When There Is No Choice

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It seems like everything is coming one after another at the moment. We’ve been obsessing about virus’ and pandemics for the last few months and now America is burning. I’m sure there was another crisis facing our health, happiness and prosperity before coronavirus came along too and not just another Tory election victory. Although that may just be a physical representation of the British peoples misdirected anger. I see the riots in America as quite a good thing although I am not entirely sure how I feel about the approach. I remember a few years ago getting involved in a little ‘comments’ argument with someone on a friends social media post about achieving things through violence. I took the stand that people always have the choice, they can choose to be peaceful and they can choose to be violent, violence just leads to further violence as well as giving the mainstream media the chance to take away any moral high ground you may have. I was told I was viewing this from a very privileged position and that if my own existence was constantly under attack and my life was in danger then it’s unlikely I would still have the same opinion or see it as a choice. I think that was the crux of the argument at least but it was a few years ago and memories change events.

I had no argument when I was challenged with that and really I still don’t. I still stand by people having a choice but I am painfully aware I come at it from an incredibly privileged position. I also imagine that constantly being attacked violently leads you to not really see non-violence as an option, it just becomes about defence. If we’re attacked we can defend ourselves. Ultimately I have no idea what is going on in black communities in Britain let alone in America, I don’t live with the daily institutional attacks upon my own self-determination and life. How can I possibly cast judgment on people for either being violent or not being violent. Like I said though I think it’s a good thing to see the state get a little back. It’s good to see them burn. Whether it’ll change anything is anyone guess but it’s interesting so many people around the world are uniting over this, even footballers are getting in on the act and they’re dangerously neutral to anything. I would be curious to see their responses had the police officer not been charged with murder though, had it been the same outcome but also the same old cover-up. I’m an ex-naive idealist who now sees the world through skeptical and slightly deflated eyes, but it’s always nice to get a little hope that something may come from all of this. I imagine at the very least a little less racism in the police force. What a sentence to still need to write in the twenty-first century.

Instinctively Morbid Curiosity

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Two ambulances just raced past my window. If this were a busy city and not a seaside village, and if it had been just one ambulance and not two, I would have thought nothing of it. Two ambulances racing passed in a slightly out of the way spot raises the curiosity alarm. Are they heading towards the beach? If so you’d imagine there would be a coastguard follow close behind, but maybe the coastguard is already there. Perhaps there’s been a crash on the road, even though there are small and slow roads around here idiots still treat it like there’re in a rally that only they know about. I’m sure there are endless possibilities and I should stop this bizarrely morbid curiosity i’ve got going on. We’re strange though human beings, we do want to know. We want to know what has happened. We want to jump in our cars and follow them. We want to drive by and slow down under the pretence of driving carefully and respectfully passed the incident even though we forget the road and don’t once take our eyes off the scene. I drove passed a fresh accident in Portugal once, the body of a once living, talking and breathing human being was just lying there beside the road in the rain with a white sheet over it. I won’t forget that scene, it also makes me slightly less tempted to drive slowly passed any other accidents. But I still will because I’m curious and human.

I suspect it is probably related to some survival instinct within us. The same thing that leads us to search out for the bad news instead of the good. We want to know what the danger is. Perhaps those two ambulances just raced off to an incident which I should know about because knowing about it will in some way help me to stay safe. Perhaps it’s part of some snowballing incident which I must see so I know to get out of it’s way. Most likely not but something instinctive within me wants to know and there is always a rational explanation we can use if we want to take the fun out of anything. It is far more satisfying to imagine we’re somehow uniquely curious beings, alone with our Sherlock Holmes levels of observation, understanding and discovery. But we’re probably not. We’re just scared animals wanting to know if what we just saw may in any way lead to something that could hurt us, or something that we could learn from so to prevent ourselves one day hurting ourselves in the same situation. Having broken it down slightly it does make me feel silly for wanting to jump in my car and follow them. Let’s be honest it’s pretty ludicrous behaviour. It’s so unfortunate that my instincts are therefore irrational. But irrational keeps us alive then. Or maybe not. I’m sure I can probably work out a rational argument to disprove that either way.

