Joe's Jottings

Category: psychology

BNP support increase – why the surprise?
For anyone who’s been asleep or under a particularly soundproofed rock for the last few weeks, here’s a quick ‘catch up’. Nick Griffin, leader of the UK’s Far Right British National Party, was invited on to BBC Television’s flagship political debate programme, ‘Question Time’. This generated a great deal of fuss and bother. Anti-Fascist groups demonstrated, Griffin himself objected about the format of the show, and it was one of the least edifying sights I’ve seen on TV for some years. A survey today reveals that after Griffin’s appearance on the show, support for the party has increased. Peter Hain is saying that this was exactly the sort of thing that led to Nazi Germany…sorry…that was Basil Fawlty…Peter Hain is saying that this was exactly the sort of thing he was afraid of. And even insiders at the BBC are stating that the way the program was handled was a farce and that Griffin was subjected to ‘attack dogs’.

Woooo…..serious stuff. Let’s just stop for a moment shall we? First of all, let’s make it clear to all and sundry that I’m no BNP supporter or fellow traveller. I say that now because I know from experience on certain Internet Forums any attempt to look at the phenomena that is the BNP or any aspect of multicultural politics in Britain tends to result in you being called a Nazi, racist, sympathiser, etc. So let’s nail that one first and now discuss the issue like grown-ups.

In terms of voting intention for an election tomorrow, the proportion who said they’d vote BNP was 3%. Last month, it was 2%. So, oodles of free publicity, massive TV coverage, the sort of profile that Griffin might have only gotten by leading a Wetherspoons Putsch and all that happens is an extra 1% of firm vote support. Pardon me, Peter, if I don’t get too panicky just yet? Yes, 22% of voters suggested that they might seriously consider voting BNP, but there’s many a slip between poll and ballot box.

What was obvious from the furore surrounding this edition of ‘Question Time’ is that :
1. A large number of protesters attempted to prevent the leader of a legal UK political party – how represehensible we might find the opinions of that party is irrelevant – from taking part in a debate on UK television.
2. Various high ranking political figures appeared to apply pressure to the BBC to not allow the broadcast to take place.
3. The format of the broadcast DID appear to be different to usual – it had all the hallmarks of a bear baiting session and I venture to suggest that the chairing of the programme could have been better.
The overall result of this has been to allow Griffin to be able to call ‘foul’ and play the ‘Martyr’ card – that well beloved ploy of all political extremists who know that their chances at the ballot box are pretty slim in any other circumstances. Griffin performed incredibly poorly on QT – despite the possibly loaded deck, which to be honest he and his advisers might have expected – his answers were not brilliant and he made teh error of getting a few cheap shots in at his political opponents. But, the overall impression that his supporters will take away and propagate through their publicity machine is that ‘We were censored and muzzled by the political establishment, the BBC and the far left’ – the very last impression that this appearance SHOULD have been allowed to give. The UAF, Government and BBC have managed by their total cack-handed handling of this issue to give the BNP the origin of their very own ‘stab in the back’ myth.

The ‘No Platform’ issue is a well worn one. Basically, it’s a policy by the left to attempt to remove any possible platform for Far Right parties in the media – or on Internet Forums, discussion groups, public venues, etc. Short for ‘No platform for Fascists’ it is supposed to starve the Far Right of the ability to publicise themselves and gain recruits. There’s one problem with this approach – it doesn’t work. It simply allows the sort of nonsense we’ve encountered over the last week to play out, gaining the Far Right more recruits and support than if they’d been allowed to quietly get on with making total arses of themselves in public.

To me, ‘No platform’ is simply a censorship operation by the Left, in the style that Stalin and Mao would recognise. Totalitarianism is alive and well on both sides of the political fence. But it is counter productive and dangerous in a wider sense than that of stifling political debate. By permitting teh right to say that they are being censored, their words are heard by more and more people. The British people are not getting more racist; but many are now perceiving that the country is changing it’s cultural make up in a way that doesn’t benefit them:
1. The Government and main political parties are thought by many people – particularly working class and those in the poorer economic groups – to be totally out of touch with people’s fears and concerns about immigration. Until very recently it’s been difficult to discuss these issues without being howled down in ‘Islington Circles’ as a racist monster who eats babies for breakfast and kicks small dogs.
2. People have seen the economy got to hell in a basket, and in many cases are now experiencing real pain. They also start noticing immigration – note I said NOTICING – for the first time. Even with no proven factual, causal link between their decrease in standard in living and the number of immigrants that they feel are coming in to the country, they irrationally believe and fear that there IS a causal link.
3. When the Government produces statistics that disprove any link between immigration and economic well being, or even suggest that there is a positive link, people are not believing it. This is partially because there are often other reports and statistics that prove the other point of view. Debating the issue then turns in to a game of ‘URL Tennis’ as participants fling references around like intellectual hand-grenades, attempting to trip up the logic or mathematics in the report and, if that fails, the credentials of the authors.
4. The Government is seen as being a bunch of lying bastards. The Government have been seen to lie on numerous issues – the 2003 Iraq War being a biggie, for example. If they’ll lie to take us to war, folks quite rightly believe they’ll lie on other policies. And as if by magic…in today’s Daily Mail there is a story of how Jack Straw and Tony Blair planned to pull an immigration ‘fast one’ on the people of Britain.
5. People wonder why the main parties are unwilling to discuss immigration and multiculturalism. People perceive an ‘elephant in the living room’ event taking place. The lack of debate or willingness to debate makes people fear the worst.
6. Media stories and programs bolster peopel’s fear of immigration and multiculturalism, especially in the absence of open, factual debate. For example, we get the ongoing ‘No Christmas Decorations’ sort of bollocks every year, programs like UK Border Patrol that show the efforts of the UK’s Border Agencies to keep undesirables out, etc.
In other words, there is an overwhelming perception for many people that this country is changing – no, is BEING changed by the Government – to a multicultural wonderland in which the views of the indiginous majority are being ignored. And the only people who’re paying attention to this is the BNP. And when these folks feel and fear that the BNP is being censored – and the BNP themselves can point to violent demonstrations to attempt to stop their leader speaking on TV – then people may well start thinking ‘What are these bastards trying to hide from me?‘

