It’s many years since I last fully engaged in discussion with convicted creationists. A pair of elderly Jehovah’s Witnesses detained me on the doorstep, at least at first. I’d just read The Blind Watchmaker and I was keen to exercise my new powers. So instead of the usual excuses I told them I was a Darwinist and that I didn’t believe in God. Sure enough, the old chestnuts rolled out: How could something as perfect as the human eye have come about incrementally? How could blind chance have given rise to the beauty and fecundity of the natural world? All the arguments that had tripped me in the past, only this time I had the answers.
So it was that one of the callers decided to end the discussion, but the way she did so was exasperating. She said, “Well, you have your way of looking at the world and we have ours”. While this was perfectly correct, it still left the most important question unanswered: What about the truth of the situation? That surely isn’t a matter of opinion, it’s something external to belief. Either God made us or he didn’t. Either the universe is twelve billion years old, or it isn’t. There might be plural ways to perceive reality but only one state of reality.
Compared to our nineteenth-century predecessors, today’s Britons are a sceptical bunch, not least when it comes to accounts that claim to be the absolute truth. This is good in some ways as a defence against despots, and also because some things really only should be judged in relative terms. But on the other hand, in many more cases it really doesn’t apply, and doesn’t deserve to be applied. Sometimes knowledge can approach certainty and only one account should be taken seriously.
Our loss of faith in ‘the truth’ is much a product of our widespread loss of religious faith. Loss of biblical truth, eternal absolute truth that one simply didn’t question, has been a loss of anchor. We bob about on a sea of competing faiths and other earthly ideologies, each, purportedly, as valid as any other. Today, anyone who insists that their particular faith is the one true faith is likely to be called fundamentalist, or just plain bigoted.
Similarly, the parallel growth of secular art and entertainment has encouraged a relativist standpoint. As one earthly being to another, you can argue Beethoven is better than Bach until you’re blue in the face, but you’ll never prove it. When you remove the issue of ‘which artist best serves God’ from the equation only personal taste is left. Best becomes subjective. My best is the one I like the most, and the same goes for you. Nothing else to add.
Finally, such thinking became vogue in late twentieth century western academia. For various reasons the status of ‘the fact’ came to be a bigger issue than facts themselves. A good part of this was again the collapse in religious faith, and public exposure to a diverse range of cultures and beliefs. And certainly the political climate played a part. By the end of the twentieth century, rationalism, as exhibited in ‘rationally planned’ society was looking decidedly unattractive and unworkable. ‘Rationalism’, in this sense, had led to the horrors of Fascism and Stalinism. Now it could be seen as the hand behind the faltering Keynesian consensus. Without a great deal of consideration as to what it might actually entail, a lot of thinkers were excited by the idea of finding better ‘sorts of truth’ in other belief systems.
Philosophical support for all this was found in the field of semiotics. Much was made of the different ways in which different cultures slice up and label the world, supposedly. We heard how the Welsh have a word for a colour which to an English speaker appears to cover both pale blue and pale green, and of course how Eskimos can distinguish 1001 kinds of snow. We extrapolated wildly from that point on: If culture alone could produce such wildly different conscious perspectives who was to say western thought was the ‘right’ one? Were science and rationality just more narratives, no better or worse than shamanism, just different?
Odder still, another key influence was twentieth century physics. Logically enough, the relativity uncovered by Einstein got people thinking about relative perspectives, and seemed to put subjectivity at the heart of the cosmos, but that was just the start. Much more was made of the history of physics, chiefly the so-called paradigm shifts, the movements from one scientific consensus to another. Arguments ran something like: Newton’s universe worked a treat for two centuries. It underpinned the industrial revolution and ushered in the modern world. Nevertheless, it was overthrown in the twentieth century, and replaced by Einstein’s radically different model.
What did that mean for the status of truth? If Einstein actually replaced Newton then in what sense was Newton’s theory ever true? And of course the same goes for Einstein. Is he just another poor Newton in waiting? Will he be replaced one day by a wholly incompatible new physics? Is that all science is, one of a multitude of competing stories about the world? Each internally consistent, but none any closer to reality than any other.
This was emphasised using the witchcraft argument: Not all of human thinking has been as intellectually scrupulous as Newton’s and Einstein’s. Complete nonsense has been passionately believed in. Presumably it seemed rational to it’s believers, or else they wouldn’t have believed it. Clearly witches never really existed. Nevertheless intelligent men and women devised detection tests, and meted out horrors on those unfortunate enough to pass them. Although the witch-finders themselves wouldn’t have used the term, they probably thought that they were acting rationally. Perhaps they sincerely believed what they were doing was the only logical means of avoiding damnation, it’s just that neither damnation nor witches exist.
What does all this say about the status of science? Bluntly, if we’ve believed so much rubbish in the past, what makes us think today’s ‘science’ and ‘rationalism’ will look any better in the future?
The limits of relativism
Although frequently overstated, relativist thinking does have its place. Certainly, it seems an appropriate way for atheists to view religions. If you don’t believe in any god, then all gods possess equal credibility. All religions become earthly, cultural constructs, peculiar to those who follow them. Rather than judging them as right or wrong, you can only judge their effects.
As for the arts, it’s more of a mixed bag. While it’s true that no one can ultimately define rules of taste, there are a mass of other reasons to call some things good and others bad. Even if you can’t prove one piece of music to be more pleasant than another you can argue complexity of composition, tightness of rhythm, tonality. You can judge a piece to be groundbreaking or derivative, polished or just thrown together to make money. These characteristics certainly don’t merit the relativist take. They’re things one can argue firmly, one way or the other.
However it’s the academic usage where the real problems start.
In intellectual circles relativism held appeal for both left and right. The right liked it because it could be used to discredit Marxism, and centrally planned society in general. Relativist arguments were used to re-frame the ‘science’ of historical materialism as just another salvation myth, another grand prophecy of the coming Jerusalem, with as much basis in fact as the previous one.
For the left, on the other hand, the appeal was more philanthropic. Cultural relativism seemed a good counter to the western superiority complex: If all worldviews were just cultural inventions than who’s to say which one is right? How dare the west impose its cultural standards upon others?
The ‘hundred kinds of snow’ idea is a case in point. It seemed to give dignity to the down-trodden Inuit, and other hunter-gatherers. For one thing, it suggests that any average human mind, in any kind of society, crunches the same amount of concepts. Our fabulously complex brains divide-up and label the world to the same degree regardless of how complex those worlds are. If you’re raised in the west there’s lots of things to label, so you can’t afford to look too closely. But if there isn’t much about other than snow, fish and huskies, then your mind will ‘super-divide’ and categorise these few important items.
Problem was, it was a hoax. A quip in a newspaper that spread like wildfire, the number of snow-types rising exponentially with each telling. Like many successful memes it got itself spread for no better reason than people liked the sound of it (I certainly did.)
Still, this is no insult to the minds of Eskimos, or the Yanamamo. As it happens I’ll bet the average western mind does contain a mass more concepts than theirs, if theirs have never encountered radio or TV, books or magazines. No Sunsilk adverts or Nirvana CDs. This is nothing to do with race or intelligence, it’s just culture. If I’d been raised by Eskimos I’m sure I’d have turned out as sharp or blunt as I have in the west; and there, like here, being ‘savvy’ would be just as important determinant of whether I had a good life or not. It’s just that I wouldn’t have so many concepts to play with, or be plagued by. Although I’m glad about many of the memes I’ve accumulated, most of them are dross. My head rings with rubbish as I try to get to sleep. I’ll bet hunter-gatherers don’t have to put up with half that noise. Pity the Inuit?
Babies and bath-water
Aside from such well-meaning errors, relativist thinking has led to some very odd and intellectually regressive ideas. At worst it encourages us to discard the great potentiality, and accumulated discoveries of human thought. The wholesale dilution of ‘truth’ into ‘story’ undermines the human intellect, and it’s quite without justification. Here’s two points I believe relativism has clouded, which I’m yet to hear a worthwhile argument against.
First, just because some aspect of reality is disagreed upon, or is difficult to verify, doesn’t mean it isn’t one way or another. In an important sense, the state of reality is independent of thought.
This is a very everyday principle that we all take for granted, when we’re not philosophising about it. For example, I might claim to have seen an Andean condor circling above Brighton Pavilion. You on the other hand might feel sure it was a seagull. Perhaps a third person swears blind it was a pterodactyl. Well, regardless of our disagreement, one thing is certain. The thing that flew over the building definitely was one or none of the above. Opinion doesn’t come into that. The fact that several theories exist doesn’t effect the fact of what happened. In reality, it either was a seagull or it wasn’t. Even if no one was watching.
Similarly, Elaine Morgan’s fascinating ‘aquatic ape’ theory might just be true. On the other hand, it might be completely groundless. But this uncertainty doesn’t mean that arguments for it and against it are both true, in some relativist sense. History actually went one way or the other. Our recent ancestors either did have a spell in the water or they didn’t. Both stories can’t be right. Perhaps one day we’ll unearth something that’ll seal it either way, but if we don’t, that absence of certainty will have no bearing on the truth. The truth is what occurred.
Secondly, just because all knowledge is ‘just theory’ doesn’t mean all theories are equally valid. Some theories are better than others, they better approximate to external reality. They have better predictive power and fit in more neatly with the rest of our observations. In all likelihood I was wrong about the condor and you were right about the seagull. If it was already established that I was a bit of a fantasist, or I’d only glimpsed the creature peripherally, your account would be further strengthened. There’d be good reason to judge your theory better than mine. Then again, my theory would still be superior to that of the pterodactyl spotter. That’s a complete non-starter.
These are fantastically useful principles, and it’s criminal that they should be obscured, let alone rejected. Laughable really. We couldn’t operate without them, our lives would fall apart.
Why science?
Much of the disservice relativism has done to the reputation of knowledge seems to boil down to one very basic misunderstanding. In a sense, it really is the case that no theory can actually be the truth. At best it can only say something about the truth. No theory can be so accurate that it actually embodies the thing it describes, anymore than the word ‘dog’ can run around and bark. In that sense, at least, it is all just stories, science included.
Nevertheless, some stories bear examination. They’re not just consistent on their own terms, but in the face of whatever you throw at them. Of course we can never be completely sure, but it seems vanishingly unlikely than some scientific theories will ever be overturned, wholesale. The periodic table, thermodynamics, natural selection, their sheer predictive power is enough to accord them the status of fact. Even if greater, over arching, theories should ever be formulated, these existing one’s will continue to work within those frameworks, and remain as invaluable as they are today.
Not so in Salem. However learned the witch-hunters might have felt they were, they were still behaving in a stupid and ignorant manner, by any cultural standard. Far from trying to understand the world in methodical manner, they set out determined not to question. Those who dared were burned. Their tests were deeply tautological, by nature impossible to verify or falsify. The only ‘truth’ they could reference was scripture, and yet more unsinkable superstition. Rational thought certainly wasn’t available to lend support.
This is simply not so with science. True scientific method is all about verification. “Show me” is the motto. In science there’s never a right time to say “well look, it’s in the old book we used for years, so just accept it.” Science constantly sticks out its chin, and invites our best shot. And if you do prove it wrong it has to change. That’s why science isn’t ‘just another theory’. It’s the best explanation, by definition. It would cease to be science if it didn’t amend itself in the face of compelling evidence. There may be corrupt scientists but scientific method is pure honesty.
So, in the light of this, what is going on with physics? Did Newton really refute Einstein? In certain ways, yes. One clear example is the nature of time. Newton assumed time passes at the same rate wherever you are, whatever you do. But in Einstein’s universe such factors as velocity and gravity actually change the rate at which time passes.
While on the one hand this clearly is fundamental, on the other, so what? Once we’ve revised our notion of ‘knowledge as reality’ to “knowledge as most consistent story about reality” then we should expect contradictions to arise, as the body of knowledge swells. In the case of Newton you can hardly blame him for thinking time was the same everywhere. He didn’t have sensitive enough equipment to gauge the changes. Things have to travel at preposterous rates, or suffer huge gravitational attraction for anomalies to show up. Such machinery had to wait two centuries, until Newton’s own theories made them possible.
Although there are conditions under which Newton’s physics breaks down, in the world of medium sized objects and low speed, Newton is as sound as ever. If you want to build or fly a plane it’s all you need. Only if you want navigate a spacecraft, or chart the motion of a sub-atomic particle need you leave Newton’s world. In all but the most bizarre, human-created situations, Newton’s physics is the truth. It will continue to explain, and we will never see it contradicted. Perhaps that’s as good a truth as we can hope for.
Abusing the relative
Regardless, there is one sense in which science seems highly regrettable. The products of science are breaking the world, and taking us with it. Science and rationalism have given us the means of our complete undoing, be it greenhouse or the bomb. It’s a very depressing thought, one that makes me jealous of previous generations. But rejecting rationalism won’t make the bomb go away, and it’ll ensure the oil continues to be frittered. The only way to tackle this madness is using rationalism. As always, it pays to be as well equipped as your adversary.
Aside from such legitimate concerns, I fear there are some less worthy reasons people choose to adopt the relative. It’s certainly a tempting cop-out for slackers. Savants aside, most of us find science at best weighty, at worst intimidating beyond approach. Relativist arguments can be a comfort to those who really would prefer to not have to learn science at all. They can blow a raspberry at their old foe, call it witchcraft.
Problem is, it’s an attitude that opens doors to lots of nonsense, some cynical, some downright dangerous. The world is rife with charlatans, witting and unwitting, and where there’s ignorance there’s brass. Strange as it sounds, there’s a colossal amount of money being made from medicine with nothing in it at all. The strongest possible dose of homeopathic medicine is pure water, yet fortunes are made. And of course that’s not the only cost. Some of the more ardent new-agers actually worsen their health by rejecting proven medicines.
It’s point two again, choosing the best theory. Certainly, it’s true that some rationally produced medicines don’t do the job, and sometimes actually make things worse. But that fact doesn’t render all medicines equal, the tested and the untested. There’s still a huge body of excellent, life enhancing, preventatives and cures. Occasional errors don’t cancel out these gains.
