Tag: morality

Good and Evil, Good and Bad

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Are you good or good? Bad or evil? Nietzsche may just have the answer. For this piece I will focus on the first essay in his On the Genealogy of Morality (GM) entitled ”Good and Evil’, ‘Good and Bad”. The crux of this is the debate surrounding the power play between two types of morality, that of the master or warrior noble, and that of the slave or ‘herd’. It is important too to understand what he means when discussing genealogy and I will begin there.

He refers to the ‘English psychologists’; such as Hobbes, Hume and his one time friend the German Paul Rée, who Nietzsche groups with them, and criticises for their utilitarian linear understanding of the term. Genealogy for Nietzsche was not about legitimising people, institutions or traditions; it is not something that could be used to lend credibility to our present structures and ideals. There is no origin story and certainly not one relating to a small group of people hanging out and moralising in Palestine two thousand years ago. Genealogy is about a series of varying events from different places with different process’ converging, influencing and evolving again with others later. Even if there were an origin it likely wouldn’t be one we would approve of with our sense of compassionate Judeo-Christian morals, more one involving violence, coercion and subjugation. Ironically three things littered throughout the history of Christianity. A linear understanding of morality in the sense of it’s genealogy merely highlights the Christian influence upon the history of Europe in the last two thousand years. Nietzsche’s aim is to delegitimise the Judeo-Christian manipulation of this term and the credibility it grants them.

We exist now in a time of the slave morality, our moral code has been created by the weak, by the herd, and it has been created out of a resentful hateful impotence towards that of the warriors. What is meant by that is that in the past, say pre-history, so pre-Christian history, those with power were the warriors. They held on to their power through their strength and subsequently dictated what should be deemed morally ‘good’ and ‘bad’. The warrior or noble of this time valued strength, courage and glory, and classed these as ‘good’ values to achieve. For them anything other was deemed ‘bad’ in contrast to merely not being them and their ‘good’; the common man, the unhealthy, the weak.

The priests were also part of the nobility but without the political power of the warrior noble. They had the expectations of the nobility and subsequently believed a certain type of life had value above all others. They desired the wealth and especially the political power of this life but were weak comparable to the warriors, it was impossible to achieve their desires through the same means. Despite this impotence they maintained a ‘will to power’, they maintained a commitment to their desired life. This refusal to accept their impotence, while also recognising it’s existence led to deep envy and hatred within the priestly caste and from this they developed ressentiment. Their ressentiment was a “repressed vengefulness” (GM 1 : 7), an inability to exorcise and a suppression of their envy and hatred. They resented their impotence and the shame that came with it. According to Nietzsche this ressentiment became creative and from that gave birth to the slave morality. They constructed a positive value in what the warriors deemed ‘bad’. While the priests may have proclaimed love and compassion, their morals were created out of hatred, envy and resentment.

“Priests make the most evil enemies…Because they are the most powerless. Out of this powerlessness their hate swells” (GM 1 : 7).

The priests changed our understanding of morality, they changed what it was to be ‘good’ and more importantly what it was to be now ‘evil’. The very values held by the warriors, the affirmation of their own self-worth, importantly what maintained their position in society yet repressed or constricted others, became ‘evil’. The priests ‘good’ was the antithesis of the warriors ‘good’. The worshipping of meekness and the weak became a way of demonising the values of the warriors and as a way of circumventing and empowering themselves. The priest doesn’t need strength to achieve power, instead the priest merely convinces others that power itself is unworthy. The ‘evil’ warrior wants power while the priest merely wants neighbourly love, they created value in political equality. The issue for the priest though is that their ressentiment has not disappeared, they may condemn the nobles but they both still desire the same “victory, spoil and seduction” (GM 1 : 8). The difference being that the warrior nobles acted out of this positive affirmation for themselves, while the priests acted reactively out of impotent hatred and rejection of others.

