Mark Steyn and Culture

Mark Steyn has a way of shocking me by producing some really good articles at times- I think he does this out of spite, he knows that I don't like some of his work and he wants me to be spinning in confusion unsure whether to like or dislike him. Sorry my sense of humour got the better of me tonight!

Anyway today Steyn has produced I think an excellent article about popular music and the need for a canon. It is really a wonderful defence of learning for the sake of appreciation. Basically Steyn's point is that you can't understand why the Beatles are great unless you understand why Bach is great. The two go together- to understand the one is to understand the other. He makes a point about the way that in order to understand something's greatness, you have to be able to see it in its context, to see what developed around it, why that move was important. Its crucial that Picasso could paint landscapes and had been trained because then his other paintings developed a meaning, its vital that Duke Ellington could play the classic solos because then he could use them in his own work. I agree completely with him: one of the wonders of artistic knowledge is the way that it supports itself. Every time I watch a new film, or read a new book (those being the two art forms I know) they tell me something about all those previous artworks I've seen and watched. And there is a strict heirarchy of knowledge in art- I would listen to Martin Scorsese for hours on film if I could because he has watched everything, and has interesting ideas about all of what he has seen.

Music is something sadly on which I'm not able to comment. One of the most illuminating moments of my life was sitting with a friend who understood music in a jazz bar in Prague. He described to me the way that what I saw as a cool sound, was actually the product of a complex interweaving of notes, a lattice of harmonies. Suddenly I saw music for a moment as this beautiful structure, which people played with, understood and manipulated- suddenly it became more than a simple nice tune, it became art, something I cared for and might grow to love. I think that appreciation is to be valued. It isn't easy to get to- appreciation of the arts is a real cost. Its something that takes time and effort, its something that you have to struggle to get to and it is something that relies on context. To take writing, its because I understand the history of English poetry that I can appreciate the opening line of the Wasteland, that April is the cruellest month- in that opening line Elliot tells us that everything that has gone before resting on Chaucer is wrong. That April is not the month of gentle showers but the month of cruelty. Poetry and novels are echoing always with previous works- the anxiety of influence was a disease that Harold Bloom diagnosed flowing through each and every author.

The great writers though manage to combine that with accessibility. I learnt to read novels- and I have to say watch films (the great twentieth century entertainment) because I began through enjoying them, I ended appreciating the same books. Most of the early readers started the same way, Jonathan Rose writes illuminatingly about the way that the first Labour MPs for example read Dickens, Carlyle, Ruskin and others and thought about them in their own way. There is a wonderful novel which really describes this process which unfortunately I can't lay my hands on right now- as soon as I find my copy I'll review it- but what shines through that book is the importance of embibing cultural classics to discovering the world of culture. The route to Austen is the route through Austen, the same goes for all the great writers and indeed for filmmakers from Orson Welles and Michael Curtiz to David Cronenberg. Its when you are bitten with the bug that you know that you have fallen in love and through falling in love you learn to appreciate and to link everything together and understand this lattice of things which all have been created partly for your pleasure.

Steyn is entirely right- you can enjoy the arts (I enjoy Music in this sense) without knowing much, but you enjoy them a hell of a lot more when you have exposed yourself to even more. Part of life is a continual adventure in self improvement- I definitely think that there are 'miles to go before I sleep' and probably will be when I'm dead- and I think that goes for art as well as anything else. There is always something 'further up and further in' to look at, there is always something which can prompt you to understand more or to reevaluate what was once familiar and now is strange. Sometimes I think in modern life we are too comfortable, the truth is that life is an adventure of understanding. For us who lag, it is worth looking up to those who are scaling the heights, but if they are worth looking up to then they are looking in admiration at the next climber. Nobody arrives at the summit, but the effort is what makes everything worth while- because by mastering that interesting novel you suddenly have another angle on human experience. Sitting down and saying no further is surrendering that knowledge and beauty that you might acquire by going up another notch- the world is limitless and its beauties are vast.

Steyn is right. To step back is folly, to stop is folly, and in this quest the canon (the works judged before by others as good) is a useful if not flawless guide. Relaxing in a comfort zone of the works written in your own culture or your own time is a waste- there is more to see and life is too short not to read that Egyptian novelist, see that Iranian film, find out about that twelfth century monk's poetry and listen to some Beethoven before going to watch Belle and Sebastien.

The End of Greek Asia Minor

At the end of the First World War, the great empires of Eastern Europe, the Russian, Austrian, Prussian and Ottoman all collapsed and were replaced with a variety of successor states. Some of those states were carved out by the treaties like Lausanne and Versailles after the war, others were essentially created by military facts on the ground- and in most cases the treaty recognised what had already happened. Its worth remembering that most of the territorial changes in Europe occurred far away from the areas in which the dominant powers at Versailles- the US, UK and France- had their troops- ie the North East corner of France. Look at a map of Western Europe in 1914 and the frontiers haven't changed really that much up to today, look at a map of Eastern Europe and the world is completely different.

What happened in 1918 in order to accomplish that, and happened in 1945 as well, was the massive transfer of populations across frontiers. We often think of that as a fairly harmless process- it wasn't. To take one example, for centuries, for millennia, numerous Greeks had lived in Asia Minor. Thales one of the first philosophers, if not the first, lived for example in Miletus on the coast of modern day Turkey. By the time of the Ottoman Empire, those people calling themselves Greeks still lived there- still constituted a large minority in cities like Istanbul, Smyrna and other places. In the period after World War One the Greeks and Turks battled over the frontier between their states, in 1922 the Greeks finally lost and withdrew from Asia Minor and as they did, the Greeks living there were forced out as well. I thought of this when I first heard of it, doing my history GCSE, as a fact of history, a bloodless fact- in fact of course it wasn't- there was great brutality.

Just to appreciate how horrible that process of ethnic movement was, its worth looking at some of the accounts from Greeks at the time. Thalia Pandiri has collected some and published translations in the International Literary Quarterly- I suggest you go and have a read, but what she describes is truly horrifying. Women with sticks driven through their bodies till they emerge coming out of their mouths. Some of the stories are equally horrifying for the poverty they display- women feeding children flour in water for example or walking for miles with a bag gripped between their teeth and a child in each hand. When they arrived in Greece, many of them found a less than hospitable reception awaiting them as well. Many of them afterall looked not to the new Greece but to the Russian Tsar, traditional protector of orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire, as their prince.

Bringing up old atrocities has more purpose to just wallowing in misfortune. The experience of Greeks moving from Asia Minor to European Greece was horrific, but it is relatively unknown. It highlights something though of worth to consider- that moving populations is always difficult. You encounter the fact that people don't want to leave their homes, you encounter the fact that newcomers aren't always welcome when they arrive. That is even true, when unlike say in Palestine, the moving population are in the end absorbed by another population- as in the Greek case where most of the immigrants report that they did eventually become successful Greeks. Ultimately though the experience of the Greeks moving across from Asia to Europe reminds us of two things: firstly that we should not be blase about moving populations around the globe- should for example climate change result in the destruction of Bangladesh we would see the events of Asia Minor on an even greater scale even if we found somewhere for those people to go. Secondly and perhaps more importantly, it reminds us of our own powerlessness. By the end of World War One, there was barely an army around apart from those of the Western Allies and even then in Eastern Europe, it was the facts on the ground that mattered, not the pious declarations from Paris, London and Washington. International politics requires modesty as well as ambition.

Al Qaeda targets 15 year olds

An interesting piece in the Guardian reports comments from the MI5 head, Jonathan Evans, that increasingly Al Qaeda is targetting its recruitment efforts at younger and younger Muslims. In particular the organisation is looking to young British Muslims in their teens. Obviously the teenage years are amongst the prime years for people to form adult identities. One of the issues surrounding that is that people in their teenage years are often uncomfortable or unsure about where they are and what they are. They are thus prime for recruitment by groups like Al Qaeda which offer a strong identity and a purpose to life at a time when most people are going through confused emotional tempests.

Part of the problem of course is what we do about this- ultimately it comes down in part to a working education system which isn't segregated (segregation is a wonderful way to manufacture resentment from afar). No doubt, youth workers, youth organisations, parents and mosques (as well as a host of others that I've forgotten) can help as well but the spectacle of the teenage suicide bomber may grow depressingly familiar as we go into the future.

Conspiring with them Liberal Lefties

Well the Liberal Left Conspiracy came to the internet today- obviously as a group it has existed for a long time- liberals and lefties, the gay mafia, the illuminati and the free masons not to mention commies and various others have been conspiring for years which is why they have been quite so successful on both sides of the Atlantic in maintaining their control over the world. I am one of the conspirators as anyone looking at the roster will know- and I have to say I'm proud to be. The right has organised brilliantly on the internet- and Conservative Home is a really good clearing house for rightwing ideas- I know some of the best rightwing bloggers like say Matt Sinclair have written there. There isn't really any equivalent place to meet leftwing people and discuss politics on the net- Labour home is not as good as Conservative Home, its often too insular and focused in on Labour party internal affairs, other places are dominated by different sectional interests- its time the left came together in the UK on the net- and this is one option, lets hope it succeeds for doing that.

