tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49648472284973634382024-03-16T01:11:39.563+00:00Conservative TendencyMark Englishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03506844097173520312noreply@blogger.comBlogger314125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4964847228497363438.post-29545134573948986822024-03-11T15:24:00.000+00:002024-03-11T15:33:23.377+00:00Outpatient at Mater Dei<p>Back in December, when I was in Sofia, I noticed a dark, more-or-less rectangular shape in my field of vision when I opened my right eye after sleeping but which resolved itself after a few seconds. It was obviously a symptom of something but, as it wasn't affecting my life in any way and as it appeared to be stable from day to day, I decided not to see a specialist.</p><p>In January, after talking to friends about it, I finally decided to act. I was staying in Malta at the time at a hotel which happened to be within walking distance of a large public hospital (Mater Dei). I went there to make enquiries and was directed to the emergency department. They organized an immediate examination by an ophthalmologist; no red tape or bureaucratic obstruction. Laser treatment was recommended and a booking for the next day was made for me at the hospital's ophthalmology outpatients clinic. The purpose of the treatment was to seal a retinal tear which had already healed itself naturally but which could (I was told) be made safer.</p><p>The treatment was quite an experience. The doctor, a young woman, seemed at first to be having a bit of trouble. It wasn't going quite as she wanted or expected. With my approval she turned up the power. The long laser blasts were still not having the desired result however. Apologies, and another tweak upwards on the power dial. This happened three or four times.</p><p>The bright yellow blasts seemed to go deeper and deeper and were painful in a dull, edge-of-consciousness sort of way. It was quite unlike the sharp pain of a dentist's drill. A couple of times the doctor stopped and took a short break, presumably for my benefit but maybe for hers also. Normally a bit of a wimp about pain, I played the stoic this time because, for obvious reasons, I didn't want to move my head or distract her in any way. Eventually her supervisor took over and added some final touches (with short bursts and a lighter hand).</p><p>At a follow-up appointment a couple of weeks later at the same clinic, the eye was examined by another doctor who recommended no further treatment. My response: relief, cautious optimism and a renewed focus on stress minimization, hydration and diet.</p><p>Before having the treatment I had asked around about Mater Dei Hospital (positive responses), and also did a quick Google search which indicated that standards were high but waiting times could be long. Not in ophthalmology apparently. As a foreigner from a country which has a reciprocal health care agreement with Malta, I was impressed by the quick and no-nonsense way I was integrated into the system and treated.</p>Mark Englishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03506844097173520312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4964847228497363438.post-6173356575161592302024-02-09T11:25:00.004+00:002024-02-18T05:47:50.362+00:00Maltese culture and language<p>My first introduction to Malta was via my childhood stamp collection and some richly coloured, colonial-era stamps. Subsequently, as a student, I came across Samuel Taylor Coleridge's account of his sixteen-month stay in 1804-5. He was struck by how noisy the place was.</p><p>There's still a lot of noise here 220 years later. Too many cars, for example. The local driving style is pretty aggressive and road rules are rarely enforced. Double parking is endemic and you often hear car horns being sounded aggressively and repeatedly by the angry owners of blocked-in vehicles. Overall, I would characterize the culture as free and easy, verging on the chaotic.</p><p>Maltese is a very unusual language. Its grammatical structure and morphology derive from an old form of Arabic (Siculo-Arabic) while much of its lexicon derives from Italian and other European languages (including English). Since independence in 1964, the Maltese language has been strongly promoted and supported by the government and official bodies (with a bit of help from the European Union since 2004).</p><p>In general, I am not a supporter of keeping languages alive via legislation and regulation. Language change and death is a natural process and individuals should as far as possible be free to choose what language or languages they want to speak and what language or languages their children should speak and be educated in. I recognize, however, that language policies of one kind or another are necessary in multilingual jurisdictions and decisions must be made. The way I see it, something is gained and something is lost either way when it comes to a choice between promoting a local language (or dialect) as against a more widely-spoken and professionally useful one.</p><p>As I understand it, the policy during British colonial times was to promote the use of English and standard Italian rather than Maltese. Italian is still spoken, though it is less prevalent than it was.</p><p>English remains an official language and is taught in schools but proficiency varies greatly and most locals (including young professionals) are more comfortable speaking Maltese. The situation is slowly changing however. Survey data indicates that Maltese under-20s are more likely to favour English and identify English as their first language than other age groups.</p><p>Anti-colonial sentiments are still evident here. I noticed, for example, that Malta's period as a British Crown Colony was referred to as the "British occupation" on an official plaque displayed outside Malta Police General Headquarters in Floriana. How deeply this kind of attitude runs amongst the general population is hard to say. Not very deeply, I suspect. It should be noted that before becoming a British Protectorate in 1800 and a Crown Colony soon thereafter, Malta had for more than 600 years been part of (or, during the period when it was ruled by the Knights Hospitaller of St. John of Jerusalem, a vassal state of) the Kingdom of Sicily.</p><p>On the whole, people here seem very laid back and friendly and not at all weighed down by post-colonial resentments. Their patriotism generally manifests itself (as one might expect in such a tiny nation) as a cultural phenomenon, as pride in cultural identity, rather than as something political or militaristic.</p><p>There are dark aspects to Maltese society, however. They are mainly related (as far as I can ascertain) to racial frictions and to organized crime and corruption. On the latter issue, a local journalist and anti-corruption campaigner, Daphne Caruana Galizia, was killed by a car bomb in 2017 and people still leave flowers at a memorial set up to honour her memory.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLpHrx-vlv4UbiDaN-TKwnV7i-i4CLZDcWDqFSLCLc5xgd1cfsTViDrcX4WIXcJCkbp1h4kQxBpr4o6vhCjTQMex7XYmUWNzhTCHXintxpjJty9AHDUk4MLtxCD4E1HNH3d-kznYubnY8YlMoMw9ZD9xnLkOZb7w_FqqTi67pYg7oMdWvUeTunIDf_WNg/s359/Daphne_caruana_galizia.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="359" data-original-width="276" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLpHrx-vlv4UbiDaN-TKwnV7i-i4CLZDcWDqFSLCLc5xgd1cfsTViDrcX4WIXcJCkbp1h4kQxBpr4o6vhCjTQMex7XYmUWNzhTCHXintxpjJty9AHDUk4MLtxCD4E1HNH3d-kznYubnY8YlMoMw9ZD9xnLkOZb7w_FqqTi67pYg7oMdWvUeTunIDf_WNg/s400/Daphne_caruana_galizia.jpg" /></a></div><p></p>Mark Englishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03506844097173520312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4964847228497363438.post-60976855429633974942023-12-29T06:45:00.003+00:002023-12-29T08:06:24.710+00:00In Bulgaria<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqsBnmb4L3m5N1NFYCruMkRH1d0Yf7XgvCSL7W9bPq36DSwCI0jAY2Iw_zcVmQQOtOIA9J8Lea5hcuz7Mz0Eh3BbxACVDi6KZiy0le5Wdt34nq1bA4gQzzmiJDoKYklY8YSflnQQTzGlgYhg3MNIauE6A50t1U1rSwOyGbbxW9UG8oDx7fotgHWfhj9iI/s3264/IMG_2023-11-20-12-08-37-899.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="2448" data-original-width="3264" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqsBnmb4L3m5N1NFYCruMkRH1d0Yf7XgvCSL7W9bPq36DSwCI0jAY2Iw_zcVmQQOtOIA9J8Lea5hcuz7Mz0Eh3BbxACVDi6KZiy0le5Wdt34nq1bA4gQzzmiJDoKYklY8YSflnQQTzGlgYhg3MNIauE6A50t1U1rSwOyGbbxW9UG8oDx7fotgHWfhj9iI/s400/IMG_2023-11-20-12-08-37-899.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>My lack of knowledge of the Bulgarian language has made it difficult for me to get beyond a superficial understanding of the country but the very fact that so many people here (including the young) are strongly committed to their language and culture is revealing.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Compared to Athens, Sofia seems gentler and more congenial. Bulgaria is clearly a poor country, but I think it’s safe to say that the economic situation here is not as dire as the situation in Greece. Greece struck me as a very unhappy country indeed, with abundant signs of psychological stress, anger and resentment in sections of the population. Such signs are less evident here.</p>
<p dir="ltr">There are countless reminders of Bulgaria’s Communist history, both physical (older buildings and infrastructure) and psychological (culture and attitudes). But whether the apparent Stoicism of the not-so-well-off is due to the country’s experience during the Cold War or something older and deeper I do not know.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I found the metro in Sofia more pleasant to use than the Athens metro. But one day, hurrying to board a departing train, I was not quite quick enough to entirely clear the rapidly closing doors. The doors caught and crushed my small backpack so that, for a few seconds, I was pinned to the doors and unable to move.</p>
<p dir="ltr">This was an old, square-fronted Soviet-era train, one of the few still operating. The carriage interior, from the floor covering to the seating to the ventilation and heating system, was markedly different from any other metro carriages I had seen here. But the most striking feature (pun intended) were the automatic doors which closed with sudden and vicious force. Guillotine-like. I’ve never encountered anything quite like it.</p>
<p dir="ltr">As it happens, I have had no health insurance cover while in Greece or Bulgaria and so am living dangerously. I thought that so long as I took reasonable care and avoided wild, wooded areas (there are wolves and bears apparently) I would be safe. Little did I realize that even in boring parts of town (to which I tend to gravitate) hazards abound.</p>
<p dir="ltr">On the roads for example. It’s amazing how ingrained one’s intuitions are about traffic flows. This applies to pedestrians as much as to drivers, and if virtually all one’s prior experience was gained in countries where traffic drives on the left-hand side, it’s so easy to step off the curb at the wrong time and walk under a passing bus.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Even some instances of the apparently benign walk (or “green man”) traffic-light signal may betray sinister intent. Were these configurations cunningly designed to trick foreigners or perhaps – more sinister still – to cull the duller or less-alert segments of the population? For example, the other day I was just about to respond to a green walk signal straight ahead of me across the street when I noticed a red signal on the thin median strip and so just managed to avoid walking into the torrent of traffic surging from my left.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Returning to my Sofia hotel (near the airport) one afternoon, I was surprised to see an unsupervised and untethered horse grazing on the grassy verge. As I walked past on the paved sidewalk, I saw a teenaged boy approaching the horse and was vaguely reassured that the animal would in due course be taken to a safer place. The horse panicked however and bolted past me, rather too close for comfort. It galloped around behind the hotel, followed by the running boy.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Another hazard are automated boom gates. They are <i>everywhere</i> in these parts, usually complemented by cyclone fencing topped with barbed wire. There are boom gates and no dedicated pedestrian entrance at the hotel I am staying at, but thankfully no barbed wire.<br /></p>
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<p dir="ltr">On a more serious note, I must say that I am glad to be in Europe again and beginning the slow process of acclimatizing myself to the practical contingencies and perspectives of contemporary European life. New experiences meld with literary and intellectual influences. Old memories are revivified and tested.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Though I have no expertise in natural history, I feel the need (or the desire at least) to be able to identify common plants, birds etc., at least to the extent that any normally observant person growing up in a given geographical location will know them. I know some European birds and trees but found it slightly frustrating not to be able to identify, for example, the black birds that formed large flocks in the vicinity of Sofia airport and whose aerial manoeuvrings reminded me of bats. Were they Eurasian jackdaws? The elegant, long-tailed Eurasian magpies were easier to identify.</p>
<p dir="ltr">With respect to local trees, many of them (unsurprisingly) are identical to English and other familiar European varieties.</p>
<p dir="ltr">But my main areas of interest (at least in recent times) relate to the human realm: to psychology, to culture, to politics. And cultural attitudes in Bulgaria incorporate a number of apparently conflicting strands. A certain nostalgia for the Communist era mixes with attachments to older religious and mystical perspectives; and strong commitments to the EU exist side-by-side with elements of Romantic nationalism.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Environmental issues are taken very seriously but usually in sensible and practical (rather than ideological) ways, with the focus on simple and appropriate technologies.</p>
<p dir="ltr">More generally, ordinary life seems less politicized here than it has become in other countries with which I am familiar. This is a good thing, in my opinion. Politics has its place but when it dominates a culture and intrudes into private, personal and inter-personal areas, social and intellectual life is inevitably compromised.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRtu7Iw77OUXPKDZpbEumSY-irWGjhbUyjjIsB_qs_6ApzN6HXRdKi6-GnqE5zzJOP3lUjpjHpKmGEEHpdzzEmK6oZFEKjWlTr92RZZWBBF5fK7rwDi41a3QDGuMfY7Hf3W_uz-ccRxVZZ0-IYNwQlvWcE6WDS67ASs5LJEZwRCGhR7iwKCZt-nHRsmi8/s3264/IMG_2023-11-30-14-00-34-038.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="2448" data-original-width="3264" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRtu7Iw77OUXPKDZpbEumSY-irWGjhbUyjjIsB_qs_6ApzN6HXRdKi6-GnqE5zzJOP3lUjpjHpKmGEEHpdzzEmK6oZFEKjWlTr92RZZWBBF5fK7rwDi41a3QDGuMfY7Hf3W_uz-ccRxVZZ0-IYNwQlvWcE6WDS67ASs5LJEZwRCGhR7iwKCZt-nHRsmi8/s400/IMG_2023-11-30-14-00-34-038.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Mark Englishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03506844097173520312noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4964847228497363438.post-49640492684221131922023-12-12T11:44:00.001+00:002024-01-25T16:42:54.235+00:00Athens interludeI spent the latter part of October and most of November in Athens. The weather was glorious. And the rocky, dry, austere landscapes of Greece have always appealed to me. But economic pressures are obviously taking their toll and the country appears to be locked into a downward spiral.<div><br /></div><div>Just down the street from where I was staying is Athens railway station (also known as Larissa Station). The station has seen better days. In the past it was integrated into the European rail network and hosted the Orient Express and an express to Berlin. No more. Today there are no international links. You can get a train to Thessaloniki – if you’re lucky. When I tried to book, there was a notification that part of the line was out of action.</div><div><br /></div><div>Athens road traffic is heavy and not easy to deal with as a pedestrian. There are many parks, however, including Pedion tou Areos with its oleanders and jacarandas and extensive network of paths and walkways.</div><div><br /></div><div>There is a quaint little park by Larissa Station but this area (like many areas of the city) is impoverished and run down. Next to the park – as if mimicking the ancient ruins which characterize this part of the world – is a derelict basketball court, two hoops lying on the ground with their support structures uprooted. And overlooking the abandoned court is a residential building with its ground floor a boarded-up and apparently fire-damaged retail space. So many buildings hereabouts (hotels, residential, commercial) are standing idle, abandoned and boarded-up or half-demolished.</div><div><br /></div><div>Many of the people I encountered seemed stressed, unhappy and not well disposed to tourists. I would go so far as to say that there is resentment towards tourists on the part of a sizable proportion of the general population. Such sentiments spill over into politics. I saw some graffiti touching on this theme (“neighbours not toyrists” [sic]).</div><div><br /></div><div>I won’t go into the political situation except to note that Greece has a long and strong tradition of radical thought and action. Police – with armoured vehicles and riot shields – were out in force on at least two occasions while I was there to deal with student demonstrations. Trade unions were also involved in the demonstrations.</div><div><br /></div><div>There is widespread poverty and borderline living. Many beggars, some of them elderly; and people selling bags of vegetables etc. on the streets.