La Peste

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There are times when certain books need to be revisited. With current events, even though they seem to be drawing to a close, it might be worth pointing people in the direction of Albert Camus’ The Plague. It’s probably quite obvious why it’s a suitable book. Set in Oran in Camus’ native Algeria, he tells of the story of a city in quarantine trying to deal with the ravages of a plague working it’s way through the populace. The protagonist is a doctor trying to find answers in scientific explanations while the ruling classes prefer to prevaricate, cover up and live on false hope. Painfully relevant to contemporary events in our own Oran as an island cut off. Having been written in the years immediately after the Second World War, the plague was also supposed to represent the Nazi occupation, one Camus experienced first hand working as a publisher in the French Resistance. Apparently in Britain alone, sales of the ebook have risen by three thousand percent which is quite remarkable.

There was an article in The Sunday Times a few weeks ago that was a translation of a letter Camus wrote to doctors during the early years of the war. In it he offers advice to doctors in how best to deal with plagues. I assume there must have been a lot of plagues back then, unless this was also a reference to Nazi occupation. It is in many ways a precursor to his book. He gives some advice on how best to avoid exposure, the importance of wine “to lessen the dismay that will engulf you” and probably most importantly of all to “never get used to seeing people die”. Sometimes it’s easy to not notice the new normal slowly ebbing it’s way into taking over our existence and once death becomes normalised, life will lose some of the value it once held. In times of plagues, pandemics and political occupations it is always vital to remember what is not normal. If that does become the case, well wine will always help.

“The fact remains that none of this is easy. Despite your masks and sachets, the vinegar and the protective clothing, despite the calmness of your courage and tireless effort, the day will come when you can no longer bear this city of dying people…their cries, their terror that knows no future. The day will come when you will want to shout out your disgust in the face of everyone’s pain and fear. When that day comes, there will no longer be any solution I can offer, other than compassion, which is the sister of ignorance”

State Sanctioned Distraction

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It is kicking off, reality television just got political. I saw something yesterday about Twitter fact checking Trump which was amusing and about time but didn’t check the news again until tonight. It is all going off. The real story must be about another killing by the police but it has become part of something else as Trump takes on Twitter. Originally he was accused of inciting violence, his post was moderated and he got a cyber slap on the wrist. Ultimately that is it. Trump then acts like a spoilt child being told off and is now getting some petty revenge. He’s getting payback. For better or for worse he is a fascinating man. Maybe more this is a fascinating situation playing out but someone like him just isn’t supposed to be that person.

There is the other side of this and that while he is going to war with Twitter and trying to repeal Section230 or 240, I can’t remember and I don’t even really know what it is. I think it’s something to do with regulating social media and whatever it is that allows the social media companies to get away with things. Anyway, he’s just proving he’s the master of distraction, there’s some sleight of hand stuff going on – as there always is with politics and power – but it does allow for a handy distraction from the riots and police violence. It’ll play out with nothing really happening and everything forgotten about after the bluster. The other side of the story which involves police killings and riots then is forgotten about too. For those not having to live it everyday that is. And I accept I am not one of them, and I will forget it because I am not living it everyday.

A rather crass leap to something else right now then, cats walking over loads of spread out objects and not knocking them over. It is quite impressive how they manage to just walk through them without any falling but what impresses me more than anything is that their back feet step in all the right places too. They’re not looking where they stand, they can’t see because they’re looking forward but they’re so aware they always step in the right spot. It is simply incredible. It also makes me realise the importance of cat videos online. State sanctioned what? I’ve forgotten what you’re talking about. Remarkable creatures.

