It's not the for first time, in this blog, that I will have mentioned Benazir Bhutto. My discussion of the Iraq War's 4th birthday all too briefly refers to her contributions on Question Time, insights which that day marked her out to me as one of these beacons of common sense and tolerance amidst the chaos. Since then I vaguely followed her tumultuous trajectory back into the heart of Pakistani politics. With admiration and not as much understanding as might have been warranted.
But now I'm becoming self-conscious. The media's description of her as a "westernised" politician makes me feel that maybe she appealed to me because she was essentially "one of us" and shared in "our" values. But responding to the argument that human rights and democracy are in some way specific to the West, in origin or application, will have to be saved for another day. For now, suffice to say the there is as much fundamentalism in the West as in the East, it is just as threatening to human rights and civil liberties, and just as condemnable.
What I failed to understand, essentially, is why she would have put herself at such grave risk, didn't she realise that the life of an academic, a commentator - would be far more cushy and lucrative, and far more likely to extend her life? But of course, she is one of these who could have been no other way. Put in context, her own, which is not the docile panel of disgruntled, ageing writers and armchair politicians & salon socialists alongside whom she sat last spring, it all makes much more sense.
That we are conditioned by our surroundings and our families should not undermine her courage nor her acheivements. Whatever can be said about being born into a certain life, part of a certain dynasty that shapes one's destiny, Bhutto clearly went a step further. That she now joins her father and brothers, who also suffered brutal deaths, was by no means a fait accompli. Though the convictions that cement our education, and the struggles of those close to us no doubt condition to some extent our conception of the world and of what constitutes reasonable sacrifice and risk for a worthy cause, no-one is born with the capacity nor the courage to defy the fear and the very prospect of death itself. Such defiance & resistance, in the face of extreme and inescapable danger cannot be simply attribted to an inevitable personal trajectory along pre-traced lines. Rather, it testifies to a kind of abandoned devotion and disregard for personal safety & interest, spurred by belief in a greater purpose so commanding and so intense that it simply cannot be ignored.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Ten today
I've already remarked on 2007's lack of an inspiring overarching theme, in comparison to say - worker mobility in 2006 which inspired a project on the topic, and inter-cultural dialogue in 2008 which may or may not inspire a young greens campaign.
The most significant thing about 2007, and definitely worthy of note and celebration if not political activism - is that it marks the 10th anniversary of 1997. No particular event that occured in 1997, just the year itself.
Anybody who's read Pete Burns autobiography (which I won't go so far as to recommend but rather will sympathise with anybody whose intrigue and curiosity wouldn't let them avoid it) will no doubt have endured his scattery account of "the formative years" in terms of popular culture, and because it's the holidays, I thought I'd go in for some similiar self-indulgence.
1997 was the year, for me. The one where you suddenly become exposed, to the stuff that comes to symbolise the pop culture of your generation. Also the one where you become turned onto politics, and current affairs. Admittedly, '97 was no '89, nor indeed was it any '01, but because of its particular timing and significance for me, everything seemed historical & momentous. It was a sudden & overwhelming rush of information, and it seems now, at least to me, that there never was nor will be a time quite like it, quite so colourful, so unprecedented, so revolutionary. As if nothing will ever be so incredibly important ever again.
To avoid an agonising Pete Burns-esque stream of consciousness, I'll take ten items from popular culture, in no particular order, in the name of memory-refreshment...
Other items of perhaps more far-reaching significance include, of course, the advent of new labour, Tony Blair leading the labour party to victory with a landslide result, putting an end to the Tory era.
What else?Diana died, Elton John sang about it, Dolly the sheep was cloned, the BSE crisis foreshadowed the many food-scares to come, Louisde Woodward shook a baby to death, and the IRA declared a ceasefire.
You couldn't make it up, in fairness.
The most significant thing about 2007, and definitely worthy of note and celebration if not political activism - is that it marks the 10th anniversary of 1997. No particular event that occured in 1997, just the year itself.
Anybody who's read Pete Burns autobiography (which I won't go so far as to recommend but rather will sympathise with anybody whose intrigue and curiosity wouldn't let them avoid it) will no doubt have endured his scattery account of "the formative years" in terms of popular culture, and because it's the holidays, I thought I'd go in for some similiar self-indulgence.
1997 was the year, for me. The one where you suddenly become exposed, to the stuff that comes to symbolise the pop culture of your generation. Also the one where you become turned onto politics, and current affairs. Admittedly, '97 was no '89, nor indeed was it any '01, but because of its particular timing and significance for me, everything seemed historical & momentous. It was a sudden & overwhelming rush of information, and it seems now, at least to me, that there never was nor will be a time quite like it, quite so colourful, so unprecedented, so revolutionary. As if nothing will ever be so incredibly important ever again.
To avoid an agonising Pete Burns-esque stream of consciousness, I'll take ten items from popular culture, in no particular order, in the name of memory-refreshment...