Of course this is by no means an endorsement of the pharmaceutical industry! I’m only saying that the methodology they use in the lab, double blind testing, huge samples, are far more likely to tell you something about how you tick than someone who seems indifferent, let alone hostile, to rationality. Highly suspect.
It’s a sorry state of affairs, with consequences laid bare in a book I just read on the Alexander Technique. Clearly the author knew his audience. He felt obliged to spend the first few pages apologising for the fact that much of what followed was arrived at rationally. Sad to say, it seems ‘rationality’ triggers alarm bells in your average ‘holistic’ consumer.
Political abuse
Finally, the example that prompted all this in the first place. As I write, Tony Blair just lost his first vote in parliament, over “anti-terror” legislation. In the interview that followed Jon Snow asked if this finally proved that the proposed policy was mistaken, given such a resounding rejection by his own comrades. Not at all, he insisted. It is possible for the truth to be known to only one person.
Perfectly true, truth isn’t democratic. Reality is independent of thought. It is perfectly possible for only one person to know the truth about something, while sixty million others believe a falsehood. Clearly he agrees with the first of the above two points.
But come point two, which is the best theory, further investigation is required. Like good scientists we have to judge likelihoods. Principally, is it more likely that several hundred MP’s are wrong, or that the PM is lying? Key questions need to be asked: Does he have a reputation for lying? Has he ever lied about matters of life and death before? Does he surround himself with professional liars and media moguls who have made their fortunes from lying about things? In the light of that, which is the best theory?
You can do the same with the ‘war on terror’ in general. Of course it’s logically possible that it is a moral crusade, rather than an oil grab, but what’s the evidence? What’s the leanest and most likely theory?
Again there’s lots of key questions: Is there any history of western interference in the middle-east? Is there any connection between the self-proclaimed crusaders, and the oil and arms industries? Have you ever met another person, face to face, who could argue cogently that the war on terror wasn’t principally about western energy needs, or has it always been politicians and media pundits? If you were to write to your Labour MP and ask about the role of oil in all this, would you get a meaningful reply, or a polite refusal to engage? Is it really likely that Richard Dawkins, Jonathan Miller and Noam Chomsky simply don’t have the mental capacity to grasp something obvious to David Aaronovich and Richard Littlejohn? You have to ask.
It’s in the midst of such difficulties relativism can be the only refuge. Martin Kettle employed it in his Guardian column, soon after the London bombings. His piece was entitled, quite unambiguously, “Not a war criminal but the world’s leading statesman”. However when it comes to justifying this claim, things become more dilute. The question of what Mr Blair actually is, is dropped. All that matters now is how he appears, to different observers:
“I accept that when some people see Blair…..they see a war criminal or a congenital liar. But those who respond that way should accept that many more people around the planet see someone else: the leading and most articulate statesman in the developed world.”
You can see his difficulty here. If the ultimate war crime is to initiate a war of aggression then clearly Mr Blair is a war criminal. So there’s no way the faithful Mr Kettle is going to broach that one. Instead he makes a distraction. An extra quality called ‘statesmanship’ is conjured-up, one with the extraordinary ability to counter-balance, or actually cancel-out war criminality. Watch the birdee!
What you have in the case of Martin Kettle, and my doorstep Jehovah, is a forced relativism. It’s not a position either party wants to inhabit, but stark reality compels them. The picture of the world they wish to promote is clearly false. There’s a far more plausible explanation to hand. The PM’s legendary integrity is as credible as biblical literalism. Like the fossil record, the public record screams it out. Sometimes knowledge can approach certainty, and only one account should be taken seriously.
Monday 19 December 2005
Friday 23 September 2005
An Open Letter to Roger Alton
Dear Roger Alton,
I saw the following posted on the Medialens messageboard:
“Dear [Name withheld]
I assume you have this stuff from medialens. It does seem clear, and forgive me if wrong, that you actually don't read our paper. Our coverage of the political, economic and environmental issues around climate change has been immense, balanced, and thorough. It is of course none of my business, but I don't think you should send out emails like this just because Medialens tells you to.
Best wishes
Roger”
Well I can’t speak for “Name withheld”, but I can for myself.
Firstly, no, I don’t read the paper in the traditional sense. I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m just not interested in products or fashion or celebrities or film reviews. I’m interested in news and comment, and that’s all available online, your paper included. And of course unlike with the hardcopy there’s loads of other interactive civvies out there picking through it all, and tipping each other off. All without any features on Toyotas, Kate Moss or Big Brother. In my position, why on earth would I want to buy or read the paper itself?
Secondly, you describe your coverage of climate change as immense and balanced, but surely that leaves the most important question unanswered: What’s the net effect of your output? Does the overall influence of The Observer’s environmental warnings actually outweigh the effects of its promotion of 4x4’s and air travel? After reading a copy, is one more likely or less likely to buy a new car? More likely to join Greenpeace or more likely to join the mile high club? Surely it must be the adverts that win the day. No corporation would pay you good money to come off worse in the public mind. What sane business would line the pockets of company that was striving to rein-in their output?
There once was a billboard advert in a Viz cartoon which read, “SMOKE TABS”. Beneath, in smaller case it read, “H.M Government warning: Don’t smoke tabs”. The Observer, Independent, and Guardian environmental stance seems much the same: A huge banner headline reading, “INCREASE CONSUMPTION!” over a much smaller “Over-consumption is killing us”
For that’s what it’s come to. The Siberian permafrost is melting. Human survival depends upon us sharply decreasing our use of fossil fuels. We can’t afford any more cars, we can’t even afford the ones we’ve got. The last thing any concerned party should do is help to promote them. And here’s the Orwell, I only know this because I read it in the bleeding Observer and Independent and Guardian!
You can see why it looks like madness to so many of us. It really doesn’t matter how good your coverage of climate change is when at the same time you’re obliged to ensure it doesn’t outweigh the effect of adverts for the very products causing the crisis. I know it’s not intentional, but it’s still a cruel trick. Getting affluent liberals to frown at melting icecaps on one page, then drool over the causes of melting icecaps on the next. Even for those who don’t buy the products the effect is fogging. The mere existence of such adverts waters down the urgency of the situation, normalises the madness. I mean, how real can the dangers of climate change actually be when the ‘liberal’ press still push cars and air travel? As with cigarettes, as long as such things are given the legitimacy of advertising it’s hard to take the threat seriously.
If the net effect of reading The Observer is to make one less sensitive to environmental problems then this sort of coverage is worse than none at all. If climate change articles are just another way to get people to fly then it would be better not to bother. In a nutshell, lose the cars or stop pretending to care.
Finally, I don’t send letters to journalists because Medialens tell me to. I do it when they point out contradictions that trouble me. Huge glaring holes in the media worldview, ones that help maintain this madness. Not that it’s my business, and forgive me if I’m wrong, but do you ever actually read Medialens alerts? They’re enough to make you scream. They enough to drive some members of the general public to actually take some journalists to task. Surely that’s better than a passive audience? News output is chronically skewed by corporate interests, and corporate lobbying. Isn’t it good for democracy that everyday folk can now question journalists? You have the right to challenge them, why shouldn’t we?
All the best,
Martin.
I saw the following posted on the Medialens messageboard:
“Dear [Name withheld]
I assume you have this stuff from medialens. It does seem clear, and forgive me if wrong, that you actually don't read our paper. Our coverage of the political, economic and environmental issues around climate change has been immense, balanced, and thorough. It is of course none of my business, but I don't think you should send out emails like this just because Medialens tells you to.
Best wishes
Roger”
Well I can’t speak for “Name withheld”, but I can for myself.
Firstly, no, I don’t read the paper in the traditional sense. I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m just not interested in products or fashion or celebrities or film reviews. I’m interested in news and comment, and that’s all available online, your paper included. And of course unlike with the hardcopy there’s loads of other interactive civvies out there picking through it all, and tipping each other off. All without any features on Toyotas, Kate Moss or Big Brother. In my position, why on earth would I want to buy or read the paper itself?
Secondly, you describe your coverage of climate change as immense and balanced, but surely that leaves the most important question unanswered: What’s the net effect of your output? Does the overall influence of The Observer’s environmental warnings actually outweigh the effects of its promotion of 4x4’s and air travel? After reading a copy, is one more likely or less likely to buy a new car? More likely to join Greenpeace or more likely to join the mile high club? Surely it must be the adverts that win the day. No corporation would pay you good money to come off worse in the public mind. What sane business would line the pockets of company that was striving to rein-in their output?
There once was a billboard advert in a Viz cartoon which read, “SMOKE TABS”. Beneath, in smaller case it read, “H.M Government warning: Don’t smoke tabs”. The Observer, Independent, and Guardian environmental stance seems much the same: A huge banner headline reading, “INCREASE CONSUMPTION!” over a much smaller “Over-consumption is killing us”
For that’s what it’s come to. The Siberian permafrost is melting. Human survival depends upon us sharply decreasing our use of fossil fuels. We can’t afford any more cars, we can’t even afford the ones we’ve got. The last thing any concerned party should do is help to promote them. And here’s the Orwell, I only know this because I read it in the bleeding Observer and Independent and Guardian!
You can see why it looks like madness to so many of us. It really doesn’t matter how good your coverage of climate change is when at the same time you’re obliged to ensure it doesn’t outweigh the effect of adverts for the very products causing the crisis. I know it’s not intentional, but it’s still a cruel trick. Getting affluent liberals to frown at melting icecaps on one page, then drool over the causes of melting icecaps on the next. Even for those who don’t buy the products the effect is fogging. The mere existence of such adverts waters down the urgency of the situation, normalises the madness. I mean, how real can the dangers of climate change actually be when the ‘liberal’ press still push cars and air travel? As with cigarettes, as long as such things are given the legitimacy of advertising it’s hard to take the threat seriously.
If the net effect of reading The Observer is to make one less sensitive to environmental problems then this sort of coverage is worse than none at all. If climate change articles are just another way to get people to fly then it would be better not to bother. In a nutshell, lose the cars or stop pretending to care.
Finally, I don’t send letters to journalists because Medialens tell me to. I do it when they point out contradictions that trouble me. Huge glaring holes in the media worldview, ones that help maintain this madness. Not that it’s my business, and forgive me if I’m wrong, but do you ever actually read Medialens alerts? They’re enough to make you scream. They enough to drive some members of the general public to actually take some journalists to task. Surely that’s better than a passive audience? News output is chronically skewed by corporate interests, and corporate lobbying. Isn’t it good for democracy that everyday folk can now question journalists? You have the right to challenge them, why shouldn’t we?
All the best,
Martin.
Monday 5 September 2005
An Open Letter To Howard Jacobson
I’m writing regarding your ‘red top heart’ article in the Independent. There’s a great deal I take issue with, but I’ll stick to one question: Of all the bombings that have occurred since 911 why did this particular one anger you so profoundly?
As I write I hear that six-hundred and forty petrified Iraqi civilians were crushed to death this morning alone. Ten times the amount lost in London. What does that do to your heart complaint? There were no suicide bombs in Iraq before we invaded. Now there’s one a day. Your own Prime Minister lied to you to bring this situation about. Shall I call A&E?
You were disgusted because a “well-educated Muslim family speaking on the radio from Pakistan” weren’t especially appalled at the London bombings. But how could any informed person, not directly affected by the London bombings, feel any different? If you reside in Pakistan, and you know what was done to Falluja, how could you possibly be mortified by the London bombs?
You despair of British Muslims who object to increased stop and search: “So who else should they be searching, you morons” and even suggest that “when bearded novelists of a certain age begin planting bombs all over London” you will “willingly, gleefully, gratefully submit to being searched every time you leave the house”
I doubt it. I bet you’d scream blue murder, and quite right too. But more importantly, why choose this bizarre scenario? If you want to make a fitting parallel with Muslim indignation why leapfrog over the obvious: Perle, Rumsfeld, and Sharon are global terrorists. They’re also Jewish, and so are you. Would you like to be put in the box with them? Shall I judge you by their perverse standards, until you can prove otherwise? Can you imagine the outcry if perfectly innocent British Jews were habitually hassled in connection with international war crimes? “What the hell’s that got to do with us!?”
And of course the answer is nothing. Muslim Joe and Jewish Joanna have no more to do with this, no more say in this than you or me. Most of London is dark-skinned and wearing a day-pack. Should we all be searched? And look who’s in charge of racial profiling. People who execute a South American, because they think he’s an Arab, on account of his ‘Mongolian eyes’. Think yourself lucky it’s not bearded novelists they’re after. Shaving wouldn’t save you.
I’ve tried to think of reasons why these other killings don’t affect your heart condition so badly but I can’t find any nice ones. It might just be self-installed Little England blinkers. You watch cricket and talk literature while our hell is meted out on other peoples, then fly screaming from your armchair as soon as the inevitable, and widely predicted, blow-back occurs.
However my suspicions are rather more grim. I suspect that you have long decided who it is that causes the problems in this world; who are life’s civilising influence and who are its barbarians. Put me straight if I’m wrong, but I suspect a good deal of your anger comes from not being able to articulate these beliefs. Like many others, I think you’d like to shout it from the rafters:
“It’s the Arabs! It’s the bloody Arabs!!! Why are we even talking about anything else!?!”
But that would endanger your column at The Independent. But more importantly, it really doesn’t scan, and it certainly won’t stop the slaughter. That’s the reason so many of us refuse to end the condemnation at the London bombers. Because we want this to madness to stop, all of it. Every disaster the stop the war movement predicted concerning this ridiculous ‘war on terror’ has come true, right down to the bombings coming home. We were warned, but our leaders pushed ahead.
Like yourself, I try not to get angry. It’s never constructive. But when I do lapse at least it’s because of contradictions outside my head. My Prime Minister is war criminal, but I have to watch the media present him as a statesman. We went to war because of vacuous lies about WMD, yet when none were found the objectives were simply changed, and the media merrily trotted out the new lies. I have to turn the TV off sometimes too.
On the other hand, one way or another, you have to maintain these contradictions within your own head. The concept of civilised England, with it’s “ancient wisdom” is trying to live alongside the reality of a state still addicted to the material benefits of treating other peoples as serfs. Horror and indignation at the slaughter of innocent Britons has to share headspace with indifference to our own far greater slaughter abroad. No wonder you go ballistic when reality strikes.
