How to help the French living under Terror and their own Terreur

Posted by Perig Gouanvic

"Inside a Revolutionary Committee under Terreur (1793-1794)"
Finger pointing and cleansing the public discourse is not new In France

In France, there are very old beliefs, reminiscent of the Terreur era, about religion and minorities that should never be questioned. Multiculturalism is considered a danger. Let's consider, for instance, the fact that the Paris attacks terrorists, who were born an raised in France or Belgium have more in common with the skinheads of the 1980s than with the fundamentalists we see on TV. They drink alcohol, smoke pot, play murder rampage video games, and really have the "no future" belief system of other teenagers 20 years ago. Several observers witted that religion would actually be a pacifying, structuring, influence for these young people. In other words, supporting the strength of religious communities, not just stopping humiliating them, might actually prevent terrorism. At the present moment, the orthodoxy says that we should not limit "free speech" - especially the Charlie* kind - and even that we should celebrate humiliation of religion as the most exquisite mark of French Freedom and Rationality.




A French anti-terrorism judge also lamented that, as the laïcité laws became more rigid, the whole Muslim community felt so alienated they stopped collaborating with the police to denounce potential terrorism suspects. But, again, don't try to convince the authorities and intellectuals that supporting communities, especially the Muslim community, as such (not as a community with socioeconomical problems, but as a community whose customs and religion are positive contributions to France) is a positive step towards the elimination of terrorism. Supporting ethnic, religious or cultural minorities, in France, is called "communautarism". Another word for multiculturalism? Yes, except that it must be said with a grin of disgust. The French feminist sociologist Christine Delphy, who has been widely vilified for her opposition to the French scarf-banning laws, offers the rest of us a definition :

The French definition of communautarism is the fact that people who are discriminated, who are assigned with prejudices, to whom equal chances are denied, etc. these people – who have often been parked in the same neighborhoods – these people hang out and talk to each other. This is communautarism, it's bad, it means that they want to part from the rest of society and, instead of looking for well seen people, people who have privileges, for example, for Blacks and Arabs instead of reaching out for Whites and beg them to come and talk with them, they talk to each other. That would be communautarism.

Yet the fact remains that cultivating friendly and respectful relationships with communities, acknowledging their contribution to civil society, is one of the time-tested ways to prevent ostracism and extremism.​ Yet in france, too often individual members of minorities talking to each other are considered potential enemies of the state. Just imagine how dangerous it would be for the French State if it decided to approach these communities and recognize them as such!

I don't think most people are aware of the mental straightjacket in which the French have placed themselves for the last 30 years. It encompasses more than the issue of ethno-religious groups. Some probably know that the French have some very strange philosophers such as Finkelkraut and BHL**, and some very despicable intellectuals such as Michel Houellebecq, who recently wrote a book describing France becoming an Islamic republic, and became a National obsession in the wake of the Charlie attacks. These public figures pretend to be victims of political correctness, although they occupy most of the media. One thing that might not be as well known is that there also exists, in parallel, a whole swamp of dissident intellectuals that are actively maintained in the margins of the French discourse. In France, they are called the "confusionnists", "cryptofascists", and so on, so forth.

The slippery slope argument and guilt by association have become commonplace in France. In this mixed bag, you will find true far right people, but also anarchists, radical critics of NATO, Israel, etc. As an example, France has been able to outlaw the boycott campaign against Israel, which makes it more repressive of boycott calls than Israel itself. Don't try to protest: if you are not called an anti-Semite you will be called an objective supporter of anti-Semites. There is no way out. These kinds of large-scale paranoid delusions are reminiscent of the arbitrary denunciations of French Revolution's Terreur, described in the above 1797 illustration.


Finally, journalism too is constrained in this straightjacket. There are only a few journalists left who analyze the terror events in depth. They have pointed out in the past the same thing that was pointed out about the Bush administration (foreknowledge, and the presence of elements in the intelligence services who rather preferred terrorist attacks to happen, for instance to impose mass surveillance (of course these theses are not mainstream but they are still more audible in the anglophone world than in France)). But they are marginalized, and quickly become part of this "cryptofascist", "conspiracy theorizing" swamp I was talking about. The result is that compelling elements of inquiry are missed not only in France but abroad. For example, Hicham Hamza, a French journalist, has investigated the local ramifications of a Times of Israel article covering a warning by "officials" to France's "Jewish community", on the morning of the attacks. His resources are thin,  his site is regularly under cyberattacks and of course most would not approach him with a tad pole, because of the usual name-calling.

