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Minimal Harm
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| I was very excited to go to Southampton, the furthest south I have ever been in England, and wanted to go down to the seaside. I peered out over the docks at the water and was happy. I then went into the Maritime Museum to look at its Titanic exhibition, where I noticed on the last exhibit that it said that Southampton is on the River Test. Confused, I asked the voluble old gent on the reception desk.
So is Southampton not on the sea?
No, it's on the Test - that's a river, not a sea.
But the Test goes into the sea?
No, it goes into the Itchen - that's a river too, not a sea. Then it gets to the Isle of Wight.
And that's where it goes into the sea.
Nooo, there it goes into the Solent. That's not a sea!
But then the Solent goes into the sea, right?
The Solent goes into the English Channel, one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world and very big. But it's not a sea, it's a channel.
And a channel isn't a sea?
No - it's a channel.
Oh. So the Titanic really only got to sea when it passed Cornwall.
That's the Atlantic Ocean - 's'not really a sea, it's a ocean. You've got the English Channel up to the end of Cornwall, then the Atlantic Ocean. And above that, the Irish Sea.
I suppose the Irish Sea isn't a sea either.
[long pause while he assesses whether I really am an idiot] Of course the Irish Sea is a sea.
I am an idiot. | comments: Leave a comment   |
| | Current Music: | Gold Against the Soul; Manic Street Preachers | | Current Location: | 332 | | Subject: | Poetry Night | | Time: | 12:30 am | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/energetic.gif) bouncy |
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| If I had a machete,
I would, like all my family, plant us a garden.
If I had a gun,
I would shoot locks off treasures, open vaults.
If I had a bomb,
I would defuse it, neutralise the very thought.
If I had power,
I'd rule it, free the passage from the start.
But if I had you,
I would be overwhelmed.
[Love Song, Jean Binta Breeze]
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The scene is Friday night at Marxism 2009. It's been a good day, by and large. I've met up over lunch with old friends from my more active socialist days back in Tooting, and met new people. I've been to one disappointing talk (the speaker was clearly well-read and intelligent, but a poor public speaker) and one stellar talk (given by the always excellent Chris Bambery). I'm now (having arrived a bit late) in the evening performance poetry session, with someone I got chatting to after the latter talk. The session is in memory of the radical poet Adrian Mitchell, most famous for his poem To Whom It May Concern - I encourage you to click the link.
I was mostly there to see Michael Rosen. I always appreciate his writing in The Guardian, I've enjoyed his performances on TV, and I love, love, love his poetry anthology Fighters for Life. I wanted to see him in person, to experience the full "performance". I wasn't disappointed. He was funny, both in his banter between poems and in the poems themselves, and the audience belly laughed almost non-stop throughout his section. He was clever and passionate in his lucid explanations of the politics behind his brilliantly-crafted verses. And, best of all about the live experience, he got everyone involved in the performance. "JACK THE RIPPER!" Maybe you had to be there - but if that's true, then I'm even more bloody glad that I was.
Jean Binta Breeze was a Jamaican poet I'd heard of before but had never read / heard / seen (hard to pick a verb for consumption of performance poetry). Where Michael Rosen's poems made me laugh, her poems sent shivers down my spine. I loved her story about being commissioned by the BBC to write a poem about the Old Testament, and bravely writing a poem called Isaiah, after the prophet who told Israel to mend its wicked ways. It takes nerve and integrity for a "Third World Girl", as a poem excoriating arrogant Western tourists was entitled, to take the opportunity offered by one of the old imperial power's greatest bastions of cultural privilege and subvert it to stand up against one of the world's greatest injustices. (Of course, the BBC said her poem was "anti-Semitic", that quick and easy route to instant censorship, and rejected it.) She performed Adrian Mitchell's To Whom It May Concern with reverence, updating it only at the end to expose its continuing relevance. Above all, though, sentimental fool that I am, I loved her Love Song (transcribed above). She set it up beautifully. "This," she said, "is called Love Song. A friend of mine once called it the perfect 21st century love poem." She paused, and the audience settled to listen to a love poem. "IF I HAD A MACHETE!" she shrieked, and we all jumped, then howled with laughter. Wonderful - and the kicker at the end was even better, and the collective "Aaawwww!" was possibly even louder than the earlier laughter.
The final poet was half-English, half-Iraqi rapper Lowkey (emphasis on the "Low"), with whom I obviously felt an immediate phonetic affinity. Any qualms were instantly dismissed with his stellar updating of (again) To Whom It May Concern: "So serenade my ears with love songs, / Provoke my peers with propaganda, / Dissolve my tongue with Coca Cola, / Seduce my brain with celebrity, / Burn my eyes with The Sun, / Muffle my mouth with McDonalds, / tie my feet with Nike's, / Tell me lies about Palestine..." He spat the words with a fiery passion that told you he knew what he was saying and that he truly felt it. He carried on with some more political poems, before dazzling the room with a slice of rap virtuosity entitled Alphabet Assassins where he slickly slid through a series of super-fast raps each dedicated to a different letter of the alphabet (I particularly giggled at the English-Iraqi's wry "I may be a mad mongrel and a manic Mesopotamian maniac").