The society based upon this slave morality may in a sense empower us, the herd, but it doesn’t exists in our best interests. It valorises the qualities which would be the inverse of what made the warrior’s powerful and ‘good’, we now exist in a world which commends this new ‘good’. We are commended for passivity, for meekness, for submissiveness, and in Nietzsche’s eyes, ultimately for mediocrity. We have created and exist in what has become a mediocre society full of mediocre people. The man of ressentiment created a world which feared the outsider, or anything different, it is a world born as a counter to the warrior’s ‘good’ and as such is a reactive world. The slave morality has created a culture in which everything exists within a mediocre rulebook of flawed moralities. They are flawed because they’re born out of this reactive hatred and because they valorise weakness and mediocrity. The reactive man of ressentiment lacks the introspective thought to realise their own self-worth and break free of this mediocrity. While this mediocrity may suit the herd it also suppresses anyone who may try to rise above and out of it, keeping all in this substandard mediocrity. An inevitable acceptance of this leads to a belief in the pointlessness of life and an embrace of nihilism.

Nietzsche held onto the classical realist position that moralities exist because they are in the interests of whichever group pushes them. Those in power will push self-interested morals and language that conserves the hierarchy and their position within it, in that sense compassion and equality can be viewed as fundamental tenets of the morals of those without power. The slave morality in this case can be viewed as just another way of creating the conditions best suited to the empowerment of the herd, or at least the priests through the herd.

Words such as ‘noble’, ‘aristocratic’ or ‘high-minded’ were conceptually linked with and synonymous with the warrior’s ‘good’, and ‘common’, ‘plebeian’ or ‘low’ with ‘bad’. In ancient Greek words for ‘real’ and ‘genuine’ evolved into meaning ‘noble’, and contrastingly ‘dark’ and ‘black’ would be used to describe dangers or untrustworthiness, as well as the dark skinned common man in the field who the blond white Aryan conqueror displaced. There was a steady manipulation of language to create an ingrained perspective of the value of the nobility and it’s position as the ‘good’ in society. In time the priests merely did the same. They associated ‘pure’ and ‘impure’ with ‘good’ and ‘evil’. The resultant connection of pureness with abstinence and restraint, the very values that also came with the impotence of powerlessness that the priests and slaves had in abundance.

Nietzsche believes there are types of people, in a sense that we’re born this way. He uses the bird of prey and lamb analogy to explain this. The bird of prey kills the lamb not because it is ‘evil’ but because it is a natural action. This is a sign of the strength of the bird and weakness of the lamb. The lamb though believes the bird of prey could not kill if it wanted and that it’s action is a choice, a belief that “the strong man is free to be weak and the bird of prey to be a lamb” as Nietzsche put it in Beyond Good and Evil. However he believed the bird of prey is not separate from it’s action, nor free to kill or not kill. The naturalness of it’s ability to kill the lamb is what makes the bird a bird of prey yet it is the lambs ressentiment which makes it believe it is a choice. The bird of prey becomes ‘evil’ for existing as it does and the lamb ‘good’ for the same reason. The slave morality lauds those who do not kill or hurt, and in turn praises those powerless to do so regardless. The priests turn their impotence into a positive and demonise the strengths of others.

This is an overview of the first essay in GM more than any type of critique. The intention is to give a general understanding as opposed to swaying the reader towards any particular interpretation.

The Boss

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You can’t study philosophy without dipping your toes into a little morality, or shall we say moralaki. Likely it’ll end up being a lot of morality but the Greek diminutive will make easing in a little less intense. Perhaps ‘The Boss‘ is not the ideal title either; sticking with the Greek theme the boss of western philosophy would likely be Plato or his invention Socrates were a poll ever conducted, and even from a contemporary stance it may not be the man in the picture either, but while reading him now it feels there could only ever be one god of philosophy and it must be Nietzsche. Yet to describe him as such would suggest totally missing the point of his ideas, and while Übermensch – a higher person – would make more sense he never saw himself as one of his own creations, which leaves us with some kind of depressed and insane rock star. Let’s just say he’s a big deal around these parts. So module two, Nietzsche and more precisely his Genealogy of Morality.

