Police Pay

I must confess to a personal quirck here- I am fascinated by how you effectively tie pay to performance in the public sector. The Institute of Public Policy Research this morning has announced that in February it will publish a report covering police pay, unfortunately as we do not have the report itself but only an executive summary on the website of the Institute there isn't much we can say. However the reccomendations on that website- which one assumes will be central to the report raise serious questions about its contents. The central reccomendations, reported this morning by the BBC, concern the introduction of performance related pay into the police service. The IPPR point out that the rates of crime detection per officer in the UK have hardly moved since 1997 despite huge increases in pay for officers and that furthermore pay within the force does not reward performance but rewards seniority. They want to shift the balance of pay to reflect performance and to get officers to train more effectively.

All of that is laudable as an aim but there are some serious questions about it that deserve to be raised. Firstly there is the obvious structure and predictability of performance related pay- how it fluctuates for individual officers year on year. No doubt the IPPR would be keen to argue that it should not fluctuate too much- uncertainty of pay award is just the kind of thing to drive talented and therefore useful people away from the police force just at the moment when we most need them. But the real issue is a second one. The problem with performance related pay is never the concept but the metric. Its the way that you measure performance. A classic case can be seen in the IPPR's own research. They argue that police performance should on their website be measured in terms of arrests per officer- but of course there are other ways of measuring police performance. As advocates of the 'bobby on the beat' will often tell you the provision of a sense of security to the public is another measure of police performance for example. The idea of performance related pay risks skewing the performance of police to reflect one or two or three different metrics. The IPPR imply that performance's definition will be decided locally- in which case one has to ask why they use a central figure of police arrests to demonstrate failure and in which case one has to ask furthermore are they willing to see the price of localisation (local failure) to be paid.

None of this is to say that their report is neccessarily wrong- we can't, its not out yet (and quite what the IPPR are doing in releasing to the press a report that hasn't been published, getting publicity for the argument before they get criticism for the research I'm not sure) but it will be interesting to see how the institute has managed to square some of these circles. In particular it will be interesting to see how they manage to derive a concept of performance that doesn't warp the performance of police away from things that we want policement to do. In general within the public sector- the problem is also there with teachers and doctors- there are two great problems. One is that pay doesn't advance much until you move into management and therefore out of the job in the field which if you are talented is the place you are most needed in, and the other is to do with how you measure performance. Just asking for performance related pay is the easy bit, working out how it works is the hard bit. It will be interesting to see what the institute thinks about that!

Obama and Political Correctness

Barack Obama's speech to the congregation of a church in Atlanta provided in full by Andrew Sullivan here are very inspiring. He says in that speech something that is very important to say- that the basis for the way that we treat other people lies in empathising with them, in creating community with them. One of the most illustrative and interesting examples he draws upon in the speech is right at the end, in describing a campaign meeting, he describes how one of his workers Ashley got everyone who joined the campaign to sit down and describe why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

So Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”

That speech explains why Obama is a viable candidate but it also explains exactly what politics ought to be based on- the sense that it isn't my greivance that matters but yours. Politics can often and does often become a matter of shouting insults at each other- trading blows. Indeed when for instance politicians ramble on about the threat from x social group- often what they are doing is encouraging the rest of us to join the mob and start throwing blows- you can see it in discussions of immigration particularly. Obama's principle is more interesting and more important- because it encourages in us a truly moral ideal of politics, not morality in terms of codification of a set of principles for others to follow, but morality in terms of an outward looking benificence.

This struck me today as I read Jonah Goldberg's recent comments on political correctness. Goldberg rebukes both conservatives and liberals when it comes to political correctness- and made the crucial point in an earlier article that

The reality is that much of political correctness — the successful part — is a necessary attempt to redefine good manners in a sexually and racially integrated society.

Goldberg is entirely right. The problem for conservatives on the issue is that they are paranoid about the Orwellian dimensions of political correctness- and that they become interested in their ability to be rude to others. For liberals its the other way round, attempting to catch others out in conversation is the classic nit picking academic parlour game (you see a different specimen of the same thing on blogs when people take others up for their spelling and typos.) History afterall has nothing to do with the male possessive noun- but refers to the Greek word for story historia and when academic idiots start writing about herstory all you observe is their ignorance! The point is that political correctness ought to be something that we do voluntarily in order to make others feel comfortable- its a code of politeness, intended as the original codes of politeness were partly for political reasons to bind society together and partly for purely social reasons, to make civilised conversation possible.

It is a real sign of hope that two such individuals as far away from each other as Obama and Goldberg though get this central point- that a key part of politics is other regarding action. And that whether its a call to moral rearmanent based on charitable impulse or a call for good manners and political correctness, the point is that that political society is based upon empathy and the more we think about that, the better.

Fate and America: history according to the Coen Brothers in No Country for Old Men

Fate or fortune has been at the centre of our understanding of human history for so long that sometimes it is easy to forget. Minds as subtle and interesting as Thucydides, Polybius, Machiavelli and Tolstoy have sought to understand how fortune governs human history. How it elevates the humble and humbles the proud. The Bible in some of its most interesting book is a mere account of the control of fate by Jehovah- for St Augustine fate was a servant in the evangelical mission of Christianity- for Hegel it was the process which drew out synthesis from thesis and antithesis- for Marx it was the turning of the screw of class conflict. Fate or fortune might be explained but humans could never master it- they could never govern it- they might never as a character at the end of this movie complains meet God.

No Country for Old Men is about fate and its workings through history. Symbolised by a remorseless and brutal killer, whose dress cinematically hints at that other remorseless slaughterer Ingmar Bergman's Death in the Seventh Seal, its impact is truly devastating. It rips families apart and confounds the confident in their search for safety in a world where you get what is coming to you. His victims live in the slipstream of history- they live in the tides of events which sweep them off course and belie their confident plans and predictions. He is seemingly invulnerable- even when wounded he can treat himself with ease- he is not a homicidal maniac according to the voice of wisdom, the local sheriff, he is fate itself. And his victims respond with fear to him- the fear that they would award to fate. From the first frames of the movie, where a man in a bar tosses a coin for his life or for his death- the killer moves according to seemingly arbitrary choices made by his victims. Should you get in his way there is no need for him to kill you, but he has to kill you because of your failure to submit to inevitability. Your death in No Country for Old Men is absolutely inevitable- it is fated and almost all the characters accept that template.

Almost all- because one of the characters doesn't. And the key exchange of the film revolves around this character's decision. When she is confronted by the mysterious killer, instead of taking his gamble, instead of agreeing with him that her death would be accidental, she confronts him with the fact that this is his act. No matter whether she lives or dies, she wants to make him feel his moral responsibility. Throughout the film the murderer is reduced- to a madman, to an epitome of modern society where robbers walk in the street naked apart from dog collars to get attention, to a force of history ('things are always the same' says a friend of the sheriff at one point) but at one moment he is confronted with his own moral agency- with the fact that it is his decision not that of fate as to whether she lives or dies. Interestingly that is the only death or possible death that we don't see (we don't know if she lives or dies) because its the conversation before that matters. Whereas with the other deaths, they have become part of the story- the story of fate- in this case moral responsibility is the story and hence the exchange is more important than the event.

The film flips its attention- the Coen brothers are keen to leave motivations out of the film for the most part. Their characters are taciturn and live in a world where an eyebrow moving conveys the fall of the Berlin Wall- perfectly acted though by the end of the film these are not marionettes but human beings. The film starts with a sequence of characters who gradually grow into a story- but the organisation of the film is such that whereas at the beginning one feels the effects of fate, by the end one feels the effects of choice. Choice is of course unpredictable in its effects- and everywhere through the film choice becomes unpredictable. Taking money doesn't often lead to slaughter, taking on your murderer doesn't mean that he will seek out, pointlessly, to kill your wife. Staying in a hotel doesn't always lead to a massacre. As the film begins the murderer is an anonymous expression of the power of chance, by the end he has a moral character, he does things because he wills them not because he has to do them. What the Coen brothers create is a world that depends on lots of people taking different choices- whose set of choices add up to the events we see on the screen. No fate intervenes just the movement together of hundreds of little choices which chart a way to destruction. This story has an explanation.

But its explanation is not based on class nor is it based on some Hegelian progress of ideas but on the action of individuals. A great story develops out of small choices- moments of decision. It recalls C.S. Lewis's perceptive comment that your descendants could include a Hitler or an Aristotle without you intending either by your choice to have children. Randomness is a consequence of the vastness of the world and the way that your choices interfere and interact with other choices. It is not part of any plan- there is no one in control, no God manipulating things, no secret power behind the scenes- there is just human choice and all its unpredictable consequences. There is no way in No Country for Old Men to say that any particular moment leads to the outburst of violence- and we do not know what ultimately the violence stemmed from nor do we know why a large suitcase of money is sitting in a field somewhere in Texas. We don't know why the killer is involved- though we can assume that some debt of honour is involved- all we know is the series of choices which take people into the road in front of the juggernaut and the series of decisions taken by the murderer to murder. Decisions for which he is accountable ultimately.