So, what’s to be done?
1. First of all, there needs to be an open discussion on all aspects of immigration and multicularal policies in the UK. It needs to be wideranging and it will involve engaging with very unplesant people on all sides of the argument. there can be no ‘No Platform’ nonsesne.
2. It must be possible for people to think and say the currently unthinkable in discourse without being howled down. You don’t destroy ideas by stopping them being expressed. You destroy them by exposing them to teh light of reasoned and factual analysis.
3. Government, opposition and opinion formers MUST realise that they are first of all dealing with perception and belief – in other words, irrational feelings that must be addressed before people can engage in this sort of debate. This will not be easy but is essential. The first stage is to simply say to people ‘We appreciate you’re a bit worried; we’re hear to listen. And then feckin’ LISTEN and don’t hear just what you want to hear.
Put bluntly, we have a fine campaigining season ahead for the bigots, the true racists, the thugs and the idealogues of both political extremes; economic recession, out of touch and dishonest Government, a few instances of corrupt and dishonest politicians stealing public money in their expenses, bankers bonuses getting stupidly high again, increasing unemployment, unpopular wars.

It’s time for Government and the political and media establishments of the UK to do soemthing before it all goes pear shaped. Censoring and demonstrating is not enough – it’s time to engage and defeat the ideas of extremists of both political colours.

Thanks for reading – go forth and get defeating.
October 25, 2009

Dubbed Hitler – why is it funny?

After the last post on here, ‘Gazing in to the abyss’, I concluded that I needed to take off the Old Testament ‘Prophet of Doom’ robes for a little while and take a slightly lighter view of something. Which is why, at first glance, the title of this piece may raise the odd eyebrow.

Some months ago, a clip from the film ‘Downfall’ appeared online. The film is about the final days in the Berlin Bunker at the end of World War 2. The scene features Hitler and his Generals studing a map, discussing a counter-attack that will never come. Hitler goes off on a serious rant at his military commanders, eventually settling down in to an admission that it’s all over.

So far, no great bundle of screaming laughs. But the 4 minute piece of video was then dubbed with whole new story lines – ‘Hitler discovers Michael Jackson is dead’, for example (left) is one of the funnier mashups on this theme on the Web.There are lots of others – Hitler finds out Oasis have split, that he’s been thrown off Xbox Live, that twitter is down again, that Liverpool have lost a soccer match. The list goes on. There’s even one where Hitler rants abouyt being subtitled…

The quality varies – some are just plain nasty, others mildly amusing, some I find laugh out loud funny.What this says about my sense of humour and the sense of humour of the people who put the mashups together is what I want to look at in this post.I guess now would be a good time to put in the usual justification that seems to be required these days….no, I don’t find Hitler amusing per se. No, I’m not a Nazi sympathiser, Yes, I do appreciate that World War 2 was not funny.

On a more practical basis, if you have even ‘schoolboy German’ the whole illusion is destroyed, so winding the sound down is quite helpful!

And having got that out of the way…

I guess we’ve always used humour to poke fun at evil. In the 1930s George Orwell (I believe) commented that the goose-step was a ludicrous way to walk, but as the marchers had guns it was best not to laugh too loudly.

Even during the Second World War, various rude comic songs were sung by the allied soldiers remarking on the rumour about Hitler’s single testicle – although the sentiment was expressed in less polite words – and various satires and comedies emerged from the War taking the mickey from the so-called Master Race – To Be or Not To Be and ‘The Great Dictator’ being the two most famous. However, it’s worth remembering that both of these films were made before the sheer scale and nature of the atrocities committed by the Nazis became known; after news came out about the Concentration Camps and the extermination policies of the Nazis, it took until Mel Brooks’s ‘The Producers’ in 1968 before it became possible to laugh at the Nazis again.

It’s worth noting that this sort of humour always picks fun at the Nazis, never their actions. There are invariably some very dark and usually unfunny attempts at humour that pick up on the cruelty of the Nazis, and occasionally even the death camps, but they’re uncommon.