The same could be said of the Charlie Hebdo attacks - and further in the past --  of Rwanda, about which the BBC aired a documentary that would be swiftly thrown in the holocaust denying, cryptofasisct swamp in France. These elements do circulate in the French blogosphere. But guess what: France now has the right to shut down any website it judges problematic. What might be judged problematic is quite broad:

[It’s] a heterogeneous movement, heavily entangled with the Holocaust denial movement, and which combines admirers of Hugo Chavez and fans of Vladimir Putin. An underworld that consist of former left-wing activists or extreme leftists, former "malcontents", sovereignists, revolutionary nationalists, ultra-nationalists, nostalgists of the Third Reich, anti-vaccination activists, supporters of drawing straws, September 11th revisionists, anti-Zionists, Afrocentricists, survivalists, followers of "alternative medicine", agents of influence of the Iranian regime, Bacharists, Catholic or Islamic fundamentalists. « Conspirationnisme : un état des lieux », par Rudy Reichstadt, Observatoire des radicalités politiques, Fondation Jean-Jaurès, Parti socialiste, 24 février 2015.

(Welcome to the conspiracy theorist movement.)

Even so, of course, it cannot prevent us from thinking and inquiring. The French population really needs a breath of fresh air right now. They need fresh insights, serious journalism, and the freedom to discuss outside of their mentally and legally censored world. I don't have specific suggestions to solve those issues. I just think that the rest of the world should be aware that the French prison of ideas is not always self imposed and that there are many people who just wish they could escape. Many do: I can see that in Quebec.


*The Charlie Hebdo satiricial magazine whose cartoonists were murdered in January.
** Bernard Henri Levy, a self-styled philosophe.

How to help the French living under Terror and their own Terreur

Posted by Perig Gouanvic

"Inside a Revolutionary Committee under Terreur (1793-1794)"
Finger pointing and cleansing the public discourse is not new In France

In France, there are very old beliefs, reminiscent of the Terreur era, about religion and minorities that should never be questioned. Multiculturalism is considered a danger. Let's consider, for instance, the fact that the Paris attacks terrorists, who were born an raised in France or Belgium have more in common with the skinheads of the 1980s than with the fundamentalists we see on TV. They drink alcohol, smoke pot, play murder rampage video games, and really have the "no future" belief system of other teenagers 20 years ago. Several observers witted that religion would actually be a pacifying, structuring, influence for these young people. In other words, supporting the strength of religious communities, not just stopping humiliating them, might actually prevent terrorism. At the present moment, the orthodoxy says that we should not limit "free speech" - especially the Charlie* kind - and even that we should celebrate humiliation of religion as the most exquisite mark of French Freedom and Rationality.


A French anti-terrorism judge also lamented that, as the laïcité laws became more rigid, the whole Muslim community felt so alienated they stopped collaborating with the police to denounce potential terrorism suspects. But, again, don't try to convince the authorities and intellectuals that supporting communities, especially the Muslim community, as such (not as a community with socioeconomical problems, but as a community whose customs and religion are positive contributions to France) is a positive step towards the elimination of terrorism. Supporting ethnic, religious or cultural minorities, in France, is called "communautarism". Another word for multiculturalism? Yes, except that it must be said with a grin of disgust. The French feminist sociologist Christine Delphy, who has been widely vilified for her opposition to the French scarf-banning laws, offers the rest of us a definition :

The French definition of communautarism is the fact that people who are discriminated, who are assigned with prejudices, to whom equal chances are denied, etc. these people – who have often been parked in the same neighborhoods – these people hang out and talk to each other. This is communautarism, it's bad, it means that they want to part from the rest of society and, instead of looking for well seen people, people who have privileges, for example, for Blacks and Arabs instead of reaching out for Whites and beg them to come and talk with them, they talk to each other. That would be communautarism.

Yet the fact remains that cultivating friendly and respectful relationships with communities, acknowledging their contribution to civil society, is one of the time-tested ways to prevent ostracism and extremism.​ Yet in france, too often individual members of minorities talking to each other are considered potential enemies of the state. Just imagine how dangerous it would be for the French State if it decided to approach these communities and recognize them as such!

I don't think most people are aware of the mental straightjacket in which the French have placed themselves for the last 30 years. It encompasses more than the issue of ethno-religious groups. Some probably know that the French have some very strange philosophers such as Finkelkraut and BHL**, and some very despicable intellectuals such as Michel Houellebecq, who recently wrote a book describing France becoming an Islamic republic, and became a National obsession in the wake of the Charlie attacks. These public figures pretend to be victims of political correctness, although they occupy most of the media. One thing that might not be as well known is that there also exists, in parallel, a whole swamp of dissident intellectuals that are actively maintained in the margins of the French discourse. In France, they are called the "confusionnists", "cryptofascists", and so on, so forth.

