This has nothing to do with anything really, but it's been hanging around the periphery of my mind's eye (not sure where that would be - in the corner next to the Locked Trunk of Teenage Embarrassment?) and tonight seems to be the time to expunge it.
Here it is: I think Kevin Ovenden has the head of a giant fly.
Wait, come back! Let me explain.
I've never met Kevin Ovenden. From what I've seen of his comments on Lenin's Tomb he seems like a sane and interesting commentator. This is in no way a comment on Kevin Ovenden.
On Lenin's Tomb he posts like this: Perhaps some of you already see the problem. For the rest, watch MY MAGNIFICENT BRAIN.
In my head, Kevin's ID becomes: See where I'm going with this?
Exactly!
See, I'm not mad! NOT MAD, I TELL YOU!
KEVIN OVENDEN HAS THE HEAD OF A GIANT FLY!!!!!!
Sorry, Kevin. I'm not entirely sure why I had to share this. Anyway, on a completely unrelated note, I'm off to bed. Like the Dread Pirate Roberts, I'll probably kill this entry in the morning.
Following Louise Mensch's remarkable revelation of a new form of critique of political economy on Friday
I have reflected on this remarkable insight. If she's right, then whilst the liberal left are 'swooning at her brio' we're missing valuable research time. As Marxists we are bound by our own credo to rigorous materialist analysis, and beverage consumption is such an obviously materialist habit that it deserves close attention. Let's elaborate this remarkable theory, I thought to myself in my secret underground Marxist lab at Proletarian Towers. And to that end, I have devised the 'Louise Mensch Beverage Scale of Permitted Capitalist Criticism' heretoforeafter referred to as the Mensch Scale.
The Mensch scale is a comparison scale between 0 and 4, where a level 4 subject is permitted full criticism of capitalism up to and including promoting anarcho-syndicalism as an alternative means of the self-reproduction of society, and level 0 represents someone whose consumption of beverages enmeshed in the capitalist system of production should just keep their fucking mouths shut, the ingrate serf scum.
Like the Beaufort Scale, we must have examples so that if we are in conversation with someone we know exactly the point at which any criticisms of the capitalist system or any of its constituent parts goes beyond the permitted maximum. As soon as this point is reached, the correct response is to raise your hand firmly and instruct the vagabond to halt their discourse. 'Cease your mimsy prattle, fool,' instruct the presumptuous ignoramus, 'for the way in which liquids that trickle through your digestive tract AS YOU PRESUME TO PEDDLE YOUR CRITICAL MIND-TURNIPS THIS DAY were produced preclude your being given an attentive ear.'
THUS WILL CONSERVATIVE DISCOURSE TRIUMPH.
As an alternative, you may use the classic 'T' symbol beloved of basketball sportspersons to indicate a 'time out'. In our case of course, the 'T' will stand for actual tea.
Enough elucidation - I realise that you must be gagging to classify yourself, family and friends!
Level 4 Permitted criticism of capitalism = Total. Academies, Goldman-Sachs, concentration of capital, etc. To achieve level 4, you must drink untreated mineral water collected yourself from a babbling mountain brook near your hermitage. Of course, you must not boil the water before drinking it, unless you mine the metal to create a kettle yourself. Purchasing so much as a camping kettle with one of those little whistle cap thingies on it basically takes you right back to the level of the Koch brothers.
Famous Level 4s: none.
Level 3 Permitted level of criticism of capitalism = TNCs, sweatshop labour and the military-industrial complex. To achieve level 3, you are allowed to drink water from the tap, despite its being produced by privatised water companies. You *must not* add Robinsons' Barley Water to it to make a weak lemon drink, however. Famous Level 3s: basically, this is John Harvey Kellogg.
Level 2 Permitted level of criticism of capitalism = privatised train networks, quality of the gifts in Kinder Surprise. To achieve level 2, you may drink tap water and fairtrade tea and coffee. On no account must you purchase this coffee from some kind of franchise or drink Ribena. THIS WILL RENDER YOUR UNHAPPINESS WITH TRAIN JOURNEYS NULL AND VOID. Famous Level 2s: Lucy Mangan, probably.
Level 1 Permitted level of criticism of capitalism = the speed of service in Nando's. AND NOTHING ELSE. Level 1s will drink Fentiman's lemonade at National Trust gift shops, then think NOTHING of washing it down with R Whites. Why don't these people just FUCK OFF AND DIE? They probably drink Ty-Phoo, the despicable BASTARDS. Famous Level 1s: YOU. If you're LUCKY.
Level 0 Permitted level of criticism of capitalism = What on earth makes you think you can criticise capitalism, you insignificant, smelly turd? IT PROVIDES YOUR BEVERAGES. Level 0s would drink Coca-Cola at a Showcase Cinema, EVEN IF SOMEONE WAS WATCHING. Famous Level 0s: given the size of the sample, it was hard to narrow it down, but here's two:
Luis 'Chile' Eduardo, Columbian Sinaltrainal union official working with employees of Coca-Cola bottlers, who routinely receives messages like this:
The Paramilitaries of Magdalenena Medio, The Black Eagles, call on the terrorist Coca-Cola trade unionists to stop bad mouthing the Coca-Cola Corporation given that they have caused enough damage already. If there is no response we declare them military targets of the Black Eagles, and they will be dealt with as they prefer: death, torture, cut into pieces, coup de grace. No more protests![1]
Erol Turedi, one of the Coca-Cola Icecek (Coca-Cola Turkish subsidiary) workers sacked for asking for a wage increase and organising union representation in their workplace. At a demonstration where 200 sacked workers walked into the Dudullu plant,
'1,000 police [were] drafted in to cope with the 200 protestors. The Cevik Kuvvet - 'robo cops' in full body armour - mass outside and are deployed into the building in groups. They fill the corridors. They occupy the balcony. They take the floor above the workers. Hundreds of police appear in the atrium, with riot shields and batons at the ready. The police charge nets six arrests and forces the protestors into a corner, the women and children huddled at the back by the walls. The men stand in front of them. They have linked arms together in an effort to protect themselves and their families, but when the assault finally comes their efforts are proved to be instinctive rather than practical. In front of them are 1,000 police and behind them the children have started to cry.