The Downfall Mashups all have one thing in common; they feature Hitler ranting and raving on the behalf of the mashup creator about something that matters to them. Hitler’s been subverted to any number of things that cause people to ‘lose it’. Maybe he provides us with that excuse we need to really lose our rag to the degree of what might be called a ‘towering fury’. I had one of those years ago – it was kicked off by soemthing really stupid and I went ballistic. About 30 seconds in I KNEW I was in the wrong but what the heck, I was enjoying it so much that I genuinely didn’t want to stop – I knew I was going to have problems looking my colleagues in the eye for days afterwards, but it just felt so worth it. I literally did feel that I was towering above the situation!

Maybe the Downfall Mashup allows us to project our feelings on to a character well known for his rants – a sort of scapegoat for acting out in public. We can script our ‘actor’, wind him up and let him go. We vent our spleen, and as a side benefit reduce one of history’s most evil men to the part of an actor in one of our own rants against society. I wonder how long it will be before there’s a ‘personally abusive’ version where someone takes it out on a real, named individual that they dislike?

Is there a down side to the Downfall Mashup phenomenenon? I’m not sure – there’s one school of thought that says that this actually humanises Hitler and gives young people today a view of the Fuhrer as a comic spectacle, a foil for our own humour. This might be so, but the solution there is to ensure that we don’t forget the original evil committed by a bunch of very ordinary men with glasses, bad haircuts and bad breath who were allowed to get to where they did in life because no one stopped them.

Or, just maybe, no one laughed at them long and hard and sent them off with their tails between their legs before they got the illusion that they were something special. Who knows.

October 24, 2009

Gazing in to the abyss
Yesterday’s exploration of ‘What would George say?’ led me to following up a few points of research and whilst browsing around I came across this quote of Orwell’s:

Here is a saying of Nietzche which I have quoted before, but which is worth quoting again:

He who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself;
and if you gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss will gaze into you.

’Too long’, in this context, should perhaps be taken as meaning ‘after the dragon is beaten’.

The line that struck a chord with me here, and has done for some years now, is ‘the abyss will gaze in to you’. My topic for today – have we all spent rather too long staring in to the abyss and what have we bought back with us from there?

I guess a good place to start is with exactly what I mean by ‘the abyss’. For me it’s that spiritual dark place where your personal and our cultural demons lie. The trick is that whilst we need to be aware of the fact it’s there, we shouldn’t get ourselves too engrossed in it’s finer geography. I look at it in the way that CS Lewis spoke of the Devil in ‘The Screwtape Letters’:

‘There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors.’

Over the years I’ve wandered to the edge of my personal abyss a few times and stepped back. We all have our personal demons – what matters is whether we give them the freedom to do anything. Show me somone who claims to have no personal demons and I’ll show you a liar. And then there are those people whose demons are, shall we say, rather more unpleasant than those that most of us have; the criminal, the depraved, the insane. The problem that we have today, I believe, is twofold – the abyss is now much wider and deeper than it was even 20 years ago, and it impinges more than ever in to our daily lives.

In 1984, Frankie Goes to Hollywood asked the question “Are we living in a land where sex and horror are the new gods?’ Back then I think the answer was still ‘yes’, but we didn’t really know what was around the corner. Twenty-five years down the line the abyss comes in to our house courtesy of the Internet. Without sounding too much like Mary Whitehouse on a Sunday Evening, the Internet, cinema and TV have increasingly bought the baser instincts of human beings to the forefront of our consideration. I’m not dumb enough to believe that, in the words of Philip Larkin ‘Sexual intercourse began in 1963 (which was rather late for me)‘. Interest in the more extreme edges of pornography – whether that pornography is the pornography of sex or that of violence – has always been with us and was usually squirrelled away in the far recesses of most people’s minds for a number of reasons:

Society was more ‘up tight’ – certain forms of behaviour or artistic expression were simply regarded as wrong and tended to be either illegalor seriously frowned upon by society. Sometimes this was right (IMO) and othertimes it was ridiculous. But there were boundaries set.
1. There seemed to be less moral relativism – there seemed to be much more of a concensus view in society as to what was ‘right’ and ‘wrong’.
2. Extremely violent pornography of graphical violence was difficult to get hold of.
3. Anyone who DID have extreme interests was typically on their own; they were in no position to talk about it with friends who might be horrified at their interest.
In these circusmtances, if you went to your abyss, and peered in, and did dwell there a while the risk was pretty minimal for society as a whole. Your trip was a private one, one not to be shared with anyone. And for most of us there was the knowldge that certain things were, to put it bluntly, totally wrong.

The Internet has brought a lot of good in to people’s lives, but it has also amplified the potential for people to gaze deeper and for longer in to the abyss. It’s had two main impacts:
1. Extreme sexual and violent imagery is available to everyone more easily than ever before in history.
2. The sheer scope of the Internet means that it’s inevitable that no matter how extreme a person’s ‘interests’ are, it’s almost inevitable that somewhere in the 1.7 billion Internet users there is someone else with the same interests, and a web site delivering up media to accomodate those interests.
The impact of these two facts is that people with particularly unpleasant demons in their abyss now find, to their mind, their beliefs and views validated by the existence of those websites and users. This permits these individuals to look in to their personal abyss and see nothing wrong with what they see there, and hence feel encouragement to express their views in to the world. It’s not trendy to be in favour of censorship, but the validation of perversity that seems to be increasingly common surely cannot be healthy for society as a whole.