If only all evenings could be that good. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| I just watched The Princess Bride, a film from some time some time ago (Wikipedia tells me 1987). ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) purplesparkler and Paul were insistent that I watch it, Paul even getting quite upset at my reluctance, so being the amiable chap I am I agreed to watch it. It was not the film I worried it would be from their descriptions (another Red Sonja clone). Yet in some ways, it was. The problem of assessment lay in that divide.
The film treads the line between a dull, ridiculous fantasy adventure story and a loving satire thereof. The characters intermittently come out of the scene, and many minor characters never really inhabit the scene at all, Peter Cook, Mel Smith and Billy Crystal especially so. The frame with Peter Falk is nice. But the jokes are too weak and ultimately too gentle and the satire too shallow. The story is made ridiculous and therefore dull for the sake of the satire, but the film cannot bring itself not to also take the story seriously. The result is a directionless mess which is just disappointing. It needed more frame, less in-scene, false trails that had to be wrapped back. It feels churlish to complain about a star-studded Hollywood version of what could perhaps be a good idea for a film. But if nothing else I am a believer in absolute values: if the film is not good enough, then no amount of comparison to even worse films from within the same system can really justify it.
Ellen suggests that it is a film that has to be seen first as a child to be appreciated. Perhaps I'm being unfair to criticise it, seeing it as an adult. There are all kinds of crap kiddie things that we retain an affection for in adulthood because our crap-detectors are less developed as kids and sentiment overrides our growing awareness. The basic introduction to meta-storytelling probably is interesting to a 6 year old. I guess my problem is with it getting touted as a good film in its own right. I read on Wikipedia that it still gets placed on various "top" lists. "In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted The Princess Bride the 38th-greatest comedy film of all time." Really? The 38th greatest comedy film of all time? The voters had seen all of the other contenders, had they?
This is all part of a wider problem: the simultaneous infantilisation and parochialism of society. Our culture's spiralling fetishisation of jeunesse results in prioritising artefacts of childhood over artefacts of adulthood. But it is the artefacts of adulthood that make for a historically worthy culture. I'm not saying that everything has to be serious: a sense of creativity and fun is a source of vitality. But it is channelling that creative spirit into something of lasting quality in which consists an activity of value. On a similar note, society has the desire to value dearest what it knows. This is a natural behaviour, but a stultifying one. "The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living." Or, to misquote Bernard Shaw, "The reasonable man is content with what he knows; the unreasonable one persists in trying to discover new things. Therefore, all discoveries depend on the unreasonable man." So, live a little, but grow up too. Keep up your sense of curiosity, but make a decision that the next thing you'll be curious about is something that stretches you. And who knows - perhaps one day you'll stretch other people too. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | I Want You Back; Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5 | | Current Location: | 332 | | Subject: | RIP Michael Jackson | | Time: | 01:24 am | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/smile.gif) shocked |
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| The King is dead.
It feels odd to be affected by a popstar's death, but Michael Jackson is - was - no ordinary popstar. A fractured, vulnerable genius. An enormous talent that perhaps even so was never fully realised. Cause for sombre reflection. One can only hope that he's resting now in the peace that he never seemed to find in life. | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | Dream World; ABBA | | Current Location: | 332 | | Subject: | Fun Brainteaser | | Time: | 10:53 pm | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/wink.gif) silly |
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| Titus Oates, an "English conspirator".
Frida Kahlo, a bisexual Mexican painter.
What links those two people?
Prizes for the first person to work it out! | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| Here's to us; one more toast and then we'll pay the bill
Deep inside, both of us can feel the autumn chill
Birds of passage, you and me
We fly instinctively
When the summer's over and the dark clouds hide the sun
Neither you nor I'm to blame, when all is said and done
[ABBA]
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Those of you who are more familiar with ABBA's back catalogue (which is none of you: it's just a hackneyed sub-journalistic trope) may be asking yourself why I didn't choose The Way Old Friends Do. Perhaps you'll understand once you've reached the end.
Last night was one of a good film (Ken Loach's simply wonderful Looking for Eric), good food (well, relative to some food emporia) and good company (Boo and her partner Francis - I can't really say "boyfriend" about someone she's moved in with). It was lovely to find Boo in such fine form and with someone with whom she seems both so happy and so naturally right. They seemed so relaxed in each other's company, and their personalities seemed to mesh snugly - on each other's wavelength, as she put it. What makes two people a good emotional match, not specifically as lovers but as companions? I suspect that we can only give an extensional definition, that any attempt at intensionality would elude us. Of all my friends from my 23 years in the north, Boo is the one with whom I spend the most time (though even that isn't very much). Why should that be? There are many reasons, most, if not all, different to the reasons for the other two of my northern friends with whom I spend any time at all. What matters, really, is that we, for now at least, choose to remain friends. That emphasis on choice is important, because it applies the other way, too: when we choose to no longer be someone's friend, that is also a valid choice, and one that we are capable of enacting with dignity. And that is what I like about the song lyrics above. The steadfast acceptance of the end of the affair, the ability to say: this thing has run its course; we had fun, but now it is over; we leave with no regrets and no grudges, but also no duties. I have a number of ex-friends with whom I am in this situation, and in the ultimate analysis I hope that I and the world will part on the same terms. Standing calmly at the crossroads, no desire to run. There's no hurry any more. All is said, and done. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| The BFI has a series called "Passport to Cinema" in which they show classic films that you'd be hard-pressed to find showing elsewhere. I've had a wonderful time with these recently, watching the emotionally harrowing La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc and Fellini's 8½. Tonight I saw Akira Kurosawa's epic (as my numb bum by the end of its three and a quarter hour running time testified) Shichinin no Samurai - Seven Samurai, the inspiration for The Magnificent Seven.