The slippery slope argument and guilt by association have become commonplace in France. In this mixed bag, you will find true far right people, but also anarchists, radical critics of NATO, Israel, etc. As an example, France has been able to outlaw the boycott campaign against Israel, which makes it more repressive of boycott calls than Israel itself. Don't try to protest: if you are not called an anti-Semite you will be called an objective supporter of anti-Semites. There is no way out. These kinds of large-scale paranoid delusions are reminiscent of the arbitrary denunciations of French Revolution's Terreur, described in the above 1797 illustration.


Finally, journalism too is constrained in this straightjacket. There are only a few journalists left who analyze the terror events in depth. They have pointed out in the past the same thing that was pointed out about the Bush administration (foreknowledge, and the presence of elements in the intelligence services who rather preferred terrorist attacks to happen, for instance to impose mass surveillance (of course these theses are not mainstream but they are still more audible in the anglophone world than in France)). But they are marginalized, and quickly become part of this "cryptofascist", "conspiracy theorizing" swamp I was talking about. The result is that compelling elements of inquiry are missed not only in France but abroad. For example, Hicham Hamza, a French journalist, has investigated the local ramifications of a Times of Israel article covering a warning by "officials" to France's "Jewish community", on the morning of the attacks. His resources are thin,  his site is regularly under cyberattacks and of course most would not approach him with a tad pole, because of the usual name-calling.

The same could be said of the Charlie Hebdo attacks - and further in the past --  of Rwanda, about which the BBC aired a documentary that would be swiftly thrown in the holocaust denying, cryptofasisct swamp in France. These elements do circulate in the French blogosphere. But guess what: France now has the right to shut down any website it judges problematic. What might be judged problematic is quite broad:

[It’s] a heterogeneous movement, heavily entangled with the Holocaust denial movement, and which combines admirers of Hugo Chavez and fans of Vladimir Putin. An underworld that consist of former left-wing activists or extreme leftists, former "malcontents", sovereignists, revolutionary nationalists, ultra-nationalists, nostalgists of the Third Reich, anti-vaccination activists, supporters of drawing straws, September 11th revisionists, anti-Zionists, Afrocentricists, survivalists, followers of "alternative medicine", agents of influence of the Iranian regime, Bacharists, Catholic or Islamic fundamentalists. « Conspirationnisme : un état des lieux », par Rudy Reichstadt, Observatoire des radicalités politiques, Fondation Jean-Jaurès, Parti socialiste, 24 février 2015.

(Welcome to the conspiracy theorist movement.)

Even so, of course, it cannot prevent us from thinking and inquiring. The French population really needs a breath of fresh air right now. They need fresh insights, serious journalism, and the freedom to discuss outside of their mentally and legally censored world. I don't have specific suggestions to solve those issues. I just think that the rest of the world should be aware that the French prison of ideas is not always self imposed and that there are many people who just wish they could escape. Many do: I can see that in Quebec.


*The Charlie Hebdo satiricial magazine whose cartoonists were murdered in January.
** Bernard Henri Levy, a self-styled philosophe.

The Man who Invented Climate Change (and then disowned it)

Posted by Martin Cohen

The man who started it all off - Herbert Lamb. Source WP:NFCC#4

History, as ever gives an insight into the Climate Change debate. The historian of science, Bernie Lewin, has researched the views of the British scientist who for many years struggled to persuade governments that actually, yes, climate did change. Hubert Lamb, an academic and the founder of the influential Climatic Research Unit (better known by its acronym ‘CRU’) at the University of East Anglia in the UK, is conventionally credited with putting manmade Climate Change on the world agenda. He doesn't get many mentions though - because he came to detest the poltical abuses of his ideas.

Lamb was once described by one of his successors at the CRU, Trevor Davies ( probably self-servingly) as ‘the greatest climatologist of his time’. Davies credits him with ‘convincing the remaining doubters of the reality of climate variation on time-scales of decades and centuries’ and an obituary in Nature offers his great achievement as overturning the ‘old orthodoxy’ of climate stability. Other scientific admirers suggest that it was Lamb who first introduced the idea that climatic change has happened, and is still happening, on human time scales. But Bernie Lewin has no doubt that much of this is political fiction, noting that Lamb was far from the first to introduce the idea of a constantly changing climate. And where Lamb’s successor at his climate research centre found it, ‘ironic’ that even as the world became ‘acutely aware of global climate change’, Lamb maintained a guarded attitude to the importance of greenhouse warming, Lewin sees nothing odd in the position of a scientist advocating the idea of natural climate change being ‘guarded’ about the evidence of a global human influence. Awareness of past variability would rather tend towards scepticism of claims to have identified a single, new and extraordinary cause of climate change.