Finally Coca-Cola's managers agree to talk to the union. So while the police corner the families downstairs [union] President K and the union lawyer go upstairs for talks. It is late afternoon when they gather in a meeting room, which is small. Around a table, which is large. Alongside the managers, which is essential. And next to the police ... which is baffling.
... If events were going badly upstairs, events downstairs took an unexpected turn for the worse. On the frontline Erol looked out at the police - 'they just pulled down the gas masks and that was when we knew.' ... Their eyes widen as they tell of stumbling into each other in panic and blindness, gasping for breath. Thye curse the polie as children were separated from their parents and the men beaten with riot sticks. And they hold out their hands when they talk of being bundled into the police wagons outside, of reaching up to the small windows to gasp for fresh air - only to be sprayed in the face by the police.[1]
Shut up! You drank Coke! What do you think you're doing, Level 0s? ------------------------------------------------ [1] Mark Thomas, Belching Out the Devil: Global Adventures with Coca-Cola, 2008
Point is, much though I enjoy Richard's writing, CiF becomes an even worse bearpit than usual under his articles. A brief survey of the comments suggests at least 3 sub-species of Trollus Cryptofascistus.
The 'cynic'. This is a common troll endemic to CiF threads. Cynics usually acknowledge that something is not good but then proceed to offer up whatever banal platitudes they use to ensure they don't actually have to do anything about it and lets them drown out the little squeals of guilt that occasionally erupt from the dustier layers of their reptilian hindbrains. These trolls' comments usually have the effect of siding with the aggressor against the victim - ach, you see it every day in the playground, bless them. Typical examples include iamaliberal:
Labour - the party with the bravery to kick someone when they are already down.
The 'clearly a hack'. Typical examples includeIlohan:
Whilst the media, liberal commenators, Ed Miliband etc get in a hysterical tizzy about events that happened years ago and are, in any case, a side effect of having a free press....1000s of people are losing their jobs in Derby cos we have no meaningful industrial policy**...
But some dodgy phone tapping is a national crisis...
I don't know...but have we al lost our minds?
The 'Sir Thickington Thickalot'. These are generally just your examples of either pig-ignorance or outright barefaced lying. Possibly a witches' brew of both. Examples include flatpackhamster:
Did you know that Richard Seymour, the author of this article, is an active member of the Socialist Worker's Party? Did you know that his party campaigns for totalitarian rule and glorifies the Soviet era?
The last ones do at least have comedy value. However, it brings out the worst in me.
--------------------------------
* For the record, it's great that he is sticking the boot in, long may it continue. However little confidence I have that it will, should Murdoch manage to pull something out of the bag to stop the rot and begin reinflating his rancid bladder of a media empire. Maybe he could do something about his unfortunate tattoo whilst he's at it.
**PS - it's not because 'we have no meaningful industrial policy' - at least, not in the sense I suspect Ilohan means. It is, as ever, because of the way capitalismruns industry. And if you want to stop the job losses, there's a public meeting next Tuesday.
Wow, I've done drunken blogging before, but that was quite impressive. Still, I would like to call attention to the lovely spelling, if not grammar. Heigh ho.
Millions of mainly working-class electors have boycotted the electoral system since 2001. The Labour leadership knows that most of those are abstaining ex-Labour supporters. The reasons for this are obvious – their interests are not being effectively represented.
But AV doesn't promise to empower them. And it actually replicates one of the undemocratic aspects of FPTP. Ralph Miliband's criticism of FPTP was that it was used by party leaders to discipline rank and file members and force them to accept centrist policies, in order to win support from "marginal" constituencies. Under AV, the parties would be doing much the same thing in order to gain the "second preference" votes of their larger competitors.
I was going to vote no. But then I saw how pathetically the yes campaign was going to be beaten and I began to pity them. And since it's still effectively rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, I thought about voting yes after all.
Then I saw the Stephen Fry video, and went against it all over again. Politicians are going to start 'working in the national interest'? Stephen sweetie, there's no such animal. And the last thing we need is more collaborationist corporate centrists telling us that because they all agree it must be best for everyone. We're All In It Together could become our national fucking motto at this rate, which would be quite something, since it would be even more dishonest than the current 'My God and my right'.
I don't particularly care whether they get married or not. They don't seem like monsters, merely people who enjoy monstrous privilege. Come the revolution there will be more important jerks to put up against the wall.
In fact, I don't give a stuff about marriage in general really. I can't get excited about it. I'm at the age now when quite a few of my friends are either married or thinking about it, and that's great for them, but it's virtually impossible to see it as anyone's business but theirs.
So I don't WANT to be annoyed about today. I've tried very hard just to ignore the manufactured enthusiasm that many people seem to be going along with out of a determined sentimentalism, like the smile on a parent's face as they agree to read The Wheels on Barney's Bus once more to their demanding young progeny.
But good gods they've made it difficult. Even watching TV on catchup I've been repeatedly and loudly informed that 'we've all got wedding fever' (Yes, if by that you mean I'm developing a rash). Youtube has some kind of banner animation and every shop is filled with the indescribable tat that would make a Franklin Mint salesman sneer. Even my alarm clock woke me up with news of this bullshit this morning.
I think I must have finally flipped because last night I actually dreamed I was at a street party that was also attended by David Cameron and Gideon Osborne, and that I locked myself in the house and watched them all being eaten by zombies. WHAT COULD IT ALL MEAN?