The phrase ‘People of the Abyss’ was used by Jack London as the title of a book he wrote in the early 1900s about the poverty of the East End of London; I believe wholeheartedly that we’re now generating a new breed of people of the abyss – those who’ve started hard and long in to the depths of their abyss, and have bought back their personal demons with them in to the workaday-world. This new breed of Abyss Dwellers are to be feared and shunned; their moral compass seems to be dictated by ‘it works for me and is no one else’s business what I do’ and they exhibit a lack of respect for the social codes of the society in which they live.

It’s not just extreme sex and violence that is an issue; I’ve just spent some time watching scenes of anti-fascist demonstrators protesting outside the BBC about the appearance of Nick Griffin of the BNP on BBC’s Question Time. There is soemthing ironic about a group allegedly demonstrating to preserve democracy by attempting to censor a TV programme. Perhaps these anti-fascists who’ve ‘fought the dragon’ are in danger of becoming that which they fight? In George Steiner’s novella ‘The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H.’ – written in 1981 – a trial in teh South American jungle allows the 90 year old Hitler, who in this novella survived the fall of Berlin, to explain himself. One comment made is that those who fought agaisnt him have taken on board many of the characteristics of his regime – in other words, by peering in to teh Nazi abyss and fighting the dragon, they’ve fought for too long and brought parts of the abyss back with them, and have now become the dragon which they once fought. Defending democracy is a delicate balancing act; you should not get so involved in the way of the enemy that you forget that you fight against that you forget the positive characteristics of what you’re fighting for.

In his novella, Steiner has a character say:

“There shall come a man who […] will know the grammar of hell and teach it to others. He will know the sounds of madness and loathing and make them seem music.”

He was, obviously, referring to Hitler in the book but today there are many such people in the public eye and those who we personally may be aware of who might be described in the same way. Modern people of the abyss who’ve been there and returned with a little more than they bargained for, and who’re determined to further expand their view of the world, and widen the abyss further, expanding the geography of Hell further in to our daily lives.

I’m a Christian – I think that colours my opinions on a number of topics, and makes me address them from a particular moral and ethical standpoint. Whether you have an religious beliefs or not I’d simply suggest that you at least become aware of the place of the abyss in your own life; what you choose to do with it when you find it’s location is up to you. Just remember that having gazed a little too long and deep, you may find that even if you leave the abyss, it may not entirely leave you.
October 23, 2009
Garden Party…
I’ve always been one of the world’s great hoarders…one of those folks who hangs on to things because they may one day be useful, one who starts something and then has to sweat cobs to get it finished.

I guess it’s when I noticed I had 3 pages of accounts, user names and passwords that I thought I might have some issues of spreading msyelf a little thin around the online world! A few more minutes of checking some of the accounts out – and finding that I’d last used them constructively maybe 3 or 4 years ago – made me realise that dragging behind you a load of digital deadwood is similar to having an attic, cellar, garage or study full of physical junk. And the nature of the online world is that it’s really difficult to get back to where you left off – even if the site’s still up and running. 🙂

We’ve recently been spending a lot of time tidying up around the Towers here – sorting out books, clearing out old stuff, and it struck me over the weekend that maybe I need to get some online tidiness and focus as well. And the relevance of the blog item title? I’ll get there eventually….

So…what to keep, what to throw, or is it what parts of me to keep, what parts of me to throw away? Ironically, especially considering my previous posts on the subject, top of the keep list are Facebook and Twitter, followed by this August publication that you’re reading right now. My plan is to:
1. Suspend my accounts on various discussion forums, and focus on stroking my ego through my Twitter and Facebook accounts and this blog. 🙂 Seriously – I think I am spread waaaay too thin out in cyberspace and really want to be in a position to publish some ‘words with weight’ when I want to.
2. Close the shutters on a few hobby sites I’ve run for a few years. They’ve never attracted much traffic and I’d rather take them ‘off the grid’ rather than leave them looking forlorn. Good backups will ensure nothing is lost, and who knows, one day they may return – alternatively they may simply be allowed to disappear forever. My last shot at an Online Community – Coffeehouse Chat – is already mothballed. Shame on you who offered support and never came… 😉
3. There should also be a commensurate loss of email accounts. I don’t know abouyt you but I find that whenever a new web site gets set up you almost always set a new email address up to go with it….
4. Kill off the accounts on any number of sites that I’ve tried before buying and found wanting – The well, LastFM, Ecademy, etc. Probably even Linked In and other business networking sites. I don’t believe that my brand is, as yet, ‘hot’ enough to warrant being on these sites. I get buried under all the other software developers, wannabe entrepreneurs, etc.
I suppose my bottom line realisation in the last 12 months is that a lot of my current online (and offline) world is of greater relevance to the Joe Pritchard of 5 or 6 years ago than the Joe Pritchard I live with today. It can’t possibly be healthy to live in the past – there’s not going to be room or even inclination to move forward to fresh fields and pastures new if your world is already full. Various things have conspired to chop off quite important anchors to my past, and I’ve become increasingly aware that people have impressions of me that are no longer true, but are like looking at some image of me in some sort of Dorian Gray style painting of how I was some years back. Hopefully, by clearing out the crud I’ll give my self space to move on to new things, whilst still keeping in touch with the people who really matter to me in the here and now.