Hubert Lamb, in fact, was an old-school meteorologist, and there was something of a clash of cultures between those like him brought up on geology and weather records, and the new kinds of ‘climate scientists’ only recently tempted by research money into applying their mathematical skills to the natural world. Lamb expressed open scepticism of the theoretical physics used now to predict future climate trends noting that often the models failed to match reality. He argued for:

* the existence of negative feedbacks dampening warming trends where the climate modellers allowed only positive feedbacks amplifying them;
* that 20th century climate variation was better explained by natural factors (such as solar and volcanic effects);
* wonders how accurate the figures relied on for identifying relatively tiny temperature trends even were.

Such doubts led him to spend time analysing the political impetus for the new climate science, including vested interests, and the reasons why climate modelling in particular received so much support. Lamb completed his memoirs in 1997, just a few months before Kyoto, the international summit in which man-made Climate Change was given it preeminent role. In these memoirs he laments:

‘It is unfortunate that studies produced nowadays treat these and other matters related to changes of climate as if they are always, and only, attributable to the activities of Man and side-effects on the climate.’

This post is lightly adapted from Martin Cohen's book:
Paradigm Shift: How expert opinions keep changing on life, the universe, and everything

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A Philosophy of Untruth

Posted by Thomas Scarborough

Untruth has to do, not with greed or with need, compulsion or coercion, but with my life-view – and my life-view begins with my conception of the world. From this arises every untruth.

Psychologist Richard Gregory puts it in a word: we, as humans, are motivated by the “unexpected”. That is, whenever and wherever I hold up my personal conception of the world to the world itself, and there discover a disjoint, I am moved to act. Therefore, prior to all of my actions is the way in which I arrange the world in my mind.

Supposing then that, in my imagination, my life is a happy family in suburbia – a friendly dog, fresh muffins on the table, and daisy-chains and laughs. Then I look from my kitchen window, to see my little girl with her face down in the grass. Suddenly there is a disjoint, and I spring into action. Of course, different people will spring into action for different reasons, and this reveals their various conceptions of the world. Some may not want a happy family in suburbia, or a dog, or fresh muffins on the table. Some may want to be loose and wild, and some may want to immerse themselves in figures. The possibilities are as many as the people.

And so, on the one hand, our conception of the world may be balanced and broad – or on the other hand, short-sighted, self-interested, and parochial. Some will live a “large” life, which is well-rounded and meaningful – while others will live a small-time existence, a self-destructive life, as fools or bunglers. In short, some will become wise, and some will become fools. With these simple observations, we may now describe the first of three forms of untruth we shall survey: namely, foolishness. Foolishness is rooted in the “small” view life – and where we find it, we tend to pity it, laugh at it, or denigrate it.  But we don't much take it to heart. It matters little to the rest of us.

Now consider that all of us arrange our worlds differently in our minds. And, again, from these conceptions of our world, our motivations arise. But now, given different conceptions of our world, and different motivations, it stands to reason that my own motivations may come into conflict with the motivations of another.  And if I do not yield to the other, then the other must yield to me. This must mean that if the other cannot, through natural processes, change my own conceptual arrangement of the world, they may yet be able to change the conceptual stuff that I have to work with. With a few targeted ruses, they may change the world I think I live in.

I may feel passionate about the village duckpond, for instance, while another person wants to build a helipad there. But if they cannot overcome my passion for the pond, by fairly changing my own conceptual arrangement of the world, they may tamper with the conceptual stuff I have to work with. They may tell me (falsely) that permission for their helipad has been granted on high authority, or that duckponds are death-traps for children. This now differs from mere foolishness, in that it seeks to manipulate what I know – and it happens all the time, whether on the personal level of lies, or on the political level of propaganda. It is our second form of untruth: namely, lies and deceit.

But further than this.  Not only may one change the way in which I arrange the world in my mind. One may change the world itself – through force and through violence, or comparable actions. Think again on the person who wishes to create the helipad. In the dark of night now, they send a small-time crook with a dump truck, to fill in the duckpond in one dramatic act. Now my conceptual arrangement of the world must change, because the world itself has changed. I have no pond left to defend, and no more purpose in opposing a helipad.

The dynamics of course may be more complex in the real world. It may be easy to see that a pond was filled in on the orders of the person who had a vested interest in it. It may be less easy to see that running me out of town with false rumours had to do with the pond, or that someone now drives a new Bentley on this account. And so the world of untruth may become tangled and dark, and as vast as the ocean. One finds it in lies and in half-truths, bluff and deceit, rationalisation and subterfuge – and now, thirdly, in violence of many kinds: physical, emotional, verbal, financial, sexual.