Anyway, I just wanted to say that I didn't WANT to be all ranty about this kitsch and gaudy celebration of inherited wealth and privilege at a time when public services are being gutted and unemployment is at 2.5 million. The media drivelstorm has forced me into it. ARE YOU HAPPY, JOURNO SCUMBAGS? ARE YOU? LOOK UP FROM YOUR SCREEN AND LOOK AROUND AT YOUR CO-WORKERS. ONE OF THEM'S ON YOUTUBE EVALUATING THE VERACITY OF UPSKIRT SHOTS OF KATE AT UNI, AREN'T THEY? PROUD OF YOURSELVES, ARE YOU? STOP DOING EVERYTHING JUST TO PISS ME OFF. STOP IT.
Anyway, I think I'm going to spend the day with Buffy DVDs and occasionally re-watch the awesomeness that was The Impossible Astronaut.
I've not updated for a bit, partly because I've been to busy with ... you know ... stuff ... and partly because I generally want to post on here in order to snark at news stories that make the little veins in my eyes start throbbing with greater urgency than a diarrhoetic in a 10 items or less queue at Boots*, but the absurdity event horizon seems to have passed me by. I mean, look at this:
Honestly, where do you start? It's times like this I am painfully aware that I can never make a great satirist. I can't see it with ironic detachment. It's just a matter of - this is utter, nonsensical madness. What's the right response to this? A clever gag, a series of bullet points explaining the various levels of hypocrisy and untruth at work, or what?**
I know everyone else has pointed this out as well - if even the shadow chancellor's got it then it's a fair bet few are fooled, but Jesus. They really do think we're a Burkean mob, don't they?
We'll see how well this 'stability' that Gideon's created works on Saturday I suppose...
----------------- *Yes, at Boots. Look, if they were in Tesco's how would you get the cue that they were buying imodium? Look, just forget it.
**Note how I avoided the obvious 'a series of bullets' line there. Never go for the easy punchline, kids. Unless it's funny to do so, obviously.
So in advance of Xmas, I announced my intention to get some seriously shit films to watch during the festive season. Films of the calibre of Beverly Hills Cop II. Did I get my wish? Well, in the end the closest I got was Beauty and the Beast, unfortunately, which is emphatically NOT shit. And not just because Disney decided that a psychosexual fable that involves the use of Stockholm Syndrome and elements of Bluebeard (and hence legendary paedophile child murderer and neckhole fucker Gilles de Rais) was a suitable subject for a children’s film. Also because a talking clock called Cogsworth says ‘If it ain’t baroque, don’t fix it!’
So what was my xmas viewing, I hear you cry? And where’s that cartoon you promised? Well my dears, as to the first: coming right up. As to the second: shut up. Firstly there was an ace Doctor Who. Combines all my favourite things about Christmas into one neat package. A Christmas Carol had some lovely singing, a message of hope and redemption, and of course an intricate time-travelling plot and a flying shark.
Then there were the little shiny discs I got from my adoring public. I may not have sat through something as dire as Star Trek: The Motion Picture, but I did have some genuinely harrowing festive experiences.
First out of the giftwrap was Deep Water. This is a documentary about Donald Crowhurst, who in 1968 got in a boat, tried to sail around the world by himself without stopping, started lying about how far he’d got, got drunk, claimed he was some kind of supernatural entity and killed himself.
Next out of my big comedy stocking and covered in holly leaves and sellotape, we have The Wave, the film in which a well-meaning schoolteacher accidentally turns his kids into the Hitler Youth within a week. With hilarious consequences, it would say on the box, if it were more than usually dishonest.
Anxiously tearing at an infinitude of ‘Merry Christmas’es in a variety of fonts, I then uncovered Hidden Agenda, Ken Loach’s film about the abuses perpetrated by the security services in Northern Ireland and containing a fictionalised version of the coup that nearly happened, to oust Wilson’s last government. With assassinations, grubby politics and the kind of aristocratic nastiness you associate with Thatcherite Establishment types, Time Out didn’t call it ‘More laughs than a barrel of monkeys with kuru.’
What’s this, hiding beneath my lump of coal? Why it’s harrowing docudrama Threads! I’ve used the bit where Sheffield blows up in lessons on War and Peace, but this is the first time I‘ve seen it all the way through. Who’d have thought the nuclear holocaust could be the least distressing part? Anyone who thinks self-important vacuity-fest The Road is a disturbing piece clearly hasn’t seen Threads. Although after you have, you will probably wish you hadn’t.
So that was my Christmas viewing. Paranoia, peer-conformity, corruption, the end of the world and the hell of survival. If you think about it, it’s what the baby Jebus would’ve wanted.
I've been doing a bit of research on religious differences and conflict recently, and came across a couple of documentaries on the subject. One of them made me quite angry. Here’s why.
RELIGULOUS!
Bill Maher's film about religion is so bad it's actually very funny. Just not for the reasons Maher seems to want. Made in 2006, it's full of the kind of extremist-bating stuff that Louis Theroux got bored with 10 years ago. You know the drill: find some inarticulate and/or hardline people with extreme or rigid views on some doctrinal matter, then take the piss. The only difference here in terms of format is that whilst Louis took the time to actually live in his subjects' world and was careful to keep his incredulity as hidden as possible, so that we got at least a fuller portrait of them and their lives, Maher just turns up and insults people to their faces, talks over them with his own equally strident but better articulated (and crucially louder) opinions, with occasional mugs to the camera to demonstrate how loony these people are. Then the camera can film people getting angry or defensive or begin to stutter or stumble over their words. Thus God is a LIE, sheeple!
Maher is opposed to religion, in a sub-Dawkins-Hitchens -Humphrys kind of a way and makes no bones about this. Well, that's fine. I've been a lifelong atheist and have never felt the pull of God or religion to be an important force in my life, and I once felt angry about how stupid religion obviously was. Of course, I was 16 at the time*, and didn't use my years of experience as a stand-up comedian who works rooms for a living to bully people into looking stupid for a documentary.
So I don’t object to an atheist making a documentary about religion per se, it’s just one as poorly made and thought-out as this one. Part of the problem is the obviousness of his targets, and a big part of it is the sheer pointlessness of the format. Maher goes around the world** doing his look-at-the-loony shtick but despite most of the screen time being a series of ‘interviews’, in reality they are monologues. The interviewees are just there to hear The Amazing Wit of Bill Maher and either agree with him on the spot or look offended. Bill does not at any point seem to be under the impression that anyone he talks to has anything in particular to offer him, with the possible exception of his mother.