The world of choice is ultimately more terrifying than a world controlled by even a mystical power. The killings in this film have no meaning as far as we can see- they don't need to happen. None of this film needs to happen. All of it is consequential upon some voluntary act. The Sheriff's depression which leads him to give up his job is precisely because of this. The United States is No Country for Old Men because an old man understands how arbitrary the process is. He understands that there are no guarantees even when shooting cattle- its always possible for the gun to slip, no one is invulnerable, no principle is sacred, no group all powerful. What if is not a purposeless question but is the heart of human history because there always could be another what if. And stories of course which suggest these conclusions to us are lies because they are just good stories (like the story with the bull) they are stories which indicate to us the fragility of telling stories. The stuff of history is too vast to know and appreciate in all its arbitrary glory- all we know is that we are alone, as if on a darkling plain, and we have choices to make- choices whose import we have no idea about.

Film as an art form is most appropriate to do this- to rip away the veil from human freedom and leave us exposed 'naked before the throne of God' (to quote Francis White), naked before our conscience. The Coen brothers in the film show the evolution of a historical understanding- showing how vast impersonal forces can be imagined by the historian as event piles on event. Showing how our search for explanation becomes a search to avoid the arbitrary nature of human freedom, how we attempt to govern anarchy through the imposition of rational ideas like fate. The point is that at the beginning of the film any viewer believes that there is some reason, some rationality behind the moments of savage slaughter. We believe that something could have stopped it, something could have prevented it, that if only we could think it out we could avoid it. The film doesn't imply that there are forces beyond our control- but shows us that there are no such things as certain ways out because ultimately we cannot be certain of the interior of other people's heads. And it is in other people's heads that we find either our salvation or our sorrow. Film, an art which marries together on screen story and characters (in a sense every actor is an author of his own character) is the perfect way to express this truth about the world and the Coen brothers have presented it wonderfully in this film.

The United States may be No Country for Old Men- but its also No Country for those who have watched this film- the view from the heights of experience and understanding is terrifying because it is so arbitrary. Yeats talked of a terrible beauty being born- its our privilege to watch it on screen.

Kevin Keegan Newcastle United Manager

Here he is in all his glory.

Charlie Wilson's War

Charlie Wilson's War does what it says on the tin. It is a film about the maverick Texan Congressman Charlie Wilson (for maverick read drunk on Whisky for twenty four hours a day, and fornicating for all the 24 he wasn't asleep during). The film portrays Charlie, a Texan charmer with a southern drawl, as an instinctually good man: sure he may employ women only in his office because you can teach them to type, but you can't teach them to have tits but only a fundamentalist Christian would object. Sure he may use his power as a member of the Defence Sub Committee for Appropriations with unchecked arbitrariness- but then again he uses it for good. Good ol Charlie has a bleeding heart, underneath the whisky, and can see through the thighs of a stripper to the agonies of Afghanistan. He can see it and once he sees it, he uses every ounce of his corrupt charisma to get Washington to see it.

For Charlie was not merely a maverick, a drunkard, a womaniser and a charmer: he was also the Congressman who took the United States to war in Afghanistan. Convinced by a sexy Texan socialite (played here with Cruella de Vil looks by Julia Roberts) who is happy to fuck him and wear scanty bikinis for him and by a renegade CIA man with undoubted anti-communist credentials, Charlie goes to war in Washington. He faces obstacles- some of the human obstacles (Rudi Giuliani and John Murtha) will be familiar to any students of today's American politics. (Incidentally Giuliani was trying to prosecute Wilson for taking drugs whereas Murtha was a colleague that our Charlie saved from an ethics investigation and so helped our Charlie on the sub committee). Charlie expanded the US covert ops budget in Afghanistan from 5 million to 500 million and set up an alliance spanning Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Israel. Just think about that alliance for a moment- as one of the Isreali characters in the movie says- Pakistan has never recognised us, Egypt invaded us ten years ago and every single assassin coming to kill me has been trained in Saudi Arabia!

The point is though that noone is invincible to Charlie's charm- not even General Zia the dictator of Pakistan. Charlie twists and turns through meeting after meeting- calling in Julia's bikini and the smile of a good ol boy doesn't work. And we see in working there on the screen. We see the guns arriving in Afghanistan. We see the missiles coming in. And we see the mujahadeen hitting helicopters with missiles- shocking the Russian soldiers who are sailing oblivious of the work of the US Congressman until their helicopter explodes in a new form of Texan fireworks. Afghanistan becomes a constituency of Texas- we even see Charlie take out a friend from Congress and both of them rouse a crowd the way that they would in Austin. The point is that through intrigue and through battling in Committees you can do as much as any agent in the field.

The history here is simplified beyond belief. There really can't be any question about its accuracy or not- because the reality was just more complicated. Of course the US weaponry ended up in the hands of the Taliban eventually. And the explosions in Afghanistan were a prelude to those in New York and London. Charlie Wilson though it has to be said bears little responsibility for that- he was responsible for funnelling money and not for the overall strategy. Furthermore Wilson wanted the US to reconstruct Afghanistan. To rebuild it and to build schools and hospitals there- for some reason, unexplored in the film, his reconstruction requests fell on stony ground. The old southern charm didn't work so well and it all failed. The film's story is one of triumph- though its tinged with sadness, towards the end of the film many characters make references to what followed- to the failure of the reconstruction effort and the rise of the Taliban. If the film has lessons for today- its in precisely that and for Afghanistan. Afghanistan once again has fallen and once again the world is turning away in frustration- Charlie's lessons still aren't being learnt. We heed his life and live in luxury- we don't heed his efforts to help the Afghan people.

Of course the film is simplistic in its political analysis- but at 97 minutes it could hardly not be. The performances are all good- even Julia Roberts does well here, exploring her evil side. She should take on more of these kinds of roles. Tom Hanks is brilliant- really demonstrating that ability to take on southern charm and give it an extra shot of Scotch. Hoffman is as always excellent and the script by Aaron Sorkin who wrote the westwing is quotable and amusing. This is not a great film- its not up there with such great political films as Citizen Kane or Nixon- but its a very good film and you'll definitely enjoy it. At times it is cloyyingly patriotic but that's the American style and boy does this film have style!

I'd reccomend Charlie Wilson's war- though with this last proviso- no matter how bloody and heroic those battles in committee in Washington were, just think about the battles in Afghanistan. And lets remember this time, we shouldn't desert these people to another round of tyranny- we need to make Afghanistan work and I'm sure Charlie with his hookers and his liquor will be cheering on from the sidelines should we do so.

Crossposted at Bits of News

Impossible Politics

Danny Finklestein suggests Al Gore as a possible VP pick for Barack Obama. Its not an implausible pick for Obama to wish that he could make- but there is a reason that noone has done three terms as Vice President- the job frustrates and infuriates its occupant more often than not. Furthermore having run for President once and turned down a good chance of the Democratic nomination this time, why would Al Gore want to run for Vice President again? If he really wanted a career in Washington he would have run for President- it strikes me that the chances he will run for Vice President alongside Obama are minuscule. Equally implausible is that John McCain (who don't forget needs to shore up his Republican base and whose health will be an election issue) would risk picking a liberal Democrat (on some issues) Joe Leiberman as his running mate.

There are people who look credible VPs at the moment- Jim Webb, Evan Bayh might be good Democratic names- but the paucity of good coverage in the UK press is reflected by the fact that when British journalists do talk about the possible VP picks of Presidential candidates they tend to suggest people like Leiberman and Gore who realistically are unlikely to be the second name on either ticket in November.

Undecided Voters

I didn't read this when it came out- but this is one of the most depressing articles about why people vote that I have ever read. Chris Hayes campaigned for John Kerry in 2004 and found that very few of the undecided voters knew anything about the issues- or even understood what an issue was. His record of his discussions with them is here and is equally depressing for the right and the left.

The Political Theory of Reservoir Dogs

Quentin Tarentino is a director that I wonder about and find difficult to work out: as this review will demonstrate his work alternately frustrates, antagonises and confuses me. To some extent I see him as the most conventional film maker around- he perfectly mirrors the kinds of angst that fill society today and in that sense his films are very interesting- even if because of that they are imperfect and almost unconsciously make points that their director doesn't intend. Reservoir Dogs is a film without much of a plot- there isn't much tension- a heist has gone wrong and about half way through the film we know who has made the heist go wrong. Its characters are deliberately emptied of anything apart from vagueness- in the service of the heist they lose their real names and become Mr White, Mr Orange, Mr Blonde, Mr Brown, Mr Blue and Mr Pink and they lose their identities. We never see the actual heist- we see blood drenched episodes after it, we see the escape from it, we observe the planning for it but the heist takes place off stage. Tarentino wants to frustrate us- he wants us to be 'fucked' with as he said in an interview- he wants us as strangely disorientated as his own character confesses he is by the song Like a Virgin (a point I have stolen from a review by Robin Gleason). He wants us emptied by the gaze of cool and turned in on ourselves reflecting on the hell of being abandoned in a warehouse with five thugs and five guns.