In the area in which I was staying, there are dozens of depressing “mini-marts” selling the same limited range of groceries and halal products, businesses run for the most part – and patronized by – Muslim immigrants. Service with a scowl seemed to be their preferred approach – though they may, for all I know, have been very pleasant to their regular clientele.</div><div><br /></div><div>While in Athens I needed to replace my sneakers and bought a new pair from a cluttered local shop-cum-warehouse run by a Chinese couple who import shoes and jackets from the People’s Republic. The mini-marts accept credit and debit cards, but this Chinese entrepreneur only took cash. The shoes I chose were marked €23.</div><div><br /></div><div>“For you, 20 euro,” he said. A real businessman this one!</div><div><br /></div><div>One of my high school teachers (his name was Lionel Lobstein) was said to speak six European languages, all with the same accent. He taught us social studies (geography and history) and later joined the Italian department at the local university. He was full of praise for Greek culture. They had their priorities right, he told us, valuing social intercourse and conversation over mundane chores, etc.. He routinely spent his annual holidays in Greece, sipping coffee and chatting in shaded courtyards (or so the story went). Later I latched on to the poems and novels of Lawrence Durrell, a British expatriate who was deeply immersed in the Mediterranean world.</div><div><br /></div><div>Even allowing for nostalgic and literary distortions, I have the strong sense of a culture which – exposed to various external forces and (perhaps) internal contradictions – has sadly lost its way.</div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI4kku8p3niVqJ_j8cVpJxP2qWS9qumjDEu8-S8WNH0vzhku-Umpvjoi416kj5TYoItrVqUNJZjM5FQte-56PCFwBow-xKn_oHktsIw7nu29TqB-n6GqQ2xZQfjbuZ2GdMb3ZjlLWbupSKHK_GxCL-w58o0rMHb9tsPrEz452Gid9gyAy5IwsOSeejRFk/s3264/IMG_2023-11-17-15-58-08-166.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="2448" data-original-width="3264" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI4kku8p3niVqJ_j8cVpJxP2qWS9qumjDEu8-S8WNH0vzhku-Umpvjoi416kj5TYoItrVqUNJZjM5FQte-56PCFwBow-xKn_oHktsIw7nu29TqB-n6GqQ2xZQfjbuZ2GdMb3ZjlLWbupSKHK_GxCL-w58o0rMHb9tsPrEz452Gid9gyAy5IwsOSeejRFk/s400/IMG_2023-11-17-15-58-08-166.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="2448" data-original-width="3264" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkhLwNPnrguznns5SLJV7OHSceOZhVH7ZYeJp6bTBBjmZ_oU_r3_JBWGde2DQJsxgiiqJPTlAr87j8laTrq8MHSeu2GKaYA_HZXdk1iZsqejWtnobwKUv8KVv-6o4s2CsA28sLzFWL15cFRXS-4mFD7XOHLyEDrH-HwDkc5Yc892rRDpMEACtZMQnfRa4/s400/IMG_2023-11-17-15-57-19-661.jpg" width="400" /></a></div></div>Mark Englishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03506844097173520312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4964847228497363438.post-79844419911955994762023-09-03T09:02:00.007+00:002023-09-06T21:22:32.494+00:00In the Blue Mountains<p>Having given up the apartment in central Melbourne which I had leased for more than a decade, I have been staying for the most part in hotels – and intend to continue to do so. The general plan is to travel in a slow and leisurely way as I consider my longer term options. One thing I need to do is to develop a shortlist of retirement destinations, places where – when (or if!) the travelling stops – I could live contentedly and within my means.</p><p>I won't go into the details of my personal finances here but the general picture is that I have cash savings and a few stock market investments which generate a modest income. Part of my strategy is to simplify my life as much as possible and (without going to extremes) to minimize "overheads", i.e. income taxes and monthly or annual fees and charges.</p><p>I am currently staying in the Blue Mountains, about 100 km from Sydney, and intend to move on soon and spend some time in Southeast Asia and, later, Europe.</p><p>I have never been all that fond of the Australian bush and feel more comfortable by the sea or in certain urban environments. But the landscapes here, as well as the flora and fauna, are certainly unique and worth taking in. I recently went with a friend on a relatively challenging walk near Blackheath.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm9Yo431VRfVzPOc9zr8VOTgh7cb1dDgPsaa1mBRvzuCg0q4zWjaTr6leA3yfDZTcp32GGRnjY_qW_xmIkSoW95Tmf0x2kp9SahcjFxN-anxGQiwuYFk67YPOuO9nj9TN2QoyxFluZbyJI8sRIzwyEwWnhqCVZ3akr8RHSqFl0J8jEbi6VAiR4wrkpLY4/s4032/Centennial%20Glen%20waterfall.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm9Yo431VRfVzPOc9zr8VOTgh7cb1dDgPsaa1mBRvzuCg0q4zWjaTr6leA3yfDZTcp32GGRnjY_qW_xmIkSoW95Tmf0x2kp9SahcjFxN-anxGQiwuYFk67YPOuO9nj9TN2QoyxFluZbyJI8sRIzwyEwWnhqCVZ3akr8RHSqFl0J8jEbi6VAiR4wrkpLY4/s400/Centennial%20Glen%20waterfall.jpg" /></a></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ_J4-SlZ9aPW4PYo-XYCrXmT5VoDuJVtIpsPE-3zKb5VLnZo_PzJ64jxrtkeUCWXqdNBsxDTN2tMxV30NKxa2hXgXoOOCFuLKk58hbNrg1RwGs3IeidA1FYX5h2_7CKiItxZS4jqiQzKGpNIFWEJWCFEUu9fcEfnjRuACEaLS_DHXuk14Zh_5ISYsJkI/s4032/ochre%20walk.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ_J4-SlZ9aPW4PYo-XYCrXmT5VoDuJVtIpsPE-3zKb5VLnZo_PzJ64jxrtkeUCWXqdNBsxDTN2tMxV30NKxa2hXgXoOOCFuLKk58hbNrg1RwGs3IeidA1FYX5h2_7CKiItxZS4jqiQzKGpNIFWEJWCFEUu9fcEfnjRuACEaLS_DHXuk14Zh_5ISYsJkI/s400/ochre%20walk.jpg" /></a></div>
The photos were taken on the Centennial Glen walking trail by Anne Williams.
<p>Certain towns in the Blue Mountains were fashionable resorts in the 1920s, '30s and '40s. Foreign tourists still come (to Katoomba and Leura, for example) but the towns and villages of the region, though still reasonably prosperous, have clearly undergone profound social and economic changes over the years, not all of them positive.</p><p>This old black and white snap, taken in 1942, bears witness to a family connection with this part of the world.