This approach leads to quite a lot of unintentional humour. There is a scene where he ‘interviews’ a Muslim woman about some of the more disturbing interpretations of Qur’anic verses (and I do mean interpretations – although Bill never mentions it, there are a variety of variant translations of the text, and the Qur’an is famously difficult to render in English, and guess what, Bill – these books are products of particular times and places and most believers are quite capable of understanding that), and when she tries to explain how she ‘reads the Qur’an’, Bill impatiently interrupts her: ‘That’s not how you read a Holy Book!’ he exclaims. The curious spectacle of an atheist telling a person of faith how they read their scriptures has a wonderful irony to it. It was a scene that returned to my mind at the end, when Bill tells us about the importance of being ‘humble’, which apparently only atheists are capable of.
Two other things stick out about this documentary as truly repellent, however. The first of these is Bill’s self-righteous and thoroughly underserved claiming of ‘reason’ for himself and fellow atheists alone, and the second is how his unacknowledged prejudices come to the fore when he talks about two issues in particular: Islam and Israel.
Bill is convinced that because he has spotted that religious texts can be contradictory or express unpleasant sentiments, and that the figure of Jesus has non-Christian historical antecedents (a truly astonishing insight that only someone engaged in the forefront of theological disputation could have unearthed – that or an AS Religious Studies student) therefore belief in God/religion (Maher frequently treats the two as identical) is fundamentally irrational and therefore wrong.
Of course, this childish level of analysis Has Teh Dumm. He repeatedly refuses to acknowledge a social, cultural, historical or political aspect of religious belief, as evidenced in his interviews regarding Israel and Islam, and evinces no ability to empathise with people whose cultural background is different from his own.***
Israel is a particularly fascinating example of his prejudices. He interviews an anti-Zionist rabbi, who begins to outline his theological justification for his stance, before the inevitable series of accusations and interruptions. The rabbi is pretty much accused of holocaust denial and wanting the destruction of all Israelis, and the hapless man is left looking somewhat bemused by the whole encounter when Bill does an O’Reilly, quitting the interview with a smirk on his face. So we never hear much about what the rabbi does think on the subject and the whole Ahmedinejad ‘Israel wiped from the face of the earth’ controversy is brought up, Maher doesn’t do anything to acknowledge the controversial way that the comment was twisted and reported in the media and uses it to discredit the rabbi. In fact he doesn’t investigate the political nature of the Israel/Palestine dispute at all, not mentioning the Naqba, the 1964 or 1967 wars, the Oslo Accords or the intifadas. A montage of angry Muslims and some bombing scenes are what we are offered. How insightful. No refugee camps, white phosphorous, ‘targeted killings’ or anything then, Bill? What about the UN GA resolutions condemning the occupation? No? Hmm.
This links directly to Maher’s characterisation of Islam. After his casual dismissal of anyone who opposes or criticises Israel as effectively in favour of suicide bombing, he decides to characterise Islam as a whole through a few of the high profile incidents of recent years – the Muhammad cartoons being a favourite, though he’s not above using 9/11 footage during the film’s epilogue. He says that when things start getting blown up, it’s usually Muslims behind it (which conveniently ignores the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions – presumably they’re hiding behind the huge elephant with ‘Israeli state terror’ written on it in fluorescent neon letters that’s already in the room) and actually goes so far as to say that his Muslim interviewees are only saying they’re peaceful because he’s an ‘outsider’ – that’s right, Bill’s implying that there’s some global Muslim club that is setting out deliberately to deceive people about their hidden agenda to take over the world, probably concealed in that funny ‘writing’ of theirs and that gibberish that so many of them speak. If they’ve got nothing to hide, why don’t they say everything in English, like the rest of us, eh? Tying everything back together, I particularly loved the bit when we see the Temple Mount, with subtitles helpfully informing us that ‘The Temple of Solomon is the holiest site in Judaism ... but Muslims built the Al-Aqsa mosque right on top of it’. Nice.
The end of the film has Maher standing in Megiddo, saying that unless we give up religion right this second we’ll all die in a nuclear holocaust. Because we’re not rational and unprejudiced like what he is.
In short then: thanks for flying the flag for atheists and reason there Bill, really appreciate it. You did everyone a service, really you did. Did you ever wonder exactly why those guys in the al-Aqsa mosque said they'd never found you funny?
----------------------------------------------- *That's actually an exaggeration for comic effect. I used to get annoyed about it in a New Atheist way well into my early 20s. Eventually I grew up a bit though – my motto became encapsulated on a t-shirt you can get from Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science store: ‘I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that.’
**In that curiously American way where you go and see people around the world but never leave America in your head.
*** This got me thinking about exactly what Bill was missing out in his view on religion. Here is a rough list. 1. The idea that religious practice is part of your family life. By his own admission religion played only a limited part in his own childhood, but he seems not to be concerned enough to see how children incorporate their understandings about religion and practices – such as when to fast, when to pray, how divorce happens into their early experiences. 2. Social influences. If your religion is something practiced by family members, friends, authority figures, people you look up to, this will influence how you see your religion. 3. Political considerations. Religion, as Marx noted, is a reflection of and an expression of resistance to class society – it is a place where the unspoken or unspeakable desires of the oppressed and the solace and justification of the oppressors can find a voice. People look to their religion and their God for an expression of peace and justice that cannot be found in their own lives, as well as to express the right of the haves to their lot. The Church of England is a good example of this – at one level it is the state religion, represented in Parliament and led by the head of state, but internally split between a High and Low Church – one of the establishment and one of the People. Around the margins you have the denominations concerned with ecumenicalism and social justice – the Nonconformists, the Methodists, the Quakers, where so much progressive thinking and leadership has come from. 4. The ineffable. Whether Bill likes it or not, many people have an experience of something Other, alien to ourselves. This experience cannot be quantified, it seems to be entirely personal, and yet often intensely profound. This experience can be attributed to God, insofar as it can be named. If pressed, people often describe this as their conviction that ‘there is something greater than themselves’ The extent to which these factors and others I’m still ignorant of interact within an individual are entirely unpredictable. It certainly doesn’t make someone irrational because they are influenced by any of these.