Ok lets turn to the whole idea of the liberal left- what does it mean to be on the liberal left and why do those words fit together. Lets define them first: broadly speaking I think that to be on the left is to be concerned about equality, and that to be liberal is to be concerned about freedom. The point about equality is that it produces freedom. Wealth is power- money would be nothing unless it had a value and that value is the goods and services it commands. The more wealth that someone has and the more independent that wealth from the interference of others, the freer they are to gain what they want in life. Rightwingers believe that the only obstacle to a free will is a state: they are right that the state can be a significant obstacle to the exercise of a free will, noone with any knowledge of this century could deny that and many on the left stood against the state as it limited the freedom of will (Orwell is a great example) but rightwingers are wrong to say that it is only the state which obstructs freedom. Corporations do too- and even the wealthy can obstruct liberty- both can use the state as well in their own interests- you could argue that that is what the British libel laws do.

Equality is married to freedom thus at a fundamental level- because without equality I cannot be free. Its encapsulated in that old piece of wisdom that beggars can't be choosers- something that the right tend to forget. This isn't an argument for state socialism, it could be but it isn't. It isn't an argument for any particular vision of society. But it is an argument that you cannot have real freedom without having equality, that you cannot be concerned about liberal things, without being concerned about leftwing things. And that goes as well for many of the other battles that the left are involved in, freeing women from the dominion of their husbands, freeing homosexual people from the legal restrictions of those that don't share their morality, freeing the innocent from the tyranny of a despot who would rather hold us all in jail than listen to any of us. All these things are both leftwing and liberal- how they are achieved is a totally separate issue but they can only be acheived if we think about equality and freedom together and try to acheive both through our policies.

That's why I'm conspiring for the liberal left (though I have to say this blog will remain basically what it has always been)!

Cultural Amnesia

Clive James is a figure unlike most others in our world- James has made a career of being an omnivore. From the chatshow couch to the comic circuit to the learned essay, James has succeeded everywhere he has gone. Writing and broadcasting, he has turned his natural wit to good account and provided a series of sparkling memoirs to furnish the bookshelves of the learned with. Cultural Amnesia, his latest book, is a fine effort to capture the unique folds of James's own mental landscape- he provides a short essay on over 100 cultural characters mainly from the last century. All the essays come out of a single quote- and often James doesn't even pause to ponder the life, instead pondering the importance of that quote.

The quoted range from Duke Ellington to Hegel, Federico Fellini to Margerate Thatcher, from Tacitus and Edward Gibbon to Coco Chanel and Adolf Hitler. The range is astonishing- though the absense of any scientists is equally astonishing. James mentions an Albert Einstein but its the musician not his more famous namesake and relative the physicist. Indeed science is one of the leading absenses from the collection which is biassed very much towards the arts. Analytical philosophy is also underepresented- we have an essay on Wittgenstein but characteristically in it philosophy students are dismissed for giving him the 'credit for everything that would have struck them if they had ever been left along with the merest metaphysical lyric from the early seventeenth century.' The Wittgenstein that matters to philosophers is the one that 'they can prove only to each other' and what James is interested in is the Wittgenstein that matters to the writer- to the humanist.

For that is what this book really is, a monument to what we might call humanism. A humanism that sees the limits of the human as surely as it does the extent of his range. James is limited- but to stress that is to undermine really his acheivement here- which is to gather and express particles of knowledge and understanding across many fields and many languages. He gets some judgements wrong- he dismisses Edward Gibbon as a poor stylist. James tells us that 'what he [Gibbon] wrote rarely lets you forget that it has been written'- possibly that's true but its also Gibbon's virtue and not to see that is to miss what Gibbon was trying to do and therefore to criticise him by a standerd he wasn't attempting to reach. James doesn't get Gibbon's historical breadth or depth either- doesn't see that the styllistic tics are made up for by the fact that Gibbon was another such as James who spanned centuries in a massive project that will probably never be attempted let alone completed again.Quotation has this feature that it inspires you to seek out the epigram- the fragment that illuminates rather than the rolling cadence of prose. Martial the great Latin poet is perhaps the most eminently quotable of Latin poets in that what he wrote was bitchy and short, James in these essays has the same quality. Like the greatest essayists he can skewer wonderfully. He can also at his best capture real nuance- his description of Edward Said in this sentence is perfect, 'As a critic and man of letters he has an enviable scope but it is continually invaded by his political strictness'. It captures the many sidedness of Said- the political lack of nuance which led him to some cartoonish descriptions of orientalists and of the orient but also the greatness- for Said who always recognised Israel and wanted Palestinians to recognise the sorrows of the Jews was a great man. James is able to capture that and through a quotation of Said's about the Battle of Algiers, bring to life the double sidedness of Said.

But this book is not all nuance. James is more often than not on the good side and vows war against those who cravenly boosted tyranny. He writes eloquently about the Manns- Heinrich, Thomas and Golo- all of whom resisted Hitler from outside the boundaries of exile. Of all the praise though it is that devoted to Sophie Scholl which most resonated with me. Scholl, James tells us, 'was probably a saint' and died in complete silence. What James wants to do with praise is make us think- he points to the fact that in his judgement despite the fact that there is a perfect actress for the role alive today (Natalie Portman) Scholl should never be portrayed by Hollywood. The finality of her end is her tragedy- far better for it to be a more obscure German film starring the unknown Julia Jenstch to portray her for the public so that they too understand the finality of the fall of the ax upon her neck shut out one of the true heroines of the twentieth century and sent her to darkness.

If Scholl volunteered to die, despite the fact she did not have to, to make a point against an odious regime, then James rightly eviscerates those who have supported those odious regimes. Though Sartre is his betenoir- he hates Sartre's evading of responsibility, hates the fact that 'Sartre was called profound because it sounded if he was either that or nothing' but ultimately his essay on Sartre is not the most interesting. Rather I think it is the essay on a much slighter figure- Peirre Drieu La Rochelle- a leading intellectual of Vichy that really made me think. For what he captures in that essay is the moment of victory in 1945, when the Germans were driven out and La Rochelle committed suicide. The key fact for James though is to evaluate the hysteria- a hysteria he informs us drily that Sartre backed and that Camus (who actually had a resistance record) disdained (though Camus thought there ought to be a reckoning). He leaves us in no doubt of the guilt of Pierre Drieu La Rochelle- but also paints a picture of France in those years which is terrifyingly accurate.

Totalitarianism is one of the foci of this book- James argues long and hard against it. Whether it is Communist or Fascist, he suggests it is deeply repugnant and you get the sense that he thinks that clear writing, thinking and reading are its enemies. As he said recently to Stephen Colbert, intellectuals get things wrong all the time- but they get them wrong less than those who don't open themselves to intellectual pursuits. In reality this book is a book about heroes- but it is not a book about heroism. The essay structure enables there to be a convincing absense of structure- in the sense that James is not interested in archetypes but in individuals- his essays are at their most effective when they describe either of two things- the impact of writing upon him as an individual or the way that this individual's career worked. An essay on Nadezhda Mandelstam is incredibly effective at making you realise the pain that she must have felt as the Stalinist machinery of death whirled past her windows. It drives you to the reality of the statistics.

Though James is reassuringly committed to the dry substance of the real world, he is most acute when he focuses on individual experiences, exploring them and rendering them to his reader. His selection is driven, as he argues in his essay on Chris Marker, by the solidity of the facts that he sees and understands but his talent is for explaining experience. This is a book which is unashamedly focused on reality- James gives postmodernism and its creeds of unreality very short shrift indeed. He is openly contemptuous of philosophical relativism and disdain for truth- openly praises the empirical and solidly researched. He bases his love for art upon a respect for reality.

James's range of understanding in this book is incredible. James is a great evoker of what other authors do and write and film and play. He can convey the meaning of others' statements in such a way as to make you want to read and listen to and watch their books, music and films. He makes you want to stroll down the streets of Vienna in particular and pop into the cafes to hear the arguments and consume the culture. He makes you want to open the books, to understand what Contini means when he says that you need to learn poetry. He creates a desire in you to leap from cultural tree to tree- as James himself in these essays does- referring for instance in an essay on Marc Bloch to the seductions and disappointments of Pound's poetry. He made me want to learn languages- to read these authors in their original tongues and capture the calligraphy of sound that they all employed.

Ultimately there isn't a greater compliment for a book like this than to say that- to say that this book is like the trunk of a great tree, along whose branches if you pursue them are fruit much more gaudy than anything found in the original bark. This is a book that leads to other books. Its a book that can be read at one sitting or dipped into- yes there are mistakes and there are manifold errors. But to forgive someone for misunderstanding that Gibbon is amongst the greatest English historians requires a great acheivement and this book is a great and interesting acheivement.