</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju9lOvjc9owExGEIy95cPH-Z6s_OgnKaIWTKw1z7ODxZUYXdE3PxlrWZ6o9Njx84JSzPZstOWYTbdOBAV5PVmn9YNCtikGvPoaFNAgPD_owWRXhT85YQj8qeeD6OCg0p5S8ZsZ1yhYtCPgSyakSGJji7Ej_k7NwJXelMcB91XcMCeWPKHR1jxej_gV2tM/s1600/-5152621876923414645.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju9lOvjc9owExGEIy95cPH-Z6s_OgnKaIWTKw1z7ODxZUYXdE3PxlrWZ6o9Njx84JSzPZstOWYTbdOBAV5PVmn9YNCtikGvPoaFNAgPD_owWRXhT85YQj8qeeD6OCg0p5S8ZsZ1yhYtCPgSyakSGJji7Ej_k7NwJXelMcB91XcMCeWPKHR1jxej_gV2tM/s400/-5152621876923414645.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<p></p><p>My mother (nearest to the camera, 17 years old) is holidaying with an older sister and friends in Katoomba.</p>Mark Englishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03506844097173520312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4964847228497363438.post-44136049851913077492023-06-07T05:28:00.000+00:002023-06-07T07:42:46.408+00:00Geopolitical tensions<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZMzx1ihil-DR4yHj6dlW_htdWbY7TI6QBOUTpchVAO2_BUkFfrvqzvsXz9MamFyL8X90VTBoNu_NH035UGHWfDkh47DPULdKM8TBWHh7bVXZ0xtBHQY8d1AWe_TARRl_rDuDCb44WiwvQwePpOcYZr0twWbQu9ekfvYRLauLduIaTljb5Bnl1_kX6/s1880/pexels-photo-17004021.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="1146" data-original-width="1880" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZMzx1ihil-DR4yHj6dlW_htdWbY7TI6QBOUTpchVAO2_BUkFfrvqzvsXz9MamFyL8X90VTBoNu_NH035UGHWfDkh47DPULdKM8TBWHh7bVXZ0xtBHQY8d1AWe_TARRl_rDuDCb44WiwvQwePpOcYZr0twWbQu9ekfvYRLauLduIaTljb5Bnl1_kX6/s400/pexels-photo-17004021.jpeg"/></a></div><p> </p><p dir="ltr">Current American foreign policy settings are arguably at the root of our most serious and urgent geopolitical problems. Under the influence of advisors committed to extreme forms of neoconservatism, aspects of policy have become disconnected from reality, even delusional.</p>
<p dir="ltr">In fact, the Cold War period was sane by comparison. Sure, it was a dangerous time but U.S. policies were hard-headed and sometimes intelligent. And, crucially, they were not completely out of kilter with underlying economic realities.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Since the break-up of the Soviet Union, the U.S. and its allies have pursued policies based on what I see as very problematic assumptions (regarding American exceptionalism, for example). These policies often involved regime change and the attempt to establish Western-style democracies in places lacking the cultural prerequisites for such systems to establish themselves.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Unfortunately, past failures are not being fully acknowledged and there are few indications that any serious reassessment of current policy settings is in train. Nor is there sufficient recognition of the irrevocable nature of various changes that have occurred on the geo-economic front.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><a href="https://conservativetendency.blogspot.com/2022/11/death-and-destruction.html">As I have previously noted</a>, the relative size of the U.S. economy with respect to the rest of the world has declined significantly over the last sixty years. Throw in other factors – like sovereign debt levels and financial and monetary issues – and it becomes clear that the prospects for a continuation of U.S. global hegemony are slim to non-existant.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Fading powers are always particularly dangerous. They see their military dominance as being eroded or as being under threat (ultimately for economic reasons). Time is not on their side, so they are motivated to provoke wars, to fight sooner rather than later in an attempt to turn the tide.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Is this not exactly what we are seeing now in Eastern Europe and the East China Sea? There are irresponsible actors on all sides, I don’t deny it. But America and its closest allies now pose the greatest danger in my opinion.</p>
<p dir="ltr">As individuals our primary duty in respect of these matters is, as I see it, simply not to fall for or contribute to unnecessarily divisive ideas. Ideally we will also assess and either embrace or try to change our own governments’ policies.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I am not interested in demonizing or assigning blame but rather in identifying – and, where possible, promoting – Western policies which will manage in a responsible way the fault lines of a world which is armed to the teeth with increasingly sophisticated weapons.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Military conflicts are occurring and will continue to occur. Foreign policy settings may encourage or discourage such conflicts. But, whatever the situation, whatever specific goals are being pursued, the <i>overriding</i> goal for policy-makers should always be to minimize the chances of conflict between major powers.</p>
<p dir="ltr">And outsiders attempting to engineer regime change in Russia or China in pursuit of a geopolitical strategy based on notions of American exceptionalism is clearly <i>not</i> the way to go.</p>Mark Englishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03506844097173520312noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4964847228497363438.post-34692543781856099542022-11-01T08:19:00.002+00:002022-11-03T06:15:44.881+00:00Death and destruction<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnR1STaV3C5Pr-Up30x5558ELW4DewKJMMiAFIicu7ej5LmUmn9SH62vwyKY6SL1vIHCp3WeyH3PXuPhsmlMUySFR3d5fZNHBZwP6yO7aBGwuiqNDOPVQ5ITaqx1UHQ51mw_jQ_mQSGyjEco6bxVUspZOf7vCN54ueEXhgxXqZ5Y-corfYRK7bNHXb/s1733/pexels-photo-11518762.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="1300" data-original-width="1733" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnR1STaV3C5Pr-Up30x5558ELW4DewKJMMiAFIicu7ej5LmUmn9SH62vwyKY6SL1vIHCp3WeyH3PXuPhsmlMUySFR3d5fZNHBZwP6yO7aBGwuiqNDOPVQ5ITaqx1UHQ51mw_jQ_mQSGyjEco6bxVUspZOf7vCN54ueEXhgxXqZ5Y-corfYRK7bNHXb/s400/pexels-photo-11518762.jpeg"/></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>My analysis of the Ukraine situation has continued to attract criticism. I have been saying for some time that American and NATO strategies are fatally flawed and extremely dangerous. Responding to the latest episode of my podcast, Culture and Value, which was <a href="https://theelectricagora.com/2022/10/29/varieties-of-nationalism/">featured recently at The Electric Agora</a>, Daniel Kaufman commented:</div><div><br /></div><div>"The idea that somehow Ukraine is at fault for the prolonged death and suffering from the war <span face="Inter, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #0d405f; font-size: 16px;">– or</span> those like the US, UK and others who are helping Ukraine <span face="Inter, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #0d405f; font-size: 16px;">– is</span> not only a poor analysis of the situation, it represents what to my mind are really terrible values. Ukraine does not want to surrender. It does not want to hand over part <span face="Inter, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #0d405f; font-size: 16px;">–</span> or all <span face="Inter, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #0d405f; font-size: 16px;">–</span> of its country to Vlad the Impaler and his armies. It does not accept the rape and torture and mass murder that Russia has been inflicting on it. The idea that it should ... in order to satisfy <b><i>your</i></b> conception of proper geopolitical order <span face="Inter, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #0d405f; font-size: 16px;">–</span> or that of Russia or any of the other murderocracies and kleptocracies on the planet <span face="Inter, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #0d405f; font-size: 16px;">–</span> is just so out of whack, I don’t even know how to respond to it."</div><div><br /></div><div>I question some of Dan's assumptions here and naturally reject any suggestion that my values are flawed or my motives tainted. My brief reply to his comment did not deal with Ukraine so much as with what arguably lies at the root of this and certain other international crises (or potential crises): the failure of those currently in power to see and come to terms with a changed geo-strategic environment.</div><div><br /></div><div>I wrote as follows:</div><div><br /></div><div>I am not talking about some desired political order. Rather I am noting, as carefully and accurately as I can, current geopolitical and geo-economic realities. I am making the point that the situation has changed over the last thirty years or so and not in ways which favour an overwhelming level of American dominance (such as applied immediately after WW2, and again after the break up of the Soviet Union) in the future.</div><div><br /></div><div>For example, the US is no longer as economically dominant as it once was. Its share of the global economy has declined from about 40 percent in 1960 to about 24 percent today. This in itself is not necessarily a bad thing but it does mean that a broader range of countries will have a say in reshaping the financial system than was the case, say, in the immediate post-WW2 period.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is important because economic factors underpin military power. And though the USD is strong at the moment, the widely-acknowledged fragility of the current debt- and derivative-based financial system <span face="Inter, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #0d405f; font-size: 16px;">–</span> a system which creates demand for (and so guarantees the value of) the dollar <span face="Inter, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #0d405f; font-size: 16px;">– </span>strongly suggests that the United States will not be able to continue to play, at least to the same degree, the dominant global role which it has played over the last three-quarters of a century.</div><div><br /></div>
<iframe class="castos-iframe-player" frameborder="0" height="150" scrolling="no" src="https://60086c85c4f722-42609047.castos.com/player/1307826" width="100%"></iframe>Mark Englishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03506844097173520312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4964847228497363438.post-73347724096862022892022-09-28T04:39:00.003+00:002022-09-28T10:35:43.605+00:00Inertia<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVno-EHkfJ5aHO9YGWt-0dfZPhh0aj8EQ8GUTLDYeGvpl58JMosk6BPBq4F3KF7C5hqeFdtXFosumjrf5muHpx3R8uZdl_LL2T97zOY0zdQ8eY27w_qtiATSdGyZNqCmowUkFiVLg_zNPF-QEvwY3VWMVCpiZGBAWOQysjK14idZDtD3FwXFZwOY96/s400/cropped-mondrian_piet_3.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVno-EHkfJ5aHO9YGWt-0dfZPhh0aj8EQ8GUTLDYeGvpl58JMosk6BPBq4F3KF7C5hqeFdtXFosumjrf5muHpx3R8uZdl_LL2T97zOY0zdQ8eY27w_qtiATSdGyZNqCmowUkFiVLg_zNPF-QEvwY3VWMVCpiZGBAWOQysjK14idZDtD3FwXFZwOY96/s400/cropped-mondrian_piet_3.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Even at the best of times I am not a model of decisive action, but I have to say that it feels more and more difficult to set goals and maintain personal momentum in the present environment.</div><div><br /></div><div>It’s not just me. The bureaucracy in which we are all increasingly enmeshed is failing. A wave of indolence or “quiet quitting” is washing over the white-collar workforce.</div><div><br /></div><div>Case in point: earlier this year I applied for a new passport. Since then I have rung the issuing office twice. Twice they apologized; twice I was told that the process would be fast-tracked. Nothing. No communication from them. When I handed in my application I was assured that the passport would be ready within six weeks. I have now been waiting more than four months.</div><div><br /></div><div>I had hoped to begin my travels some time ago. The lockdowns, curfews and travel bans may finally have been lifted but it is difficult to make concrete plans without a passport – especially when one has no clear idea of what is causing the delay. Only when I have the new passport in my hands will I think seriously about booking flights, etc..</div><div><br /></div><div>This passport business is relatively trivial – in my case at least. No grave implications. But it is certainly emblematic, and indicative of wider problems.</div><div><br /></div><div>Here is a short list of some of my current (non-travel-related) preoccupations…</div></div><div><br /></div><b>Health concerns</b> are always there, even in the absence of (known) serious illness or disease. This is particularly so as one ages. Personally I am prone to health-related anxieties and, consequently, try to minimize my interactions with Dr. Google and the medical profession. So long as I can function more or less normally and have no new or alarming symptoms, I feel justified in putting my focus on other things than the inner workings of my body. One health-related area I do take an interest in, however, is preventive medicine, and especially the effect of diet on health.<div><br /></div><div>I had expected (or hoped) that the <b>SARS-CoV-2</b> virus would be fading from the scene by now but it continues to spread. Worse still, bad news is coming through on the long-term effects of COVID-19. If (as seems to be the case) the virus was a product of gain-of-function research conducted under the auspices of various national governments and official agencies, this is not only a tragedy of epic proportions (it obviously is that) but also a scandal which, by further undermining trust in ruling elites, will have deep and lasting political implications.<br /><br />Though they don’t concern me in a direct or personal way, I am following <b>geopolitical developments</b> closely. I am concerned by the belligerent stances being assumed by all major powers, and by the lack of leadership and intelligent diplomacy being exhibited by major Western powers.<br /><br />More generally, I am appalled by the transformation of our media into an integrated <b>propaganda</b> machine. News has always been propaganda to an extent but the balance between propaganda and hard (factual or critical) content varies from time to time and from place to place. What we are seeing now in the West is somewhat reminiscent of old communist and fascist models and of World War 2-era American and British newspapers and newsreels, etc.. But arguably the situation is worse now than it was back then because of the intrusive nature of current technologies. The combination of digital news services and social media has produced an integrated – and insidious – framework of communication which is being effectively exploited by governments, powerful corporations and other favoured organizations.<br /><br />As a preparation for possible future writing on social, economic and geopolitical themes, I have been reading (or rereading) the work of some early 20th-century thinkers, including <b>Louis Rougier</b>. Born in Lyon in 1889, Rougier was an intellectual historian and social philosopher who, unlike many intellectuals, had a good grasp of fundamental social, political and economic principles. In his best writings (from the 1930s and 1940s especially) he takes a refreshingly down-to-earth and non-ideological approach to political and economic questions. More on him later perhaps.<div><p></p></div></div>Mark Englishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03506844097173520312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4964847228497363438.post-14726197654618278052022-08-26T08:13:00.002+00:002022-09-28T06:39:44.332+00:00Politics, personal attitudes and the approaching crisis<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGnyCNlGhyZBfzE5fJu25BbjntvfMf7Fkyrh7vrT-RyklO_Ek5Ilu57siOSXU5gr_Zfo8YQDAxbziWkRgXySDQAl8ojlJ-o5C7hn_-KMIptxx-A0FGX8yh9z9sqlxA931wRXsgmJqNtZJACj9YXpJV5XIN7M4zP6zYYmqc3fs2PhoXfzZdLha8_GEB/s480/hqdefault.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGnyCNlGhyZBfzE5fJu25BbjntvfMf7Fkyrh7vrT-RyklO_Ek5Ilu57siOSXU5gr_Zfo8YQDAxbziWkRgXySDQAl8ojlJ-o5C7hn_-KMIptxx-A0FGX8yh9z9sqlxA931wRXsgmJqNtZJACj9YXpJV5XIN7M4zP6zYYmqc3fs2PhoXfzZdLha8_GEB/s400/hqdefault.