A Bright Sun Shining Day

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This sunshine is really starting to become a positive factor in life. April was torturous stuck inside while we embraced another new the hottest month on record from our living rooms and through our windows. But now that we’re all free(ish) it’s time to get out there and live again. I usually tell people I meet abroad that the best time to visit Scotland is April and May but that usually one of them is sunny and the other raining. This year it seems to be a bit of both, both sunny that is. It’s also worth remembering it’s nearly June. It’s also a bit shocking then that we have had this virus running about since March, over two months ago. Maybe some will disagree but it doesn’t feel like it’s dragged, we now have a new normal and I didn’t even see it coming.

It is scary in how easily we can just get used to new conditions in our lives, how society can become something completely different and we just get on with it. It can’t be a surprise to anyone that dictatorships slowing ebb into creation out of once semi-healthy societies. This new normal the Health Secretary was talking about. On the other hand it’s also a wonderful thing because there is something incredible in our collective ability to adapt. I’m sure it’s less our brains that have helped humans survive and thrive until this point than our ability to adapt to new events and circumstance. That ability could though be down to our big brains. Although it would also be our ability to adapt that gave our brains the chance to develop and become big in the first place. So like usual it’s a little bit of everything and I’m risking going both back and forth, and in a circle at the same time.

It would be impossible to mention all this glorious weather without mentioning climate change of course. It’s not impossible but it’s not always easy to sit there enjoying all this sunshine and warmth, remembering that it wasn’t always this way. Beautiful though it is it’s also probably going to kill us all and those big brains won’t be much use then. That was probably an unnecessary downer but it’s always such an effort to find that balance between downer and realism, unless realism is the downer. I’m sure we’ll be able to adapt, we’ll find a way. It’s just a shame we’ll have to adapt and leave this beautiful world behind to survive in a world of floods, deserts and food crisis’. I will say though it does make me want to drink cider. Lots of lovely cold cider.

Generic Male Intelligentsia

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I’m reading a graphic novel on Rosa Luxemburg at the moment. I won’t go into it too much because I’m not finished and will write a piece on it when I do. There is just something worth mentioning now and it is the way Socialist intellectuals of that time look and are portrayed. There is a recurring theme in images and film that they all look a little like Lenin and Trotsky combined. For context Rosa Luxemburg lived at the beginning of the twentieth century and was deeply involved in the left wing intelligentsia of Germany and Poland. Possibly more places but I haven’t got there yet and my knowledge of her is not detailed enough yet to go out on a limb and make too many statements. Mixing in this world when it was really beginning to come to life with genuine importance she must have mixed with many ‘Lenotskys’ as I shall call them.

The look then is Lenin’s slightly round face, balding hair and goaty mixed with a little hair to signify Trotsky, similar facial hair and his glasses. Perhaps more of a Lenin but with glasses and a Trotsky air to him. That feels closer. Regardless there always seems to be this same character, it’s like the stock image graphic artists go for when they want to represent the archetype left wing intellectual. Of course this just could be how people looked at the time, and Lenin and Trotsky were merely fashionistas of the age, early twentieth century revolutionary hipsters if you like. The glasses would probably have been a style, the hair can’t be help and the goaty like the glasses could be a fashion. The soft accountant like look because they weren’t working men toiling in the field and under the sun. Maybe it’s not as straight forward as I’m trying to portray it.

One of the reasons I enjoy this image is that I have met a few people who looked arguably similar in features and style who also happened to be left-wing and saw themselves as intellectuals. Probably less Lenin but Trotsky has certainly captured the attention of those trying to style themselves on someone but that could just be because nobody wants to style themselves on a bald middle aged man. There’s definitely something less romantic about that than a revolutionary hero who died with an ice pick through his skull. It was a remarkable time in history, makes life seem rather mundane by comparison. Even if it did look like there were accountants everywhere.