American Beauty (MAJOR. The kind of thing that makes such a huge impact you spend the next 3 days constantly thinking about it, and mentally replaying it, to the point where it interferes with social interaction and keeps you awake at night. Very rarely, if ever, do films affect me so much anymore)- The Spice Girls (my debut in the reception of popular music basically consisted of a head-on collision with the Spice Girls, and is the reason why I can't be cynical about their reunion like those sneering 30-40 somethings)
- Teletubbies (generally I either watch children's television with delight or horror, the the combination of the two stirred by the teletubbies was something I've really yet to come to terms with)
- LA confidential cleaned up at the oscars, and I of course was not allowed to see it. Nor indeed was I allowed to watch Jurassic Park, which also caused a sensation that year, being as it was, on the cutting edge of computer-animated dinosaur technology.
- Hanson (the novelty of androgenous children singing incomprehensible things blew my mind at the time, and all the therapy since hasn't helped to lessen the mental impact)
- Blood on the dancefloor & Stranger in Moscow (two of the greatest and most-underrated songs in Michael Jackson's repertoire, & the latter, admittedly perhaps from late '96, featuring on the seminal HIStory album, I still go around proclaiming to be my favourite song of all time)7. Indie genius (Oasis - dyou know what I mean, Verve - Bittersweet symphony)
- Gala (my initiation in skanky dance music began with the finest in euro-trash)
- Boybands (BSB's first comeback, Gary Barlow - I may have missed the Take That generation, but at least i still caught the barlow bandwagon, brief as it was)
- Titanic (when a generation of pre-teen girls fell hopelessly in love with leonardo dicaprio. in my case, it bordered on obsession, and one which it pains me to say im still battling today)
Other items of perhaps more far-reaching significance include, of course, the advent of new labour, Tony Blair leading the labour party to victory with a landslide result, putting an end to the Tory era.
What else?Diana died, Elton John sang about it, Dolly the sheep was cloned, the BSE crisis foreshadowed the many food-scares to come, Louisde Woodward shook a baby to death, and the IRA declared a ceasefire.
You couldn't make it up, in fairness.
Monday, December 24, 2007
Reclaiming Christmas
Is an atheist christmas a contradiction in terms? It's a view many Christians appear to hold, rolling their eyes as they do, at the annual church-goers, the dilletantes who go through the motions, all the style but none of the substance. They must wonder what it's all about for them, perhaps assuming they venerate and worship in the temple of the God of consumerism. How very vacuous for them. Perhaps, they've got a point.
The idea that atheists do, in fact, have souls too, might be tough to swallow for some believers and indeed non-believers alike, but it's a question that becomes of particular salience at this time of year.
The non-believers who partake in all the cultural ritual and hold no moral objections to the religious symbolism but simultaneously reject it with a certain measure of distate and unease, are not immune to criticism on the basis of paradox and hypocrisy.
In an atheist or agnostic christmas, it is the one day a year we pretend to beleive or do so in solemn remembrance of a time when we ourselves once beleived, or in honour of devout ancestors and relatives. It as if we can beleive through our past selves, or through those others, in admiration and respect for the strength of their convictions. Beleiving in the name of others - as a strange somewhat disembodied demonstration of faith by proxy.
Upon reflection, it seems to me this second-hand belief is not sufficient. I would rather celebrate in the name of my own personal convictions.
In his review of some "bright ideas" that have emerged this year, Will Hutton argues:
"If 2006 was the year of the rampant secularists, Richard Dawkins assailing religion as the source of much evil, 2007 has seen the case for faith begin to make a comeback. A life well lived for many is helped by a sense of higher moral purpose. Human beings still require a sense of the sacred.
Even if there is no God, the act of faith, the sense of purpose and the belief in the sacred have illuminating spillovers on the rest of us."
Although the stark polarisation between the believer and militant atheist seems to me unlikely to correspond to the reality (and the substitution of religion for faith in the opening sentence worthy of note), overall I think Hutton might be onto something.
But rather than keeping their heretic heads down whilst engaging in passive participation in the usual ceremonies, perhaps atheists need to depart from the traditional religious model and ideology of christmas, and fashion a new kind of sacred.
So when it's no longer about believing in Santa Claus, nor in Jesus Christ, what to fill the ostensible void with if not materialism?
Perhaps we can look to the traditional substitutes for religion championed by those with faith in a more tangible realm - socialism, humanism, historical inevitabilty... Or in terms of a focus which shifts from Humans to nature. Admittedly environmentalism doesn't sound very spiritual, and paganism, with its overtones of occultism & witchcraft, might likewise be a tough sell.
Hutton supports those making a case for "non-fundamentalist faith as a source of spiritual good, [which] must be tolerated" while "Dawkins-style militant atheism only widens hostility."
Tolerance is of course as essential for atheists as for any other kind of believers (Because as Hutton rightly points out, belief is not limited to belief in God). For some even, tolerance is not enough. But for those non-Christians among us who will be celebrating Christmas this year along religious lines, singing from the same hymn sheets as our more devout counterparts, where should we look for spiritual nourishment? The litany of secular greeting card concepts: peace, love, goodwill & so on, are surely key components of a secular faith.