And the title of this piece? Rick Nelson bought it all home to me in these lyrics:

I went to a garden party to reminisce with my old friends
A chance to share old memories and play our songs again
When I got to the garden party they all knew my name
But no one recognized me I didn’t look the same

But it’s all right now
I learned my lesson well
You see you can’t please ev’ryone so
You got to please yourself

Smart bloke. Time to re-invent.
October 20, 2009
Book Review – ‘Mere Christianity’
Mere Christianity cover from Wikipaedia

When I used to commute between work and office I used to do a regular(ish) item on here called ‘The Bus Book’ in which I reveiwed the book I’d been reading whilst on the commute. One book I intended to review as part of that series, but never managed it because the commuting finished, was C. S. Lewis’s ‘Mere Christianity’.

C. S. Lewis is probably best known for his children’s classic ‘The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe’, part of the ‘Narnia’ series of stories about a fantastic land in which magic has true power. The books are also deep Christian allegory, reflecting Lewis’s great abilities as a writer on the topic of Christianity and Christian apologetics.

‘Mere Christianity’ grew out of a series of radio lectures that Lewis was asked to do in the Second World War. The BBC approached a large number of writers and artists to develop radio programmes in the war – Orwell and Priestley were amongst Lewis’s fellow contributors to the literary war effort – and Lewis contributed a series of programmes describing the ‘guts’ of Christianity – the common issues that the Christian Faith of all denominations has to deal with. And these programmes, after the war, became the basis of ‘Mere Christianity’.

I’ve often commented that the mental processes that led to my eventual Confirmation in to the Church of England were started by two men – Johnny Cash and C.S. Lewis – both of whom came to their belief via what’s best described as a ‘non-standard’ route – Cash through feeling the presence of God when he’d decided to give up and die in a cave, and Lewis coming back to belief after many years as an Atheist.

‘Mere Christianity’ is a relatively slim book, but heavily laden with ideas. Stylistically it hasn’t aged well in the 60 years since the material was originally written, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The style is best described as ‘no-nonsense’ and the book approaches Christianity from, in my opinion, a very Anglican perspective, although the theses within are applicable to all Christian denominations. The Anglican faith is often said to be based on three cornerstones – Faith, Tradition and Reason – and it is this statement that Lewis uses as the basis of his ideas in the book.

The book is split in to 4 sections –
1. Right and Wrong as a clue to the meaning of the universe
2. What Christians believe
3. Christian behaviour
4. First steps in the doctrine of the Trinity
Central to the arguments of the first part of the book, where Lewis puts the case for Christianity, is the idea that there exists a general ‘law of morality’ – a rule about right and wrong known almost implicitly by all humans. Whatever our beliefs, most people would argue that the Holocaust was wrong at any number of levels, that child-murder is abhorrent, etc. (This was written 60 years ago – I guess it says a lot about the changes in morality in the last 60 years that I had to think hard when writing that last sentence!) Lewis argues that for such a universal rule of right and wrong to be known to people irrespective of culture, there must be something above and beyond us to impose such a rule.

Lewis then posits what is now known in theological circles as the ‘Lewis Trilemma’ – an argument that is now a little dented by modern theological studies but that stated that Jesus was either divine, lying, or insane. As His behaviour didn’t seem to indicate insanity, and his works did not indicate the moral turpitude associated with lying, Lewis was left with the conclusion that Christ was indeed divine.

He explores the virtues and the sins – I have to say that on reading this book for the first time the idea of ‘pride’ being a sin – maybe THE sin -came as something of a shock to the system but when Lewis explores the idea that extreme pride is often at the back of the other sins, such as gluttony and lust – then perhaps it’s not such a long shot. He then points out that Pride was what separated the Devil from God in the first place, so that rather put the hat on it!

Lewis’s exploration of virtue, sin and morality from a Christian perspective are interesting and well grounded. He states very clearly that his intention with the book is to bring people who might be intrested in becoming Christians in to a sort of spiritual ‘waiting room’ where they can determine which particular branch of Christianity their calling will be for. And it works very well on that level. he does not intend the book and the ideas within it to be a doctrine of their own.

I think the only issue I woudl take with the book is the language and general style – it’s a little ‘stuffy’ and in a couple of places distinctly politically incorrect – and whilst that doesn’t bother me one jot I can see some people being put off. My advice would be to persevere – the book was written 60 years ago by an upper-middle class male academic, but the issues it deals with are eternal.