But its hard to get at more than that. Reservoir Dogs is not a gangster film- it is not a film about gangsters, nor about violence. There is violence in it but violence is not examined. Rather it is a film about the experience of being abandoned with a group of people alone and suspicious. It is about loneliness and suspicion. It doesn't really debate the idea of suspision as much as it could because these are characters deprived of their insides- they are characters bleeding their identities out- all of them in a sense are undercover. Rather its about the position of identity and identification within a world filled with isolation. It works by announcing that its main characters have no names, dispositions but no characters, and desires but not identities- they have actresses they fancy but no wives they love. The characters therefore within the movie are characterless, they are deprived of context, abandoned to each others' gaze and abandoned to each others' fear. The film is less a testament to the hell of other people, than to the hell of a state of nature. Its point is not about society- as here there is no society, noone has a role- as about society without social function, society without the state. The criminals abandoned feel the fear that Hobbes argued they would feel and go out in a blaze of gunfire.

There is something postmodernist about this vision- and I take it that Tarentino intends it that way. The dialogue is fractured and the speech doesn't reveal the direction of the plot (a conscious directorial decision on Tarentino's part). Anyone who reveals the truth is penalised by the logic of the plot and by the heist. The undercover policeman is the only good character and yet his raison d'etre is his equivocal relationship with the truth- the fact that he can inhabit and even convince himself of his own lies. Anyone who believes in absolute truth is deceived and the only real truths are found in murder and being murdered. But that postmodernist point leads to a very odd conclusion- because we are back in the world of Hobbes, where words have no meaning but those given them by a sovereign. The kind of epistemelogical anchoring that the boss, Joe, performs when he gives the gangsters their names, their colours, seems essential to the plot. Indeed to take the point further, one notices an echo of Genesis- Joe like God names the entities that he sees in front of him, like God he gives them meaning and when Mr White questions those names, like Lucifer, he brings the whole world down tumbling upon him (only in this case we are talking post Nietzsche so God too can be a victim).

That I think is one of the things that is so dissatisfying about the film- because it demolishes every structure in order to prove that all structure is artificial and that without structure there is only endless violence. In that sense, the film is profoundly conservative. Tarentino's argument is that without roles, human life is nothing but an endless struggle of murderer against murderer- roles and definition give us purpose and life. Its a counter enlightenment point- civilisation cannot be defended because its right, it must be defended because without it everything else collapses. Having said that Tarentino is aware of the fact that every role hides a disrespectful interior- the Gangland boss sits in an old world office and runs numerous businesses. The gangsters themselves laud their own professionalism. Everything that we know and love can be and is expropriated by evil- every role is corrupted but without that corruption, he implies, we cannot exist. The horror of confinement is better than the terror of equality- because equality leads as Hobbes argues to a suicidal desire for self preservation.

Reservoir Dogs attests to the unease of modernity- an unease that we have not dispelled. A central monument to being cool, its politics are deeply reactionary and its message is disquieting. If you are happy to surf on its dialogue that's fine- but sift beneath it and the vision is disquieting, the reality uncomfortable and the vision incredibly bleak. Yeats talked of a long sleep being stirred to nightmare by a rocking cradle- I wonder if Reservoir Dogs is another swing of that cradle.

The Balance of Power 2007

There is nothing particularly wrong with Policy Exchange's latest report on the balance of power between the left and the right across the OECD in 2007- however there are real questions about how much you can infer anything from it. Policy Exchange argues that the majority of the OECD is under the control of the centre right- a fair piece of analysis- though one has to add that were the United States to have gone Democratic in 2004 the majority of the OECD would be controlled by the centre left and don't forget how close the 2004 election was. In truth the US is evenly balanced between left and right. Furthermore there are real questions about whether this means anything- for instance a large number of citizens of the OECD live in Turkey where the big issue in the recent election was about secularism in Islam, an issue which few of the voters who will vote in November in the US will be concerned with. Local issues are often more important than people give them credit for: in South Korea for example relations with the North are very important. Governments like Aznar's in Spain often lose power thanks to miscalculations or like John Major's in the UK thanks in part to sleaze. Furthermore left and right mean different things in different places: many British conservatives would back the Democrats in the States and have always been hostile to Irish nationalism, many US Republicans would not have backed Erdogan in Turkey, and so on. Furthermore all this discussion doesn't reflect the other battle- that of ideas- between the left and the right. Leftwing governments as in New Zealand in the eighties can be very rightwing in practise- and no British Tory needs too much reminding of how leftwing conservative governments can be after listening to an old tape of Harold Macmillan!

Policy Exchange have provided a useful parlour game- I'm not sure its more than that!

Blogpower Roundup

A roundup chosen by the bloggers themselves of Blogpower's best posts of year is up here- I chose a post about the Robert Bresson film L'Argent, in part because I think its a good review, and in part because I think Bresson is one of the most important artists and film makers of the century and that he is deeply underappreciated.

As a bynote I should also say that the Carnival of Cinema is back- and there are some good posts especially complaints about Yahoo's list of the best movies of the last year.

Read both- in particular the Blogpower one- a fine collection of posts!

Agreeing with Dizzy

Just a quick note- I have published an article on the Liberal Conspiracy agreeing with Dizzy about the fact that MPs should not have allowances to pay for rubbish collection in their London properties.

Otto Preminger

This is an important article and well worth reading about the great Austrian director Otto Preminger.

Cricket illustrates Life

The recent events in India illustrate an important rule for politics as well as sport: that process is often more important than outcome. That once a judge has given a decision, no matter its justice, you have to accept it. The Political Umpire makes the point in a cricketing context well here- but when you read his post, remember it applies to much more than just cricket.

Reading Class: The Talented Mr Ripley

The Talented Mr Ripley is Patricia Highsmith's first novel about the psychopathic murderer Tom Ripley. For those who don't know it the plot is as thus- Ripley is a poor ne'er do well in New York who is sent by an old acquaintance's father, Richard Greenleaf, to go to Italy and find Greenleafe's son Dickie and persuade him to come back to Italy. After going there and meeting Dickie, Dickie's girlfriend Marge and his friend Freddy Miles, Tom becomes increasingly enamoured of Dickie's lifestyle- to such an extent that he eventually murders Dickie and later Freddy and spends the rest of the book evading the Italian police. As Debra Hamel pointed out at Normblog the point of the novel is to elucidate and describe Ripley's character: the title provides a clue to that. Ripley not the murders nor the investigation is the centre of the novel and the reveal is about Ripley's character: slowly inch by inch Highsmith shows us Ripley the man and reveals to us his anxieties, paranoia and his thoughts.

When reading it therefore you get a very precise idea of Ripley's motivation. Why then does he do what he does? Murder normally is mystery: here it is the end of the mystery and in order to discover the real mystery we need to discover why Tom murders Dickie Greenleafe. In truth Tom murders Dickie because he envies the other man's class and sophistication, his money and easy living lifestyle. He murders Dickie because Dickie is slowly growing tired of Tom: because Dickie sees Tom in part as a sponge and possibly a homosexual sponge at that. Tom decides he has to become Dickie- he has to reinvent himself as an aristocratic young man about Italy, as a classy cool individual. Even his posture we are told changes as this process unfolds. Tom's hesitant slouch becomes Dickie's confident and assertive pose. Dickie's class though isn't all money- its also savoir faire. Its a certain style- a magnetism that Tom is forced to acknowledge and wishes he has. Dickie is someone- and throughout the book Tom lives in his shadow. In reality Tom seeks not to murder Dickie as to merge with Dickie, Tom seeks suicide not slaughter.

Poverty and wealth come together in this novel- and what we see is the way that the poor man sees the rich man. Not neccessarily as the owner of the accoutrements of money- but as the owner of the parephenalia of civilisation. Tom aspires to Dickie's culture, he is disappointed by Dickie's vulgarity (especially the poverty of Dickie's painting- Dickie reminds me of Vronsky in Anna Karenina, forever attempting to be an artist, forever failing) but he likes the carefree indolence of the young American. He has insecurity which is founded on poverty but not described by it. Tom's insecurity is fed into by other things: his possible homosexuality, his own poor family life, his anxieties about being a dependant. That insecurity leads him to murder and to various other things: but it remains the focus of the novel. It is what ultimately makes Tom's character sympathetic- and it makes you wish that he will escape, because all the time you are alone with his fears. None of the other characters comes alive in the same way as Tom does- because none of the others are given an internal voice and none of the others are in motion. In a curious way, murder becomes a means to social advancement in the novel.