I wouldn’t want all that rattling away in my head. For the sake of your heart, and a lot besides, you could do with sorting these issues out.
Best wishes,
MJ
Click on link below for original article
As I write I hear that six-hundred and forty petrified Iraqi civilians were crushed to death this morning alone. Ten times the amount lost in London. What does that do to your heart complaint? There were no suicide bombs in Iraq before we invaded. Now there’s one a day. Your own Prime Minister lied to you to bring this situation about. Shall I call A&E?
You were disgusted because a “well-educated Muslim family speaking on the radio from Pakistan” weren’t especially appalled at the London bombings. But how could any informed person, not directly affected by the London bombings, feel any different? If you reside in Pakistan, and you know what was done to Falluja, how could you possibly be mortified by the London bombs?
You despair of British Muslims who object to increased stop and search: “So who else should they be searching, you morons” and even suggest that “when bearded novelists of a certain age begin planting bombs all over London” you will “willingly, gleefully, gratefully submit to being searched every time you leave the house”
I doubt it. I bet you’d scream blue murder, and quite right too. But more importantly, why choose this bizarre scenario? If you want to make a fitting parallel with Muslim indignation why leapfrog over the obvious: Perle, Rumsfeld, and Sharon are global terrorists. They’re also Jewish, and so are you. Would you like to be put in the box with them? Shall I judge you by their perverse standards, until you can prove otherwise? Can you imagine the outcry if perfectly innocent British Jews were habitually hassled in connection with international war crimes? “What the hell’s that got to do with us!?”
And of course the answer is nothing. Muslim Joe and Jewish Joanna have no more to do with this, no more say in this than you or me. Most of London is dark-skinned and wearing a day-pack. Should we all be searched? And look who’s in charge of racial profiling. People who execute a South American, because they think he’s an Arab, on account of his ‘Mongolian eyes’. Think yourself lucky it’s not bearded novelists they’re after. Shaving wouldn’t save you.
I’ve tried to think of reasons why these other killings don’t affect your heart condition so badly but I can’t find any nice ones. It might just be self-installed Little England blinkers. You watch cricket and talk literature while our hell is meted out on other peoples, then fly screaming from your armchair as soon as the inevitable, and widely predicted, blow-back occurs.
However my suspicions are rather more grim. I suspect that you have long decided who it is that causes the problems in this world; who are life’s civilising influence and who are its barbarians. Put me straight if I’m wrong, but I suspect a good deal of your anger comes from not being able to articulate these beliefs. Like many others, I think you’d like to shout it from the rafters:
“It’s the Arabs! It’s the bloody Arabs!!! Why are we even talking about anything else!?!”
But that would endanger your column at The Independent. But more importantly, it really doesn’t scan, and it certainly won’t stop the slaughter. That’s the reason so many of us refuse to end the condemnation at the London bombers. Because we want this to madness to stop, all of it. Every disaster the stop the war movement predicted concerning this ridiculous ‘war on terror’ has come true, right down to the bombings coming home. We were warned, but our leaders pushed ahead.
Like yourself, I try not to get angry. It’s never constructive. But when I do lapse at least it’s because of contradictions outside my head. My Prime Minister is war criminal, but I have to watch the media present him as a statesman. We went to war because of vacuous lies about WMD, yet when none were found the objectives were simply changed, and the media merrily trotted out the new lies. I have to turn the TV off sometimes too.
On the other hand, one way or another, you have to maintain these contradictions within your own head. The concept of civilised England, with it’s “ancient wisdom” is trying to live alongside the reality of a state still addicted to the material benefits of treating other peoples as serfs. Horror and indignation at the slaughter of innocent Britons has to share headspace with indifference to our own far greater slaughter abroad. No wonder you go ballistic when reality strikes.
I wouldn’t want all that rattling away in my head. For the sake of your heart, and a lot besides, you could do with sorting these issues out.
Best wishes,
MJ
Click on link below for original article
Monday 22 August 2005
How does propaganda work in a free society? Here’s how!
A couple of weeks back, trapped in someone else’s car, I was forced to endure the Jeremy Vine show on BBC Radio Two. Nauseating as it was, this prolonged period of exposure was illuminating. An excellent illustration of how propaganda works in a free society.
The programme featured an interview between Vine and a Muslim spokesman (of some hue, it wasn’t clear at first) regarding the London bombings. For the first half I couldn’t fault the stranger’s arguments. Whatever obstacles ‘impartial’ Jeremy put in his way he just kept blurting out simple important truths: “Why must I apologise?” “This is because of British involvement in Iraq” “Blair is the real terrorist”, etc. “Do you condemn the London bombings?” pressed a flailing Vine, over and over. “Do YOU condemn the invasion of Iraq and sanctions that have left a million dead ?” the interviewee fired back, quite rightly. Naturally Jeremy refused to answer.
For a while it sounded like a refreshing splash of dissent, aired mainstream. So it was deeply disappointing when Vine eventually did succeed in persuading this man to describe the actual basis of his beliefs. Clearly he did condone the London bombings. Clearly he did hope that the whole world would be converted to Islam. Clearly, he was a full-blown religious bigot, committed to violent retribution.
Now it was clear why this particular Muslim had been invited onto the show. It wasn’t to provide a platform for those who oppose the ‘war on terror’. It wasn’t to allow a public figure to make the connection between the London bombings and the invasion of Iraq. It was precisely to discredit such viewpoints, chuck them in the loony bin with all the rest. That’s why the media loves to quote Islamic fundamentalist cranks. Not only do they help to make Islam seem sinister and inherently malevolent, they also help to discredit anti-war thinking in general. They help to conflate important truths about the world (Blair IS a liar and a terrorist) with superstition and bigotry. Both truth and fiction can be combined to discredit each other.
With the playing field thoroughly skewed it was now safe to bring on ‘a moderate Muslim’ from the MCB. And my, how moderate he was. With that as an introduction who wouldn’t be? The MCB could be a important political force at this time. Peaceable people, appalled at the West’s treatment of those in other countries. This could have been a valuable opportunity for him to tell us about their suffering, and the suffering of friends and relatives abroad. Instead he had to waste the first half of the interview bowing and scraping to distance himself from the previous speaker. By the time he did get to: “But, well you know, the west’s role in the world….” Jeremy was still able to close him down, effortlessly: “So you’re saying that these bombings are justified by our foreign policy? We had it coming to us?”, to which the poor man flung himself to the floor again, and begged for another whipping. Fat chance of any issues being discussed.
I wrote to Jeremy to ask him why he wouldn’t condemn the killing of a million Iraqis but he is yet to respond. Clearly those innocent victims exist in a moral grey area, unlike our own stark variety. If he ever does get back my next question would be: Would you have invited a right-wing religious crank to comment on Bush’s policy in Iraq?
In one sense I’m sure his answer would be yes. I’m sure he’d be delighted if Tony himself offered to guest. But in the sense I mean it there’s really no chance. And it’s not because they’re not out there. There are scores of Christian screwballs in the mid-west who would be delighted to inform us of how the “war on terror” is an essential stage in humanity’s progression toward Armageddon (Bring it on!), but they aren’t consulted when it comes to discussing US policy in Iraq. Only with Islam.
You can find Zionist cranks who condone running tanks over unarmed protesters. You can find Christian cranks who advocate castrating homosexuals, and atheist cranks who’d happily send all God believers to the Gulag (Christ knows, I’m one of them!). But none of these are consulted when it comes to assessing Jewish, Christian or Godless ethics. Only when it comes to Islam are the cranks rolled out. Only Islam gets to be represented by its least representative.
There are a multitude of bright British people, Muslim or otherwise, who could argue a watertight case for Blair the terrorist, without adding any of the cranky baggage. But Jeremy wouldn’t dream of inviting them on. “Did Tony Blair lie to take us to war?” would be a fascinating subject for discussion, but there’s no chance of that either; well, not unless the person arguing the case was also known to hold other abhorrent views, or came oven-ready-smeared, like poor George Galloway.
The London bombings constitute the gravest threat to that which Tony Blair holds most dear. From the moment they went off he has campaigned frenetically to keep the spotlight off himself, and on Islam. Truth is, the only remaining barrier between Blair and the flak he so richly deserves are British Muslims. They are his last shield. If he didn’t have them to cower behind he would be fully naked, exposed.
One might wonder why our media would be so keen to bail out this scoundrel, especially when it endangers the public at large. In the case of the BBC, direct government pressure is certainly a crucial factor, as is corporate pressure in the private media. Another sad reason, surely, is that many media big-wigs share his world view. They cherish the material benefits of global inequality. They see the suffering of foreigners as a price worth paying for material abundance at home. They don’t want to be the ones who slow-up the gravy train.
And you can’t rule out embarrassment. Much of our media establishment jollied along the ‘war on terror’. Most big name journalists are already suffering excruciating cognitive dissonance. Always knowing that this was all about oil, but always having avoid to the subject. Always knowing how savage and ignorant and hypocritical and psychotic the neo-cons clearly are, but having to paint them as the world’s only hope. The last thing these people need is glaring proof that they’ve been peddling lies, lies that have now led to deaths at home.
Quite simply, the media is keeping the ‘war on terror’ in place (I can’t think of a single person I’ve met face to face who bothered trying to defend it. Can you?) It’s really something only people in government and media take seriously, or pretend to take seriously. The cost of this complicity is vast, and terrible. Out of a mixture of vanity, greed, shame and cowardice the British corporate media is guaranteeing the next UK bombing, the next war crime, the next racial attack.
Proof of the latter came with the post interview phone-in. It was little better than hate week. What a revelation! Most callers thought that any man who refused to condemn the London bombings must be a bad man. Swathes of indignation and barely concealed racist bile. Little England tripe about ‘our values’ and ‘these people’. No analysis, just indignation and misunderstanding. No causes, just a battle between good and evil. Clearly the net effect of the programme was an increase in ignorance and fear. Just what Tony wants. Job done.
The programme featured an interview between Vine and a Muslim spokesman (of some hue, it wasn’t clear at first) regarding the London bombings. For the first half I couldn’t fault the stranger’s arguments. Whatever obstacles ‘impartial’ Jeremy put in his way he just kept blurting out simple important truths: “Why must I apologise?” “This is because of British involvement in Iraq” “Blair is the real terrorist”, etc. “Do you condemn the London bombings?” pressed a flailing Vine, over and over. “Do YOU condemn the invasion of Iraq and sanctions that have left a million dead ?” the interviewee fired back, quite rightly. Naturally Jeremy refused to answer.
For a while it sounded like a refreshing splash of dissent, aired mainstream. So it was deeply disappointing when Vine eventually did succeed in persuading this man to describe the actual basis of his beliefs. Clearly he did condone the London bombings. Clearly he did hope that the whole world would be converted to Islam. Clearly, he was a full-blown religious bigot, committed to violent retribution.
Now it was clear why this particular Muslim had been invited onto the show. It wasn’t to provide a platform for those who oppose the ‘war on terror’. It wasn’t to allow a public figure to make the connection between the London bombings and the invasion of Iraq. It was precisely to discredit such viewpoints, chuck them in the loony bin with all the rest. That’s why the media loves to quote Islamic fundamentalist cranks. Not only do they help to make Islam seem sinister and inherently malevolent, they also help to discredit anti-war thinking in general. They help to conflate important truths about the world (Blair IS a liar and a terrorist) with superstition and bigotry. Both truth and fiction can be combined to discredit each other.
With the playing field thoroughly skewed it was now safe to bring on ‘a moderate Muslim’ from the MCB. And my, how moderate he was. With that as an introduction who wouldn’t be? The MCB could be a important political force at this time. Peaceable people, appalled at the West’s treatment of those in other countries. This could have been a valuable opportunity for him to tell us about their suffering, and the suffering of friends and relatives abroad. Instead he had to waste the first half of the interview bowing and scraping to distance himself from the previous speaker. By the time he did get to: “But, well you know, the west’s role in the world….” Jeremy was still able to close him down, effortlessly: “So you’re saying that these bombings are justified by our foreign policy? We had it coming to us?”, to which the poor man flung himself to the floor again, and begged for another whipping. Fat chance of any issues being discussed.
I wrote to Jeremy to ask him why he wouldn’t condemn the killing of a million Iraqis but he is yet to respond. Clearly those innocent victims exist in a moral grey area, unlike our own stark variety. If he ever does get back my next question would be: Would you have invited a right-wing religious crank to comment on Bush’s policy in Iraq?
In one sense I’m sure his answer would be yes. I’m sure he’d be delighted if Tony himself offered to guest. But in the sense I mean it there’s really no chance. And it’s not because they’re not out there. There are scores of Christian screwballs in the mid-west who would be delighted to inform us of how the “war on terror” is an essential stage in humanity’s progression toward Armageddon (Bring it on!), but they aren’t consulted when it comes to discussing US policy in Iraq. Only with Islam.
You can find Zionist cranks who condone running tanks over unarmed protesters. You can find Christian cranks who advocate castrating homosexuals, and atheist cranks who’d happily send all God believers to the Gulag (Christ knows, I’m one of them!). But none of these are consulted when it comes to assessing Jewish, Christian or Godless ethics. Only when it comes to Islam are the cranks rolled out. Only Islam gets to be represented by its least representative.
There are a multitude of bright British people, Muslim or otherwise, who could argue a watertight case for Blair the terrorist, without adding any of the cranky baggage. But Jeremy wouldn’t dream of inviting them on. “Did Tony Blair lie to take us to war?” would be a fascinating subject for discussion, but there’s no chance of that either; well, not unless the person arguing the case was also known to hold other abhorrent views, or came oven-ready-smeared, like poor George Galloway.
The London bombings constitute the gravest threat to that which Tony Blair holds most dear. From the moment they went off he has campaigned frenetically to keep the spotlight off himself, and on Islam. Truth is, the only remaining barrier between Blair and the flak he so richly deserves are British Muslims. They are his last shield. If he didn’t have them to cower behind he would be fully naked, exposed.