But beyond this, perhaps we should endeavour to re-claim and re-brand the so-called "arrogance" of humanism, with its inherent capacity for irrational and boundless optimism - something just as basic and just as vital as belief in a higher being. Hope that is not embodied in the form of such a being, but rather in existence itself. Faith in our environment, in ourselves and in each other.
The idea that atheists do, in fact, have souls too, might be tough to swallow for some believers and indeed non-believers alike, but it's a question that becomes of particular salience at this time of year.
The non-believers who partake in all the cultural ritual and hold no moral objections to the religious symbolism but simultaneously reject it with a certain measure of distate and unease, are not immune to criticism on the basis of paradox and hypocrisy.
In an atheist or agnostic christmas, it is the one day a year we pretend to beleive or do so in solemn remembrance of a time when we ourselves once beleived, or in honour of devout ancestors and relatives. It as if we can beleive through our past selves, or through those others, in admiration and respect for the strength of their convictions. Beleiving in the name of others - as a strange somewhat disembodied demonstration of faith by proxy.
Upon reflection, it seems to me this second-hand belief is not sufficient. I would rather celebrate in the name of my own personal convictions.
In his review of some "bright ideas" that have emerged this year, Will Hutton argues:
"If 2006 was the year of the rampant secularists, Richard Dawkins assailing religion as the source of much evil, 2007 has seen the case for faith begin to make a comeback. A life well lived for many is helped by a sense of higher moral purpose. Human beings still require a sense of the sacred.
Even if there is no God, the act of faith, the sense of purpose and the belief in the sacred have illuminating spillovers on the rest of us."
Although the stark polarisation between the believer and militant atheist seems to me unlikely to correspond to the reality (and the substitution of religion for faith in the opening sentence worthy of note), overall I think Hutton might be onto something.
But rather than keeping their heretic heads down whilst engaging in passive participation in the usual ceremonies, perhaps atheists need to depart from the traditional religious model and ideology of christmas, and fashion a new kind of sacred.
So when it's no longer about believing in Santa Claus, nor in Jesus Christ, what to fill the ostensible void with if not materialism?
Perhaps we can look to the traditional substitutes for religion championed by those with faith in a more tangible realm - socialism, humanism, historical inevitabilty... Or in terms of a focus which shifts from Humans to nature. Admittedly environmentalism doesn't sound very spiritual, and paganism, with its overtones of occultism & witchcraft, might likewise be a tough sell.
Hutton supports those making a case for "non-fundamentalist faith as a source of spiritual good, [which] must be tolerated" while "Dawkins-style militant atheism only widens hostility."
Tolerance is of course as essential for atheists as for any other kind of believers (Because as Hutton rightly points out, belief is not limited to belief in God). For some even, tolerance is not enough. But for those non-Christians among us who will be celebrating Christmas this year along religious lines, singing from the same hymn sheets as our more devout counterparts, where should we look for spiritual nourishment? The litany of secular greeting card concepts: peace, love, goodwill & so on, are surely key components of a secular faith.
But beyond this, perhaps we should endeavour to re-claim and re-brand the so-called "arrogance" of humanism, with its inherent capacity for irrational and boundless optimism - something just as basic and just as vital as belief in a higher being. Hope that is not embodied in the form of such a being, but rather in existence itself. Faith in our environment, in ourselves and in each other.
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Going round again
Upon re-reading some my recent and not so recent posts, it occurs to me that perhaps something of a disclaimer is in order, just to point out that you might have to adjust the levels of your inbuilt sarcasm detectors to "mental", if attempting to gleam any threads of coherence at all out of my fragmented ramblings.
So I turned on the news this morning, as one does the morning after say - a big football match or a national election, in order to find out "the score" as it were, with Bali.
But of course, you don't get the results of a footie match or a national election being announced as "well, actually, we really haven't got a clue about the outcome". Unless it's a Belgian national election of course. Anyway, I found this most dis-heartening. But of course, it's so much worse than dis-heartening.
I like the way the BBC have covered the conference so far, I have to say. Incidentally, I also approve of the way the BBC exposed Gordon Brown's late arrival at the Lisbon treaty signing for the spineless, petty gesture that it was (and even interviewed my best friend Mr. Nigel Farage, who did a very good impersonation of someone for whom the world has more or less just ended). But back to Bali - I think the way they juxtapose the reports on the suits at the conference with the picture of "just down the road" in the rice fields, where people's livelihoods (and lives) are at stake, and they fear for their futures but hey, what can you do, etc, helps to reinforce the real scandal of the whole process. I don't mean to sound like Al Gore - but the immorality of it. Of shirking on such heavy, heavy responsabilities, of treating it like just another diplomatic impasse that has to be negotiated around with words that are just a little bit more ambiguous in order to keep people happy (cf. the Lisbon treaty, on that note).