Scorsese interview

Martin Scorsese being interviewed in the late nineties- always a treat.

Analytical Blogging again

The other day I wrote an article on analytical blogging, which got some negative attention from Dizzy, who makes a fairly amusing point against it though personally I'm not as convinced as he is that intelligence is only reserved for the elite. Its interesting as well that modern conservatives often have tended towards being unabashedly in favour of populism- that reinforces one of my feelings that modern conservatism and other historical forms of conservatism are not the same- I can't imagine Edmund Burke or Hayek even giving three cheers for the Sun in the way that Dizzy does!

However that isn't the main point of this post. Matt Sinclair asks a much more interesting question about smart people and blogging, and I think he is right to ask it and the answer in the case of this blog demonstrates something which I think is interesting. Matt asks "Why should someone with interesting and novel things to say use the blogosphere as a medium?", he goes on to deliver some interesting answers, all of which depend mostly on the community as a whole providing a forum. Matt imagines that blogging is a bit like an intellectual salon on the net, in which we can throw around ideas, as he rightly points out that presumes a membership, there is no point talking to onesself.

Somebody asked me on my thread about this, why I don't do more analytical work on politics. I do a bit, but nowhere near what Chris Dillow does on Stumbling and Mumbling- and I think this ties into another reason to maintain a blog, which is one of the basic reasons that Westminster Wisdom (the title is partly ironic) exists. This blog really isn't an analytical policy blog- though I do occasionally rummage through politics and policy, its really a purely egoistic exercise. For me a blog is the equivalent of an 18th Century common place book, ie its where I put down my impressions of the world so I can go back to them. An interesting quote, a fun video, a film review, even a review of a novel, anything which makes me remember how I reacted to something for the first time.

I think that is a valid reason to keep a blog- partly because experience flows past me at such a rate that I can never really grab hold of it. Throughout my life, amongst my major vices is forgetfulness, and that means that I often lose hold of what I should know or should remember. Here I have a resource to which I can turn, when I want to, to find out about say Rousseau's walks or Bresson's Joan of Arc. Part of that is it forces me to think about what I see and read more acutely than ever before: because I know I'm going to have to write an article up here on it. That makes me look deeper and try and understand more. Its also a good resource to remember what an idiot I am occasionally- there are moments on this blog where I know I've been a complete fool- reminding onesself of that is a good thing and doing it on a blog is fairly harmless. (Which in a way brings me back to Dizzy, acute mockery of your own pretensions is always a good thing to read!)

In answer to Matt's question therefore- I think there is another reason- in addition to the good ones he has given- for a person to keep a blog and that is as an online diary. Afterall that is what blogs started off being- and I wonder whether in the end that will be their principle use.

LATER Incidentally Dizzy should probably go and watch this.

Glamour Politics

Chris suggests on his blog that all those that report on politics are interested in is glamour not policy. I was quite stunned to read that, having just seen the perfect example, a BBC reporter reporting on the latest report to call into question the efficacy of the government's education spending on literacy didn't bother to analyse whether the report was right or not- oh no she dived straight into what the political consequences of the report might be. No words about how we might evaluate it, what the basis of it was, what teachers thought, why this spending hadn't worked, no real indication about how to judge it for the viewing public, just the kind of reporting that would suffice for a playground- oh there's been a supernova, that means Gordon's down and Dave's up and its all good. That report and the general gossipy tone of BBC news is a great argument for ditching the entire organisation- and sacking all those involved for doltish stupidity!

Averages

The Political Umpire wonderfully fisks Melanie Phillips's bigotry at his blog. He also points out I think something that Melanie and indeed many seem not to grasp- the distinction between an average and a definition. If for instance it were true that on average people with blonde hair are cleverer than those with brown hair, it wouldn't mean anything in terms of whether a particular blonde person was cleverer or less clever than the average brunette. If however it is part of the definition of say a dolphin to be less articulate than a monkey, then it is indeed justifiable to treat them differently. That Phillips doesn't understand that distinction is worrying. That the Political Umpire does is reassuring.

Two interesting articles

I thought I'd note two articles that have been published.

Firstly there is my own article about Leon for the Bright Lights Film Journal. Leon is a really interesting film that makes you reflect about what it means to be adult. What I would argue is that there is a teleology within Leon which is very interesting. Leon is a film in which one of the characters may die because he has fully become adult. That is an interesting and constant idea throughout human life- we talk of a full life implying that a life may be complete. We talk of the culmination of acheivements, which implies that there is such a thing. Its a very interesting mental trick that we perform- and is a thought which recurs through major philosophies and religions. The idea of culmination and an end to a process I think is about our use of the analogy of life as a task. Ultimately we tend to imagine life is something like an exam- we work to its completion. But actually it isn't- my own experience demonstrates that life is much more incomplete, much less teleological than that. Most lives end not at a full stop but mid-sentence. To imply otherwise is comfortingly incorrect.

Secondly there is an article, which thankfully is not by me. This article reflects on the scientific facts behind rumours of Vampires, Ghosts and various other ghouls. It is a very interesting discussion. The discussion of zombies in particular is interesting because it brings me to something which I think is one of the distinguishing marks of scientific thought. Ultimately in the cases of zombiefication, which these two attribute to a particular method of poisoning, the people concerned did see something which was similar to a zombie but their attribution of the cause of that was wrong. The magical explanation infers a vast other world of supernatural power- whereas actually all we need to discuss is the particular poison found in a particular fish. It isn't that the people observing are incorrect, it is that their assumption that the occurance is magical is incorrect- they assume too much to explain that which they cannot understand and don't conceive of the fact that there are more facts about the natural world to be discovered, rather than a whole other world that exists to explain ours.

Both of these ideas- teleology and magical explanation- are buttresses to much of our philosophy and religion. Both are in my view contrary to experience and consequently to be rejected, but they seem attractive. Our mental equipment is rigged for evolutionary reasons in various ways- to accept the definition of existance in anthropomorthic ways- as a task to be completed for example- which helps us survive but doesn't help us to explain the world in which we live.

The Halloween Blogpower Roundup!

I am honoured today to be rounding up some of the best posts from the Blogpower collective over the last month- Hallowe'en having just passed (thanks to the ever precise Higham for a spellcheck), we have the ghoulish and the ghostly and the downright despicable, there are skeletons falling out of cupboards, poltergeists messing with the constitution, fiends in the comment boxes and other nasty surprises. Oh yes this is one for you to read with a nice cup of tea by a warm fire as the wind whispers the names of the long dead in your ears.

And so our tale begins, on a dark and windswept night, with curious Yew Berries deposited through the forest, I made my way with some friends over to the Blogpower camp. LadyM waxed lyrical about dinners she had had in Morocco, but even she was struck dumb when she saw how Welshcakes welcomed in the winter. Everyone was feeling good: leaning back and looking at the planets with Crushed by Ingsoc, marvelling with Mutley at the decline of the Chuckle Brothers, just agreeing with Ruthie that having Little C around makes everything worthwhile and looking at Age in the Mind's snaps of Tokyo James was sitting in a corner wondering about being alone until his commenters came over with one of Tuscan Tony's ice cream black puddings- James looked quite green for the rest of the evening! To be honest I got slightly worried when all these people started chatting with Ellee about how they weren't superstitious but believed in ghosts- slight logical problem methinks and often logical problems lead to disaster in the blogosphere!

But all seemed quiet, all was pleasant and we were all settling down in sleeping bags- though Ruthie was absorbing the patter of the rain on her tent wall, self imposed insomnia she calls it whilst JMB lay dreaming of things that might have been. Suddenly there was a scream- no it wasn't Baht at seeing a last remnant of the Bradford textile industry, it wasn't even the Pub Philosopher having another nightmare as he tried to work out Gordon's Bill of Rights it was much much worse than that. It wasn't even as bad as that image of Gordon and a Badger that Harry had put into my brain earlier that evening. My bones rattle as I tell of this horror. It was the sight of a government, that doesn't and I tremble to type the words, know right from wrong.

That is right, screams clogged the frosty air as we all realised, as we all saw houses demolished before our very eyes, Ian from Shades of Grey heard a spectral voice intoning the Queen's Speech, one voice tried to lure Stephen Bainbridge away from his tent with promises of liberty, Stephen like a sane fellow was able to resist and one very odd ghost kept on turning round and round talking about the morality of marriageBut all around us a cacophony of voices were raised in mutinous tumult. All around us the threat grew- the threat we realised of dead speechwriters arisen from their graves and coming back to torment us- the Dodo team had told us of their deaths why oh why hadn't we listened and realised they might return. I felt as isolated as George Bush. In all this noise no artist could hope to be heard without aggressive marketing. Not even a dog hero or a good strategy to get us out of Iraq could save us now. Indeed now down came hordes of creepy things, personages of absolute vileness, some of us later dressed up like them and JMB got the pics- imagine those things flying out of a darkened forest on a rainy windy night!