It was fascinating to see the "posse" genre at what I'm told is arguably its genesis. There's something weird in a quiet Japanese village, and it don't look good. Who you gonna call? Fucking SAMURAI, that's who. None of this messing around with proton packs when you can have a giant fuck-off katana. Just like the Seven Dwarfs (sorry JRR), each of them has his own distinct personality. My favourites were the overly earnest young one who idolises the older, more seasoned samurai, and the old sword expert with a practiced line in both taciturnity verging on moroseness and effortless competence. I got the feeling that the academic introducing the film liked the fool "Kikuchiyo" best from his description, but I never particularly feel for the wacky joker character in these things.
( Cut for spoilers ) | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| And so to Andrew and Edward's Masquerade Ball. We arrived in time, albeit an hour later than we planned due to the moral necessity of Paul needing to "show that inefficient bastard that that was no way to win Scepter von Zavandor".* Everyone had made an effort with their masks (except Johannes, and no, being 8 and a half months old is not an excuse). In particular - and this is notable for later - Andrew was wearing a long black jacket with a high, flat white collar. The food was good, especially the cakes, he types with purplesparkler holding a shotgun to his temple - actually the birthday cake itself was in my opinion the best cake of hers that I've tasted - and also some delicious tartlets of cheese, tomato and aubergine in a puff pastry shell. It was for me tinged with sadness that of the seven friends of mine who were at the party, six may soon be leaving the country. But since that thought (or corollaries thereof) is tinging pretty much my entire life at the moment, in one way or another, that wasn't too big an issue. In general, a splendid time was had by all. <gets sudden urge to listen to Sgt Pepper's>
As we got on the bus home (Edward and Andrew first, followed by Paul, then purplesparkler, then me), as purplesparkler and I got on, we overheard the following converstion behind us:
I can' believe you was cussin' a priest, man!
'E's no' a priest!
Naw, naw, man, I REALLY fink e's a priest.
Naw man, wha' would a priest be doin' on dis bus a' dis time o' night?
Maybe 'e's a trainee priest?
Maybe 'e's no' a very good priest!
"Excuse me," I called down the bus to Andrew, "which stop are we getting off at, Father?"
* These may not have been his exact words, but you get the gist. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| [Modern countries listed, the country they were part of at the time in brackets afterwards if relevant]
European countries that were part of Nazi Germany at the start of WWII:
Germany
Austria
Czech Republic
European countries that were allied with Nazi Germany during WWII:
Italy
San Marino
Hungary
Romania
Bulgaria
Finland
Slovakia
Slovenia (Yugoslavia)
Croatia (Yugoslavia)
Bosnia & Herzegovina (Yugoslavia)
Serbia (Yugoslavia)
Montenegro (Yugoslavia)
Macedonia (Yugoslavia)
Albania (Italy)
European countries that collaborated with Nazi Germany during WWII:
France
Monaco
Denmark
Norway
Sweden
Russia (USSR)
Estonia (USSR)
Latvia (USSR)
Lithuania (USSR)
Belarus (USSR)
Ukraine (USSR)
Moldova (USSR)
Spain
Portugal
Andorra
Switzerland
Liechtenstein
Vatican City
European countries occupied by Nazi Germany during WWII:
Poland
Belgium
Netherlands
Luxembourg
France
Monaco
Denmark
Norway
Slovenia (Yugoslavia)
Croatia (Yugoslavia)
Bosnia & Herzegovina (Yugoslavia)
Serbia (Yugoslavia)
Montenegro (Yugoslavia)
Macedonia (Yugoslavia)
Greece
Russia (USSR)
Estonia (USSR)
Latvia (USSR)
Lithuania (USSR)
Belarus (USSR)
Ukraine (USSR)
Moldova (USSR)
European countries that maintained effective neutrality with Nazi Germany during WWII:
Ireland
Turkey
All other European countries:
United Kingdom
Iceland
... and Iceland was only because we invaded them before the collaborationist Danish king could tell them to collaborate too. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| I held an interesting conversation recently in which we discussed how an intelligent person should deal with someone of noticeably lower intelligence. The discussion revolved around the issue that the intelligent person has a duty of assistance, but has no right to be patronising to a fellow human being: striking the balance between these imperatives is difficult. We didn't get around to any serious analysis of the problem, simply swapping anecdotes of times when we have been on the receiving or the delivering end of good and bad examples of such behaviour. But I have been thinking about the issue and have a number of thoughts that I want to explore.
Firstly, I should establish some parameters. Instead of the uncomfortably pejorative, "noticeably lower intelligence", I will try to stick to considering the ordered set of rational individuals and the relations between individuals at different gradations within the set. I will also consider the implications of a further duty held by the rational individual: to truth, accuracy, or some parallel variant thereof depending upon the situation. I will consider the ethical, pragmatic and psychological implications of different models of behaviour, and give examples to illustrate them.