Studying the rhetoric of colonialism, which may well turn out to be my vocation in life such is the passion I've uncovered for it, or "cultural diplomacy" if you want to be euphemistic about it (and they generally do) has on so many occasions struck me as bearing disturbing similarities to the rhetoric we hear nowadays regarding the environment. Oh the implications.
And no, I have to disagree with my learned African Politics lecturer, much as I revere him and his enthusiasm for political outcomes in a made-up imaginary country called The Gambia, I personally don't think the word "discourse" is an empty term. In fact, such a suggestion smacks of someone who clearly doesn't understand (french) sociology, and probably doesn't respect it either, if they're going around making statements like that. Discourse, is crucial. Not in itself, but because it's symptomatic of underlying attitudes and conceptions. Yes, I definitely think so.
If you want an example of an empty term, try - everyone's favourite - "sustainable development". Nobody in the world thinks sustainable development is a bad thing. It's something we can all agree on, and as a result - means absolutely nothing. This discovery, made at an early stage of my "Environmental sociology 101" class, was the source of considerable disillusionment for me because I actually thought we were making some real progress in this direction.
"Protection" is another favourite, that crops up in both. And problematic, because although it sounds nice & benign, in some contexts protection can mean annexation, can mean isolation, can basically mean theft. Depriving people of their livelihoods on the basis of "environmental protection" might sound like a moral dilemma, but it shouldn't. It's an ingenius way of turning the problem on its head. Yes, of course the (over)developed nations should lead by example, they should step up to the plate and commit to binding targets that slash their emissions so developping countries can go about meeting decent living standards without too much pressure and strain. But then remind yourself, that these are the very same nations, who 200 years ago decided to pump all the resources from their colonies, in order to fund their grand industrial entreprise (not to mention their monuments and palaces...). And instantly, it's the likelihood, rather than the emissions, which are slashed.
Between Gordon Brown's pig-headedness, Bernard Kouchner's casual quasi-threats of war against Iran, and George Bush every living breath, you don't have to look very far to realise that we are not living in an era of solidarity. Fairness and altruism, are not part of the equation, let's be clear about it.
Although there's been such scope for optimism this month, what with the EU-Africa Summit, the Lisbon treaty ratification, and ground-breaking talks at Bali, hopes for a real global breakthrough just haven't materialised. The problem is, the approach to diplomacy in these forums is still the same old dusty one that's always been deployed.
Case in point - Lisbon. Those who supported the original EU constitution aren't happy because it's been twisted out of shape and watered down so much, and those who opposed it initally are hardly any more enthusiastic. As for the Eurocrats, it's almost as if they're embarrased, trying to sneak it under the radar, to scrape back some legitimacy, but almost doing themselves more harm in the process. But this is inevitable if you're trying to resurrect & repackage a defunct and much-maligned document. The prognosis of Bali, at its most optimistic, seems to be about regenerating the Kyoto protocol, in a new & improved format that we can all agree on. But it's the same strategy of attempting to "replace" a treaty that failed, and has lost all credibility.
Perhaps it's no surprise that, for all their professed noble intentions, the same kind of diplomacy just leads to attempts to reproduce the same kinds of agreements. Which are inevitably destined to suffer a similar fate, unless they're modified to be made more pallatable - to the point of rendering them irrelevant.
The lesson is, sometimes - if at first you don't succeed, perhaps it's time for a radically new approach.
So I turned on the news this morning, as one does the morning after say - a big football match or a national election, in order to find out "the score" as it were, with Bali.
But of course, you don't get the results of a footie match or a national election being announced as "well, actually, we really haven't got a clue about the outcome". Unless it's a Belgian national election of course. Anyway, I found this most dis-heartening. But of course, it's so much worse than dis-heartening.
I like the way the BBC have covered the conference so far, I have to say. Incidentally, I also approve of the way the BBC exposed Gordon Brown's late arrival at the Lisbon treaty signing for the spineless, petty gesture that it was (and even interviewed my best friend Mr. Nigel Farage, who did a very good impersonation of someone for whom the world has more or less just ended). But back to Bali - I think the way they juxtapose the reports on the suits at the conference with the picture of "just down the road" in the rice fields, where people's livelihoods (and lives) are at stake, and they fear for their futures but hey, what can you do, etc, helps to reinforce the real scandal of the whole process. I don't mean to sound like Al Gore - but the immorality of it. Of shirking on such heavy, heavy responsabilities, of treating it like just another diplomatic impasse that has to be negotiated around with words that are just a little bit more ambiguous in order to keep people happy (cf. the Lisbon treaty, on that note).
Studying the rhetoric of colonialism, which may well turn out to be my vocation in life such is the passion I've uncovered for it, or "cultural diplomacy" if you want to be euphemistic about it (and they generally do) has on so many occasions struck me as bearing disturbing similarities to the rhetoric we hear nowadays regarding the environment. Oh the implications.