I agree wholeheartedly with Anthony Burgess’s comment about the book : “…the idea persuader for the half-convinced, for the good man who woudl like to be a Christian but finds his intellect getting in the way.” It’s a great and useful book – I wish I’d come across it earlier in my personal spiritual journey. An excellent companion for Lewis’s religious novel in ‘letter’ form, ‘The Screwtape Letters’.
October 17, 2009
Death of a celebrity

This weekend the singer Stephen Gately died at his residence in Majorca. At the time of writing, the cause of death is unknown but suicide, foul play and drugs abuse are not being suggested. I was provoked in to making this post by the reaction to the death that I noticed from various friends and acquaintances who took teh death quite hard but who also commented on the ‘gallows humour’ and apparent indifference of people to the fellow’s passing.

Mr Gately was clearly well loved by friends, family and fans. I have to say that he meant little to me – a passing aquaintance with his name on the news – but unfortunately those who live as celebs must die as celebs, and part of that is the sick jokes marking their passing. Since the widespread uptake of email, and especially since the web, this sort of humour has followed celebrity death as quickly and inexorably as paparazzi photographers and ambulance chasing lawyers. Before electronic media, one at least had to wait for the jokes to appear in the newspapers / magazines or be passed from people who’d heard them from a friend who in turn heard them from a guy who knew the gardener of the dead celeb.

It’s rarely anything personal – it’s a coping mechanism, perhaps some of the milder jokes even provide the 21st Century version of marking the death of someone by printing the borders of the newspapers in black. As some of you will know I was Admin on Sheffield Forum for a couple of years. How to handle posted ‘dead person humour’ was an ongoing problem. I used to apply the rule of 24 – within the first 24 hours it’s not nice – after that, it happens. It may not be nice but it’s a byproduct of being in the celebrity food chain. When you stop swimming in the media seas, your body sinks and the local bottom dwellers come and dismember the body, so to say….

One comment made stuck with me; imagine going to bed at 33 years old and not waking up. When I was a kid I lost a friend who died at age 11. As a younger man I lost a friend who died at 21. Every morning in the developing world people in their 30s don’t wake up because they’ve died in the night of malnutrition, AIDS, Malaria, Cholera. At the risk of sounding callous, I’m afraid that death is not the preserve of the poor, the sick, the elderley and the nobodies in the world. It’s pretty Catholic in it’s tastes and can strike out at anyone – not just people who immediately surround us, and those of our modern pantheon of celebrities that our media choose to inform us are worthy of dying publically. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not hypocritical enough to comment that I feel the death of total strangers in the developing world at all in my life – I don’t – but neither am I willing to go to serious grief over a celebrity who I didn’t know from Adam and who doesn’t even know I personally exist, except as part of a demographic.

I’m willing to admit to being sad at the deaths of three celebs in particular – John Peel, Joe Strummer and Johnny Cash. I grew up with their music playing an important part of my life to varying degrees, so can empathise with people who’ve felt the loss of Mr Gatley as a figure in their musical upbringing – and especially those who’ve actually met the fellow. Whilst we can all reflect on John Donne’s words about ‘ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for you’ it’s worth also reflecting on whether your feelings are genuinely inspired by the death, or inspired by the media scrum surrounding the death suggesting how we should feel.

October 13, 2009
Everybody Hurts

For various reasons, I started really thinking about the REM song ‘Everybody Hurts’ today. Just in case you’re not au fait with it – here are the lyrics…

When the day is long and the night, the night is yours alone,
When you’re sure you’ve had enough of this life, well hang on
Don’t let yourself go, ’cause everybody cries and everybody hurts sometimes

Sometimes everything is wrong. Now it’s time to sing along
When your day is night alone, (hold on, hold on)
If you feel like letting go, (hold on)
When you think you’ve had too much of this life, well hang on

‘Cause everybody hurts. Take comfort in your friends
Everybody hurts. Don’t throw your hand. Oh, no. Don’t throw your hand
If you feel like you’re alone, no, no, no, you are not alone

If you’re on your own in this life, the days and nights are long,
When you think you’ve had too much of this life to hang on

Well, everybody hurts sometimes,
Everybody cries. And everybody hurts sometimes
And everybody hurts sometimes. So, hold on, hold on
Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on
Everybody hurts. You are not alone
“Everybody hurts. You are not alone.” So very true, and also so difficult to remember when you are in any sort of pain.

(more…)

September 9, 2008
Dumbing Down 2.0?

I regularly follow Bill Thompson’s columns on Online Issues at the BBC’s website – see the Blogroll here for a link to Bill’s personal blog – and recently re-read this item which I found very interesting indeed.

In it he comments on the idea expressed by Nick Carr – that Google and it’s ilk on the Internet might actually be diminishing our capacity for thinking. There is also a little backing from neurologist Susan Greenfield for the idea, in that the way we take in information from modern media is different to how we’ve taken in information (by more direct experience) for the last couple of million years. In other words, there may be a bit of re-wiring going on…

Now, what really interested me here was that it actually supports a vague suspicion I have that my own mental faculties have changed in recent years. I’ve also witnessed it in others, and heard people complain about the fact that ‘They can’t settle down to read’, for example. Just watch people around you – we seem to spend an awful lot of time when we are mentally engaged in ‘information surfing’. We used to joke about MTV Attention Spans and ‘soundbite politics’ – how long before we start commenting on your ‘Googlespan’ rather than your attention span?