Hitler The Humane

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Hitler was an interesting character. Strange opening statement I admit but I got your attention. I imagine he was quite the complex chap. I was thinking about him today, not nostalgically just thinking. We learn about Hitler in school and then in regular programmes or cultural references. Ultimately we alway learn about him as being evil personified. This isn’t me about to defend the man, he was responsible for the suffering of millions, but beyond him being a vegetarian and nature lover we never hear much else about his character than he was evil. We’ve created this monster who we hear had no redeemable qualities, even the vegetarian nature lover doesn’t get talked about because it would conflict with the desired narrative.

It’s strange, I feel that I can’t say anything except for bad things about him otherwise I must be an apologist for all his atrocities. And why would I feel the need to defend such a man. I’m not though because to do such a thing would be an attempt to humanise him and this is exactly what people aim not to do. I don’t know what good things he did in his life or what kind of person he was before whatever series of traumatic events happened that led him on this path, but i doubt he wasn’t born evil. We have dehumanised him to such an extent that he is seen as offering nothing positive but he was followed and loved by a nation, they weren’t all just scared of him or manipulated. People wanted to follow him and did. There is a very powerful narrative we follow surrounding him.

This could go for countless despots, I’m sure Stalin loved and cared for his grandchildren. I’m sure Pol Pot once held a woman in his arms that he loved and who loved him back. I’m sure even Pinochet laughed at a joke once. And let’s not forget Hitler taking a walk in a meadow, picking flowers, watching deer romp and coming home to a tofu steak. The point is not one of defence because these were abhorrent men but more of the complex nature of narratives and the human condition. It’s strange to think of people who have committed such crimes as having humanity but they weren’t total evil one hundred percent of the time. These are extremes but it’s always interesting to step back from an idea and see the long formation of a particular narrative surrounding it.

BR#5 – Frankenstein

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From time to time as adults we throw a little classic in to our reading. The kind of story that spawned others and has passed the test of time. The kind you could have studied at school. That last one in a way makes it sound unappealing considering we don’t always look back on the book we studied at school fondly. Frankenstein though isn’t one of them, it’s one of the ones you wish you had studied at school. It has so many of those moments you could see yourself analysing in a class, it has layers. It is also very simple and obvious. A main uncomplicated but unbelievable story. Take it at face value and that’s it.

The writing feels like it could be updated although it shouldn’t ever happen. When things are translated they are also updated in language and in a subtle way style. A book written in English will forever be ageing. I would love to know how Tolstoy sounds to a Russian than he is in the latest translation I read. In that sense I can tell it was written in the early nineteenth century. While that’s not a problem it will be one day.

Shelley approaches all sorts of ideas and concepts throughout the book. They are too numerous to go into detail in just five hundred words but she discusses justice, the role of god, she approaches ideas of personhood and what is is to be a person, our understanding of ethics, even existentialism but this was long before it had become an ism. This is an entire philosophy course for a year covered. There are many essays written on it. I imagine it’s a common understanding too that there is the potential schizophrenia angle which relates in a way to ideas of duality in the book. They need each other, the monster never tries to hurt him and when he dies the monster goes off to die too. Did Frankenstein give a part of himself in the creation of the monster. In a way the monster shows more of what we call humanity than Viktor Frankenstein who in the end becomes a monster himself in a sad way. In a contemporary sense we could think of the development of Artificial Intelligence. The monster has not only an ability to learn but has self-consciousness, the ultimate stage of creating free thinking robots. I could go on and on.

Quite interestingly the book has nearly as interesting a back story. Mary Shelley was the daughter of the revolutionary thinkers William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, and the wife of the poet Percy Shelley. In the ‘Year Without Summer’ of 1816 when they were visiting the exiled and infamous poet and writer amongst many things, Lord Byron in Switzerland, the weather forced them to stay indoors and Byron came up with the idea they all wrote horror stories. In a dream over the next few nights the story of Frankenstein and his monster came to Mary Shelley.

Along with all this and not to be forgotten it’s actually quite a good story. You don’t just read it to learn and look smart, you read it to enjoy. I assume they teach it in schools still and if they don’t can’t think why. It’s so full of everything it would be a waste. I ended it really feeling happy that I had just read a good book. We all should, we may just learn a little eloquence and humanity from a monster.