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>The following observations had their origin in an exchange I had with a friend, some of whose ideas about, and attitudes towards, politics and human freedom I saw – rightly or wrongly – as being false (the ideas) and counterproductive (the attitudes).</p><p><b><br /></b></p><p><b>1. Attitudes</b></p><p>For me politics is a boring necessity which, at its best, runs in the background. Enthusiasm for politics is always a danger signal.</p><p>Such enthusiasm may manifest itself rhetorically or be rhetorically generated, but I am not condemning rhetoric per se. Rhetoric is an inevitable feature of any communication which incorporates a human element and engages the emotions. You can’t avoid it, and political talk – which is often designed to persuade or (let’s face it) to manipulate – is always going to be rhetorical to some extent.</p><p>So I am not criticizing people for utilizing rhetoric in the political sphere so much as for believing it – for falling for their own or other people’s rhetoric. Doing so, they are often implicitly seeking in politics something which politics or political action cannot, in the end, provide: that is, some kind of deep satisfaction or “salvation”. They are turning politics into a religion-substitute. This is a very dangerous thing to do.</p><p>Emotional satisfaction is a personal rather than a political matter and is best sought, I believe, in interpersonal relationships and personal, non-political activities and practices (work, hobbies and “creative” activities, walking, sitting in the sunshine, etc.). When people get (or seek to get) their deepest satisfactions from political or, more broadly, from ideological beliefs and activities, something is amiss.</p><p><b><br /></b></p><p><b>2. Romanticism and politics</b></p><p>I keep seeing not only ideological (that is, political and personal-value-based) but also metaphysical elements in the political views of activists both of the left and the right. Much has been written about the implicit (and in my view dangerous) metaphysics of Marxism but right-libertarians – with their views on natural rights and their fetishization of freedom – are also committed to their own, ultimately empty and baseless, metaphysical ideas.</p><p>The origins of many current ideological fashions can be traced to the 19th century and the Romantic movement. Many Romantic ideas carry religious and metaphysical baggage deriving from Biblical as well as classical sources (Plato, the Stoics). It took me some years to see my own Platonist and Romantic commitments and assumptions for what they were – and so let go of them.</p><p>One’s views on art and human creativity and action need not have a metaphysical dimension but Romantic aesthetics certainly does, and these ideas have and still do play into political thinking in unfortunate ways. I am not saying that we, as individuals, can’t find deep satisfaction in creative activities at a personal level. My point is that no political solution can ever alter the underlying realities and imperatives of social and economic life and deliver the sorts of universal freedoms and satisfactions which are typically promised by radical, progressive or libertarian ideologies.</p><p><b><br /></b></p><p><b>3. The current situation</b></p><p>Ideologies are real in the sense that they motivate political action and affect the way people interpret history and current events. They are essentially action-oriented, reality-distorting mechanisms and are worse than useless as analytical tools.</p><p>The “system” we currently find ourselves in is not capitalism, at least in the historical sense of the term. Western capitalism had deep cultural roots and was associated with certain patterns of thought and behaviour which no longer prevail (work ethic, deferred gratification, thrift, certain religious ideas, etc.). It involved the slow accumulation and deployment of actual capital, “creative destruction”, unprofitable companies being allowed to fail, and so on.</p><p>This is nothing like what we are witnessing today where everything is driven by debt and derivatives and there is an unholy alliance between heavily indebted governments, central banks and financial institutions. Markets are grossly distorted. Currencies are losing purchasing power. The financial system has become detached from economic reality.</p><p>The seeds of the current crisis were sown when the USD’s link to gold was finally severed in 1971. Or actually before that: in the fiscal profligacy of the 1960s which made the suspension of the Bretton Woods arrangement necessary.</p><p>Governments and central banks have played a major role in creating the current perverse and dysfunctional system, but other groups have also been involved (Wall Street bankers, certain business people and billionaires, NGOs, big tech and media). The system – such as it is – is now collapsing.</p><p>There will be inevitable pain.</p>Mark Englishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03506844097173520312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4964847228497363438.post-71539049547297838232022-08-17T01:38:00.001+00:002022-08-17T09:35:52.510+00:00Circles of concern<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZT3TjWowz_FnmlPfpDaBu4Y6Oo2HrlsRmOo7kH1DXdC5Sm6XUgnWaj-h5fEXMXdEUUYFy9hn2XAPT53qwlo_iBOwr9udWQjR2UYpbLHa16WUN0ey3k5mMctsk0UrSXbTol3aD8N4o3cX-4Cp2w6qErylQMNMq8WbJdPJlNTAr5LX4Ttp3XCh4lwSJ/s720/pexels-photo-5290163.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="479" data-original-width="720" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZT3TjWowz_FnmlPfpDaBu4Y6Oo2HrlsRmOo7kH1DXdC5Sm6XUgnWaj-h5fEXMXdEUUYFy9hn2XAPT53qwlo_iBOwr9udWQjR2UYpbLHa16WUN0ey3k5mMctsk0UrSXbTol3aD8N4o3cX-4Cp2w6qErylQMNMq8WbJdPJlNTAr5LX4Ttp3XCh4lwSJ/s400/pexels-photo-5290163.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p>There is much to be said for seeing life primarily in local terms, for seeing one’s personal situation as dictating to a large extent one’s actual duties and responsibilities, and for resisting temptations to moralize, pontificate or parade one’s opinions in the public sphere. Sadly, the current digital media environment works against such reticence and self-restraint, exacerbating the drift away from real connections and real communities.</p><p>The “uncoupling of shared content from physical proximity and ongoing relations” was recently a topic of <a href="https://theelectricagora.com/2022/08/01/sharing/#comments">discussion</a> at The Electric Agora. One participant lamented the current situation, seeing “the constant deluge of information about far-off goings on” as the root cause of the problem.</p><p></p><blockquote><i>Apart from the occasional message from family, it’s not natural for people to be concerned about what’s going on more than a few day’s ride or walk away. It makes diffuse the collective ethics of cooperation, and lends itself to costless performative virtue. Easier for a New Yorker to wave a sign on behalf of a Uyghur than knock on doors for the would-be county mayor, or boycott Israel instead of putting a stone through a scab’s windshield. Solidarity and hope are reduced to self-parody.</i></blockquote><p></p><p>I'm not sure I see any form of solidarity or hope worth having in picket lines – but let that pass.</p><p></p><blockquote><p><i>We need to rebuild [heal?] social division geographically. People are best at improving things close by, and knowing what needs improving. Unfettered individualism and social division are symptoms of the sickness. Humanity writ large is not a society, let alone a community. Put your neighborhood, family, and city first, and maybe you’ll feel like part of something bigger. The welfare of your locale is part of the world’s welfare, and the part you can do the most about.</i></p></blockquote><p>Self improvement comes into it too.</p><p></p><blockquote><p><i>You’re part of the community. Improve yourself, and you improve the community. Prowess, beauty, and fitness are all good. A personable friend to shoot hoops with, a scoutmaster teaching kids to camp, or a schoolgirl putting her all into clarinet chasing that scholarship do far more for a neighborhood than a conscientious news-junkie or devout activist for the identitarian cause of the day.</i></p><p><i>We need to go back, but most won’t. Streaming videos, internet news, and cell phones are popular for a reason. Distraction has its place, but it’s not a legitimate way of life. The EA crowd has a lot of this going on. Buying 20 Malaria nets for strangers a continent away is less virtuous than playing catch with your kids or baking a pie with grandma, and – no matter how they pretend otherwise – they know it too.</i></p></blockquote><p></p><p>I quote these passages in full because they are vividly expressed and because there is significant overlap with my own views. These sorts of topics are never clearcut, however, and caveats and reservations necessarily apply.</p><p>One caveat relates to the fact that there are circumstances in which long-distance concerns demand attention: foreign policy questions, for example.</p><p>Quite obviously, the interventionist policies currently being pursued by the U.S. and its closest allies sit uneasily with the principles outlined above, and some kind of regionalism or system of geographically-based spheres of influence would be a better fit.</p><p>No set of principles is sacrosanct, however, and it may be – I don’t think they can, but it <i>may</i> be – that current policies can be defended or justified on other grounds. I can see that proximity counts for less and less in purely military terms – in terms of weapons technology, for example – just as it does in terms of general communication. But, of course, any strategic analysis needs to be contextualized and supplemented with a wide range of data and information (including cultural information) if it is to be useful in the real world and effective in the long term.</p><p>Some believe that only continued American global dominance can save us and deliver a more just, peaceful and prosperous world but I see dangers in the unipolar model and in the very notion of a global elite, however it is constituted and however sensitive this supposed elite might be to the nuances of cultural variation.</p><p><br /></p>Mark Englishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03506844097173520312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4964847228497363438.post-12753492469585097202022-08-07T00:52:00.001+00:002022-08-07T07:51:48.447+00:00A few thoughts on culture, religion and Jewish identity <div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcpjTpXOFmuGIguyEC1euHgtWRSBOQQPkEuaJ7y7wVD28UrY6eyDO3myNErIm8Ch4yTjnjjPEHGXPHMnWs8pXBcHoo7FSTafe4IZ4y-WveG_SN5L-i_ONSyx7C0-tmpXo2bgSLQ-9Sr_ncITS2wNsOWLXK1w4ohiJpWEoRpq2KChZ5U24in3KHCDOY/s1944/CropperOutput-1129600483.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="1094" data-original-width="1944" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcpjTpXOFmuGIguyEC1euHgtWRSBOQQPkEuaJ7y7wVD28UrY6eyDO3myNErIm8Ch4yTjnjjPEHGXPHMnWs8pXBcHoo7FSTafe4IZ4y-WveG_SN5L-i_ONSyx7C0-tmpXo2bgSLQ-9Sr_ncITS2wNsOWLXK1w4ohiJpWEoRpq2KChZ5U24in3KHCDOY/s400/CropperOutput-1129600483.jpg"/></a></div><div><br /></div>
So much talk about religion is empty of substantive content or tediously partisan, mere apologetics. I try to avoid the subject myself as far as I can. But religious practices and beliefs constitute an important aspect of culture and so can’t entirely be ignored, even by those who count themselves as non-religious.<p>There is also the psychological angle: despite individual differences, it’s clear that our brains are wired for religion or something like it. Why else would secular and even atheistic social and political movements exhibit so many similarities to religious sects and cults?</p><p>In a <a href="https://theelectricagora.com/2022/07/25/remarks-on-religion/">recent piece</a> at The Electric Agora, Daniel Kaufman summarized his skeptical views on God and the supernatural and wondered why it is that so many are still drawn to religious belief.</p><p>"By now," he begins, "most readers know that I am an atheist, as I do not believe in the existence of God or anything supernatural. Readers also likely know that I am Jewish by lineage and culturally and that I think God is useless both as an explanation and as a moral exemplar."</p><p>It was his social and cultural observations rather than the philosophical reflections which interested me. This, for instance:</p><p>"When I first moved to the Bible Belt, I was surprised by the level of confidence people had in their particular brand of evangelical or Pentecostal Christianity (some of them brands I’d never even heard of until that point) and used to think that the best thing for them would be to live in a Lubavitch or Satmar community for a few weeks, where it would become quickly evident that there were people far more religiously committed and more rigorous in their religious lifestyles than they are."</p><p>Chabad-Lubavitch and Satmar are rival Brooklyn-based Hasidic sects originating in Russia and Hungary respectively. They differ, amongst other things, in terms of their attitudes to outreach and proselytizing within the wider Jewish community [Chabad is active in such activity but Satmar is not]; and in their attitudes to Zionism and the state of Israel [Satmar remains staunchly anti-Zionist].</p><p>Unlike these Jewish groups, evangelicals and Pentecostals profess and proclaim (in Kaufman’s words) their own “extraordinary and intense religious faith” whilst behaving in other respects “pretty much like everyone else.”</p><p>Dan talks about the “self-deception” or “psychic indolence” involved in seeing ancient religious texts as embodying eternal truths “about the nature and operation of the universe and everything and everyone in it” rather than in more realistic terms. He himself sees sacred texts as “fascinating and often lurid elements from the eclectic, messy, often ugly history of human development.”</p><p>US fundamentalist Christians are a group concerning which I have only limited knowledge. Two things are clear, however: they are are less regimented than Jewish ultra-Orthodox or extremist Islamic groups; and most of the individuals involved embrace large chunks of modernity in their thinking and in their day-to-day lives.</p><p>Mixing faith-based and modern views involves inconsistencies but compartmentalization of one kind or another is a universal feature of our brains. Some of the greatest scientists bracketed out their religious beliefs in rather crude ways or aligned themselves with extreme and anti-rational ideologies or political movements. Though most of us manage to avoid such extremes, the logical aspect of our thinking is always in an awkward or ambiguous relationship with more emotional aspects of thought – including those that relate to existential anxieties, to attachments and aversions, to religion, politics, self-image and identity.</p><p>In the linked piece, Dan explicitly acknowledges and embraces his Jewish lineage as well as the essentially secular Jewish culture in which he was raised. For his parents – and for himself, apparently – ancestral religious practices continued to be meaningful in the absence of belief.</p><p>There is a tension here which revolves, I think, around the purported centrality of specifically religious ideas and practices to Jewish identity. When scriptures lose their special status and come to be seen solely in historical or literary terms, when prayers and rituals are no longer expressions of religious experience but mere nostalgic forms or reassuring customs, they gradually but inexorably lose their power to command attention and motivate religious practice. They become museum pieces. They die.</p><p>Is this a problem?