Experience in administering and contributing to numerous online discussion forums and mailing lists has also exposed me to what I think are changes in the style of discourse. Ignoring the ‘slanging matches’ I’ve noticed more use of links to things like blogs and wikis without any interpretation of the target link by the poster. Sometimes this is appropriate, but sometimes the relevance of the link to the ‘guts’ of the issue at hand seems to be tenuous or requires ‘drawing out’ from the material referenced. In either case, I’d expect the referenced material to be developed in the discussion; without this development it often appears that the poster is simply ‘Google Bombing’ the discussion with a load of references designed more to give the appearance of knowledge than the actual knowledge itself.

After all, Googling a topic rarely takes more than a few minutes; understanding the material returned, cross referencing it, checking it’s particular bias or accuracy – these are the parts of the process of Internet research that take the time if done properly. I guess I’m concerned about laziness or, in some cases, posters exhibiting intellectual intimidation by simply attempting to floor people with their apparent erudition. How one determines whether soemone is lazy, intimidating or simply assumes people know as much as they do is a good point for discussion!

Perhaps we should all take a few steps to stop the rot in our own thinking.

One starting point is to search for knowledge, not to point score. Resist the temptation to Google for facts in a topic about we know nothing, purely to win a debating point. After all, shouldn’t you be engaging in that debate with at least a grasp of the basic issues involved? Now, don’t get me wrong here; I’m not saying don’t Google; I’m saying Google in the heat of debate to get clarification and detail, not to get ‘first time exposure’ to the issues. If you see a debate that looks interesting but of which you know nothing, then take soem quality time out to read around the issue from a number of online sources and – dare I say it – the odd book or magazine article? After all, if it’s worth your time debating it, it’s worth doing well.

Secondly – know and question your sources. See what other ersources are referenced. regard anything without at least a couple of supporting ‘quality’ references as an debate-pieces rather than it necessarily being afctually correct.

Read deep as well as wide; too often people see something that appears to support their point of view and then stop reading.

Let’s see what we can do to stop the ‘fast food’ approach to our acquisition of information. We should be acquiring information, to improve our knowledge, and from that develop wisdom in the application of that hard earned knowldge. Read deep and wide and continue the tradition of the centuries.

Now, stop reading this and grab a book.

July 16, 2008
Just a nudge?

I recently read the phrase “Some days, it’s just not worth chewing through the straps” on someone’s online signature. With a wry smile I came to the conclusion that, Yes, some days it’s just too much like hard work out there, and that many of the basic paradigms of civic behaviour and politeness that I was brought up with seem to have become an increasingly rare commodity in modern life.

Now, before you dismiss this post as the ravings of a fortysomething craving for his lost youth, let me direct you to this Blog entry from the BBC’s Mark Easton – Do We All Need a Nudge?.

To which I think the answer is yes.

This article pulled together a few themes that I’m very interested in. The issues of civic responsibility, duties and rights has always been important to me. Many people who know me will be sorely tired at my usual rant of ‘Too many people who know all their rights and undertake none of their responsibilities’. The one aspect of Gordon Brown’s premiership that has encouraged me in any way, shape or form was reflected in a quote from the PM in Easton’s piece – “people themselves adopting the work ethic, the learning ethic and aiming high”. It may be rare for me to agree with ‘Wee Gordon’, but he’s right on the money here.

People need to adopt the habit and attitude of learning, working and aiming high; I’m hoping to encourage this in the social and community project field by a new project of mine (still under construction, but feel free to take a look) – CommunityNet – which I’ll be formally launching in the near future. I have a great belief in communities and individuals helping themselves, and shaking off the ‘nanny state’ and ‘dependency culture’ that seems to have grown up in the UK in recent years.

A ‘nudge in the right direction’ is perhaps the best thing we can all do to help this happen.

Catch people doing things right, set a personal example in all that you do, dedicate some time or resources to community projects that matter to you, be a good friend and neighbour, and show genuine respect to those you deal with. All good things that have become almost platitudes in the last decade or so; perhaps it’s time for us all to be nudged to making small changes that will make the world a more pleasant place to live in.

Mao Tse Tung said ‘The long march starts with a single step.’; what long march will your small step start off?

June 27, 2008
`Viva la Vida` – `All Along The Watchtower` for 2008?

The perennial question of ‘What the heck is that all about?’ with regard to the lyrics of Bob Dylan’s ‘All Along The Watchtower’ was kicked off last year when a haunting version of the song by Bear McCreary was used in the season finale of ‘Battlestar Galactica’. The brooding, beat-driven, almost trancelike music provided a stunningly effective counterpoint to the unfolding action of the last 15 minutes of the episode.

The dense, occasionally apocalyptic imagery of the lyrics of the song, drawing as they do on at least two archetypes – the Trickster and the King – provide a Rorschach Test for the listener; to a great degree you can project in to the song whatever floats your subconcious boat.