I don't think I have captured the flavour of the book well- there is much more in it, including a really good read. But I think the way that it describes the experience, the total experience of social anxiety and its complexity- the way it derives from sexual, social and cultural signs- is perfect. Tom's anxiety is not all class based. But part of its structure depends on his class. It is not all based on his homosexuality and his idealisation of Dickie and rivalry with Marge: part of it though is. It isn't all based on his fear of being dependent both socially and monetarily on Dickie: part of it is though. Throughout the novel we see Tom grow and change- a haunted hunted man becomes even more haunted and hunted, but he gains respectability through murder.

Conservatism

An interesting post from Iain Dale this evening on rural theatres. Iain wants to know why their funding is being eroded- the answer it seems is that with money tight, the Arts Council are focussing on the 2012 Olympics. What's interesting though is that Iain considers this worthy of blogging- I completely agree with him. One of the sources of strength for conservatism is the notion of organic little platoons which come together to grow civil society- Iain wants those little platoons which cultivate localism and peculiarity to be strengthened and reinforced with public money. I think we should facilitate their growth as well- a small amount of money to a village theatre is something that produces immeasurable goods for a community and fortifies society- its something any real conservative ought to support.

Dirty Tricks

This is a really interesting interview with a former Republican Dirty Tricks man. I should emphasize that what is interesting is the techniques he describes- they are international- they were used for example in Australia by the liberals and they are used by all sorts of people from the right like the interviewee to the left. It is interesting though to see some of them being rehearsed and its quite an eye opener- some of the techniques- pretending to be the other side and phoning people during the Super bowl are very subtle and clever. All of them tend to make democratic decisions harder- as there are upcoming elections in the US and the UK and other places, we should know about these techniques and beware of them.

The Relevance of Rigour

The Taxpayer's Alliance has come in for some criticism on this blog occasionally- however yesterday their response to the rumours that Cambridge and the LSE might rethink their attitude to some A-Level subjects was just right. It was just right because it restated what I think is an important principle- that the A-Level should not be degraded. However the TPA's analysis brings back to my mind at least the important difference between academic and vocational qualifications- a distinction that needs making again and again- though it is between two things which do blend into each other.

The point about academic subjects is that they are a different type of training to a different type of vocation than vocational subjects. They are trainings in rigour and reason. The harder academic subjects- physics, maths, history, philosophy, literature, chemistry- require years of study and intense thought. They also require learning a discipline- evaluating evidence or preparing chains of reason- in a field in which many intelligent men and women have worked before. To study one of those subjects at university is to acquire a flavour of what it means to be a scholar and consequently of what it means to reason, analyse and discuss results. Of course the subject matter is to some sense extrinsic to that- but all those subject headings really describe not so much an area to be studied, as a discipline to study that area with. They involve the use of rules which tell you how to evaluate and use reason in a particular context- as such they have a universal validity. They don't tell you how to be a good anything- but they do train you in how to reason effectively, how to analyse ideas and data and evaluate them.

If we turn from that model to look at a vocational qualification- we can see that some such ie law or engineering share that quality of being a training in a discipline of thought. Other vocational qualifications aren't training so much in a discipline of thought as they are in training another kind of discipline- physical activity for instance may not require much thought but may require a lot of skill. Take the art of cooking- cooking requires a certain degree of skill, an ability to see what should happen at a particular moment to the dish you are preparing. It does require analysis- but more instinctual analysis- the ability to see for instance when a spice is needed or a herb is required to give the dish more taste and when it isn't. You could put other crafts into that category too- from the precise moulding of a pot by a potter to the construction of a painting. They are crafts. They do not require or exemplify the same skill as say a degree in history does- not because they are inferior but because they are not that type of training.

This isn't to say that we require one type of qualification or the other to be available- its just to say that one isn't the same as another. I wouldn't trust a mathematician or a historian with a resturant kitchen, but I would prefer them to a cook when it came to being an accountant. There is no metaphsyical sense in which one profession is 'better' than another: and yet the key point here is that there is a real difference in the kind of skill that is being used and cultivated through their study. And that is precisely the reason why many people want to leave the academic subjects and do vocational qualifications- they don't want the same experience as they have at school or university, they want to do something which has more external results than the products of analysis do. Its vital to keep that distinction in mind- because it reminds us that if we try and make vocational study academic we will lose the attractiveness of the first and the rigour of the second. Rather we should look at tailoring vocational studies more precisely to the actual needs of people in jobs- looking for example at apprenticeships and other things- and we should open both kinds of study to people throughout their entire lives. Most of us afterall will have to retrain during the fifty years that we can expect to spend in the workforce now- and the government since the foundation of the Open University has recognised that fact.

Vocational and Academic qualifications are ultimately different but equal ways to acheiving different careers- reason won't knock nails into walls, a knowledge of construction won't solve a third order differential equation- its time we were realistic about education.

The Oddities of Ron Paul

Ron Paul has some questions to answer. It appears that his newsletter sent out for over twenty years has published racist, anti semitic, homophobic material. The most shocking moment to me is that he apparantly has allowed a publication in his name to go out which compares Israel to the Nazi State of the 1940s. Paul may not have written these newsletters but they all went out under his name and regularly contained these attacks- if he read them he must have been aware of their content. Either he has had a change of heart- or he is an inappropriate candidate to be in a position of high office, such as that he aspires to. Its time he made a statement to clarify whether he thinks all blacks are just after welfare, gays contaminate heterosexuals with physical contact or that Israel planned the World Trade Centre bombing.

The Saragossa Manuscript

The Manuscript found in Saragossa is one of the great monuments of 19th Century culture- written by Jan Potocki it tells the tale, supposedly through a manuscript discovered in Saragossa, of Alphonse Van Worden and his attempt to get from France to Spain in the mid 18th Century. Van Worden's journey is delayed and obstructed by a group of gypsies, Moors, scientists, occultists, a set of sexy lesbian princesses and the spirits of two hanged men. These individuals engage him and tell him stories which parallel those of Boccacio or Chaucer- there are baudy stories, erotic stories, exotic stories, bizarre stories, ghost stories, tortures, rescues, deaths and duels, treatises on science, treatises on the Kaballah and accounts of the history of the wandering Jew, Ahaseurus. The tales are amazing- better than the tale which contains them all- they contain all sorts of life and love and mystery and magic. The Manuscript is an almost unfilmable book because of its extent- almost anything you could desire to read about and write about is here- from the gentle pains of remembering lost loves in old age to the glory of feeling it in the first flush of youth.

Putting it on to a screen is therefore not easy. Particularly that's true because the Manuscript works on a very imaginative level. You have to for example imagine two beautiful Moorish princesses, draped over each other and over the hero and how they seduce and play with his mind, making him into their tool whilst they entice his senses with sisterly caresses. You have to do this in your own mind- and to have it rendered in flesh and blood women is bound to be disappointing. The same goes for so much of this incredibly intense book- you have to not be there in order to impose your own images of horror and delight upon it. This is a world crafted in such humane colours that we all have met its characters- and we can all appreciate the bullying Busqueros, so much so that we all put a face to him as we read. Putting a cinematic countenance in there deprives the book of its personal impact.

The version put out by the Polish director, Wojciech Has, in 1965 though does manage to entice you in. It surprised me. In that I didn't think anything could give me the same mixture of horror and delight as the book does. It does. There are some wonderful sequences- especially when our hero reaches out his hand to caress the face of a lesbian princess only to find he is stroking the countenance of a hanged man. There are some really good comic moments as well- as characters climb up ladders and terrify other characters in the middle of the night- or as servants laugh at the misfortunes of their stupid masters (of which more later). The film captures some of the burlesque of the original- its sheer joie de vivre, its appreciation of the eccentricity of normal human life and the wonder of that eccentricity- its praise (to borrow an Erasmian phrase) of folly.

Where the film doesn't cope so well though is in conveying some of the book's deeper reflections. The book contains characters- a Kabalist and a scientist- which the film contains but does not exploit. The hours of commentary that these two men supply- by way of explication of the situation that Van Worden finds himself in and of the wider world- vanishes and is replaced by their mute presence. They sit and listen but they are not as crucial as they are in the book- this leaves their presence rather moot. You wonder why they are there- what their characters are doing- you wonder why the Kabbalist has a sister and what her relevance is. In the book she is a crucial character- in the film the line of decolletage is low cut but the purpose of her character is unclear.

This means that the film loses something of the quality of the book- which is that its anchored within the enlightenment. It loses something of the nature of the book as a fictional encyclopedia of the eighteenth century and instead changes into something else. The film includes many more revelations of the soundness of the working classes- many more revelations of the way that they unlike their more privileged masters they do understand. They think that duelling is silly, that absurd honour is silly etc etc. Of course that message is absent from the book- but its been placed there by the director. A twentieth century message about class has replaced an eighteenth century obsession with the bizarre intellectual movements of the age- this diminishes the film in my eyes.