It’s early days and I’m just getting my head around some of his concepts. Seemingly he’s not a massive fan of Judeo-Christian morality. It gives power to the slave morality by putting a flawed value on weak concepts likes meekness. He believed this type of morality had a detrimental effect upon the advancement of the the higher person as it thwarted the development of human excellence. Too much focus was put on uplifting the weak herd at the expense of the potential of the higher person. In a sense the need to live by the rules of a morality which pushed empathy, selflessness and equality risked the higher person not fulfilling their potential, as they were forced to reign in their natural instincts. Think of some people who we class as great people, innovative genius’ perhaps, and without a doubt there will be an aspect of them and their single minded drive that falls foul of our sense of the good. Nietzsche’s point is seemingly that we shouldn’t force them to live by our own moral code, this universal moral code of good and evil, because people are quite clearly not universally the same. On the surface it is pretty clear to see why people dislike his non-egalitarian beliefs but it’s not a stretch to say there is an argument to be had for it. How much will become clear as I go through the module.

The influence of the great thinkers throughout history can only really become clear when you see which ideals of theirs have become commonplace within our general thinking. How many times have people reassuringly told themselves or others that if it doesn’t kill you it makes you stronger, well Nietzsche came up with that. He believed in the importance of the journey, especially if it involved a little suffering, and undoubtable saw little value in just being given the answer without having to work on it. Much of his life revolved around suffering, at the age of four he watched his Lutheran pastor father die from a devastating brain disease, and it was in these moments of suffering throughout his life he did much of his best work. It can’t be a coincidence that considering his own experience he believed moralities that held suffering to be a bad thing, to be so deeply flawed. Suffering for Nietzsche was a good and he put it to the test enough times.

He said without doubt his work would be misused in the future and seemingly the Nazi’s proved him right. They had a little help from his sister who edited and published some of his notebooks after his death to make him look as equally anti-Semitic and nationalistic as she was. While she may have been an old lady at the time she was a total Adolf fan-girl and he was more than happy to warp Nietzsche’s words to justify some Aryan master race bullshit. The truth was that Nietzsche hated nationalism as much as religion, yet spent the first half of the twentieth century mis-represented as a Nazi. Yet that’s the issue, as I said earlier he is very much open to interpretation to the point one esteemed Nietzsche expert will say he was anti-Semitic and other that he wasn’t. Who am I to know really after a few papers and a couple of podcasts.

Nietzsche spent the last eleven years of his life completely insane and died in 1900. In the late 1880’s just before being committed he wrote much of his best work. He wrote ferociously at this point almost as if he knew what was coming and just wanted to get his words and ideas out before it was too late. It isn’t a stretch to suggest there is a fine line between genius and crazy and seemingly Nietzsche lost that battle. He seems interesting though and while I have already made far more notes that this little introductory ramble would suggest, I look forward to attempting to really form an opinion on him as right now I’m likely just to be repeating the words of others if I try to make sense of the man. I’ll come back next time with something a little more detailed and philosophical, or at least an attempt at such.

The Snake Pit of Certainties

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It appears that time when an audience is required for some personal thing this author is going through has returned. That may have appeared an unnecessarily formed sentence but that is because this author is finally, after a five year hiatus, undertaking the second and final year of his Philosophy MA with The Open University. When previously completing my one year of daily writings an audience was required for inspiration, my ego and to ensure standards never slipped to the point of producing nothing. Now it’s about having a space to publicly mull over and attempt to express with the written word my understanding, or more concisely misunderstanding, of whatever is currently hiding behind the wall of confusion and ignorance in front of me.