My starting concept is that there are two areas of behaviour, each of which has distinct rules: one, the domain of ordinary human interaction; two, the domain of formal debate. These have different social requirements, and different expectations can be made within each. In the domain of ordinary human interaction, the first two requirements - to help, but not to be patronising - are paramount, while in the domain of formal debate it is the latter requirement - to truth - which dominates. I will consider each case separately, before proceeding to examine grey areas.
In formal debate, we usually consider that we have effectively no duty to assist, nor a duty to refrain from being patronising. Our "opponents" are considered to be sufficiently rational and tough enough to have entered themselves into this domain and must therefore live or die by their rationality and their conformity to truth and accuracy. Effectively, we are abstracting the human out of the situation, and indeed this scenario is only found in its pure form in debating competitions. This is not a scenario in which the social and ethical issues discussed in my conversation apply; effectively we have created an arbitrary space in which we consensually agree to suspend our usual maxims of ethical behaviour for the purpose of disputing truth.
In ordinary life, we have an ethical duty to help others, but not to be rude to them. This is a problem when one has enhanced ability, as one must judge what knowledge to impart, and when. In conversation I gave an example from my youth of a dramatic failure in this, when I used the word 'deify' in conversation with a friend, and thoughtlessly proceeded to explain the word's meaning. I understood instantly from the look of frustration and hurt on his face that my explanation had not been needed and apologised. Luckily he took it in good spirit and merely teased me for the rest of our acquaintance by throwing the word 'deify' into the conversation at every possible opportunity. I had crossed the line between trying to be helpful and being patronising in not considering both the likelihood of his acquaintance with the word (he was also a very intelligent young man) but more importantly his feelings in my demonstrating my apparent belief in his relative ignorance. Conversely, however, I also at the time often received bitter complaints when I used obscure words without explaining them. Was it that I simply could not win?
Does one rule have priority over the other? A consequentialist would say that one should simply perform a neat piece of game theory on the situation and calculate the optimal return based upon the various probabilities involved and the utility gained or lost. As a Kantian deontologist, however, I instead try to consider how rational principles of ethical behaviour should be my guide. There are two guiding principles: one, "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law"; and two, "Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end and never merely as a means to an end". (These are both, of course, quotes from Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, which I would urge everyone to read.) In effect, we have two conflicting maxims here, one to provide assistance to others, and two to avoid treating others in a patronising manner. But what are the precise formulations of the maxims by which I would act? For the first, it is not in fact a simple injunction to provide assistance, but an injunction to provide assistance where needed and wanted, for unneeded and unwanted assistance would not be respectful of that person's ends. There is an intriguing relationship between 'want' and 'need' here: in a world of rational actors, they would only not want the assistance if they do not need it, yet the way that we can deduce their lack of need is from their demonstration of lack of want. However, the need is logically prior to the want, and so the maxim would be to provide assistance where needed. For the second, to patronise someone is to disrespect them as a fellow rational lawgiver. Yet an inadvertent patronisation cannot be held against someone who has made all best efforts to avoid such. Ultimately, the Aristotelian mean state is to assist where you assistance seems needed to enable another to achieve their rational ends, but to always do so with an air that avoids as far as possible the appearance of being patronising.
This was in fact the lesson that I learnt and applied, and gradually became better at relating to people without offending them with assumptions of their inferiority. I tried to allow others to make their own mistakes, unless their mistakes were based on a misunderstanding both fundamental and easily rectifiable, or if their mistakes would have massive potential costs to them that they had not foreseen. In effect, through careful, rational application of Kantian deontological ethics, I became better (though still far from perfect) at relating as an emotional human being.
A common criticism of Kantian ethics is that they only work among a pure community of rational actors, the famous "Kingdom of Ends". I do not believe this to be the case: they are not principles of behaviour for rational people, but rational principles of behaviour for people. An analogy of difference can be made to the common wet liberal belief in the transcendent power of rational debate with fascists to convince them, and all observers, of the error of fascism. This, many would claim (myself among them), is a fantasy because people do not act purely rationally and cannot be expected to sift the arguments neutrally before coming to a carefully judged assessment of the abstract merits of the cases. For this reason, I and many other socialists proclaim, "No platform for fascists", on the grounds that it is the scenario best-suited to smothering the fascist instinct and preventing it from developing an organisation, an integrity or even a coherent public language, which fans of Wittgenstein can tell you is something of a drawback for someone. (How does this square with treating others as ends and not means? We are enabling them to assess all options without the falsifying and distorting fear and emotionalism of the fascist agenda.) Does this failure have consequences for Kantianism? No, because Kantianism does not require that you treat all others as always being rational lawgivers, but as actors capable of giving rational laws. This has obvious consequences for our situation, since we have defined our objects as being of sub-optimal rationality - our new insight allows us to construct Kantian solutions to our problem, as we have done, which rationally impel us to consider the human, the contingent and the irrational in our solutions. (I have to note that anyone with a familiarity with the Groundwork would have known already from Kant's examples that he is very concerned about putative universal laws which fail the test of consistency with natural human desires; the crude caricature of Kant as cold and heartless stems primarily from those who have never bothered to read him.)