Its worth saying as well that not everything does work here- for moments of beauty and there are many, there are also moments of clumsiness when you regret that the director wasn't more in control. At points the story veers away from him, at points the plot is lost. Having said this this is a worthy effort to film an unfilmable book, to condense 700 odd dense pages into 2 hours of film. That it doesn't quite work is not a surprise, that Has got it anywhere near to working is.

The rising tide of hatred

The 90s and 00s have been the years of vitriol. Whether its Anne Coulter accusing Democrats of 'treason' or its Michael Moore accusing George Bush of being a Saudi puppet, whether its the mad bloggers of the right rounding on appeasers or its the mad bloggers of the left rounding on chickenhawks, its open season on the internet and in the newspapers. There is perhaps something peculiar about the times that we live in: George Bush has been a uniquely divisive President in US history partly because he has been so ambitious. In the UK, the parties have begun to alternate for much longer periods of time in and out of office- the stakes are therefore higher in any election. Though we shouldn't overrate it: Nye Bevan afterall said in the 1940s that Tories were lower than vermin and fights in the House of Commons are not de rigeur as they were when Hugh Cecil confronted the Irish MPs in the 1900 and 1906 Parliaments. In the US, duelling politicians contend on the airwaves- not as Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton did at sixty paces. Nobody at this election looks like doing what Lee Attwater did or even repeating Karl Rove's antics in 2000. Its easy to get overexcited and assume that today's events are novel- when they are merely repetition.

So why then are such notable bloggers as Ashok and Ruthie worried about the state of conversation on the internet? Are they wrong? The real answer to that question is that they aren't wrong. Because something has changed and its brought more of the gutter out into public view than ever before- that is the invention of the internet. Effectively whether its Guido in the UK or Drudge in the US or those commenters making death threats against Dick Cheney or those columnists who revel in the facile comparison of George Bush to Adolf Hitler, they are only out there because of the creation of this medium. Blogging can do many good things- but it can also do some things to retard political conversation and even education. If academics can use it to hold virtual conferences in which someone from Utah can speak to someone from the Ukraine about their research, then so too can nutcases and fascists, conspiracy theorists and loons. Imagine the joy that you get when you suddenly discover that someone else is interested in the mating habits of the millipede- and then imagine the joy you get when you realise that you aren't the only one who feels that Bush is Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin rolled into one and multiplied together. Lunacy is profitable on the internet because the lunatics can gather into communities and support each other, reinforce each other, leave comments on each others' posts telling themselves they are all great and be happily ignorant of the fact that they are morons.

In a broader sense- one of the key and best insights of conservative thinkers down the years has been the power of convention. Convention not law moulds the way that we think and behave and the ways that society is generated. Convention exists in regular life- so that for instance certain things are conventionally rude, if you say them you are shunned. It is conventional not to think in most communities about assacinating the President of the United States: but on the internet you have more choice. You can shape your community to reflect your prejudices and thus the prejudices of the community become its conventions. Weird behaviour like over exuberrant political hatred or unthoughtful vitriol can become conventional habits. The internet ressembles thus nothing so much as a vast student union societies fair, where you chose your society and end up singing about Stalin in the Labour society and Hitler in the Tories. Most people grow out of university though and realise that they have to fit into the conventions of wider society which preclude talking about how 'they' control the world (in language reminiscent of the third reich) and about how liberals or conservatives are evil- but on the blogs they can loose those aspects of themselves, they can regress to the student hack hurling hate and use the fact they have an audience as validation. Just look at some of the worst blogs and how they use their stats as an alibi for instance.

And they do it in public. As a blogger you put forward your most objectionable side to the world. Lets take another simple example. Readers of this blog will know Matt Sinclair. Matt Sinclair is a really good friend of mine- yet we often disagree about politics. On our blogs the disagreement about politics is the central thing about our relationship- though we both try to keep it civil- in real life its not the central thing at all. And that goes for many of the regular commenters who I actually know here. Writing about politics is not the be all and end all of anyone's life and most bloggers to exist in society have to have friends with other opinions, workmates etc. And yet on the net we are reduced to argument- so consequently we sometimes look and sound much worse than we are. Allow as well for the fact that whereas when in conversation with someone I can say with a wry smile, oh you just are interested in fleecing the poor to pay for the lusts of the rich- with a blog you don't have the luxury of tone or the ability to catch someone as they listen to you and moderate your thoughts to their sensitivity. All you have is the brutality of the written word- a word which is sometimes more stark than you want it to be and consequently more offensive. As Ruthie says there is also the fact that anonymity liberates us to become much nastier- I wouldn't dream of saying to someone's face that they are an idiot, I might say it on a blog though.

All those things combine and they drag the traditional media with them- afterall the traditional media always want to sell papers. That and the increasing popularity of tabloids leads to a perceptive coarsening of public debate- a coarsening that Ashok and Ruthie have spotted. In my view there is some coarsening going on, but there is also a lot of stuff that is happening because of technological change- because the gatekeepers have gone away, the long tail is triumphant and therefore the conventions that hold society together have less force. On the internet I have no need to socialise with those I disagree with- unlike in real life!

Iowa Tealeaves

It is difficult to read the results of the Iowa Caucuses last night with any precision. On the Democratic side Obama has been strengthened, on the Republican side Romney has been weakened. It may be that Obama is heading now to New Hampshire, a possible win in South Carolina and the nomination- but there are many slips ahead. As for Mike Huckabee- it should never be forgotten that in 1988 Iowa was won by Pat Robertson and that Huckabee will be significantly weaker in New Hampshire than he was in the midwest. Having said all of that, I do think that the results in Iowa are interesting- in particular four results are interesting, firstly the fact that Obama and Edwards beat Clinton, secondly that Huckabee beat Romney, thirdly that Ron Paul got double the vote of Rudi Giuliani and fourthly that on the Democratic side of the aisle the minor candidates were not merely blasted away, they were wiped out.

What does that mean? Well the last piece of information tells us something very interesting- personal charisma mattered in Iowa more than personal politics did. A good communicator with a good CV like Biden or Dodd was flattened as the Democratic caucus goers sought the established candidates. Furthermore the large turnout in the Democratic party meant that the minnows were effectively destroyed and flung out of the race- in the Democratic party established figures lost to media figures- something that you would expect in a race largely driven by independents (who voted overwhelmingly for Obama) and young people (ditto). Media momentum must lie behind Ron Paul's 10% as well- which ecclipsed Mr Giuliani's 4%- but behind that lies the other and perhaps more interesting story of the primary.

The victors of this primary were the populists. On both sides of the aisle, populists triumphed over establishment candidates. On the Democratic side, John Edwards had a good showing- though possibly not enough to keep him alive. On the Republican side though we saw something fascinating. Because there was no perfect conservative candidate running- none of the alternatives looks particularly appetising to most conservatives- you saw the conservative coalition splinter. Huckabee's victory reinforces the old historical trend that the Midwest supports populists and actually reinforces to me the idea that this could become a new battleground in American politics- where the politics of John Edwards and the politics of Mike Huckabee contest states like Iowa and Montana and all the rest. In a sense the lesson of Iowa is a lesson about the retreat of Republican orthodoxy into the south. But its also a lesson about the functioning of American politics- part of what drives the Huckabee campaign is class. Huckabee appeals on the basis of class and social morality- in that sense he is a warning shot to both parties because he undercuts both of their traditional coalitions. Ron Paul likewise is in the position of mounting an insurgency particularly against the war in Iraq- again the isolationist impulse in American politics should never be underrated.

Not all states will be as populist as Iowa. I'd reckon now if Super Tuesday comes up and Obama maintains this level of support- he is odds on for the nomination. As for the Republican race, its still wide open. But the hint of populism reemerging is an interesting one and perhaps the longest lasting lesson of these events.

Dizzy thinks about the internet

Having myself written about the comparison of UK and US blogs- I was interested to see that Dizzy had looked at the issue- and more interesting than that he has a really good article about it. I don't have much to add- save that I think the institutional distinctions are more important than funding limits because of the potential for out of campaign spending by inexplicitly politically aligned groups- but the article is well worth reading and I reccomend it.

The NHS and lifestyle choice

Matt Sinclair thinks that the NHS reduces the sphere of private accountability to a minimum because all risk is pooled together in one pot. If your healthcare is not something which costs me any money, I don't feel interested, in Matt's view as to whether you smoke or not or take drugs or not or do whatever you wish to do. If your healthcare is something that costs me money, then in a Millite sense (that any action which is other regarding we should have the ability to regulate) I have the right to regulate your conduct. Its a worthy argument- I think though that its wrong- partly because it overestimates the actual strength of the Millite position on liberty.