In the previous writings there were times I attempted to write about philosophy and it felt evident it was far harder than writing about some inane thing I was getting up to or having a rant about corrupt politicians. I need you to help me become better at what I’m trying to do. As I said I am using you.

Our new journey will start with the philosophy of emotions, moving on to Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality, Foucault and Arendt’s take on Power, finally politics and morality in the sense of Dirty Hands, before finishing on whatever my dissertation will be. Trust me when I say that is some great subject matter and I hope I am capable of persuading you of this. How often anything will be published is open, it won’t be daily like previously.

Judging by the introductory day I just attended you may be experiencing far more of my misunderstandings than observations, yet I will start with the observation that attempting to understand Nietzsche is like diving into a snake pit of your own eternal ever evolving misunderstanding. It turns out we know nothing for sure, although not nothing in the sense of totality as there are no absolute certainties, what I think, and we need to be careful there with both the ‘I’ and the ‘think’, is like that snake pit and ever evolving. Rolls eyes. What fun we’re going to have.

Normal Is Another World

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It was just recently the one year anniversary of the massacre of three Mormon women and six of their children in Mexico. Their cars ambushed in the hills near their home at La Mora close to the US border. Caught up in local Cartel violence; the exact reasons and culprits are still unknown. They will likely never get real answers. It was a brutal event which understandably brought international attention and shock and just for a second it opened up a community to the eyes of the world.

With over seven billion people on earth there are over seven billion different ways of being raised to understand life and the world around. Mormons can be ridiculed for it, but they offer an example of another way of life. With my experience of growing up, understanding how people like these Mormons live their lives is not always easy. To begin with we view them through the narrow prism of our own conditioning and view their actions as if they thought as we do. But why would they, having grown up in a Mormon community in the north of Mexico, their experience in the large part is beyond my comprehension. Saying that having Anglo-European origins, they likely won’t be as far removed as we might first think.

I look at the women and struggle to understand how they could be happy with a husband who also has other wives. The young women growing up and ultimately being prepared for a life of baby making. The two women discussed in the BBC article have over one hundred children and grandchildren in total. That is simply remarkable. Or at least it’s remarkable for someone who comes from a country which will likely start to experience falling birth rates in the near future. The understanding of these women also comes from the experience of women with a very different attitude to sharing their men.

This isn’t to say all cultures are right in all their own ways and we need to respect people in their cultural sensitivities. If a culture is abusive of someone within it, then that is still wrong. It’s being able to identify the grey areas between what is abuse and what is simply misinterpretation because of your own cultural understanding of the world. There are plenty of examples throughout history which suggest we have at times got it very wrong. I look at the huge group of children in the pictures and think what a lovely childhood they must have growing up together, it’s just a shame it’s tinged with God and all that that entails. Many run away from Mormonism or don’t continue it’s practises, but someone growing up in that world will likely have a different perspective of God’s influence and all their brothers and sisters. Normal is always normal in our own eyes.

We can be critical too of people to don’t reject these worlds they grew up in. Unable to understand why they don’t walk away from what seems so obvious. With such sentiment all we do is miss the irony that we are unable to walk away from the more detrimental and destructive aspects of our own societies and ways of life. There are many and we vary in levels of obliviousness towards them. I can imagine a Mormon from this rural community finding all sorts of faults with the behaviour of the average city dwelling northern European.

This all simply comes from imagining growing up not as me but as a kid in this community. What a completely different understanding of the world, or of home they must have. Then imagine someone from Asia or Africa, or even southern Europe. It’s just important to remember sometimes that what we think isn’t necessarily the only way of thinking. How we experience a moment is not the only way of experiencing it. Normal is not always normal in others eyes after all.

