcos’s shoes certainly didn’t make her happy, why would a content person continue to worry so much about footwear? If she’d acquired every style on earth she still wouldn’t have been happy, she’d probably just have moved onto handbags.

Of course we’re not all unquestioning believers. To varying degrees at different times, every clan has its dissenters. During lean times particularly doubters and challengers arise to question the strategy of the leaders, even question the power of the gods.

On Easter there must have been people who appreciated the damage and the impending danger and even some who dared to call for a halt, particularly towards the end. But then as now it was rare that anyone in power held this view – they were more likely in cahoots with the parties organising the destruction. Whatever the exact details, clearly the pressure to plough-on outweighed the pressure to turn back. The plough-on brigade won the day – and lost the world.

At the moment too the plough-ons prevail. Certainly there’s lots of oppositional discourse, but it’s greatly outweighed by the positive propaganda, and the temptation to look away. The luxury of cars and flights has a compelling hold over many of us. Add the fact that corporations actively want us to over-consume and the outlook does look bleak. ‘No party will ever get elected on that ticket’; ‘You can’t expect people to stop flying and get rid of their cars’ – these are the most chilling mantras of the anti-environmentalists, left and right.

When all the trees were chopped, the soil gone, and the forty species of seabird all eaten, they started on each other:

“Oral traditions of the islanders are obsessed with cannibalism; the most inflammatory taunt that could be snarled at an enemy was ‘The flesh of your mother sticks between my teeth’.”

Although global cannibalism seems unlikely in the near future, our current trajectory is leading to equally desperate social relations. In the race to exploit the planet billions are being trampled underfoot. If the plunder continues we can only expect more suffering and insecurity to follow.

Diamond shows us that we are all still just animals, squabbling over limited resources – it doesn’t matter if it’s ten thousand on an island or six million on a globe, there’s only so much useful land and sea to go round, and a constant temptation to over-exploit it. This much will never change.

But he also shows us how we differ from the other animals. He shows how some ancient and some modern societies responded intelligently to environmental crises, and ended up safeguarding their future. As much as it was ingenuity that got us into this mess it remains our only means of escape – should we choose to use it.

Why is Radio Two like the Daily Mail?

2007-05-07T13:33:00.000+01:00

He loves Radio 2, and his show, where he mixes cultural debate with the likes of Richard Dawkins and Salman Rushdie alongside phone-ins on Daily Mail staples like teenage tearaways and the NHS.

(Jayne Thynny interviewing Jeremy Vine in The Independent)

It might sound harsh but there’s actually quite a lot of Daily Mail about Radio Two. While much of it is politically inert – pop music, pop culture – its news and talk content shares a great deal with the Rothermere’s ugly child. Both are pitched at similar demographics. Both conceive of a large swell of moralistic, patriotic, but politically shallow viewers and listeners, and each does its best to cater to it.

There is rarely anything deep in the Mail. While it covers the most important topics its contribution to understanding is worse than useless – all hysterics and no substance. Rather than teaching it functions by triggering existing beliefs and bigotries. It’s really all just sermons on the same few commandments: Wealthy people and wealthy countries deserve their wealth (apart from a few bad apples); the poor deserve to be poor; car-owners are an oppressed class; foreigners are morally and culturally inferior and perhaps genetically inferior too.

Although far less hysterical, Radio Two news is every bit as conservative and shallow. Like in the Mail, the righteousness of Britain and America goes unquestioned – our military remain heroes whatever the evidence, our leaders remain honest, regardless of past performance. Every report of our crimes is written in disappearing ink, each new day a clean sheet.

Like the Mail, Radio Two is desperately parochial. Foreign lives are simply not worth a jot, not unless they happen to be pawns in some grander western plan. The only rationale for running international stories at all is how events might affect British people – thousands of foreign deaths can be dismissed in a sentence, but only after a heartfelt analysis of our own cuts and bruises.

Like every national paper (bar the FT) Radio Two’s news-content is celebrity obsessed. Any known face elevates any old nonsense to the top of the hour. Indeed if you are one of destitute of Africa or Asia about the only chance of a mention on Two is from a chance encounter with royalty or a pop star (or heaven upon heaven, one of the BBC’s own stable of personalities. Then you might get your own series.)

Another way is feel-good patriotism. If you can get your plight highlighted in a way that shines warmly on British people and British character you might earn a mention on Two. As with the Asian Tsunami, and poor Ali Abbas, the central story is always British generosity, our rising to the challenge. The suffering of foreigners is really just a muse for our magnanimous spirit to play to.

One might wonder then, as licence payers, why this should be. Why should state-funded broadcasting stoop to emulate a commercial tabloid, particularly such a noxious one? The Mail is critically regarded as a sick joke, Private Eye can’t compete for parody. From health scares to politics, no more consistency of argument than the National Enquirer, Winston Smith would have trouble keeping up with it.

But of course the Mail sells, and that in itself is the BBC’s reason for wandering down this dark path. The BBC and especially Radio Two have a contractual debt to popularity. Every channel is committed to netting a certain size of audience and Radio Two is duty-bound to land the biggest catch of all. The whole purpose of our nationwide, advert free ‘adult orientated pop music’ station is to attract a huge number of listeners.

Why popularity should signal a right-wing news-agenda is another matter. The implications are not pleasant however you look at it. Either there really is a large swell of politically shallow people with a taste for fascist phone-ins, or it’s just that the BBC thinks that there is and is attempting to cater to it. Alternatively, perhaps BBC thinks the average listener is far more politically sophisticated than the average caller and only tunes-in for the fun of it, the voyeurism – you don’t have to be as stupid as a cockerel to enjoy a good cock-fight.

Like I say, not pleasant implications. Either we truly are shallow, or the BBC thinks we’re shallow, or it thinks we’re political sophisticates who get a self-righteous kick out of laughing at bigots.

I suppose all three posses some truth. We’ve all met Alf Garnett and Peter Cook’s cabdriver and Catherine Tate’s gran. There really are people who don’t pay any deep attention to political history but nonetheless feel qualified to explain to every stranger exactly what is wrong with the world and what needs to be done to correct it (and how many languages Enoch Powell can speak.)

But mere existence doesn’t mean mass existence. The fact that such people exist tells us nothing of their prevalence. Indeed certain factors act to skew the BBC’s portrait of the ‘average’ listener in this direction.

For one thing people who ‘know everything’ are far more likely to bother to phone-in in the first place. Alf Garnett would be far more likely to pontificate down the phone to Jeremy Vine than a left-liberal type like Warren Mitchell himself. Moreover the fact that conservative-minded loudmouths can be relied upon to say controversial things without saying anything controversial about the powerful (Gawd bless ‘em) also makes them much more likely to be the callers chosen by producers and DJs – the last thing they want is some leftie blurting the truth about Iraq across the airwaves and getting them into trouble with their managers, and getting their managers into trouble with the government.

The fact that the BBC anticipates a politically shallow general public is undeniable. It’s executives have spent the past two decades openly trying to think up ways of make lite of everything. There’s an ongoing campaign to dumb programming down, and hopefully dumb down our expectations in turn. As for people tuning-in just to laugh at other people’s opinions, and their manner of expressing themselves, well anyone who has ever listened to Two in a busy workplace knows the answer to that!

Which is why it is odd that any attempt to address these questions is usually dismissed as ‘patronising’, whatever stance you take. You are either patronising people by suggesting they are stupid, or patronising people by criticising things that they like, or patronising people by suggesting that they can be influenced by the media at all.

Odd when, as I say, the executives who produce radio and television have no qualms about theorising about us. They are at liberty to gather in boardrooms to discuss ways in which make culture more stupid so as to meet corporate demands, but we are being patronising if we try to recognise what they think of us, how they target us, what they are trying to do to us.

Alf Garnett exists but we shouldn’t all be tarred with his opinions, or feel obliged to cater to his appetites. The mere existence of a social group doesn’t make it a legitimate market for a state-funded broadcaster to target. This is not an affront to democracy or freedom. I defend the right of bigots to air their views, but I don’t defend the right of broadcasters to use bigots to skew public opinion in corporate-friendly, power-friendly directions. That, alas, is the worst consequence of Radio Two being like the Daily Mail.

Political Pole-Reversal II

2007-03-29T18:04:00.000+01:00

No one likes to be called a turncoat. In politics as elsewhere, it’s sometimes easier to imagine that the world changed while you yourself maintained your original position. To the untrained eye it might look like certain leftist writers swapped political poles in the wake of 911 – but according to them in fact it was the rest of the left that moved. What looked like their rapid shift right-wards was just relative motion.

The logic runs: By forming alliances with Muslim groups the anti-war left has fallen into the hands of the far-right, or rather has itself become right-wing. The old left has leapfrogged straight over neo-conservatism and into the arms of ‘Islamofacism’.

In consequence the only option for a true left-winger is to ally with the neo-cons, now situated to the left of the old left. Rather than fight American militarism, a true leftie should support it, as the best hope of achieving traditional leftwing goals. Only when radical Islam is defeated can true leftists then get back on with the job of tackling capitalism.

Tortuous as this is – ally with the right to support the left – there’s a more fundamental reason not to take it at face value. Marxist or not there’s one tenet of Marxism that seems essential to anyone bothering to call themselves left-wing: Power boils down to economics not belief. Material wherewithal trumps any ideology.

This is only to say that is decidedly un-leftwing to find yourself siding with capital. It clashes with a fundamental leftist belief: Whatever the political situation, the rich are to blame not the poor. This is not just class stubbornness, but a rational observation. If anyone has the opportunity to bring an awful situation to a happy end it has to be the players with the economic advantage. You may have to pan out a little to see it, but the rich and powerful are always the ones ultimately wielding the power.

Accordingly, Britain was the only player capable of bringing liberty to India and Ireland; Indonesia and the US were the only people who could stop the slaughter in East Timor; Israel and the US are the only players capable of bringing peace to Palestine. It’s written into the military and economic imbalance.

Of course opposition movements are vital players but any changes they secure can only be concessions. Whether by fair means or foul, the disadvantaged can make no greater mark on the world than the material power they manage to attain or influence. For the poor and the oppressed political victory always takes the form of an act by the wealthy and powerful. It’s always the wealthy that have to start doing something, or stop doing something, if things are to get better.

Ownership overrules desire. Whatever you might want for the world it won’t happen if you don’t have the material clout. You can threaten human existence in speeches and writing, but your reach will never be greater than the extent of your material back-up. However frenzied some Islamists might seem, clearly they are ants next to the western military-corporate elephant. That power imbalance in itself should be enough to make any real leftie suspicious of this argument.

Of course the cruise-missile ‘left’ might counter that Nazism was ‘only’ a set of ideas and yet it grew to wield huge and terrible power. This only proves the point. All those neat uniforms and kinky boots didn’t pay for themselves. Cleary there was big money poured into that party and that movement. Whatever connections they might have in the oil industry no Islamic terror cell can commission and requisition large sectors of industry. They can’t befriend Raytheon and Boeing as Hitler befriended Messerschmitt and Heinkel.

Some mainstream commentators have taken to calling Islamic killers ‘dusty nuts’ and ‘rag-heads’, so they at least seem to acknowledge the point. Unlike Hitler, Osama doesn’t have a mass contract with Hugo Boss.

So eventually the whole Islamic threat to humanity boils down to, “They’ll get a nuke from an enemy state and use it on us because they’re just plain nuts/because they want to blackmail the world into converting to Islam. It’s the absurd end of an absurd position. No further theory or evidence needed, all complexity reduced to a classic red scare: Pure evil is poised to savage us, it will listen to no reason.

Rather than some exotic new left-ism this is quite conventional talk for those drifting to the right: The world really did change after X, these new devils really are devils, the IRA and Communists and Celts were schoolboys by comparison. For the first time in history, ideas so malevolent they can overcome a colossal material imbalance. Meanwhile oil – the centrepiece of any traditional left-wing analysis – slips off the radar. The material commodity at the heart of global production is outshone by unprecedented evil.

If upon examining the world you reach the conclusion that the wealthy and powerful are our best hope, fair enough, you are not on your own – but in so doing you forfeit any meaningful connection with the left. If experience leads you to believe that prayers and sermons and speeches can usurp Raytheon and Citibank any claim on the left evaporates. You might call yourself a liberal of some sort, and you certainly fit the bill for a classic right-winger, but you have no place on this cloud.

Political Pole-Reversal

2007-03-04T17:44:00.000Z

Only a fool or a cynic would blame a Brazilian street urchin for its plight. It’s a terrible start in life, and quite understandable that it frequently ends up terrible too. Given a good home who knows? Some of yesterday’s barrio children might have become today’s concert pianists or physicists, only opportunity never knocked.

Conversely we all acknowledge the responsibility of the individual, to some degree. We all have the gut feeling that subsidising truly slack behaviour does no one any favours. Child, co-worker or politician, we should never bankroll shameless shiftlessness – it only encourages them.

But while we all have these capacities, for sympathy and its polar opposite, scorn, we vary greatly in who we apply them to. Some blow a gasket over insider dealing but speak-up for welfare claimants. Some bang on about sickness benefit but rush to defend the poor downtrodden CEOs. One person’s slacker is another’s victim of circumstance. One person’s welfare scrounger is another’s victim of de-industrialisation, one person’s corporate tax dodger is another’s victimised captain of industry.

Political belief is intimately related to this question – who do you blame for the state of things? Among us, who is it who drags us down, and who that offers us the chance to ascend? Both left and right agree that the central purpose of politics is to empower the worthy and deflate the cynical and the idle, it’s just that we differ over who is who.

Or to put it the other way round, we apportion blame and praise in accordance with our political beliefs. Our politics dictate whether we sympathise with an individual or social group or condemn them as the cause of their own woes.

Although there are no hard and fast rules it seems fair to say that the conservative mind tends to see the materially disadvantaged as responsible for their own condition. Likewise, they tend to see the wealthy as the agents of their own good fortune. It’s unavoidable if you are to maintain the core conservative assumption: The justice of the existing order. Conservatism must in some sense entail the desire to conserve things as they are, in the belief that the current system is fundamentally fair, just and meritocratic.

It can only follow then that domestic and global inequalities are a reflection of ability, rather than tyranny: The poor of Glasgow and New Orleans make their own beds. The governments of Ethiopia and Bangladesh are responsible for their own starving masses, and those starving masses should be ashamed for not ousting such corrupt leaders. To the ‘right’-minded it would be foolish to subsidise such indolence, as wrong as it would be to subsidise a teenager’s drug habit.

Obviously anyone bothering to call themselves left-wing would likely to reject all this and offer up different candidates for blame – the owners of production, western capital, the arms industry – they would more likely see the poor as the victim of the rich.

I say likely because as I said before there are no hard and fast rules. Humans can be very contrary beasts. Many supposed leftists care passionately about domestic living standards but remain quite indifferent to the welfare of foreigners. Nevertheless, certain arguments and world-views do tend to gravitate towards to the same sort of people. Certain views and theories mesh more neatly with our existing ones, reinforce them. Sympathise with the ‘war on terror’ and you’ll most likely also sympathise with Israel but scorn Chavez. Scorn the Bush camp and you’ll probably tend to sympathise with the Palestinians and the Bolivarians but scorn NATO.

Political beliefs accrete over a lifetime, but the ones we glean are the ones that appeal to our existing political outlook. It’s a bit like electrolysis. We each set out with a left and a right terminal, each biased to attract a certain type of belief and argument. By middle life one terminal has often grown much fatter than the other. We might have laid down a thousand reasons to commend Tony Blair, or a thousand to condemn him.

Of course people do change, sometimes violently. Overnight they reject the whole basis of their previous beliefs, a whole lifetime of observations. When right turns to left – the usual direction – all manner of previous convictions find themselves abandoned or reversed. Old sympathies turn to scorn, or are swept under the carpet; people and organisations previously vilified find themselves re-appraised, even commended. It’s like a sudden reversing of polarity. Deep seated beliefs strip off one terminal and rush to form incongruous lumps on the other.

To whatever degree they are aware of it, Aaronovitch, Cohen and Hitchens are currently undergoing this tiresome process – perpetual revision of previous beliefs, writings, conversations, alliances. The saints they spent the first half of their lives defending, suddenly morphed into sinners. Years of criticism and analysis reduced to embarrassment - something to argue away, or revise out of all recognition, rather than utilise.

Meanwhile on the right terminal a new sort of argument starts to accumulate; layer on layer, thicker each day.

Labour and Empire

2007-01-17T19:03:00.000Z

A close friend finds my outright condemnation of the New Labour project infuriating, quite unfair. She stresses the good work they have carried out in her own community: Well-thought-out schemes and wisely targeted cash leading to palpable improvements in people's lives.

To be honest, I don’t even know how true this. Such is my bitterness with New Labour I don’t keep up with such bread and butter issues. If there is anything to it, such successes may be one reason so many one-time left-wingers have stayed loyal to Mr Blair.

But regardless of how true it might be, for anyone who claims to hold universal democratic ideals it really isn’t good enough. Socialism paid for by the misery and enslavement of foreigners isn’t socialism at all, it’s just more tribalism – putting the welfare of your own lot before others. It’s hard to take comfort from domestic improvements when they’re clearly being bankrolled by the blood and tears of those elsewhere.

There are endless debates about whether the current world order is or isn’t imperialist, but in a most important sense it definitely is. However you go about it, imperialism is characterised by the exploitation of other peoples. It matters little whether you actually administer a colony, the important question is do you turn it to your own benefit? Do you encourage it work to your own advantage, rather than to its own? Do you cause it to suffer to bring wealth back to your own shores?

All five Labour Prime Ministers have been keen imperialists in this sense. Ramsay Macdonald’s brief flirtations with power were imperialist in every sense, the globe was at its pinkest. He certainly wasn’t voted into office to dismantle that empire, he was elected to distribute the spoils more equitably.

Of course it may not have of seemed like that at the time. Those who fought for public welfare simply wanted a fairer slice of the pie. But while the working classes might have shifted towards to the living standards of the middle classes in England, for those slaving away in Asia nothing changed, it often worsened.

Although Atlee oversaw the initial dismantling of the formal empire, there was certainly no parallel drive to improve the living standards and liberty of colonial subjects. If you were an African digging diamonds or copper you still got paid peanuts. The great share of the wealth still went back to Europe, only now some of it went on to fund social welfare programs.

This is not to suggest that successful domestic welfare requires foreign exploitation. Cuba achieves great healthcare without needing to bleed other countries to fund it. Whatever complaint you make about Cuba’s internal politics, you can’t accuse her of impoverishing her neighbours for her own gain. (There’s another candidate in the hemisphere.)

But in the case of the Parliamentry Labour party it has always been the case. From Cape Town to Baghdad to Jakarta, Wilson and Callaghan supplied arms to anyone prepared to protect British business interests, prepared to keep life miserable and wages low. Like every other modern British government, they inherited a highly unfair world order and stopped at nothing to keep it that way.

Blair’s foreign policy is nothing new to Labour, this is the history of Labour in power. It’s a horrible irony, but for all the sincere effort of some party members, and some excellent domestic gains, Labour has been a terrible, selfish player in world affairs. To the alien eye, rather than an asset the British welfare state could be mistaken for another means by which the outside world was kept unequal. A little trickledown at home to keep the natives quiet, and the empire unchallenged.

Britain’s ‘favourable’ global business connections have paid huge premiums to our domestic welfare, often at the most testing times. Like North Sea oil, ‘favourable’ foreign investments wrote many of the dole-cheques that limited the eighties’ riots. Like tax breaks and extra policemen, they were another strategy to weather the storm.

Foreign exploitation still generates a great deal of Britain’s income, and part of that goes toward our relatively lavish welfare. It pays for schools and social services, highly-skilled paramedics to scrape binge drinkers off pavements, artificial hip joints and machines to keep us alive into our nineties – unimaginable services in many of the countries Britain invests in, and extracts from.

As I said before, it doesn’t have to be this way – welfare doesn’t have to be based on imperialism – it’s just that in Britain it always has been.

Ne’er Dwell

2006-12-12T18:45:00.000Z

If you’re not actually doing something to solve a problem it’s best not to think about it at all. Dwelling is emotionally exhausting and a waste of time.

Of course this doesn’t rule out grieving. Contemplation of a lost one is a vital part of learning to cope without them. Appropriate grieving is very much doing something about a problem. Suppress such thoughts at your peril.

But grieving also demonstrates the cut-off. Excessive grieving, that which lingers and strips your ability to function properly in the world is clearly an enemy, something to stand up to. Gloomy ceaseless grieving certainly happens, but it’s always a pity. It does no-one any favours.

It’s the same all the way down to more trivial problems. Bemoaning that fact that you didn’t get what you wanted or weren’t treated well is worse than pointless. Spilling your sorrows to a trusted friend or professional can be very rewarding of course, but regurgitating your problems to all-and-sundry is draining, and it certainly doesn’t make for good company.

Describing one’s sorrows is contemplating one’s sorrows, and that’s never a happy time. Unless you are actually in the process of petitioning someone for assistance it’s best to keep it to yourself – and indeed from yourself. There’s a limit to how long any insoluble problem should bark away in a human mind. Once you’ve mulled all the useful lessons you can from a bad experience or bad news, there’s nothing more to be gained by thinking about it. Put it to bed, think about something else. Return to it refreshed.

Easier said than done of course. Worries play for our attention, but perhaps certain other beliefs weaken our guard. Perhaps we fear that if aren’t constantly fretting about a problem we’re neglecting it – neglecting the issue of the errant lover, ailing business or missing child.

But it can’t be neglect if you’re not in a position to do anything. If all you have to offer are painful impotent thoughts it’s time to change the record. There’s nothing to be gained by wallowing in sorrow, but a lot to lose. Rather than a duty, dwelling is a costly indulgence.

How to end terrorism in one generation.

2006-11-20T09:01:00.000Z

Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller’s horrific description of countless British terror cells, planning countless heinous deeds, is not an easy thing to question. There’s no way to check information compiled in secrecy. Call it exaggerated and you open yourself up to the accusation of endangering human life, and of course you really do make yourself hostage to fortune.