</p><p>My preference is to see group affiliations in personal and individual terms, that is in terms of sets of shared and overlapping cultural elements and personal values. To the extent that Jewishness is seen this way (i.e. as an evolving element within various disparate cultures rather than in terms of direct links with an ancient, Hebrew-speaking population and the religious practices and beliefs of that population), existential questions about cultural survival simply will not arise.</p>Mark Englishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03506844097173520312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4964847228497363438.post-49268237376477582392022-06-12T06:01:00.003+00:002022-06-12T08:35:32.079+00:00Slow progress<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJQmH5CxjfwQ3-PTJzSgfREAt_3OCFFSu7-Mhq9ToccRTcSMeAmcsJ6cySWgahANubeBs_b4p_fPYBV411Mw5e7IV0iZNoT4Spn208M4wHqbjozNxH7yjfm7V8LxohYa3on_sMOJb8mogLxA9cJXQwmos-j9cTg7JOm07akII-pS1DDhKaTDsNyMLu/s554/images%20%2813%29-1.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="554" data-original-width="554" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJQmH5CxjfwQ3-PTJzSgfREAt_3OCFFSu7-Mhq9ToccRTcSMeAmcsJ6cySWgahANubeBs_b4p_fPYBV411Mw5e7IV0iZNoT4Spn208M4wHqbjozNxH7yjfm7V8LxohYa3on_sMOJb8mogLxA9cJXQwmos-j9cTg7JOm07akII-pS1DDhKaTDsNyMLu/s400/images%20%2813%29-1.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div>I have been making slow progress on preparations and planning since I wrote that "Travel plans" piece two months ago. The timetable remains more or less the same. It may slip however.</div><div><br /></div><div>With respect to blogging etc., rather than trying to set up a new site in order to build a bigger audience I have decided <span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"" style="background-color: white; color: #414141; font-size: 16px;">– </span>for the time being at least <span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"" style="background-color: white; color: #414141; font-size: 16px;">–</span> to consolidate. I intend to post more frequently here and (identical material) at <a href="https://markenglish1.wordpress.com/">my WordPress site</a>, adopting a more informal approach. Shorter pieces.</div><div><br /></div><div>My association with Daniel Kaufman and his Electric Agora will probably continue though I have no new essays in the pipeline. With respect to my EA-based podcast, Culture and Value, <a href="https://culture-and-value.castos.com">eight episodes are currently available</a>. They have attracted some attention (and so far about 4000 listens/downloads <i>in toto</i>). But I am not adding new episodes at the moment. (This is for various reasons <span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"" style="background-color: white; color: #414141; font-size: 16px;">–</span> including the fact that the podcast has yet to be made available on Apple Podcasts.)</div>
Mark Englishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03506844097173520312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4964847228497363438.post-63195142680699252562022-04-09T05:52:00.002+00:002022-04-12T21:47:16.196+00:00Travel plans<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXWhKucVWs5062n-0tlRXh903Hi5n__6XUycntr3nDAx3cznuLMdpmyaIQ6JpBg_siO0UJuj0RehQAgCuil-BPKlqdjcz_yaKgTfZtj3g6ygXqgbw2idLPDPMMezTieecVxKywbOW57CWG05BtkF9U7wD6hU19sh_nqsbvO0HIsfWHFcE1FfY5gsx5/s320/images%20%2814%29.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="218" data-original-width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXWhKucVWs5062n-0tlRXh903Hi5n__6XUycntr3nDAx3cznuLMdpmyaIQ6JpBg_siO0UJuj0RehQAgCuil-BPKlqdjcz_yaKgTfZtj3g6ygXqgbw2idLPDPMMezTieecVxKywbOW57CWG05BtkF9U7wD6hU19sh_nqsbvO0HIsfWHFcE1FfY5gsx5/s400/images%20%2814%29.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><p>I am in the process of reorienting my life. Over the years I have been caught up, as everybody is, in various projects, commitments, entanglements and responsibilities (or perceived responsibilities). Some of these commitments limited my opportunities for extensive travel, or at least the sort of travel I desired.</p><p>In recent years I wanted to ensure that I would be able to visit my ailing mother on a regular basis. She was in a nursing home in Melbourne. So I leased a place fairly close by, a small ninth-floor apartment in Melbourne’s old Chinatown district.</p><p>Unfortunately, due to draconian COVID-driven bans on visiting, I was not allowed to see my mother for months on end or liaise in the normal way with nursing staff during 2021. In previous years she had fared pretty well, fighting off occasional acute illnesses and defying predictions by physicians and nurses of her imminent demise. But last year a pressure sore got out of hand and became infected and she went into serious decline. She died in January.</p><p>My apartment lease expires in early August and my intention at the moment is not to renew it. I have not decided on where I will be based. The plan, for the moment, is just to travel. Initially to Singapore, and then further afield. This itinerant lifestyle could continue for quite some time if my health and finances allow.</p><p>My intention is not to be moving constantly but rather to stay for extended periods (months) at most destinations. I will probably continue to post material online. But how my lifestyle changes will affect the extent, nature or focus of this activity is uncertain.</p><p>Naturally there would now be some scope for doing anecdotal travel-related pieces, impressions of various places and so on. But to what end? Before the restrictions of the last couple of years, most people I know traveled widely and on a regular basis. I didn’t. I am the least-frequent flyer I know.</p><p>I am aware that the old fogey, Rip Van Winkle angle could easily become tedious, so I'll need to put strict limits on my conversational and other references to four-engined turboprops, Boeing 707s and descriptions of how places have changed. (When I last visited Athens, for example, the Third Hellenic Republic was in its initial stages and the time of the generals was still fresh in everybody’s memory. But, as I say, this is not really a line I want to pursue.)</p><p>On places, one has impressions, one makes judgments. But is there any need to talk publicly about them? Opinions and impressions are a dime a dozen; and reportage makes sense if you are being paid for it or if you are pushing some narrative or other which you deem to be important, but not otherwise as far as I can see.</p><p>There is always the option of getting involved in scholarly work again or in serious writing – possibly on political themes or international relations, possibly on more theoretical topics. It all depends on various factors (whom I meet, where I am based, how my interests develop, geopolitical developments, etc.).</p><p>Whatever happens, my preoccupation with culture and value will continue, and exposing myself to different cultures (to the extent that urban cultures have not converged into a boring sameness) will at the very least constitute a kind of experiment in compatibility.</p><p>There are still things to do here (sorting papers, legal matters, getting a new passport, etc.). I hope that it will all go smoothly and that my transition to a new way of life occurs without my having to face any further personal stresses or challenges.</p><p>Looking to the broader context, it goes without saying that social, political and economic stresses will continue and probably become more intense. To what extent I will be trying to chronicle or wanting to comment on these things in the future I do not know.</p><p>Nor have I decided what communication platforms to rely on during my travels. I may even decide, given the state of the world and the direction in which things are moving, that I want to follow the example of many of my literary and intellectual heroes and hunker down somewhere far from the madding crowd.</p><p>While I am in traveling mode, however, I would be very open to meeting – for a coffee, say – anyone who may have come across my blog posts or essays over the years, as well as those internet friends with whom I have maintained more direct contact.</p><p><i>[This is an abridged and modified version of <a href="https://theelectricagora.com/2022/04/06/traveling-light/">an essay which appeared recently at The Electric Agora</a>.]</i></p>Mark Englishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03506844097173520312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4964847228497363438.post-51015449791517923922022-02-16T10:20:00.000+00:002022-02-16T10:20:05.199+00:00Personhood and cultural embeddedness<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgtTExtrhvirjn-JPDiJtP2hjRNGiUgCvIT7X13Isbk4IGMJFLFZ0BYeT8p8VPNZWgfFT3phtcpFKYDvXvFMRvY8Mc1TZyvba3DaOamHcB4Hplq9zkaRkEipy53v8c9bCPJ_W3HMaMx_l_omPQeP9_4KAN21qSTbMk9OYkDW_o-MFnmI8vYcAoZpsEN=s946" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="946" data-original-width="746" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgtTExtrhvirjn-JPDiJtP2hjRNGiUgCvIT7X13Isbk4IGMJFLFZ0BYeT8p8VPNZWgfFT3phtcpFKYDvXvFMRvY8Mc1TZyvba3DaOamHcB4Hplq9zkaRkEipy53v8c9bCPJ_W3HMaMx_l_omPQeP9_4KAN21qSTbMk9OYkDW_o-MFnmI8vYcAoZpsEN=s400" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>In my <a href="https://culture-and-value.castos.com">podcast</a> and elsewhere, much of what I say is centered around what you could see as the paradox of personhood: our individuality derives from our cultural embeddedness. I thought it might be useful to set out in writing – as directly and concisely as possible – my assumptions about personhood and about what makes us human.</div><div><br /></div><div>These ideas are difficult to pin down but they are important because they are so fundamental. They also have significant implications, and this is why they continue to interest me. In fact, you would be hard pressed to find a currently-contentious social or political issue to which answers to the basic questions I am addressing would not be relevant.</div><div><br /></div><div>Biology and culture. Culture and biology. That’s not all there is, but – with the inorganic world within which biological organisms evolved and within which they exist – that’s enough to make a human being.</div><div><br /></div><div>Imagine growing a human fetus in a lab, doing whatever might be necessary to allow the body to grow and muscles to develop but not allowing social contact or cultural (e.g. linguistic) input. Such a being might look human and may even be able to perform some basic physical activities but how human would it be (except in a technical sense)? Crucially it would not (I am saying) be a person.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now, if you believe in a spiritual substance which inhabits or animates the body you will have a different view from mine and may consider me to be disrespecting human dignity by even discussing such an imagined experiment at all. But my point is not to demean human dignity but rather to understand where it comes from.</div><div><br /></div><div>The person is not just a body, but a body that has developed within a particular social and cultural environment. There’s no secret ingredient. There doesn't need to be.</div><div><br /></div><div>I recognize, however, that it’s natural for us to think in terms of embodied – and disembodied – spirits. Such ideas are widespread across many, unconnected cultures. The most concise and compelling account I have read of these things was by the anthropologist Pascal Boyer who, drawing on his research into African religions and on cognitive science, postulated a kind of universal mental template for persons which gives rise not only to our normal notions of embodied persons but also to the notion of disembodied persons, the notion of purely spiritual beings.</div><div><br /></div><div>I am saying that we are culturally embedded biological organisms. Our personhood derives not from a soul or spirit but simply from the cultural matrix in which we grew up.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is all very well, you might say, and widely accepted. But I am making two claims here. One is that there is no soul or spirit. One is that we are <i>necessarily</i> culturally embedded. It’s the latter point I want to emphasize.</div><div><br /></div><div>People often talk as if one can or could “reject” or stand outside of one’s culture. I would reference here the Romantic myth of the rebel. Its hold within the cultural milieu in which I grew up always bemused me and I still see signs of it everywhere. Sure, you can reject aspects of your culture – but only by embracing and deploying other aspects of the cultural matrix within which you came to and continue to exist. An individual is always dependent on – and in fact defined by – this matrix and indebted to the other individuals, past and present, who have contributed to it.</div><div><br /></div><div>This does not mean that individualism is impossible or is an illusion. The individualist simply seeks out and engages with a wider range of cultural elements than the unreflective conformist does.</div><div><br /></div><div>The sort of individualism I value most is not about eccentricity or even primarily about creative self-expression (important as the latter undoubtedly is). It is more about independent thinking and practical wisdom (or commonsense).</div><div><br /></div><div>As I envisage it, independent thinking is closely associated with – and bolstered by – the institutions, traditions and values of science and scholarship. Such values may be universal but they are also culturally contingent in the sense that they have flourished at different times and in different regions. And their current eclipse in Western countries does not auger well for the future.</div>Mark Englishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03506844097173520312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4964847228497363438.post-42997935310411810772022-01-13T18:29:00.004+00:002022-01-13T21:48:47.751+00:00Mother's deathMy mother (Marjorie Clare English (née Shanley)) suffered a sudden deterioration in her health early this week and died peacefully today. She had been battling serious health problems for some time, including Parkinson's disease.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2OizKJDsWGc/X5PwQb2lMwI/AAAAAAAAFDo/trMySdgIIA8D7Vl1d2D9zQph8fQJDNSwgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMAG0389.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1360" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2OizKJDsWGc/X5PwQb2lMwI/AAAAAAAAFDo/trMySdgIIA8D7Vl1d2D9zQph8fQJDNSwgCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/IMAG0389.jpg" /></a></div>
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For the last ten years of her life she lived in a nursing home where her two sons visited her on a regular basis. My sister, who lives in Western Australia, had to make do with the telephone most of the time but always kept in very close touch. Circumstances were such that my sister's two boys never really got to know their old and (by then) ailing grandmother as well as they would have wished.<div><div>
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This is not the time to write about my mother as a person other than to say that she was deeply loved by her children and other family members, and throughout her life was liked and respected by just about everyone who knew her. I have written in the past about her illness and her fighting spirit, and about the music she liked and responded to. (See <a href="https://conservativetendency.blogspot.com/2018/05/a-parkinsons-playlist_7.html">"A Parkinson's playlist"</a>.)<br />
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The family is grateful to Marjorie's physician for her dedication, wisdom and kindness and especially to the hard-working personal care assistants, nurses and others who interacted with her over the last decade. Above all, it was this friendly interaction which kept her going.</div><div><br />