I will proceed to examine grey areas between formal debate and ordinary human interaction, which are numerous. We have already touched on the political sphere. This has many aspects of formal debate, especially when one watches PMQs on a Wednesday. And yet, the presence of an audience with ultimate decisive power means that there is a temptation to relax the commitment to truth and accuracy. Moreover, the partisan nature of politics and the collegiate clubbability of it both mitigate against the instinct to speak openly and truthfully. I wouldn't endorse this, considering all such behaviour to be plain wrong, but I can understand the motives from which the behaviour springs. A related situation obtains in the academe, where the community element reduces the propensity to speak truth baldly and bluntly (though not, as anyone acquainted with academia knows, by very much).
A particular case that I want to examine, because it affects we ordinary people far more than do the special cases of formal politics or academia, is that of informal debate. To what extent can one ignore one's fellows' feelings during informal debate? This ranges over various degrees of informality, from community meetings to a chat down the pub. Clearly there is still a duty to truth and, if it is a decision-making body, to good policy; yet there is also a very clear duty to good behaviour towards one's fellows in terms of assistance and respect. (In some ways formal politics is a special case of this with unusually weak community ties, but I think of it separately from cases where the participants are predominantly friends and neighbours.) Our task of combining the maxims is substantially harder here, as whereas the first two involved similar values about treating others well, we now have maxims predicated upon distinct value systems: our treatment of others; and truth, or meetness. Yet a path is available, though it is hard to follow: to state the truth helpfully and humbly. Intriguingly, this is very similar to the famous Biblical quote from Micah 6:8: "You have already been told what is right and what Yahweh wants of you. Only this, to do what is right, to love loyalty and to walk humbly with your God." To do what is right, to love loyalty and to walk humbly. A big ask, but who said that morality was easy?
One wrinkle is the emotionality of the person attempting to act in a rational Kantian way: for no one is immune, nor should we pretend they can be (see my previous post on Susan Boyle and mental health), and indeed nor should they be, for our rationality is a tool to help us attain the ends that we desire because of our emotional human nature. An example from long ago in my life, before I knew most of the people reading this, was an argument I had over a topic the nature of which is unimportant now, all these years later. I had been discussing the issue with a friend, when another friend - one whom I liked but who was not on the same intellectual level, especially when it came to the ability to think rationally and logically through the consequences of his beliefs - interrupted and baldly stated that he was "sorry, but [my] argument was completely flawed" because of x, y and z. I noticed as he unfolded his position that he hadn't listened to most of our discussion, which was about something non-trivial, unlike what he was talking about, and had not understood even what little he had heard. Stung by his rudeness in presuming to condemn me so harshly without even listening to what we had been discussing, I lost my temper, proceeded to uncaringly rip his arguments into little pieces and then verbally abuse him, at which point he understandably got upset and ran off, humiliated. This was not rational behaviour on my part. It was not respectful of him as a person to show him up in front of my other friend, nor to be rude to him, even as revenge for his rudeness, and in particular it was wrong of me to treat him as an inferior. The fact that he was was irrelevant: he was a human being and deserved to have his feelings and dignity respected. So how should I have responded? Even had he heard the conversation, his contribution would likely have been of little interest to me - but to him, his contribution was important, and a significant end: ignoring his contribution would have been to treat him as only a means to my end of discussing the issue. With my years of hindsight, I believe that the correct approach would have been to let him continue making his point until he reached a lull, pointed out that that was not actually what we had been discussing but what did he think about what we were actually discussing? I mentioned earlier that the Bible had presaged our rational moral axiom; here our correct course is prefigured by the example of Socrates. Socrates wandered Athens, rarely outright imposing his views, but drawing from others explanation and understanding of the flaws in their own positions, as they grappled towards the truth which he saw but did not flaunt.
The final point of interest flows from the last, which is that 'rationality' performs two distinct functions in our discussion: one, as an ability which can be used as a tool and which one person can contain in greater capacity than another; and two, as a state of mind and a process which contribute to the assessment of how to apply that tool. When thought of like this we can see parallels to other "abilities" where excessive flaunting is considered rude, but the unassuming use of which in others' interests is considered a moral imperative - physical strength, for example, or wealth: a strong man is expected to help the weak to lift large boxes, but not to wander over to a weaker man lifting a small box and ask if they need help; a rich man is expected to give to the poor, but not to impugn their ability to support themselves by offering to pay for trivial things, which would diminish the recipient's status as an independent, self-actuating person. From the other side, there is always the lesson that a capacity for great rational force does not necessarily make one capable of applying that rational force in the end of promoting human dignity and happiness. Humility behooves us all. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| My friend colesey wrote an interesting if typically elliptical post about this whole Susan Boyle thing, noting that it has two sides: how we treat celebrities and how we treat people with learning disabilities. It would probably be worth reading his post before you read mine, as this is largely a response (it started out as a comment there before it got too long). I suppose that I should state from the outset that as a man with a severely mentally handicapped cousin whom I love deeply, I have an instinctive sympathy for Miss Boyle, in whom I perhaps irrationally see a lot of my cousin. Moreover, we so far have no evidence that she has any real mental illness beyond a natural aversion to harassment and interference. Patricia Williams made what I consider to be the most ridiculously self-obsessed statement about the Susan Boyle story when she said,
My fairy tale construction of Boyle's performance idealises her as a black American woman revealed as princess. I know that must sound like a stretch, but as a black American woman, I live in a world where the colour of one's skin is at least as powerful an indicator of status as whether Boyle wore open-toed white heels with sheer black hosiery and let her hair go grey.