And no, I have to disagree with my learned African Politics lecturer, much as I revere him and his enthusiasm for political outcomes in a made-up imaginary country called The Gambia, I personally don't think the word "discourse" is an empty term. In fact, such a suggestion smacks of someone who clearly doesn't understand (french) sociology, and probably doesn't respect it either, if they're going around making statements like that. Discourse, is crucial. Not in itself, but because it's symptomatic of underlying attitudes and conceptions. Yes, I definitely think so.
If you want an example of an empty term, try - everyone's favourite - "sustainable development". Nobody in the world thinks sustainable development is a bad thing. It's something we can all agree on, and as a result - means absolutely nothing. This discovery, made at an early stage of my "Environmental sociology 101" class, was the source of considerable disillusionment for me because I actually thought we were making some real progress in this direction.
"Protection" is another favourite, that crops up in both. And problematic, because although it sounds nice & benign, in some contexts protection can mean annexation, can mean isolation, can basically mean theft. Depriving people of their livelihoods on the basis of "environmental protection" might sound like a moral dilemma, but it shouldn't. It's an ingenius way of turning the problem on its head. Yes, of course the (over)developed nations should lead by example, they should step up to the plate and commit to binding targets that slash their emissions so developping countries can go about meeting decent living standards without too much pressure and strain. But then remind yourself, that these are the very same nations, who 200 years ago decided to pump all the resources from their colonies, in order to fund their grand industrial entreprise (not to mention their monuments and palaces...). And instantly, it's the likelihood, rather than the emissions, which are slashed.
Between Gordon Brown's pig-headedness, Bernard Kouchner's casual quasi-threats of war against Iran, and George Bush every living breath, you don't have to look very far to realise that we are not living in an era of solidarity. Fairness and altruism, are not part of the equation, let's be clear about it.
Although there's been such scope for optimism this month, what with the EU-Africa Summit, the Lisbon treaty ratification, and ground-breaking talks at Bali, hopes for a real global breakthrough just haven't materialised. The problem is, the approach to diplomacy in these forums is still the same old dusty one that's always been deployed.
Case in point - Lisbon. Those who supported the original EU constitution aren't happy because it's been twisted out of shape and watered down so much, and those who opposed it initally are hardly any more enthusiastic. As for the Eurocrats, it's almost as if they're embarrased, trying to sneak it under the radar, to scrape back some legitimacy, but almost doing themselves more harm in the process. But this is inevitable if you're trying to resurrect & repackage a defunct and much-maligned document. The prognosis of Bali, at its most optimistic, seems to be about regenerating the Kyoto protocol, in a new & improved format that we can all agree on. But it's the same strategy of attempting to "replace" a treaty that failed, and has lost all credibility.
Perhaps it's no surprise that, for all their professed noble intentions, the same kind of diplomacy just leads to attempts to reproduce the same kinds of agreements. Which are inevitably destined to suffer a similar fate, unless they're modified to be made more pallatable - to the point of rendering them irrelevant.
The lesson is, sometimes - if at first you don't succeed, perhaps it's time for a radically new approach.
Thursday, December 06, 2007
British primary school teacher arrested for naming teddy bear after prophet.
As news stories go, you couldn't ask for a better formula, or a more perfect cast...
The face of the well-intentioned noble european who sets out into darkest Africa seeking to bring education and light into the lives of those in need (stop me if you've heard this one before) and what does she get in return? Arrested, abused, and very nearly executed!
Happily, it's just a matter of Gordon Brown and his diplomats to the rescue and before you know it "common sense" has prevailed over extremism, and Ms Gibbons is, of course, on her way home within a matter of days.
And don't worry, it turns out Ms Gibbons is the gracious & forgiving type, and bears absolutely no hard feelings against the Sudanese or indeed Islam. Which is a damn sight more than they deserve. In fact, this mild, altruistic primary teacher who "wouldn't hurt a fly" sounds like an examplary individual in just about every respect, which of course makes the whole affair even more deplorable.
There's been many an indignant response to the claim from the Sudanese Embassy that the whole thing amounts to no more than "a storm in a teacup based on cultural misunderstandings", because we shouldn't be downplaying the event but instead taking it extremely seriously, despite exceptional and brief character of the whole affair. But the issue I want to address here is not about freedom of speech, religious law or whether or not 15 days in prison and/or 40 lashes for "insulting islam" is justified.
It's not so much the story itself that's objectionable, so much as the sheer amount of coverage it's been getting. And the way they've managed to use the incident to spark a "debate" about Islam.
The Sky News team has certainly been doing its bit, saying things like:
"There are going to be people who say "well this just proves what kind of a religion Islam really is..."
Are there? And are they going to be saying it on national television, or is that just you?
"Prominent religious leaders have all spoken out in unison to say that "British Islam" condemns this..."
Let's be clear about it - our own born & bred British muslims are one thing, the ones way over there in the axis of evil are quite another story. Why they should have bothered to speak out in the first place really doesn't at all seem obvious to me either.