Well as I'm sure you are all aware, the Blogpower universe has special resources. Yeah that's right some of us can give numbers and words colours, some of us can imagine a room with a view anywhere we go. While Jams wracked his brains about what we could learn from nuclear disasters when facing ghosts and Andrew stoically reminded everyone that as David Cameron has just found out a week is a long time in politics and these guys couldn't go on for ever, Crushed distracted the ghosts on Ian Appleby's site with a history of the Catholic Church's attitude to science. Just as he finished up popped Theo with a story about pilots in World War Two and how two had found each other years later. But it was a new man, on his first outing, who worked it out- suddenly the long haired hippy by my side struck his head and said "I know its those long commenters, get a code of conduct and we can drive away the trolls on whom the ghosts rely for food"- everyone nodded and we all started frantically deleting all those long ad hominem anonymous commenters! Nothing if not resourceful, Heather suddenly said hey this is just informational overload, what we need is a strategy to filter the ghosts and take them on one by one, just like the internet you can't deal with more than one ghost at a time or more than one website.

They were still attacking but now we had their measure. Welshcakes found a particularly repellent ghoul and sent him away by telling him he would repress the internet, Tony sent Jacques Delors's ghost reeling by summing up Europe in about 200 words. The Tin Drummer struck with a well aimed literary joke. The Wardman Wire punched Alex Salmond back to the ropes with a great hit. It was swinging our way! These weren't ghosts, they were just politicians armed with faulty statistics and alarmist health reports. Thunderdragon caught one of the health scares and stripped him of his white cloak and found a host of untruths hiding below. The Norfolk Blogger recognised how self interested they were, protecting their own funding. Ghosts hate generosity so when Tom Paine threw out a link to Prodicus they shuddered.We were all in accord and the ghosts, they vanished as quickly as they had come, the noise repressed, the arguments destroyed, the ghouls vanquished!

We fell to a swift slumber- and then morning arrived and time to discuss what had happened. James was absolutely clear, the bloggers have neglected the main issue again, we'd let the ghost's take over. He nominated that we all reread what Crushed said about a UK President. His Lordship pointed out that too much idiocy existed in the world, I argued that there weren't any good lists of geniuses out there. The meeting dissolved in chaos- but at least we had driven off the ghosts and ghouls- that is until next month!

John Bull can't Blog

Sunny Hundal is one of the best bloggers in the UK, and he has identified a real problem in the British blogosphere. With certain exceptions most British blogs have tended to fit, to use Matt's categories most British blogs tend to be either investigative or gossip blogs. There aren't that many analytical blogs around- though I've metntioned two of the best there are very few, and the emphasis on getting better as a blogger is on attracting readers through stories. The main focus amongst British bloggers is in finding the latest ministerial scandal or in working out the latest infraction by the European Union. The problem is as Sunny rightly says, that that means that the British blogosphere is impoverished. There aren't many British counterparts say to Dan Drezner or Crooked Timber in the States, who whatever you think of them, publish a great deal of detailed academic material and attempt to work with it.

The problem is not that there aren't any such bloggers around- I've cited both Matt Sinclair and Chris Dillow and there are more out there who could and do this kind of blogging. Part of the problem is promotion- myself and Ashok and Ian Appleby have often had discussions about how to promote analytical blogs and blogging. I'm not sure as to how to make that work- but I do think that it is something that is missing from the whole British blogging scene. The British blogging scene at the moment is little more than an echo chamber to the mainstream media- someone like Guido for all his vaunted efforts- echoes the ideas and concepts of the media. Even a blogger like Mr Eugenides who takes apart the efforts of the mainstream media still follows its agenda- real analytical bloggers are the only way to actually make this medium independent from the mainstream media. The first indication that bloggers aren't parasitic will come when the bloggers actually start manufacturing ideas which cross into the real world. Despite the critiques of Eugenides or the scandals found by Guido the real moment of independence is when the blogosphere actually becomes somewhere which manufactures thought and concepts.

We shall see if that ever happens, but Sunny is right, until then the British blogosphere remains what it has been for a long time- a rather large parasite but nothing more than that and definitely nothing of significance.

Lady Thatcher

Lady Thatcher is a genius. Like most sensible people she has decided to get a cat not a dog. One of the great divides in life is between cat people and dog people, let me say that I'm really pleased that Lady Thatcher is on the right side of that divide!

Nightmare Alley

"Is it some quality of the crystal itself or does the gazer merely use it to turn his gaze inward"

Nightmare Alley is not an easily classifiable film- it deals with all sorts of topics from alcoholism to promiscuity to psychology to the con artists at a carnival. No statement can be taken to mean what you might think it does- this is a film in which everyone is a con artist, repeating each other's cons. Indeed the line I quote above recurs twice in the film- first mouthed by an old decaying drunk, secondly by the main character as he decays into drunkenness himself. Made by the Hollywood star Tyrone Power but supressed for years by a legal dispute, the film chronicles the rise and fall of the Great Stanton, a carnival magician who rises to become an artist at exploiting and manipulating the follies of upper class Chicagans. He uses a code with his wife to guess the content of questions, the way that she accents words and the way that she asks him what the questions are gives him the clue to perform an act of translation and tell his audience what the questions are even though he has not seen them. The Great Stanton is linked throughout his career to three women, a older woman Zeena who gives him the code, a younger woman, Molly, who he has an affair with and then marries and a psychiatrist Lilith whose information he uses to con wealthy clients.

The tale involves more than just mesmerism though. It is in part an inquisition into the principle of holding an immoral job. Stanton rises by fooling and lying his way through society for the good ends of others- he offers them consolations that they have no way of detecting as fakes. Stanton suggests to them that their dead loved ones are happy, that their futures are fortunate and that their lives are bound to improve. The only accurate predictions in this film though are pessimistic- Stanford sells his prescriptions like sugared sweets to children. By the end of the film though Stan is reduced to becoming a carnival Geek, the man who swallows live chickens and beetles, who performs every disgusting act in order to curl up in a dry corner with a bottle of whisky. As Stan tells the carnival operator who offers him the job, he was 'made for it'. The revelation though isn't a revelation- he has been a Geek throughout, prostituting what he enjoys to what he needs. He needs the corner and the whisky, and in a sense all his fraudulent activity has been committed throughout to providing what a Geek provides- entertainment at the price of indignity and immorality. This criticism of capitalism reduces all employment to geekdom- as Matt Sinclair argues it is other regarding but it directs itself to the deepest wells of human immorality, the desire to see a freak eating a live chicken, the desire for fake reassurance and accomplishes those ends through fraud, deception and degredation.

The quote I just mentioned above lends itself to a further examination of the film, for this film is also all about perception. Most of the characters speak endlessly about the truth- whether its the truth of a psychologist like Lilith or of a carnival girl who believes in God and tarot cards like Molly. Both the psychologist and the carnival people are in a profession that demands that they claim knowledge of the truth. In both cases the central idea is that they are lying, betraying the truth to convince the chumps with money that they are, as Stanton tells a client, like a prophet of old. Soothing truths like balm to wounded souls, become poison as the deception is revealed- or else remain merely potentially poisonous as the truth is not revealed. Ultimately at the heart of the carnival is a certain truth- in that Molly and the others actually believe to a certain extent in God and fortune, tarot cards and angels. Whether Lilith believes anything is another matter- she convinces people that they are mad to twist them to her own ends. And as for Stanton he unites his desires to his morality, wedding them together, he persuades himself that what he wants is good and those desires are too fraudulently deceive. There are no truths here which are immune from the huxter's profession, that every boy has a dog, that every human has desires and the point is to convince them of the truth that suits them, the truth that they want and not the truth that exists. In that sense capitalism creates the lie.

The movie is underwritten by a spiritualist position which sees that lie as important. The writer of the original book, Bill Gresham (married to Joy Gresham who later became C.S. Lewis's wife) evolved from being a communist to being a Christian- I to be honest couldn't swear as to where in his evolution the concepts of the book evolved from. But definitely here there is a very sexist view of women- masculine women are to be shunned, feminine women to be embraced and there are several indications that there is some reality behind spiritual phenomena. Furthermore in the character of Molly we are offered an alternative ethical vision to the capitalist, a vision of self denying, self sacraficing love as the pillar of existance. A love for one man that only acknowledges one other obligation, that to the moral code of the creator. The film cares so deeply about the lies its characters tell in the service of their careers precisely because it considers that the truth is important- leaving open the question of whether like me you disagree with the truth advanced, you can disagree that the lie is important.