I was getting my hair cut this afternoon. One of the hairdressers was sounding off about education, one of those dreary, depressing 'bring back the birch, kids don't have no respect' monologues that I've talked about elsewhere, but it did remind me of one of those topics I've thought about a lot recently - just what should a teacher's relationship be to their pupils?
I think it goes without saying that part of being a teacher is not beating children, but what should we be prepared for? I used to think that as long as I'd given the pupils a lesson, moved them on through their curriculum, that they'd learned something new, that was enough. The longer I've been doing it, though, I've started to come to the conclusion that it isn't, not really. The ideal, I now think, is a bit more complex than that, and one which I'll be outlining in a shamefully overly sentimental and lachrymose way below.
It transpired that the reason for the hairdresser's diatribe against this new fad for not throwing things at children was the presence of a schoolgirl in the shop, who had obviously got herself a Saturday job. This girl in turn was giving her strident opinion on the uselessness and stupidity of teachers in general. I found it all quite fascinating, in a way. I've often heard pupils say that what they want in a teacher is someone who can 'control a class' and this girl was no exception. To illustrate her point she mentioned a case when a supply teacher had been unable to get her class to be silent to the point where she had left the room. The touch of bravado in her voice as she told this story said it all. Although I doubt she'd ever admit it, she obviously felt guilt over this incident. The hairdresser's confusion of 'fear' with 'respect' had stemmed from this.
Here's where I know I have a long way to go as a teacher developing their practice. I know that children are not young adults, that they are rapidly developing individuals, often with fragile egos, and that part of the job is to provide the kind of guidance and structure that will help them to make academic progress as they go through the godsawful process known as 'adolescence'. So you can't treat them as adults, no matter how grownup they seem to be - not because of their intellectual capabilities but because of everything else. I don't like to cite non-peer-reviewed sources when talking about child development, but here's some good shorthand to cut through my waffling:
Or to put it another way: you can never go home again.
To grope my way slowly towards this post's destination, then. Despite my knowing all this, a part of me wants to give The Speech, every time I encounter some child who's worked it all out and knows everything (i.e. all teenagers, everywhere). Since I could never give the speech in a professional context (and hence it's something I've always had in my head and has never been said aloud), I've decided to reproduce it here, in my nice pseudonymous blog.
'I have absolutely no doubt that you think you know what school is, and what classes are for, and I'm guessing you think it's something like 'to pump you full of facts and some skills and get you some GCSEs then shove you out into a job'. Maybe you think this is a good thing, maybe not. But if you do reckon that's what all this is for, I'm afraid that's not quite it.
You are, and I appreciate it probably doesn't look like it to someone who has to go to 25 lessons a week and spend hours on homework as well, plus whatever hells happen outside of school, really lucky. For most of human history, most people have received little or no formal education. A hundred years ago, most people didn't get much past primary school, even in the UK. Today millions still go without any formal education at all.
But having the opportunity to learn about algebra and thermodynamics and Shakespeare and slavery and Sikhism and how cities grow and how to play cricket isn't the only reason you're lucky. You're also lucky because your teachers are people who won't hit you, or threaten you, who want to encourage you to be your best**. You're lucky because the CBI ideology that you get an education to get a job hasn't won yet, and because a lot of teachers do what they do because they think you should have a chance, at least once in your life, to learn about some of the things that make this universe and this planet and humanity so absolutely fascinating and give you a flavour of all the possibilities that your life has to offer you, that we've not yet given in to the turgid utilitarianism of 'get a trade, son' thinking - the kind of thinking that leads straight back to throwing chalk and sitting in silence with textbooks.
The proto-existential philosopher Nietzsche saw two possible futures for humanity - one where people dared to be great, and one where people lost sight of their own souls. He called this second possibility the 'ultimate man,' and wrote of him like this:
Well, some of your lessons will be dull and some of your teachers won't understand you and you'll probably get shouted at sometimes, and if you make it through your school life without at least one detention you'll be very weird, and life isn't perfect, and the next few years might see classes grow larger and resources get fewer, and there probably will be a bully who makes your life miserable at some point - and that bully may even be in school - but underneath all that stuff, what we really want to do is more than give you a good education, one that doesn't turn you out at 16 any more jaded and cynical than you're forced to be because you're 16, we want you to leave with self-confidence and skills and if at all possible the understanding that the world is an amazing place that you've barely begun to explore.
But I couldn't give that speech of course, because I'd have to explain what the CBI is, and utilitarianism. And that would be a picnic compared to Nietzsche. And because kids' attention spans aren't long enough. And it's soppy. And it doesn't really solve anything.
But basically I'd model all education on Doctor Who if I could.
---------------------------------- *Admittedly, this is being used as a metaphor for awakening to the love of Christ, but I think it's more useful if you look at it more literally.
Watching the new series of Peep Show. Here are some random thoughts that occurred during the ad break.
Does that bloke do all the ad voiceovers, or just anything to do with telecommunications?
Attention CGI'd-to-look-sort-of-plasticine new fathers: this is how it works in a maternity ward - if you don't tell the nurse, she will just keep giving you more babies.
Davidoff isn't going to be the person people want him to be any more. He's going to interfere with children.
Everyone involved in Skoda needs to die.
McDonald's food is not xmas themed and everyone involved in this pathetic attempt to persuade us that it is should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.
At the time of the Terry Jones Qur'an burning idiocy I was a bit blase about it. He was so obviously a massive wanker that there didn't seem to be anything much to say about it. In fact I was fairly thoroughly agreed with the Daily Mash on the subject.