The Big Vote

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Today is the day. The calm before the storm. It may feel a million miles away from our lives, and in many ways it is, but for the sake of politics as a sport you’ve got to root for something. It always feels a little strange, or like it’s none of my business who votes in another country. I’m not American and doubt I’ll ever live there but with it’s tentacles in a lot of pies worldwide it is something that will have a lasting affect on us all. That isn’t to say one is a good guy who warrants support and the other the bad, this isn’t Hollywood or the Bible, but it’s clear there’s an issue of morality involved. The deeply immoral one versus the one with a politicians sense of morality. It is also unclear whether voting one way will have a beneficial influence upon the politics or economy of my own country. Our government are on their knees begging not to be screwed over too much in a trade deal with the Americans but there’s little reason to suspect the outcome will vary greatly depending on this election. What it will affect though, is who has been emboldened these last four years.

It is clear that around the world we have seen dramatic shifts to the political, cultural and economic right. In some countries they have succeeded, think Trump, Brexit, Viktor Orban in Hungary and Bolsonaro in Brazil. In others they didn’t quite manage it, think Marie Le Pen, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, Matteo Salvini in Italy and following recent elections, Bolivia too. What Trump does is embolden not just the right, American politics in general is right wing already, he gives belief to the previously dismissed fringe elements outside his own borders too. The idea of Brexit had always drifted around the edges of British politics but more like a threat, even those campaigning for it seemed surprised by the outcome. You can’t blame Trump on something that occurred before his election, but it is important not to dismiss the influence his election has had since and on the belief of those who previously believed such things as impossible. There may be differences between Biden and Trump regarding healthcare, renewable energy and foreign policy, or at least on the surface, but Trump must not be elected because his mere existence in politics empowers those who should never even believe themselves capable of power let alone holding it. It may be easy to belittle and ridicule the crazies of the world but their current existence in world politics is having a lasting effect on us all.

This will not be resolved today by voting him out. Likely the election itself will not even be called by this time tomorrow. With Trump spending the last few months convincing his supporters postal voting lacks legitimacy, his approach to the post-election is already clear. The possibility that he has a lead denied him as these votes trickle in is very real and it’s a very believable line for him to take with a support already firmly entrenched in the world of deep state conspiracies. This is set up perfectly and he is not a man to go out with a whimper. Even if he accepts initial defeat, imagine for a second his Twitter feed is currently in someway shackled by those around him, can you imagine how a free unhinged sore loser Trump is likely to start behaving. With the passing of this election he is not going to simply disappear and could in theory become even more dangerous as he desperately tries to court an ever diminishing but increasingly devoted core support. He may be a ridiculous man but he’s dangerous too and stepping further into the unknown with such a person is a worrying prospect for us all.

Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay

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If there’s one thing I’m good at it’s being distracted from the current book I’m reading with another. I envy these fast readers who can sit down and complete a book in a few days. I’m more of a few weeks to a few months depending on the distractions around me type of person. There’s one book I’ve been reading for nearly a year now, I really enjoy reading it too so it’s not as simple as it may seem at first. I wonder if I’m a victim of how we process entertainment these days. I’m not sure I like calling myself a victim but more I’ve allowed myself to get caught up in the culture of short bitesize moments of pleasure.

I love a website called Aeon – which I’ve written a piece on here about before – that has some incredibly interesting articles. They’re not always a light read, not difficult but sometimes they require more effort than something on a website devoted to football. The articles on there are usually about three to four thousand words and despite knowing they’re interesting and that I can learn from them; a combination of the effort involved in the length and with the mental effort required slightly above minimum, I’ll not always bother. I prefer fiction books to non-fiction even if the topic in the non-fiction is potentially really interesting. Partly this is because I genuinely enjoy stories and the way meaning and message can evolve in this style.

The more I write about this I suspect I’m just lazy and ill disciplined. Aeon requires a bit more effort than football news and non-fiction potentially more than a story to follow and get into. I am leaping from one extreme to the other though, this is never a black and white argument unless I generalise which I seem to have been doing. This piece today was going to be another review and as seems to be a bit of a trend it was going to be a play. Dario Fo‘s Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay to be precise. I’ve mentioned Dario Fo in a previous review of one of his plays, Accidental Death Of An Anarchist. He wrote political and social plays on the whole and this is a large part of what has drawn me to him. Take into consideration everything I have mentioned and you can see what leads me to a play. Something that’ll take me one to two hours to read followed by that rosy sense of accomplishment.

Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay is the story of two couples caught up in different situations in which people push the boundaries of stealing. The prices in the supermarket increase once more so the women riot and take what they want, only paying a minimum compensation to the shop. “I paid half price for half my goods”. While the husbands get caught up in similar as the canteen at work increases the prices and the workers simply serve themselves. Unlike the wives though the husbands take a stance against this seeing it as stealing. What ensues is a comedy involving fake pregnancies, avoiding the law and hypocrisy, all as Fo dissects the moral arguments behind whether there can be such a thing as justifiable theft.

The varying levels of hidden meaning in stories is what draws me to fiction. We can analyse what the playwright or the author intended with certain bits. I may not have appreciated it much at school but it is something I certainly enjoy now. For example, despite not having the most flamboyant of styles, I enjoy Sartre’s fiction far more than his non-fiction, even though they’re both variants of his philosophical discourse. Maybe lazy and ill disciplined is in itself a lazy understanding of something which as I’ve already mentioned is not a black and white issue. Interpretation for me is everything, and can’t pay won’t pay, I suspect I know what I would do.

“Quotes”

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“Of all sexual perversions, chastity is the strangest” said Anatole France the French writer. Someone said similar on a podcast a few days ago, incorrectly attempting to quote him. He may have said the wrong words but it was close enough to perk my attention and do a little research of old Monsieur France. He appears to be another of these intellectuals living around the turn of the nineteenth century. Involved in the societal issues of the day, he took on the state a few times, especially in regards the Dreyfus Affair. This was an incident when nationalistic and anti-Semitic elements of the French army made a scapegoat of a Jewish soldier and had him wrongly convicted of murder. France though seems to be an infinitely quotable person and while I was drawn in with the one above it is only apt to throw a few more in.


“Until one has loved an animal a part of one’s soul remains unawakened“

“If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing“

“It is human nature to think wisely and act in an absurd fashion“

Quotes are great things. It takes a tiny snapshot of a thought and imprints it forever. There is an intensity to them that allows people to feel they understand a whole concept or person with nothing but a short sentence. We use them to justify opinions of a person, to discredit a lifetimes worth of work with one passing comment, to immortalise a version of someone. I have wanted to tattoo a million moments of wisdom all over my body despite knowing better. I finally succumbed a few years ago in my own way and have “estas como una cabra” on my arm. It is a Spanish expression which translates as “you’re like a goat” and is intentionally the antithesis of tattooed wisdom. Yet we keep on coming back to quotes.

I used one recently when writing a piece on here bashing Winston Churchill. His quote was from 1937 and I used it to justify my accusation of racism. Yet I would be curious to hear his opinion in 1945 after the horrors of murderous racism became real to the world. Does that mean we form an opinion of his character at the end of his life, at a certain point in his life or try to balance out an impression of his character from squashing everything he ever said and did into one little box. We evolve over time in who we are and how we think but quotes freeze a moment in our lives and are used to define us for eternity. I suspect there won’t be many academics pouring over this body of work at any point but were they to I don’t doubt they could find enough ridiculous things I’ve said to justify creating an impression that I am three or four different versions of myself and morality. But then we live so many versions of ourselves in our lives that this must surely be inevitable. How then when quotes are everything can we ever let these parts of ourselves go.