The movie is Christian in one particularly interesting way- like most Christian philosophy it places a huge emphasis on relationships. The point of the film is that all of its relationships are corroded and broken up by the economic imperative of greed. Stanford goes through three women in the film. His first relationship he enters into with an older woman to get the code that she knows to con crowds of people. He sleeps with her for that code and in the end obtains it. But because its a fraudulent relationship as soon as he gets that code he discards her in favour of the girl he really loves, Molly. His relationship with Molly is broken by the fact that he Stanton refuses to live a good life. Molly in the end deserts him because of that- though at the end of the film when all his ability to do evil is destroyed there is an implication that she returns to him. Lastly there is Lilith, who uses him for her own ends- again its a relationship where there is real passion but again the passion is overlaid by greed and again that fact means that it is doomed.

What we see with Molly is a moral individual being held up to the light of the screen. That moral individual enables us to get some anchors in the world again- otherwise we might decay into hermiticism. The problem is that really the issue here is with other people and the distinction between appearance and reality. It brings back the argument between Rousseau and Smith. Gresham seems to argue that some kind of moral principle is neccessary to living with others- some kind of 'real' other regarding or 'real' sympathy. He doesn't define this and possibly he can't. The issue though that he exposes is less a positive vision than a negative one- it is that capitalism allows even constrains us to fake sympathy and morality in order to immoral and ultimately unsympathetic ends. Matt argues that capitalism promotes morality, what Gresham suggests is that it doesn't promote morality, it promotes the appearance of morality. His point is Rousseau's against Smith, that true sympathy is not created by capitalism, only a fake sympathy. People are regarded as objects to be deceived not as entities to be loved. In that way Molly though she too works in a deception is a true human being because she still loves, but she will never be as successful as Lilith is because she has a mark at which she stops her deceits.

If Nightmare Alley propounds a view of the world ultimately that view of capitalism is very very pessimistic. Unlike Matt, no watcher of this film can be sure that other regarding actions neccessarily proceed from a system in which your value depends on others, fraud and deception abound in the world of the film not merely in the world of the carnival. Indeed there are ways in which the carnival world is more moral than the world of the upper class caricatured in the second half of the movie. Molly's tricks are less repulsive than Lilith's partly because Molly has not been captured by her tricks, wheras Lilith wealthier and more selfish has. Personally I find the spiritual dimension of the film less convincing, that's partly I think because Gresham was moving between various positions and had not yet adopted one (I'm not sure what an orthodox Christian would think of Tarot Cards!) but also because the film doesn't really explore it- there are many things which could be spiritual but also could be purely natural. And one thing the film does teach you is to beware that there could be a huxter round every corner waiting to deceive you.

This is a fascinating film- and there is much more to it than just what I have written- as ever there are interesting things to think about here which I haven't touched on from sex to alcoholism and the nature of addiction. But central to it all I think is this perception of the corrosive influence of capitalism upon our habits, that living in an other regarding society can turn us all into fraudsters and destroy our closest relationships as we seek that popularity known as profit. The point is extreme and in its extremity wrong- not all employment is geekdom. But the point that capitalism undermines true sympathy is an accurate one- and the issue that that points to in morality is a central problem that we live with constantly. This is neither a Randian individualistic manifesto (we are looking for real sympathy and not to abolish sympathy) nor is it a particularly positive manifesto (these problems may be endemic). What it does though is offer a corrective to the too easy view that if an action is other regarding, it is sympathetic. Gresham and the director and actors suggest it isn't.

Ultimately capitalism at its worst turns us from relationships to dependance, from love to avarice and most importantly from truth to deceit. The film invites us to look into the crystal of the screen and perceive there the deformation of our own eye.

Ideology and Politics

Gary Kamiya argues at Salon that one of the consequences of the Bush administration is the ideological defeat of a certain strand of American Conservatism. Kamiya is not alone in doing such analysis- many political commentators have proved over the years surprisingly inept at describing ideological change- and particularly at predicting when it will happen. That is in part because as in Kamiya's case most predictions are actually aiming for persuasion and not prediction: the pundit argues that the national trend goes in a certain way because he wants others to follow that trend. Partly and this is the case here, the commentator overestimates the impact of either conventional wisdom today or of the reputation and competence of a particular political figure.

For example, the conventional wisdom today holds that George Bush was wrong to invade Iraq and would be wrong to invade Iran. Those are both perfectly legitimate opinions- indeed I myself incline to both of them- and yet they are opinions that may well be discredited by events. Conventional Wisdom in 2003 said the opposite and was wrong and it may well be as wrong today in predicting disaster in the Middle East should the present strategy continue. We may change our minds about this historical moment- it is difficult to see in the present hour through the fog of uncertainty- and it is worth remembering that Presidents before have been unpopular only to become popular later on. Harry Truman was hated when he left office- but now is lauded by everyone across party for his policies in the Cold War. That isn't to imply that Bush's reputation will neccessarily change- and too many on the right take comfort from the fact that reputations have changed in the past (some of course did not change- Lord North is still seen as an incompetent as he was at the time)- but equally its worth remembering that in ten years or twenty years time things may have changed.

One thing though will have changed and that is this. Ten years from now, George Bush will not be the most prominent conservative politician in America. In four years time, it will be someone else who is the big issue for the country heading into another Presidential election. Politics is an unforgiving business and once you are in the past, you are history. Bush therefore won't neccessarily still be the name the public associates with conservatism in the next twenty years- other figures will emerge. And that means that some of Bush's most egregious faults- his incompetence in particular will fade from the public consciousness. We should not mistake ideological decline for the decline of individuals within the political sphere- we should not mistake the temporary effects of a bad Presidency for something longterm. Afterall it is still very possible for a Republican to win in 2008. Furthermore it is not always bad Presidencies or Presidents that end ideological dominance- Warren Harding was one of the worst Presidents of the century and yet he was succeeded by two Republicans. Herbert Hoover may have been one of the best qualified but was faced by a crisis that he couldn't deal with and so it was with his Presidency that the Republican run ended and the Democrats took the White House for the next twenty years.

Political commentators tend in my observation to believe too much in hidden historical rules and moments of intellectual confusion. In truth there are defenders even of Bush's strategy in Iraq, something that should give us pause to think. Ideological change happens often on a much more personal level- one might think in the US for instance of the way that each President gives his party a temporary brand. Margerat Thatcher was indispensible to Conservative ideological change in the UK- no great force propelled her forwards, had Whitelaw or Howe been leader the history of the party and country might well have been very different. Its worth remembering the role of accident in all of this as well- history is a chaotic set of events- as chaotic as an individual life (and its worth remembering how chaotic one's life is- one of my best mates in the blogosphere is Ashok, I met him because I was searching for a post for a philosophy carnival I was running which was on a post 1900 philosopher, did a blogsearch for Heidegger and his blog came up). That being said some ideologies are obviously vulnerable to not providing an agenda which meets the needs of a particular moment- one wonders how a depression would change the consensus around globalisation- but we should be cautious. Mr Bush's departure will change America and American conservatism in particular, but the ways that it does that are not obvious even now- and would be very different depending on whether its President Huckabee, President Giuliani, President Clinton or President Obama in 2009.

Genius!

Well it had to happen- a management consultancy has come up with a list of geniuses for us to marvel at. Save of course, once you examine their methodology more critically what they seem to have done is to have worked out who were the most famous clever people in the world and come up with a list of them and then given them points on an arbitrary list and come up up with a list of the world's top geniuses. There is something slightly imperfect about this- a hole that gapes open before the idiots who did this survey- and that is quite simple. Knowledge has become so specialised that it is hard even for those who have completed undergraduate studies in an area to be accurately aware of the merits of work done by their academics or by specialists. As a historian moving from undergraduate to graduate work I observed this. And furthermore in subjects that I know little about- mathematics or physics I have no clue about how to compare the intelligence say of a Feynman and a Bohr or even whether they would play in the same league! This list furthermore is a disaster when it comes to art- many of the great artists of a particular period only acquire recognition later. Judging the world's literature and say putting Dario Fo in the top ten, when you don't have a panel that can read all the world's languages and tell us about them seems equally foolish. To publish a list like this furthermore implies that you only need to engage with ten people to engage with the whole world, like lists of the greatest novels or the greatest music, this is intellectual suburbanisation- if you only tackle this and this you have become learned. Sorry that's not true- lets put this list with all the others on a pyre and let the smoke carry a signal out that learning doesn't stop at the margins of a list, but begins with a canon and heads through canon after canon, on an everlasting quest for an eternally unreachable comprehension of everything of worth ever done or discovered.

Best Tabloid Headline

I have been memed again! [Expletive Deleted] Dave Cole (whose fantastic blog has a new address by the way now) decided to give me this virus, anyway the idea is to come up with the dream tabloid headline, so here's mine:

Asylum-seeker, Diana's ghost and Britney Spears in Threesome: House Prices Forecast to Fall!