But I forgot. The most basic lesson. The one that anyone who's had contretemps with racist organisations should remember.
One man in a grey Adidas tracksuit and white trainers, who has a blue cloth wrapped around his head as a burka-style mask, makes a series of obscene gestures towards the book as it burns.
Laughing, the tracksuited gang shouts “This is for the boys in Afghanistan. September 11, international burn a Koran day, for all the people of 9/11.
“This is how we do it in Gateshead, right.”
One man then attempts to add more fuel, but instead sets the plastic petrol can on fire. He then kicks the book across the yard, leaving a trail of flames which he is forced to hastily stamp out.
For the record: no it isn't, you twunt. That's why you got arrested. For an encore, the EDL turned up to an SWP branch meeting to try and assault my comrades, and assaulted two Irish Centre members of staff for good measure.
What a bunch of twunting twunty twuntbags.
In short: copycat crimes are a symptom of people who haz teh dumm in the worst kind of way.
Let's not worry for a second about the ex-Nazi* whose office (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly known as the Holy Inquisition) was not exactly enthusiastic about pursuing allegations of child abuse but still lays claim to a billion followers complaining about the 'marginalisation' of Christianity. I was more thinking about his now legendary speech yesterday. Just after the Nazi reference. This bit.
As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a 'reductive vision of the person and his destiny'
Now I've already had a dig at his Nazi past, as has everyone else on the internet. Just thought it might be worth mentioning that Italy and Spain were both heavily RC nations in the 20th century, and, well you know what bastions of human freedom they became. So you don't need to look as far afield as ... well one doesn't want to appear indelicate, does one? As far afield as You-Know-Who to find a place for the Vatican at the fascist table. Phew, I think I managed to avoid Godwining this piece. Close call - that Ratzinger and Nazism, it's just going to dog him like a child-sex allegation at the Criminal Records Bureau, isn't it? Sorry about that.
Damn, I mentioned them! Three times!
-------------------- *Yes, I know it was the law when he joined the Hitler Youth and I know he was only a teenager, but in fairness, he started it.
I stopped watching Newsnight Review back when it was still called Newsnight Review*. I should've stopped when this was first broadcast but I let myself casually drop into it occasionally back when I still was capable of watching Newsnight itself without wanting to kick the screen in. So about 5 years ago.
Anyway, it came on last night when a DVD finished and I was subjected to the mutilated horror of it all for a minute or two. Couple of things:
Jesus Christ, SHUT THE FUCK UP ALL OF YOU. SHUT THE FUCK UP. WHENEVER YOU SPEAK IT'S LIKE DROWNING IN A LAKE OF SMUGNESS. I SINCERELY WANT YOU TO DIE.
To explain point (1), I refer you to the review of Tamara Drewe (a strip so incredibly dull I never successfully navigated a complete edition of when it was in the Graun's Review section. In fact it was probably the reason that I now open it at the back, read Doonesbury, then stick it in the recycling). Here is Clemency, looking like every annoying fucking Rah that I would see hanging around Hatfield at uni, apparently doing nothing whilst waiting to be appointed part of the Establishment when they graduated.
'Isn't it amazing to see the middle classes depicted on film like that, I mean, especially a UK Film Council-backed film? I mean we're talking about Shane Meadows later and they're much more likely to back a film like ... This is England, and I found that fascinating, though sort of rather uncomfortable as you say, kind of I might have that [inaudible due to scratching of absurd rah hairdo] I quite often see Jim Naughtie at literary festivals, I'm complicit in this as well.'
Yes, if there's one thing the British media needs more of, it's portrayal of the lives of the average ordinary member of the middle classes who live in Arcady-By-The-Waitrose. We just don't see enough of these people, do we? FUCK OFF. --------------------- *It is apparently now called The Review Show.
Just because I'm looking for a distraction from doing some actual work, here's a random fucking idiot from CiF.*
Background: Charlie Brooker wrote about the 'Ground Zero Mosque' nutters , in which he pointed out that it's not a mosque and not at Ground Zero, although oddly he didn't do the obvious and make it clear that there shouldn't be a problem if it was either or both of those things, as it would be rather like saying that Oscar Romero is the same as Alexander VI. Anyway, here's a particularly cretinous comment from some stupid bloody wingnut.
First of all that building was close enough to have the falling landing gear of the plane Muhammad Atta was on damage it. Secondly, they said they will hold Friday nite prayers in it so of course it's a mosque. This is not about religious freedom. It's about LOCATION. Do you think the Russians would be happy about a mosque being built in Beslan near the school where over two hundred kids were raped and shot in the back by terrorists? One more thing, I seem to remember a super mosque that was supposed to be built in London just in time for the olympics. The people protested about it and now the mosque isn't being built. Rather hypocritical of you isn't it?
The governor of New York wants to meet with them to suggest an alternative site but they flat out refuse to even consider it. Their present position is "We are going to cram this peace loving, bridge building mosque down the throats of you Americans whether you like it or not."
So, let the taunting commence!
First of all that building was close enough to have the falling landing gear of the plane Muhammad Atta was on damage it.
You're saying that these terrorists were willing to risk damage to one of their own buildings*? How evil is that! Like TOTALLY evil. We're through the looking glass here, sheeple!
Secondly, they said they will hold Friday nite prayers in it so of course it's a mosque.
Or, is it a cultural centre with a prayer room in it?
This is not about religious freedom.
Or, is it? Because it kind of sounds like you're saying that people can't use their own building to worship in their own way and use that building to promote understandings between other people exercising their religious freedom in the way they want to. So, it kind of is about religious freedom really, isn't it? Just a little bit? Maybe?
It's about LOCATION.
Hmm, don't know about you, but if I was trying to think of anywhere for people to build some hope and understanding between faiths, somewhere near an awful reminder of what happens when people have an intolerant attitude towards others might be, oh I dunno, the perfect place to put it?
Do you think the Russians would be happy about a mosque being built in Beslan near the school where over two hundred kids were raped and shot in the back by terrorists?