I'm wary enough of the BBC but I absolutely loathe Sky News, it's the kind that had a camera fixed on the McCans front door for a week non-stop and calls it "breaking news". On that note, if you want a good critical & humorous perspective on TV news, I'll refer you to my hero Mr Brooker. Watching sky news doesn't so much supply information, as propose a partisan view of certain current events it has some vague notion of but really knows very little about, and tailors its scant information to adhere to the pre-conceived "plot" of the stories. If anything, it dis-informs.
I mean what is this story REALLY about?
It's just the kind of story we need to remind us all that there's dangerous extremist lunatics out there, that we should still be afraid and outraged by them - just in case we were getting rather too complacent about the state of the world and the global political consensus. And what's more, it also illustrates beautifully that our government has our best interests at heart, and will always fight our corner in the face of such trials. It's exactly the kind of fuel that threats of unilateral military action need in order to gain popular support and hey - Sudan rhymes with Iran, and everyone knows what they're up to.
Game on - nuclear annihilation.
This follows on quite nicely from my earlier discussion on sociology - that nothing above question or without an agenda of some sort.
This is what university in France taught me, and plenty of other things beside, but this is the central, fundamental key moment when something was clarified, something was lit up, and I felt as if I'd broken through a wall in my mind. Learning is normally a gradual, progressive exercice, happening over months and years, creeping too incrementally for you to realise, but sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it comes in a flash. In France I was brutally & suddenly confronted to the harsh reality that even the most fundamental values and foundations, the ones we build everything else upon, the ones that shape us, are the result of a struggle, an agenda, they are part of a dominant paradigm - just one of an infinity of others. And what's more - it's all imaginary. This rhetoric, this nationalism, this so-called clash of civilisations, these "revendications a l'universel" - are all riddled with implicit conceptions, that need to be dissected and taken out of context and looked at in an altogether new light and it's like performing self-dissection, and in this way it's inevitably limited, because we can only extract to a certain point... a bit like the paradox of exploring the unconscious, yet essential in order to understand the world, not understand as in comprehend the News, but REALLY understand.
We look at the problems in the world today, in society - problems like racism, globalisation, immigration, xenophobia, descrimination, intolerance, religious fundamentalism, conflict, nationalism, genocide, sectarian violence, but these are all symptons. And this is why it's so difficult to make sense of them, without seeing beyond, without looking to the underlying causes - to the roots.
In fact, it's not so much about what's there - as what isn't. As what ISN'T on the news, what the politicans AREN'T talking about, what is ommitted. As Adam Hochschild argues, our world today is "shaped far less by what we celebrate & mythologise than by the painful events we try to forget" - Leopold's Congo being one example, but that's another story...
As news stories go, you couldn't ask for a better formula, or a more perfect cast...
The face of the well-intentioned noble european who sets out into darkest Africa seeking to bring education and light into the lives of those in need (stop me if you've heard this one before) and what does she get in return? Arrested, abused, and very nearly executed!
Happily, it's just a matter of Gordon Brown and his diplomats to the rescue and before you know it "common sense" has prevailed over extremism, and Ms Gibbons is, of course, on her way home within a matter of days.
And don't worry, it turns out Ms Gibbons is the gracious & forgiving type, and bears absolutely no hard feelings against the Sudanese or indeed Islam. Which is a damn sight more than they deserve. In fact, this mild, altruistic primary teacher who "wouldn't hurt a fly" sounds like an examplary individual in just about every respect, which of course makes the whole affair even more deplorable.
There's been many an indignant response to the claim from the Sudanese Embassy that the whole thing amounts to no more than "a storm in a teacup based on cultural misunderstandings", because we shouldn't be downplaying the event but instead taking it extremely seriously, despite exceptional and brief character of the whole affair. But the issue I want to address here is not about freedom of speech, religious law or whether or not 15 days in prison and/or 40 lashes for "insulting islam" is justified.
It's not so much the story itself that's objectionable, so much as the sheer amount of coverage it's been getting. And the way they've managed to use the incident to spark a "debate" about Islam.
The Sky News team has certainly been doing its bit, saying things like:
"There are going to be people who say "well this just proves what kind of a religion Islam really is..."
Are there? And are they going to be saying it on national television, or is that just you?
"Prominent religious leaders have all spoken out in unison to say that "British Islam" condemns this..."
Let's be clear about it - our own born & bred British muslims are one thing, the ones way over there in the axis of evil are quite another story. Why they should have bothered to speak out in the first place really doesn't at all seem obvious to me either.
I'm wary enough of the BBC but I absolutely loathe Sky News, it's the kind that had a camera fixed on the McCans front door for a week non-stop and calls it "breaking news". On that note, if you want a good critical & humorous perspective on TV news, I'll refer you to my hero Mr Brooker. Watching sky news doesn't so much supply information, as propose a partisan view of certain current events it has some vague notion of but really knows very little about, and tailors its scant information to adhere to the pre-conceived "plot" of the stories. If anything, it dis-informs.