Let me explain with the use of a couple of empirical points:

a. It is true that the age of healthcare has been the age of increased regulation of what we put into our bodies- opium in the form of laudanum was legal in the nineteenth century but isn't today. But there isn't much evidence to connect the fact that drugs are illegal with the survival of the NHS. Those who support the NHS and support drug legalisation today often overlap. Whereas those who want to privatise the NHS and support drugs being illegal often overlap as well. Homosexuality is not under threat from those worried about STDs, its under threat from those worried about the Bible. The 'yuck' factor and not the abstract Millite argument is what really motivates bans. Look at the distinction between the discussions about banning fatty food and stressful jobs- there is a discussion in the one case for aesthetic reasons, there isn't in the other because an overworked lawyer is more attractive than a fat slob.

b. Matt misunderstands wilfully Mill's argument and consequently misinterprets the zone of Mill's freedom. Mill's concept of freedom is very tricky to understand- but if it were as Matt suggests inclusive of all actions that affected others in any way, the area of free rights would be tiny. Afterall all our actions in some ways effect others- even actions taken in complete privacy- a choice of job afterall effects others sometimes more than a choice of lifestyle does (even in a system with an NHS). This brings me to another point, what Matt neglects is that of course other regarding actions don't require a state to be other regarding- my health has more profound implications for many than those required to pay for it. It has ramifications for my family and for my friends (including Matt) which go far beyond its ramifications for the state. Matt states that public healthcare makes everyone's health a 'public good'- sorry my friend actually everyone's health is a 'public good' whether you have a healthcare system or not.

c. Matt's preferred solution is that,

individuals, rather than taxpayers, are paying for their health insurance it should be possible to allow adjustments in their premiums for healthy behaviours.

His preferred solution though creates many other problems. Genes matter as much as environmental factors- would Matt accept a system in which companies were allowed access to our genetic code and set different premiums based on that for various people, sometimes prohibitive premiums. What about such premiums actively discouraging people for example from performing various important jobs- take for example those who volunteer to be part of the royal lifeboat association (something that involves them in great risk for a real public good and for free)- that would incur them a higher premium is that fair- the same thing might be said about special constables. The concept of splitting the insurance pool for healthcare could take us down some very dodgy paths.

Healthcare isn't an easy issue- but splitting up the insurance pool doesn't seem to me to be a good way forward in tackling it. Nor does a strict adherance to a particular concept of Mill's argument for liberty. Matt Sinclair is one of the most intelligent bloggers on the right and raises an interesting issue- but I don't think he manages to provide a good answer to his question nor to frame his question in an appropriate way.

The Children's Crusade and Media

I have written an over academic article over at the Liberal Conspiracy on the way that the Children's crusade worked and what it tells us about the way that we react to information. I think its interesting-noone else does which is why noone else has commented but I think it probably was too academic for that forum- and should have been posted here. So that's an encouragement to regular readers- get across and take a look! I think it also comes out as too postmodernist- I don't endorse the fully relativistic position on this!

Happy New Year

Happy New Year everyone- especially Welshcakes who got in to comment before I could put this post up. I really enjoy writing this blog so thanks for reading it- I hope its as enjoyable to read as it is to write it. And I hope everyone who reads this blog has a great 2008 and had a great time last night whether curled up watching a DVD in bed or out on the town somewhere or anywhere in between!

The Legend of the Holy Drinker

Joseph Roth is a novelist who is less appreciated in the English world than he ought to be. Roth's fine novella- the Legend of the Holy Drinker- is the story of Andreas, the drinker of the title, and his miraculous progress towards death. Roth himself was an alcoholic, meandering like his character through the streets of Paris as he wrote this novella- and knew that whereof he spoke. The novel though accomplishes two things- one less profound but which lies in a tradition which runs backwards through Oscar Wilde of using the lives of the poor, reconfigured as fairy tales, to reinforce lessons for the rest of society. The other more interestingly adopts the point of view of the poor saint to remind us of the ugliness of human kind and the redemptive quality of a good soul. Andreas is cut off from human society, served a prison term for a murder in defence of his mistress, is a drunkard, unwashed and with a torn shirt and yet he is a saint- without malice or forethought- who lives in a present generosity, a figure of true amour de soi, he aims for his own good without attacking the good of others and he is, as he constantly says a man of honour.

This trope has been used before- Dostoevsky's idiot, Prince Mishkin has some simularities to the artless drunkard Andreas. But Roth wants us to see how Andreas's story relates to our own stories, our own thoughts- fairy tales have meanings and we need to understand Andreas at a deeper level in order to appreciate what Roth is saying. Andreas's drink frequently we are told drives his memory away. Memorylessness is a key feature of his character- Andreas doesn't change though the world around him does and drink is his instrument to drive his memory away. In Roth's story drink is the weapon that the saint uses to obliterate his own memories- his sense of self. Furthermore it obliterates his artfulness- Andreas is not artful and loses money to wasters and to theives- he is easily diverted by a pretty face or ankle and easily conned. He is so easy to con, so easy to deceive and persuade though precisely because of his attitude to life. He does not act but merely flows through life- like a river he can be diverted but he follows the course that the valley sets for him. And he uses drink to control any temptations not to follow it.

Consequently the unnatural aspects of the fairy tale- the fact that Andreas keeps accidentally coming across money which sustains him is a feature of the character examined. Like everything else, sudden riches just crop up in Andreas's wake. He is improvident- but is so because he just expects more to pop up and to generate a life for him. Life for him is not something that is thought through, examined and analysed but something that just happens to him. That perception of life means that he avoids all kinds of comparisons (though not jealousy of the girl he loves)- he is natural and unaffected. Roth portrays him as such but also leaves us in no doubt that Andreas is incapable of living in modern society- like a Skimpole without the lie he leaves a trail behind him of destruction and improvidence. The point is that because he is a saint he cannot be a citizen- because he is a Christian, he cannot be a consumer. Roth's tale takes place in a dreamingly Catholic Paris- St Therese is central to it and at some point I will return to this tale to discuss its theology. But at the centre of it is this character and ultimately this character's strength which is also his flaw- his saintliness which leads to his inability to live as a modern citizen. Roth though leaves us in no doubt that this failure to survive in modern society is not a downfall- for Andreas events all have the same character- even death. When he dies, he goes to sleep without concern- the consequence is that whereas he has lost everything that we might think matters- none of it does matter to the Holy Drinker.

Like Mishkin he points out to us the illusion of society and the difficulty of living a moral life within the world- the Holy Drinker is a standing rebuke to the way we live now.

Apologies

Apologies for slow posting- I have a tempramental internet connection at the moment and am sorting it out- I've got a post to go up right now but for the next few days things may be slow.

The Children's Crusade

In Chartres, amidst the calls for knights and noblemen to go to Spain to fight against Islam, a group of shepherds led by Stephen of Cloyes one of their number, got up and started marching to deliver a letter from Christ to the King of France. Months later in Cologne Nicholas of Cologne set off with a group of German adolescents to take ship to the Holy land and recover the true Cross and with it Jerusalem. The movements may have been related- we don't know. We don't know though we can guess who took part, we have little knowledge of what happened to those that did take part- and we know only three people's names who were on the expeditions- Stephen and Nicholas referred to above- and an Otto who petitioned the papal curia in 1220 to be releived from his vows to crusade. And yet these crusades have become famous, passed from chronicler to historian, from poet to philosopher, from novelist to children's novelist, until they became part of the common currency of our times. The Children's Crusade is one of those events that shocked Europe at the time- yet had almost no consequences- it survived as a myth- a rumour- a disquieting revelation about human nature that kept the leaders of the Church and the doctors of the enlightenment awake at night.

What were the Children's Crusades? Well firstly there were as I said two of them. On both medieval chroniclers say that 'pueri' (latin for 'boys') took part. Some historians beleive that those pueri were a social group- marginalised young men on the edge of medieval society- some beleive that they were an age group- the young. Gary Dickson who has produced the most authoritative modern treatment suggests a mixture of the two- that the pueri were most likely shepherds and the dispossessed- young men before their marriage who left their homes and went to join these movements. The crusades happened in the Chartres region of France and in Germany. At our best guess, the crusade around Chartres developed after a request was sent out to the churches of the Chartrain to furnish soldiers for Christian armies under pressure in Northern Spain. The Chartres crusade arose out of processions around the great cathedral at Chartres- our best guess is that Stephen of Cloyes, mentioned by a chronicle from Laon, went home and was inspired by those processions to mount his own procession to bear a letter from Christ to King Phillip of France at St Denis. We know that that excitement led to perhaps hundreds and maybe thousands (numbers are hard with our limited information) to go south to St Denis. After St Denis, for some reason the remnant of the crusade headed off into the Rhineland- we have them recorded in a document at St Quentin, 140 miles north east of St Denis and a possible eye witness account by Renier of Liege at Liege in the first fifteen days of July 1212. From there they went onto Cologne where the movement seems to have grown in size. Dickson comments that fewer shepherds and more young people seem to have been present because the references in the chronicles emphasize the youth more. Nicholas of Cologne's group passed from Cologne southward- over the Alps and into Italy heading for the meditereanean- before attempting to board ships at various ports down the coast, culminating we think at Brundisium on the southern coast of Italy.