Now notice what has happened in the course of this short post. By means of some basic principles, all manner of evils in this world have been reconciled. Whether someone is reckoned to be a fool, a liar, or a thug, these are all basically one and the same. It is through a false conceptual arrangement of the world that people fall prey to each one. And notice something else: something about human nature, which seems to speak louder than words. Our moral integrity (or not) lies beyond our immediate control. It lies beyond all moralism and legalism. It changes only if our very life-view changes.

Kikaku leads the way

Posted by Alex Stein*

Image by senunez

Sometimes people ask me how I came to be a writer of aphorisms. To that, I reply:

I came to the aphorism by way of haiku and I came to haiku by ways still vague to me. I was 25, living in Seattle, and in thrall to the prose of Jack Kerouac. I spent my days and evenings filling notebook after notebook with stream of consciousness twaddle. Perhaps, I would have continued at this until I was good and dead. There was really no reason not to. I enjoyed the activity. Notebooks were cheap. The hours flew by.

Then something odd: in the middle of the twaddle, I wrote a little poem. 

Dandelion, roar!
Simple thing,
speak your simple mind.

I looked at the poem, and here is the curious thing: the poem looked back at me. Not long after that I wrote:

Hold light,
butterfly;
for a short life:
Praise
!

The more I looked at these poems, the more they looked back at me. “What?” I asked. “What do you want?” “Divine us,” they replied. “How?” I asked. “Divine us,” they repeated.

In a bookstore in downtown Seattle, I found a haiku anthology. In it, I read Kikaku’s:

Above the boat,
bellies
of wild geese.

Over the next few years, I must have read that poem a thousand times. Then, one day, I wrote in the margin:

Perhaps our world is the spirit world of some other world. Perhaps our birdsongs are heard but faintly in some other world, and only by certain ears. Perhaps a poem is like an airlock that carries the breath of one world into the lungs of the next.

I read Kikaku’s:

  Evening bridge,
  a thousand hands
  cool on the rail.

 I wrote:

Kikaku’s bridge spans both the construct of space and the abstract of time; so, all those hands, “cool on the rail,” are also the hands of the dead in their various phases of crossing-over.

 Kikaku! That was the unlikely name of the piper who led me on.”

---

*Alex Stein is (with James Lough) the co-editor of, and a contributor to, Short Flights: Thirty-two Modern Writers Share Aphorisms of Insight, Inspiration and Wit, the first EVER anthology of contemporary writers of aphorism. Other aphorists in Short Flights include Charles Simic, Stephen Dobyns, Irena Karafilly, and Yahia Lababidi.

Six smarter ways to stop the terrorists

It is important to fight the real enemy, not an imaginary one

François Hollande declared the attacks on Paris “an act of war that was waged by a terrorist army, a jihadist army, by Daesh [the Islamic State], against France.” The French president (who was at the soccer game outside which bombs were detonated), has promised that France will wage "pitiless war" against those who conceived and executed the attacks.

Now there's two ways to respond to the Paris attacks - an unthinking violent way, and a smart way. Guess which one is in favour? The influential magazine, Foreign Policy, puts it very clearly, it sees  in the streets of Paris an occasion for the ruthless application of hard power.

France has already had one outrage - in the senseless killing of a group of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists seated around their conference table. The response to that - essentially an attack on free speech - was a new law prohibiting language that the State interpreted as supportive of terrorism. In the days that followed, several hapless French motorists were given life terms in prison for breaching the new rules.

A 34-year-old man who hit a car while drunk, injuring the other driver and goaded the police when they detained him by praising the acts of the Hebdo killers was sentenced to four years in prison. In the following days, according to Cédric Cabut, a French prosecutor, a good hundred people were investigated or charged with making or posting comments that 'supported terrorism'. Of course, the charges were ridiculous. But the principle of 'free speech' the cartoonists had died for was buried further.

And rather than arrest and carefully dissect the mindset of the terrorists, the government organised a spectacular 'shoot out' with them, which left the media satisfied but the nation deprived of an opportunity for a meaningful investigation into the underlying issues.

And now less that a year on, another and indeed worse tragedy, underlines the failure to learn anything from the first one.

The immediate response was to 'close the borders' - a grand slamming shut of the characteristic French shutters  -  to stop terrorists getting in or out. This involved several hundred thousand police and army. But it was entirely irrelevant to a terrorist cell made up largely of European (three were from Brussels!), indeed, French, nationals.

So let me tentatively and in a spirit of solidarity, offer the French authorities some more 'analytical' six ideas on behalf of the ordinary people of France  - not the government or the security forces - who were the chosen targets as well as the victims in both attacks.