I'm sure that there are many of you that could come up with a better- so why don't you go for it Thunder Dragon, James, Mutley and anyone else who fancies their hand at crafting something worthy of the Sun.

Incidentally another thought for the last couple of days- which links to an article I wrote at Bits about it (guess the story before you click the link), anyway here is the headline,

Who's Jorry now: Martin's a Smartin at Spurs!

Right now before I lose all my respect for myself and others- I must leave the banks of the fetid swamp- to all you readers who have blogs, have a go yourselves at this, its quite fun!

LATER Ok I've got the bug, but this is worth it, what about

Princess Diana ate my Hamster

Wonderful definition of the Abortion Debate

by Jon Stewart here about half way through,

Do you condone what some would consider rape to prevent what some would consider murder?

Alex Salmond goes Ballistic

Alex Salmond is no stranger to publicity. He has just returned to lead the Scottish Nationalists and in the last Scottish elections took them into a majority in the Scottish Parliament. But neither is he a fool. His recent letter to the 189 leaders of the signatory nations to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty asking for Scotland to have observer status at their meetings blatantly controvenes the spirit of the leglislation that set up the Scottish Parliament. The Parliament has various competencies- most of which are to do with Scottish domestic policy- but has absolutely no powers to deal with the defence policy of the UK- which is a matter for Westminster. Alex Salmond knows that as much as anyone does- and he does this conscious of this knowledge. He might be able to have an observer there- but the observer could have no more powers than any other observer.

He doesn't seriously expect to be at the nuclear proliferation talks in any capacity- British allies around the world and there are lots of them will pay no attention to his declaration- well apart from a mildly amused grin or an exasperated sigh at yet another piece of paperwork going through a busy bureacratic machine. Mr Mugabe and some more of his ilk may choose to grandstand about the dealings of an 'independent Scotland' but it will make little difference to their standings internationally or internally. This is not an important international issue- but it might just be important domestically- and that's the debate that Mr Salmond is trying to influence.

Mr Salmond makes no secret of his real desire- Scottish independence. That's been his desire all along- and the desire of the SNP themselves. The Scottish Parliament was designed all along to assuage that concern. The Labour party wanted to indicate that it was sympathetic to the concerns of Scots who wanted independence, and so it designed a commitment to devolution. It also wanted to appeal to Scots who believed in a federal constitution- and to English and Welsh people who were less attached to the idea. Labour thus brought in assymetric devolution- creating real constitutional problems, Scottish MPs for instance can vote on English issues whereas their English counterparts can't vote on the same Scottish issues, but they also never faced up to another central problem. But there was another problem that no Labour politician ever addressed in the relationship between the Parliaments.

Mr Salmond at present stands up as leader of the Scottish Parliament- not of a Scottish party. He stands as the representative of Scotland and to be honest the election at which he came to power is more recent than the election which brought in the British government. So Mr Salmond can justifiably claim to be more representative of current Scottish opinion than the Labour Party led by Gordon Brown. Previously when he sought to make points about Scottish constitutional independence he did so as the leader of a party, now he does so as the representative of the Scottish nation- indeed he does so with the dignity and majesty of his office. This makes Mr Salmond's intervention more important in UK Politics.

His reasons for making the intervention are also entirely predictable- as predictable as his increased power. He makes the intervention in part to get away from domestic politics. Domestic politics is always difficult for politicians- battling Westminster particularly over nuclear weapons enables a politician to look strong and brave. Dealing with the latest crisis in the health service is much more difficult- especially when like Mr Salmond you don't have a majority in your own Parliament- Mr Salmond is running a minority government in Scotland and in a minority government posturing is easier than policy. Mr Salmond has the political inclination to do this- as a nationalist- but he also has the interest to do it- it leaves him looking noble, fighting for Scotland against Westminster without having to take an unpopular decision. It risks him looking like a comedy figure, too interested in his own ego, but at the moment with Mr Brown's government an unpopular one, Mr Salmond can probably afford the political gamble.

I expect this gamble to be repeated again and again. Bashing Westminster is in the self interest of any Scottish government as is bashing England. Jack McConnell (Salmond's Labour predecessor) did it last year when he told the tabloids that he wouldn't support England in a world cup. The issue that the Labour party never explained was how these neccessary tensions between the two Parliaments would not lead to opinion on either side of the border growing more and more divided. Scots defining themselves away from England and asking why their Parliament didn't have powers over nuclear weapons or the war in Iraq or whatever other cause becomes the flavour of the month. The simple politics, as Sir John Major argued in 1997, propel a devolved assembly into combat with the central Parliament and eventual independence. That is even more true when the structure is left uncomplete and incomprehensible by the adhoc opportunists of Millbank.

In 1997, Labour came to the country with a constitutional agenda that was shoddily drawn up and incompetently executed. You could back federalism and House of Lords reform and still think that incidentally (I am close to that position myself). The problem is that Labour left too many threads dangling and didn't think through much of what they did- most of it was done on the spur of the moment and the future left to sort itself out. The success of that approach was that whilst things went well there were no problems. But perhaps as Labour begins to suffer in the polls and lose its majority in the devolved assemblies- or even regain that majority and lose in the Westminster Parliament- they and we might regret Tony Blair's shoddy workmanship. The major three parties are unionist now- though they all mumble about increased devolution- but that might change. Such disatisfactions may lead to more radical constitutional reform than Labour ever intended.

Tony Blair famously felt the hand of history on his shoulder- I wonder if he ever considered where it might be pointing!

Stephen Colbert for President!

Were Guiliani and Clinton the candidates it appears Mr Colbert would get over 30% of the votes from people aged 18-29! The source is here.

Forum

Guys- just thought I'd note that Ashok of In rethinking and Sharon of La Philosophe and me have just started a forum together. Basically the idea is to kick around the odd thought about all sorts of things. Anyway if you are interested in it- here is the forum.

The Argument about Abortion

Reading Unity's excellent fisk of Nadine Dorries and Sunny's most recent post on abortion and the comments under it, something suddenly struck me. If you look carefully at both posts and the comments under Sunny's various people consider the issue of abortion. However there is something rather interesting that had never struck me before about the way that they discuss the issue. The pro-life camp discuss the issue from the point of view of the rights of the unborn child, but rather than trying to defend or sustain those rights as a philosophical project, they jump straight to images or ideas about the dead foetus, using words like murder. The pro-choice side don't really attempt to deny the images of the pro-life side- they immediatly jump to discussions about abortion clinics in back streets and the fight of women for equality down the century as well as the pain of childbirth.

I don't want to get involved on either side of the debate, however there is something rather intriguing in thinking about the way these arguments are being made. Unity is a great blogger and one of the most impressive thinkers on the net- but I think when he says that the abortion debate is about a contest of rights, he is actually wrong. He misplaces the moral language that the argument is being had in. Actually this is about a contest of empathies- the question is who do you empathise with- the unborn embryo or the mother. Consider a website like the US Pro-Life Alliance- the website entrance contains pictures of smiling babies and the statement that 'abortion stops a beating heart'- this isn't an argument being made to your concept of an abstract right to life but an argument being made to your capacity to sympathise with another human being. Rights are used as a way of trumping the other empathetic understanding- but this is morality based upon empathy not upon an understanding of right. The word 'right' is called into service here as a trump card- because the recognition of human rights is (rightly or wrongly) deemed an absolute within our culture.

Looking at the abortion debate, the most interesting thing about it is that it denotes I think the basis for most modern moral judgements. The basis for most people's morality it seems to me from this and other debates is concepts of empathy. In this sense Adam Smith was right- in that he predicted that the marketisation of society would lead to more empathetic understandings of morality. Whether you are a Christian pro-lifer or a feminist pro-choicer the basic vocabulary with which you talk about religion is exactly the same- its about the sympathy that a particular object should receive. Phrasing it in terms of rights is a mere rhetorical choice. This also explains to me the presiding causes of our time- the way that pictures of African orphans or victims of the Tsunami can become cause celebre and evoke millions of charitable donations. One of the interesting things about abortion is that it is an issue where empathy can justifiably be evoked on both sides- both the mother and the embryo can be said to deserve our understanding- that makes it a difficult and controversial issue within an age where the dominant moral climate is partly an empathetic one.

Of course there are more principles involved within our moral climate- but I think the abortion debate reveals something very interesting about the way that we think about right and wrong. It reveals how important empathy is in our decision as to which way to go on an issue- that is the way that both sides make their arguments. And it also reveals the way that the language of rights, is in this case at least, more of a trump card than an actual argument.