One might wonder why our media would be so keen to bail out this scoundrel, especially when it endangers the public at large. In the case of the BBC, direct government pressure is certainly a crucial factor, as is corporate pressure in the private media. Another sad reason, surely, is that many media big-wigs share his world view. They cherish the material benefits of global inequality. They see the suffering of foreigners as a price worth paying for material abundance at home. They don’t want to be the ones who slow-up the gravy train.
And you can’t rule out embarrassment. Much of our media establishment jollied along the ‘war on terror’. Most big name journalists are already suffering excruciating cognitive dissonance. Always knowing that this was all about oil, but always having avoid to the subject. Always knowing how savage and ignorant and hypocritical and psychotic the neo-cons clearly are, but having to paint them as the world’s only hope. The last thing these people need is glaring proof that they’ve been peddling lies, lies that have now led to deaths at home.
Quite simply, the media is keeping the ‘war on terror’ in place (I can’t think of a single person I’ve met face to face who bothered trying to defend it. Can you?) It’s really something only people in government and media take seriously, or pretend to take seriously. The cost of this complicity is vast, and terrible. Out of a mixture of vanity, greed, shame and cowardice the British corporate media is guaranteeing the next UK bombing, the next war crime, the next racial attack.
Proof of the latter came with the post interview phone-in. It was little better than hate week. What a revelation! Most callers thought that any man who refused to condemn the London bombings must be a bad man. Swathes of indignation and barely concealed racist bile. Little England tripe about ‘our values’ and ‘these people’. No analysis, just indignation and misunderstanding. No causes, just a battle between good and evil. Clearly the net effect of the programme was an increase in ignorance and fear. Just what Tony wants. Job done.
Friday 5 August 2005
Only acting on orders
Sir Ian Blair shares more than the Prime Minister’s surname, judging by his comments in The Times last week. Key sound-bite:
“It is not the police, it is not the intelligence services, that will defeat terrorism. It is communities that will defeat terrorism.”
Come again? Communities? Not cynical politicians? Not governments who wage illegal wars in spite of massive public opposition, after being warned by their own intelligence services that domestic terrorism would be the likely result? How did the chief of Scotland Yard come to overlook these clues? Seems pretty bum detective work. Sherlock Holmes would simply point to Tony Blair and suggest The Hague, but somehow Sir Ian managed to stumble upon a less obvious conclusion.
So who are these ‘communities’ that he believes to be capable, or rather culpable? Does he mean us? Well yes, but only some of us. For ‘communities’ read ‘Muslim communities’. He’s urging innocent British Muslim’s to question themselves, and blame each other. He’s encouraging non-Muslim Britons to focus their anger on Islam. After all Britain has done to the world since 911 the head of the Met chooses to point his finger at innocent members of his own citizenry. It’s their fault, not the powerbrokers. It’s up to them to sort this out.
Now is a good time to clarify the structural political inclinations of the police. If Sir Ian truly cared about protecting the public, if that really was his central concern, he would have to declare that Tony Blair bore great responsibility for what has happened. Blair was warned, he lied, thousands died, some in London. He should stand trial. But of course it would be career suicide if he did:
“Sir Ian must stick to his job and concentrate on catching the perpetrators. He must not allow politics to colour his judgement”
As if! As with all important public posts, Sir Ian’s job description was strictly circumscribed. The state simply cannot afford to employ senior policemen who are inclined to criticise British foreign policy, regardless of its effect on the home front. The bizarre reality is, before anything else, to be a senior policemen means accepting that you will have to parrot state policy even when it endangers the citizenry you are supposedly employed to protect. Whatever the UK does abroad, however we make our living, the job of senior policemen is to ignore it and just mop up the consequences. The first priority is to protect the state from the people, not the other way round.
Unfortunately for Sir Ian, the British government has given him a pretty ludicrous script to defend. As always, Tony Blair’s central concern has been to save his own neck. Even at this late stage a gentleman might concede defeat, take it on the jaw. Instead he swings the spotlight onto the perfectly innocent. People who actively opposed his imperialist adventure. People who just happen to look like the bombers, or happen to look Brazilian: “Blame them, not me!”
The unsurprising consequence is a massive increase in violence against innocent British Muslims. The rage and indignation generated by the bombings is hurled at those who had nothing to do with it. Those who created this situation walk free, unhurt, unhindered. Free to plan more raids abroad. And as for national security? Going along with Mr Blair’s fairy story means no end to UK terror campaigns. We just sit and wait for the next bomb. Wasting millions policing tube stations won’t make this problem go away. As long as key public figures won’t face up to the government’s culpability, as long as they are prepared to parrot state propaganda, we citizens will remain at risk.
“It is not the police, it is not the intelligence services, that will defeat terrorism. It is communities that will defeat terrorism.”
Come again? Communities? Not cynical politicians? Not governments who wage illegal wars in spite of massive public opposition, after being warned by their own intelligence services that domestic terrorism would be the likely result? How did the chief of Scotland Yard come to overlook these clues? Seems pretty bum detective work. Sherlock Holmes would simply point to Tony Blair and suggest The Hague, but somehow Sir Ian managed to stumble upon a less obvious conclusion.
So who are these ‘communities’ that he believes to be capable, or rather culpable? Does he mean us? Well yes, but only some of us. For ‘communities’ read ‘Muslim communities’. He’s urging innocent British Muslim’s to question themselves, and blame each other. He’s encouraging non-Muslim Britons to focus their anger on Islam. After all Britain has done to the world since 911 the head of the Met chooses to point his finger at innocent members of his own citizenry. It’s their fault, not the powerbrokers. It’s up to them to sort this out.
Now is a good time to clarify the structural political inclinations of the police. If Sir Ian truly cared about protecting the public, if that really was his central concern, he would have to declare that Tony Blair bore great responsibility for what has happened. Blair was warned, he lied, thousands died, some in London. He should stand trial. But of course it would be career suicide if he did:
“Sir Ian must stick to his job and concentrate on catching the perpetrators. He must not allow politics to colour his judgement”
As if! As with all important public posts, Sir Ian’s job description was strictly circumscribed. The state simply cannot afford to employ senior policemen who are inclined to criticise British foreign policy, regardless of its effect on the home front. The bizarre reality is, before anything else, to be a senior policemen means accepting that you will have to parrot state policy even when it endangers the citizenry you are supposedly employed to protect. Whatever the UK does abroad, however we make our living, the job of senior policemen is to ignore it and just mop up the consequences. The first priority is to protect the state from the people, not the other way round.
Unfortunately for Sir Ian, the British government has given him a pretty ludicrous script to defend. As always, Tony Blair’s central concern has been to save his own neck. Even at this late stage a gentleman might concede defeat, take it on the jaw. Instead he swings the spotlight onto the perfectly innocent. People who actively opposed his imperialist adventure. People who just happen to look like the bombers, or happen to look Brazilian: “Blame them, not me!”
The unsurprising consequence is a massive increase in violence against innocent British Muslims. The rage and indignation generated by the bombings is hurled at those who had nothing to do with it. Those who created this situation walk free, unhurt, unhindered. Free to plan more raids abroad. And as for national security? Going along with Mr Blair’s fairy story means no end to UK terror campaigns. We just sit and wait for the next bomb. Wasting millions policing tube stations won’t make this problem go away. As long as key public figures won’t face up to the government’s culpability, as long as they are prepared to parrot state propaganda, we citizens will remain at risk.
Monday 18 July 2005
Good reasons not to be terrorised by the London bombings
Rather than the bulldog spirit, or the memory of a blitzkrieg no Londoner under seventy can possibly remember, there are some legitimate and constructive reasons not to be terrorised by the London bombings, at least for the great mass of us lucky enough to have not been directly involved.
The first is only possible for those who opposed the war, and stayed in touch with it’s consequences the whole time. If you’ve been paying attention to what’s been going on since 911, and you weren’t directly effected by the London bombs, then there is a definite limit to how shocked this event could make you. Incidents of this kind will have been plugging away at your conscience every day, and this looks much like any other day. In fact you could say that the degree of grief one can feel as a non-victim is inversely proportional to the amount of attention you’ve paid to the years of savagery that led us here.
It’s difficult for this not come out as indignation, particularly when confronted by other people not directly effected, but who are, nevertheless, genuinely shocked to the core. It’s difficult to hold back. You might end up with a smack in the mouth. What were you doing while Falluja was being razed? Did you grieve this much for the Iraqi wedding party, or were you busy watching Big Brother? No wonder some uninjured Britons are traumatised. For them this really is a bolt from the blue.
It’s one advantage of keeping yourself inoculated with the horrors of the world, I suppose. The next time someone asks you why you read things and watch things that clearly upset you so much, well this is one sound answer. It doesn’t hurt so much or shock so much when the pain and suffering draws closer. You can remain calm and try to discuss how it happened, and how it might be prevented in the future. You have better immunity to government propaganda, you're better prepared to pick your way through their lies. It’s the person who ignores the suffering in faraway places that is mortified by its arrival on these shores. In the long run, it’s them that really get upset.
All said, it is still difficult for even the most sincerely anti-racist, universally compassionate Briton not to feel more shocked by these killing than those abroad. But not for any noble reason. It’s just that we’re not used to concentrated coverage of the consequences of the ‘War on Terror’. The violence our side dishes out isn’t fit for discussion. Iraq’s own ceaseless suicide bombings have become just a detail, low down the running order on the evening news. Just like Vietnam and Ireland before, they’re just a faint repetitious noise in the background. A body count, a concerned expression, and on to the Beckhams.
A good measure of the media’s sincerity is it’s reporting of other atrocities subsequent to July the seventh. Clearly their newly discovered compassion ran out quickly, or was swallowed in one go by the London attack. Every day since has seen comparable horrors in Iraq itself. Will The Independent post a billboard of photographs of the victims faces on its front page? Will each photo be accompanied by eulogies about these peoples lives, their hopes and expectations? Will this mother have the chance to speak of her son’s plans to go to college, or marry in the spring?
The second good reason not to be terrorised is purely statistical, and available to every rational citizen. Unless this is the beginning of a sky-high escalation of attacks (and remember, it wasn’t after 911) you still have far more to fear crossing the road or driving, and the level of potential grief is comparable.
I’ll have to tread very carefully through this minefield. To be clear, I am NOT suggesting that there is moral equivalence between the criminal negligence of reckless drivers, awful as it is, and the psychopathic behaviour of suicide bombers. What I am saying is that from the victim’s perspective there isn’t much difference. To have a loved one torn to pieces in either way creates similar trauma. If you don’t believe me try telling a father who has lost a child in a road accident that his grief is less than if it had been in a terrorist attack. I only ask this rhetorically. I really wouldn’t recommend it.
So if the level of pain and misery induced by each kind of loss is comparable, you can then factor-in likelihood. And of course incidents of road death and injury blow terrorism out of the water, in this country at least. In the UK there are around 3,500 road deaths a year, attended by around 300,000 injuries. Nine deaths a day. Around one London bombing every six days. But of course that’s each and every six day period of the year.
Day in, day out, the infernal combustion engine swats innocent humans like flies. If we should feel frightened by bombs in the UK we should be in perpetual hysterics about road injury. If we feel worried sitting on the tube we should be soiling ourselves going down the motorway. But we don’t. Rightly or wrongly we are all but indifferent to this vastly greater danger, until it actually picks one of us off.
I stress again, I’m not talking morality here, just about likelihood of injury and legitimate states of fear. For this is all about using fear to control people. The power of nightmares. Make no bones about it, there are two groups of terrorists vying to capitalise on this vile deed. The people who organised the bombing, for sure. But equally the state terrorists who lied to us to take us to war, even after being advised in advance that this would be the likely consequence. Tony Blair, Jack Straw and George Bush are well aware what is at stake at this time. The finger of treachery points directly to them.
Our subservient media is doing a fine job helping with the smokescreen. It seems astonishing that we are yet to hear from any victim who opposed the war, and is furious at Tony Blair. I can’t bear to listen to the radio at the moment, but when I catch it the permissible agenda seems to be:
1. This is nothing to do with Iraq.
2. This is a good reason to increase state power, ID cards etc.
3. What’s wrong with Islam?
4. We must work to heal our communities.
Stray from this vacuous agenda and you support the bombers. Any closer analysis is necessarily a justification for what they did. Gavin Esler can muster great offence when George Galloway speaks the truth ‘too soon’ after the event (is it ever to soon to speak the truth?) but Tony Blair, who brought about this tragedy, is given a platform to spin more lies on the very day of the bombing: This is nothing to do with Iraq. Evil ideology. They hate our freedoms.
Quite pathetic. No human would do this for religion alone. Whatever other crankiness the bombers believed an essential part of their ‘brainwashing’ was the truth. Learning what the West was doing to other Muslims, things you won’t see on the BBC. This was an act of intense sickening violence, prompted by intense sickening violence. We should think long and hard about the motives of anyone who tries to tell us different.
George Bush’s success has always been terror, death his lease of life. After a rough couple of months he is now walking proud again, chest puffed out. Terrorism is his oxygen, his soul, his mandate, his gift to the world. We went along with it and now it’s come to back to visit us, and he and Tony Blair hope to make good of it. These people really do hate our freedoms. They hate us questioning their actions. They'd rather we were suspicious of each other. They want us frightened in our beds.
This can’t go on forever. The ‘War on Terror’ must be derailed, sooner rather than later. We must refuse to be terrorised and get thinking. Making innocent British Muslims feel like they’ve done something wrong won’t help. The best way to ‘heal our communities’ is to get out of Iraq and impeach Tony Blair. Perhaps the victims’ families are our best hope. How many of them were on the February 2003 march? How many Rose Gentle’s and Reg Keys’ are stirring from their grief and preparing to confront Mr Blair? We must give them all the support we can.
The first is only possible for those who opposed the war, and stayed in touch with it’s consequences the whole time. If you’ve been paying attention to what’s been going on since 911, and you weren’t directly effected by the London bombs, then there is a definite limit to how shocked this event could make you. Incidents of this kind will have been plugging away at your conscience every day, and this looks much like any other day. In fact you could say that the degree of grief one can feel as a non-victim is inversely proportional to the amount of attention you’ve paid to the years of savagery that led us here.