None of this is going to prevent me from writing a long post disregarding entirely all of those caveats, by pointing out that another side to the story is how we treat those with mental health problems such as depression. Mental illness is simultaneously trivialised as an essential lifestyle choice for celebrities and sensationalised as the domain of murderers and the walking dead. Society appears to see no contradiction between these things, just as it sees no contradiction between its glamorisation of queerness as a world of celebrity fun and its demonisation of queerness as a sign of interior degeneracy and unreliability.
Mental health problems, like queerness, can be invisible axes of difference - it may take an effort, but a queer or someone with a mental health problem can hide it enough from enough people enough of the time. Because of this, the defining type of subordination is different: not direct oppression as in the case of women and ethnic minorities, but what Cheshire Calhoun calls "displacement", the loss of queer and mentally ill identities from the public domain because they must be hidden in order for the queer or mentally ill person to be allowed to participate on equal terms. (It's interesting that as direct oppression of women and ethnic minorities has decreased, more and more they note that their success is at the cost of having to act like the stereotype of a white man in order to succeed - in other words, displacement.)
It is well-attested that the myths of meritocracy, the equal playing field, the uninfluenced and uncreated rational actor, are predicated upon a Greek conception of personhood created in the image of the white, heterosexual patriarch, and that this conception has dogged us for millennia. A society which depends upon its legislators' ability to be rational actors is a society which depends upon a lie. Even the patriarchs did not spring into being unformed but were pulled screaming out of their mother's vagina in a puddle of blood. They were raised in the home, learning their common morality and their common prejudices there. No exceptions. To pretend otherwise is not just to self-deceive but to self-alienate. There are no purely rational actors but only contingent humans. And the model that we in the West have of the rational actor is not unfounded, but founded upon the dominant social class of the last several millennia: the rich, white, heterosexual, man - with no mental health problems.
Each of these contributes to our conventional view of what makes the perfect public citizen. The ability to devote himself solely to public life - which requires large personal wealth and is at the root of our current expenses scandal. The idolisation of traditional European cultural mores and conventions in music, art, literature. The family fetish, with no policy speech possible unless it references "hard-working families everywhere" and the obsession with children and childhood which both infantilises adults and sexualises children, as well as encouraging disastrous policies of subsidising parenthood when we should in fact be urgently slashing the population. The dominance of aggressive competition as both a fact of public life and a tenet of public policy, championing the testosterone-fueled antics of the City and bringing the market into even the classroom and the hospital. And underpinning it all the deification of pseudo-rational impartiality, with no virtue higher than dull technocracy.
And this all returns to Susan Boyle and her assessment under the Mental Health Act. Our fear of mental health problems, instead of embracing them and learning from their perspectives, leads us to medicalise - almost criminalise - them. It is well known that depressives are better able than anyone else to accurately assess reality. Manic depressives and schizophrenics have in other cultures been respected for their creative powers and spiritual insights. But not here, not now. Susan Boyle has a tantrum and instead of understanding it as a perfectly natural emotional reaction to her exciting few months, especially given her learning disabilities, we medicalise, isolate, condemn. We live in a sad world. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU FUCKING TECHNO FUCKS | | Current Location: | 332 | | Subject: | Fucking LJ | | Time: | 12:00 am | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/angry.gif) aggravated |
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| I could cry. I could fucking cry. I wrote a long, heartfelt post about how my life gets repeatedly fucked into tiny pieces and fucking LiveJournal decided to encounter a fucking server error and lose EVERYTHING. What, so I don't have a right to get all fucking emo at a time like this?
I don't know why I even bother fucking existing. At least it gives me an excuse to break out the angsty dark red. | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| Today, at my regular games meet, I played a game called Blokus 3D. This is a much fun game reminiscent of, though different from, Tetris. It involves placing tetracubes onto a lattice, within a notional net. The way to succeed, as intimated by the name, is to block your opponents from being able to play efficiently, or even at all. I have a great love for this genre of game, known as "abstracts", and did quite well, winning three of our six games against other players who, though like me were new to the game, were nonetheless strong players too. I worked out how to block them slightly quicker - and was heartless enough to employ this knowledge ruthlessly.
It was an irony, then, that I should find myself on the receiving end of a parallel play in the meta-game of actually getting a game at all. After my original opponents left to go home early, I hung around for a looong time waiting for a game. Two games finished and suddenly the prospect of a game loomed large, vindicating my long and tedious wait. And then - another player insisted on playing a game that they knew I hated and persuaded the group round to their point of view, leaving me to go home, making all of my time waiting an unambiguous and total waste. I had been successfully blocked, a devastating move that left me floundering and humiliated. What can I say but "Good move" and that next time perhaps I should apply my in-game ruthlessness to the meta-game itself. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| ... his wonders to perform; he plants his footsteps in the sea, and rides upon the storm.