1. There is no way to stop small groups of people killing ordinary citizens. You can protect your elites, but cannot protect the vast majority. Thus the real battle is for minds and hearts.

"A 242-ship Navy will not stop one motivated murderous fanatic from emptying the clip of an AK-47 into the windows of a crowded restaurant."

2. It follows from this that the security services must work under and for the people, not on top of and against them, as has always been the case in France. The most egregious example of what happens when the security services operate in isolation from the people came in the Second World War when the gendarmerie rounded up Jews for transportation to the Nazi death camps.

3. Instead of these 'muscular' reasons - immediately proffered again by the French politicians - there should be an intelligent response, both in terms of social policy and in terms of security. Suspicious individuals, of whom for example returned jihadis are an obvious and entirely manageable group, should be individually watched and their activities curtailed. Policies directed against the 60 million French people - such as closing the borders, searching all vehicles etc etc - are not only an abuse of power but a waste of resources.

4. The French State needs to respect citizens of all religious persuasions. It simply won't do, for example, to  impose pork on Muslims (or Jews, or indeed vegetarians) in school canteens, nor is there any rational argument for opposing the wearing of headscarves. Face-obscuring garments I think are in a different category. There is a tendency to seek the erasure of religion today rather than the freedom of religion. At the same time, radical Islam itself seems to advance by encroaching on the laws of a nation. It expands its ‘territory’, where other religions focus on heart.

5. Part of the State's obligations to all its constituent groups is to ensure equality of opportunity - and to actively combat inequality. It is in the swamps of the sprawling suburbs of the cities, that the Hebdo killers festered. Jihadis are by no means explained as simply frustrated workers, but on the other hand, their twisted senses of grievance are fuelled by the extremes they see in life around them.

6. The militarisation of the police and the frequent use of the army by the French State creates inevitably a response, and the people who suffer most, as we have seen now, are the weakest and most defenceless. It is thus shameful to hear the drum beating and the clamouring for more 'resources' from the security services that have so clearly let down their citizens.

Europe needs to think outside the box, not only about war but about peace.  I sense that it needs fundamentally new ideas, even mindsets, and an openness to new ideas without its obsession to preserve what it has, or idolises. 

But there's one other practical step that can be taken. Stop propping up the anti-democratic regimes in the Gulf States. The ones behind 9/11, and many other atrocities worldwide - and now the new horror in Paris.

Poetry: Questioning the EU Referendum

Editorial note: “Many readers outside Europe will not have heard of Britain’s plan to vote on whether or not to stay in the European Union – nor indeed may any who have care very much. But Chengde’s thoughts apply not only to a single referendum, but to democracy itself.  They apply to every item we buy in the shop, every deposit someone makes at a bank.”

---

A poem by Chengde Chen 

Questioning the Referendum

Britain is split by whether to remain in the EU or not
but very much united over the way of resolution
All the parties have agreed to settle it by a referendum –
let the people decide – the great principle seems indisputable
Yet, there’re two questions like a fish-bone stuck in my throat:
is it true that people always understand their own interests?
is it democracy to vote on things the voters don’t understand?

Democracy contains two elements that are linked
One, people have the right to vote for their own interests
Two, voters should know what their interests are –
only such voters can really exercise their right to vote
Children can’t vote, as they don’t understand their interests
Nor can mental patients, as they may not know theirs either
To ask people to vote on things they don’t understand
is to let the blind select colour or the deaf judge music
Do ordinary folks always understand their own interests?
With the increase in scale and complexity of society
there are issues beyond most people’s comprehension
For such matters, adults are in fact ‘children’ –
sufficient age does not mean sufficient knowledge
Although knowledge can be obtained through education
not all that is needed can be given by a short course

How would voting be affected by ignorance?
Operational research shows that
if there is a correct choice, ignorance reduces its chances
When a thousand vote on an issue understood only by ten
the rationality of the 1% will be drowned in the sea of ignorance
So, when doctors are divided over a surgical procedure
the hospital refers it to an expert panel, not a referendum
People need specialists’ help for their democracy
just as they need their GPs and solicitors

Whether Britain should stay in the European Union
is an extremely complex matter that is highly technical
Either way has countless advantages and disadvantages –
many many economic, political, and cultural concerns
many many short, medium, and long term consequences
Some effects may be foreseen, while most are not…
an overall understanding takes sophisticated calculation
 (Some want to leave the EU because they dislike Germans
as if they could go to war with Scots because of their kilts!)