It’s difficult for this not come out as indignation, particularly when confronted by other people not directly effected, but who are, nevertheless, genuinely shocked to the core. It’s difficult to hold back. You might end up with a smack in the mouth. What were you doing while Falluja was being razed? Did you grieve this much for the Iraqi wedding party, or were you busy watching Big Brother? No wonder some uninjured Britons are traumatised. For them this really is a bolt from the blue.
It’s one advantage of keeping yourself inoculated with the horrors of the world, I suppose. The next time someone asks you why you read things and watch things that clearly upset you so much, well this is one sound answer. It doesn’t hurt so much or shock so much when the pain and suffering draws closer. You can remain calm and try to discuss how it happened, and how it might be prevented in the future. You have better immunity to government propaganda, you're better prepared to pick your way through their lies. It’s the person who ignores the suffering in faraway places that is mortified by its arrival on these shores. In the long run, it’s them that really get upset.
All said, it is still difficult for even the most sincerely anti-racist, universally compassionate Briton not to feel more shocked by these killing than those abroad. But not for any noble reason. It’s just that we’re not used to concentrated coverage of the consequences of the ‘War on Terror’. The violence our side dishes out isn’t fit for discussion. Iraq’s own ceaseless suicide bombings have become just a detail, low down the running order on the evening news. Just like Vietnam and Ireland before, they’re just a faint repetitious noise in the background. A body count, a concerned expression, and on to the Beckhams.
A good measure of the media’s sincerity is it’s reporting of other atrocities subsequent to July the seventh. Clearly their newly discovered compassion ran out quickly, or was swallowed in one go by the London attack. Every day since has seen comparable horrors in Iraq itself. Will The Independent post a billboard of photographs of the victims faces on its front page? Will each photo be accompanied by eulogies about these peoples lives, their hopes and expectations? Will this mother have the chance to speak of her son’s plans to go to college, or marry in the spring?
The second good reason not to be terrorised is purely statistical, and available to every rational citizen. Unless this is the beginning of a sky-high escalation of attacks (and remember, it wasn’t after 911) you still have far more to fear crossing the road or driving, and the level of potential grief is comparable.
I’ll have to tread very carefully through this minefield. To be clear, I am NOT suggesting that there is moral equivalence between the criminal negligence of reckless drivers, awful as it is, and the psychopathic behaviour of suicide bombers. What I am saying is that from the victim’s perspective there isn’t much difference. To have a loved one torn to pieces in either way creates similar trauma. If you don’t believe me try telling a father who has lost a child in a road accident that his grief is less than if it had been in a terrorist attack. I only ask this rhetorically. I really wouldn’t recommend it.
So if the level of pain and misery induced by each kind of loss is comparable, you can then factor-in likelihood. And of course incidents of road death and injury blow terrorism out of the water, in this country at least. In the UK there are around 3,500 road deaths a year, attended by around 300,000 injuries. Nine deaths a day. Around one London bombing every six days. But of course that’s each and every six day period of the year.
Day in, day out, the infernal combustion engine swats innocent humans like flies. If we should feel frightened by bombs in the UK we should be in perpetual hysterics about road injury. If we feel worried sitting on the tube we should be soiling ourselves going down the motorway. But we don’t. Rightly or wrongly we are all but indifferent to this vastly greater danger, until it actually picks one of us off.
I stress again, I’m not talking morality here, just about likelihood of injury and legitimate states of fear. For this is all about using fear to control people. The power of nightmares. Make no bones about it, there are two groups of terrorists vying to capitalise on this vile deed. The people who organised the bombing, for sure. But equally the state terrorists who lied to us to take us to war, even after being advised in advance that this would be the likely consequence. Tony Blair, Jack Straw and George Bush are well aware what is at stake at this time. The finger of treachery points directly to them.
Our subservient media is doing a fine job helping with the smokescreen. It seems astonishing that we are yet to hear from any victim who opposed the war, and is furious at Tony Blair. I can’t bear to listen to the radio at the moment, but when I catch it the permissible agenda seems to be:
1. This is nothing to do with Iraq.
2. This is a good reason to increase state power, ID cards etc.
3. What’s wrong with Islam?
4. We must work to heal our communities.
Stray from this vacuous agenda and you support the bombers. Any closer analysis is necessarily a justification for what they did. Gavin Esler can muster great offence when George Galloway speaks the truth ‘too soon’ after the event (is it ever to soon to speak the truth?) but Tony Blair, who brought about this tragedy, is given a platform to spin more lies on the very day of the bombing: This is nothing to do with Iraq. Evil ideology. They hate our freedoms.
Quite pathetic. No human would do this for religion alone. Whatever other crankiness the bombers believed an essential part of their ‘brainwashing’ was the truth. Learning what the West was doing to other Muslims, things you won’t see on the BBC. This was an act of intense sickening violence, prompted by intense sickening violence. We should think long and hard about the motives of anyone who tries to tell us different.
George Bush’s success has always been terror, death his lease of life. After a rough couple of months he is now walking proud again, chest puffed out. Terrorism is his oxygen, his soul, his mandate, his gift to the world. We went along with it and now it’s come to back to visit us, and he and Tony Blair hope to make good of it. These people really do hate our freedoms. They hate us questioning their actions. They'd rather we were suspicious of each other. They want us frightened in our beds.
This can’t go on forever. The ‘War on Terror’ must be derailed, sooner rather than later. We must refuse to be terrorised and get thinking. Making innocent British Muslims feel like they’ve done something wrong won’t help. The best way to ‘heal our communities’ is to get out of Iraq and impeach Tony Blair. Perhaps the victims’ families are our best hope. How many of them were on the February 2003 march? How many Rose Gentle’s and Reg Keys’ are stirring from their grief and preparing to confront Mr Blair? We must give them all the support we can.
Friday 8 July 2005
The End of Tony Blair
He lied to take us to war. He was advised that terror at home would be the likely consequence but he just pushed his lies harder. Clearly it wasn't us he was worried about. It was politics, oil and power.
Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been slaughtered and now dozens of British corpses have been thrown on the pile. True, Blair did not plant these bombs, but it's equally certain that without his lies and meglomania this would not have happened.
When the dust and blood settles he must be brought to book. As always, he will try to turn his self-made disaster into a personal asset. Already people are talking defensively, about this making ID cards easier to push through.
There will be many voices in the media trying to distract us and drown out the obvious conclusion. This must be countered. The message is simple. British involvement in the "War on Terror" stops here.
Blair out! Troops out!
Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been slaughtered and now dozens of British corpses have been thrown on the pile. True, Blair did not plant these bombs, but it's equally certain that without his lies and meglomania this would not have happened.
When the dust and blood settles he must be brought to book. As always, he will try to turn his self-made disaster into a personal asset. Already people are talking defensively, about this making ID cards easier to push through.
There will be many voices in the media trying to distract us and drown out the obvious conclusion. This must be countered. The message is simple. British involvement in the "War on Terror" stops here.
Blair out! Troops out!
Thursday 7 July 2005
A good seven years to bury bad news
Two posts back I suggested that people often like to pretend they like something for one reason, when it fact it’s for another. London’s successful Olympic bid seems set to break records for this kind of evasion. I’ve already heard the defining one, the shield that will be raised time and again: The Olympics is a glorious exciting sporting event, adored by those who participate and those who watch.
There, said it. And as it happens I quite agree. It is all those things, and a great many Britons will be chuffed for no more cynical reason than that. But aside from that there are a mass of other issues of good and bad thrown up by this selection, quite unrelated to the subject of sport.
For Tony Blair and David Beckham it’s good in terms of personal PR. Both narcissus and war criminal are attracted by the good it does their public image to be associated with this victory (though of course they’ll tell us it’s all about the glory of sport.)
Indeed for Blair this is a godsend in a many ways. A great patriotic distraction from a the quagmire of Iraq, and the recent, unequivocal proof of his deceit. Certainly, he’ll love the footage of healthy multi-ethnic Britain competing as one big happy family. He’ll appreciate the way it wrong-foots his critics, and distorts the critical abilities of the public at large: How bad can Britain’s role be in the world when we all get on so well here? Fingers crossed, British people will feel that bit better about themselves, at a time when his actions might have left them feeling angry, ashamed and politicised.
McDonalds will be happy, McAlpine will be happy, Coca-Cola will be cock-a-hoop. A mass of multinationals will be delighted. But it won’t be about the high jump or the women’s 400 metres.
The controllers of BBC news will certainly be chuffed. Makes their lives a lot easier. It’s must have been hard to keep a lid on Falluja and the Downing Street memos these past few months. Without poor Geldof kissing hands with the war criminals in question, and comforting myths about future G8 benevolence, there might have been space for some news. But now the opportunities are endless. Seven years of meaningless success and failure to draw upon. The only excuse needed? It’s all just about the glory of sport.
There, said it. And as it happens I quite agree. It is all those things, and a great many Britons will be chuffed for no more cynical reason than that. But aside from that there are a mass of other issues of good and bad thrown up by this selection, quite unrelated to the subject of sport.
For Tony Blair and David Beckham it’s good in terms of personal PR. Both narcissus and war criminal are attracted by the good it does their public image to be associated with this victory (though of course they’ll tell us it’s all about the glory of sport.)
Indeed for Blair this is a godsend in a many ways. A great patriotic distraction from a the quagmire of Iraq, and the recent, unequivocal proof of his deceit. Certainly, he’ll love the footage of healthy multi-ethnic Britain competing as one big happy family. He’ll appreciate the way it wrong-foots his critics, and distorts the critical abilities of the public at large: How bad can Britain’s role be in the world when we all get on so well here? Fingers crossed, British people will feel that bit better about themselves, at a time when his actions might have left them feeling angry, ashamed and politicised.
McDonalds will be happy, McAlpine will be happy, Coca-Cola will be cock-a-hoop. A mass of multinationals will be delighted. But it won’t be about the high jump or the women’s 400 metres.
The controllers of BBC news will certainly be chuffed. Makes their lives a lot easier. It’s must have been hard to keep a lid on Falluja and the Downing Street memos these past few months. Without poor Geldof kissing hands with the war criminals in question, and comforting myths about future G8 benevolence, there might have been space for some news. But now the opportunities are endless. Seven years of meaningless success and failure to draw upon. The only excuse needed? It’s all just about the glory of sport.
Monday 4 July 2005
Mind trumps muscle
It’s commonly understood that might is right. No matter how clever you are someone physically stronger will call the shots. The final say goes to muscles and weapons, not minds.
Although there is some truth in this, it’s actually a very distorted picture of how things generally work. It really only applies in isolation. It’s perfectly true that if a big person wants to overpower a smaller person they can. A suitably sized playground bully or robber or bouncer or soldier or policeman will prevail. At that exact instant might is right. But if you pan out a bit it doesn’t hold. In the case of the last three potential assailants they are, to coin a phrase, only acting on orders. Those orders usually come from people who never get their hands dirty, let alone bloody. The source of their violence is a command or a law, the product of a mind.
Of course such servants may actually stray from their orders and start acting violently above and beyond the call of duty. But in that case they themselves would be subject to discipline, much like the thief and the playground bully. Laws, more products of thought, would be invoked to subdue them. And if they continued to disobey, other public servants would be employed to physically coerce them. In this sense at least, the pen is mightier than the sword. It commands the sword.
Much of the attraction of democratic society is its ability to level this particular playing field. A healthy meritocratic society has to be one where minds can discuss things and compete with each other fairly, economically and intellectually, without the threat of superior physical strength. Even the most hardened conservative would agree. The state exists primarily so we can all do business and blossom, to the best of our abilities. It’s there to stop bullies and thieves stealing our honest gains. (Back in the real world of course…)
In fact, even at the level of the individual a mind never takes a lead from its own fists. Even here it’s the mind doing the violence, even if it is using its body to carry it out. You can’t blame muscles for the signals they’re sent. They can’t control the mind, the mind has complete control over them. Contrary to common belief, the real bottom line is, mind trumps muscle.
Although there is some truth in this, it’s actually a very distorted picture of how things generally work. It really only applies in isolation. It’s perfectly true that if a big person wants to overpower a smaller person they can. A suitably sized playground bully or robber or bouncer or soldier or policeman will prevail. At that exact instant might is right. But if you pan out a bit it doesn’t hold. In the case of the last three potential assailants they are, to coin a phrase, only acting on orders. Those orders usually come from people who never get their hands dirty, let alone bloody. The source of their violence is a command or a law, the product of a mind.
Of course such servants may actually stray from their orders and start acting violently above and beyond the call of duty. But in that case they themselves would be subject to discipline, much like the thief and the playground bully. Laws, more products of thought, would be invoked to subdue them. And if they continued to disobey, other public servants would be employed to physically coerce them. In this sense at least, the pen is mightier than the sword. It commands the sword.
Much of the attraction of democratic society is its ability to level this particular playing field. A healthy meritocratic society has to be one where minds can discuss things and compete with each other fairly, economically and intellectually, without the threat of superior physical strength. Even the most hardened conservative would agree. The state exists primarily so we can all do business and blossom, to the best of our abilities. It’s there to stop bullies and thieves stealing our honest gains. (Back in the real world of course…)
In fact, even at the level of the individual a mind never takes a lead from its own fists. Even here it’s the mind doing the violence, even if it is using its body to carry it out. You can’t blame muscles for the signals they’re sent. They can’t control the mind, the mind has complete control over them. Contrary to common belief, the real bottom line is, mind trumps muscle.
Tuesday 28 June 2005
Different Goods
Different Goods
There are several quite distinct types of good and bad. There’s good in terms of utility, well suited or well made, then good as in enjoyable or beautiful, the aesthetic kind of good. And of course there’s the moral meaning of good, good and bad behaviour, right and wrong, the ethical good. Of course they’re not mutually exclusive. You could judge, say, the writing of Dickens to be good on all three counts. You might find it beautiful, well made and moral. And there’s even some potential for cross-over. You might see beauty in its morality, or beauty in the way it has been crafted. Nevertheless, such judgement must be rooted in something. Things can’t just be good per se. They must be good in one or more senses of good.