Nevertheless some external evidence can be factored-in, for one thing Tony Blair’s ringing endorsement. Judging by his track record his understanding of such matters is shamefully inadequate. Taking his opinions seriously has proved disastrous for the world and its inhabitants. To any rational mind Blair’s agreement with any assessment of world affairs must subtract from its credibility. It’s almost a guarantee of error.

Also the timing is highly convenient. The very week the Bush administration is castrated, another blast of terror – at least on paper. Just as the whispers of dissent start to become audible ‘terror’ returns to stifle them. The message is clear and tediously familiar – stay on board, look what happens without our protection.

But more than anything there’s the strange issue of the time-scale. Manningham-Buller suggests that the current wave of Islamic terrorism will “last a generation”. You have to ask, what is the basis for this claim? How did she arrive at this figure?

Obviously much depends on what she sees as the cause of Islamic terror. Many see Islamic atrocities as a response to western atrocities. As long as the west continues to treat Muslim life casually we can expect some Muslims to treat us with equal compassion. If our thirst for oil compels us to mistreat masses of innocent people, some of them will respond in kind.

Alternatively some see the problem as inherent to Islam. Muslims have an innate tendency to world domination (eerily familiar?) and care little for who they kill along the way. In fact they relish dying in the process, because of all the fleshy heavenly rewards.

I can’t see that the head of British Intelligence is of the first opinion, her response would be just too good to be true. If she sees Islamic terror stopping in one generation she must also be predicting the end of western brutality – perhaps something she and the other security services are working towards?: Palestinian liberation, US bases removed from Saudi, Iraq given back to the Iraqis.

A nice thought, and certainly something I’d like to work towards, but it seems unlikely this is what she means. Mere discussion of such an obvious strategy is forbidden in powerful circles. If you want to get anywhere in the state you have to accept that some options are not to be considered, even if this wilful ignorance endangers the people you are employed to serve.

Far more likely she takes the second view. But if so it’s still difficult to imagine how she arrived at the ‘last a generation’ claim. If radical Islam is the problem she suggests what have she and MI5 got in mind, and how do they account for the proposed time scale? If radical Islam really is a hurricane of madness, spiralling through madrasahs and carrying off young minds, exactly what plan has the state devised to tackle it? And why will it take one generation to implement? Why not half a generation, or three?

I suspect the real reason for the time period is political expedience. One generation is the goldilocks option. Any longer and it would sound as though we’ve already lost. But any shorter and it would require evidence of strategy, other than just business as usual, and its usual depressing consequences. ‘Within one generation’ sounds do-able, just don’t expect to be able to detect any progress. We’re in for the medium-term haul.

Fiction VII

2006-09-29T08:48:00.000+01:00

Fact as a Virtue

Fiction certainly has its virtues. It can enlighten and inform, exercise reading skills and increase vocabularies. It gives audiences access to concepts, landscapes and situations they would otherwise never encounter. At times it’s the best way to communicate important ideas, sometimes the only way.

Nevertheless, there are limits on the sort of information that be conveyed in this manner. Most of the time, the best way to learn about the world is to study it first-hand, or at least as close-hand as you can get.

While Newton’s bizarre life-story might be usefully illuminated by dramatisation, his Principia would suffer dreadfully. Calculus is difficult enough without it being further encoded into a human storyline. If you want to learn how to solve equations there’s no better way than studying equations directly – certainly more illuminating than studying narratives about people who themselves study the equations. In this case it’s definitely best to study first-hand.

In the last part I suggested that some of the virtues commonly ascribed to fiction are undeserved. As with mathematics, politics and human-nature are subjects best studied first hand. You might top-up your knowledge of these subjects with a fiction, or even be inspired to investigate further after consuming a fiction, but a fiction alone would be pretty worthless, in understanding these complex matters.

It may sound facetious, but I sincerely believe the best way to ‘lay bare the human condition’ is by reading pop science. The whole magnificent corpus of natural philosophy is available in lucid terms, written with the layman in mind. Evolution, genetics, psychology, theory of mind – these are our best hope of or seeing ‘directly into the human soul’. While fiction might provide gut-wrenching sensations of existence, pop science actually provides understanding, comprehension.

Just the same with politics. Watching The West Wing or Yes Minister might add colour and structure to your notion of government and civil service, but it’s no substitute for real politics. Without any accompanying knowledge of real politics political fiction becomes mere decoration.

I suspect a bit of self-deception is sometimes at play. It’s just so much easier to consume a fiction than go to source, and it’s a great bonus to think it’s doing us some good. Watching a drama about Newton is a far less daunting prospect than tackling his theories. Watching The Deer Hunter is far easier than reading Manufacturing Consent. Watching M*A*S*H is far easier than studying Korean history.

It’s a bit like the one about the lazy lit student – watches the film of the book instead of reading the book itself. Dramatisations of important discoveries and events are bound to be less of a struggle to swallow than material closer to source, but we tend to pay for that decrease in difficulty with a proportional decrease in useful learning.

The ease with which we gulp down most of our fiction is a pretty good indicator that nothing too profound is being acquired. Real learning – such as that carried out by lit students – is a difficult, head scratching, business. Uncritically consuming fiction, on the other hand, is a breeze.

For the consumer it might sound like a free lunch, but as usual someone ends up paying. It’s tempting to let our feelings towards fictions become a substitute for legitimate moral concern. Reading about child labour in nineteenth-century Lancashire feels like a moral act, but it’s far less disquieting, or implicating, than reading about child labour in Vietnam today – great surges of compassion, none of the guilt. It hurts less to read Dickens because it doesn’t implicate us. All the emotion with none of the culpability.

If we allow ourselves to project our compassion onto simple fictional victims instead of ugly reality, the consequences are anything but virtuous. If we allow ourselves the warm moral glow when there’s no chance of a moral effect it’s a net moral loss. Read in isolation, fiction won’t change the world. You can read and discuss Dickens until the cows come home, but it’s morally worthless if you never apply it to the present. It’s just milking away your morality, rather than acting upon it.

Fiction VI

2006-09-28T08:46:00.001+01:00

Fiction as a Virtue

Once upon a time our English teacher asked us to list the books we were reading out of school. I doubt I was reading anything, but I wrote down the last few titles I could remember. She frowned at my list, “You know you really should be reading some fiction.”

It was voiced with genuine concern for my well-being. Like many people, she saw a life without fiction as a life lacking. Like vitamins, fictions were missing from my psychological diet, a deficiency that would narrow my outlook. Without fiction I would grow into a less ‘well-rounded’ character.

But does consuming fiction make a better human of you? Does it make the world an easier place to comprehend, and cause you to act in a more enlightened way?

Obviously much depends on the fiction. By definition, virtuous fiction would tend to instil virtue, help form that ‘well-rounded character’ all responsible educators desire. Enlightening writing is that which enlightens, leaves you better able to cope in the world. If the only fiction you read is morally and intellectually enlightening the experience is bound to be a constructive one.

But that doesn’t sound much like the average fiction, or the average purchaser. Most of us buy fiction for pleasure, not self-improvement. Although often intelligent and entertaining, it seems uncontroversial to suggest that the mass of fictions we consume range from morally irrelevant to morally malevolent, they certainly teach us nothing useful about the world.

Love it as they might, few viewers of Coronation Street could claim they’d become better moral agents by watching it. After forty years, what could you have possibly learned?: Old women gossip, but it’s usually their undoing in the end? Schoolgirls sometimes fall pregnant? Factory owners drink scotch?

The proportion of useful ideas popular fiction conveys to public minds is slight in the extreme. Popular fiction is about pleasure, not learning, I’m sure most fiction consumers and creators would agree.

There’s less agreement about the virtues of more highbrow fiction, often renamed literature or classics. Such works are heralded as the peak of human intellectual achievement. To whatever degree this might be true, some claims seem quite unjustified. While there is nothing wrong in principle with the idea of virtuous fiction, some powers attributed to it simply don’t stand up to inspection.

It is frequently suggested, without comment, that Shakespeare or even Jane Austen ‘see directly into the human soul’ or ‘lay bare the human condition.’ I really don’t think this is true – but I have an idea why it gets said. Good fiction triggers deep emotion. Subtle dramatisations of profound human interactions can be deeply moving. If it’s done with sufficient intelligence it can feel like you are witnessing vital moral and emotional truth.

But feeling isn’t the same as learning. The fact that a fiction can instil powerful emotions in us has no bearing on the depth of any message it might convey. This misunderstanding seems central to the frequent mistaken elevation of fiction from pleasure to virtue. The beauty we witness and the deep feelings we experience while consuming it can encourage the idea we have learned something deep along the way, when it might not be the case at all.

Politics for example, and Shakespeare again. I remember an interview in which an RSC bigwig emphasized the political profundity of Julius Caesar. Its greatest lesson, he suggested, was that it teaches us ‘the impossibility of politics’.

Again, I don’t think the first claim is true – as before, profundity of feeling is being muddled with profundity of learning. However powerful and moving Julius Caesar might be I’d challenge anyone to identify a novel political insight in it. Its profundity lies in its beauty, its humanity and language, but there’s nothing in it that might make you better able to cope with contemporary politics – certainly nothing as useful as actually studying contemporary politics. It’s eminently quotable, but it won’t clarify current global economics, or inspire social reform.

Indeed if ‘the impossibility of politics’ is the great lesson of the play that greatness is highly questionable, at least to those of a progressive persuasion. It’s really an appeal to political resignation – resistance is futile. For while it’s certainly a great truth that political ambition does invariably descend into corruption and betrayal, it also won us every existing liberty. Although those successes are dust beside the failures, we only possess them because some of our predecessors refused to believe politics was impossible, refused to give up. If the ‘great lesson’ of Julius Caesar actually wards people away from politics its ethical consequences are in fact degenerate, at least in that respect.

Fiction V

2006-07-05T12:38:00.000+01:00

The Politics of Fiction

As seen in the last part, fiction can instil inappropriate fears. But fear isn’t a special case. Whatever the subject, there’s always the risk a story will leave us with inaccurate information about the world. It’s a recurring quandary with fiction. It’s great that it can tell us about things we wouldn’t otherwise encounter, but not so great when what it tells is isn’t true. Sometimes it might be better not to know at all.

Clearly, if your entire knowledge of Jewish people comes from Nazi propaganda films you’d be better knowing nothing at all. Likewise, if your entire knowledge of Libyans is based upon the salivating sub-humans depicted in Back to the Future complete ignorance would be preferable.

Sad to say, for many children and adults in the Thirties and the Eighties such characterisations were all they had to go on. Consequently when they heard the words ‘Jewish’ or ‘Libyan’ it was those sort of images that sprang to mind. Consequently, when it came to gassing and bombing these people, there was less outcry. Malevolent sub-humans elicit little public sympathy, and that was how fiction had helped to paint them.

Fictional depictions are sucked into vacuums in our knowledge. If a mind has no information on a subject other than through a fiction, it will tend to store and utilise that fiction as it would fact.

For example, watching Quincy is the closest I’ve come to knowing an American pathologist. No surprise, when I hear the term ‘American pathologist’ it is Jack Klugman’s face and pleasant demeanour that spring to mind. I’ve little else stored on the subject.

Alternatively, if I hear the term ‘aging beach stud’ then naturally I’ll picture Mr Hasslehoff. But this time my mind will also factor-in a bit of Robert Mitchum, in Cape Fear, and perhaps some of the older characters in surf-movies like Big Wednesday. As it happens, I have actually been on some Californian beaches, so those memories of reality will also inform my reading. Nevertheless, in this particular case the fictions remain the majority input. They’re the defining images in my mind.

Colourful as it can be, this reliance on fiction for facts leaves us vulnerable to misrepresentations, no more so than in the sphere of politics. Depending on which narratives you consume you can be left with a very different impression of events: If your entire knowledge of the American frontier comes from watching John Wayne movies you’ll be left with a particular view of that period. If it comes from Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee you’ll be left with a very different set of images. Heroic horseback duels between righteous Europeans and noble savages would turn to images of genocide.

If your entire knowledge of Vietnam ‘war’ comes from watching ‘Nam movies, your opinion of what happened will be tightly circumscribed. You might think of it as a brave adventure, you might think of it as a tragedy that befell young American manhood. But you certainly won’t see it as the US battling to derail democracy in Asia.

Doubtless, such depictions have helped keep the true horrors out of the public mind, and on track.

Or take the concept of the British spy. Ask anyone on Earth to name a British secret agent. It won’t be Guy Burgess or David Shayler. James Bond is far better known, a far bolder image in the public eye than any real spy.

For all the fun of the films, this misunderstanding has been an boon for state-criminals, a priceless diversion from reality. When we should picture murky individuals, sneaking, lying and squealing, instead we picture immaculate evening attire, casinos, Ferraris, Dry Martinis and beautiful women. When we should be protesting the destruction of countless democracies instead we picture a dashing hero, keeping Moscow or whatever at bay. Perfect war propaganda, without any government coaxing.

Star Trek was a stunning piece of cold-war propaganda. The whole premise is America’s infinite benevolence, and its right to police the universe. As power passed from Europe to the States, Star Trek spelled out the change: Now we could see the future, and that was American too. If anyone was going to build intergalactic ships it was them. If anyone was going to patrol the universe it was them. Still difficult to imagine it any other way.

Perhaps the most subtle political messages come at the level of the individual characters. To what ever extent our politics is influenced by friends and acquaintances, something similar applies for fictional characters. Realist fiction is out to seem like reality, to make us feel we are witnessing real people and real events. Unavoidably, part of that reality is the political complexion of each character. Without any necessary authorial intent, fictional characters tell us what we are, as political animals.

Much as I know that Dirty Den was a scoundrel and a lover and a small businessman, I can also assume he voted for Margaret Thatcher. Hilda Ogden on the other hand was a stubborn old prude, a classic working class Tory, while trade unionist Bobby Grant on Brookside was firmly on the Labour left.

So, what’s the pay off? Of all the people who influence us politically, what net influence do our fictional acquaintances exert?

In this sense it seems hard to deny that spending time consuming popular fiction is spending time in the company of deeply apolitical people. Soap characters, in particular, are a pitifully disconnected bunch. Aside from election days, the subject simply isn’t approached. To the extent that we are politically motivated by those around us, soap ‘friends’ are the last people to inspire a revolution.

This certainly isn’t a call for more left-wing soap characters, rather to point out how unworkable that would be. It’s not really what fiction is about. Popular fiction is about entertainment, not hard work. Soaps and big movies can’t waste time constructing politically progressive characters. They have to stick to the simple things, things we all know best – birth, sex, power, death. There’s no room for revolutionary ideology in Hilda Ogden’s mouth, there’s simply no call for it.

The very form of fiction makes it better suited for conveying reactionary messages. After all, fiction is always re-presentation - it comes alive by reminding us of things we’ve already encountered, not by suggesting abstract plans for the future. Novelties abound, of course, but they must always reference the familiar or things just wouldn’t make sense. However subtly delivered, stereotyping is unavoidable – how else could we relate to the characters?

Fiction always has to remind us of real people, real events. It may point to the future but it always has two feet in the past. For this reason alone no fiction can really be politically neutral. Whatever writers and devotees might believe, all fictions convey the political perspective of the period - often little more than the accumulated bigotry of the period.

As usual, it’s easy to see after the event. These days decent folk wince at early Hollywood depictions of race. We can see it now, but clearly a lot of people didn’t at the time. It seems safe to assume that many of our current crop of racial stereotypes are similarly narrow-minded, and will have future liberals wringing their hands about what terrible people we all must have been.

While progressive fiction is a possibility it’s always going to be in a minority. Orwell’s novels contain priceless political insight, but they really are bucking the trend. The mass of popular fictions perpetuate conservative readings. Most of the fiction we consume is for pleasure, and pleasure rarely means profound.

Fiction IV

2006-06-02T09:17:00.000+01:00

Fiction and Fear

One evening, not long after I moved out of the family home, my mother phoned, anxious. Apparently Damon from Brookside had been stabbed in the street and left to die – standard upbeat fare. Clearly she was upset, Damon was about my age. One way or another she was phoning to check I was okay.

At the time I found her concern annoyingly naïve and misplaced, but a second example puts me in my place: When I was seventeen skinheads were having one of their many renaissances. To celebrate, ITV screened Made in Britain, a play about a psychotic and deeply defiant skin. Tim Roth was Trevor, the boy who respected no authority, listened to no reason, spat in the face of huge coppers and always managed to get up afterwards, and smile.

For all the thrill of witnessing his wild behaviour I have no doubt that Trevor made me more scared of skinheads. Always a bit scary, unknown skins on the streets of Chelmsford and Romford emitted higher levels of foreboding.

I’m sure many of them would’ve been chuffed. At the time the fashion attracted lads who wanted to look tough, whether or not they actually were. Then again, some of them might have just found the play exciting like I did, only with the added cachet of brotherhood.

Then again, others might have felt intimidated by it, incapable of emulating such behaviour. Perhaps some were even scared by it, and turned off. Whatever, one thing’s certain, the amount of real skinheads as sociopathic as Trevor remained vanishingly small. Most were only in it for the fashion, the friends, the scene. They no more wanted to hit me than I wanted to hit them.

Looking back I have to ask, was it worth it? For the sake of entertainment, my mother and me made reality into a scarier place for ourselves. For the thrill of fictional fear we sacrificed some confidence in reality.

Horror stories are scary, obviously. An open case of fiction as bringer of fear. Publicity boasts how scared you’ll get, how you’ll need to leave the landing light on (strange things, those humans.) But instilling fear is not the preserve of horror or the thriller. Fear is a staple of fiction, one of its most powerful means of moving us.

One consequence is an increased suspicion of reality. Entertaining ourselves with fear inevitably leaves us with a scarier looking world.

Although they’re usually not the most gorily violent, it’s probably the ultra-realist fictions that cast the longest shadows on the psyche. Alien petrified audiences, but I’ll bet the fear was mostly short-lived. Spacecraft and sentient robots simply aren’t a part of our daily lives. Nothing we encounter in reality reminds us of our fears in Alien.

Conversely, the fictional reconstructions used in programs like Crimewatch refer to our immediate surroundings. Naturalistic representations of frightening events, set against a backdrop of everyday reality. We’re assured the rationale is virtuous, but it’s simply not true. Even if such mini-dramas do jog memories it can only be those of a handful of people. Once it’s been established that you weren’t in the area at the time it all becomes porn, morbid curiosity, entertainment. Nothing more than the thrill of seeing real muggings and real molestations, played out by actors.

The payback comes when you’re walking home, after dark. While you might be fully aware that you’re in no greater danger after watching a re-enactment of a mugging, there’s no telling that to your subconscious. If you frequently immerse yourself in fantasies about people leaping out of dark alleys wielding knives, there’s no way to stop your animal brain from getting twitchy when you walk pass real dark alleys. No matter how sophisticated the audience there’s never a queue for the shower after a screening of Psycho. At some level of consciousness the fear remains.

If you want to know what it’s like to live in the sea don’t ask a fish. It’s a sentiment that applies well to fictional fear. It’s hard to see it until you get out of the water and look back. I followed Eastenders from it’s beginning until the mid-nineties. I remember liking it, and discussing the antics with colleagues the next day. When I see it now I’m staggered by the tension. I can’t eat my dinner with it on. An endless cycle of shouting and threatening, violence close at hand.

That tension, I suppose, was what I previously watched it for. A good part of the entertainment of Eastenders is the sensation of being in the company of crooks, hard men, the odd psycho. Eastenders is designed to make you feel you’re there, in the houses and lock-ups and dodgy pubs. ‘Realistic’ is the greatest compliment you could pay to its creators.

And of course it’s not just Albert Square. Film and television bombard us with horror stories about strangers, how awful it is ‘out there’. Not because it is, but because it sells. One consequence is a distorted picture of human nature, skewed toward violence and fear.

None of which is not to suggest horrible things don’t happen, clearly they do. The problem is one of proportion. Like sex, violence sells. One of the standard quick fixes for flagging ratings is to crank-up the aggression, the tension, the fear. Makers of soaps and cop-shows may claim they are just representing reality but that just begs the question – whose? The aspects of reality they choose to represent are often far more aggressive than the average viewer’s life. While many of us may regret not being as sexy as the people on the telly, it’s surely a huge compensation that we’re not as violent.

Since I stopped watching soaps and thrillers, strangers are less likely to give me the creeps. There are less silly fantasies waiting in my mind, sending out false alarms, painting innocent bystanders in a bad light. It’s logical enough really. If you don’t keep fantasising about unpleasant people you won’t keep seeing them on the bus. If you enjoy fictional street violence, but have an intense fear of dimly-lit city streets, you might try killing two birds.

The Real Bogeyman

2006-04-24T09:01:00.000+01:00

We’re in trouble, no mistake. Every credible scientific source warns of impending environmental catastrophe. Every day delivers another calamitous statistic, tipping points approaching, scientists’ worst expectations realised.

Then, when you think it couldn’t get anymore intractable, Exxon and Halliburton are in the White House. Even the feebly modest Kyoto agreement is blocked. Cars and aeroplanes just get bigger and more numerous, with projections of exponential future growth. Even those few newspapers that run environmental features drown them in adverts for 4x4s and 2-4-1s to Paris. For every single warning about over-consumption, a thousand imploring us to over-consume.

Still that’s the situation and we’re stuck with it. That’s what we’ve got to address rapidly or go the way of the thylacine. That’s my candidate for the real bogeyman.

Not everyone agrees. Some maintain this bogeyman is just a bogeyman. There is no impending environmental crisis, or if there is it has nothing to do with human activity. Melanie Phillips is one. She believes that herself and a handful of uncelebrated scientists understand the situation better than NASA. Who am I to argue, but I’ll stick with NASA.

