Writing's a fight and this boy needs a battle
Steve Taylor, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Leeds Beckett University, uses the concept of a “dark triad” of three personality traits… psychopathy, narcissism and machiavellianism” to describe Boris Johnson.
Taylor’s thesis is a litany of “unpalatable” behaviours and personality traits, that shouldn’t be anywhere near the seat of power, let alone sitting on it.
Armand D’Angour argues in the The Conversation, the ideas of Aspasia of Miletus, Socrates first love, are at the root of Western philosophy.
Just another example of the phrase that may or may not have been said by Napoleon Bonaparte.
What is history but a fable agreed upon?
Quote Investigator
It’s not hard to see how or why patriarchy has marginalise Aspasia of Miletus. Interestingly the website Quote Investigator, who investigate the source of quotes, attributes it to someone else. Ironic.
Matteo Ceriotti in The Conversation explains the plausible science of the new Netflix film, Wandering Earth (2019).
The science is interesting, but Ceriotti leaves the best for last. If there’s any human life on Earth when the sun starts to expand, the best thing we can do is move the entire population of the planet to Mars.
Personally, I’d much prefer moving to the moon, that way we’ll be floating through space like the team of Moon Base Alpha in Space: 1999.
I’m not sure I agree with Andrew Russell’s thesis in The Conversation that “people are searching for ways to escape the fast pace of the modern world” and choosing slow cinema as a way to achieve this.
Slow cinema is all about tension and release. The filmmaker builds tension by making the audience wait. I suspect its popularity for a slower paced film may have more to do with peoples habit of bingeing through ten hours of serialised drama. Audiences have more tolerance than ever before for stories building over time.
Joanna Boehnert in The Conversation makes the point “designers cannot design sustainable future ways of living on scale without a shift in economic priorities”.
The key point of interest comes at the end of Tony Dobbins’ article in The Conversation. “The UK is increasingly now a low-tax, deregulated, market economy. Unless these causes of low pay are targeted by radically alternative policies, income inequalities will persist.”
As my mum likes to say “the rich will get richer, and the poor will get poorer”.
It feels to me like the whole world is heading backwards. If we’re not already there, we’re heading for Victorian levels of inequality, eating our own tail, blindly making the mistakes of the past. We can’t see it or do anything about it, because we’re too busy trying to survive, and I’d argue that’s all deliberate.
We need to look up, look around and look back, we need to learn.
I agree with Tom Quinn’s analysis in The Conversation about the Independent Group, their “likely endpoint is another merger” with the other centrists party, the Liberal Democrats. In the same way as the SDP merged with the Liberal Party in the 1980’s, it’s the logical outcome of a binary political system.
I voted to remain, and Chuka Umunna is my MP, so theoretically I should vote for his pro European platform, and return him to Parliament at the next election. I’m not sure I will. For me the only way forward is the solution offered by the Labour Party. We leave the European Union but maintain a strong trading partnership, that includes free movement, and regulation parity.
Labour and Corbyn have been criticised for their stand, accused of propping up right-wing Tories. I don’t think that’s what is happening. I think Corby is using our exit of the European Union as a way to further the manifesto promises of the last election.
I still think leaving the European Union is an act of social and economic madness, playing Russian roulette with five rounds in the six shot cylinder. The chances of us emerging alive on the other side are slim, but I am equally disturbed by the neoliberalism of European Union.
Two things come to mind when I think neoliberalism. The first is Thatcherism, a system of “dog in a manger” economics, obsessed with the vagaries of the market and privatisation, and a property owning democracy that either revels in Boomtown, or sleeps rough when the economy hits the skids.
The second thing that comes to mind is something said by Ken Loach. The European Union is a club for bosses. It may offer workers rights, minimum safety standards for consumer goods, free movement of goods, services, and of course workers, but all of those benefits are designed as much to enrich the wealth of the bosses, as mollify its citizens
Given a choice between a revolver with five rounds in the chamber, and cheaper food, I’m going to choose cheaper food. But if our food is going to be more expensive, perhaps that can be offset by cheaper utility bills, and cheaper transportation, when those industries are nationalised under a Labour government.
Just a thought.
Damien Hall’s article in The Conversation got me thinking about language as a virus.
William S. Burroughs once wrote that “language is a virus from outer space”. Hall’s insights might go some way to understand how the virus mutates and spreads power.
The article argues that regional variations of language spoken in Normandy reflect changes in the language spoken in Paris. The people of Normandy look to Paris for the “best way” to speak French. When the language in Paris mutates, the Parisian strain spreads to Normandy, taking with it the power of Paris.
We all learn to talk by listening to those around us. The way we speak organises the way we think. How words are spoken, and sentences structured, communicates a logic. That logic organises a specific way of understanding the world. Regional accents not only connect people to a specific area, but also to unique way of life.
Take for example the different ways English is spoken throughout the United Kingdom. The dominant culture in the UK is centred in the South. The way people think in the South is not the same as people in the North. The culture is different, because the logic is different, because the language is different. We may all speak English, but Northern English is not the same as Southern English. It’s more than just an accent, it’s a set of values.
I think there’s a strong argument to be made, that the media spreads the Londoncentric virus, allowing it to dominate the furthest reaches of the country. It changes the way people speak, and think, and understand the world.
Burroughs’ “cut up” technique may offer a way of immunising ourselves against this homogenising virus. By cutting into his text Burroughs was able to create new words, new sentence structures, new logics, and releases his own mutations into the culture.
We should all think seriously about how to do the same.
I find the ideas at the core of Joe Herbert’s article in The Conversation interesting.
The notion of “degrowth” is compelling, especially when you consider the predictions of Polly Toynbee’s hard-right revolution in my previous post.
What I find difficult to conceptualise, is the how?
Yes “the logic of infinite growth is driving ecosystem collapse and climate breakdown”. Yes the “heavily polluting countries of the global north – such as the UK – must undergo a phase of managed and socially equitable economic contraction”. Yes endless economic growth has “left our society overworked, over-stressed and plagued by extreme levels of inequality”. I agree “poverty and inequality could be tackled by implementing a universal basic income”.
The intellectual arguments are there, but as I said, what I don’t understand, is the how?
Those at the top of the pyramid will not give up their privilege, and will react with hostility at any attempt to redistribute wealth through taxation. Any attempt to seize their assets will be met with violence. The strengthening of right-wing economic policies has come with boots on the ground. Those soldiers will be mobilised, and will have to be fought.
The problem is wars are great for growth, so how do you degrow society without going to war?
I understand very little, if any, of the science in this article. What intrigues me is the idea that they may have discovered a particle that “is not just outside the standard model but outside it in a way that nobody anticipated”.
To me that is the stuff of science fiction. New particle leads to who know what? Some might find this distressing. I say keep looking. It may be the particle that lets us hit the reset button on the mess we are currently in.
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