For a variety of reasons humans often like to muddle up these different ‘goods’. We like to tell ourselves we like something for one reason when in fact it’s for another. Some teachers praise the skills or virtues of certain students when in fact they just have a crush on them. Some drinkers refer to some of their drinks as ‘medicinal’ suggesting both moral and practical good, when in fact it’s just good old aesthetic good being pursued, as usual. Some pundits tell us that they support Bush’s ‘War on terror’ because it is a virtuous crusade, when in fact they are just worried that the current system of inequality is under threat. The protection of material luxury, aesthetic good, masquerading as saving the world, virtuous good.
There’s certainly money to be made through this kind of misunderstanding. When I first heard Samantha Fox’s Touch me I told one of my Romford mates how awful it was. “What? So you wouldn’t then?” he replied. It’s a great trick. What are you supposed to say? It’s a completely different subject. But then he hadn’t meant to be facetious. It was the record company’s express intention to blur the two. Never mind the noise, look at the chest.
Stranger still, some people like to paint their favourite forms of entertainment as virtuous. They might tell themselves that travelling in Asia, or smoking dope, or listening to The Clash are active political behaviours, rather than simple pleasures. Usually it’s quite transparent. When people say that a football match was good it’s clear they can only mean good in an entertaining sense, not good in a moral sense. Exasperating as some fanatics might find it, it is only a game. For all the overblown oratory it remains at best entertaining, never righteous. The England world cup win in ‘66 was no moral victory. Regardless of how important this event remains to many Englanders, it really was just some blokes kicking a ball around for a couple of hours.
However, some forms of entertainment do garner astonishing success in managing to pass themselves off as virtuous. Novels and dramas are considered by many to be highly cerebral, highly self-bettering. Radio Four and a multitude of film clubs and book circles push this line, and I used to too. I used to think watching Boy’s from the Black Stuff was a political act, rather than a passive pleasure. I used to tell my self that Scum was an important social document when, like the rest of my peers, I was just titillated by the brutality.
Whatever the moral worth of Brecht or Pinter, the fact remains that most of the material the wittering classes witter about is either morally worthless or downright degenerate. All soap operas and the vast majority of films and novels are pure entertainments, made by people who care not one jot as to the moral impact of their work. It’s just bums on seats. But to listen to the critics you wouldn’t know it. Ms Greer and Mr Parsons seem to see a profound importance in their outpourings, as they deftly probe the minds and lives of non-existent people, all churned out by other great sages to keep their own pots boiling.
Just the same, being a snob, I do think that Radio Three listeners are engaging in a culturally more worthwhile pursuit than those who listen to Radio One, daytime at any rate. But at the end of the day we’re all only in it for the aesthetics. Like football, music’s essentially about pleasure. It’s always a stretch to call it virtuous. We listen because it pleases us, not because it helps others.
Once we clear-up these differences and admit to our real motives an important question arises: What priority should we place on each of these kind of good? Shouldn’t aesthetic good always take second place to ethical good? A morally scrupulous type might say so. They might argue that as long as there is a single hungry child in the world we should forgo all other material pleasures. No beer until everyone has water. No filet mignon until everyone has a bowl of rice. It’s an horrific thought, at least to hedonists, not least because it sounds like the only decent thing to do. Then, thankfully, the other arguments roll in.
For one, practicality. A life without some luxury looks boring, so few people would actually participate. You could even read moral worth into this. Without some pleasure we lose our humanity, become automata. In consequence we may become even less likely to want to assist others. I once heard Terence Conran (I think) use an argument of this kind to defend arts funding. Yes, if we sold all our national treasures then perhaps we could eliminate all NHS waiting lists. But what’s the point in being healthy when there’s no art to enjoy?
But of course that’s an extreme example. At the moment the scales are tipped firmly, and dangerously, in favour of aesthetics. We in the west seem intent on pleasuring ourselves to death. Through a heinous mix of advertising and decades of right wing governance we’ve been trained to think of our pleasures as necessities, rights. We’ve been trained to treat morality with suspicion, a deviation from the true path of greed. For the sake of profit we’ve been encouraged to forsake duty.
Worse still, many of the ‘rights’ we declare for ourselves are the very things that lead to both ethical problems and to unhappiness for the supposed beneficiaries: Our right to drink all day, our right to cheap petrol, cheap food, cheap clothes, cheap air travel. Our right to twenty-four hour television, 4x4s, gambling, hard-core pornography. The very things that are killing us and creating misery for others have become things we’d be honoured to die for. One way or another the scales do need re-calibrating .
There are several quite distinct types of good and bad. There’s good in terms of utility, well suited or well made, then good as in enjoyable or beautiful, the aesthetic kind of good. And of course there’s the moral meaning of good, good and bad behaviour, right and wrong, the ethical good. Of course they’re not mutually exclusive. You could judge, say, the writing of Dickens to be good on all three counts. You might find it beautiful, well made and moral. And there’s even some potential for cross-over. You might see beauty in its morality, or beauty in the way it has been crafted. Nevertheless, such judgement must be rooted in something. Things can’t just be good per se. They must be good in one or more senses of good.
For a variety of reasons humans often like to muddle up these different ‘goods’. We like to tell ourselves we like something for one reason when in fact it’s for another. Some teachers praise the skills or virtues of certain students when in fact they just have a crush on them. Some drinkers refer to some of their drinks as ‘medicinal’ suggesting both moral and practical good, when in fact it’s just good old aesthetic good being pursued, as usual. Some pundits tell us that they support Bush’s ‘War on terror’ because it is a virtuous crusade, when in fact they are just worried that the current system of inequality is under threat. The protection of material luxury, aesthetic good, masquerading as saving the world, virtuous good.
There’s certainly money to be made through this kind of misunderstanding. When I first heard Samantha Fox’s Touch me I told one of my Romford mates how awful it was. “What? So you wouldn’t then?” he replied. It’s a great trick. What are you supposed to say? It’s a completely different subject. But then he hadn’t meant to be facetious. It was the record company’s express intention to blur the two. Never mind the noise, look at the chest.
Stranger still, some people like to paint their favourite forms of entertainment as virtuous. They might tell themselves that travelling in Asia, or smoking dope, or listening to The Clash are active political behaviours, rather than simple pleasures. Usually it’s quite transparent. When people say that a football match was good it’s clear they can only mean good in an entertaining sense, not good in a moral sense. Exasperating as some fanatics might find it, it is only a game. For all the overblown oratory it remains at best entertaining, never righteous. The England world cup win in ‘66 was no moral victory. Regardless of how important this event remains to many Englanders, it really was just some blokes kicking a ball around for a couple of hours.
However, some forms of entertainment do garner astonishing success in managing to pass themselves off as virtuous. Novels and dramas are considered by many to be highly cerebral, highly self-bettering. Radio Four and a multitude of film clubs and book circles push this line, and I used to too. I used to think watching Boy’s from the Black Stuff was a political act, rather than a passive pleasure. I used to tell my self that Scum was an important social document when, like the rest of my peers, I was just titillated by the brutality.
Whatever the moral worth of Brecht or Pinter, the fact remains that most of the material the wittering classes witter about is either morally worthless or downright degenerate. All soap operas and the vast majority of films and novels are pure entertainments, made by people who care not one jot as to the moral impact of their work. It’s just bums on seats. But to listen to the critics you wouldn’t know it. Ms Greer and Mr Parsons seem to see a profound importance in their outpourings, as they deftly probe the minds and lives of non-existent people, all churned out by other great sages to keep their own pots boiling.
Just the same, being a snob, I do think that Radio Three listeners are engaging in a culturally more worthwhile pursuit than those who listen to Radio One, daytime at any rate. But at the end of the day we’re all only in it for the aesthetics. Like football, music’s essentially about pleasure. It’s always a stretch to call it virtuous. We listen because it pleases us, not because it helps others.
Once we clear-up these differences and admit to our real motives an important question arises: What priority should we place on each of these kind of good? Shouldn’t aesthetic good always take second place to ethical good? A morally scrupulous type might say so. They might argue that as long as there is a single hungry child in the world we should forgo all other material pleasures. No beer until everyone has water. No filet mignon until everyone has a bowl of rice. It’s an horrific thought, at least to hedonists, not least because it sounds like the only decent thing to do. Then, thankfully, the other arguments roll in.
For one, practicality. A life without some luxury looks boring, so few people would actually participate. You could even read moral worth into this. Without some pleasure we lose our humanity, become automata. In consequence we may become even less likely to want to assist others. I once heard Terence Conran (I think) use an argument of this kind to defend arts funding. Yes, if we sold all our national treasures then perhaps we could eliminate all NHS waiting lists. But what’s the point in being healthy when there’s no art to enjoy?
But of course that’s an extreme example. At the moment the scales are tipped firmly, and dangerously, in favour of aesthetics. We in the west seem intent on pleasuring ourselves to death. Through a heinous mix of advertising and decades of right wing governance we’ve been trained to think of our pleasures as necessities, rights. We’ve been trained to treat morality with suspicion, a deviation from the true path of greed. For the sake of profit we’ve been encouraged to forsake duty.
Worse still, many of the ‘rights’ we declare for ourselves are the very things that lead to both ethical problems and to unhappiness for the supposed beneficiaries: Our right to drink all day, our right to cheap petrol, cheap food, cheap clothes, cheap air travel. Our right to twenty-four hour television, 4x4s, gambling, hard-core pornography. The very things that are killing us and creating misery for others have become things we’d be honoured to die for. One way or another the scales do need re-calibrating .
Friday 10 June 2005
The difference between the tragedy of war and the outrage of terrorism
The difference between the tragedy of war and the outrage of terrorism
From Harry’s Place, May 17th:
"War and Terrorism
In the midst of some pretty rank letters responding to Madeleine Bunting's article on suicide bombers, someone points out what should be the obvious:
In the muddle linking terrorist suicide bombings with, variously, Soviet and Japanese pilots ramming military targets during the second world war and Christian and Buddhist martyrdom that risked no one else's lives, Ms Bunting misses the reason why such suicide bombings are morally revolting - namely, the intentional slaughter of people who are not legitimate targets of war. Our feelings of horror and moral revulsion do not arise from the means employed, but the targeting of the innocent.
David Guberman
Newton, Massachusetts
Which is why this point in another letter is so wrong:
Is the loss of life due to suicide bombings in Iraq really more shocking than the slaughter in Falluja?
Yes it is.
As David Guberman said: the intentional slaughter of people who are not legitimate targets of war ie innocent civilians, is the difference between the tragedy of war and the outrage of terrorism.
Posted by Harry at 08:31 AM" (His Emphasis)
As I said in '911v Hiroshima', many westerners juggle a very tricky paradox. Like any decent human, they want to make an unequivocal declaration that the taking of innocent human life is wrong, yet at the same time they feel compelled to excuse it in certain circumstances. They’re so besotted with the system that guarantees their own freedom and standard of living that they can’t bring themselves to condemn its acts of savagery. Too much to lose. Through that loophole perhaps a hundred thousand innocent Iraqis have fallen.
The above quote is a good case in point. As uneasy bedfellows, we start with visceral condemnation of the killing of civilians, quite unequivocal, but end in a more ‘statesmanly’ tone, referring to some sort of noble caveat called ‘war’. Clearly the author believes there’s a state of conflict called war which transforms the moral landscape. In a state of war the outrage of killing civilians can become downgraded to mere tragedy. Let’s see what this might mean.
It’s a familiar enough idea, and until you think about it it’s quite hard to argue against: Sometimes the aim of a war can be noble and necessary enough to justify the incidental death of civilians. Sometimes you have to have to kill a few to save the many.
Whatever the universal morality of this idea, the only way it could possibly be moral in action is if certain conditions are met. Firstly, is the aim of the war moral enough to justify these deaths? Righteous warfare can’t just mean any old military objective. You can’t kill civilians just to secure oil supplies, or to terrorise neighbouring countries, heaven forbid. If war is to have some righteous meaning beyond terrorism then it must aim to save lives, and defend freedom. Secondly, before you act you have to ask, is the killing of these civilians the only means of securing your supposed higher goal? Couldn’t you do something else to meet your objective that doesn’t involve killing civilians?
I don’t know whether Harry would endorse the bombing of Hiroshima as a legitimate tactical strategy of its time. Hopefully he’d be horrified at the suggestion. Hiroshima was a clear-cut case of mass-murder. I don’t think anyone would bother arguing it now (though they still did when I was a kid.) To vaporise a city then suggest the dead were collateral to a greater objective is a sick joke. What possible moral objective would justify such an act? What possible horror was prevented, greater than the one carried out?
Problem is, the Coventration of Falluja is a similar case. In terms of ideals, and saving other lives, how did flattening that city help? There was no population with a gun at it’s head that now sleeps safer. Everything’s worse than ever. And as for the second question! Was there nothing else the US could have done? Perhaps they could’ve not flattened Falluja, not tortured detainees, not invaded Iraq and not installed Saddam in the first place? Then they wouldn’t have needed to even consider flattening Falluja. That terrible question would never have arisen.
The second ‘difference’ the correspondent isolates is the deliberate targeting of civilians as the mark of terror rather than war. The implicit argument: However brutal US soldiers might be in Iraq their brutality is only a side-effect of their military objectives. Terrorists on the other hand deliberately set out to maim, and do so for no better reason than getting their political opinion across. They don’t kill while taking a town, they just kill people in the town. All for the sake of publicity, just as propaganda for their cause.
To point out that it has been the US and its clients that have specialised in exactly this sort of operation (for a higher cause, naturally) seems too passé to repeat. It’s all well documented and available to read. Instead let’s take the principle on face value. First, isn’t it the most banal obviousness that when the occupied party in a conflict decides to act violently it will choose psychological rather than conventional military goals? The poor and oppressed don’t have conventional weapons to fight with, they can’t hope to ‘take the town’. If they are to act violently it’s bound to be for publicity’s sake, and bound to target those people they have access to.