Matthew Parris isn’t far behind. He accepts climate change is happening, but he doesn’t think the evidence of its linkage to human activity is proven. Contrary to the world’s leading climatologists, he thinks we need to look into it a little further, otherwise carry on pretty much as we are. He also wonders whether our fear of such catastrophe might just be a standard facet of our psyche, whether or not that threat exists. We’ve lost biblical Armageddon, thankfully, but gained nuclear Armageddon – now we’re inflicting eco-Armageddon on ourselves, too. Like Phillips, Parris suspects my real bogeyman is just another traditional bogeyman.

I’m not sure of Nick Cohen’s position on global warming but it doesn’t seem to rank too highly in his fears. Since his overnight conversion to neo-conservatism (or since the rest of us shifted to fascism, as he see it) his principle concern has been the threat of radical Islam.

What this threat might actually involve it’s impossible to tell. His new allies at the Pentagon have already concluded that environmental destruction is a far greater threat to human survival than retail terrorism, so it can’t be that. If he is privy to The Protocols of Islam I think it’s time he let the rest of us have a look, so we can judge for ourselves. Otherwise his position seems very strange. It’s not so bad to leave subsequent generations with no habitat, just so long as they don’t get converted to Islam on the way. Let our granddaughters die, if corporate logic demands it, just don’t let them die wearing burkas.

Sadly, even some traditional leftists (that’s Trotskyite-Islamo-Fascists to Nick Cohen) still treat this bogeyman as an object of ridicule, rather than a real and growing threat. Any mention draws wounded, bitterly sarcastic responses: “So you think we should start reusing toilet paper? Working class people don’t deserve cars and holidays? What sort of a future is that? Let’s all die of pessimism. Complete pie in the sky anyway. No politician who promises to reduce growth will ever get elected.”

To emphasise the selflessness of this stance the consumer rights of ‘all workers of the world’ are also cited: “So, people in India don’t deserve cars and holidays? They don’t have the right to aspire to the things we take for granted?”

In all the above cases it seems to me that another kind of bogeyman is at large: Fear of change. Not least, fear of reduced living standards. Many of us have become used to having money to throw about, and an endless supply of products and services to meet it. Cheap hi-fis and exotic holidays, all washed down with lots of booze. The parents’ generation couldn’t have dreamed of it. Much of the vitriol levelled at environmentalism stems from the horrific thought of this luxury-tap drying up. Weaned onto perpetual purchasing, many of us are traumatised by the mere mention of a slow-down.

Also, quite understandably, people feel indignant at the suggestion that they’re doing something wrong, particularly when it’s something that they cherish. People set their hearts on their products, their cars, their holidays. It’s always annoying to hear criticism of things you desire, or already proudly own, even worse to hear them being blamed for the awful state of the world.

Still, there are greater pains than these. If you accept the scientific consensus on global warming then resisting and obstructing action is morally wrong. Consumer rights don’t enter into it. No matter where you’re from, Coventry or Beijing, no generation of humans has the right to steal from subsequent generations. The motoring aspirations of humans in 2006 can’t be allowed to reduce the life expectation of humans in 2026. How fair would that be on the future workers of the world?

As for the unelectability of candidates who seek to slow growth, well that’s something that will have to change, one way or another. We’d do well to remember universal suffrage and free healthcare seemed impossibly idealistic goals a century ago, yet now we take them for granted. And if the stakes are as high as them seem then we really have no option. If it’s change or perish then it has to be change.

Then some fears are peculiar to some people. If you’ve built your political life around a particular ideology it must be daunting when it turns out to be a disaster. Matthew Parris was a cheerleader for Thatcherism. If that policy is driving us to extinction, then whatever has he been preaching all these years? That’s why he waxes lyrical to the point of incomprehension. He can’t address the science of climate change because science isn’t on his side. Science would tell him it’s all been a terrible mistake, and we need to change course. Not bedtime reading.

Melanie Phillips fears the spectre of communism. She thinks environmentalism is a left-wing plot to derail the monetarist revolution. To some degree, I suppose it has to be. Thatcherism has always been slash and burn and may the most powerful and ruthless win – the very behaviour that has brought us to this point. For scientist Phillips however such conclusions are quite out of bounds. Indeed if the answer to any question isn’t unbridled neo-liberalism then the question must be wrong. If science concludes Milton Friedman is killing us, then it is science that must be at fault. There is no alternative.

Nick Cohen’s big fear we’ve already met, but his reaction to it is also noteworthy. To fight Islamic terror he’s allied himself with its central cause – Bush and Blair’s “war on terror”. His own paper recently confirmed this. Soon after the London bombings Cohen claimed “We all know who was to blame for Thursday's murders ... and it wasn't Bush and Blair.”, yet this month The Observer reported that the “Home Office inquiry into the deadliest terror attack on British soil has conceded that the bombers were inspired by UK foreign policy, principally the decision to invade Iraq.” This is a man who wants to fight terrorism?

Just the same, if he is shrewd enough to fear climate change he couldn’t have picked worse bedfellows. The Bush administration is hell bent on long-term destruction, for short-term booty. Oil and arms, stalking the globe.

What can’t be denied is that there’s a market for this stuff. Much as there are plenty of columnists happy to disseminate doubts about climate change there are a great many people who want to read them. It’s comforting to be told not to worry, that everything is going to be just fine. But it’s a cruel trick. When you hear what real scientists have to say on the subject, and discover the track record of the maverick scientists, and hear which oil companies have funded their ‘independent’ research, such hopes crash back to earth.

I for one would be delighted if Melanie Phillips turned out to be right. Few things would make me happier. But the weight of hard evidence smothers the dream. Her desire for the world to be as she wants counts for nothing. Comforting dreams cut no ice in the physical sciences, and dreams are all she has.

And that’s why climate change is worth worrying about and biblical Armageddon isn’t. True, the sensation caused by each is probably much the same. Rather than momentary blind terrors they’re overarching fears, dark clouds always present at some level of consciousness. But the fact that the kind of fear is the same tells us nothing about the reality of the threat. Armageddon was never scientifically defended, it was always pure unassailable myth. By contrast, human induced climate change has been studied intensively.

Whether or not these kinds of fears have some innate component is hardly the point. What matters is that some fears are bogus and others are justifiable. If anyone’s getting medieval it’s the climate-change deniers. They’re the ones waving the obscure texts, and warning us away from science. They’re the ones preaching unquestioning faith in the everlasting, regardless of what evidence is put before them.

References:

http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles/archives/000255.html

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1065-2113244,00.html

observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1525172,00.html

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1745085,00.html

Fiction III

2006-03-21T08:58:00.000Z

3. What is Fiction?

All fictions contain some fact. While Hilda Ogden is clearly fictional, such characters do exist. In that sense at least she is something of a truth about the world. Similarly, while Hilda’s home town of Weatherfield is an invention it’s one structured around reality. If nothing else the accents – even if the dialogue is totally fabricated those accents are a true part of Manchester, a truth about the world.

Fiction is a bit like salt. It’s something we sprinkle on representations to enhance their credibility. Clearly there’s fictive content and real content in every novel, film and television program.

Television news, of all things, sells itself as pure fact. Of course it does possess factual content, it’s usually about real people and real events, and the newsreaders are real people too. Nevertheless the journalism is usually rich in fiction. If the truth is an honest summary of the days events, one that might enlighten and inform a democracy, television news is shot-through with fiction. In this sense, the very last thing it does is tell the truth about the world.

Novels are card-carrying fiction. They’re a celebration of the art of making things up. But just like soaps, the key is realism. Snippets of reality, things we already know and recognise, fabricated into novel narratives for the sake of entertainment. This sort of fiction is deeply dependent on fact.

Sci-fi for example. While Daleks are obviously fictional, their personality traits are cherry-picked from real humans. Ruthlessness and blind obedience to tyranny are, sadly, persistent aspects of human life. Daleks are a mixture of these and other unfortunate earthly conditions. Conversely, Marvin the Paranoid Android is a collection of facts about decent people, capable people, melancholy people. Like Eyore, he warms us with memories of our own friends and acquaintances. Neither Dalek nor Marvin would engage us if we didn’t already have experience of nasty humans, and tragicomic humans. That’s what they’re based on.

Pornography is obviously phoney, but it works by looking real. However ludicrous the screenplay, the players must at least look human if it’s to work. Pornography is a bold example of how fiction works by impersonating reality. It makes people horny by giving them the feeling they are actually witnessing or participating in real sex. Certainly explains the moaning and the looks to camera, and the frightening close-ups. At some level of consciousness, you could almost be there.

Odd as it sounds, even maths textbooks contain some fiction. Errors in theory or in the answers at the back would be fictional. They’d be untruths that would leave the student with a worse understanding of the world. More positively, fictions can also be employed actively, to help with the explanations: “Bryan has sixty pence. He gives thirty to Charlie…” Pure fiction, but for a noble cause. A little fiction to clarify important facts.

Biography and autobiography may claim the status of fact but they often embody more fiction than novels. A biography of Churchill might be chronologically precise in a manner Citizen Kane never can be, but the inferences drawn concerning his life and character might be wholly inaccurate, fictional. If the biographer already loves or loathes Churchill they’ll tend to pick and position those facts which express their own feelings towards him, the narrative path they want him to wander down, rather than an honest appraisal. And of course Kane was based on Hearst, who certainly was a real man. Perhaps Hearst’s life as embodied in Kane was a highly accurate portrait, more so than many a deferential Churchill biography.

Like novels, biographies are finely woven threads of fact and fiction. Things can get very tangled. It’s often difficult to say which parts are true and which false, even for the author. Even if we agree that fact and fiction are at work in a given text, we’ll often disagree as to which aspects are the real ones, and which the invented.

No more so than with historical writing. Unlike maths books, there’s always disagreement about which aspects of history books are fact and which fiction. The main contention is of course politics. Political belief is inseperable from historical belief. We each advocate the politics we advocate because of what we believe to have happened in the past. Every political colour cites the past as the justification for their current stance. If you want to applaud the Nixon administration you cite their record in office. If you want to condemn the Nixon administration you cite their record in office.

Clearly something funny is going on here. Logically, some written history must be fictional, at least in parts. If it’s possible for two radically contradictory histories to be published concerning the same historical event, one of them must be a shameless travesty, perhaps both.

Being of my own political persuasion I tend to see conservative historians as purveyors of fiction. Not wilfully cynical, or inaccurate with dates – that’s not the level the fiction operates at. The fiction comes in the selection of facts, the order they are put into, the story this gives rise to. The fiction comes with the picture of the world this sequence of facts implies.

Although I’d be surprised if there was ever a wrong name or wrong date in a Simon Schama television history, the way the facts are employed produces a downright fictional picture of social change. He gets you thinking about all the wrongs things. It might be pretty, and heart-rending, to imagine that the decisions of kings and queens drive civilisation onward, but it teaches you nothing about the world. “At that moment Elizabeth realised, England was hers” – a bold image certainly, but one that teaches you nothing useful about the world.

Of course Simon Schama would say the same thing of left history. It’s leftists who don’t understand the true engine of history – elite humans, but it’s not good enough to put this all down to point of view. At least one of us must be wrong. Was the cold war Soviet aggression or an American fiction? Clearly both factors played a part, but which was prevailing? Which version best explains the current state of the world? Noam Chomsky and Niall Ferguson would doubtless have a thousand examples on hand to throw at each other, but what’s the fact? Unless it’s a dead heat, one of these accounts must be nearer to the truth, and the other predominantly fiction. One of these commentators must be pushing false history.

Of course there’s another way in which news-anchors can be economical with the actuality. He might be wearing a toupee or a girdle, she’ll certainly be wearing lipstick, or even breast implants. For that’s where this all starts. As humans we all tell fibs to some degree. The fictions we incorporate into our representations are just a cultural extension of our day to day lies.

In this sense, fiction is as old as human consciousness. Lying is as much a human reality as honesty. At the very least, we all modify our behaviour in different company. We have ideals about ourselves we work to and we’re often prepared, consciously or otherwise, to bend the truth a little when we can. We affect telephone voices. We assure children that their paintings are beautiful. We tell interviewers that the job sounds fascinating, and loved ones that the meal was lovely, and no, of course you don’t look fat. We all have to lie sometimes just to keep the peace, and not break each other’s hearts. Sometimes it’s downright immoral not to lie. Then again, sometimes we lie cynically, for material, emotional or political gain.

The fictions we read and write are an extension of our daily fabrications, our mix of innocent daydreams, white lies, and cynical deceits. In turn, the effect of these fictions can be good or bad, moral or malevolent. Like lies, some fictions really are worse than others, and that’s the subject of the following parts.

Fiction II

2006-02-13T08:56:00.000Z

2. A Slice of Life

Reality is a complex place, for all intents and purposes infinitely so. Representations on the other hand are necessarily finite. There’s only so many hours in the day to observe things, and only so much time to draw, paint, sculpt, film, or write down those observations. You can’t just keep adding detail indefinitely, and any attempt to do so would result in something strange rather than something realistic.

Nevertheless, certain forms of representation can at least give the impression that they embody total reality. Although they make for a weird team, there’s a distinct connection between Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Monet’s water lilies, Rodin’s The Kiss, and Coronation Street. Although methods vary, they’re all designed to make you believe that what you are witnessing is living reality, other realities. Some hot and sweaty, others crisp and fragrant. You could almost be there.

Clearly this isn’t true of all representations. However much beauty and anguish you might see in a Van Gough chair, you wouldn’t want to sit on one. Similarly, while Picasso’s figures can exhibit deep humanity, there’s little chance of mistaking them for real humans, there in the room with you, thank heavens.

With visual representations one of the key tools is perspective. Unlike Picasso’s demoiselles, Whistler’s mother is perfectly proportioned. The legs of her chair are in all the right places and her shadow falls just where it would. You could be Whistler, standing at his easel, and the two-dimensional geometry falling on your retina would be much the same. You could be there, and it feels like it too.

It’s part of what you might call the ‘photo-ishness’ of certain paintings. Like a photograph, Whistler’s mother does a jolly good two-dimensional impersonation of our three-dimensional world, as it falls upon our eyes. Indeed, if David Hockney is right about the use of camera obscurers in renaissance painting, it makes perfect sense that these forms should work on us in similar, and quite unprecedented ways.

Another key ingredient of photo-ishness is the filling in, the shading or colouring of a two dimensional image. Here again, the more natural looking paintings are the ones that resemble photographs, the ones where brightness and colour are distributed much as they might be in a photograph. Impressionist painting is a clear case. Little dapple here, little splat there, just like in a photo. Clearly these painters and thinkers learnt from the new medium. Impressionism might well be called ‘painting in the light of photography’.

Like accurate geometry, accurate filling-in is an effective way to make a flat, still image spring to life. A canvas coloured and shaded in sympathy with the world is more likely to instil a feeling of looking at the world.

Although words and paint convey meaning in very different ways, when it comes to inducing a sense of reality the starting point is the same. As with a painting there’s no possible way to transcribe the totality of a scene in words. The best you can do is choose snippets, those which best coax the reader to fill in the rest of the detail, or at least convince the reader that the rest of the detail is present, just unseen.

Like great portrait painters, great fiction writers are people with a skill for picking the right metonyms, ones that encourage the reader to project their own sense of reality onto the text. Like fine painters, they can spot those aspects of reality that will be most evocative. How is another matter. Inspiration is always going to be enigmatic, even for the inspired. Nevertheless there are some long-established fictional devices that give some indication of what can be achieved.

The first is so common and so logical it’s often included in style guides for budding writers: Long before product placement, fiction writers were using brand names, real and fictional, to boost the realism of their work.

Makes sense. Use the term 'metal polish' in a fiction and it conjures little in the mind of the reader – but call it Brasso and it springs to life. Brasso gives the reader a chance to visualise a real product they’ve handled, or seen on a shelf. Even if you’ve never heard of Brasso it still sounds a likely metal polish, in a loud tin, one you might see under a neighbour’s sink. Likewise, don’t say vinegar, say Sarson’s. If you remind people of a bottle they’ve actually seen and handled, they’re more likely to smell it on fictional chips and feel it running down fictional sleeves.

Again, it works because it rings true. In truth there are no generic products, everything is made by someone. The Rovers Return is the only pub where customers ask for a packet of their ‘usual cigars’. Like it or not, we now think brands where we once thought things. Using brand-names helps fictions to feel real, because brands have become such a large part of our reality.

Another reliable realism activator is the small inessential exception to life’s norm. A well chosen unlikelihood can breath life into empty space. I remember a Norman Mailer story in which a man momentarily focuses on a “surprisingly well drawn nude lady” on a wooden panel in the gents. No more is said, but it's very effective. Truth is, badly drawn nude ladies are ten a penny. Good erotic graffiti is a rarity, it really stands out from the crowd.

Occasionally truth is stranger than fiction. Sometimes we do glimpse beauty in the strangest of places. The unusual is all part and parcel of reality, less common than the usual, but still significant. Fictions stand a better chance of feeling like reality if they occasionally tip their cap to the unusual.

Lastly, it pays to keep certain aspects of a fiction quite jagged and messy-looking if you want to strike a realist chord – beginning or ending a chapter mid-dialogue, perhaps, or even mid-narrative. Again the reasoning is quite sensible. No moment of our conscious lives does have a precise beginning, let alone a tidy end. Sentences really do come at us from out of the blue. Conversations chop and change as our lives proceed. There is no Once upon a time or Happily ever after in this life. No surprise, stories which eschew such conventions are more likely to ring true.

Fictions come alive by seeming like reality, and reality comes at us in flashes, slices. Reality is products on shelves, scrawled images, broken sentences, all competing for our attention. Believable fictions are those which manage to evoke something of this sensory onslaught. Stories seem real when they come at us like that, because life comes at us like that.

Next thrilling installment in progress.....

Fiction I

2006-01-25T08:46:00.000Z

1. Fiction and Metonyms

While most consumers of fiction are perfectly familiar with the metaphor, far fewer have even heard of the metonym. This is odd considering its importance in creating plausible stories. When it comes to understanding how fictions ‘come alive’ the metonym is the key.

A good way to grasp the metonym is by contrasting it with the metaphor. With a metaphor you try to capture the essence of something by calling it something else, My love is, a red, red rose, for example. Clearly this isn’t meant literally. A rosebush would make an ungrateful lover, even for a rugged Scotsman. It’s only an allusion to qualities shared by both; youth, vitality, beauty, symmetry, silky textures and bright colours, and perhaps a little thorniness too.

With a metonym on the other hand you describe something using an aspect of that very same thing. Calling alcohol the bottle or a car your wheels. Calling Sinatra Blue Eyes and Van Damme the Muscles from Brussels. The nicknames, Brains, Fingers and Four Eyes. For that matter, calling a woman a bit of skirt, or a man a prick.

Of course they’re not mutually exclusive. Calling a man a prick can be a metonym and a metaphor. If you mean he’s sexually predatory, or sexually obsessed it’s a metonym. If that one small part of him seems to have an unnatural hold over the rest, it’s apt to call him by that thing. But if you were just using it to imply that he was stupid, or even resembled one physically, then that would be a metaphor. You’d be suggesting he had the same intelligence, or appearance, as this famously dumb-looking organ.

While metaphors certainly are an important part of fiction, metonyms are central. Fiction is all about describing things by their parts. Has to be. Reality is too complex to describe in full. The only thing fiction writers can possibly do is transcribe aspects, bits and bobs of the complex whole.

Nevertheless, when fictions work they do ‘feel’ real. When they work properly they can make it feel like a whole other world is alive before us. That’s really what people are buying when they buy fiction, a taste of another reality. The worst thing you could say about any novel is that you didn’t believe in any of the characters. With fiction, believable is the bottom line.

Of course some will argue that most of fiction is pure fantasy, with an audience fully aware that it’s all made up, but it’s really not true. If you care in any way about what happens to the characters in a film, you must believe they exist, in some sense, if only for the duration of the show. Of course Princess Lea doesn’t exist, but we can still fear for her life. Of course Bambi never existed, yet grown men cry.

Even something as simple and abstract as Itchy and Scratchy conforms to this. If we didn’t believe they were real in some sense we wouldn’t wince at the violence. You can’t pity something without believing it exists. You can’t feel pain for another creature if you don’t believe it to be sentient, at least for the duration of the show. Somehow, a crudely drawn three-dimensional cat appears to be in agony.

That ‘somehow’ comes down to choice of metonyms. With that particular cartoon, we may believe the cat exists to some degree, but not much. The choice of metonyms, the parts represented, restrict our reaction to squeamishness, rather than full-blown revulsion. If all you use to represent the complexity of a cat’s leg is a thin black stick, with a pink cross-section, then it’s no surprise we don’t vomit when it’s amputated with a chainsaw.

Alternatively, by selecting ever more subtle, more ‘realistic’ metonyms it would be possible to ratchet-up the reality, and so the revulsion. A Bambi-quality version of Itchy and Scratchy would be quite sickening, and a Walking with Dinosaurs-style computer generated version would probably spark-off riots in the Home Counties.

You might think all that’s happening here is increase in detail. A more detailed cat looks more realistic and so is more likely to generate sympathy. In part I’d agree, this is all about realism, or realistic-ness. But I’d argue that it’s choice of metonym, rather than amount of detail, that dictates whether a fiction ‘comes alive’. Choice of detail rather than quantity of detail.

The success of such things as The Blair Witch Project bears this out. Tiny, slithery little metonyms: darkness, heavy breathing, the snap of a twig. You can hardly call these devices detailed, yet they can cast a huge and horrifying reality onto an audience. And it’s not just scary movies. The most heart-wrenching scene in a romance might well consist of three minutes of virtual darkness, with just two voices chatting quietly. Maybe throw in an owl.

Clearly it’s not how much you say, it’s what you say and how you say it. It’s the choice of detail, not the amount of detail that makes fictions ‘feel’ real.

Part Two will follow shortly.....