I mean what is this story REALLY about?
It's just the kind of story we need to remind us all that there's dangerous extremist lunatics out there, that we should still be afraid and outraged by them - just in case we were getting rather too complacent about the state of the world and the global political consensus. And what's more, it also illustrates beautifully that our government has our best interests at heart, and will always fight our corner in the face of such trials. It's exactly the kind of fuel that threats of unilateral military action need in order to gain popular support and hey - Sudan rhymes with Iran, and everyone knows what they're up to.
Game on - nuclear annihilation.
This follows on quite nicely from my earlier discussion on sociology - that nothing above question or without an agenda of some sort.
This is what university in France taught me, and plenty of other things beside, but this is the central, fundamental key moment when something was clarified, something was lit up, and I felt as if I'd broken through a wall in my mind. Learning is normally a gradual, progressive exercice, happening over months and years, creeping too incrementally for you to realise, but sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it comes in a flash. In France I was brutally & suddenly confronted to the harsh reality that even the most fundamental values and foundations, the ones we build everything else upon, the ones that shape us, are the result of a struggle, an agenda, they are part of a dominant paradigm - just one of an infinity of others. And what's more - it's all imaginary. This rhetoric, this nationalism, this so-called clash of civilisations, these "revendications a l'universel" - are all riddled with implicit conceptions, that need to be dissected and taken out of context and looked at in an altogether new light and it's like performing self-dissection, and in this way it's inevitably limited, because we can only extract to a certain point... a bit like the paradox of exploring the unconscious, yet essential in order to understand the world, not understand as in comprehend the News, but REALLY understand.
We look at the problems in the world today, in society - problems like racism, globalisation, immigration, xenophobia, descrimination, intolerance, religious fundamentalism, conflict, nationalism, genocide, sectarian violence, but these are all symptons. And this is why it's so difficult to make sense of them, without seeing beyond, without looking to the underlying causes - to the roots.
In fact, it's not so much about what's there - as what isn't. As what ISN'T on the news, what the politicans AREN'T talking about, what is ommitted. As Adam Hochschild argues, our world today is "shaped far less by what we celebrate & mythologise than by the painful events we try to forget" - Leopold's Congo being one example, but that's another story...
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Politics vs. Sociology
Week after week, I am amazed at the disparity in terms of brain cell count (or to be more diplomatic - critical faculties) between the two disciplines my degree course uncomfortably straddles.
Political science - or, the 4 hours a week when I feel the overpowering urge to drop out of college, because I clearly haven't a prayer. I have no idea where these kids come from, or more to the point where their knowledge, poise and capacity to string words together to make beautifully incisive, pertinent & eloquent statements comes from.
Sociology - or, the 4 hours a week when I feel the overpowering urge to drop out of college because I'm surrounded by intolerable half-wits. There's a few people in particular, who've incurred my wrath with their inane contributions. I don't name names of course, but I will spout quotes. Especially gems such as:
"But isn't, like, nature, like, too big to manage? I mean - the Nile is, like, huge."
Yes. You're not wrong, the Nile is, effectively, huge. And so is the Amazon, for that matter!
...was the altogether too forgiving response of our docile lecturer. No sharp-tongued lashing to the tune of "Good God, the Nile might well be somewhat on the large side, but have you even stopped to consider, for one second, the sheer scale of the entire human industrial entreprise you STUPID CHILD."
The Irony (with a capital), as I see it, is the remarkable lack of correlation between these (admittedly anecdotal) observations, and the nature and demands of the disciplines themselves. Or at least, the disciplines as taught by our esteemed, now-ranked-top-53-in-the-world-according-to-the-Times, thank you very much mr Provost, educational institution - Trinity college.
Political science, in essence, once you've nailed down a decent research question, really boils down to applying rigorous methodolgy, quantifying "stuff", totting up data - a monkey could do it.
Sociology, on the other hand, as I learned last year in France (as opposed to how I was taught it for the two years prior) is complex beyond imagination. It's a horrifying mess of historical legacies, underlying socio-economic factors and, worst of all - individual motivations. But more than that - it effectively requires the ability to see the invisible, to posess real mastery in terms of critical thought, to be able to extrapolate the underlying values & assumptions which you don't see because you're not MEANT to see them, because you've been conditioned not to, and because everything has been engineered precisely so you won't see them, so you'll be without any shred of doubt that some things just are neutral, natural, eternal & universal - that some things just "are". When really, they just aren't. At all. Or at least, who says they are? Because somebody is or has, that much is certain.
And this is what so irritates me about the failure of some to take sociology seriously (justified in some respects - it's ok to be a joker in a joker's course such as "Gender & popular culture" of course, in fact it's almost impossible not to be, but we all know how I feel about that one). I didn't take it seriously, until I was faced with the revelation, that nothing is beyond question, or goes without saying (something I should have realised well before as it had been heavily hinted at in a remarkably prescient and important course the IB involves - Theory of knowledge).