“All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another” – Anatole France

Modern Morality & Historical Identity

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There is a common theme running through our historical education at school. It is usually the simple narrative that supports our national identity and message; that we as a country haven’t really done much wrong. We learn about the two World Wars from the British perspective, the industrial revolution, The Soviet Union and never in a favourable way and sometimes the Napoleonic Wars but are taught about it and him from a very different angle than the French are. Which means every country does it and that is why this isn’t a piece bashing the UK and suggesting we’re wrong in a world of right. There is currently much discussion about Churchill or the philanthropic slave trader Edward Colston and we as a populace are being forced to explore their roles in our national identity with a different set of eyes. This can only be a good thing because to describe someone such as Churchill as the greatest Briton of all time must only ever sugar coat the actions he took that led to people suffering. Equally not everything he did was bad so it’s important to examine him and his legacy from all angles and in a fair way. We live in an age of trial by social media but once the furore dies down I suspect their will be a few historic individuals with slightly different identities than before.

We are re-addressing our own history then and as long as that’s not with corrupted intentions it can only ever be a good thing. It is important to realise though that we are doing so with our modern take on morality and while it doesn’t absolve people of their wrongs it is still important to take into consideration the times in which they lived. That doesn’t entirely excuse them of course because there are plenty of examples of people in their time expressing beliefs more attuned to our contemporary ideals. Slave traders can not be excused when there are so many examples of people trying to eradicate the practice at the time for example. It can be used by apologists as an excuse but it is important to remember that we are viewing a different time when trying to understand previous takes on racism, sexism and power.

Which begs the question of whether we need to take into consideration how future generations may view us now. Will they understand our actions on race, sex, religion or economic productivity and think us simply abhorrent. On the other hand will they view all religion as abhorrent. I have called people fascists in the past in a derogatory way but had historical events turned out differently that word would have a different meaning. Ultimately we have no idea how our societies and our moralities will evolve and how we will be viewed in the future but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take it into consideration. Our behaviour in combating climate change is one such example. If we carry on like this I suspect it’ll be pretty clear how we’ll be viewed. It could be argued this will tie in with whether we manage to overcome neoliberal capitalism and what kind of society we manage to create in the next fifty years. It is easy to criticise people from the past and sometimes rightly so but it’s important now in understanding our own actions that one day we too will be someones past.

The Covid-19 Miracle

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Times of crisis expose reality for what it is. It is undeniable that we live in a world that thrives on illusions, usually used to sell us things we don’t need and to instil a sense calm servitude. There must be a multitude of old adages about how if we as a collective people knew the truth we would rise up and smash the state and it’s puppetmasters. How true that is is slightly debatable, I don’t have much faith in us not just taking the safe and easy option given such a scenario. I am attempting to avoid talking about this coronavirus with every post but it is quite a challenge when it has entirely taken over our lives, our newsfeeds and our thought processes. Everything seems the same as I look out the window but apparently it isn’t, that may just be one of the illusions I’m still living within.

This then may not yet appear to be a crisis but from all I hear it is already well within that category of event. Even if nothing more happens now, we wake up tomorrow and miraculously Covid-19 has disappeared; we have probably done enough damage to the economy that we’ll suffer another recession. Capitalism thrives on this, we live in an age of disaster capitalism and this will be welcomed with open arms by those already starting to buy up stock on the cheap. I’m not necessarily doubting the severity of this virus, while I doubt there is much danger for myself I worry about my parents, and I know I’ve said this previously. What I will be critical of, and it is another thing to add to the disgustingly large pile of bullshit, is how the media has used any opportunity to sensationalise everything relatable they can. The hysterical criticism of people who have stockpiled food in response to the hysterical whipping up of fear that stocks may run out. Like capitalism, like the vast majority of politicians, the media has no morality. I’m not going to go as far as to say the whole thing has been set up to create a new recession but the media have certainly played such a part in bringing one about, it is easy to justify accusations it is intentional.

Saying all that though, are they not just a creation of our own making. They keep creating sensationalism because all we respond to is sensationalism. If people were more receptive to stories about initiatives in local areas that have been set up to help those in need during this crisis then maybe they would print some. Maybe they don’t exist that’s the problem. I have been attempting to find any local to me and cannot. It is probably too early, people are still out and about.