A spontaneous popular movement like this is not something that passed without comment. Monastic chroniclers were terrified of its implications- angry at the outburst of enthusiasm and fearful of the ways that the pueri had deserted the authority in particular of their parents. But nor was it unusual in the medieval world. There were movements before this- that behind the crusade launched by Peter the Hermit in the 1090s for example (though his movement did attract aristocratic support which the Children's Crusades didn't) and later movements like the Shepherd's Crusade of 1251 for example also had a popular nature. Popular revivals of religious sentiment were a feature of European religious history right up until the reformation and beyond: in 1457-9 thousands of French youths headed for Mont Saint Michel to pray and chronicles talked of the countryside emptying, similar things happened in the sixteenth century for example John of Leiden roused his supporters behind a manifesto of equality and free love based on the scripture. Such upheavals were the price society payed for a surplus of young men who were unemployed and ready to be roused to a biblically literalist interpretation of Christianity. They had other effects too- Dickson the author of the latest study of the Children's Crusade argues that one of those effects was mass migration. Effectively the pueri moved from Germany down to Northern Italy and many of them stayed behind within Italian towns- legends still connect many families in Genoa with the families of pueri who stayed behind, and Otto our petitioner to the papal curia was himself an emmigrant to Italy. Furthermore Dickson argues the effect of the crusade was to popularise the discourse about Crusades and hence about identity within medieval Europe: the call to crusade, made by Pope Innocent in 1213, was the first to address the people of Europe as well as its princes.

The Crusade has passed latterly into fiction and fairytale. Many of whose elements are unreliable- we have little evidence that there were mass sales into slavery at the end of the crusade- its not that likely that babies took part as one rather inspired chronicle has it. Nor that as medieval writers asserted the whole thing was a dasterdly plot by the Old Man of the Mountain or by Stephen of Cloyes's father who had sold his soul to Satan or for that matter by anyone else. Protestants in the 17th Century accused the Pope of selling out the crusaders and loved the self inspired nature of the movement. Voltaire in the 18th Century thought of it as a testament to his new doctrine of a socially contagious mental disease- religion. Victorians imagined it as the march of the innocent- H.G. Wells thought it was a 'dreadful affair'- Bertolt Brecht saw it as an analogy for wartorn central Europe and even a historian whose credentials were as impressive as the British Byzantist Sir Stephen Runciman couldn't resist gilding the history. The truth is though that the movement was a revivalist movement- launched from within the lower classes. We don't know an awful much about it- but what we do know makes it more fascinating than any myth would have it- we have a group of people marching away from their homes in the service of a living God, a God who breaks up authorities and family. The God of truly radical religion- not radical in our sense of the word- but radical in a much more profound sense- the God that destabilises.

The Children's Crusade is a useful marker in that sense- and Dr Dickens's book a useful testament- to the power of religion.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Merry Christmas everyone, I will raise a glass to you all this afternoon over my Turkey and Christmas Pudding, I hope you have a really good day and loads of great presents! Sorry about the shortage of posting- too much shopping for presents!

Religion and Politics

Oliver Kamm has a great article up about the separation between the two here- afraid I won't post much more today- too much Christmas shopping- but there may be an article tommorrow.

The Professor's House

He had made something new in the world- and the rewards, the meaningless conventional gestures he had left to others.

Professor St Peter is the hero of Willa Cather's novel- the Professor's House- he is the hero of a novel in which nothing much seems to happen. The novel dwells on death repeatedly- St Peter himself beleives that he is dying, his best student Tom Outland died in the Great War and St Peter sees old loves and old attachments die around him to- he is he says transported back to his childhood, transported back within himself with neither his daughters nor his wife to keep him company. He has completed the work for which he was placed on the world- a history of Spanish adventurers in the Americas- and now all he sees is mindless games of conversational convention- the sport of furniture and clothes which fascinates him less and less.

Professor St Peter's book has gained recognition and the wealth that that provides enables his family to buy a new house- but the elderly academic wishes to spend his days inside a study in the house that they have left. A cold and bare study but one in which he can remain in solitude and think- where the ornaments of the room are signals to inspiration. For him the study remains a sanctuary, and its inhabitants- two clothes models- are as sacred as any other emblems of his own individuality. Emerging from the study, the Professor finds society outside tiresome and trivial. There is something he cannot grasp in the fascination his wife and daughters feel for small things- something he cannot appreciate about the way they interrupt the internal scholastic monologue.

His student Tom Outland shared that inclination. Outland was a country boy and part way through the story in the novella amidst the romain (as A.S. Byatt who provides an introduction to my edition charmingly calls it), Outland narrates his own tale- of how he discovered out in the south west United States an abandoned Indian village. What Outland tells us though is more than that process of discovery- he tells us about the pleasures of loneliness. The pleasures of sitting on the Indian tombstone and communing in the quiet with the intellectual idea of the past. The sense that Outland is more fundamentally disturbing than that- for going to Washington he realises that all the inhabitants of the capital are slaves. They are slaves to work and office, slaves to desiring lunch, slaves to desiring more and more and more- endless items to satiate an endless desire. A desire created by society.

For Outland and the Professor, such solitude finds society. However they both need society in order to thrive. Outland never looked happier than when playing with the Professor's daughters. The Professor's chief happiness came when Outland arrived- but also during his early marriage, when his children were growing up, when the sweetness of a child too caring of her father to disturb him, sitting outside his study for hours with a beestung finger charmed him. Furthermore he has genuine affection for his daughters and wife. He has a genuine sense of style as well. The story thus isn't simple- it isn't just that withdrawel from society is reccomended- happiness could not be found by St Peter in the hermit's cell, no less than official Washington, the cell would be barren of what provides human excitement. Convention may be the enemy but conversation is a good.

The Professor's withdrawel from the world is in part the withdrawing of a man who has become weary of the world, his lament over his vanished youth (visualised in those lines I quote above about Outland) is just as much a cry of weariness, of tired resignation as it is a point about the way that the world works. Death Cather implies is a renouncing not of the self but of company, a desire for death is a desire to be alone to meditate. Nobody interrupts in a grave. The irritating skin of society gets worse after time- after acheivement- after life has passed. There is no balm for existential doubt. Furthermore resting in that alienation is the alienation of someone who had been far away when his favourite son had died on the Western Front- its the angst of a society that has been shaken by death that is reflected on the page of Cather's novel- despite it never been mentioned, the shells of the Somme shake the Professor's living room.

We all struggle ultimately with other people- they are as Sartre said hell, they are as Bergman implied our only route to God's existance. Cather's novel places other people and the self in contradiction- it tends to no easy answers- but it demonstrates an acute power of observation is at work within its pages. The world, that old Christian bugbear, is very much with us- its impact upon us all is the subject of almost everything we do- even when we renounce- and failing to acknowledge both its danger and its pleasure is the mark of folly.

Religious Bigots

The Muslim Public Affairs Committee is an organisation with a long history of odd behaviour- they have over the last few days excelled themselves. They published last week a call for the names of the researchers for Policy Exchange's recent report to be given to them- they wanted Muslim activists to ring up their offices and tell them who these eight researchers were. MPAC accused these researchers- and the whole Sufi community in the UK- of being fifth columnists for a zionist neo con cabal who were intent on destroying Islam and then the world...... fill in the blanks. They suggested that these Quislings should be reported to them so that MPAC could "dig deeper and expose every last detail of the Sufis who tried to destroy their own community." Having been called up on this language, MPAC are now asserting that their interest was purely in the researchers' credibility as researchers- given that they advertise this operation as being "A Hunt for 8 Sufi Zio Con Frauds"- I'm not entirely sure that their interest is in research methodology.

That's particularly true given the rest of the content on their website. They have published articles which argue that Sufi scholars collaborate with the Pharoah of our time George Bush and that Sufism is a trend in Islam that promotes a passivity desired by the zio con forces of evil. They have also published articles defending Sufism but it definitely seems to me that MPAC beleives that this is a legitimate debate- its strange that they don't have any articles saying that any other strands of Islam aren't Islamic! Furthermore their official statement, 'The Hunt' supports the anti-Sufi case- they state there that the Sufis have been used throughout history as a weapon in the arms of Russian and British and now American imperialism. The slurs on Sufism are absolutely and completely ridiculous. Anyone who knows an iota of the history of Islam- obviously noone involved in MPAC can be listed in that category, knows that Sufism is an old and established trend in Islamic theology.