Great Political Misjudgements

Paul Linford has put a list of great political misjudgements up here- they are all from British politics during the last thirty to forty years. Its a pretty good list and I'd reccomend having a look. His list reinforces to me though some of the conclusions of earlier posts on this blog- politics is ultimately about how you confront issues. Whether its Harold Wilson not devaluing the pound in 1964 or John Major forcing Thatcher into the ERM in 1990, the arguments mattered but it was the caution or inventiveness or decisiveness of politicians that really counted. Timing is crucial. For example bad timing cost the Tories in 1974 and Labour in 1979. Counter factual is always difficult to do in history- but it reinforces something that Matt Sinclair said recently about the way that causation in politics doesn't have a simple pattern, but relies upon the chaotic movement of individual choice and disposition. Its always worth remembering that- and the effect of political misjudgements- because it demonstrates to me that very few of the trends in human society are inevitable.

(The picture is for non-UK readers of Jim Callaghan, the then Prime Minister, telling the Trade Union Congress that there wouldn't be an election in 1978- a year later Margerat Thatcher was Prime Minister and Callaghan's party preparing for 18 years of opposition- 18 years which changed the Labour party completely.)

Khufu's Wisdom: Pharonic Follies

Naguib Mahfouz seems to be equally able to write about ancient and modern Egypt. His novels about Ancient Egypt concern themselves with an analysis of high politics, often through using mythic stories to indicate political concerns. So for example, his novel about Akhenaten, the ancient Pharoah focuses on the links between faith and politics and questions about how far religious motivations can justify political actions. Khufu's Wisdom, his novel about the Pharoah Khufu (also known as Cheops) focuses on similar issues. Mahfouz is fascinated by the way that the personality of the ruler effects his power to control and rule his nation. Khufu's Wisdom concerns the succession to Cheops, from the beggining of the novel the scent of death rests over the realm, after ten years the Great Pyramid is still unfinished. The real story though concerns Khufu's effort to avoid a prophesy that says Djedjef, son of the priest of Ra, will succeed him and not his own sons. The novel shows us the way that despite Khufu's best efforts, Djedjef does come to succeed him, ultimately through the Pharoah's own intercession.

Statecraft is central to this novel. Khufu's actions rest upon the fact that as Pharoah his interests and the people's interests are presumed to be exactly aligned. Throughout the tale though two concepts of the Pharoah's power debate each other- we might to borrow Walter Ullman's language call them the ascending and descending views of Khufu's power. On the one hand we have the idea expressed by vizier, Hemiunu,

Why differentiate your lofty self from the people of Egypt, as one would the head from the heart or the soul from the body? You are my Lord the token of their honor, the mark of their eminence, the citadel of their strength and the inspiration of their power. You have endowed them with life, glory, might and happiness. In their affection there is neither humiliation nor enslavement but rather a beautiful loyalty and venerable love for you and for their homeland.

Notice that Hemiunu makes the Pharoah's power conditional upon the fact that he is a symbol for his subjects- it is through his subject's support and their identification of him as the symbol of the nation that he receives legitimation. They do that because he is a good ruler. In that sense power ascends from them to him. Khufu himself says that he agrees with this interpretation- he says that he is no mere king- he is Pharoah of Egypt- the stress is on the last word, it is the people that endows the authority. And in that context Khufu stresses the fact that the individual- himself or any in the room with him matters little besides the majesty of the nation in the thought of the statesman.

His son, Khafra, who throughout is offered as a counterpoint of folly to Khufu's wisdom, has a different view. After Hemeinu has spoken, Khafra gives a descending view of authority. He tells his father that

You rule according to the wish of the Gods not by the will of men. It is up to you to govern the people as you desire, not to ask yourself what you should do when they ask you!

For Khafra authority descends from God to the Pharoah and then to men- the Pharoah is not the King of Egypt but is King by Ra's authority and is entitled to rule for his own individual purposes. And despite what he says above, Khufu is not wise enough to follow his own advice. During the course of the novel he does act in the interests of himself and not in the interests of Egypt. By attempting to kill the young Djedjef in his cradle, the Pharoah attempts to commit a horrendous crime and use the soldiers of Egypt to do it and furthermore he attempts to put his son Khafra on the throne- a young man who would use Egypt as his chattel slave domain. The Pharoah's retirement into his study to write down his wisdom is a way of attoning for this crime- Khafra presses him to use Egypt's military power- at a cost to soldiers that Khafra cares little about- but Khufu wisely restrains his son from committing the further crime of killing the innocent troops in the cause of a useless war.

In the end Khufu yields to his son. We get the impression that Khufu by this point has grown old and more easily swayed by those around him. But he unlike the Prince still recognises the underlying sadness of war, that he betrays his trust towards the 100 Egyptians who die. Interestingly the war is also the instrument which brings about the change of dynasty- for Djedjef is promoted to be the commander of the armies which victoriously destroy the tribes of the Sinai. However Djedjef like Khufu reveals himself to be a great ruler- as opposed to a ruler who rules in his own interest not the interests of his community- he has compassion for the soldiers who have died in the war and also before admiring his own triumph attends to the captives of the Sinai tribes. In that way he too recognises that ultimately the justification of Egyptian power ascends from the people to those in power, it does not descend from the Gods to the Pharoah. The Pharoah is ruler of Egypt, not just a ruler by the grace of God. Djedjef therefore proves himself a more worthy successor to Khufu than Khafra ever did. In the last scene of the novel, Khufu himself is led to recognise this. Having spent his last years, writing a book of wisdom, the old Pharoah finally realises that his family's good and that of the state are separate and recognises Djedjef as his heir and the husband of his daughter.

It is not the Pharoah alone but minor characters too are called upon to make similar sacrafices. Bisharu is Djedjef's adoptive father and at one point has to consider the merits of his adopted son against that of the state- or the Pharoah's will- he argues within himself:

Now which of the two do you think will be first to be sold? Duty or the avoidance of doing harm. A pupil in the primary school at Memphis could answer this question immediatly: Bisharu will not end his life with an act of treachery. No he will never sell out his sire: Pharoah is first, Djedjef comes second.

Notice that for Bisharu it doesn't matter ultimately whether the Pharoah is Pharoah by order of the Gods or for the good of Egypt- duty would lead in the same direction. But one wonders whether the certainty with which Bisharu comes to his view at that moment would be the same- Khufu's status as the servant as well as the master of Egypt leads Bisharu to a desperate certainty that he must betray his actual son for the good of his country. Bisharu in this case acts in a better way than Khufu who when offered that choice decided the wrong way.

Ultimately though this novel is not about subjects but about sovereigns and the argument it makes is on behalf of what Ullman called the ascending theory of government. That government exists primarily to serve its people. The descending theory that government exists to serve an external force and the people must obey it is implicitly left dead on the floor with the Prince Khafra- the longterm good of Egypt is the same as the interests of the fates in this novel, it is a plan that the wise Pharoah ultimately has to carry out. Furthermore the rise of Djedjef is the rise of a sovereign who truly serves his people, whose power flows from acts of loyalty like those of his father, acts of loyalty which stem from the fact that a good subject, faced with the same dilemma as a good King, acts more virtuously, sacraficing his son where a King would not. This issue of political engagement as a form of service is something that recurs right up to the present day- Rousseau is one modern political philosopher who explores it- the general will is another way of discussing the idea that we ought to centre sovereignty on the good of the whole public not the interests of our own part of the public. Ullman's notion of descending and ascending views of authority is an interesting one- and it still applies though in a democracy we are of course all in the position of Khufu- the interesting issue is whether we beleive that we have a responsibility when we exercise authority to look to the good of the people or whether we are endowed with authority to arbitrarily act in our own interests.

Khufu's Wisdom is a fascinating novel- and this isn't the only issue it explores- the subtle way with which Mahfouz interweaves ancient politics and myth with modern political philosophy is fascinating but there are other interesting questions in here- particularly about motherhood that this review hasn't scanned. Ultimately though one of the most interesting questions that arises out of the novel is a further insight- when we talk about the wisdom of Khufu are we talking about a faculty or an inclination. Khufu's last piece of wisdom is his renounciation of his own family in favour of the state- is that something he is wise because he knows or in this case is it that wisdom is the right emotional inclination- is the wisdom of Khufu actually not wisdom but political virtue?

Crossposted at Bits of News- from whom I nicked the rather nice image as well!

The Counterfeiters

The Counterfeiters is a film all about suffering and guilt. Its central character is one of those people caught up in the terrors of the twentieth century- having lost his family in the awful aftermath of the Russian Revolution, he himself is caught up in the terrors of Hitler's dictatorship. Salomon Sorowitsch was a counterfeiter of bank notes in the 1930s in Berlin, we see him operating in a club which reminds one of the great cultural landscape of Weimer Germany and also of its tensions (one of his customers on learning that Sally stands for Salomon turns away in disgust at meeting a Jew). Having been arrested, he is taken to the camps as a criminal and forced into a harsh, horrible environment- into which he is joined by his fellow Jews gradually, as the screws of the final solution were turned up and up. Sorowitsch manages to make the whole experience less terrible by catering to the vanity of his commanders, painting their pictures and sketching them to be noble Aryan warriors. Escaping the Holocaust by prostituting his talents.