Unlikely Relativists

2005-12-19T09:48:00.000Z

It’s many years since I last fully engaged in discussion with convicted creationists. A pair of elderly Jehovah’s Witnesses detained me on the doorstep, at least at first. I’d just read The Blind Watchmaker and I was keen to exercise my new powers. So instead of the usual excuses I told them I was a Darwinist and that I didn’t believe in God. Sure enough, the old chestnuts rolled out: How could something as perfect as the human eye have come about incrementally? How could blind chance have given rise to the beauty and fecundity of the natural world? All the arguments that had tripped me in the past, only this time I had the answers.

So it was that one of the callers decided to end the discussion, but the way she did so was exasperating. She said, “Well, you have your way of looking at the world and we have ours”. While this was perfectly correct, it still left the most important question unanswered: What about the truth of the situation? That surely isn’t a matter of opinion, it’s something external to belief. Either God made us or he didn’t. Either the universe is twelve billion years old, or it isn’t. There might be plural ways to perceive reality but only one state of reality.

Compared to our nineteenth-century predecessors, today’s Britons are a sceptical bunch, not least when it comes to accounts that claim to be the absolute truth. This is good in some ways as a defence against despots, and also because some things really only should be judged in relative terms. But on the other hand, in many more cases it really doesn’t apply, and doesn’t deserve to be applied. Sometimes knowledge can approach certainty and only one account should be taken seriously.

Our loss of faith in ‘the truth’ is much a product of our widespread loss of religious faith. Loss of biblical truth, eternal absolute truth that one simply didn’t question, has been a loss of anchor. We bob about on a sea of competing faiths and other earthly ideologies, each, purportedly, as valid as any other. Today, anyone who insists that their particular faith is the one true faith is likely to be called fundamentalist, or just plain bigoted.

Similarly, the parallel growth of secular art and entertainment has encouraged a relativist standpoint. As one earthly being to another, you can argue Beethoven is better than Bach until you’re blue in the face, but you’ll never prove it. When you remove the issue of ‘which artist best serves God’ from the equation only personal taste is left. Best becomes subjective. My best is the one I like the most, and the same goes for you. Nothing else to add.

Finally, such thinking became vogue in late twentieth century western academia. For various reasons the status of ‘the fact’ came to be a bigger issue than facts themselves. A good part of this was again the collapse in religious faith, and public exposure to a diverse range of cultures and beliefs. And certainly the political climate played a part. By the end of the twentieth century, rationalism, as exhibited in ‘rationally planned’ society was looking decidedly unattractive and unworkable. ‘Rationalism’, in this sense, had led to the horrors of Fascism and Stalinism. Now it could be seen as the hand behind the faltering Keynesian consensus. Without a great deal of consideration as to what it might actually entail, a lot of thinkers were excited by the idea of finding better ‘sorts of truth’ in other belief systems.

Philosophical support for all this was found in the field of semiotics. Much was made of the different ways in which different cultures slice up and label the world, supposedly. We heard how the Welsh have a word for a colour which to an English speaker appears to cover both pale blue and pale green, and of course how Eskimos can distinguish 1001 kinds of snow. We extrapolated wildly from that point on: If culture alone could produce such wildly different conscious perspectives who was to say western thought was the ‘right’ one? Were science and rationality just more narratives, no better or worse than shamanism, just different?

Odder still, another key influence was twentieth century physics. Logically enough, the relativity uncovered by Einstein got people thinking about relative perspectives, and seemed to put subjectivity at the heart of the cosmos, but that was just the start. Much more was made of the history of physics, chiefly the so-called paradigm shifts, the movements from one scientific consensus to another. Arguments ran something like: Newton’s universe worked a treat for two centuries. It underpinned the industrial revolution and ushered in the modern world. Nevertheless, it was overthrown in the twentieth century, and replaced by Einstein’s radically different model.

What did that mean for the status of truth? If Einstein actually replaced Newton then in what sense was Newton’s theory ever true? And of course the same goes for Einstein. Is he just another poor Newton in waiting? Will he be replaced one day by a wholly incompatible new physics? Is that all science is, one of a multitude of competing stories about the world? Each internally consistent, but none any closer to reality than any other.

This was emphasised using the witchcraft argument: Not all of human thinking has been as intellectually scrupulous as Newton’s and Einstein’s. Complete nonsense has been passionately believed in. Presumably it seemed rational to it’s believers, or else they wouldn’t have believed it. Clearly witches never really existed. Nevertheless intelligent men and women devised detection tests, and meted out horrors on those unfortunate enough to pass them. Although the witch-finders themselves wouldn’t have used the term, they probably thought that they were acting rationally. Perhaps they sincerely believed what they were doing was the only logical means of avoiding damnation, it’s just that neither damnation nor witches exist.

What does all this say about the status of science? Bluntly, if we’ve believed so much rubbish in the past, what makes us think today’s ‘science’ and ‘rationalism’ will look any better in the future?

The limits of relativism

Although frequently overstated, relativist thinking does have its place. Certainly, it seems an appropriate way for atheists to view religions. If you don’t believe in any god, then all gods possess equal credibility. All religions become earthly, cultural constructs, peculiar to those who follow them. Rather than judging them as right or wrong, you can only judge their effects.

As for the arts, it’s more of a mixed bag. While it’s true that no one can ultimately define rules of taste, there are a mass of other reasons to call some things good and others bad. Even if you can’t prove one piece of music to be more pleasant than another you can argue complexity of composition, tightness of rhythm, tonality. You can judge a piece to be groundbreaking or derivative, polished or just thrown together to make money. These characteristics certainly don’t merit the relativist take. They’re things one can argue firmly, one way or the other.

However it’s the academic usage where the real problems start.

In intellectual circles relativism held appeal for both left and right. The right liked it because it could be used to discredit Marxism, and centrally planned society in general. Relativist arguments were used to re-frame the ‘science’ of historical materialism as just another salvation myth, another grand prophecy of the coming Jerusalem, with as much basis in fact as the previous one.

For the left, on the other hand, the appeal was more philanthropic. Cultural relativism seemed a good counter to the western superiority complex: If all worldviews were just cultural inventions than who’s to say which one is right? How dare the west impose its cultural standards upon others?

The ‘hundred kinds of snow’ idea is a case in point. It seemed to give dignity to the down-trodden Inuit, and other hunter-gatherers. For one thing, it suggests that any average human mind, in any kind of society, crunches the same amount of concepts. Our fabulously complex brains divide-up and label the world to the same degree regardless of how complex those worlds are. If you’re raised in the west there’s lots of things to label, so you can’t afford to look too closely. But if there isn’t much about other than snow, fish and huskies, then your mind will ‘super-divide’ and categorise these few important items.

Problem was, it was a hoax. A quip in a newspaper that spread like wildfire, the number of snow-types rising exponentially with each telling. Like many successful memes it got itself spread for no better reason than people liked the sound of it (I certainly did.)

Still, this is no insult to the minds of Eskimos, or the Yanamamo. As it happens I’ll bet the average western mind does contain a mass more concepts than theirs, if theirs have never encountered radio or TV, books or magazines. No Sunsilk adverts or Nirvana CDs. This is nothing to do with race or intelligence, it’s just culture. If I’d been raised by Eskimos I’m sure I’d have turned out as sharp or blunt as I have in the west; and there, like here, being ‘savvy’ would be just as important determinant of whether I had a good life or not. It’s just that I wouldn’t have so many concepts to play with, or be plagued by. Although I’m glad about many of the memes I’ve accumulated, most of them are dross. My head rings with rubbish as I try to get to sleep. I’ll bet hunter-gatherers don’t have to put up with half that noise. Pity the Inuit?

Babies and bath-water

Aside from such well-meaning errors, relativist thinking has led to some very odd and intellectually regressive ideas. At worst it encourages us to discard the great potentiality, and accumulated discoveries of human thought. The wholesale dilution of ‘truth’ into ‘story’ undermines the human intellect, and it’s quite without justification. Here’s two points I believe relativism has clouded, which I’m yet to hear a worthwhile argument against.

First, just because some aspect of reality is disagreed upon, or is difficult to verify, doesn’t mean it isn’t one way or another. In an important sense, the state of reality is independent of thought.

This is a very everyday principle that we all take for granted, when we’re not philosophising about it. For example, I might claim to have seen an Andean condor circling above Brighton Pavilion. You on the other hand might feel sure it was a seagull. Perhaps a third person swears blind it was a pterodactyl. Well, regardless of our disagreement, one thing is certain. The thing that flew over the building definitely was one or none of the above. Opinion doesn’t come into that. The fact that several theories exist doesn’t effect the fact of what happened. In reality, it either was a seagull or it wasn’t. Even if no one was watching.

Similarly, Elaine Morgan’s fascinating ‘aquatic ape’ theory might just be true. On the other hand, it might be completely groundless. But this uncertainty doesn’t mean that arguments for it and against it are both true, in some relativist sense. History actually went one way or the other. Our recent ancestors either did have a spell in the water or they didn’t. Both stories can’t be right. Perhaps one day we’ll unearth something that’ll seal it either way, but if we don’t, that absence of certainty will have no bearing on the truth. The truth is what occurred.

Secondly, just because all knowledge is ‘just theory’ doesn’t mean all theories are equally valid. Some theories are better than others, they better approximate to external reality. They have better predictive power and fit in more neatly with the rest of our observations. In all likelihood I was wrong about the condor and you were right about the seagull. If it was already established that I was a bit of a fantasist, or I’d only glimpsed the creature peripherally, your account would be further strengthened. There’d be good reason to judge your theory better than mine. Then again, my theory would still be superior to that of the pterodactyl spotter. That’s a complete non-starter.

These are fantastically useful principles, and it’s criminal that they should be obscured, let alone rejected. Laughable really. We couldn’t operate without them, our lives would fall apart.

Why science?

Much of the disservice relativism has done to the reputation of knowledge seems to boil down to one very basic misunderstanding. In a sense, it really is the case that no theory can actually be the truth. At best it can only say something about the truth. No theory can be so accurate that it actually embodies the thing it describes, anymore than the word ‘dog’ can run around and bark. In that sense, at least, it is all just stories, science included.

Nevertheless, some stories bear examination. They’re not just consistent on their own terms, but in the face of whatever you throw at them. Of course we can never be completely sure, but it seems vanishingly unlikely than some scientific theories will ever be overturned, wholesale. The periodic table, thermodynamics, natural selection, their sheer predictive power is enough to accord them the status of fact. Even if greater, over arching, theories should ever be formulated, these existing one’s will continue to work within those frameworks, and remain as invaluable as they are today.

Not so in Salem. However learned the witch-hunters might have felt they were, they were still behaving in a stupid and ignorant manner, by any cultural standard. Far from trying to understand the world in methodical manner, they set out determined not to question. Those who dared were burned. Their tests were deeply tautological, by nature impossible to verify or falsify. The only ‘truth’ they could reference was scripture, and yet more unsinkable superstition. Rational thought certainly wasn’t available to lend support.

This is simply not so with science. True scientific method is all about verification. “Show me” is the motto. In science there’s never a right time to say “well look, it’s in the old book we used for years, so just accept it.” Science constantly sticks out its chin, and invites our best shot. And if you do prove it wrong it has to change. That’s why science isn’t ‘just another theory’. It’s the best explanation, by definition. It would cease to be science if it didn’t amend itself in the face of compelling evidence. There may be corrupt scientists but scientific method is pure honesty.

So, in the light of this, what is going on with physics? Did Newton really refute Einstein? In certain ways, yes. One clear example is the nature of time. Newton assumed time passes at the same rate wherever you are, whatever you do. But in Einstein’s universe such factors as velocity and gravity actually change the rate at which time passes.

While on the one hand this clearly is fundamental, on the other, so what? Once we’ve revised our notion of ‘knowledge as reality’ to “knowledge as most consistent story about reality” then we should expect contradictions to arise, as the body of knowledge swells. In the case of Newton you can hardly blame him for thinking time was the same everywhere. He didn’t have sensitive enough equipment to gauge the changes. Things have to travel at preposterous rates, or suffer huge gravitational attraction for anomalies to show up. Such machinery had to wait two centuries, until Newton’s own theories made them possible.

Although there are conditions under which Newton’s physics breaks down, in the world of medium sized objects and low speed, Newton is as sound as ever. If you want to build or fly a plane it’s all you need. Only if you want navigate a spacecraft, or chart the motion of a sub-atomic particle need you leave Newton’s world. In all but the most bizarre, human-created situations, Newton’s physics is the truth. It will continue to explain, and we will never see it contradicted. Perhaps that’s as good a truth as we can hope for.

Abusing the relative

Regardless, there is one sense in which science seems highly regrettable. The products of science are breaking the world, and taking us with it. Science and rationalism have given us the means of our complete undoing, be it greenhouse or the bomb. It’s a very depressing thought, one that makes me jealous of previous generations. But rejecting rationalism won’t make the bomb go away, and it’ll ensure the oil continues to be frittered. The only way to tackle this madness is using rationalism. As always, it pays to be as well equipped as your adversary.

Aside from such legitimate concerns, I fear there are some less worthy reasons people choose to adopt the relative. It’s certainly a tempting cop-out for slackers. Savants aside, most of us find science at best weighty, at worst intimidating beyond approach. Relativist arguments can be a comfort to those who really would prefer to not have to learn science at all. They can blow a raspberry at their old foe, call it witchcraft.

Problem is, it’s an attitude that opens doors to lots of nonsense, some cynical, some downright dangerous. The world is rife with charlatans, witting and unwitting, and where there’s ignorance there’s brass. Strange as it sounds, there’s a colossal amount of money being made from medicine with nothing in it at all. The strongest possible dose of homeopathic medicine is pure water, yet fortunes are made. And of course that’s not the only cost. Some of the more ardent new-agers actually worsen their health by rejecting proven medicines.

It’s point two again, choosing the best theory. Certainly, it’s true that some rationally produced medicines don’t do the job, and sometimes actually make things worse. But that fact doesn’t render all medicines equal, the tested and the untested. There’s still a huge body of excellent, life enhancing, preventatives and cures. Occasional errors don’t cancel out these gains.

Of course this is by no means an endorsement of the pharmaceutical industry! I’m only saying that the methodology they use in the lab, double blind testing, huge samples, are far more likely to tell you something about how you tick than someone who seems indifferent, let alone hostile, to rationality. Highly suspect.

It’s a sorry state of affairs, with consequences laid bare in a book I just read on the Alexander Technique. Clearly the author knew his audience. He felt obliged to spend the first few pages apologising for the fact that much of what followed was arrived at rationally. Sad to say, it seems ‘rationality’ triggers alarm bells in your average ‘holistic’ consumer.

Political abuse

Finally, the example that prompted all this in the first place. As I write, Tony Blair just lost his first vote in parliament, over “anti-terror” legislation. In the interview that followed Jon Snow asked if this finally proved that the proposed policy was mistaken, given such a resounding rejection by his own comrades. Not at all, he insisted. It is possible for the truth to be known to only one person.

Perfectly true, truth isn’t democratic. Reality is independent of thought. It is perfectly possible for only one person to know the truth about something, while sixty million others believe a falsehood. Clearly he agrees with the first of the above two points.

But come point two, which is the best theory, further investigation is required. Like good scientists we have to judge likelihoods. Principally, is it more likely that several hundred MP’s are wrong, or that the PM is lying? Key questions need to be asked: Does he have a reputation for lying? Has he ever lied about matters of life and death before? Does he surround himself with professional liars and media moguls who have made their fortunes from lying about things? In the light of that, which is the best theory?

You can do the same with the ‘war on terror’ in general. Of course it’s logically possible that it is a moral crusade, rather than an oil grab, but what’s the evidence? What’s the leanest and most likely theory?

Again there’s lots of key questions: Is there any history of western interference in the middle-east? Is there any connection between the self-proclaimed crusaders, and the oil and arms industries? Have you ever met another person, face to face, who could argue cogently that the war on terror wasn’t principally about western energy needs, or has it always been politicians and media pundits? If you were to write to your Labour MP and ask about the role of oil in all this, would you get a meaningful reply, or a polite refusal to engage? Is it really likely that Richard Dawkins, Jonathan Miller and Noam Chomsky simply don’t have the mental capacity to grasp something obvious to David Aaronovich and Richard Littlejohn? You have to ask.

It’s in the midst of such difficulties relativism can be the only refuge. Martin Kettle employed it in his Guardian column, soon after the London bombings. His piece was entitled, quite unambiguously, “Not a war criminal but the world’s leading statesman”. However when it comes to justifying this claim, things become more dilute. The question of what Mr Blair actually is, is dropped. All that matters now is how he appears, to different observers:

“I accept that when some people see Blair…..they see a war criminal or a congenital liar. But those who respond that way should accept that many more people around the planet see someone else: the leading and most articulate statesman in the developed world.”

You can see his difficulty here. If the ultimate war crime is to initiate a war of aggression then clearly Mr Blair is a war criminal. So there’s no way the faithful Mr Kettle is going to broach that one. Instead he makes a distraction. An extra quality called ‘statesmanship’ is conjured-up, one with the extraordinary ability to counter-balance, or actually cancel-out war criminality. Watch the birdee!

What you have in the case of Martin Kettle, and my doorstep Jehovah, is a forced relativism. It’s not a position either party wants to inhabit, but stark reality compels them. The picture of the world they wish to promote is clearly false. There’s a far more plausible explanation to hand. The PM’s legendary integrity is as credible as biblical literalism. Like the fossil record, the public record screams it out. Sometimes knowledge can approach certainty, and only one account should be taken seriously.

An Open Letter to Roger Alton

2005-09-23T09:14:00.000+01:00

Dear Roger Alton,

I saw the following posted on the Medialens messageboard:

“Dear [Name withheld]
I assume you have this stuff from medialens. It does seem clear, and forgive me if wrong, that you actually don't read our paper. Our coverage of the political, economic and environmental issues around climate change has been immense, balanced, and thorough. It is of course none of my business, but I don't think you should send out emails like this just because Medialens tells you to.
Best wishes
Roger”

Well I can’t speak for “Name withheld”, but I can for myself.

Firstly, no, I don’t read the paper in the traditional sense. I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m just not interested in products or fashion or celebrities or film reviews. I’m interested in news and comment, and that’s all available online, your paper included. And of course unlike with the hardcopy there’s loads of other interactive civvies out there picking through it all, and tipping each other off. All without any features on Toyotas, Kate Moss or Big Brother. In my position, why on earth would I want to buy or read the paper itself?

Secondly, you describe your coverage of climate change as immense and balanced, but surely that leaves the most important question unanswered: What’s the net effect of your output? Does the overall influence of The Observer’s environmental warnings actually outweigh the effects of its promotion of 4x4’s and air travel? After reading a copy, is one more likely or less likely to buy a new car? More likely to join Greenpeace or more likely to join the mile high club? Surely it must be the adverts that win the day. No corporation would pay you good money to come off worse in the public mind. What sane business would line the pockets of company that was striving to rein-in their output?

There once was a billboard advert in a Viz cartoon which read, “SMOKE TABS”. Beneath, in smaller case it read, “H.M Government warning: Don’t smoke tabs”. The Observer, Independent, and Guardian environmental stance seems much the same: A huge banner headline reading, “INCREASE CONSUMPTION!” over a much smaller “Over-consumption is killing us”

For that’s what it’s come to. The Siberian permafrost is melting. Human survival depends upon us sharply decreasing our use of fossil fuels. We can’t afford any more cars, we can’t even afford the ones we’ve got. The last thing any concerned party should do is help to promote them. And here’s the Orwell, I only know this because I read it in the bleeding Observer and Independent and Guardian!

You can see why it looks like madness to so many of us. It really doesn’t matter how good your coverage of climate change is when at the same time you’re obliged to ensure it doesn’t outweigh the effect of adverts for the very products causing the crisis. I know it’s not intentional, but it’s still a cruel trick. Getting affluent liberals to frown at melting icecaps on one page, then drool over the causes of melting icecaps on the next. Even for those who don’t buy the products the effect is fogging. The mere existence of such adverts waters down the urgency of the situation, normalises the madness. I mean, how real can the dangers of climate change actually be when the ‘liberal’ press still push cars and air travel? As with cigarettes, as long as such things are given the legitimacy of advertising it’s hard to take the threat seriously.

If the net effect of reading The Observer is to make one less sensitive to environmental problems then this sort of coverage is worse than none at all. If climate change articles are just another way to get people to fly then it would be better not to bother. In a nutshell, lose the cars or stop pretending to care.

Finally, I don’t send letters to journalists because Medialens tell me to. I do it when they point out contradictions that trouble me. Huge glaring holes in the media worldview, ones that help maintain this madness. Not that it’s my business, and forgive me if I’m wrong, but do you ever actually read Medialens alerts? They’re enough to make you scream. They enough to drive some members of the general public to actually take some journalists to task. Surely that’s better than a passive audience? News output is chronically skewed by corporate interests, and corporate lobbying. Isn’t it good for democracy that everyday folk can now question journalists? You have the right to challenge them, why shouldn’t we?

All the best,

Martin.

An Open Letter To Howard Jacobson

2005-09-05T11:13:00.000+01:00

I’m writing regarding your ‘red top heart’ article in the Independent. There’s a great deal I take issue with, but I’ll stick to one question: Of all the bombings that have occurred since 911 why did this particular one anger you so profoundly?

As I write I hear that six-hundred and forty petrified Iraqi civilians were crushed to death this morning alone. Ten times the amount lost in London. What does that do to your heart complaint? There were no suicide bombs in Iraq before we invaded. Now there’s one a day. Your own Prime Minister lied to you to bring this situation about. Shall I call A&E?

You were disgusted because a “well-educated Muslim family speaking on the radio from Pakistan” weren’t especially appalled at the London bombings. But how could any informed person, not directly affected by the London bombings, feel any different? If you reside in Pakistan, and you know what was done to Falluja, how could you possibly be mortified by the London bombs?