Whereas state terror is often the actual means by which people are subjugated and repressed retail terror is usually conducted for the sake of publicity. US war crimes in Falluja are the direct means of gaining control of the city. While they do also hope to terrorise dissenting Iraqis into submission, the last thing they want is for those crimes to be filmed and reported outside. American soldiers perpetrate war crimes for the sake of stealing oil, not to change world opinion. Film of their crimes is a PR disaster. On the other hand, retail terrorism, that of the suicide bomber or online executioner is all about propaganda. The aim is not to kill and steal as quietly as you can, but to be as revolting as possible, as publicly as possible. Which is worse? Damned if I could say.
And besides, this selective repugnance is completely feigned. Whatever means an official enemy uses, it’s always going to be wrong. It’s always going to be emblematic of how evil they are and we aren’t. If the IRA had been militarily strong enough to take the north by force are we supposed to believe that the Daily Express would have looked at them more sympathetically? If the PLO did get hold of some tanks and started pushing Israel out of the occupied territories would they get a better write up in the Jerusalem Post?
And finally, this line:
“Is the loss of life due to suicide bombings in Iraq really more shocking than the slaughter in Falluja?
Yes it is.”
In a very literal sense I suppose he’s right. For the majority of western people suicide bombings are more shocking than the razing of Falluja. But that’s only because Falluja goes unreported. If people had the chance to see and hear what’s been going on there I’m sure they would be just as shocked and appalled.
But in the sense he means it, then well sorry, no, it isn’t. As an individual human looking at the world I defend my right to say that I am no more shocked by one or the other. Is it more terrible to blow civilians away for propaganda than for direct military objectives? From the victims perspective I doubt it. Is it easier to cope with the death of your child in the knowledge that the aim of the killers was to take a town, rather than awaken minds to a cause? If you lost your legs in a conventional war, would it provide comfort to know that it was only a collateral consequence rather than the specific aim of your attackers? I don’t think I’d give a damn.
Moreover, when it comes to depravity, which shocks you more? Brutalised, dirt poor Palestinians using improvised explosives to wipe out scores of innocent civilians, or well educated American college kids (so well educated they think Saddam was behind 9-11) using hi-tech weapons to wipe out thousands of innocent civilians? Or how about real-life Beavis and Butthead in an F-16, shouting “boom!” as they fire, and giggling as thirty faint images evaporate from their screen – “Oh, Dude!”. Is that less shocking, less depraved, than a stolen car filled with Semtex? It’s one of the most shocking things I’ve ever seen.
Belsen, Palestine, Falluja, Dresden, there’s no moral distinction, only differences of scale. Humanity at its worst. The most brutal, stupid, vicious of human acts. Yet for some commentators some infanticides are more justifiable than others. That’s the leg pull. It’s Harry and pals who are inconsistent. It’s they that can’t uphold their morality across the board. It’s they who have to excuse some of these acts, because of their other loyalties.
From Harry’s Place, May 17th:
"War and Terrorism
In the midst of some pretty rank letters responding to Madeleine Bunting's article on suicide bombers, someone points out what should be the obvious:
In the muddle linking terrorist suicide bombings with, variously, Soviet and Japanese pilots ramming military targets during the second world war and Christian and Buddhist martyrdom that risked no one else's lives, Ms Bunting misses the reason why such suicide bombings are morally revolting - namely, the intentional slaughter of people who are not legitimate targets of war. Our feelings of horror and moral revulsion do not arise from the means employed, but the targeting of the innocent.
David Guberman
Newton, Massachusetts
Which is why this point in another letter is so wrong:
Is the loss of life due to suicide bombings in Iraq really more shocking than the slaughter in Falluja?
Yes it is.
As David Guberman said: the intentional slaughter of people who are not legitimate targets of war ie innocent civilians, is the difference between the tragedy of war and the outrage of terrorism.
Posted by Harry at 08:31 AM" (His Emphasis)
As I said in '911v Hiroshima', many westerners juggle a very tricky paradox. Like any decent human, they want to make an unequivocal declaration that the taking of innocent human life is wrong, yet at the same time they feel compelled to excuse it in certain circumstances. They’re so besotted with the system that guarantees their own freedom and standard of living that they can’t bring themselves to condemn its acts of savagery. Too much to lose. Through that loophole perhaps a hundred thousand innocent Iraqis have fallen.
The above quote is a good case in point. As uneasy bedfellows, we start with visceral condemnation of the killing of civilians, quite unequivocal, but end in a more ‘statesmanly’ tone, referring to some sort of noble caveat called ‘war’. Clearly the author believes there’s a state of conflict called war which transforms the moral landscape. In a state of war the outrage of killing civilians can become downgraded to mere tragedy. Let’s see what this might mean.
It’s a familiar enough idea, and until you think about it it’s quite hard to argue against: Sometimes the aim of a war can be noble and necessary enough to justify the incidental death of civilians. Sometimes you have to have to kill a few to save the many.
Whatever the universal morality of this idea, the only way it could possibly be moral in action is if certain conditions are met. Firstly, is the aim of the war moral enough to justify these deaths? Righteous warfare can’t just mean any old military objective. You can’t kill civilians just to secure oil supplies, or to terrorise neighbouring countries, heaven forbid. If war is to have some righteous meaning beyond terrorism then it must aim to save lives, and defend freedom. Secondly, before you act you have to ask, is the killing of these civilians the only means of securing your supposed higher goal? Couldn’t you do something else to meet your objective that doesn’t involve killing civilians?
I don’t know whether Harry would endorse the bombing of Hiroshima as a legitimate tactical strategy of its time. Hopefully he’d be horrified at the suggestion. Hiroshima was a clear-cut case of mass-murder. I don’t think anyone would bother arguing it now (though they still did when I was a kid.) To vaporise a city then suggest the dead were collateral to a greater objective is a sick joke. What possible moral objective would justify such an act? What possible horror was prevented, greater than the one carried out?
Problem is, the Coventration of Falluja is a similar case. In terms of ideals, and saving other lives, how did flattening that city help? There was no population with a gun at it’s head that now sleeps safer. Everything’s worse than ever. And as for the second question! Was there nothing else the US could have done? Perhaps they could’ve not flattened Falluja, not tortured detainees, not invaded Iraq and not installed Saddam in the first place? Then they wouldn’t have needed to even consider flattening Falluja. That terrible question would never have arisen.
The second ‘difference’ the correspondent isolates is the deliberate targeting of civilians as the mark of terror rather than war. The implicit argument: However brutal US soldiers might be in Iraq their brutality is only a side-effect of their military objectives. Terrorists on the other hand deliberately set out to maim, and do so for no better reason than getting their political opinion across. They don’t kill while taking a town, they just kill people in the town. All for the sake of publicity, just as propaganda for their cause.
To point out that it has been the US and its clients that have specialised in exactly this sort of operation (for a higher cause, naturally) seems too passé to repeat. It’s all well documented and available to read. Instead let’s take the principle on face value. First, isn’t it the most banal obviousness that when the occupied party in a conflict decides to act violently it will choose psychological rather than conventional military goals? The poor and oppressed don’t have conventional weapons to fight with, they can’t hope to ‘take the town’. If they are to act violently it’s bound to be for publicity’s sake, and bound to target those people they have access to.
Whereas state terror is often the actual means by which people are subjugated and repressed retail terror is usually conducted for the sake of publicity. US war crimes in Falluja are the direct means of gaining control of the city. While they do also hope to terrorise dissenting Iraqis into submission, the last thing they want is for those crimes to be filmed and reported outside. American soldiers perpetrate war crimes for the sake of stealing oil, not to change world opinion. Film of their crimes is a PR disaster. On the other hand, retail terrorism, that of the suicide bomber or online executioner is all about propaganda. The aim is not to kill and steal as quietly as you can, but to be as revolting as possible, as publicly as possible. Which is worse? Damned if I could say.
And besides, this selective repugnance is completely feigned. Whatever means an official enemy uses, it’s always going to be wrong. It’s always going to be emblematic of how evil they are and we aren’t. If the IRA had been militarily strong enough to take the north by force are we supposed to believe that the Daily Express would have looked at them more sympathetically? If the PLO did get hold of some tanks and started pushing Israel out of the occupied territories would they get a better write up in the Jerusalem Post?
And finally, this line:
“Is the loss of life due to suicide bombings in Iraq really more shocking than the slaughter in Falluja?
Yes it is.”
In a very literal sense I suppose he’s right. For the majority of western people suicide bombings are more shocking than the razing of Falluja. But that’s only because Falluja goes unreported. If people had the chance to see and hear what’s been going on there I’m sure they would be just as shocked and appalled.
But in the sense he means it, then well sorry, no, it isn’t. As an individual human looking at the world I defend my right to say that I am no more shocked by one or the other. Is it more terrible to blow civilians away for propaganda than for direct military objectives? From the victims perspective I doubt it. Is it easier to cope with the death of your child in the knowledge that the aim of the killers was to take a town, rather than awaken minds to a cause? If you lost your legs in a conventional war, would it provide comfort to know that it was only a collateral consequence rather than the specific aim of your attackers? I don’t think I’d give a damn.
Moreover, when it comes to depravity, which shocks you more? Brutalised, dirt poor Palestinians using improvised explosives to wipe out scores of innocent civilians, or well educated American college kids (so well educated they think Saddam was behind 9-11) using hi-tech weapons to wipe out thousands of innocent civilians? Or how about real-life Beavis and Butthead in an F-16, shouting “boom!” as they fire, and giggling as thirty faint images evaporate from their screen – “Oh, Dude!”. Is that less shocking, less depraved, than a stolen car filled with Semtex? It’s one of the most shocking things I’ve ever seen.
Belsen, Palestine, Falluja, Dresden, there’s no moral distinction, only differences of scale. Humanity at its worst. The most brutal, stupid, vicious of human acts. Yet for some commentators some infanticides are more justifiable than others. That’s the leg pull. It’s Harry and pals who are inconsistent. It’s they that can’t uphold their morality across the board. It’s they who have to excuse some of these acts, because of their other loyalties.
Wednesday 25 May 2005
Hoodies: New Paedophiles for Summer ’05
Hoodies: New Paedophiles for Summer ’05
In the Seventies Stuart Hall and some other social theorists produced an excellent study of the media’s role in generating convenient social panic (called Policing the Crisis.) Believe it or not, rather than paedophiles, car-jackers, motorway rapists or joy riders, the term making its UK debut was ‘muggers’. Mugging, the authors pointed out, was just a groovy new term for a very old crime. Theft involving personal assault had been around as long as civil society. The only novel thing was the term mugging, imported from the States.
Mugging certainly is a powerful word, so much it’s become the defining term for that type of crime. Just as a noise, it works well. It sounds a bit like slugging, possibly with a cosh, or maybe being smothered by having a mug pushed over your face, or perhaps a po. More than anything though, as the authors suggest, it’s favoured because it implies that the attacker considers the victim of the crime to be a mug. Such a depraved outlook is a useful media tool, even if it rarely is the case. It makes thieves all the more evil and incomprehensible, more frightening for sure. You can imagine them all gathering in snooker halls at the end of the day, to smoke cigars and laugh at how stupid we all are.
I was mugged at knifepoint on Copacabana beach, a revolting experience that returned in flashes for weeks, so I am no friend of such people. However, the seventeen year old who did it didn’t look very pleased with himself. He may have spent that evening doing coke, or he may have spent it with his mother and father in one of a million corrugated shacks on the hillside beyond the hotels, but I’ll bet he didn’t spend it laughing about me.
Like muggers, those labelled ‘hoodies’ dish out an archaic form of unpleasantness. I can’t say whether sadistic child-on-child violence is on the increase, but it’s always been there to some degree. There’s always a section of youth disturbed enough to enjoy gratuitous violence. Certainly was at my school and certainly still is. If it does vary in degree I’m sure economics has far more to do with it than jogging-tops. (My brother recalls that it was leather biker jackets that got you barred when he was a lad. Hell’s Angels, the lot of them.)
One might doubt the sincerity of the media at such times. You have to ask, if such blitzkriegs actually work, then isn’t it irresponsible for them ever to stop? Moreover, aren’t we risking countless other social evils by not concentrating on them just as intensely? What are the paedophiles getting up to now The Sun has taken its eye off their balls? Should we expect an increase in the number of sexual assaults upon children since the hoodie rode into media-land, on another pupil’s BMX? Without tabloid vigilance, and dedicated evening campaigns on the estate (against paediatricians and philatelists) it’s a wonder any of us still have our children. I’m surprised Jonathan King hasn’t caught them all and baked them in a big pie.
The chief concern here, as usual, is copy. Hoodies, like paedophiles, make great monsters for the media to write about, and sell. In both cases the added threat of spooky technology provides good plot seasoning. Like paedophiles, hoodies love their mobiles. The former use them to film trampoline users, the latter to film their beatings. In both cases the technology gives them a opportunity to savour their perversity, and even share it with others.
Although chilling, you have to wonder how often such things actually happen. You also have to wonder how much of this ugliness is disseminated and prompted by the campaigns themselves. It’s not unreasonable to imagine that a few Nelsons did think “Har!-Har!” when they watched that evening’s news, and dutifully took the memes down to their playground the next morning. That’s the risk of making a fetish out of something nasty. It appeals to fetishists.
And of course the knock-on from all this celebration of fear is more fearfulness. Boys in hooded tops. Another symbol for little old ladies to shrink away from. It’s also a great smokescreen issue as the truth about Iraq reaches exploding point. Anything to take our minds off that.
In the Seventies Stuart Hall and some other social theorists produced an excellent study of the media’s role in generating convenient social panic (called Policing the Crisis.) Believe it or not, rather than paedophiles, car-jackers, motorway rapists or joy riders, the term making its UK debut was ‘muggers’. Mugging, the authors pointed out, was just a groovy new term for a very old crime. Theft involving personal assault had been around as long as civil society. The only novel thing was the term mugging, imported from the States.