When I say my degree course straddles two disciplines uncomfortably - this is not limited to the purely academic endeavours and the disparities between them. As this term has gone on, I've come to realise that the two disciplines correspond to two different, contradictory world views of my own.
In sociology, I find myself in staunch support of those who advocate a new form of citizenship, of greater participation, of realising democracy - in order to acheive environmental justice, perhaps as part of a pragmatic or "real" world approach to concretising that ubiqutous & slippery concept of sustainable development.
In political science, on the other hand, I adhere to Platonic view that really, we'd all be better off if we scrapped democracy and put in place a merit-based system where competent people are in charge, and make all the decisions on behalf of "the masses". I won't shy away from the terms "despotism" and "autocracy", because I'm well aware that's what it amounts to. But perhaps this model is limited to the theoretical, notional world of ideas, of the endless philosophical dialectic that ties itself in knots in search of the elusive utopia.
What fundamentally differs here is a judgement on the capacity of human beings to make intelligent decisions for themselves, to run their own lives, and just how much power & influence should be allocated to them accordingly.
And yet somehow, my appraisal of this capacity (ie. in sociology - considerable, in politics - zero) is curiously inversed to my experience, in terms of the scholars of both schools.
Political science - or, the 4 hours a week when I feel the overpowering urge to drop out of college, because I clearly haven't a prayer. I have no idea where these kids come from, or more to the point where their knowledge, poise and capacity to string words together to make beautifully incisive, pertinent & eloquent statements comes from.
Sociology - or, the 4 hours a week when I feel the overpowering urge to drop out of college because I'm surrounded by intolerable half-wits. There's a few people in particular, who've incurred my wrath with their inane contributions. I don't name names of course, but I will spout quotes. Especially gems such as:
"But isn't, like, nature, like, too big to manage? I mean - the Nile is, like, huge."
Yes. You're not wrong, the Nile is, effectively, huge. And so is the Amazon, for that matter!
...was the altogether too forgiving response of our docile lecturer. No sharp-tongued lashing to the tune of "Good God, the Nile might well be somewhat on the large side, but have you even stopped to consider, for one second, the sheer scale of the entire human industrial entreprise you STUPID CHILD."
The Irony (with a capital), as I see it, is the remarkable lack of correlation between these (admittedly anecdotal) observations, and the nature and demands of the disciplines themselves. Or at least, the disciplines as taught by our esteemed, now-ranked-top-53-in-the-world-according-to-the-Times, thank you very much mr Provost, educational institution - Trinity college.
Political science, in essence, once you've nailed down a decent research question, really boils down to applying rigorous methodolgy, quantifying "stuff", totting up data - a monkey could do it.
Sociology, on the other hand, as I learned last year in France (as opposed to how I was taught it for the two years prior) is complex beyond imagination. It's a horrifying mess of historical legacies, underlying socio-economic factors and, worst of all - individual motivations. But more than that - it effectively requires the ability to see the invisible, to posess real mastery in terms of critical thought, to be able to extrapolate the underlying values & assumptions which you don't see because you're not MEANT to see them, because you've been conditioned not to, and because everything has been engineered precisely so you won't see them, so you'll be without any shred of doubt that some things just are neutral, natural, eternal & universal - that some things just "are". When really, they just aren't. At all. Or at least, who says they are? Because somebody is or has, that much is certain.
And this is what so irritates me about the failure of some to take sociology seriously (justified in some respects - it's ok to be a joker in a joker's course such as "Gender & popular culture" of course, in fact it's almost impossible not to be, but we all know how I feel about that one). I didn't take it seriously, until I was faced with the revelation, that nothing is beyond question, or goes without saying (something I should have realised well before as it had been heavily hinted at in a remarkably prescient and important course the IB involves - Theory of knowledge).
When I say my degree course straddles two disciplines uncomfortably - this is not limited to the purely academic endeavours and the disparities between them. As this term has gone on, I've come to realise that the two disciplines correspond to two different, contradictory world views of my own.
In sociology, I find myself in staunch support of those who advocate a new form of citizenship, of greater participation, of realising democracy - in order to acheive environmental justice, perhaps as part of a pragmatic or "real" world approach to concretising that ubiqutous & slippery concept of sustainable development.
In political science, on the other hand, I adhere to Platonic view that really, we'd all be better off if we scrapped democracy and put in place a merit-based system where competent people are in charge, and make all the decisions on behalf of "the masses". I won't shy away from the terms "despotism" and "autocracy", because I'm well aware that's what it amounts to. But perhaps this model is limited to the theoretical, notional world of ideas, of the endless philosophical dialectic that ties itself in knots in search of the elusive utopia.
What fundamentally differs here is a judgement on the capacity of human beings to make intelligent decisions for themselves, to run their own lives, and just how much power & influence should be allocated to them accordingly.
And yet somehow, my appraisal of this capacity (ie. in sociology - considerable, in politics - zero) is curiously inversed to my experience, in terms of the scholars of both schools.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