Hey, Floridian, have a look at this: Here are some Terrorists: And here are some Muslims: P.S. Islam is the second largest religion in North Ossetia-Alania, an independent republic within the Russian Federation, not actually in Russia. But wait, you don't want the great US of A to be judged by the standards of the RUSSIANS, do you, Floridian? Why do you HATE AMERICA?
One more thing, I seem to remember a super mosque that was supposed to be built in London just in time for the olympics. The people protested about it and now the mosque isn't being built.Rather hypocritical of you isn't it?
I have to admit, I'd never heard of this story, but then I don't live in that London, and anyway it does seem a tad racist to assume that Charlie Brooker would have opposed the Mosque because he is British. Presumably the Muslims who wanted to build the thing in the first place were British as were the community groups that opposed it. Not sure this is actually hypocritical in any way at all. Hang on a sec... Nope, doesn't seem to apply. Perhaps hypocrisy doesn't mean what you think it means?
The governor of New York wants to meet with them to suggest an alternative site but they flat out refuse to even consider it.
What, you mean they don't see why they should move from their own building just because some hysterical racists are shouting at them? They won't back down from a project whose explicit point is to combat idiotic ideas like yours? I wonder why ever not?
Their present position is "We are going to cram this peace loving, bridge building mosque down the throats of you Americans whether you like it or not."
Or, 'we're not going to let a bunch of hysterical racists stop us'? Sounds kind of, you know, courageous to me. Also, Veiled Penis Reference, too.
But anyway, in conclusion Floridian, you thought building a mosque was insensitive? Check THIS out. ---------------------------------- *It's OK to read CiF if it's for Charlie Brooker, it's like eating a sandwich whilst you're walking.
**I just found Floridian 123's dictionary. I see the problem, because under 'Mooslem' it just says 'See terrists'
As previously when I've done talks like this, the below is more or less what I meant to say, any resemblance to my actual, stammering and highly eclectic delivery is purely coincidental. Enjoy...
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Every socialist will have heard this objection to socialism. You've got someone to agree that the current system doesn't work, that the credit crunch shows some basic problems with the system, that it's unfair that some have so much and others so little, but then you come to propose socialism as an alternative. 'Ah, but that's human nature, isn't it? You've always got to have leaders. Some people always rise to the top. People are naturally selfish/greedy/bastards.' That's why doing a speech on this topic is brilliant, because tonight we'll have the space to actually talk about why this is not an effective objection, rather than, as I usually do, to myself on the bus home.
In my experience, people believe that this is their trump card, the insuperable objection. It's all very well wanting equality, but in the end we're all a bunch of selfish buggers, right? Good point. From littering to murder we can think of all manner of examples of selfish behaviour. Indeed, the political party with the largest number of parliamentary seats is explicitly based on the politics of greed and self-interest. So how do we explain the fact that we are still socialists? There are only 2 options:
This brilliant objection had never occurred to us before
We think we have a good response.
Since every time you mention your politics this is brought up by someone, I think we can discount a, even if you don't credit us with the smarts to have thought of it ourselves (a point of view that implies that socialists emerge fully-formed from some kind of Damascene conversion). That leaves us with b. So what might a socialist response consist of?
There are really three aspects to the question:
What is human nature?
What is socialism?
Is 1 incompatible with the aims of 2?
Some people have argued that there is no such thing as human nature at all – that humanity is some kind of tabula rasa on which all behaviours are written by social and cultural influences. I won't be arguing this, but rather that although some human behaviours can be seen as universal, the expression of those behaviours does not sum up human nature and that social factors hugely influence some behaviours and completely determine others. This, I think, suggests that human nature is perfectly compatible with our idea of socialism.
Some human behaviours are universal. Language is the most obvious example – all human cultures have complex languages. We are speaking, and because of that thinking, apes. Other candidates for universal behaviour include play, laughter, and tool use. You will notice from my examples that these are broad and general formal categories, they describe a general form of behaviour but no specifics. All humans laugh, but do they all titter? I honestly couldn't tell you. All humans speak, but clearly not all humans speak about Peter Mandelson's autobiography, or the advantages of Python over Perl.
Not even the person who has told you that socialism is impossible because we're all too nasty or selfish would agree that all human behaviour is essential to our nature. There is no gene to code for writing Star Trek fan fiction. So we're talking about defining what is essential to humanity and what is not, in general terms. We've already looked at some things that all humans seem to do independently of culture. So what kinds of things are particularly socially constructed, other than fan fiction?
First off there are social institutions – these clearly have only social roots, responding to a social set of circumstances and defined entirely by social relations. Money, schools and religions fall into this category. But more than that we are, as Aristotle so neatly put it, 'political animals' – animals that by our very natures exist in communities, that are social not through choice but because it is one of the things that define us. We can only have a concept of selfishness at all because it stands in opposition to our ideas of communal behaviour: selfishness is a feature of our political natures, usually defined in a negative way against our presumed social obligations rather than in accordance with them – that, I think, is our intuitive understanding of selfishness.
The idea of the individual, isolated human as a major philosophical idea begins with the Enlightenment and Rationalist thinkers, such as Descartes, with his solipsistic evil demon, and the Empiricists like Hume and Locke, for whom individual perceptions were the building blocks of philosophy. This isolationist tendency in philosophy is mirrored in the phenomenon of alienation that is produced by capitalist society.
It is sometimes thought that Marxism is somewhat crass, that it reduces the complexity of human interaction to an economic basis, but of course for Marxists, economics form the base of what humans are able to do, and society is the superstructure built on top of this base. One of my favourite quotations from Marx is about just this phenomenon: men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please, they do not do it under conditions of their own choosing. In other words, how our society is structured is fundamentally governed by how we put food on the table – how society produces for itself. So, what is alienation, why does capitalism lead to it, and what does this have to do with human nature?