If the principle of not allowing children to vote is right
to use a referendum to determine the EU matter is wrong
Parliament shirking its responsibility in the name of democracy
is like a pilot handing over his plane to the passengers in that name!
The matter should be decided by a certain ‘expert democracy’
for example, to let a thousand economists vote on it
Although this won’t guarantee a correct decision
it will be a more scientific one, rooted in reason

I do not, of course, expect the country to heed my advice
so I leave this poem to those heading for the ballot box
A ballot box is the symbol of democracy
but its slot should be guarded by knowledge
Voting with knowledge is democracy with reason
while a box of ignorance is a political dustbin
Britain did not have Confucius, but can have his words:
‘Understanding is understanding, and not so is not so’
A rational man shouldn’t vote on things he doesn’t understand
while an abstainer can be proud of his or her rationality!
 

---

Chengde Chen is the author of Five Themes of Today: philosophical poems. Readers can find out more about Chengde and his poems here

Who is 'the Most Powerful' Really?

Posted by Martin Cohen 

This 'thought experimenter' was powerful in a way too

The 'Rich list' was bad enough, but oh no, here comes the Forbes list of The World’s Most Powerful People!

Forbes' list  (Reuters' picture version is here)  is really silly stuff – but more than that – its publication and repetition around the world’s media, show how little we respect AUTHORS and artists and doctors and scientists and philosophers and... well you can add your own kind of ‘powerful’ people. Here though, it is Putin is first, Obama second and the Pope is No. 4.

Forbes said it took four factors into consideration when it created the list: how many people they have power over (that looks like a tautology, if you ask me); the financial resources they control (in what sense? Obama can’t really spend the US Treasury on his projects); if they have influence in more than one sphere (wobbly criterion); and how actively they throw their weight around in the world. That last one is the real indicator of how crude the thinking is here. Is a politician more powerful if they wage a war or if they achieve their aims through behind-the-scenes diplomacy?

Curious perhaps, though, given these rules, is to take a second look at Facebook’s Zuckerberg. He’s rich – but does he really throw his weight around? Does he control us when we  click his 'like' buttons?

It’s a highly political list...

Obama had been on the top of the list every year he had been President except in 2010, when Hu Jintao, the former political and military leader of China, was Numero Uno. Steve Forbes is a Presidential hopeful, as well as magazine organ grinder. The crowd-pulling monkey in this case is Forbes writer, Caroline Howard, who explained some of the thinking:

“Putin has solidified his control over Russia, while Obama's lame duck period has seemingly set in earlier than usual for a two-term president — latest example: the government shutdown mess.” 

... but I’d go further. It’s not just politics, it's crass, childish and perpetuates myths about what is really important in life and society. Bankers, financiers and increasingly politicians too, are people who circulate money - not people who change the world. Ideas, not individuals, truly change the world!

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Picture Post No. 8: Apples COMMENT ADDED

This is definitely not a Picture Post, Thomas. I think you have to reformati it. It is a bit more of your theory of how language works, so I guess should be 'potentailly' a post. But even as that it does seem rather trivial. You would need I think to redynamise this one - more examples maybe?

Martin

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'Because things don’t appear to be the known thing; they aren’t that what they seemed to be neither will they become what they might appear to become.'

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NOTE:  I have put a preferred version of this post at the top, yet have left the previous versions intact (below), to give priority to the editorial eye. Thomas.

Posted by Thomas Scarborough

One sees, above, the results of two Google Image searches. First, I searched for 'apples'.  Then, I searched for 'pommes'.  Then I jumbled them up.  Pommes, of course, are apples in French.  Do not scroll down. 

The 'apples' (English) have an ideal form.  Several shift even into abstraction or stylization.  They only occur singly, and most of them sport only one leaf.  They are red, and only red, and are polished to a perfect shine. One apple has been cut: not to eat, but to engrave a picture perfect symbol on it.  The 'pommes' (French) belong to a family of pommes, of various colours: red, green, even yellow.  One may take a bite out of them to taste, or cut them through or slice them: to smell their fragrance, or to drop them into a pot.  Pommes, too, are always real, unless one should draw one for a child.

Now separate out the apples from the pommes. Scroll down. You probably distinguished most apples from pommes. In so doing, you acknowledged – if just for a moment – that in some important way, apples are not pommes.

(While this example is flawed, try the same with more
distant languages, and more complex words).

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Posted by Thomas Scarborough

One sees, above, the results of two Google Image searches. First, I searched for 'apples'.  Then, I searched for 'pommes'.  Then I jumbled them up.  Pommes, of course, are apples in French.  Do not scroll down. 