We have been taught for so long to look out for ourselves and this is easy when things are comfortable, it’s when we struggle that we need to come together. As a society we haven’t really struggled collectively since the Second World War. Politicians are already trying to invoke this kind emotive response but they’re all so pathetic and such weasels that it is hard to take them seriously. Boris Johnson with whistle to his lips about to order us over the top, “Nah you’re alright ya prick, you first…on ya go”. On the upside we may rediscover what it feels like to get to know and help your neighbour, or help anyone. Maybe I’m getting a little ahead of myself with that though. The Covid-19 miracle and how it saved society. At the very least we’ll get some great data in a year or two about the environmental benefits of industry, airlines and cars being shut down. The steroid boost that slowed climate change, we have have just gained ourselves a little extra time. Now that would be a miracle.

Humane Rats

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Today has been a day of discovery, I learnt a little about rats. These little critters seem to provoke the most remarkable terror and fear in people. Understandably this probably dates back to a time when we died of bubonic plague, or for those unfamiliar, think of a coronavirus that wiped people out, gave you boils and was spread by rats. However now the chances of catching anything from a rat are rare and you’ve got more chance of being eaten by your cat. Saying that I do remember as a fifteen years old opening the bin in the dark and one jumping out at me, I’m not ashamed to admit I screamed and ran away. Doesn’t make it any less irrational though.

It appears though rats are pretty cool once you get over yourself and get to know them. They laugh when tickled which comes out as a type of ultrasonic chirp. Apparently they bond with their ticklers and search them out to continue playing with, they’ve even taught them how to play hide and seek. They enjoy themselves. They’re capable of reliving past memories and planning routes for future use. They reciprocally trade goods with each other and have a system of favours in which the favour need not necessarily be repaid in the same currency. They respond with something close to regret when they make the wrong choice, have been taught how to use tools to access out of reach food and have been able to outperform humans in some learning tasks.

Remarkably they have shown signs of empathy too. They refused to press levers to access food if it resulted in another rat getting an electric shock, as well as walk down certain tunnels in a maze if the result was an electric shock to another, this became extra prevalent had the mouse experienced the shock themselves already and knew what was coming for the other rat. Similarly if they themselves have experienced being drenched in water they’re more likely to rescue another rat from drowning and will rescue a trapped rat when they themselves can escape to safety. Even humans don’t do that, maybe we need to readdress this word humane we seem to have elevated onto a pedestal. Rats seem to care about each other more than we do.

In a time long past now, we as a species used to commit the most heinous of experiments on chimpanzees until we realised they are incredibly similar to us. There are now laws protecting them but there are still none protecting the rat. They have decided they didn’t learn enough from experimenting on chimpanzees and have now replicated many psychological experiments on rats too. They have raised some rats away from their mothers and in social isolation, the result being a shrinkage in the area of the brain responsible for emotion and affiliation. They managed to create mentally ill, traumatised and emotionally suffering rats. While we admit they’re close enough for us to use as models for human psychopathologies, the accepted wisdom is that they’re far enough away for us to relate to them and empathise, unlike chimpanzees and other primates who remind us of humans.

The rat genome has been fully sequenced for fifteen years now which has led to major advances in our understanding of how genomes work. We have made breakthroughs in our understanding of cardiovascular disease and obesity, and because their social nature mimics our own, behavioural and psychological studies too. Researching on rats clearly has benefits and many people would use this as justification for the continuation of such work. We understand the moral argument otherwise we would just do this testing on humans, we don’t even use chimpanzees anymore. We may have learnt to fear rats and I’m in no rush to cuddle one but they’ve been shown to be sentient beings with rich emotional lives. If we are such an advanced species why do we continue to suppress our own emotional bond with other sentient beings. Maybe that’s what advanced is, the ability to switch it on and off when it suits us. Perhaps it’s time for a new and updated definition of humane.