To take the last question first – from a Marxist point of view, any society will emphasise certain human characteristics over others, according to how it is organised. Theft, for example, is a big issue in capitalist societies, where most things are held as private property and therefore taking most things without asking, or paying: food from a supermarket, a train journey without a ticket, burglary, are seen as theft. A society which does not hold most things to be private property would of course not have such an obsession with who owns what. Alienation is not a conscious product of capitalism, but a result of the way people relate to each other under this form of production, and I will argue is a big factor in why people make the 'human nature argument' against socialism, although they may not be aware of it.
Of course at this point many people cry foul over Marxist argument, as with the related idea of false consciousness: 'how can you tell me that what I think I'm thinking isn't at all what I'm thinking! I know I'm selfish sometimes and I'm not a capitalist, you're being very presumptive about being able to determine my psychological motivations here!' And it's important to distinguish between what we can say about the general forms of capitalism and the motivations of individuals. What we can say is that the way in which our society produces for itself means that the individuals in it are alienated in certain ways. This doesn't tell us how any individual will choose to act but it does tell something of the general ways in which people relate to each other.
So what is alienation? There are several possible ways of approaching it, but one which most people will recognise is that sense of disconnectedness from those around us, sometimes focused on the workplace, at other times more difficult to place. Alienation can be in the pointless meeting you've got to attend, or when watching the telly and realising that there is nothing on that was made with you or your tastes in mind. At these moments we feel disconnected from those we work with, disconnected from the culture that we should be able to identify with.
But alienation goes far deeper than this – consumer culture is itself a form of and response to alienation. Capitalism produces commodities at a rate far outstripping any previous mode of production, and the defining way that it achieves this is mass-production. Mass-production in a capitalist system forces redundancy (because capitalists compete with each other to generate profit and need to maintain growth in order to increase those profits) – resulting in endless iterations of objects and the idea of artefacts as inherently disposable. A good example of this is the iPhone, which although only launched about 5 years ago has gone through 4 iterations, each marketed as utterly superior not only to its competitors but also to the model that preceded it. So we come to think of objects around us as impermanent, transitory and without substance.
Mass-production creates millions of identical objects. When we see Toy Story, for example, the toys in it are instantly recognisable. Each Mr Potatohead or Barbie is after all identical to all the others. The result of this is that even the objects of play that we are presented with as children are throwaway – if my son has an Optimus Prime and his friend has an Optimus Prime, they have two completely identical toys. There is no uniqueness to the objects we purchase.
Mass-production places the actual making of objects, from the morning Weetabix we eat to the cars we drive, outside of most of our objects of experience. If I work on a production line at Toyota, I will may have a part in the making of the car I drive, but I will have had no part in making my Tesco's pizza. Most of the objects of our experience are obtained with no intervention from ourselves other than the exchange of currency. We are alienated from the things around us because we have no direct connection to them.
Perhaps most importantly, mass production places us in a position of powerlessness in relation to many of the objects that we own. If I need a table, it is still possible for me to go down to B&Q (other builder's merchants are available) and buy the wood I need to make it, and thus create an object purely for my own use. But I cannot put together a mobile phone or a computer in the same way. If I want a commodity I may be able to choose between different suppliers, but I cannot relate to the object as anything other than a commodity – it is produced to be sold more than it is produced to be used.
The wider system of capitalism alienates us from people around us. At work we are often in competition with our workmates, we are keenly aware that there are only so many jobs and more than that we in most cases have no control over our economic lives. We do not set our own wages, or our own hours. We do not choose who we work with or the way we approach our jobs. The lower the pay you're on, the more likely this situation is to be true. More than this, because capitalism is a very particular mode of production, where things are made not on the basis of need but on the basis that they will be sold, there is a sort of creeping tendency to assign everything a monetary value. Indeed, as capitalists have sought to find new markets to expand into, new arenas of profit, we have seen the creation of markets in water, in pollution – effectively parcelling up the air we breath, and even in government itself, through PFI and PPPs.
So capitalism is not only an economic model but one which defines the way society works and affects the way we relate to the people around us. The essence of capitalism is competition and private wealth. These are the driving motors of capitalism and why the logical endpoint of capitalism is Gordon Gekko's famous comment that 'greed is good' – it is somewhat telling of course that what was intended as an indictment of the relentless pursuit of profit was enthusiastically taken up as a slogan.
What effects might the profit motive have on human behaviour? In the USA people are paid for their blood donations. This means that blood is donated by people who are in need of money quickly, and is looked down upon socially. Another effect is that the blood is more frequently found to have infections – the only major illness outbreak resulting from transfusions in the UK, where blood donation is voluntary, came from a batch of blood bought from New York. Bringing in the profit motive can undermine the idea of public service itself, not just by changing the motivation from those involved in delivering it from public duty to personal enrichment, but by changing the general public perception of the nature of the service. Revelations about the levels of pay in the top levels of the NHS, or major charities like Oxfam, affect how people think about those organisations and reduce the public's support for them.
Just to briefly sum up, then: what does all this suggest? Well, along with the idea that we are animals whose nature is shaped by the social forces we encounter, and the idea that the social forces produced by capitalism do not simply encourage greed, but also alienation and commodity fetishism, there is the undeniable public-spirited side to human nature that is revealed in the reaction to inroads to public-sector work being made by the profit motive. Capitalism has no choice but to encourage the profit motive, and with it the selfishness, alienation and greed that characterises it.
One of the questions I started this talk with was: what is socialism? It's a difficult question to answer, because socialism envisages a world without an exploiting class, one in which the workers enjoy real economic and political power – which of course unfortunately also means that we cannot say what a lot of it will look like, since the decision is not ours to make. As revolutionary socialists, we look forward to the day that we are no longer needed. What then, the question should perhaps be, does socialism offer? Socialism offers the opposite to capitalism. It is fundamentally co-operative, food is put on the table not by competing consumers but by the agreement of all, by workers who are in control and where there is no class of people profiting from the work of others. Since human nature is to be sociable, adaptable and co-operative, and since capitalism makes us so unhappy and unfulfilled, not only is human nature not incompatible with socialism, human nature will actually benefit from it.