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</div></div>Mark Englishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03506844097173520312noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4964847228497363438.post-48933949096411309312022-01-09T04:39:00.000+00:002022-01-09T07:45:45.024+00:00The most unhappy country in history<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhG9kz_AW8ZYUSzknT9lpTcScuaViv9rdKOInel3fppslJ1mhYHNAN0MjDWXhVjQBIlmNSnvl5CpI13fGsfaiaKn9utOcqlPCBJXi73OTi0Ra4Qe2PfbM8Oao8ZfZOaepAFNJ73U6Pj4Ru1IaKMiSU2N4MqSndV-Jk9JyLK6ltbu1kdiXUnFXY6yvrV=s220" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="162" data-original-width="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhG9kz_AW8ZYUSzknT9lpTcScuaViv9rdKOInel3fppslJ1mhYHNAN0MjDWXhVjQBIlmNSnvl5CpI13fGsfaiaKn9utOcqlPCBJXi73OTi0Ra4Qe2PfbM8Oao8ZfZOaepAFNJ73U6Pj4Ru1IaKMiSU2N4MqSndV-Jk9JyLK6ltbu1kdiXUnFXY6yvrV=s400" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>You know how it is. You are tempted to
submit another comment in a comment thread discussion but then think better of it. Because you don't want to monopolize the discussion, appear too negative or just because "less is more."</p><p>Disagreements are intrinsically more interesting than agreements and I am often drawn to challenge statements either for <i>what</i> is being said, or for <i>how</i> it is being said.</p><p>Take this brief extract from <a href="https://theelectricagora.com/2022/01/06/wandering-thoughts-about-aesthetics/">a piece by E. John Winner</a> which appeared recently at the Electric Agora:</p><p><i>"And it has been my experience, although widely denied, that Americans, despite wealth and power, remain the most unhappy people in history. Others suffer greater physical suffering, of course, but none experience angst, dissatisfaction, frustration, hopelessness, depression, disappointment, more deeply than we..."</i></p><p>There is, at least from an outsider's perspective, something darkly comical about these claims. It's not just that they are hyperbolic. It's more that they come across as yet another manifestation (albeit rather strange and perverse) of American exceptionalism. We are not only the most unhappy people in the world, we are the most unhappy people in the entire history of the planet. We suffer angst, dissatisfaction, frustration etc. more deeply than foreigners can even imagine!</p><p>There is <i>something</i> to this however, and it relates to imperial decline. The wealth and power is slipping away, just as it did for the British who faced a series of debacles (including Suez) and eventually the humiliation of an IMF bailout. This process is very painful for those who grew up believing that the status quo would continue indefinitely. I understand that.</p><p>I was going to make a moral point here, referring to foreign victims of American violence and suggesting that some kind of karma or communal guilt might have been in play also. But this would have been disingenuous. I don't believe in karma; nor, really, in communal guilt. Besides, it would have been a cheap shot. Bad things happened; and pointing the finger at one group or nation necessarily lets other groups or nations off the hook.</p>Mark Englishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03506844097173520312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4964847228497363438.post-29295071776198749372021-12-17T07:04:00.000+00:002021-12-17T07:04:27.304+00:00Politics and personal values; the Taiwan question<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhEm2STRhCAKGq3YO2ui8SKuHIidki3zToKfA-ovNr1PEquwn_XM8TFV7-CxM2UP9YRg4mqr_yMH8bumoYyUqSbAnSzB4v7_F5Fd7SCtbh9mQqRiCL-aKc-fA3d_urmnHPLC14XreUY0X5-KwkofsC0t0Lerj8xcA88JUALb2ejXm52KwhFD1G-yQ1P=s275" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhEm2STRhCAKGq3YO2ui8SKuHIidki3zToKfA-ovNr1PEquwn_XM8TFV7-CxM2UP9YRg4mqr_yMH8bumoYyUqSbAnSzB4v7_F5Fd7SCtbh9mQqRiCL-aKc-fA3d_urmnHPLC14XreUY0X5-KwkofsC0t0Lerj8xcA88JUALb2ejXm52KwhFD1G-yQ1P=s400" width="400" /></a></div><p>Personal and political values can be intertwined in complicated ways. Even within close families, there are often serious, politically-driven divides. I talk here about the way my own foreign policy views and attitudes developed, referring to the influence of my father and also to bitter, politically-driven personal rifts which existed at one time within my father’s family.</p><p>The latter part of this episode of Culture and Value is devoted to a review of a recent discussion about China’s regional ambitions and to the dangerous game (as I see it) that the United States is currently playing in the Western Pacific, especially in relation to Taiwan.</p>
<iframe class="castos-iframe-player" src="https://60086c85c4f722-42609047.castos.com/player/804763" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="100%" height="150"></iframe>Mark Englishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03506844097173520312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4964847228497363438.post-89502712152931379682021-10-31T09:41:00.004+00:002021-11-08T09:31:55.812+00:00The curious persistence of Cold War thinking<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7K3CYxYbp4U/YX4KLjK5VvI/AAAAAAAAFUk/vNoGzhvPenMImYUab8NqGaOpfBHpBvT9QCLcBGAsYHQ/s678/images%2B%25283%2529.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="452" data-original-width="678" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7K3CYxYbp4U/YX4KLjK5VvI/AAAAAAAAFUk/vNoGzhvPenMImYUab8NqGaOpfBHpBvT9QCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/images%2B%25283%2529.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><p>Great powers in decline are often more dangerous than rising powers. The leaders of such countries (today's United States?) may be tempted to take drastic action in an attempt to stem perceived decline and restore the status quo ante or simply to distract from domestic problems.</p><p>In the latest episode of my podcast, I argue that, although changes in the geopolitical landscape have taken us well beyond the relatively clear ideological dichotomies of the Cold War era, new and dangerous forms of neoconservatism have arisen which are influencing foreign policy and media reporting and perpetuating the myth of American exceptionalism.</p><p>This episode runs for about 13 minutes.</p>
<iframe class="castos-iframe-player" frameborder="0" height="150" scrolling="no" src="https://60086c85c4f722-42609047.castos.com/player/751303" width="100%"></iframe>Mark Englishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03506844097173520312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4964847228497363438.post-57842558898015260602021-10-24T06:55:00.005+00:002021-10-24T07:02:03.408+00:00Ozu's The Only Son<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nlpaLNjem28/YWtqQwz8TxI/AAAAAAAAFTw/zNvKA0lIEgwRZb8CVXfnT6OxWOZohEQNQCLcBGAsYHQ/s300/images-8.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="168" data-original-width="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nlpaLNjem28/YWtqQwz8TxI/AAAAAAAAFTw/zNvKA0lIEgwRZb8CVXfnT6OxWOZohEQNQCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/images-8.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 17px;"><a href="https://youtu.be/hbyUlUSgoOE">The Only Son</a> (1936) was Yasujirō Ozu’s first feature with synchronized dialogue. The musical score is by Senji Itō (who also wrote the music for Ozu’s</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 17px;"> </span><em style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 17px;">Late Spring</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 17px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 17px;">and</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 17px;"> </span><em style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 17px;">Early Summer</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 17px;">). The film is about the relationship between a widowed mother and her only child. He goes to Tokyo and loses touch with his mother for some years. Then – prefiguring Ozu’s later masterpiece,</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 17px;"> </span><em style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 17px;">Tokyo Story</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 17px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 17px;">(1953) – she pays him a visit.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 0.875em; overflow-wrap: break-word;">One of the lighter scenes of <em>The Only Son</em> takes place in a cinema. As a treat, the son has taken his mother to see her first talking picture. It is an odd choice: <em>Unfinished Symphony</em>, a kitschy Anglo-German biopic about Franz Schubert, complete with strikingly Aryan heroine (the singer Marta Eggerth). The son is embarrassed as his poor mother keeps drifting off to sleep.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 0.875em; overflow-wrap: break-word;">But these were troubled and violent times and Ozu’s focus in this film is on personal relationships in the context of grinding poverty. In an iconic scene, the son expresses regrets, telling his mother that he wishes he had stayed with her in rural Shinshū as she herself had wished instead of seeking to further his education in Tokyo, essentially at the expense of his mother’s (always tenuous) financial security and her comfort in old age.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 0.875em; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The soul-crushing monotony of the provincial silk mill and the flat, ugly landscape of a poor sector of Tokyo, with tall chimneys belching smoke nearby, represent Ozu’s version of William Blake’s “dark Satanic mills.” But, unlike Blake – whose head was full of Christian myths and radical politics – Ozu is more interested in depicting the pathos and tragedy of life than in elaborating apocalyptic visions. Or, for that matter, in making strong political statements or agitating for some imagined social, political or economic remedy.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 0.875em; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Culture – and, by extension, politics – is important and can modulate our personal realities but the pathos and tragedy of life is inescapable precisely because it is tied not just to culture but also to the biological cycle of life, aging and death. The quote (from the short story writer Ryūnosuke Akutagawa) which Ozu chose to serve as the epigraph for <em>The Only Son</em> underscores this point: “Life’s tragedy begins with the bond between parent and child.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 0.875em; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><i><br /></i></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 0.875em; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><i>This is an extract from a piece which appeared in August at The Electric Agora.</i></p>Mark Englishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03506844097173520312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4964847228497363438.post-65962051695564651412021-10-15T04:09:00.007+00:002021-10-21T22:24:26.636+00:00A podcast called Culture and Value<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hedUUuNK_C4/YWjaEwUQ0jI/AAAAAAAAFS0/NFXfznwItMEi7drdpD5jtdFAcChyWcP-QCLcBGAsYHQ/s1280/Culture%2Band%2BValue_v1.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1280" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hedUUuNK_C4/YWjaEwUQ0jI/AAAAAAAAFS0/NFXfznwItMEi7drdpD5jtdFAcChyWcP-QCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/Culture%2Band%2BValue_v1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
I haven’t been posting here lately, mainly because I have been spending the time I would normally devote to writing posts for The Electric Agora (most of which find their way to this site in modified form) trying to develop a podcast for the EA network of podcasts. Things have gone slowly largely because of technical and procedural problems but a very brief introductory episode of the podcast and the first substantive episode (<a href="https://theelectricagora.com/2021/09/28/chinese-generals-daughter/">a brief memoir entitled “Chinese General’s Daughter”</a>) are now available. You can find the show, called Culture and Value, at theelectricagora.com, the Electric Agora YouTube channel, and on the following audio streaming services: Castos, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, Amazon/Audible, Pocket Casts and <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/2qtdMKrD5C0G2CGM0igUAP">Spotify</a>.<div><br /></div><div>The show is very much a work in progress and may or may not continue in its present form. I like doing it, but obviously there will be no point if I can’t sustain an audience. We’ll see how it goes.</div><div><br /></div><div>I intend to use Twitter to signal new episodes (<a href="https://twitter.com/mark_english1">@mark_english1</a>), but I may also post summaries and links here at Conservative Tendency.</div>Mark Englishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03506844097173520312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4964847228497363438.post-59754736552712756562021-07-14T08:57:00.002+00:002021-10-16T22:52:56.506+00:00Spirit of the game<p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Though I was not a natural sportsman, forces associated with school and family pushed me into various sporting activities which (as I see even more clearly in retrospect than I did at the time) I endured rather than enjoyed.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Back then I pooh-poohed the idea that sports, especially team sports, were character-building. Quite the opposite, I thought. Observing the behavior of teammates and opponents alike, I came to believe that playing sports only serves to bring out our worst qualities. I have come to modify this point of view however.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One positive thing which can be said for traditional games and sports is that, because they reflect (at least to some extent) the harsh and intractable realities of a wider world, they serve to counter Walter Mitty-like tendencies. And this could be seen to be ever more important as gaming and virtual reality technologies extend the possibilities of personalized escapist fantasies in ways that Thurber could never have imagined.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sporting contests can also teach you to lose – and to win – with grace and equanimity. This may be more about manners than morals but it is no less important for that.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As I see it, the only strictly moral benefit of an initiation into traditional sporting culture relates to the idea of fair play: of playing by the rules – and the spirit of the rules. I don’t want to go on about this. I could elaborate and give examples etc., but I am wary of moralizing. Besides, I am inclined to think that if these concepts are not real to you already, nothing I say will make them so.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I don’t want to claim that there is this special way of looking at human interactions – i.e. in terms of fair play and abiding by the spirit of agreed-upon rules or laws – which is accessible only to those who have had the benefit of certain experiences in childhood or adolescence, though it's possible that this is the case.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some experience with sports or games may (conceivably at least) represent a necessary condition for seeing things in the way I describe, but it is certainly not a sufficient condition. For there are and always will be those natural thugs who bring their thuggishness to everything they do, including sport. In the realm of sports and games these people are often feared, but they are (or at least were in my experience) generally despised by players and sophisticated spectators alike.