For the benefit of MPAC, it might be worth rehearsing some of the contributions of Sufism- and others can add to this- in stimulating Islamic theology and political thought. Plenty of sources see Sufic communities going back right to the beggining of Islam- into the eighth century. Muzaffar Allam in his study of Indian Islamic political thought argues that Sufis have been present in India since the 11th or 12th centuries. As Richard Eaton demonstrates in his studies of the growth of Islam in India- Sufi movements provided many of the missionaries that spread throughout India to convert communities to Islam. Indeed David Cook shows in his studies of martyrdom and Islam that Sufi movements were also central to the growth of Islam in Indonesia and in many other places around the world. Great Sufi poetry and art has animated Islam: think of the Persian/Turkish poet Rumi whose work provides inspiration for art in the middle East right up until today, where its often quoted in the novels of Orhan Pamuk. The thesis that Sufis have never done anything for Islam- implied by MPAC- is just plain wrong and perhaps the organisation would like to withdraw its slurs.

Quite frankly though this goes further than just that. Because MPAC in reality are saying something else. They are saying that they have the right to define what Muslims ought to do or be- Muslims can't support say the invasion of Iraq. What utter nonsense! It is not for MPAC to define the essence of Islam. Muslims have been throughout history a group with a wide variety of beliefs just like Christians and Jews and Hindus and all other faiths. MPAC demands the names of these researchers because ultimately it wants to publish them and expose them- it doesn't want to argue or discuss (afterall they are Zio Con quislings) it wants to condemn. It doesn't want to examine why some Muslims might decide to help Policy Exchange- that they do convicts them and means they are irrelevant- they don't need to be talked to, they just need to be condemned. That stance fits into a general pattern- whereby their rhetoric is violent and conspiratorial- they don't seek to understand, they don't take on other arguments, they just want the luxury of an easy assertion that everyone else is evil. Their rhetoric avoids unhelpful facts- how can the war against Islam be a verifiable fact when Tony Blair bombed the Serbs out of Kosovo. How can it be a verifiable fact when the West repeatedly attempts to do things for Darfur and when westerners put their hands in their own pockets to help victims of the Tsunami? Has MPAC ever looked at the amount of aid that the EU gives to Palestine? Have they ever considered the support that America has always given to Pakistan?

MPAC want to define Islam and define certain people out of Islam. They seem to want Islam defined politically. Their politics is bizarre, conspiratorial and has a tangential relation to reality. But it goes further than that- in reality their conception of Islam excludes many Muslims from its definition. They basically argue that Sufis are quislings- they basically say that they would junk the entire tradition of Sufism because of the closeness of some present Sufis to politicians that they don't like. They are apocalyptic in their language. They are aggressive in their abusive calls for the silencing of those that disagree with them. If there is one thing likely to make me sympathetic to Policy Exchange in this whole debate, its the attitude of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee. I still feel that there are legitimate questions about the reporting in Policy Exchange's work and I have no problem with critiques of it: but as Liberals we should stand, as our enlightenment predecessors did, against religious bigotry. And religious bigotry is what MPAC peddles against Muslims who don't back their political line and against plenty of others as well.

Crossposted at the Liberal Conspiracy

Lermontov A Hero of our Time

Mikhail Lermontov's "A Hero of Our Time" is a book which boasts its irony in its preface. The book focuses on Pechorin, a Russian officer in the 19th Century Caucasus, who Lermontov beleives is typical of his age- hence the title. Like Dosteovsky's Raskolnikov, Pechorin is a symbol of the alienation of 19th Century Russian youth from Russia and the spiritual traditions of orthodoxy. Pechorin is a superfluous man- cut off from history he has a Faustian sense of his own ability to control history and other people. Pechorin like so many other Russian heroes before and since, like Onegin for example, is a creature of cynical intelligence- purposeless he strives to manipulate the purposes of others. He sees through the subterfuge of society, sees through the elaborations of human deceit down to the rotten core of the human heart. It is symbolic that for Pechorin, marriage- the ultimate in sincere emotional commitment within any human life- is a signal, according to an old gipsy prophesy, of ensuing doom. Sincerity leads to downfall, love to instant loss.

Lermontov's tale illustrates his central character episodically. We see five main stories develop around Pechorin- three of which concern romantic endeavours in which he is involved- two of which concern his relationships with other men. Throughout the stories various ideas run like lines to demonstrate to us the kind of man that Pechorin is. He, we are assured by his own voice (three of the stories are told from Pechorin's point of view as part of an unpublished journal), is a creature who feels lust but not love. He is able to appreciate and admire female beauty but he strives always to value it. Most of his emotions are common to most of mankind- he hankers after girls that he doesn't have and then grows bored of them- but the distinction is that Pechorin never moderates this passion with reason or religion. He follows his appreciation callously leaving behind in its wake those whom he discards. He applies the same logic to friends- seeking after beauty he discards the instances of beauty. In that sense he operates as a pure Platonist might- looking for the ideal and discarding the real instances of it.

Pechorin's outlook is moulded by romanticism. The entire novel is shot through with Byronic overtones- there is an explicit reference to Rousseau and the narrator indicates that this memoir is what Rousseau might have written, had he not been writing to be heard. At a deeper level though the novel is about the triumph of sentiment over reason in the human soul. Sentiment drives the plot in all the stories. Characters are unable to control, unable to master their passions. As an essayist in human psychology, Lermontov suggests that there is nothing more to us than our passions and where they lead us. Patterns of passion, Pechorin assures us, are not to be trusted- they do not exist. Instead the demands of desire are essentially random- Pechorin seeks to understand them, not to tame them but to exploit the passions of others to fulfill his own. A classic Don Juan, he seeks to manipulate both men and women for his own ends- and yet ultimately Lermontov assures us that this leads Pechorin empty. As he says at one point within the novel, he is the cause of much unhappiness whilst also being the unhappiest of men.

This tale is rooted of course within a historical situation. Russia after the reforms of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great was a place undergoing massive change. A vast bureacracy had taken over from the ancient aristocracy of boyars and state service became the only method for advancement within society. Furthermore as Russian authors chronicled Russia felt a cultural inferiority to things further West- but also felt that those societies to the West lacked spirituality, lacked a centre. You can see this theme running through the great Russian authors of the 19th Century from Pushkin to Chekhov, through Turgenev, Herzen, Dosteovsky, Tolstoy and its here in Lermontov as well. Part of Pechorin's characterisation is about the position of Russia after the reforms of the 18th Century- Pechorin is a hero of his time- like Russia he has been modernised and stripped of his spirituality. He is like modernity, angst filled, power driven, successful and spiritually empty. He cries out for a God that he cannot beleive in and does not even mention.

You cannot take away the Russian anchor from Lermontov's tale. Its filled with the colour of the Caucasus. You see the customs of the frontier tribes of Chechnya in the 19th Century, their brutal society of bands and frontier theft. There is an orientalising vision at work here- we are instructed that these tribes are primitive and yet their members, the artless beauty Bela for example, understand better than the civilised Pechorin the demands of passionate morality. Part of the charm of the novel though is the taste of this society- a society where a Circassian raid on a country house would not be unexpected- a society which lies on the northern border of Islam, on the southern border of orthodoxy. There are wonderful descriptions of rides through the Chechen mountains. Descriptions of small spa towns, embedded outposts of Russian colonialism amidst the barbarism of the frontier. That description in one tale gives you a real sense of the nineteenth century- I suspect that though Lermontov is describing the Caucasus, he could be describing somewhere near Kinshasa, Calcutta or Kansas.

And yet for all the local colour, the underlying theme of the book is universal. It comes back to that great question of the 19th Century, phrased with typical bluntness by Nietzsche, that when God is dead you have to find something else to fill his gap. Philosophers from Rousseau to Kant to Hegel to Schleiermacher struggled with the position of God in an age of materialism- they all came to different and distinct answers. Lermontov's work is a sceptical recasting of the question- he asks what happens to the unmoored human being and in a sense he comes back to Rousseau's answer. God may not exist but he is neccessary for human beings to turn amour propre into amour de soi. He is neccessary for human beings to anchor their passions around. Without God men will still anchor their passions, but as with Pechorin they will anchor them around an egotistic attempt to control others, with God they anchor them around an egoist's love of the divine which sees that as more vital than human attachment.

Whatever you think of that stance, its novelisation is a fantastic feat- and provokes a lot of thought. The character of Pechorin provokes and intrigues in equal measure as an exempla of how a particular vision of humanity works.

Just a little point about comments

Just a little point on comments- generally I don't delete comments unless they are abusive or obviously spam. I've got two comments over the last couple of days which have basically been compliments with the web address for a gaming website affixed. I'm afraid I treat such comments as spam and do delete them. If you want your comments to stay up, then don't reccomend completely out of context a gambling website at the end of the comment.