You despair of British Muslims who object to increased stop and search: “So who else should they be searching, you morons” and even suggest that “when bearded novelists of a certain age begin planting bombs all over London” you will “willingly, gleefully, gratefully submit to being searched every time you leave the house”

I doubt it. I bet you’d scream blue murder, and quite right too. But more importantly, why choose this bizarre scenario? If you want to make a fitting parallel with Muslim indignation why leapfrog over the obvious: Perle, Rumsfeld, and Sharon are global terrorists. They’re also Jewish, and so are you. Would you like to be put in the box with them? Shall I judge you by their perverse standards, until you can prove otherwise? Can you imagine the outcry if perfectly innocent British Jews were habitually hassled in connection with international war crimes? “What the hell’s that got to do with us!?”

And of course the answer is nothing. Muslim Joe and Jewish Joanna have no more to do with this, no more say in this than you or me. Most of London is dark-skinned and wearing a day-pack. Should we all be searched? And look who’s in charge of racial profiling. People who execute a South American, because they think he’s an Arab, on account of his ‘Mongolian eyes’. Think yourself lucky it’s not bearded novelists they’re after. Shaving wouldn’t save you.

I’ve tried to think of reasons why these other killings don’t affect your heart condition so badly but I can’t find any nice ones. It might just be self-installed Little England blinkers. You watch cricket and talk literature while our hell is meted out on other peoples, then fly screaming from your armchair as soon as the inevitable, and widely predicted, blow-back occurs.

However my suspicions are rather more grim. I suspect that you have long decided who it is that causes the problems in this world; who are life’s civilising influence and who are its barbarians. Put me straight if I’m wrong, but I suspect a good deal of your anger comes from not being able to articulate these beliefs. Like many others, I think you’d like to shout it from the rafters:

“It’s the Arabs! It’s the bloody Arabs!!! Why are we even talking about anything else!?!”

But that would endanger your column at The Independent. But more importantly, it really doesn’t scan, and it certainly won’t stop the slaughter. That’s the reason so many of us refuse to end the condemnation at the London bombers. Because we want this to madness to stop, all of it. Every disaster the stop the war movement predicted concerning this ridiculous ‘war on terror’ has come true, right down to the bombings coming home. We were warned, but our leaders pushed ahead.

Like yourself, I try not to get angry. It’s never constructive. But when I do lapse at least it’s because of contradictions outside my head. My Prime Minister is war criminal, but I have to watch the media present him as a statesman. We went to war because of vacuous lies about WMD, yet when none were found the objectives were simply changed, and the media merrily trotted out the new lies. I have to turn the TV off sometimes too.

On the other hand, one way or another, you have to maintain these contradictions within your own head. The concept of civilised England, with it’s “ancient wisdom” is trying to live alongside the reality of a state still addicted to the material benefits of treating other peoples as serfs. Horror and indignation at the slaughter of innocent Britons has to share headspace with indifference to our own far greater slaughter abroad. No wonder you go ballistic when reality strikes.

I wouldn’t want all that rattling away in my head. For the sake of your heart, and a lot besides, you could do with sorting these issues out.

Best wishes,

MJ

Click on link below for original article

How does propaganda work in a free society? Here’s how!

2005-08-22T08:54:00.000+01:00

A couple of weeks back, trapped in someone else’s car, I was forced to endure the Jeremy Vine show on BBC Radio Two. Nauseating as it was, this prolonged period of exposure was illuminating. An excellent illustration of how propaganda works in a free society.

The programme featured an interview between Vine and a Muslim spokesman (of some hue, it wasn’t clear at first) regarding the London bombings. For the first half I couldn’t fault the stranger’s arguments. Whatever obstacles ‘impartial’ Jeremy put in his way he just kept blurting out simple important truths: “Why must I apologise?” “This is because of British involvement in Iraq” “Blair is the real terrorist”, etc. “Do you condemn the London bombings?” pressed a flailing Vine, over and over. “Do YOU condemn the invasion of Iraq and sanctions that have left a million dead ?” the interviewee fired back, quite rightly. Naturally Jeremy refused to answer.

For a while it sounded like a refreshing splash of dissent, aired mainstream. So it was deeply disappointing when Vine eventually did succeed in persuading this man to describe the actual basis of his beliefs. Clearly he did condone the London bombings. Clearly he did hope that the whole world would be converted to Islam. Clearly, he was a full-blown religious bigot, committed to violent retribution.

Now it was clear why this particular Muslim had been invited onto the show. It wasn’t to provide a platform for those who oppose the ‘war on terror’. It wasn’t to allow a public figure to make the connection between the London bombings and the invasion of Iraq. It was precisely to discredit such viewpoints, chuck them in the loony bin with all the rest. That’s why the media loves to quote Islamic fundamentalist cranks. Not only do they help to make Islam seem sinister and inherently malevolent, they also help to discredit anti-war thinking in general. They help to conflate important truths about the world (Blair IS a liar and a terrorist) with superstition and bigotry. Both truth and fiction can be combined to discredit each other.

With the playing field thoroughly skewed it was now safe to bring on ‘a moderate Muslim’ from the MCB. And my, how moderate he was. With that as an introduction who wouldn’t be? The MCB could be a important political force at this time. Peaceable people, appalled at the West’s treatment of those in other countries. This could have been a valuable opportunity for him to tell us about their suffering, and the suffering of friends and relatives abroad. Instead he had to waste the first half of the interview bowing and scraping to distance himself from the previous speaker. By the time he did get to: “But, well you know, the west’s role in the world….” Jeremy was still able to close him down, effortlessly: “So you’re saying that these bombings are justified by our foreign policy? We had it coming to us?”, to which the poor man flung himself to the floor again, and begged for another whipping. Fat chance of any issues being discussed.

I wrote to Jeremy to ask him why he wouldn’t condemn the killing of a million Iraqis but he is yet to respond. Clearly those innocent victims exist in a moral grey area, unlike our own stark variety. If he ever does get back my next question would be: Would you have invited a right-wing religious crank to comment on Bush’s policy in Iraq?

In one sense I’m sure his answer would be yes. I’m sure he’d be delighted if Tony himself offered to guest. But in the sense I mean it there’s really no chance. And it’s not because they’re not out there. There are scores of Christian screwballs in the mid-west who would be delighted to inform us of how the “war on terror” is an essential stage in humanity’s progression toward Armageddon (Bring it on!), but they aren’t consulted when it comes to discussing US policy in Iraq. Only with Islam.

You can find Zionist cranks who condone running tanks over unarmed protesters. You can find Christian cranks who advocate castrating homosexuals, and atheist cranks who’d happily send all God believers to the Gulag (Christ knows, I’m one of them!). But none of these are consulted when it comes to assessing Jewish, Christian or Godless ethics. Only when it comes to Islam are the cranks rolled out. Only Islam gets to be represented by its least representative.

There are a multitude of bright British people, Muslim or otherwise, who could argue a watertight case for Blair the terrorist, without adding any of the cranky baggage. But Jeremy wouldn’t dream of inviting them on. “Did Tony Blair lie to take us to war?” would be a fascinating subject for discussion, but there’s no chance of that either; well, not unless the person arguing the case was also known to hold other abhorrent views, or came oven-ready-smeared, like poor George Galloway.

The London bombings constitute the gravest threat to that which Tony Blair holds most dear. From the moment they went off he has campaigned frenetically to keep the spotlight off himself, and on Islam. Truth is, the only remaining barrier between Blair and the flak he so richly deserves are British Muslims. They are his last shield. If he didn’t have them to cower behind he would be fully naked, exposed.

One might wonder why our media would be so keen to bail out this scoundrel, especially when it endangers the public at large. In the case of the BBC, direct government pressure is certainly a crucial factor, as is corporate pressure in the private media. Another sad reason, surely, is that many media big-wigs share his world view. They cherish the material benefits of global inequality. They see the suffering of foreigners as a price worth paying for material abundance at home. They don’t want to be the ones who slow-up the gravy train.

And you can’t rule out embarrassment. Much of our media establishment jollied along the ‘war on terror’. Most big name journalists are already suffering excruciating cognitive dissonance. Always knowing that this was all about oil, but always having avoid to the subject. Always knowing how savage and ignorant and hypocritical and psychotic the neo-cons clearly are, but having to paint them as the world’s only hope. The last thing these people need is glaring proof that they’ve been peddling lies, lies that have now led to deaths at home.

Quite simply, the media is keeping the ‘war on terror’ in place (I can’t think of a single person I’ve met face to face who bothered trying to defend it. Can you?) It’s really something only people in government and media take seriously, or pretend to take seriously. The cost of this complicity is vast, and terrible. Out of a mixture of vanity, greed, shame and cowardice the British corporate media is guaranteeing the next UK bombing, the next war crime, the next racial attack.

Proof of the latter came with the post interview phone-in. It was little better than hate week. What a revelation! Most callers thought that any man who refused to condemn the London bombings must be a bad man. Swathes of indignation and barely concealed racist bile. Little England tripe about ‘our values’ and ‘these people’. No analysis, just indignation and misunderstanding. No causes, just a battle between good and evil. Clearly the net effect of the programme was an increase in ignorance and fear. Just what Tony wants. Job done.

Only acting on orders

2005-08-05T09:04:00.000+01:00

Sir Ian Blair shares more than the Prime Minister’s surname, judging by his comments in The Times last week. Key sound-bite:

“It is not the police, it is not the intelligence services, that will defeat terrorism. It is communities that will defeat terrorism.”

Come again? Communities? Not cynical politicians? Not governments who wage illegal wars in spite of massive public opposition, after being warned by their own intelligence services that domestic terrorism would be the likely result? How did the chief of Scotland Yard come to overlook these clues? Seems pretty bum detective work. Sherlock Holmes would simply point to Tony Blair and suggest The Hague, but somehow Sir Ian managed to stumble upon a less obvious conclusion.

So who are these ‘communities’ that he believes to be capable, or rather culpable? Does he mean us? Well yes, but only some of us. For ‘communities’ read ‘Muslim communities’. He’s urging innocent British Muslim’s to question themselves, and blame each other. He’s encouraging non-Muslim Britons to focus their anger on Islam. After all Britain has done to the world since 911 the head of the Met chooses to point his finger at innocent members of his own citizenry. It’s their fault, not the powerbrokers. It’s up to them to sort this out.

Now is a good time to clarify the structural political inclinations of the police. If Sir Ian truly cared about protecting the public, if that really was his central concern, he would have to declare that Tony Blair bore great responsibility for what has happened. Blair was warned, he lied, thousands died, some in London. He should stand trial. But of course it would be career suicide if he did:

“Sir Ian must stick to his job and concentrate on catching the perpetrators. He must not allow politics to colour his judgement”

As if! As with all important public posts, Sir Ian’s job description was strictly circumscribed. The state simply cannot afford to employ senior policemen who are inclined to criticise British foreign policy, regardless of its effect on the home front. The bizarre reality is, before anything else, to be a senior policemen means accepting that you will have to parrot state policy even when it endangers the citizenry you are supposedly employed to protect. Whatever the UK does abroad, however we make our living, the job of senior policemen is to ignore it and just mop up the consequences. The first priority is to protect the state from the people, not the other way round.

Unfortunately for Sir Ian, the British government has given him a pretty ludicrous script to defend. As always, Tony Blair’s central concern has been to save his own neck. Even at this late stage a gentleman might concede defeat, take it on the jaw. Instead he swings the spotlight onto the perfectly innocent. People who actively opposed his imperialist adventure. People who just happen to look like the bombers, or happen to look Brazilian: “Blame them, not me!”

The unsurprising consequence is a massive increase in violence against innocent British Muslims. The rage and indignation generated by the bombings is hurled at those who had nothing to do with it. Those who created this situation walk free, unhurt, unhindered. Free to plan more raids abroad. And as for national security? Going along with Mr Blair’s fairy story means no end to UK terror campaigns. We just sit and wait for the next bomb. Wasting millions policing tube stations won’t make this problem go away. As long as key public figures won’t face up to the government’s culpability, as long as they are prepared to parrot state propaganda, we citizens will remain at risk.

Good reasons not to be terrorised by the London bombings

2005-07-18T09:16:00.000+01:00

Rather than the bulldog spirit, or the memory of a blitzkrieg no Londoner under seventy can possibly remember, there are some legitimate and constructive reasons not to be terrorised by the London bombings, at least for the great mass of us lucky enough to have not been directly involved.

The first is only possible for those who opposed the war, and stayed in touch with it’s consequences the whole time. If you’ve been paying attention to what’s been going on since 911, and you weren’t directly effected by the London bombs, then there is a definite limit to how shocked this event could make you. Incidents of this kind will have been plugging away at your conscience every day, and this looks much like any other day. In fact you could say that the degree of grief one can feel as a non-victim is inversely proportional to the amount of attention you’ve paid to the years of savagery that led us here.

It’s difficult for this not come out as indignation, particularly when confronted by other people not directly effected, but who are, nevertheless, genuinely shocked to the core. It’s difficult to hold back. You might end up with a smack in the mouth. What were you doing while Falluja was being razed? Did you grieve this much for the Iraqi wedding party, or were you busy watching Big Brother? No wonder some uninjured Britons are traumatised. For them this really is a bolt from the blue.

It’s one advantage of keeping yourself inoculated with the horrors of the world, I suppose. The next time someone asks you why you read things and watch things that clearly upset you so much, well this is one sound answer. It doesn’t hurt so much or shock so much when the pain and suffering draws closer. You can remain calm and try to discuss how it happened, and how it might be prevented in the future. You have better immunity to government propaganda, you're better prepared to pick your way through their lies. It’s the person who ignores the suffering in faraway places that is mortified by its arrival on these shores. In the long run, it’s them that really get upset.

All said, it is still difficult for even the most sincerely anti-racist, universally compassionate Briton not to feel more shocked by these killing than those abroad. But not for any noble reason. It’s just that we’re not used to concentrated coverage of the consequences of the ‘War on Terror’. The violence our side dishes out isn’t fit for discussion. Iraq’s own ceaseless suicide bombings have become just a detail, low down the running order on the evening news. Just like Vietnam and Ireland before, they’re just a faint repetitious noise in the background. A body count, a concerned expression, and on to the Beckhams.

A good measure of the media’s sincerity is it’s reporting of other atrocities subsequent to July the seventh. Clearly their newly discovered compassion ran out quickly, or was swallowed in one go by the London attack. Every day since has seen comparable horrors in Iraq itself. Will The Independent post a billboard of photographs of the victims faces on its front page? Will each photo be accompanied by eulogies about these peoples lives, their hopes and expectations? Will this mother have the chance to speak of her son’s plans to go to college, or marry in the spring?

The second good reason not to be terrorised is purely statistical, and available to every rational citizen. Unless this is the beginning of a sky-high escalation of attacks (and remember, it wasn’t after 911) you still have far more to fear crossing the road or driving, and the level of potential grief is comparable.

I’ll have to tread very carefully through this minefield. To be clear, I am NOT suggesting that there is moral equivalence between the criminal negligence of reckless drivers, awful as it is, and the psychopathic behaviour of suicide bombers. What I am saying is that from the victim’s perspective there isn’t much difference. To have a loved one torn to pieces in either way creates similar trauma. If you don’t believe me try telling a father who has lost a child in a road accident that his grief is less than if it had been in a terrorist attack. I only ask this rhetorically. I really wouldn’t recommend it.

So if the level of pain and misery induced by each kind of loss is comparable, you can then factor-in likelihood. And of course incidents of road death and injury blow terrorism out of the water, in this country at least. In the UK there are around 3,500 road deaths a year, attended by around 300,000 injuries. Nine deaths a day. Around one London bombing every six days. But of course that’s each and every six day period of the year.

Day in, day out, the infernal combustion engine swats innocent humans like flies. If we should feel frightened by bombs in the UK we should be in perpetual hysterics about road injury. If we feel worried sitting on the tube we should be soiling ourselves going down the motorway. But we don’t. Rightly or wrongly we are all but indifferent to this vastly greater danger, until it actually picks one of us off.

I stress again, I’m not talking morality here, just about likelihood of injury and legitimate states of fear. For this is all about using fear to control people. The power of nightmares. Make no bones about it, there are two groups of terrorists vying to capitalise on this vile deed. The people who organised the bombing, for sure. But equally the state terrorists who lied to us to take us to war, even after being advised in advance that this would be the likely consequence. Tony Blair, Jack Straw and George Bush are well aware what is at stake at this time. The finger of treachery points directly to them.

Our subservient media is doing a fine job helping with the smokescreen. It seems astonishing that we are yet to hear from any victim who opposed the war, and is furious at Tony Blair. I can’t bear to listen to the radio at the moment, but when I catch it the permissible agenda seems to be:

1. This is nothing to do with Iraq.
2. This is a good reason to increase state power, ID cards etc.
3. What’s wrong with Islam?
4. We must work to heal our communities.

Stray from this vacuous agenda and you support the bombers. Any closer analysis is necessarily a justification for what they did. Gavin Esler can muster great offence when George Galloway speaks the truth ‘too soon’ after the event (is it ever to soon to speak the truth?) but Tony Blair, who brought about this tragedy, is given a platform to spin more lies on the very day of the bombing: This is nothing to do with Iraq. Evil ideology. They hate our freedoms.

Quite pathetic. No human would do this for religion alone. Whatever other crankiness the bombers believed an essential part of their ‘brainwashing’ was the truth. Learning what the West was doing to other Muslims, things you won’t see on the BBC. This was an act of intense sickening violence, prompted by intense sickening violence. We should think long and hard about the motives of anyone who tries to tell us different.

George Bush’s success has always been terror, death his lease of life. After a rough couple of months he is now walking proud again, chest puffed out. Terrorism is his oxygen, his soul, his mandate, his gift to the world. We went along with it and now it’s come to back to visit us, and he and Tony Blair hope to make good of it. These people really do hate our freedoms. They hate us questioning their actions. They'd rather we were suspicious of each other. They want us frightened in our beds.

This can’t go on forever. The ‘War on Terror’ must be derailed, sooner rather than later. We must refuse to be terrorised and get thinking. Making innocent British Muslims feel like they’ve done something wrong won’t help. The best way to ‘heal our communities’ is to get out of Iraq and impeach Tony Blair. Perhaps the victims’ families are our best hope. How many of them were on the February 2003 march? How many Rose Gentle’s and Reg Keys’ are stirring from their grief and preparing to confront Mr Blair? We must give them all the support we can.

The End of Tony Blair

2005-07-08T09:53:00.000+01:00

He lied to take us to war. He was advised that terror at home would be the likely consequence but he just pushed his lies harder. Clearly it wasn't us he was worried about. It was politics, oil and power.

Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been slaughtered and now dozens of British corpses have been thrown on the pile. True, Blair did not plant these bombs, but it's equally certain that without his lies and meglomania this would not have happened.

When the dust and blood settles he must be brought to book. As always, he will try to turn his self-made disaster into a personal asset. Already people are talking defensively, about this making ID cards easier to push through.

There will be many voices in the media trying to distract us and drown out the obvious conclusion. This must be countered. The message is simple. British involvement in the "War on Terror" stops here.

Blair out! Troops out!

A good seven years to bury bad news

2005-07-07T09:23:00.000+01:00

Two posts back I suggested that people often like to pretend they like something for one reason, when it fact it’s for another. London’s successful Olympic bid seems set to break records for this kind of evasion. I’ve already heard the defining one, the shield that will be raised time and again: The Olympics is a glorious exciting sporting event, adored by those who participate and those who watch.

There, said it. And as it happens I quite agree. It is all those things, and a great many Britons will be chuffed for no more cynical reason than that. But aside from that there are a mass of other issues of good and bad thrown up by this selection, quite unrelated to the subject of sport.

For Tony Blair and David Beckham it’s good in terms of personal PR. Both narcissus and war criminal are attracted by the good it does their public image to be associated with this victory (though of course they’ll tell us it’s all about the glory of sport.)

Indeed for Blair this is a godsend in a many ways. A great patriotic distraction from a the quagmire of Iraq, and the recent, unequivocal proof of his deceit. Certainly, he’ll love the footage of healthy multi-ethnic Britain competing as one big happy family. He’ll appreciate the way it wrong-foots his critics, and distorts the critical abilities of the public at large: How bad can Britain’s role be in the world when we all get on so well here? Fingers crossed, British people will feel that bit better about themselves, at a time when his actions might have left them feeling angry, ashamed and politicised.

McDonalds will be happy, McAlpine will be happy, Coca-Cola will be cock-a-hoop. A mass of multinationals will be delighted. But it won’t be about the high jump or the women’s 400 metres.

The controllers of BBC news will certainly be chuffed. Makes their lives a lot easier. It’s must have been hard to keep a lid on Falluja and the Downing Street memos these past few months. Without poor Geldof kissing hands with the war criminals in question, and comforting myths about future G8 benevolence, there might have been space for some news. But now the opportunities are endless. Seven years of meaningless success and failure to draw upon. The only excuse needed? It’s all just about the glory of sport.

Mind trumps muscle

2005-07-04T11:24:00.000+01:00

It’s commonly understood that might is right. No matter how clever you are someone physically stronger will call the shots. The final say goes to muscles and weapons, not minds.

Although there is some truth in this, it’s actually a very distorted picture of how things generally work. It really only applies in isolation. It’s perfectly true that if a big person wants to overpower a smaller person they can. A suitably sized playground bully or robber or bouncer or soldier or policeman will prevail. At that exact instant might is right. But if you pan out a bit it doesn’t hold. In the case of the last three potential assailants they are, to coin a phrase, only acting on orders. Those orders usually come from people who never get their hands dirty, let alone bloody. The source of their violence is a command or a law, the product of a mind.

Of course such servants may actually stray from their orders and start acting violently above and beyond the call of duty. But in that case they themselves would be subject to discipline, much like the thief and the playground bully. Laws, more products of thought, would be invoked to subdue them. And if they continued to disobey, other public servants would be employed to physically coerce them. In this sense at least, the pen is mightier than the sword. It commands the sword.