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The failing or failed sportsman is often a devoted sports fan, and (from about the age of ten) I was definitely that. I have autographs of many of the cricketing greats to prove it. But as I grew older I gradually lost interest. Moreover, changes in the general culture of the game were making it progressively less attractive. Now sports exist for me only to the extent that my exposure to them helped to form me and to the extent that they feature in my personal memories (two quite different things).</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Technical and aesthetic factors are important but it is ultimately the human side of things which give sports an abiding interest to players and spectators alike. It helps that the conflicts and dramas usually stop short of anything too distressing. In wars, you have death in battle; in politics moral dilemmas, all sorts of unpleasantness and very little in the way of style or grace or beauty.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sports and games occupy a protected space. In this and in other ways adult sports – at their best, at any rate – can be seen to represent, like the arts, a kind of benign hangover, an extension of certain aspects of childhood.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What prompted these reflections was coming across, by chance, an old cricketing story from the early 20th century. The story is quite moving, actually, and worth retelling. But, though it probably has some emblematic significance, my original idea – to see it as underscoring "the massive gulf which lies between the sporting culture which characterized the British Empire and the professional sporting culture which dominates today's world" – was clearly overblown. So scratch that. I’ll just tell the story. Make of it what you will.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">First a bit of background to set the scene. Victor Trumper was born in 1877 in the British colony of New South Wales. A natural sportsman and brilliant cricketer, he was much loved and revered, both for his playing and for his natural humility. He is probably best remembered today as the subject of a photograph by George Beldam, taken when the batsman was in full flight at The Oval in London. This image is probably the most famous in the game's history. Dancing down the pitch, with a huge backswing, Trumper is poised – perfectly balanced – to execute a straight drive.</span></p><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uElY2CF10I0/YO6hHOYslkI/AAAAAAAAFQ0/93f1pYGuFhY_0Rk90EnCW65JYEZBu9c1QCLcBGAsYHQ/s250/download.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="202" data-original-width="250" height="323" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uElY2CF10I0/YO6hHOYslkI/AAAAAAAAFQ0/93f1pYGuFhY_0Rk90EnCW65JYEZBu9c1QCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h323/download.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Trumper was one of the most gifted strokeplayers of all time. The writer A.A. Thomson recorded recollections of one of his great innings: "It was glory, it was wonder. Old men who saw it recall it with tears…" Trumper died of Bright's disease in 1915, at the age of 37.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As a very young man, leg-spin bowler Arthur Mailey encountered Trumper – his idol – in a club game in Sydney.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"This meeting had been nervously anticipated by Mailey," </span><a href="https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/sport/nostalgia/bygones-australia-batsman-victor-trumper-dove-graced-cricketing-heavens-3021808" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">writes Chris Waters in an historical piece for the</span><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Yorkshire Post</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. "[M]ight something happen to prevent his hero from playing in the match (“a war, an earthquake, Trumper might fall sick”), or might Mailey’s captain not bring him on to bowl against the maestro, fearing that the youngster might take a terrible pounding?"</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But Trumper played and Mailey was indeed brought on to bowl to him. And Mailey achieved something beyond his wildest dreams – he had Trumper stumped off a perfect googly.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As Trumper walked past Mailey on his way back to the pavilion, he smiled, patted the back of his bat and said, "It was too good for me."</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mailey recalls in his autobiography that he felt no sense of triumph as he watched the receding figure.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"I felt like a boy who had killed a dove," he wrote.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>[This piece was published earlier in the year at The Electric Agora.]</i></span></p>Mark Englishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03506844097173520312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4964847228497363438.post-62780319939695542332021-03-25T08:02:00.001+00:002021-03-25T23:51:07.134+00:00Information, communication and insecurity<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Nh0fhkwxuOA/YFvltdB-6uI/AAAAAAAAFLM/yUz_x0qY9_4a8Cf4AmuGv_LhBRuWahzGgCLcBGAsYHQ/s700/images.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="394" data-original-width="700" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Nh0fhkwxuOA/YFvltdB-6uI/AAAAAAAAFLM/yUz_x0qY9_4a8Cf4AmuGv_LhBRuWahzGgCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/images.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 17px;">There are, these days, countless new and improved ways of losing documents and missing messages. If I and my friends are in any way typical, one routinely loses a large proportion of one’s stored data without even trying; whereas in the past we generally lost only what we deliberately threw away or burnt (school work, old tax documents, those embarrassing attempts at fiction, letters, etc.).</span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 0.875em;">Back then, incoming messages were reliably received. Telephone numbers were generally stable over long periods of time, publicly listed and easily accessible. Household and business telephones rang (quite anonymously) and were answered – or not, as the case may be. Letters and telegrams were an essential part of life and sacrosanct with respect to privacy.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 0.875em;">Across the Western world, a mythology had been built up, via news stories and fictional accounts, around the conscientiousness and persistence of the people who delivered the mail. A short story entitled “<em>Le facteur rural</em>” (“The country postman”) appeared in a French anthology from my childhood. It was very dated even then, but it must have struck a chord because I still remember it. And I recently came across a scholarly article on the role that national mail services played in France and other European countries in creating a sense of security, cohesion and national identity during the 19th century.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 0.875em;">Mail service myths persisted into the late 20th century and even carried over into commercial settings. In the movie <em>Cast Away</em>, Tom Hanks plays a very persistent FedEx executive who, after surviving a plane crash and solitary life on a deserted Pacific island, finally returns to civilization and personally delivers a package from the crashed plane to an isolated Texas farmhouse. But the commercial and (more or less) contemporary context of the film is far from that world in which national or imperial postal and telecommunication services were seamlessly integrated into everyday life.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 0.875em;">Some time ago I wrote a <a href="http://conservativetendency.blogspot.com/2010/11/no-sense-of-place.html" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0087be; text-decoration-line: none;">short piece</a> centered on the (Texas-born) writer Patricia Highsmith, based on a reading of a few of her novels. The claustrophobic and chilling world she describes is rooted in the mundane realities of the 1950s and 1960s and her fiction reflects important truths about the crucial role communication technologies play in weaving a cultural milieu and defining a locality.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 0.875em;">“Some of Highsmith's central characters,” I wrote, “spend a large proportion of their allotted pages planning and writing letters, posting letters, organizing the material for writing more letters, waiting for letters and speculating as to why no letter has come or, more rarely, receiving a letter and analysing the contents. The local newspaper is good for keeping track of whether the body has been found or what stage the police have reached in their investigation. And the telephone looms as large as it did in the movies of the period.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 0.875em;">In their way, each of these media enhances the sense of place and/or the sense of distance from other places. Even the telephone signals the sense of distance by the involvement of a human intermediary, the operator.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 0.875em;">The technological changes we have seen in the last half-century have not only provided many new ways to store, send – and lose – information, they have irrevocably changed the culture. The new media can be and have been used to stir up nationalistic sentiments but, by and large, the tendency of the transnational networks (technological and political) upon which we have come to depend is to undermine geographically-based identities.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 0.875em;">These changes also have other effects. They strike at the root of our individual and group identities and affiliations and necessarily undermine old ways of thinking and doing things. On a personal level, a whole new mindset is required. One has to let go of old expectations, for practical reasons and simply to avoid stress and anxiety.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 0.875em;">The very idea of the self can be seen to be changing in subtle ways as new opportunities for self-presentation and concealment appear. New codes of behavior are developed, or arise spontaneously. There are changes in goals, expectations and perceived responsibilities. Old insecurities are reshaped and/or replaced by new insecurities.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 0.875em;">Take personal privacy. It was once sustained by social structures and a pattern of widely understood and accepted rules. But the advent of digital technologies and social media rendered the old rules irrelevant. It is now unclear what the boundaries of personal privacy are or should be.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 0.875em;">A new definition or concept of personal privacy is called for and no one can say what form it will take. These things are determined by circumstances and cannot be precisely predicted. But, given the current political tendency to exploit technology to the utmost in order to enhance centralized power and social control, the general direction is fairly clear. Redefinition will almost inevitably involve a weakening and downgrading of the concept.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 0.875em;">I’ll finish with a few more remarks on Patricia Highsmith.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 0.875em;">Her writing style is plain and spare and utterly non-experimental but she explores the themes of identity and morality in very confronting ways. And, though her literary persona is cosmopolitan, sophisticated and liberal, there are traces of deep conservatism in her work. She was a Texan, after all.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 0.875em;">Tom Ripley is her greatest creation, a likable psychopath. He only murders people (very few really) when he has to – and feels no guilt. He can kill someone in the afternoon and have a pleasant dinner, or dispose of the body during the night and really enjoy his morning coffee.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 0.875em;">But Highsmith is always aware of the moral landscape that Ripley’s behavior and attitudes challenge and always sensitive to the nuances of human communication which in large measure constitute the texture and map the significance of our lives. In <em>Ripley Under Ground</em>, a suicidal artist character reads from the journal of another suicidal artist:</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 0.875em;">“Where has kindness, forgiveness gone in the world? I find more in the faces of children who sit for me, gazing at me, watching me with innocent wide eyes that make no judgment. And friends? In the moment of grappling with the enemy Death, the potential suicide calls upon them. One by one, they are not at home, the telephone doesn’t answer, or if it does they are busy tonight – something quite important that they can’t get away from – and one is too proud to break down and say, ‘I’ve got to see you tonight or else!’ This is the last effort to make contact. How pitiable, how human, how noble – for what is more godlike than communication? The suicide knows that it has magical powers.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 0.875em;">Technologies change. Lifestyle, language and sense of self alter accordingly. But, through all this, human psychology and human needs stay fundamentally the same – a fact which I find vaguely reassuring.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 0.875em;"><em>[This is an abridged and revised version of a piece which appeared last month at The Electric Agora.]</em></p><div class="wpcnt" id="wordads-preview-parent" style="background-color: white; color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 17px; line-height: 0; text-align: center;"><div class="wpa" style="display: inline-block; max-width: 100%; position: relative; text-align: left; transform: translate3d(0px, 0px, 0px);"></div></div>Mark Englishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03506844097173520312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4964847228497363438.post-53654829272949219902021-02-14T01:08:00.004+00:002021-02-15T02:14:00.613+00:00Forbidden ideas<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VubeIr977dE/YCh1BTxazgI/AAAAAAAAFJM/jR_jCXlCvVUCnFcELw5TfINTjE3wNqmkQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1880/nature-bird-flying-red-2.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="1245" data-original-width="1880" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VubeIr977dE/YCh1BTxazgI/AAAAAAAAFJM/jR_jCXlCvVUCnFcELw5TfINTjE3wNqmkQCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/nature-bird-flying-red-2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
The English writer, actor and stand-up comedian, Alexei Sayle, was born into a seriously left-wing family (they were communists), and he still adheres to what he sees as Marxist principles. This background shaped his life but did not entirely destroy his sense of humor. He published an account of his early years under the title, <i>Stalin Ate My Homework</i>.<div><br /></div><div>Sayle once talked about the peculiarities of left-wing audiences. He noted that, when he did a stand-up routine at party conferences or other left-wing gatherings, there was always a brief but discernible pause between the punch line and the laughter, just time enough for audience members to pass the joke through a mental political-acceptability filter.<div><br /></div><div>Censorship can be understood as operating in various ways: top-down (via the policies and actions of governments and/or media companies); or bottom-up (via self-censorship driven by social pressure or cultural taboos).