A New Normal Sunday

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The Prime Minister still has his most special adviser standing next to him and holding his hand. Apparently he is a man of integrity who did the right thing. I must say the newspapers really played a blinder on this one. Release the first part of the story, let the politicians defend him and lie, before releasing the second even more damning information. It shows how powerful he is that he’s still here and hasn’t walked, he’s hardly going to push himself. It also shows how powerful he is that he’s clearly a marked man, the other side have gone into overdrive to take him down. It’s always much less obvious when it’s your own side getting excited and calling for someones head. When the others do it it feels exaggerated and wrong, like you witnessing another injustice. It’s remarkable how easy it is to get carried away with the baying mob. He’s still a total c**t though and I hope he gets thrown to the wolves.

I hope Sunday was enjoyable for most of us. Is life coming back to normal to the point that it feels like a Sunday again? Certainly there would have been a time when Sunday and Tuesday were indistinguishable but that can now be resigned to the past. Do we want normal to return? All that talk of a new normal sounds great if the new version was meadows and liberty but seeing as it’s the same mob responsible for turning all the meadows into suburban housing estates in the first place I’m a little concerned. We know it as shifting baseline syndrome or something, I may have just made that up, probably did actually, but it’s why people view Scotland’s rolling Glens as open and beautiful when they should be all dense forest, not the wet deserts they now are. Ireland will be the same. It’s partly the sheep and partly the industrial revolution. Now whatever woods there are are just monocrops poisoning the soil. There are some organisations trying to plant native forests again and they’re doing well with what they can but as trees are it’s slow going.

That’s it then on that note. I bid you adieu for another week. They keep on coming and they keep on passing by, each one a microfraction faster than the other. It’s a shame I don’t manage to write each of these a microfraction faster than the previous though.

The Fall Of The Puppet Master

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If it feels like the word hypocrisy should originate with a character from Greek antiquity, I wonder what word will be born out of Dominic Cummings and used freely two thousand years from now. Traveling two hundred and sixty miles from London to Durham while the country was in Lockdown. Traveling during Lockdown when suspected of having the actual virus. Ignoring the guidelines he himself helped draw up. Shining a light on people not following the very rules they are so content for fining others for. A fine for sitting alone in the park while not displaying any symptoms, but according to Tory HQ his actions were ‘in line’ with the guidelines. Apparently his trip was ‘essential’ as he needed to be nearer family for the purposes of childcare were he to get ill. The dates given for the trip and statements from the Tory party at the time suggest he already had it when he traveled. Official guidelines state that if you display any symptoms you should self-isolate for seven days and not even leave the house for essential supplies. Well he left the house alright. According to the official party statement too he was at no point spoken to by police as is being reported. It’s just unfortunate that the reports are from official statements made by the Durham police Commissioner.

The party spin machine will be going into full overdrive with this. Under no circumstances can Dominic Cummings be forced to quit. This isn’t just some dispensible advisor, this is the man seen by many to be pulling the strings. Let’s be honest right now and agree Boris Johnson is no leader, he is running diddly squat. For Cummings to quit would bring down this government ultimately. Not immediately in the next month but very possibly by the end of the year. He is that important. That is why the likelihood of him falling on his sword is so slim. That is in comparison the former Scottish Chief Medical Officer Catherine Calderwood who fell on hers after twice visiting her family home in Fife just over the Firth of Forth from Edinburgh. That is also in comparison to leading scientist and government advisor Professor Neil Ferguson who also fell on his after a woman he was having an affair with came around to his house for a visit. There is clearly precedent. Precedent the Tory Party gleefully called for when it suited them but one they seem determined to ignore this time around. If there’s anything we’ve seen so far from this lot is their usual tactic is to try and ride anything and everything out. I suspect this may be the same, the consequences being just too large. It’ll at least be nice to watch them squirm for a bit. and if anything it will make a great Greek tragedy a few years down the line.