'Apples' have an ideal form.  So much so, in fact, that they tend to shift into abstraction or stylization.  Mostly (though not in every case), they sport only one leaf.  Apples only occur singly.  They are red, and only red, and they are polished to a perfect shine. One apple has been cut, though not to eat it – rather to engrave a picture perfect symbol on it.  'Pommes', on the other hand, belong to a family of pommes, of various colours: red, green, yellow, even plum.  And leaves: they may have one, or two, or none.  One may take a bite out of them to taste.  One may cut them through, or slice them: to smell their fragrance, or perhaps to drop them in a pot. And pommes are always real, unless one should draw one for a child.

Now separate out the apples from the pommes. Scroll down. You probably accomplished this with 80% accuracy. In so doing, you acknowledged – if just for a moment – that in some important way, apples are not pommes.

(Now try the same with more distant languages, and more complex words).

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'Because things don’t appear to be the known thing; they aren’t that what they seemed to be neither will they become what they might appear to become.'

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Posted by Thomas Scarborough

Two Google Image searches.  First, 'apples'.  Then, 'pommes'. (A pomme, of course, is an apple in French). 

The 'apples' (English) have an ideal form.  Several shift even into abstraction or stylization.  They sport one leaf (with two exceptions).  They only occur singly.  They are red, and only red, and are polished to a perfect shine. One apple has been cut: not to eat, but to engrave a picture perfect symbol on it.  The 'pommes' (French) belong to a family of pommes, of various colours: red, green, yellow, even plum.  One may take a bite out of them to taste, or cut them through or slice them: to smell their fragrance, or to drop them into a pot.  Pommes, too, are always real, unless one should draw a picture for a child.

Signifier points to signified, we are told, whether 'apple' or 'pomme'. But in English and in French, are the signifieds the same?

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Gedicht: Freundschaft

Von Theo Olivet geschrieben *

Mit Dank an Tamarris Art Galleries

Eine Kernfrage ist wohl: Woran kann ich Halt finden bei der Suche nach der eigenen Position im Leben. Hilft Freundschaft? Kann man aus gemeinsamer leidvoller Erfahrung Staerke gewinnen? Seine kuenftige Position definieren? Inwieweit kann man auch durch einen Schwachen gestuetzt werden?

Freundschaft

Komm, wir wollen uns verneigen
an diesem uns so sehr vertrauten Ort,
hier schnipstest schnippisch du so manche Kippe fort
und ließt den weißen Rauch  aus deiner Nase steigen.

Und dann, in das so tiefe Schweigen,
das sich oftmals daraus ergab,
hustete ich was Raues ab
und suchte dabei deinen Blickkontakt  zu meiden.

Mal fiel in diese Stille auch ein leises Wort:
Ich laufe morgen vor mir selber fort.
Und Du darauf, ganz unumwunden:
Ich hab noch nicht zu meinem Typ gefunden,
ich bin mir manchmal spinnefeind …
Ich fragte:  Meinst Du oben oder unten?
Dann haben wir lauthals geweint.

Das waren Zeiten! will ich meinen.
So Großes, Mensch!  das kommt nicht mehr,
wir standen da mit beiden Beinen
jeweils in einem Meer von Teer …

Komm, gib mir eine mal von deinen,
denn meine sind jetzt fade im Geschmack,
ich werde anders, will mir scheinen,
mein Innres macht da Knick und Klack,
da rüttelt manches an den Türen…
ich muss da nur noch Strom zuführen.

Die Zigarette,  ja… ich sage Dankeschön,
so wie sie schmeckt und mich im Rauch erinnert,
wie du so schnippisch oft an ihr gefingert,
Du … ja … so hoff ich auf ein Wiedersehn …

*Theo Olivet ist ein Autor, Künstler und pensionierter Richter in Schleswig-Holstein

Picture Post No. 6: The Croquet Game

'Because things don’t appear to be the known thing; they aren’t that what they seemed to be neither will they become what they might appear to become.'

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Posted by Martin Cohen and Tessa den Uyl

New Mexico, 1874

This peaceful scene (the whole right part looks almost like a romantic painting) of a game of croquet set in the American South, generated considerable media interest, once it was established that one of the men pictured was none other that the notorious outlaw, Billy the Kid. Billy, it should be explained, was considered to be both ruthless and dashing, and had a dramatic end at an early age involving a shoot out with the sherifs.

Juxtaposed, then, as art critics might say, with this quintessentially genteel act, the game of croquet, redolent of English afternoon teas and cucumber sandwiches, we have a powerful perhaps slightly piquant reminder that even a murderer, a desperado, can have another, gentler  side. (Even if, as anyone who has actually played croquet knows, the game is actually quite cruel and remorseless, as players wreck the hopes of their opponents by blasting their wooden balls into the shrubbery.)

Billy himself, looking just a little bit dangerous?