I have no “in principle” argument against censorship. Sometimes it is justified, even the top-down kind.</div><div><br /></div><div>The only trouble is that, for many of us, the wrong people are in positions of power and are censoring all the wrong things. Even if the “right” people were in power, however, one could never be sure for how long. So the still popular (in some circles) ‘no censorship’ position is a kind of pragmatic compromise – and at first glance a sensible one. In the real world, however, censorship of one kind or another always exists to a greater or lesser extent.</div><div><br /></div><div>If I was going to give a serious treatment of this topic, the focus would be on the impact of digital technologies. There is a lot to say. History is being rewritten and not in a good way. Certain views are being expunged from the record. Even some science journals are reportedly deleting previously published papers which have retrospectively been deemed harmful or offensive. But I will save all this for another time or – better – leave others to lay out the depressing facts. Here I just want to make a few remarks about the scope for personal frankness and openness.</div><div><br /></div><div>Professional comedians inherited the privileges of the clown or of the king’s jester or fool who traditionally had a license to go beyond what would normally be considered acceptable speech and behavior. But how far beyond? What should today’s comedians be allowed to get away with? Should there be limits on whom or what they are allowed to make fun of? In most contexts today, as in previous times, strict limitations apply even if they are rarely spelled out, and there are adverse consequences for comics who overstep the mark or take what is perceived to be an unacceptable political or ideological line.</div><div><br /></div><div>Theatrical productions were banned in England in the 1640s in a bid to rein in “lascivious Mirth and Levity.” The actors and theatrical companies strenuously objected, of course. But it can be safely assumed that mirth (lascivious and otherwise) and a degree of levity persisted within the general population even during these troubled times.</div><div><br /></div><div>There is always a tension between laughter and authority. Generally speaking, laughter punctures pretentiousness, and in this respect is a powerful force for good. There is no more devastating response to a claim to authority or power than laughter, especially the spontaneous laughter of a crowd.</div><div><br /></div><div>Ideally, we would all feel free – within the limits of politeness – to say publicly how we actually feel and what we actually think. But this isn’t the reality and never will be. The simple truth is that such freedom doesn’t exist; except, of course, for those with anodyne or boringly conventional views.</div><div><br /></div><div>What’s more, the range of publicly acceptable views has narrowed alarmingly of late. This is sad. But I console myself that such a state of affairs has been the norm for most of human history. I just happened to have grown up in a time and place of unusually great freedom and need now to wind back expectations.</div><div><br /></div><div>For a younger me (and my young contemporaries) the Soviet system seemed like an outlier, an anomaly that would soon pass away. It did. Now, however, we find ourselves heading into a totalitarian system of a not dissimilar kind.</div><div><br /></div><div>Lately many old Soviet jokes seem to have taken on a new lease of life because they now apply – mutatis mutandis – to us, to the Western world. This one, for example…</div><div><br /></div><div>A man goes to the KGB, explaining that his talking parrot has disappeared, presumably stolen.</div><div><br /></div><div>“This is not the kind of case we handle, comrade,” he is told. “Go to the regular police.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Excuse me, of course I know that I must go to them,” he replies nervously. “But I just want to make it clear, to put it on record, that I disagree with the parrot.”</div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>[This is an abridged and revised version of a piece which originally appeared at The Electric Agora.]</i>
</div></div>Mark Englishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03506844097173520312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4964847228497363438.post-68414437985627984942020-11-22T06:57:00.007+00:002020-11-22T11:24:33.619+00:00A few comments on Ingrid Bergman's work in European films<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sLna1ufPwGY/X7jaQORovTI/AAAAAAAAFF4/Nph5tYV-2uwD3_CAJI7zxaMReuI2R-gxQCLcBGAsYHQ/s220/images%2B%252867%2529.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="220" data-original-width="170" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sLna1ufPwGY/X7jaQORovTI/AAAAAAAAFF4/Nph5tYV-2uwD3_CAJI7zxaMReuI2R-gxQCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/images%2B%252867%2529.jpeg" /></a></div><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #303030; font-family: "Open Sans", Tahoma, Arial; font-size: 16px;">One of the reasons the Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman interests me is because her career illustrates both the connections between European cinema and Hollywood and some of the differences and divisions.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #303030; font-family: "Open Sans", Tahoma, Arial; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 1.5em;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">In the 1940s, Bergman took the English-speaking world by storm, but this was not her only public manifestation. She was renowned in her own country before she went to Hollywood and – surprisingly – she almost became a German film star (her mother was German) just before World War 2.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #303030; font-family: "Open Sans", Tahoma, Arial; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 1.5em;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">In 1938 Bergman went to Germany, having signed a three-film contract. She was pregnant at the time and only made one film there – a very light but strangely touching drama, </span><a href="https://youtu.be/62eR2UvrrQA" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #fe5689;"><i style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">Die vier Gesellen</span></i></a><span style="box-sizing: inherit;"> – before returning to Sweden to give birth. An offer from David Selznick took her to Hollywood soon after.</span><span style="box-sizing: inherit;"><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /></span><span style="box-sizing: inherit;"><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /></span><i style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">Die vier Gesellen</span></i><span style="box-sizing: inherit;"> was designed specifically as a vehicle to launch her German career. The film is very stylish, and veteran director Carl Froelich does a wonderful job bringing out the complexities and vulnerabilities of the main characters. Bergman is particularly good. She plays an ambitious young commercial artist who is in love with her former art teacher but is determined to prove herself in the tough, male-dominated commercial world of late-1930s Berlin.</span><span style="box-sizing: inherit;"><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /></span><span style="box-sizing: inherit;"><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /></span><i style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">Intermezzo</span></i><span style="box-sizing: inherit;"> (1939) was Bergman’s first American film. It was a remake of </span><a href="https://youtu.be/R2LHfIetM1c" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #fe5689;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">a film she had made three years before in Sweden which was co-written and directed by Gustaf Molander</span></a><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">. The Hollywood version – directed by Gregory Ratoff who had replaced William Wyler who walked out after a dispute with producer David Selznick – is flawed by schmaltz, gratuitous moralizing and a dumbed-down script. Some scenes are positively ludicrous. By contrast, the original Swedish film – though melodramatic at times and made in a style reminiscent of the silent era – is intelligent, well-crafted and full of subtle and realistic touches.</span><span style="box-sizing: inherit;"><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /></span><span style="box-sizing: inherit;"><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /></span><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">After World War 2, Bergman continued to work in America but also worked in Europe. Notably, she appeared in films made by Roberto Rossellini, whom she married. </span><a href="https://youtu.be/CJ9e0ReGwy8" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #fe5689;"><i style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">Journey to Italy</span></i></a><span style="box-sizing: inherit;"> is set in and around Naples. Though Bergman, her co-star George Sanders and most of the other actors spoke their lines in English, the film was first released – dubbed into Italian – as </span><i style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">Viaggio in Italia</span></i><span style="box-sizing: inherit;"> in 1954. The restored English-language version is generally recognized as a masterpiece. It has almost the feel of a documentary but is profoundly personal and (I would say) truthful. It is basically a study of a marriage in crisis but manages to incorporate a good deal of understated humor.</span><span style="box-sizing: inherit;"><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /></span><span style="box-sizing: inherit;"><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /></span><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">Late in life, Bergman returned to Sweden to make </span><i style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">Höstsonaten</span></i><span style="box-sizing: inherit;"> with Ingmar Bergman. </span><i style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">Höstsonaten</span></i><span style="box-sizing: inherit;"> (co-written by the director) incorporates thematic parallels and echoes of earlier films in which Ingrid Bergman appeared, notably </span><i style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">Intermezzo</span></i><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">.</span></p><div><span style="box-sizing: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="sharedaddy sd-like-enabled sd-sharing-enabled" id="jp-post-flair" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; clear: both; color: #303030; font-family: "Open Sans", Tahoma, Arial; font-size: 16px; padding-top: 0px;"><div class="sharedaddy sd-sharing-enabled" style="box-sizing: inherit; clear: both; margin: 2em 0px 0px;"></div></div>Mark Englishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03506844097173520312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4964847228497363438.post-84988341129677344432020-11-03T09:34:00.005+00:002020-11-05T04:31:24.468+00:00Debt and the monetary system; I invest in a gold mining stock<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-453Trz-x-po/X6DCmk2LtBI/AAAAAAAAFFE/VtmpVL0_bfgfSvASbsMipV1N4f2HvzPcwCLcBGAsYHQ/s271/download%2B%252823%2529.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="186" data-original-width="271" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-453Trz-x-po/X6DCmk2LtBI/AAAAAAAAFFE/VtmpVL0_bfgfSvASbsMipV1N4f2HvzPcwCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/download%2B%252823%2529.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div>
<i>What follows is a modified version of (a part of) a personal email which I sent recently to a friend who had asked about my views on the current economic situation. He is a fan of Andrew Yang. I am not…</i><div><br /></div><div>I listened (on YouTube) to an interview with Andrew Yang. He is right about jobs and automation but I find him to be very naive on economics. He doesn’t seem to understand money and debt. He talks about America as the richest nation in the history of the world when the country is actually in dire economic straits. The real economy has been hollowed out and ultimately the status and purchasing power of the dollar is at risk.</div><div><br /></div><div>I agree with Yang that there will not be anywhere near enough jobs in the future. This will inevitably lead to trouble. I don’t pretend to have a solution, but to get to a solution we need to understand economic realities at a deep and basic level.</div><div><br /></div><div>My friend asked: “[W]hat about other currencies? Are they all fiat, rather than backed by something?”</div><div><br /></div><div>They are all fiat. Most float; some are pegged to the dollar.</div><div><br /></div><div>There are a whole bunch of other names I could mention but George Gammon (accessible on YouTube and Twitter) has a good grip on the way the monetary system works. At least he is interested in understanding what is going on and uses evidence and reason and communicates well. It’s not rocket science, but most people can’t be bothered.</div><div><br /></div><div>On recent monetary history, my understanding is that the petrodollar replaced the gold-backed dollar in the early 1970s. It involved an understanding with the Saudis. Before Nixon was forced to abandon the gold-backed dollar (because France and other countries wanted gold for their dollars and the US had nowhere near enough gold to pay them with), the USD was pegged to gold at $35 an ounce and all other currencies were pegged to the dollar. This was the Bretton Woods system. Since Bretton Woods fell apart you have had the current debt-fuelled system which has now gone completely crazy and exponential.</div><div><br /></div><div>Gold is now about $1900 an ounce. It’s not so much that gold has gone up in value. It is that the dollar and other currencies have lost value (i.e. purchasing power).
Technological advances (especially robotics and AI), debt defaults and current demographics (aging population) are all disinflationary but debt-ridden governments can’t allow deflation because it increases their (and every other debtor’s) debt burden. They have to print more money and create inflation in order just to keep things going. You can see where this is headed.</div><div><br /></div><div>I have started buying shares in a smallish gold miner (ASX: SBM). I try to base my decisions on research and reason. But there seems nothing wrong with letting sentiment come into it a little. After all, everything is uncertain and there is so much data out there it can be overwhelming. Sometimes sentiment can help push you to act, to take the plunge. After all, nowhere is safe. Staying in cash long term is certainly unwise.</div><div><br /></div><div>So this is the personal and quite irrelevant detail that helped to get me moving: my father was born at Gwalia, a small Australian gold mining town in a very inhospitable region. Mining eventually became unprofitable and the town was abandoned. However, the Sons of Gwalia mine around which the town had been built – and with which a young Herbert Hoover (future American President) had been directly involved – was reopened and extended and currently represents St Barbara Limited’s chief Australian operation.</div><div><br /></div><div>The basic numbers for the company look okay to me, though I don’t pretend to have a grasp of the details. Their other two operating mines (both gold mines) are in Nova Scotia and Simberi (an island in the Western Pacific). Currently I am down a few thousand dollars on my investment but am quite optimistic for the medium and longer term. If there are declines in the share price and the fundamentals stay the same, I will be buying more over the next year or so.
</div>Mark Englishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03506844097173520312noreply@blogger.com0