Sometimes life throws up odd coincidences. I am a rationalist and have done some reasonably high-powered philosophy. I understand the anthropic principle and its parallels. I understand the point of the Eskimoes in Trafalgar Square. And yet, sometimes things move with an apparent purpose. It is unexplainable by reason, yet the evidence is there and all you can do is file it away under the category "odd".
Today I went to see a film, La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc, of which more in a later post. After coming out of the BFI I walked zombie-like to Waterloo, before remembering that I had to go back and get the tickets for my viewings in June; I could have and had planned to go straight to the box office from the screen. I went back, spent an arbitrary amount of time arguing with the guy at the box office, phoning up meuncovered and purplesparkler to get them to come with me to 8½ and The Magnificent Ambersons respectively, and picking the seats. I then went to the BFI shop to buy the DVD of La Passion..., and unusually for me asked at the desk, only to be told that it was unavailable in England; I could have been fruitlessly hunting for it on the shelves for hours. I now left the BFI and went to Waterloo, got on the Northern Line. I randomly decided that I was going to go to a Sainsbury's to buy ravioli, and that the Sainsbury's to which I would go would be, for old times' sake, the one in Tooting Broadway. I carried on down the Northern Line, past my usual stop at Stockwell, and got off at Tooting Broadway. This was a pretty odd decision. I got out of the station and went into Sainsbury's, only to find that all of the cappeletti was gone. I could have given up and gone home, or I could have bought ravioli without cappeletti. Instead I randomly decided to get a bus down to another Sainsbury's, past Colliers Wood. I got there, went inside. I walked past the ravioli aisle twice before finding it - this was weird as I should have known where it was. When I eventually found it, there was exactly enough cappeletti for my needs (four pots of cappeletti, four pots of other ravioli and tortellini). Success! I was about to go and pay when I had a sudden urge to go to the deli counter. I went there to find it all shut, except for the mussels stall. I asked for mussels, but only realised as they were being scooped up that they weren't pre-cooked. I have never cooked mussels in my life, and normally just don't buy them. Today, I decided I would buy them anyway. I went to the checkouts, where there were long queues, which would delay me, annoyingly. Except that a manager popped up and opened another till for me. That was unusual. I then went to Colliers Wood station to get the tube back home. I could have gone to the bus stop and taken the bus that goes straight up the road - slower but cheaper. When I got to Colliers Wood I remembered that I only had a few quid left on my Oyster card. I always top up at the end of my journeys, but today I randomly decided to top up at the start, there and then. As I topped up, a young man came up to the machine next to me - there was no one else in the station - and struggled with his ticket. He sounded Latin American, and couldn't work out how to spell Walthamstow. I helped him out and finished buying my ticket. I turned to see him putting a tatty fiver through the machine, which wouldn't accept it, the fiver being so old and worn. I looked into my wallet to see if I could change the fiver and was surprised to see that I had no cash other than a pound coin and a 50p piece. The young man was becoming frantic - no money, no credit card, stranded on completely the wrong side of London. There was no one else around. So I bought his ticket with my debit card, took his fiver from him and gave him my pound coin. He was profusely grateful as I went through the gate, leaving him to phone his girlfriend to say he was coming. A good deed, and one that I would not have been there to help with had not such a random chain of events propelled me to that specific time and place where I was needed.
But that is not the end of the story. I got home to the flat, and said hi to Paul and Ellen, who were preparing to cook. What are you cooking? I asked. Mussels. I laughed and showed them my bag of mussels. We agreed to cook them together. I went into my room to shuck off my shoes, wallet, etc. Ellen came through: she didn't have enough wine to make the sauce for the mussels: would I go out and get some. Of course. I put my shoes back on, put my wallet and keys back in my pocket. When I get back, I said, remind me to tell you about an odd coincidence. I walked to the shop and looked for the cheapest bottle of white wine I could find, eventually finding one for £5.49. I took it to the counter, and as I pulled out my wallet to pay I realised that I had precisely £5.50 in it, and that had I not helped the young man I would have had precisely £2, and the minimum for using a card in the shop was more than £5.50 and I would not have been able to eat the mussels that I only decided to get because I was randomly in Colliers Wood where I had to be to help the young man. The circle was closed. There was no rationale behind it, and coincidences do happen, that's how the laws of chance work. And yet; and yet. | | comments: 6 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | Common People; William Shatner | | Current Location: | 332 | | Subject: | Mundanities First | | Time: | 11:07 pm | | Current Mood: | zen |
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| In a glum mood tonight. As with all things, it revolves around boardgames.
I started playing my favourite game online. It is a wargame set in the First World War. I am not great at it, but I do enjoy playing.
Usually.
Tonight, after failing almost every computer-generated die roll in the game over the last week of playing, I apologised to my opponent, who had expected us to get a lot of turns done tonight, and walked out of the game, vaguely promising to look at it tomorrow.
I don't even know if I will.
It has been so unbelievably grim.