The focus of the film though lies not so much in those events- Sorowitsch and others with the requisite skills are taken out of the camps and sent to a special unit. Sorowitsch as a counterfeiter is taken to this unit and put in charge of counterfeiting the pound. Alongside him are bankers, printers and photographers, all at work inside the camp but with better conditions than the normal prisoners. They sleep on comfortable beds, they have a ping pong table to play games on, they get weekends off and receive cigarrettes from the guards as a reward for their acheivements. Of course, as they realise the notes that they are forging will go to support the Nazi war effort and undermine those who seek to rescue them from what is still an undignified and horrible situation. You realise that when a German soldier pisses down Sorowitsch's neck and also when a Jew with TB is just shot without ceremony. The indignity of bankers working alongside counterfeiters, both for those that want to kill them, is captured with wonderful acuteness. They know as well that as soon as their work is finished they will be killed, the better to conceal the operation and also as part of the final solution that Hitler envisaged for the Jews.

So the dilemma facing Sorowitsch and his comrades is about what to do in those circumstances- save yourself and kill your cause, or kill yourself and save your cause. Throughout the film several of the characters make reference to the fact that their only obligation is to save themselves. From Nazi officers who say that they only served Hitler to save themselves, to the Jews in the camps saying they counterfeit to save themselves- they all repeat this nostrum as much as they find it difficult to beleive it. Burger one of the Jews keeps making the ideological argument for sabotage- in the end Sorowitsch is forced to sabotage the sabotage in order to save the rest of the Jews from being killed one by one. But that tension remains throughout- Sorowitsch knows that it exists as does everyone of his comrades- they also all can hear the sounds of the normal life in the camp going on outside, the screams, the deaths, the trudge of prisoners being walked until they collapse- all these things remind them of their privilege inside the walls.

The moral dilemma here is a difficult one. Imagining yourself standing where Sorowitsh stood during the war, you don't know how you would have chosen faced with such an agonising hell on the other side of the wall- a hell to which you could easily return. Though equally at the end of the film, when confronted by the prisoners from outside, what can those inside the cushioned world of the forgers say to the gaunt figures and faces emerging from the actual camp. The prisoners inside the unit are always trapped between these two things- between the horror of what they are going through, and the guilt that they aren't going through more. Karl Markovics captures the essense of Sorowitsch's angst brilliantly- he gets the sense of suavity that enables Sally to survive and also gives him an increasingly haunted melancholy as the film continues. The other characters are varied but all the performances range from the good to the competent- it is Markovics's performance though that is really extraordinary and gives the film life.

There is a nihilism at the bottom of this experience that Sorowitsh goes through- a nihilism that is created by living solely to survive for so many years. Sorowitsh's haunting eyes are after the war emptied of anything- as he goes to casinos trying to lose money and sleep with women that he is sure care nothing for him. The scars of the Holocaust are such that they have destroyed meaning for him, they have made him see beauty as barbaric (as Theodore Adorno said the Holocaust made poetry barbaric)- there is something terrifying about the mechanical nature of Markovics's performance as Sorowitsch after the war compared to his performance as Sorowitsh before the war- the sorrow is reflected in the emptiness of his face in the later scenes replacing the open joy of the earlier scenes. We see this most evidently because of the way that the scenes after the war come directly before in the film the scenes before the war- the director wants us to see how the first Sorowitsch (historically later) developed from the second earlier Sorowitsch.

Guilt, sadness, horror and betrayel- all these emotions are bound up in this film. A film in which the passport out of moral complicity is to assert that one too has suffered greatly- the German commandant tries to tell Sorowitsch that he too has suffered and more plausibly the prisoners in the unit rescue themselves from the wrath of their fellows outside the walls by pointing to their own catalogue numbers from the concentration camps. It is difficult to come to any sense of what you or I might do trapped in that terrible situation- with the screams coming from outside to motivate working for the oppressor. This film offers no easy answers to the moral dilemma embedded within it. It only offers questions but they are questions worth thinking about and pondering over.

Crossposted at BitsofNews.

Isolation and the Executive

President Bush has now spent six years in the White House, by the time he leaves the place in January 2009 he will have completed his eighth year in the seat of US government and have left a momentous legacy. Bush has attracted hatred and praise in ways that few US Presidents have in the last fifty years- he has been compared both to Sir Winston Churchill and Harry Truman and to Adolf Hitler. What hasn't been addressed though are some of the real lessons from Bush's time in the White House and those of his predecessors. When the Americans elect a President, they elect a man or perhaps a woman who then serves at the apex of their government for the next four or possibly eight years. One of the most interesting facets of that service is the ways that it effects the person in control- it is their whim that ultimately decides and has to decide great questions of policy and the pulpit that the White House is afforded is still the most powerful in the World, so the question of how the office shapes its holders is a vital and important one.

Bush's Presidency is the first War on Terror Presidency. But his Presidency reflects trends that have been present for a long time- at least since the second world war and which are present as well in other democracies- the UK for example. As this fascinating article from Todd Purdum (husband of Dee Dee Myers an official in the Clinton White House) makes clear the US President is an increasingly isolated figure. Its part of the nature of the office that the President is surrounded by security and occupied by the business of a vast bureacracy. In the early Republic men like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were connected to their fellow countrymen through the exchange of vast volumes of correspondence. The fears of anthrax mean that the present President is unlikely to receive directly a single letter from an ordinary voter. Bush dined outside the White House three times in the last six months- his contact with the outside world, even with longterm friends is mediated always by the vast military machine surrounding him. There can be and are almost no spontaneous social contacts with non-employees available to him, there are very few moments when his every interraction isn't planned for and leglislated long in advance.

President Clinton and other former Presidents have spoken about how this strange position effected them. Clinton used apparantly to walk past the lines of tourists and chat to them whilst going in to work in the morning, he found this gave him human interraction. President Reagen rang up charity phone lines to give money and had to convince the rather terrified interlocutor on the other end that he was indeed the President of the United States. We don't know about life inside the Bush White House yet- and probably won't until the term of the current President ends though Mr Purdum has gathered lots of information. What instantly strikes me though about the kinds of lives led by Presidents and Prime Ministers is that increasingly they are veiled from outside sources of information- they are by the nature of their office out of touch with people's lives. Whether that matters or not is another matter. I think it does partly because it makes the President into an icon not a personality- the trappings office must change a personality especially over such a long time and give that personality an exaggerated sense both of its own importance and also of its own omniscience.

The most worrying part of the Bush administration's rhetoric to me is often the way it sites their man within history. Mr Blair, the former Prime Minister, has the same rhetorical preoccupation and Mr Brown his successor shares it. David Owen, the ex British foreign secretary and neurologist recently argued that there is a condition of hubris into which politicians whilst in office descend. One wonders whether their unique position means that they think they are uniquely placed to anticipate the verdicts of historians long into the future. President Bush for example recently reminded visitors to his White House of the experience of President Lincoln in 1864 when he was deeply unpopular- of course he is right to remember that unpopularity isn't neccessarily a mark that one is wrong, but nor is it a mark that one is right. Mr Bush lives in the White House, burned during the war of 1812, a war which few now consider a success either for Mr Maddison or for his British counterpart the Earl of Liverpool. Isolation though breeds that sense of superiority- of communion not with your peers but with a long line of historical predecessors and successors.

Of course, isolation is a fact about modern political lives- the recent events in Pakistan demonstrate why. And Presidents and Prime Ministers from Spencer Perceval to John F. Kennedy have paid with their lives for the access their public gets to them (fortunately that list neither in the UK nor the US extends no further, though President Reagen was almost another victim in the early 1980s). But it isn't a good thing- it perpetuates the distance that supreme power creates by surrounding it with a barricade of security. Still more, the President and Prime Minister surround themselves with attempts to avoid scrutiny, a careless comment can kick up a controversy and the way that President Bush for example can't make a self deprecating joke without Michael Moore putting it in a film demonstrates the unreality of the office and the difficulty of living with it. Isolation may be a fact of life for these people, but it isn't a good thing. Casual interraction, the battering of meeting with equals and friends, all these things are crucial to living a real and a full life. Its one reason why wives and husbands are so crucial to political life- as Peter Hennessy commented recently in an interview with Iain Dale, its crucial to have a wife or husband that takes you down at the end of the day to normality. One can see in Oliver Stone's film about Nixon that Nixon loses contact with reality when he can't even talk to Pat Nixon about his life in the office: he can only talk to Haldeman and Ehrlichman.

Isolation encourages madness, hubris and mistakes. It is one of the worst and most neccessary elements of modern political life- and its one that modern politicians have to strive to find their way to break through. In the end politics remains as it always has been an intoxicating brew- but once you lose your soul, the point is that you are on the way to losing the world.