Much of the attraction of democratic society is its ability to level this particular playing field. A healthy meritocratic society has to be one where minds can discuss things and compete with each other fairly, economically and intellectually, without the threat of superior physical strength. Even the most hardened conservative would agree. The state exists primarily so we can all do business and blossom, to the best of our abilities. It’s there to stop bullies and thieves stealing our honest gains. (Back in the real world of course…)

In fact, even at the level of the individual a mind never takes a lead from its own fists. Even here it’s the mind doing the violence, even if it is using its body to carry it out. You can’t blame muscles for the signals they’re sent. They can’t control the mind, the mind has complete control over them. Contrary to common belief, the real bottom line is, mind trumps muscle.

Different Goods

2005-06-28T08:15:00.000+01:00

Different Goods

There are several quite distinct types of good and bad. There’s good in terms of utility, well suited or well made, then good as in enjoyable or beautiful, the aesthetic kind of good. And of course there’s the moral meaning of good, good and bad behaviour, right and wrong, the ethical good. Of course they’re not mutually exclusive. You could judge, say, the writing of Dickens to be good on all three counts. You might find it beautiful, well made and moral. And there’s even some potential for cross-over. You might see beauty in its morality, or beauty in the way it has been crafted. Nevertheless, such judgement must be rooted in something. Things can’t just be good per se. They must be good in one or more senses of good.

For a variety of reasons humans often like to muddle up these different ‘goods’. We like to tell ourselves we like something for one reason when in fact it’s for another. Some teachers praise the skills or virtues of certain students when in fact they just have a crush on them. Some drinkers refer to some of their drinks as ‘medicinal’ suggesting both moral and practical good, when in fact it’s just good old aesthetic good being pursued, as usual. Some pundits tell us that they support Bush’s ‘War on terror’ because it is a virtuous crusade, when in fact they are just worried that the current system of inequality is under threat. The protection of material luxury, aesthetic good, masquerading as saving the world, virtuous good.

There’s certainly money to be made through this kind of misunderstanding. When I first heard Samantha Fox’s Touch me I told one of my Romford mates how awful it was. “What? So you wouldn’t then?” he replied. It’s a great trick. What are you supposed to say? It’s a completely different subject. But then he hadn’t meant to be facetious. It was the record company’s express intention to blur the two. Never mind the noise, look at the chest.

Stranger still, some people like to paint their favourite forms of entertainment as virtuous. They might tell themselves that travelling in Asia, or smoking dope, or listening to The Clash are active political behaviours, rather than simple pleasures. Usually it’s quite transparent. When people say that a football match was good it’s clear they can only mean good in an entertaining sense, not good in a moral sense. Exasperating as some fanatics might find it, it is only a game. For all the overblown oratory it remains at best entertaining, never righteous. The England world cup win in ‘66 was no moral victory. Regardless of how important this event remains to many Englanders, it really was just some blokes kicking a ball around for a couple of hours.

However, some forms of entertainment do garner astonishing success in managing to pass themselves off as virtuous. Novels and dramas are considered by many to be highly cerebral, highly self-bettering. Radio Four and a multitude of film clubs and book circles push this line, and I used to too. I used to think watching Boy’s from the Black Stuff was a political act, rather than a passive pleasure. I used to tell my self that Scum was an important social document when, like the rest of my peers, I was just titillated by the brutality.

Whatever the moral worth of Brecht or Pinter, the fact remains that most of the material the wittering classes witter about is either morally worthless or downright degenerate. All soap operas and the vast majority of films and novels are pure entertainments, made by people who care not one jot as to the moral impact of their work. It’s just bums on seats. But to listen to the critics you wouldn’t know it. Ms Greer and Mr Parsons seem to see a profound importance in their outpourings, as they deftly probe the minds and lives of non-existent people, all churned out by other great sages to keep their own pots boiling.

Just the same, being a snob, I do think that Radio Three listeners are engaging in a culturally more worthwhile pursuit than those who listen to Radio One, daytime at any rate. But at the end of the day we’re all only in it for the aesthetics. Like football, music’s essentially about pleasure. It’s always a stretch to call it virtuous. We listen because it pleases us, not because it helps others.

Once we clear-up these differences and admit to our real motives an important question arises: What priority should we place on each of these kind of good? Shouldn’t aesthetic good always take second place to ethical good? A morally scrupulous type might say so. They might argue that as long as there is a single hungry child in the world we should forgo all other material pleasures. No beer until everyone has water. No filet mignon until everyone has a bowl of rice. It’s an horrific thought, at least to hedonists, not least because it sounds like the only decent thing to do. Then, thankfully, the other arguments roll in.

For one, practicality. A life without some luxury looks boring, so few people would actually participate. You could even read moral worth into this. Without some pleasure we lose our humanity, become automata. In consequence we may become even less likely to want to assist others. I once heard Terence Conran (I think) use an argument of this kind to defend arts funding. Yes, if we sold all our national treasures then perhaps we could eliminate all NHS waiting lists. But what’s the point in being healthy when there’s no art to enjoy?

But of course that’s an extreme example. At the moment the scales are tipped firmly, and dangerously, in favour of aesthetics. We in the west seem intent on pleasuring ourselves to death. Through a heinous mix of advertising and decades of right wing governance we’ve been trained to think of our pleasures as necessities, rights. We’ve been trained to treat morality with suspicion, a deviation from the true path of greed. For the sake of profit we’ve been encouraged to forsake duty.

Worse still, many of the ‘rights’ we declare for ourselves are the very things that lead to both ethical problems and to unhappiness for the supposed beneficiaries: Our right to drink all day, our right to cheap petrol, cheap food, cheap clothes, cheap air travel. Our right to twenty-four hour television, 4x4s, gambling, hard-core pornography. The very things that are killing us and creating misery for others have become things we’d be honoured to die for. One way or another the scales do need re-calibrating .

The difference between the tragedy of war and the outrage of terrorism

2005-06-10T08:26:00.000+01:00

The difference between the tragedy of war and the outrage of terrorism

From Harry’s Place, May 17th:

"War and Terrorism
In the midst of some pretty rank letters responding to Madeleine Bunting's article on suicide bombers, someone points out what should be the obvious:

In the muddle linking terrorist suicide bombings with, variously, Soviet and Japanese pilots ramming military targets during the second world war and Christian and Buddhist martyrdom that risked no one else's lives, Ms Bunting misses the reason why such suicide bombings are morally revolting - namely, the intentional slaughter of people who are not legitimate targets of war. Our feelings of horror and moral revulsion do not arise from the means employed, but the targeting of the innocent.
David Guberman
Newton, Massachusetts

Which is why this point in another letter is so wrong:

Is the loss of life due to suicide bombings in Iraq really more shocking than the slaughter in Falluja?

Yes it is.

As David Guberman said: the intentional slaughter of people who are not legitimate targets of war ie innocent civilians, is the difference between the tragedy of war and the outrage of terrorism.

Posted by Harry at 08:31 AM" (His Emphasis)

As I said in '911v Hiroshima', many westerners juggle a very tricky paradox. Like any decent human, they want to make an unequivocal declaration that the taking of innocent human life is wrong, yet at the same time they feel compelled to excuse it in certain circumstances. They’re so besotted with the system that guarantees their own freedom and standard of living that they can’t bring themselves to condemn its acts of savagery. Too much to lose. Through that loophole perhaps a hundred thousand innocent Iraqis have fallen.

The above quote is a good case in point. As uneasy bedfellows, we start with visceral condemnation of the killing of civilians, quite unequivocal, but end in a more ‘statesmanly’ tone, referring to some sort of noble caveat called ‘war’. Clearly the author believes there’s a state of conflict called war which transforms the moral landscape. In a state of war the outrage of killing civilians can become downgraded to mere tragedy. Let’s see what this might mean.

It’s a familiar enough idea, and until you think about it it’s quite hard to argue against: Sometimes the aim of a war can be noble and necessary enough to justify the incidental death of civilians. Sometimes you have to have to kill a few to save the many.

Whatever the universal morality of this idea, the only way it could possibly be moral in action is if certain conditions are met. Firstly, is the aim of the war moral enough to justify these deaths? Righteous warfare can’t just mean any old military objective. You can’t kill civilians just to secure oil supplies, or to terrorise neighbouring countries, heaven forbid. If war is to have some righteous meaning beyond terrorism then it must aim to save lives, and defend freedom. Secondly, before you act you have to ask, is the killing of these civilians the only means of securing your supposed higher goal? Couldn’t you do something else to meet your objective that doesn’t involve killing civilians?

I don’t know whether Harry would endorse the bombing of Hiroshima as a legitimate tactical strategy of its time. Hopefully he’d be horrified at the suggestion. Hiroshima was a clear-cut case of mass-murder. I don’t think anyone would bother arguing it now (though they still did when I was a kid.) To vaporise a city then suggest the dead were collateral to a greater objective is a sick joke. What possible moral objective would justify such an act? What possible horror was prevented, greater than the one carried out?

Problem is, the Coventration of Falluja is a similar case. In terms of ideals, and saving other lives, how did flattening that city help? There was no population with a gun at it’s head that now sleeps safer. Everything’s worse than ever. And as for the second question! Was there nothing else the US could have done? Perhaps they could’ve not flattened Falluja, not tortured detainees, not invaded Iraq and not installed Saddam in the first place? Then they wouldn’t have needed to even consider flattening Falluja. That terrible question would never have arisen.

The second ‘difference’ the correspondent isolates is the deliberate targeting of civilians as the mark of terror rather than war. The implicit argument: However brutal US soldiers might be in Iraq their brutality is only a side-effect of their military objectives. Terrorists on the other hand deliberately set out to maim, and do so for no better reason than getting their political opinion across. They don’t kill while taking a town, they just kill people in the town. All for the sake of publicity, just as propaganda for their cause.

To point out that it has been the US and its clients that have specialised in exactly this sort of operation (for a higher cause, naturally) seems too passé to repeat. It’s all well documented and available to read. Instead let’s take the principle on face value. First, isn’t it the most banal obviousness that when the occupied party in a conflict decides to act violently it will choose psychological rather than conventional military goals? The poor and oppressed don’t have conventional weapons to fight with, they can’t hope to ‘take the town’. If they are to act violently it’s bound to be for publicity’s sake, and bound to target those people they have access to.

Whereas state terror is often the actual means by which people are subjugated and repressed retail terror is usually conducted for the sake of publicity. US war crimes in Falluja are the direct means of gaining control of the city. While they do also hope to terrorise dissenting Iraqis into submission, the last thing they want is for those crimes to be filmed and reported outside. American soldiers perpetrate war crimes for the sake of stealing oil, not to change world opinion. Film of their crimes is a PR disaster. On the other hand, retail terrorism, that of the suicide bomber or online executioner is all about propaganda. The aim is not to kill and steal as quietly as you can, but to be as revolting as possible, as publicly as possible. Which is worse? Damned if I could say.

And besides, this selective repugnance is completely feigned. Whatever means an official enemy uses, it’s always going to be wrong. It’s always going to be emblematic of how evil they are and we aren’t. If the IRA had been militarily strong enough to take the north by force are we supposed to believe that the Daily Express would have looked at them more sympathetically? If the PLO did get hold of some tanks and started pushing Israel out of the occupied territories would they get a better write up in the Jerusalem Post?

And finally, this line:

“Is the loss of life due to suicide bombings in Iraq really more shocking than the slaughter in Falluja?

Yes it is.”

In a very literal sense I suppose he’s right. For the majority of western people suicide bombings are more shocking than the razing of Falluja. But that’s only because Falluja goes unreported. If people had the chance to see and hear what’s been going on there I’m sure they would be just as shocked and appalled.

But in the sense he means it, then well sorry, no, it isn’t. As an individual human looking at the world I defend my right to say that I am no more shocked by one or the other. Is it more terrible to blow civilians away for propaganda than for direct military objectives? From the victims perspective I doubt it. Is it easier to cope with the death of your child in the knowledge that the aim of the killers was to take a town, rather than awaken minds to a cause? If you lost your legs in a conventional war, would it provide comfort to know that it was only a collateral consequence rather than the specific aim of your attackers? I don’t think I’d give a damn.

Moreover, when it comes to depravity, which shocks you more? Brutalised, dirt poor Palestinians using improvised explosives to wipe out scores of innocent civilians, or well educated American college kids (so well educated they think Saddam was behind 9-11) using hi-tech weapons to wipe out thousands of innocent civilians? Or how about real-life Beavis and Butthead in an F-16, shouting “boom!” as they fire, and giggling as thirty faint images evaporate from their screen – “Oh, Dude!”. Is that less shocking, less depraved, than a stolen car filled with Semtex? It’s one of the most shocking things I’ve ever seen.

Belsen, Palestine, Falluja, Dresden, there’s no moral distinction, only differences of scale. Humanity at its worst. The most brutal, stupid, vicious of human acts. Yet for some commentators some infanticides are more justifiable than others. That’s the leg pull. It’s Harry and pals who are inconsistent. It’s they that can’t uphold their morality across the board. It’s they who have to excuse some of these acts, because of their other loyalties.

Hoodies: New Paedophiles for Summer ’05

2005-05-25T08:13:00.000+01:00

Hoodies: New Paedophiles for Summer ’05

In the Seventies Stuart Hall and some other social theorists produced an excellent study of the media’s role in generating convenient social panic (called Policing the Crisis.) Believe it or not, rather than paedophiles, car-jackers, motorway rapists or joy riders, the term making its UK debut was ‘muggers’. Mugging, the authors pointed out, was just a groovy new term for a very old crime. Theft involving personal assault had been around as long as civil society. The only novel thing was the term mugging, imported from the States.

Mugging certainly is a powerful word, so much it’s become the defining term for that type of crime. Just as a noise, it works well. It sounds a bit like slugging, possibly with a cosh, or maybe being smothered by having a mug pushed over your face, or perhaps a po. More than anything though, as the authors suggest, it’s favoured because it implies that the attacker considers the victim of the crime to be a mug. Such a depraved outlook is a useful media tool, even if it rarely is the case. It makes thieves all the more evil and incomprehensible, more frightening for sure. You can imagine them all gathering in snooker halls at the end of the day, to smoke cigars and laugh at how stupid we all are.

I was mugged at knifepoint on Copacabana beach, a revolting experience that returned in flashes for weeks, so I am no friend of such people. However, the seventeen year old who did it didn’t look very pleased with himself. He may have spent that evening doing coke, or he may have spent it with his mother and father in one of a million corrugated shacks on the hillside beyond the hotels, but I’ll bet he didn’t spend it laughing about me.

Like muggers, those labelled ‘hoodies’ dish out an archaic form of unpleasantness. I can’t say whether sadistic child-on-child violence is on the increase, but it’s always been there to some degree. There’s always a section of youth disturbed enough to enjoy gratuitous violence. Certainly was at my school and certainly still is. If it does vary in degree I’m sure economics has far more to do with it than jogging-tops. (My brother recalls that it was leather biker jackets that got you barred when he was a lad. Hell’s Angels, the lot of them.)

One might doubt the sincerity of the media at such times. You have to ask, if such blitzkriegs actually work, then isn’t it irresponsible for them ever to stop? Moreover, aren’t we risking countless other social evils by not concentrating on them just as intensely? What are the paedophiles getting up to now The Sun has taken its eye off their balls? Should we expect an increase in the number of sexual assaults upon children since the hoodie rode into media-land, on another pupil’s BMX? Without tabloid vigilance, and dedicated evening campaigns on the estate (against paediatricians and philatelists) it’s a wonder any of us still have our children. I’m surprised Jonathan King hasn’t caught them all and baked them in a big pie.

The chief concern here, as usual, is copy. Hoodies, like paedophiles, make great monsters for the media to write about, and sell. In both cases the added threat of spooky technology provides good plot seasoning. Like paedophiles, hoodies love their mobiles. The former use them to film trampoline users, the latter to film their beatings. In both cases the technology gives them a opportunity to savour their perversity, and even share it with others.

Although chilling, you have to wonder how often such things actually happen. You also have to wonder how much of this ugliness is disseminated and prompted by the campaigns themselves. It’s not unreasonable to imagine that a few Nelsons did think “Har!-Har!” when they watched that evening’s news, and dutifully took the memes down to their playground the next morning. That’s the risk of making a fetish out of something nasty. It appeals to fetishists.

And of course the knock-on from all this celebration of fear is more fearfulness. Boys in hooded tops. Another symbol for little old ladies to shrink away from. It’s also a great smokescreen issue as the truth about Iraq reaches exploding point. Anything to take our minds off that.

Jam Today! (pay tomorrow)

2005-05-09T08:58:00.000+01:00

There’s a link between using credit and using alcohol, or any other recreational drug. In both cases you’re opting to have the nice bit first and the horrible bit after. Like the warm glow induced by a pint of Stella, the warm glow induced by purchasing products on the never-never is always followed by a hangover of some sort. Even if you only have the one, you feel listless and want another. Pleasure yesterday, pay today.

It’s an exact reversal of the more virtuous deferred reward strategy, where you eat your greens on the promise of jam roly-poly for afters. Instead, you first gorge on pudding and then have to face the broccoli.

These two opposing strategies are deployed in many aspects of human life. Resisting scratching a mosquito bite is of the first kind. Holding back breaks the cycle of irritation and the whole thing’s soon forgotten. Jam tomorrow. Alternatively you can have near-orgasms dragging your nails over it, but at the price of still having it, itchier than ever, a month later. Jam today. Similarly, vigorous exercise can be a daunting prospect, but it’s more than justified by the endorphin buzz that follows. More than can be said for street heroin. A definite case of jam today, hell to pay.

Learning the merits of deferred reward is an essential part of growing up, and The Little Red Hen is the parable. She didn’t shilly-shally like the other animals. She planted corn, ground flour, and baked bread, all without help from her neighbours. So when the aromas started to waft, and they came asking, she told them where to get off. Presumably a Methodist of some sort.

Indeed, the concept of a heavenly afterlife is the ultimate deferred reward strategy, though it’s questionable who gets rewarded. Accept a miserable existence in this world on the promise of eternal glory ever after. A shrewd means for the wealthy and powerful to scare the poor into compliance.

Some people want to have their roly-poly and eat it. Margaret Thatcher liked to align herself with the hen, but only when it suited: “You don’t spend money you haven’t got!” is a useful chant when you want to get public assets into private hands, but it’s forgotten when it comes to chucking money at arms manufacturers. ‘Credit’ is then elevated to ‘investment’. “Simply good housekeeping!” is another killer, coming from the Prime Minister who did so much to turn her country into the home of credit-card lunacy. That’s not bad housekeeping, that’s personal freedom.

Investment and credit are closely intertwined, two sides of the same coin. The credit run-up by the irresponsible cardholder is at the same time MasterCard’s shrewd investment. Your loss, their gain. Furthermore, it’s not always irresponsible to borrow. You can borrow as a means of investing, on the hope that the investment will itself more than cover the interest on the borrowed money. Similarly, as a consumer you can use credit wisely to pick up a true bargain that might be gone by the time your wages come in. The problems start when you borrow money but have no intention of investing it, like credit-junkie consumers, or John DeLorean in business.

Drugs and tic share a similar danger. Both allow you to steal from the future. The product you can’t afford this month steals next month’s wages, plus interest. A big Saturday night out steals happiness from poor old Monday morning, perhaps right through to strung-out Wednesday afternoon. You’ve got to pay sometime.

Distorting Demand (Part II)

2005-05-03T09:09:00.000+01:00

Corporate Keynesianism

The other flaw in the ‘market freedom’ argument is the likely size of any organisation that can afford prime advertising space. Million pound adverts cost millions. Television advertising is never going to help the smaller producer to grow. In fact it’s one of the key methods used by corporations to bankrupt and absorb smaller rivals.

As standard histories tell, commercial television was introduced to Britain as a means of re-inflating a sluggish post-war economy. By raising the profile of products it was hoped consumer demand would grow, and along with it industry. Successful though this was, it’s important to note which businesses actually benefited. The first advert, after all, was for Gibb’s SR toothpaste. While this multinational may have helped inflate its own coffers, and those of some retailers, the effect would have been deflating for any smaller rival, a drop in demand. Gibb’s was using glossy imagery to squeeze the life out of smaller, rival tubes.

It doesn’t take long to work out who it was pushing for the introduction of commercial television. Certainly big American players like Kellogg’s and Proctor and Gamble must have been delighted at the prospect. A killing to be made. For the first time tried and tested campaigns could play in British homes. A whole nation to make passionate about soap, and negative towards the humble soap they’d always taken for granted.

Clearly the term ‘re-inflating the economy’ is very subjective. Who gets to re-inflate? One person’s boom is always another’s bust. In the case of re-inflating the economy with expensive adverts it’s clear which section of the economy is going to do the growing. It has to be the big fish. Small and medium bourgeois never get a look in. Television adverts are a means for the already powerful to squeeze out smaller producers. They’re a key tool for corporate globalisation, a great way to slash, burn and strip domestic rivals.

Adverts are warps in the fabric of demand-space. Strange then, one might think, that those who push hardest for commercialisation of television are those who most vehemently oppose state intervention in the economy. It’s characteristic monetarist hypocrisy. Like the other form of demand management that dare not speak its name, military Keynesianism, corporate market interference is an exception to all those free market values. Whereas it’s a crime against the freedom of the market for a government to subsidise public transport, it’s an inalienable right of corporations to use psychological trickery to skew markets in their favour.

That’s the monetarist concept of market freedom: Government must not interfere in the economy, but huge unaccountable multinationals must be allowed to skew it anyway that suits. Governmental attempts to manage demand lead to unfair competition and subsidise inefficiency, but private million-dollar brainwashing campaigns are the stuff of free markets. Adam Smith must be spinning.