Perhaps I am unduly affected because of the specifics of now; more of this in the protected next post. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | The Birdie Song; Studio 99 | | Current Location: | 332 | | Subject: | Nashville | | Time: | 01:02 am | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/blah.gif) blah |
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| Saw Robert Altman's Nashville at the BFI today. Had hoped to get others to come along but even the lure of my cut-price tickets wasn't enough to make anyone want to spend time with me. All those people who said you could buy friendship lied.
Anyway, the film was riveting. Truly epic, both in terms of the breadth of the cast, the scope of the vision and the bum-numbing length. But every character was fascinating and important - the lesser ones ultimately even more so, he says without wishing to spoil it. The scope of the vision was no less than a State of the Union on the occasion of the bicentennial, and couldn't be anything less. And the film never felt bloated or padded with unnecessary scenes - even at three hours it zipped along and could have easily had more content.
From the pre-scene it established its aesthetic, and then from the first scene it established its socio-political dialectic. That opening song, 200 Years, was gripping, and every word defined that character - or did they. Then Lily Tomlin appeared in an unbelievably awesome role as the lead of a gospel choir. The Brit journalist was a bit odd at times, but was clearly important as the Old World outsider. Character after character, each nuanced and multi-faceted. All of their disparate lives entangling, and all the while the shadowy unseen figure of Hal Phillip Walker, the eccentric populist making an astonishingly successful third party bid for the Presidency, spoke calmly his devastating words of condemnation of the American state and its degradation.
An unambiguous 10/10. Hard to see how this film could have been improved in any way. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| Makes a man fancy breakfast in bed.
Just woke up. Life is good.
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Just reading about the latest fallout from the MPs' expenses scandal. It makes you want to weep with frustration. So many intelligent people subsumed into fetid corruption. Hard to see how the Euros and locals will be anything other than a screaming nightmare for Labour. Perhaps I should re-register with the Electoral Commission ready for a June election? | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini; Timmy Mallet | | Current Location: | 332 | | Subject: | Welcome Back! | | Time: | 09:04 pm | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/thinking.gif) nostalgic |
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| Aww - all those posts I wrote so long ago. Some are funny; some are moving. Honestly, the odds are you've not got access to the moving ones, or at least not all of them. But I do, and that's what's important.
I think I want to start this up again. I think at best it helps me to make sense of things, and at worst it provides a harmless outlet for venting. I hope you'll join me!
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| | Current Music: | Round Round; Sugababes | | Current Location: | No8 | | Subject: | So Long '07; Hello 08 | | Time: | 12:35 pm | | Current Mood: | peaceful |
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| I always like to consider myself to be pretty good at judging prospects. As such, I feel kind of smug at how accurate my prediction from 1st Jan 2007 was: http://coldjwplay.livejournal.com/93647.html?nc=1. 2007 was crap. More death, most notably my grandma, the last remaining grandparent. Most of the year on medicine. Working insanely long hours, first in two jobs, and then in just the one. Ridiculous rent. Ballooning weight. Yet, it wasn't all bad. I came off the medicine. I got politically active. I gamed and gamed and gamed. I saw a million and one films. I lost a lot of the weight. I had a great appraisal. I found a new place to live. I achieved a personal ambition... So all in all it was okay. But still, glad it's over.
The next thing is to establish how I did with my resolutions, listed here: http://coldjwplay.livejournal.com/92794.html?nc=4. I absolutely smashed the first resolution, playing not just twice a month, but more like six or seven times every month. Perhaps that means I overdid it - but I enjoyed it. The second one was overtaken by circumstances: the meds made me gain insane amounts of weight; but then I did manage to lose huge amounts again by strict dieting. So not unsuccessful on this measure. The third was also overtaken by events: I moved to Tooting, which makes it harder to walk to work. But I still manage it once every few weeks, and I can run short distances without collapsing. Again, not unsuccessful. And finally, the last was kind of overtaken by events too. We'll see how that goes in '08.
So, any new resolutions? More like achievements, this time. Not activities to do, but targets to hit.
- Make SRE. By hook or by crook (aka by promotion or by moving) I really feel I ought to move up a level in 2008. I could do with the money, if nothing else.
- Reach 11 stone. Three months ago I was 14 stone (!); I am now 12 stone; I want to lose more. Realistically, the less you have to lose, the harder it is. Losing the two stone was relatively easy: the next target is to lose another stone.
- Unspecific, but See my friends more. With focussing on my hobbies and my work and my politics I've let my friends slide a little. When did I last see a Manchester friend (other than the eternally reliable Dom)? Not seen DGH enough, either. And it was so lovely to see Cem that I want to do that again more too. Hard to quantify this one without seeming callous, so I'm leaving it unspecific.
- Personal resolution.
I think 2008 will be better: I can see good stuff happening. 2007 was a hard year but an important one. By April I'll have repaid my big loan and I'll be free. With self-control and a better routine I can lose the extra stone in a few months, I feel sure. Games are firmly entrenched in my routine, and I've learnt better which games I really enjoy. I have got used to regular cinema-going, and have some Odeon vouchers to spend (thanks mum and dad!). Oh, to think that one year ago I was their employee. Again, doing that was hard but important - both financially and personally. And, grimly enough, there are now no likely deaths coming up.
So, a Happy New Year to everyone: love to you all.
Chris x
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Minimal Harm
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disappointed