And so to Coldplay, and Viva La Vida. I wasn’t a great Coldplay fan – I actually admitted to my wife that I got them mixed up with Radiohead. For me, hipness is simply where my legs pivot. 🙂 But I caught a snatch of the song on an iTunes advert and thought – that sounds interesting….if weird…. One swift trip to HMV later – sorry guys, I’m not techie enough to manage this downloading tomfoolery – I like polycarbonate! – and I had a good listen to the album…which I enjoyed greatly.

And so to this song…it clearly seems to have triggered a lot of thought and analysis in people. There are a number of versions of the lyrics on the lyric sites online – most of them (to my 47 year old ears) seem reasonably accurate. Google is your friend here…anyway:

I used to rule the world
Seas would rise when I gave the word
Now in the morning I sleep alone
Sweep the streets I used to own

I used to roll the dice
Feel the fear in my enemy’s eyes
Listen as the crowd would sing:
“Now the old king is dead! Long live the king!”

One minute I held the key
Next the walls were closed on me
And I discovered that my castles stand
Upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand

I hear Jerusalem bells are ringing
Roman Cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror my sword and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field
For some reason I can’t explain
Once you go there was never, never an honest word
That was when I ruled the world

It was the wicked and wild wind
Blew down the doors to let me in.
Shattered windows and the sound of drums
People couldn’t believe what I’d become

Revolutionaries wait
For my head on a silver plate
Just a puppet on a lonely string
Oh who would ever want to be king?

I hear Jerusalem bells are ringing
Roman Cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror my sword and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field
For some reason I can’t explain
I know Saint Peter won’t call my name
Never an honest word
But that was when I ruled the world

Again – a lot of imagery of which a great deal is religious and obviously historical. A few theories propounded on the Internet have suggested that it’s an allegorical reference to the Bush Whitehouse, or the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon.

My immediate thoughts on this song were that it was pretty much something to do with Roman period Jerusalem (nothing complicated there!), and I started contemplating events that would fit. Now, as regular readers will have realised, I’m very interested in Pontius Pilate (see my short review of ‘The Master and Margarita’), and after a few minutes thinking I got quite convinced that the song was referring to Pilate.

I felt rather smug at this point, did a Google and found this link –http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080604143507AADrMnN&show=7 – which indicated that a chap from London had come to the same conclusion a couple of weeks previously. Anyway – in addition to the comments that are made in the link, here are a few more thoughts.

One thing about Pilate is that he’s a very anonymous person in historical terms; there’s a great deal of speculation and mythology around him, and so my analysis here draws on that.

“Viva la Vida” – a VERY loose translation might be ‘Live Forever’, reflecting one version of the myth that states that Pilate, like the Wandering Jew, was damned to live forever as punishment for his act of cowardice.

“Roman Cavalry…” – Pilate was a member of the Equestrian class of Roman Society – a sort of lower rank Patrician – and in his duties in Jerusalem he would have commanded only a few hundred troops – probably light cavalry and auxilliaries, akin to a police force. Bulgakov, in his novel, certainly took the view that Pilate would have had light horsemen available to him that were deployed at the Crucifixion.

“See fear in my enemies eyes…” – Pilate’s military career isn’t clear; it’s likely he spent at least some time as a soldier. Again, in fiction Pilate is regarded as having been a military officer.

“Rolled the dice…” – this may refer to the Biblical reference where soldiers played dice at the crucifixion for Christ’s belongings. However, I think it’s more likely that it refers to the game of ‘Basileus’ – a dice game something like Ludo which was popular amongst the troops AND was played by the troops in Jerusalem – there is evidence in the form of a game board cut in to stone in the vicinity of the palace. The aim of the game was to become king, and the winner might easily be dressed as a mock king as part of the game – this could refer to the ritual humiliation of Christ at his hearing with Pilate as described in Matthew 27.

“held the key…” – Pilate did indeed hold the key to what happened to Christ; Bulgakov hints in his novel that Pilate was tempted to try and free Christ and have him accompany him to his own home.

“Seas rose at my command”… OK…a bit of a stretch but…Pilate carried out civil engineering projects in his reign, one of which was a viaduct project to improve the water supply of Jerusalem by carrying water from elsewhere. Another possible hint is again part of the eternal fate of Pilate according to myth – that after his death the waters and land of the Earth would not hold his body – the seas could be regarded as having risen and rejected him.

“castles built on pillars of salt and sand” – someone with a viewpoint of eternity would regard the things that were important during his life to be ephemeral in the great scheme of things. Again, another Biblical reference here is to the Sermon on the Mount.

“puppet on a lonely string” – Pilate was a Governing official of limited real power – not quite a puppet, but restrained in his ability to do his job by the Empire and local Jerusalem politics. However, it could also be read as him being a puppet of fate; the Crucifixion is the defining moment in Christianity – Pilate’s actions might therefore be regarded as pre-ordained and out of his control. A true puppet of destiny.

So….my personal interpretation!

I wonder if discussions will be taking place about it in 40 years time like with ‘All Along The Watchtower’?

June 25, 2008

Category: psychology

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