The victors

Skewing markets and asset-stripping the losers frees-up a lot of money. This can’t all go to the sponsoring corporation of course. Those who assist receive a share of the booty, ad agencies for one. Then there’s also the transmission medium itself, the television company and the accompanying programmes. And of course there’s the actors and celebrities who play in the commercials. Most will have never seen a pay-check a fraction of the size, even for their most celebrated work

It must be very tempting. Just that one advert won’t hurt. But of course if it didn’t hurt someone the sponsors wouldn’t bother. It must hurt someone’s wallet, or someone’s business, if it can free-up those sort of appearance fees. For an ad to pay it must distort demand sufficiently to pay for itself, and some more. Robbie Coltrane, I’m sure, would argue that the sum Barclays offered him was simply irresistible, enough to sort you out for life. Nevertheless, as with the oil company PR, his contribution was to soften the image of a global corporation. After all, how bad can Barclays really be when big cuddly Robbie will do adverts for them, doing Tai Chi? He’s even made the odd left-wing comment in his time.

It’s horrible to say, but unavoidable to conclude, that by helping to paint Barclays in a good light he was helping them to maintain their record of unethical investment, and getting a slice of the spoils in payment. Where else would that sort of money come from, and that sort of desperation for a cuddly make-over? Same for the distressing sight of Run DMC in a GAP commercial. Whichever way you hold it up it’s Run DMC profiting from foreign sweated labour, and anxious western teenagers.

Sainsbury’s PR department announced with glee that it had caused a palpable warp in demand when Jamie Oliver started to feature in their ads. Prunella Scales ably assists Tesco in its plan to take over the world. There are richer Pepsi directors, and fatter children, thanks to Gary Lineker’s crisp adverts. What other conclusion can you draw? None of these seem unkind people, but the money they were paid certainly has a smell about it.

Big companies, such as supermarkets, might argue that they’re only using advertising to put each other out of business. Whatever the ethics of that, it’s obvious who’ll definitely lose in such a rich man’s game. Some adverts might only target large rivals but their attempts to out-gloss and out-bargain each other can’t help but turn us off smaller producers. Adverts show us how bargain filled, cheap, clean and obliging multinationals are, and even make us feel sophisticated for shopping there. Remind you of many independent retailers? How will Arkwright and Granville ever hope to compete with that?

Adverts are creative

Another grounds for defence of adverts is their occasional beauty, ingenuity and creativity. That they can be so attractive, funny and well made can give the impression that they themselves constitute a valuable part of television. Truth is, all that money and talent could have been spent on making the TV programmes.

“The adverts are better than the programs!” It’s a cliché, but a painfully accurate one. Many programmes do look shabby in contrast to the ads. This is not something to congratulate the ad industry on, it just shows had bad we have allowed things to become. Adverts outshine programs because corporations have gained a stranglehold on the industry. However pretty commercials might seem, they remain parasitic upon the medium of television. We shouldn’t celebrate the fact that a parasite is prospering.

Contrary to common belief not all parasitic growths are ugly and misshapen. Some actually beautify their host. The peacock’s fan is a beautiful thing, but in an important sense the genes that give rise to it are parasitic. Outside a sexual context it’s a huge liability. Extremely wasteful in terms of growth and maintenance, and an asset to predators. It only exists because the genes for big fans in peacocks, and the genes for fancying big fans in peahens, drove each other into orbit. If you could somehow magically erase the genes for peacock’s tail feathers and the genes that make peahens select flamboyant males, the species would make a net gain. They’d be faster, more agile, and have a much smaller dietary requirement.

Like peacocks’ fans, some adverts are highly attractive. However if television is to serve public rather than corporate needs, this is a dire state of affairs. If TV is the host to advertising it is being sucked dry. The parasite grows plumper and more lavish as it suckles. The host becomes the deferent party, modifying its patterns of behaviour to suit the parasite’s demands. Which brings us to the last misconception.

Advertising provides free television

I remember the first time I saw an advert for an advert. In fact the chain was longer. It was an advert for a TV programme which itself was only being shown to get people to sit still long enough to watch other adverts. From the side of a New York city bus smiling anchors invited drivers to tune-in to that night’s news. Although commonplace now, at the time it seemed odd, mistaken, inefficient in the extreme. A commercial station, one which relied solely upon the revenue of advertisers, was itself running advertisements for its own programs. Adverts to make you watch programmes to make you watch adverts.

It was my father, again, who was the first to point out to me the real cost of commercial television. There’s no such thing as free lunch, and commercial television is not charity work. The cost of producing television programmes must be met by the consumer at some point. In the main it is at the point of sale. We pay for commercial television in increased cost of goods. However, the structure of commercial TV being what it is we pay a great deal more for it. Commercial television is a criminally wasteful means of making programmes.

If we pay for television directly, say from a licence scheme or income tax, the money can all be targeted at making programmes, uninterrupted by commercial clutter. Instead, we pay for commercial television by an invisible sales tax, one that has countless other costs to cover before anything can go toward program making. Executive salaries for ad agencies, focus groups and opinion pollsters; technical staff to make the adverts and a host of creatives to dream them up; actors, make-up, caterers, location filming; promotional fees, magazine and billboard adverts to encourage people to watch a program, to watch the adverts. Moreover, there’s the whole array of shareholders, every step of the way, all demanding a return on their investment. After all that, what’s left over can be spent on making programmes. Wonder why the adverts look superior?

What’s wrong with TV is the adverts

In the current climate, bald statements like “Television is bad for you” are quite understandable, but you have to be clear about your meaning of ‘television’. The physical medium, as in two-dimensional images accompanied by sound, is not something intrinsically destructive, no more pernicious than writing or painting. In fact it’s no more, or less, pernicious than those who control its output. Differing forms of ownership give rise to different kinds of television, and what the viewer considers the medium of television to be. Depending where you’re from, television means different things. In the USSR it was state owned and so produced formal state propaganda. In the USA, state licensing and corporate ownership means commercialism and state-corporate propaganda. Neither output is intrinsic to broadcast television, it’s all just historical happenstance. You can’t blame a screen and a loudspeaker for the signals they receive.

One valid objection, regarding my claim that all the money that goes on advertising could be spent on the programs: In truth of course, without corporate sponsorship that money wouldn’t even be on the table. The television industry would be a fraction of the size it is, and would produce a fraction of the programs. Perfectly true, but then would that be a bad thing? It would certainly mean no Big Brother, Topless Darts or thirteenth season of Friends. The only reason such desperate programs get made is because they yield sizeable audiences who then can be made to sit through adverts. Instead TV could return to what it used to be. One or two channels broadcasting for a few hours each day. Perhaps people could rediscover life again. What a frightening thought.

Once again however, it’s the problem of loving your enemy. Commercial TV has eaten its way into our lives. Twenty-four hour junk has become something many would fight to the death to maintain. I overheard an interesting discussion between an American couple on a train out of London. They’d just landed, she for the first time, and he was having difficulty explaining the TV licence system to her. She found it unbelievable that TV could be restricted, let alone that you could end up in prison for not paying: “My Gahd! If they tried that in the States there’d be riots!”, which is probably true.

The fact that television has slipped into corporate hands makes it all but impossible to wrestle back. Corporations own it and they aren’t about to let go. Limitless sex, glamour, romance, violence and the occasional worthy programme are at their disposal, at no visible cost to the viewer. Asking people to pay a new charge to receive only a fraction of current output is a doomed sales pitch. Commercial television has the medium of television by the balls. Before any change can occur corporate power itself will have to be challenged.

Distorting Demand (Part I)

2005-04-20T08:51:00.000+01:00

Distorting Demand (Part I)

To state the obvious, advertisements are out to get you to buy things. They are a means employed by producers to modify consumer demand in their favour. Less obvious are the sacrifices entailed elsewhere. By its ubiquity advertising does a grand job convincing people of its innocence and even its economic and creative worth. Each of the following pieces challenges a different assumption regarding the supposed benign or beneficial aspects of advertising.

Advertising as a natural extension of market freedom

One common-sense defence of advertising is that it is something natural in a market economy. To some point this seems true enough. In a healthy economy producers need a means of promoting their products. Likewise consumers need information about products if they are to make informed choices.

It’s unavoidable. As long as people buy and sell there’ll always be some role for presentation and promotion. It’s only natural to buff the vase the day before auction, or shout, “Forty pence yer bananas!” in a louder or more charismatic manner than the next stall-holder. Every street-traders right. Advertising, the argument runs, is just a logical extension of this freedom.

All quite true. Promotion is bound to play some part in retail. But there are clear lines to be drawn. The sort of promotion that enhances producer and consumer freedom must at least be honest. Telling lies about products doesn’t benefit the consumer, and it’s also unfair competition. Similarly, the fact that some producers can afford colossal advertising budgets is no aid to market freedom. The ability to drown out the voices of other producers does the consumer no favour, and again it’s unfair competition.

Psychological abuse

I’ve a photograph of the forecourt of Kemptown railway station (long since an industrial estate.) Behind the Zephyrs and Corsairs, one wing of the stationhouse bears the sign:

LENS TEAS

And, just in case any drivers were confused:

PULL UP FOR TEA.

Undeniably this is advertising. It meets all the modern criteria and motives. Although I doubt he thought about it in such terms, Len definitely did paint the sign in an attempt to skew the market in his favour. Anyone who pulled up for tea upon seeing his sign was having their demand managed by his promotional scheme. If it worked, alternative transport cafes and teashops lost money in consequence. Perhaps some went bust.

However, while this certainly is advertising it’s a world away from the methods of the Saachis. It’s one thing to announce, “I have hot tea to sell” but quite another to associate your tea with Yorkshire firesides, or, God help us, sex. Such associations are patently false, deliberately out to mislead. Nothing to do with the reality of the product. Certainly not included with the product. That sort of advertising can’t be defended as a freedom. Lying and brainwashing are not the friend of a free market, they’re its enemy.

That difference, the difference between truth and falsehood, is one key test as to whether an advert can be considered just. After a lifetime’s exposure it can be hard to see the difference. This abuse crept up on us slowly, advertising industry included.

A glance at older ad campaigns brings us back to earth. Not so long ago adverts concentrated on the use value or quality of the product itself. Tellingly, there was a time when it was still deemed necessary to include a verb in an advert. “Smoke Regal”, “Take Courage” “Drink Coca-Cola”. Although all these campaigns were out to skew markets at least they remain close to the reality of the product. (Mind you, the illegitimate association of tobacco with royalty, and ale with bravery, hints where all this will lead.)

Since then some sort of sea change occurred. It no longer mattered what you did with the product, just that the name and some associated concepts entered you consciousness. Welcome to Marlboro country. Don’t think of petrol think of tigers. Don’t think of crumbly chocolate bars, think of blow-jobs. Don’t think of smoking and coughing and dying, think of prairies and jack-rabbits.

My father was loathing of advertising to the extent that he fixed our TV to only receive the BBC. Not a man to hold much of a theory of ideology, he claimed commercial television led to ‘Worms on the brain!’. Though the image fits, if anything it downplays the severity of what commercials do. Rather than writhing, maggot-like in our brains, adverts alter them, wholesale. When they succeed they make us feel differently about the world and all its contents, not just the one product.

Like all propaganda, adverts work by restructuring minds in a manner beneficial to those who sponsor them. This could just mean honest product information, but it can also mean extreme cynicism and abuse. At the moment the culture seems pretty much anything goes. Advertisers would have us think anything if they thought it would move more units.

When we finally did get ITV I was delighted and revelled in the commercials. Nothing difficult, just great jokes and jingles and special effects and animation, and all of lavish quality compared to the programmes. Me and my sister were so spellbound we’d shout, “Ads!!!” up the stairs to each other each time they came on (I think the old man would have smashed the damn thing up on the spot if he’d ever heard that!)

And what good did it do? Thanks to advertising a mass of the concepts that make up my consciousness are stupid lies about the world. To my shame, thirty years on I can still sing the Tetley tea-folk song, recite the punch-lines to PG Tips adverts (“Can you ride tandem?”) and the catch-phrase for Quick Brew (“It’s me little perforations!”). Junk memes nailed into my head firmer than Shakespeare or trigonometry ever will be.

Worse still, it’s never a neutral waste of brain-space. Invariably, adverts work by inducing anxiety in the consumer. In the long run the aim is to make money, but more often than not the means is by making people feel bad about themselves, envious of what others supposedly have. Amongst all the excitement I also remember a glum feeling of jealousy during jeans adverts. Levi’s and Wrangler and Lee Cooper, everybody strutting around cool and sexy. Didn’t look much like me and my friends, even with the jeans. Still bought a pair, of course, to be on the safe side.

Inducing consumer anxiety is a cruel but lucrative trade. Again it’s difficult to recognise how unpleasant it is when you’ve lived in it so long. It’s easier to see it when its being done to another culture for the first time. A few years back I saw a familiar looking advert on Moroccan TV. A beautiful brown mother twirling a beautiful brown baby overhead, all gurgles, blue skies, and impossibly white cotton. Handsome father smiles on from the veranda. It was the start of the big wind-up. Morocco’s first chance to share the delights of whiter than whites. Now they can learn to worry about all the important things we’ve been worrying about for the past fifty years. Worry that their neighbours might live more cleanly than their own family, might be more happy generally. All to shift more units of soap powder. Happy with your wash? What about deep down?

Love your enemy

Some campaigns are more subtle, but as often as not they serve to convince us of greater and more terrible falsehoods. Advertising is, after all, just a branch of PR. It’s the branch that deals with getting us to think more about shopping than we otherwise would. Whereas PR is about distorting public perception in general, advertising specifically distorts demand for goods. However, these boundaries are not set in stone. Advertising is frequently used as a medium for full-blown political PR, or propaganda as it used to be known.

For example, it is political benefit BP and Exxon gain from much of their advertising and sponsorship deals. Such campaigns are out to baffle our critical abilities, soften our hearts towards these titans, make it harder for us to be angry with them when we hear what they’ve been up to, again. If the brand name ‘Shell’ is generally encountered in the context of wildlife preservation or arts funding the company’s human rights record and its true impact on the environment is obscured. It’s harder to form a critical opinion of an environmental and social abuser when you’re bombarded with lavish exaggerations of their occasional charity work. These ads are still about selling oil, but indirectly. They’re about making the world seem different in such a way that it facilitates further plunder.

Rather than extolling the virtues of a product much of modern advertising aims to radically restructure consumer minds, i.e. people's minds. Here’s another that worked on me: A few years back Lloyds bank ran a campaign featuring huge lumbering Jim Henson-style trolls. Seemed very odd at the time. An international bank buying thirty seconds of prime time advertising to bring us cuddly monsters hitting each other with massive rubber clubs. What were they thinking of?

Although there was the pretence of a money-related narrative, (about how wise trolls invested their gold pieces, or some such) it’s clear that wasn’t the thrust of the campaign. The chief intention was to change peoples minds about banks, specifically this bank. The subliminal message was, ‘Everything you ever believed about banks, wooden panelling, stuffy time-served counter staff, “Capt. Mainwaring will see you now!”..…all that’s gone. Don’t take us so seriously. We’re really all about FUN!’

It was a clear case of brain-washing. Fight it though I might, my notion of banks changed forever. To this day they still seem less stuffy and intimidating. That strange campaign successfully modified my mind in Lloyds favour. (The Egg credit card, a front for the stuffy old Prudential, takes this approach to its ridiculous conclusion: Running up debt is so wacky!)

It’s quite a price pay. Advertising has us running in circles, worrying about nonsense, chasing rubbish. It paints corporate abusers as saviours and makes environmentalists seem like cranks. It encourages us to eat high-fat food then makes a fetish out of being thin. It goads children into pestering money out of parents, and leaves parents feeling guilty if they can’t provide. Instead of compassion towards others it promotes endless concern with the self. It turns neighbours and strangers and friends into people to compete with, people to worry about. It makes last year’s cool into this year’s joke. Better get the new one.

I won’t be offering any other prescriptions regarding adverts, but there is one: Stop watching them. Don’t engage with them. Turn over or just kill the sound. That’s the real liberating power of the remote control. Adverts are out to make you anxious. Logically then, avoiding them can make you less anxious, happier, something no soap-powder will ever do. Like any other rogue on the doorstep don’t let them in. Just watch the programs and let the sponsors pay.

Part Two now posted above.

BBC Vacancies

2005-04-19T12:36:00.000+01:00

BBC Vacancies

I don’t say you’re self-censoring – I’m sure you believe everything you’ve said; but what I’m saying is, if you believed something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting.

(Noam Chomsky to the BBC’s Andrew Marr, then of The Independent.)

When your brand image is neutrality it’s not nice to be called biased. While workers at Fox news probably laugh at the accusation, then agree, many at the BBC take offence: No one is pulling their strings. They just report what they see, as they see it.

In an important sense they are absolutely right. Simply by being the kind of people they are, it is possible for them to convey propaganda yet still feel like impartial correspondents. As Chomsky suggests to Marr, like all job vacancies media vacancies are strictly circumscribed. They’re not for just anyone. They are certain shaped holes that can only accommodate a certain shape of person. And while many of the more overt criteria are skill-based (being as pretty, clever, knowledgeable, specialist, annoying, funny or vacuous as required) every bit as important is the political shape of the candidate. If you don’t meet that criteria you won’t get the job.

To start with a fairly uncontroversial example, BBC Radio Two’s breakfast show is never going to be offered to an outspoken Marxist. Social commentary, when it does arise, will more likely be restricted to the horrors of traffic cones, or the difficulty of finding a parking space (and then somebody steals it!)

The reflex reaction to this of course is that the BBC wouldn’t employ anyone politically outspoken in such a role. The BBC must remain ‘neutral’ on such matters. But of course this is completely circular. Neutrality is in the eye of the beholder. If the type of people who already govern and run the BBC get to choose what constitutes neutrality then the acceptable candidate is simply the one who sounds neutral to the ears of that elite. The job selection process becomes nothing more than a mechanism for selecting politically like-minded people.

And it shows. It is BBC ‘neutrality’ that dictates that non-fatal storms in Cornwall or (even more tellingly) Florida will find their way to the top of the news the same day a hundred drown in Bangladesh. Likewise, one British athlete failing to complete her event can take up the first ten minutes of the evening news on the same day that more US/UK war crimes go unreported.

If that’s balanced reporting then forgive me for becoming unbalanced. That such a perverse worldview can be touted as impartial speaks volumes about the mind-set of those making the most important decisions at the BBC. As such it pervades, even outside the news room, even on lightweight Radio Two. There, it is perfectly acceptable to speak in hushed tones about retail terrorism, but any mention of Western atrocities will have you back on Radio Norwich by the weekend.

No fear. The unconscious vetting process works. Phrases like ‘US sponsored terrorism’ are simply not in Steve Wright’s or Terry Wogan’s vernacular. They’re not those sort of blokes. Conversely, phrases like ‘The terrible events of September the eleventh’ drip from their mouths like honey. No risk of impartiality if you only mourn for ‘our’ dead. While the majority of Earth’s inhabitants would find the first phrase every bit as justifiable and chilling as the second, any likely Radio Two DJ would be incredulous. The right man or woman for that job simply wouldn’t be the type to think, let alone talk, in those terms. It’s a vital, but unspoken, part of the job description. No need for a bullet-point.

Radio Two neutrality takes motoring, package holidays, love of football and national pride as simple apolitical reality. Being on the receiving end of lust for oil is not a valid perspective. The reality pushed by Radio Two is owning a car and worrying about pension funds, and those blessed EU bureaucrats messing with the Great British banger. If such a perspective doesn’t come naturally to you, don’t bother applying. Like the dyslexic enquiring about the vacancy as proof reader, you’ll be politely refused.

Just the same, if you don’t think the world starts and ends with Hollywood movies, products, pop stars, soap operas and celebrity gossip, don’t apply to be a daytime Radio One DJ. Don’t apply to work at the BBC’s history department unless you are obsessed with one six year period of British stoicism during a whole century of imperial misadventure. And whatever you do, don’t apply to be a presenter of the BBC’s ‘Top Gear’ if you plan to use it as platform to voice your concerns about global warming. The very essence of Top Gear is being rich and selfish and paying no attention to the consequences of you actions. That’s the job.

Instead you should apply to be a presenter on…er?

When it comes to assessing the most ‘liberal’ end of the BBC’s potential vacancies it’s easy to miss the wood for the trees. The fact that, very occasionally, Newsnight presenters do pose the right questions, obscures some thunderingly obvious limitations on political impartiality.

Here’s one little conflict of interest: Newsnight ‘anchors’ earn millions. Kirsty Wark, Jeremy Paxman and Gavin Esler are paid millions, literally. That one fact renders a whole range of important questions out of bounds. If you think extreme material inequality is the central problem facing the world, what chance do you have of these people arguing your case? How fiercely can Paxman hold a minister to account over the corporate asset stripping of the British media when he himself is enjoying such a large slice of the spoils? How critical can he be of the dumbing-down and commercialisation of TV when his own standard of living is one of it’s consequences?

Many of today’s most famous journalists probably railed against Margaret Thatcher during the eighties. Perhaps some still speak bitterly of her in private. Nonetheless, it is the world she created that paved the way for their extraordinarily well remunerated jobs. Before Thatcher and Reagan no newsreader expected to find a million in their pay packet. Robert Dougal would have had a heart attack. Thatcher set out to smash dissent and increase corporate parasitism in the BBC, and she did a thorough job. The political ‘shape’ of current BBC vacancies is a direct consequence of that strategy.

The next standard response to all this is “So what would you do instead?”. But of course that’s a different question, and to ask it signals agreement. (Presumably, a more democratic society would foster a more democratic media, but that’s no great theory.) Suffice to say, the current structure of the BBC and it’s complex connections with state and capital ensure strict limits on the political perspective of its output. It can only afford to employ people prepared to observe those boundaries.

Thanks, in part, to a lifetime’s exposure to the BBC’s output, there are many among us who can meet that criteria, without even being conscious of doing so. That’s the real howler in Marr’s quip about having his ‘organs of opinion’ removed when he joined the BBC. It was those very organs that got him the job.

911 v Hiroshima

2005-04-19T12:35:00.000+01:00

911 v Hiroshima

For many Westerners the attacks of 911 were the most appalling act they had ever witnessed. Amongst popular broadcasters the sense of shock and awe was uniform and profound. Not since the death of Diana had Radio 2 disc jockeys spoken with such an air of gravity, the same chilling footage playing over and again in their minds.

Over the days that followed many attempts were made to rationalise what had happened. For those with scant appreciation of the West’s role in the world one conclusion stood out. Clearly such an act of barbarity could not have been committed by civilised Westerners – atheists, Christians and Jews. Only ‘medieval’ Islam could supply a perverse enough world-view to drive humans to commit such an act of depravity.

In a sane world this nonsense could be countered with one word: Hiroshima. Similar method of delivery to 911, bar the suicides, but with a payload that extinguished a full 75,000 innocent lives. Twenty-five 911s in one hit, perpetrated by well-fed well-heeled western heroes. End of argument?

The fact that it rarely is demonstrates the lengths some go to maintain contradictory beliefs. At first asking, those who ‘blame Islam’ often argue with conviction that the slaughter of three thousand innocents in ANY situation is deeply and transparently wrong. Morally unjustifiable regardless of the context. My stance entirely.

However, as soon as you mention Hiroshima many back-pedal from this moral obviousness. Suddenly circumstances do matter:

“You can’t compare those two situations!”
“We were in the middle of a war!”
“Those bombs saved lives. They brought the war to a close more quickly.”

Forgetting that all these excuses could equally have come from Al-Qaeda, the moral shift is seismic. Suddenly it’s not that there’s something intrinsically wrong with killing three thousand civvies. The problem is doing it without ‘good reason’. Presumably, if your reasons are valid you should feel free, indeed morally obliged, to slaughter 75,000. Who knows, maybe more?

Revising your moral stance to that of pragmatic advocate of mass-murder comes at a price. It’s a schizophrenic state, doggedly insisting that there are appropriate times to slaughter children when you know in your gut that there can’t be. It makes people defensive. Others who dare to maintain their opposition to all such acts will soon find themselves on the receiving end of that most heinous charge, pacifism. All the old chestnuts roll out, the sort of questions employed by wily schoolchildren and moral philosophers alike, when they want to torture each other:

“So if you knew that the only way to prevent two million people from nuclear annihilation was to press a button that would itself kill one million people, you still wouldn’t do it?”

True, as it stands, out of context, it’s a near impossible question to answer. But so what? Neither 911 nor Hiroshima nor any other colossal act of barbarity has happened out of context. Let’s forget for a moment that the standard justifications for Hiroshima are complete baloney. Even if bombing Hiroshima did save lives in the long run, what justification is there to ever consider it as a stand alone event?: History starts here. Press or don’t press?

In reality, there has to be a suitably insane context before such insane quandaries can arise. Two imperial powers squabbling over whose right it was to rape the pacific. Two governments terrorising their own populations with tales of the depravity and sub-human nature of the other side. Two armies brainwashed to treat each other with no mercy. That’s the lunatic terrain upon which such calm, ‘rational’ choices as whether or not to raze a city arise. With mass-murder context is everything. If you really want to understand why it happens you can’t boil it down to single choices.

Mention of Hiroshima is a good way to counter those who prefer to demonise Islam than study history. Either they must concede that Islam is not a special case and condemn Western crimes with equal intensity (game over), or they must slide down the moral hill to pragmatic approval of such acts, in which case you can refer them to history. No one can hold both positions and remain rational however much they might want to. Establish which and hold them to it.

Truth is coherent

2005-04-19T12:32:00.000+01:00

Truth is coherent

I’m a hopeless liar. Not to say I do it a lot, but the opposite. I’m so hopeless at the game of lying I have to avoid it. Unless I have a moral reason to lie (‘No commandant, Anne Frank is not hiding in my attic’ or less seriously, ‘Yes, you look fantastic!’) I find it much easier not to. Just in practical terms, lies require a lot more maintenance than truth. If pressed, you can’t rely on actuality to fill in the detail. You have to produce other supporting lies and these may not cohere with other aspects of reality, causing you to generate even more lies of increasing feebleness, with increasing dry-mouth – ugh!

Stick to the truth on the other hand, and you have the whole state of the world to support you. You don’t need to make anything else up because you never made anything up in the first place. When asked, ‘Where were you at six-thirty last night?’ you can reply with confidence, ‘On the bus’. When questioned further, ‘Did anyone else see you on the bus?’ you can reply, ‘Yes, my friend Stan’. You can say this and feel comfortable that they may contact Stan for corroboration. You don’t have to slip-off and phone Stan to prime him because he actually was on the bus with you. Worst thing that you might be in such circumstances is mistaken, but if you have been acting in good faith then at least you can explain how you came to be mistaken, hand on heart.

I can’t be sure whether Aaronovitch, Cohen and Hari actually believe their own writing or if they are card carrying mercenaries like Paul Johnson or Roger Scruton. In an important sense it really doesn’t matter. Their own opinion of what they write has no bearing on its actual truthfulness. Reality is independent of opinion and whatever they might think the world-views they espouse simply don’t tally with reality. They’re grossly incoherent. You can’t oppose terrorism AND support the ‘war on terror’. To any rational and informed mind the two are mutually exclusive.

Take one huge lie, one all serious historians will be cacking themselves laughing-at in years to come: The invasion of Iraq of was not motivated by oil but by moral concern for the people of Iraq.

Given the Bush family’s connections with oil, US support for Saddam during his most violent excesses, subsequent US sanctions specifically targeting the people of Iraq, Rice and Chevron, the PNAC, the breaching of Kyoto, and every previous post-war US president being a war criminal (I would go on, but you’ve heard it all before) it takes a lot of effort to keep this whopper afloat. The bare faced, often self-confessed cynicism of the invasion is just plain obvious, a truth easily grasped by Chomsky’s ‘fairly intelligent adolescent’ should the poor child ever get told about it. Ask any stranger at a bus stop, right-wing or left wing, anywhere in the world outside the USA, ‘Are the Americans in there for the oil?’ Hundred to one, we all know what answer we’ll get.

A lie of such proportions takes some spinning. Every other aspect of reality is screaming, ‘Not so!’ For whatever reasons the above named have decided to take on the job. Of course, given the complexity of history, there’s no need to actually make anything up. Those who wield Occam’s mallet beat-out distraction, evasion and omission. Good start, reduce everything to one loaded question, “So you’d prefer it if Saddam was still in power?”. And of course condescension. Everything is so much more complex than we mere mortals could understand. We need their guidance to see that black really is white.

Growing up in the seventies, watching BBC news, I felt rather dumb for not understanding ‘the situation in the middle-east’ or ‘the situation in Northern Ireland’. At the time I put it all down to my own inability to grasp complex ideas. These events were being explained in detail, night after night, yet I just couldn’t get a handle on them, silly me.

Now of course the problem is clear. You can’t expect to understand a story when you’re only told half of it. At the time only Republican acts of violence counted as news. What was being done to Catholics was all but omitted from the picture. If mentioned at all it was in the (now eerily familiar) reframe of ‘the continuing cycle of violence’.

Aside from the moral implications of such omission it’s no wonder so many say they find the news boring and confusing and unsatisfying. It’s no wonder so many of us don’t ‘get it’ when there’s no consistent ‘it’ being offered for us to get. As long as so many key aspects of reality are ruled out before the explanations even begin there’s no chance of creating a coherent picture, one which you could argue from. All you’re left with is, ‘Bad people have been bad again. They usually are in that part of the world’.

So you give up. The Irish are obsessed with religion and violence and the IRA are the most appalling example. But don’t ask me to explain it.

The first time you encounter Chomsky or Said on Palestine or Tim Pat Coogan on Ireland it’s surprising how easy it is to understand. Aside from occasional bouts of nausea it’s extremely satisfying to have all that missing data finally stream in. The human misery that prompted the miserable act finally has a chance to enter the picture, and a more coherent pattern of cause and effect emerges, one you can use to draw future judgements from.

Call me a victim of left-wing propaganda all you like. All I know is that after several decades of immersion in mainstream news I was quite incapable of discussing either of these subjects, way out of my depth. I’m no expert now, but I’d happily argue the fundamentals with anyone. Armed with truth, as in a balanced picture of events, at least I have a chance of discussing these situations.

And soon after you start to notice how it’s done. You notice how it’s always Palestinians doing the attacking and Israelis doing the retaliating. You notice how individual acts of terror using primitive weapons are far more horrific and barbaric than the perpetual hi-tec hell unleashed by the West and its clients. You notice that violent threats to the lives of Africans are only newsworthy if the threatened Africans are white. This is the real danger that prompts all the vitriol. The real threat of Chomsky and Herman and Zinn is the threat of a thinking public, one that can analyse and participate in politics instead of giving up and blaming it all on evil people. And blaming their own inability to get to grips with the subject on their own intellectual inadequacy.

All of which leads to a rather upbeat conclusion. Although those who promote ‘necessary illusions’ have the mass of media to support them, they haven’t got the coherent qualities of truth to back them up. Their huge, flabby, apologies can’t be defended by reference to reality other than excruciatingly feeble exceptions, ones that beg as many questions as they answer. This is why it’s so easy to argue with Daily Mail readers. Their knowledge of world politics, as mediated, is paper thin. You don’t have to identify many contradictions in their arguments before they either smile embarrassed and agree with you, or more likely run-off screaming with their fingers in their ears.

Dissent is always going to be a hard game but at least it can be approached honestly, and that’s a real asset. If you refuse to tolerate inconsistencies in your own beliefs, even the comforting ones, you may never have to lie again. And you’ll always have reality waiting to back you up.

M.

Offence is not the Issue

2005-04-19T12:26:00.000+01:00

Offence is not the Issue

CLIVE: Same thing happened with, er, you remember ‘Andy Pandy’?
DEREK: Yeah.
CLIVE: He used to come on. As soon as that was on I used to get in a glove. I used to jump in a glove and rush down the road and, you know, the power it has over people.
DEREK: Mmm.

(Derek and Clive on the dangerous influence of television)

When racist comments are condemned in the media too often the charge is that such views are offensive. Someone might feel insulted or threatened. This is of course a huge oversimplification. The problem isn’t people getting upset as much as bigotry being socially divisive in general. Bigotry fosters ignorance and vice versa, and that’s far more serious than momentary hurt feelings.

I’m suspicious that the reason “causing offence” has become the media’s condemnation-term of choice is that any more sophisticated analysis would be an admission of the effect the media has on us in general.

Big media players have no desire to open that can of worms. Instead such claims are dismissed as patronising, eg: Jon Snow’s recent reply to the editors of Medialens:

"people are not as ignorant as you make them out to be..dont underestimate the viewer!"

This is wilful oversimplification, and only a stone’s throw from Pete and Dud, in the above sketch. Of course, bar the occasional freak incident (playing TARDIS in an old fridge, etc) the masses don’t feel compelled to copycat dangerous behaviour. But who said the political influence of news and fiction works to such simple patterns of cause and effect? One single uncritical appraisal of the Reagan years might not fool the public on its own, but it’s not on it’s own. It’s part of a week long media blitz, in the wake of two decades of omission. The true and important stories, the ones about bombing Tripoli and terrorising Nicaragua are the ones in the wilderness, the ones that have no chance of ‘fooling’ the public.

Ideology, the stuff that succeeds in making most Britons think that the occupied territories are under Palestinian occupation, comes at us in drips. A slow but relentless saturation. The public may not feel compelled to jump in a glove, but they can be made to completely invert complex historical events if enough of the right detail is left out, day after day, year after year. This conclusion is not insulting or patronising. It’s something we should all recognise in ourselves.

An extreme but by no means improbable example: Some pensioners live quite alone. Their last twenty years in the company of a television. Say during this time a sizeable immigrant population was sucked into the country, like West Indians into Britain in the fifties, or Hong Kong Chinese into Vancouver in the nineties. Without any direct contact with members of this ethnic group, where would one of these pensioners learn about the attitudes and habits of this new racial group? You can say with virtual certainty that it has to come from the telly and the papers (and perhaps a bit from Dolly at 42, who also lives with a telly). Every opinion our recluse has about that group must have been mediated by the mass media.

In turn, the opinions and actions of that pensioner may vary greatly depending on the stories the media decides to tell: Are these people here to help with a labour shortage or to sponge off our welfare system? Are they a proud diligent people, keen to abide by our customs, or just here to plant bombs and sell our children crack? Will our pensioner be happy to ask one of these people for help at the laundry, or limp-off down a back-alley in terror? All will be dictated by the narratives the mass media has tied to the group.

Like it or not, there’s something of this pensioner in all of us. My own opinion of what Indian people are like, or rather how they might differ from me, can be no more sophisticated than the memes about Indians I’ve obtained from the mass media, plus my personal encounters and acquaintances with Indians, which as it happens are quite numerous. But when it comes to, say, Maori’s, I’m little better than a lonesome pensioner. Everything I know of them is media memes, and it’s a very sparse jigsaw: Showing posterior to British royalty, obviously commendable, and “Once Were Warriors” which is obviously very frightening. Pity the poor Maori who gets stuck on the bus next to me. Imagine the questions I’d ask.

Of course I’m exaggerating, but not much. We can’t expect our opinions of strangers or of distant conflicts to be any more sophisticated than the facts and fictions we’ve been exposed to. Such patterns of cause and effect may be difficult to chart but it’s all still just cause and effect. Just because you can’t summarise it in a sentence (without sounding absurd) doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.

Insatiable Desires

2005-04-19T12:23:00.000+01:00

Insatiable Desires

………and they all lived happily ever after.

Whether it’s parents, clergy or advertisers spinning the yarn, there’s something fishy about eternal happiness. From a Darwinian perspective pleasurable sensations can only be fleeting. Functionally speaking, they’re an incentive, a reward for certain kinds of behaviour, not something to wallow in indefinitely. Limitless food, love, sex, drugs, wealth and prestige might sound nice(!) but it all wears thin, eventually. Pleasure arose because it kept us on our toes, not our backsides.

The model of the mind popularised by Stephen Pinker is modular, and to some degree genetically pre-programmed. Rather than a blank slate upon which environment sketches a personality, each mind comprises specific modules or ‘organs’ that have evolved in response to specific selection pressures.

To some extent this seems undeniable. Without any conscious intervention all normal humans develop capacities of hunger, thirst, and sexual desire. Whatever our upbringing, our brains seem pre-programmed to exhibit these drives. In Darwinian terms it’s not hard to imagine why. Those of our animal ancestors with a strong genetic disposition to pursue those goals passed on those genes. Those with lesser urges reproduced proportionally less. No surprise, we are the horny born of the horny, and the hungry born of the hungry.

More controversially, the model can be extended, positing an innate basis to more subtle psychological traits. The desire for prestige or kudos, for example, could be an innate feature of the human mind. Prestige can get you more food and more partners, so it too may have established a genetic basis, on the back of its own replication-enhancing effects. Similarly, the desire for material wealth, be it possessions or territory, seems a likely candidate for an evolved, rather than purely learned urge.

Although these organs are common to us all their strengths are not uniform, from person to person. Each of us suffer a different level of effect from each of our standard array of mental modules. To put it crudely, the master volume control on each organ may be set higher or lower, from person to person. Indeed, the noise from some can be so great as to almost drown the others out. Some of us seem innately more food-hungry, or sex-hungry, or power-hungry than the next (and some of us all three.) In as much as biology does dictate mental behaviour, human personality could be seen as the summation of the effects of these organs. In combination, their various outputs form the innate component of the psychological makeup of a given individual.

At which point the arguments spiral, even among those who agree in principle. Naturally, as the number of possible variables increases so does the uncertainty: How can we be sure that a specific behaviour is the consequence of a particular mental organ, rather than a learned trait? Which supposed module, drives which identified urge? Is envy a true organ of the mind, selected for it’s reproductive worth, or is it just a symptom of an unsatisfied prestige module? Is romantic love an innate capacity, or just the conjunction of a satisfied companionship module and an overheated lust organ?

For all the disagreement some version of the model seems only reasonable. However difficult it might be to map the landscape of the inborn component of human psychology, few can doubt that some such landscape exists. Indeed some of its features are quite clear and can provide useful landmarks while attempting to survey the surrounding terrain.

Which brings us back to pleasure. Rather than a drive in itself, pleasure can be seen as one of the means by which our drives compel us. Much as pains avert, pleasures encourage. In the main, we feel pleased when we get what we want, when we satisfy the urges our mind-organs foist upon us. True, sex, food, comfort and security don’t guarantee happiness, but equally true their absence tends to make us unhappy. We keep chasing them for the pleasure we hope they’ll bring.

Now it becomes plain why our capacity for sustained pleasure is so limited. Clearly there would be no replicative advantage in a feeling of pleasure that continued long after the period of reproductive advantage had passed. Pleasure wouldn’t help you to pass on your genes if it stayed with you long after a particular meal had been fully digested, when you could be concentrating on ensuring the next; or satisfaction regarding last night’s comfy bed when you haven’t worked out where you’ll be sleeping tonight; or fond memories of the sex you had last week when you could be fulfilling that urge again that evening.

Happiness is of no use in replication terms if it continues long after the act or event that prompted it. Indeed, a disproportionately prolonged high would be positively harmful to our chances of procreation. Like the committed heroin user, we could bask in the warm glow of pleasure while our lives fell about around us. The everlasting orgasm might sound attractive, but it won’t help you to reproduce, or get the housework done. At some appropriate point the anxiety has to kick back in, to get us up and chasing life again.

Clear as this might be, it’s not the easiest thing to remember when you’re clattering through the anxieties and insecurities of real life. When you’re suffering from an absence of a certain form of pleasure it can become all too easy to imagine that fulfilling that one desire would make you whole, happy and complete. If you haven’t had sex for a long time it can come to seem like it’s the only thing that matters, as if its fulfilment would obliterate all other anxieties. And of course it might, for a while. Indeed, that one moment of joy might leave you in a better position to handle all the other problems as they slide back into view. Nevertheless, there’s no long-term escape. At some point they will slide back into view. It’s how we’re built.

Just as sure, though often just as difficult to see, is the insatiable character of our desire for material provision. Of all human needs, this is the most fundamental, even overruling sexual desire when necessary. Everything has to take second place to food and shelter. The pleasure we derive from attaining such essentials (and the anxiety induced by their absence) is a reflection of their fundamental importance.

Given this vital role it’s understandable that many of us crave material excess. Throughout our evolution abundance has always been a rarity, too rare to make a dent in the evolved component of our psyche. In our entire history, scant few have led lives where basic material provision wasn’t a principal anxiety. For the great mass of modern humanity this is still very much the case. For those who still scrape a living it is difficult to imagine anything better than endless material abundance. When your own material provision is uncertain extreme wealth can look like a perfect state of being.

In truth though, there’s no escape. Not even for the wealthy. Anxiety doesn’t depart as riches arrive. You only have to look at the rich. If there’s one truly valuable thing to be learned from celebrity gossip it’s that the rich and famous aren’t any more satisfied than the rest of us. Wealth operates strictly to the law of diminishing returns. Beyond basic material security, and a certain level of luxury, every further penny buys less and less contentment.

Some won’t take the hint. They hope another Ferrari will make things right. But how many Ferraris can you own? If you already own three, how much happier can the fourth really make you, seriously? How many houses can you own, how many banquets can you attend, how many drugs can you take? As difficult as it is for us less wealthy to appreciate, the opulent are still just chasing their tails.

And of course material provision is only one human urge. Money alone can’t shut the others up: Lack of acclaim. Lack of critical acclaim. Critical acclaim but from the wrong quarters. Not having sex with the person you want to. Having sex with the person you want to but they look like they don’t mean it (perhaps they’re just after your money?) Children you’ve given the world to (materially) who now resent you, and take your wealth for granted.

Then there’s one form of material abundance that even the poor of the West can afford to be fooled by. One that also has us chasing our tails, and chasing ourselves to the grave. As with wealth in general, our genes have been little altered by food surpluses. In the main we’ve benefited from every calorie we could get our hands on. Accordingly, fatty, sugary food can be very comforting, in a chilly world. The chronic obesity that currently stalks the West bears testament. Like the fourth Ferrari, the fourth Big Mac won’t satisfy for long. The comfort soon passes and the angst is sucked back in, if anything enhanced by increased feelings of queasiness, ugliness and self-loathing.

None of which is to deny than we can engineer happiness, in the short-term. We do a fine job of subverting our urges. Contraception is a clear case of us cheating the functional aspect of sex and snatching the pleasure: Human Autonomy 1, DNA 0. But the overriding rule still stands. Even the best sex has to end. At some point the other drives loose patience, and start screaming for attention.

Similarly, drink and drugs can cause ecstatic sensations, feelings our bodies were keeping safe for moments of genuine achievement. With the right chemicals we can tap into the pleasures normally reserved for when we genuinely win the race, have the baby, feel appreciated, make a friend, improve the world, get the beloved. But as always it can’t go on indefinitely. At some point the high must end and the hangover begin.

For all its illogicality, the idea of enduring happiness continues to be a useful tool for the powerful. Whatever purpose the myth of heaven might currently serve, its history is littered with abuse. For centuries it’s been a successful means of suppressing the discontent of the poor: Accept your miserable station in life, for eternal happiness awaits. Fat chance. No more plausibly, advertisers promise heaven in the here and now. Lasting contentment is in fact attainable through the right kind of chocolate or car or soap powder. Just look at the ecstatic people in the adverts. Happy with your wash?

Any questioning of material excess is prone to the accusation of sour grapes. It’s difficult to criticise the lives of rich people without it sounding like jealousy (and to be sure, it’s in there somewhere.) But that doesn’t alter the fact of the matter. The notion of eternal joy is a myth, something we thumb-sucking humans couldn’t resist inventing. At best, this is always going to be a roller-coaster ride. No human has ever earned enough money, eaten enough food, or had enough sex to permanently escape the anxiety of simply being here. “Things still aren’t right, I still need something” is instinctive, built in, with us to the end.