Mugging certainly is a powerful word, so much it’s become the defining term for that type of crime. Just as a noise, it works well. It sounds a bit like slugging, possibly with a cosh, or maybe being smothered by having a mug pushed over your face, or perhaps a po. More than anything though, as the authors suggest, it’s favoured because it implies that the attacker considers the victim of the crime to be a mug. Such a depraved outlook is a useful media tool, even if it rarely is the case. It makes thieves all the more evil and incomprehensible, more frightening for sure. You can imagine them all gathering in snooker halls at the end of the day, to smoke cigars and laugh at how stupid we all are.
I was mugged at knifepoint on Copacabana beach, a revolting experience that returned in flashes for weeks, so I am no friend of such people. However, the seventeen year old who did it didn’t look very pleased with himself. He may have spent that evening doing coke, or he may have spent it with his mother and father in one of a million corrugated shacks on the hillside beyond the hotels, but I’ll bet he didn’t spend it laughing about me.
Like muggers, those labelled ‘hoodies’ dish out an archaic form of unpleasantness. I can’t say whether sadistic child-on-child violence is on the increase, but it’s always been there to some degree. There’s always a section of youth disturbed enough to enjoy gratuitous violence. Certainly was at my school and certainly still is. If it does vary in degree I’m sure economics has far more to do with it than jogging-tops. (My brother recalls that it was leather biker jackets that got you barred when he was a lad. Hell’s Angels, the lot of them.)
One might doubt the sincerity of the media at such times. You have to ask, if such blitzkriegs actually work, then isn’t it irresponsible for them ever to stop? Moreover, aren’t we risking countless other social evils by not concentrating on them just as intensely? What are the paedophiles getting up to now The Sun has taken its eye off their balls? Should we expect an increase in the number of sexual assaults upon children since the hoodie rode into media-land, on another pupil’s BMX? Without tabloid vigilance, and dedicated evening campaigns on the estate (against paediatricians and philatelists) it’s a wonder any of us still have our children. I’m surprised Jonathan King hasn’t caught them all and baked them in a big pie.
The chief concern here, as usual, is copy. Hoodies, like paedophiles, make great monsters for the media to write about, and sell. In both cases the added threat of spooky technology provides good plot seasoning. Like paedophiles, hoodies love their mobiles. The former use them to film trampoline users, the latter to film their beatings. In both cases the technology gives them a opportunity to savour their perversity, and even share it with others.
Although chilling, you have to wonder how often such things actually happen. You also have to wonder how much of this ugliness is disseminated and prompted by the campaigns themselves. It’s not unreasonable to imagine that a few Nelsons did think “Har!-Har!” when they watched that evening’s news, and dutifully took the memes down to their playground the next morning. That’s the risk of making a fetish out of something nasty. It appeals to fetishists.
And of course the knock-on from all this celebration of fear is more fearfulness. Boys in hooded tops. Another symbol for little old ladies to shrink away from. It’s also a great smokescreen issue as the truth about Iraq reaches exploding point. Anything to take our minds off that.
Monday 9 May 2005
Jam Today! (pay tomorrow)
There’s a link between using credit and using alcohol, or any other recreational drug. In both cases you’re opting to have the nice bit first and the horrible bit after. Like the warm glow induced by a pint of Stella, the warm glow induced by purchasing products on the never-never is always followed by a hangover of some sort. Even if you only have the one, you feel listless and want another. Pleasure yesterday, pay today.
It’s an exact reversal of the more virtuous deferred reward strategy, where you eat your greens on the promise of jam roly-poly for afters. Instead, you first gorge on pudding and then have to face the broccoli.
These two opposing strategies are deployed in many aspects of human life. Resisting scratching a mosquito bite is of the first kind. Holding back breaks the cycle of irritation and the whole thing’s soon forgotten. Jam tomorrow. Alternatively you can have near-orgasms dragging your nails over it, but at the price of still having it, itchier than ever, a month later. Jam today. Similarly, vigorous exercise can be a daunting prospect, but it’s more than justified by the endorphin buzz that follows. More than can be said for street heroin. A definite case of jam today, hell to pay.
Learning the merits of deferred reward is an essential part of growing up, and The Little Red Hen is the parable. She didn’t shilly-shally like the other animals. She planted corn, ground flour, and baked bread, all without help from her neighbours. So when the aromas started to waft, and they came asking, she told them where to get off. Presumably a Methodist of some sort.
Indeed, the concept of a heavenly afterlife is the ultimate deferred reward strategy, though it’s questionable who gets rewarded. Accept a miserable existence in this world on the promise of eternal glory ever after. A shrewd means for the wealthy and powerful to scare the poor into compliance.
Some people want to have their roly-poly and eat it. Margaret Thatcher liked to align herself with the hen, but only when it suited: “You don’t spend money you haven’t got!” is a useful chant when you want to get public assets into private hands, but it’s forgotten when it comes to chucking money at arms manufacturers. ‘Credit’ is then elevated to ‘investment’. “Simply good housekeeping!” is another killer, coming from the Prime Minister who did so much to turn her country into the home of credit-card lunacy. That’s not bad housekeeping, that’s personal freedom.
Investment and credit are closely intertwined, two sides of the same coin. The credit run-up by the irresponsible cardholder is at the same time MasterCard’s shrewd investment. Your loss, their gain. Furthermore, it’s not always irresponsible to borrow. You can borrow as a means of investing, on the hope that the investment will itself more than cover the interest on the borrowed money. Similarly, as a consumer you can use credit wisely to pick up a true bargain that might be gone by the time your wages come in. The problems start when you borrow money but have no intention of investing it, like credit-junkie consumers, or John DeLorean in business.
Drugs and tic share a similar danger. Both allow you to steal from the future. The product you can’t afford this month steals next month’s wages, plus interest. A big Saturday night out steals happiness from poor old Monday morning, perhaps right through to strung-out Wednesday afternoon. You’ve got to pay sometime.
It’s an exact reversal of the more virtuous deferred reward strategy, where you eat your greens on the promise of jam roly-poly for afters. Instead, you first gorge on pudding and then have to face the broccoli.
These two opposing strategies are deployed in many aspects of human life. Resisting scratching a mosquito bite is of the first kind. Holding back breaks the cycle of irritation and the whole thing’s soon forgotten. Jam tomorrow. Alternatively you can have near-orgasms dragging your nails over it, but at the price of still having it, itchier than ever, a month later. Jam today. Similarly, vigorous exercise can be a daunting prospect, but it’s more than justified by the endorphin buzz that follows. More than can be said for street heroin. A definite case of jam today, hell to pay.
Learning the merits of deferred reward is an essential part of growing up, and The Little Red Hen is the parable. She didn’t shilly-shally like the other animals. She planted corn, ground flour, and baked bread, all without help from her neighbours. So when the aromas started to waft, and they came asking, she told them where to get off. Presumably a Methodist of some sort.
Indeed, the concept of a heavenly afterlife is the ultimate deferred reward strategy, though it’s questionable who gets rewarded. Accept a miserable existence in this world on the promise of eternal glory ever after. A shrewd means for the wealthy and powerful to scare the poor into compliance.
Some people want to have their roly-poly and eat it. Margaret Thatcher liked to align herself with the hen, but only when it suited: “You don’t spend money you haven’t got!” is a useful chant when you want to get public assets into private hands, but it’s forgotten when it comes to chucking money at arms manufacturers. ‘Credit’ is then elevated to ‘investment’. “Simply good housekeeping!” is another killer, coming from the Prime Minister who did so much to turn her country into the home of credit-card lunacy. That’s not bad housekeeping, that’s personal freedom.
Investment and credit are closely intertwined, two sides of the same coin. The credit run-up by the irresponsible cardholder is at the same time MasterCard’s shrewd investment. Your loss, their gain. Furthermore, it’s not always irresponsible to borrow. You can borrow as a means of investing, on the hope that the investment will itself more than cover the interest on the borrowed money. Similarly, as a consumer you can use credit wisely to pick up a true bargain that might be gone by the time your wages come in. The problems start when you borrow money but have no intention of investing it, like credit-junkie consumers, or John DeLorean in business.
Drugs and tic share a similar danger. Both allow you to steal from the future. The product you can’t afford this month steals next month’s wages, plus interest. A big Saturday night out steals happiness from poor old Monday morning, perhaps right through to strung-out Wednesday afternoon. You’ve got to pay sometime.
Tuesday 3 May 2005
Distorting Demand (Part II)
Corporate Keynesianism
The other flaw in the ‘market freedom’ argument is the likely size of any organisation that can afford prime advertising space. Million pound adverts cost millions. Television advertising is never going to help the smaller producer to grow. In fact it’s one of the key methods used by corporations to bankrupt and absorb smaller rivals.
As standard histories tell, commercial television was introduced to Britain as a means of re-inflating a sluggish post-war economy. By raising the profile of products it was hoped consumer demand would grow, and along with it industry. Successful though this was, it’s important to note which businesses actually benefited. The first advert, after all, was for Gibb’s SR toothpaste. While this multinational may have helped inflate its own coffers, and those of some retailers, the effect would have been deflating for any smaller rival, a drop in demand. Gibb’s was using glossy imagery to squeeze the life out of smaller, rival tubes.
It doesn’t take long to work out who it was pushing for the introduction of commercial television. Certainly big American players like Kellogg’s and Proctor and Gamble must have been delighted at the prospect. A killing to be made. For the first time tried and tested campaigns could play in British homes. A whole nation to make passionate about soap, and negative towards the humble soap they’d always taken for granted.
Clearly the term ‘re-inflating the economy’ is very subjective. Who gets to re-inflate? One person’s boom is always another’s bust. In the case of re-inflating the economy with expensive adverts it’s clear which section of the economy is going to do the growing. It has to be the big fish. Small and medium bourgeois never get a look in. Television adverts are a means for the already powerful to squeeze out smaller producers. They’re a key tool for corporate globalisation, a great way to slash, burn and strip domestic rivals.
Adverts are warps in the fabric of demand-space. Strange then, one might think, that those who push hardest for commercialisation of television are those who most vehemently oppose state intervention in the economy. It’s characteristic monetarist hypocrisy. Like the other form of demand management that dare not speak its name, military Keynesianism, corporate market interference is an exception to all those free market values. Whereas it’s a crime against the freedom of the market for a government to subsidise public transport, it’s an inalienable right of corporations to use psychological trickery to skew markets in their favour.
That’s the monetarist concept of market freedom: Government must not interfere in the economy, but huge unaccountable multinationals must be allowed to skew it anyway that suits. Governmental attempts to manage demand lead to unfair competition and subsidise inefficiency, but private million-dollar brainwashing campaigns are the stuff of free markets. Adam Smith must be spinning.
The victors
Skewing markets and asset-stripping the losers frees-up a lot of money. This can’t all go to the sponsoring corporation of course. Those who assist receive a share of the booty, ad agencies for one. Then there’s also the transmission medium itself, the television company and the accompanying programmes. And of course there’s the actors and celebrities who play in the commercials. Most will have never seen a pay-check a fraction of the size, even for their most celebrated work
It must be very tempting. Just that one advert won’t hurt. But of course if it didn’t hurt someone the sponsors wouldn’t bother. It must hurt someone’s wallet, or someone’s business, if it can free-up those sort of appearance fees. For an ad to pay it must distort demand sufficiently to pay for itself, and some more. Robbie Coltrane, I’m sure, would argue that the sum Barclays offered him was simply irresistible, enough to sort you out for life. Nevertheless, as with the oil company PR, his contribution was to soften the image of a global corporation. After all, how bad can Barclays really be when big cuddly Robbie will do adverts for them, doing Tai Chi? He’s even made the odd left-wing comment in his time.
It’s horrible to say, but unavoidable to conclude, that by helping to paint Barclays in a good light he was helping them to maintain their record of unethical investment, and getting a slice of the spoils in payment. Where else would that sort of money come from, and that sort of desperation for a cuddly make-over? Same for the distressing sight of Run DMC in a GAP commercial. Whichever way you hold it up it’s Run DMC profiting from foreign sweated labour, and anxious western teenagers.
Sainsbury’s PR department announced with glee that it had caused a palpable warp in demand when Jamie Oliver started to feature in their ads. Prunella Scales ably assists Tesco in its plan to take over the world. There are richer Pepsi directors, and fatter children, thanks to Gary Lineker’s crisp adverts. What other conclusion can you draw? None of these seem unkind people, but the money they were paid certainly has a smell about it.
Big companies, such as supermarkets, might argue that they’re only using advertising to put each other out of business. Whatever the ethics of that, it’s obvious who’ll definitely lose in such a rich man’s game. Some adverts might only target large rivals but their attempts to out-gloss and out-bargain each other can’t help but turn us off smaller producers. Adverts show us how bargain filled, cheap, clean and obliging multinationals are, and even make us feel sophisticated for shopping there. Remind you of many independent retailers? How will Arkwright and Granville ever hope to compete with that?
Adverts are creative
Another grounds for defence of adverts is their occasional beauty, ingenuity and creativity. That they can be so attractive, funny and well made can give the impression that they themselves constitute a valuable part of television. Truth is, all that money and talent could have been spent on making the TV programmes.
“The adverts are better than the programs!” It’s a cliché, but a painfully accurate one. Many programmes do look shabby in contrast to the ads. This is not something to congratulate the ad industry on, it just shows had bad we have allowed things to become. Adverts outshine programs because corporations have gained a stranglehold on the industry. However pretty commercials might seem, they remain parasitic upon the medium of television. We shouldn’t celebrate the fact that a parasite is prospering.
Contrary to common belief not all parasitic growths are ugly and misshapen. Some actually beautify their host. The peacock’s fan is a beautiful thing, but in an important sense the genes that give rise to it are parasitic. Outside a sexual context it’s a huge liability. Extremely wasteful in terms of growth and maintenance, and an asset to predators. It only exists because the genes for big fans in peacocks, and the genes for fancying big fans in peahens, drove each other into orbit. If you could somehow magically erase the genes for peacock’s tail feathers and the genes that make peahens select flamboyant males, the species would make a net gain. They’d be faster, more agile, and have a much smaller dietary requirement.
Like peacocks’ fans, some adverts are highly attractive. However if television is to serve public rather than corporate needs, this is a dire state of affairs. If TV is the host to advertising it is being sucked dry. The parasite grows plumper and more lavish as it suckles. The host becomes the deferent party, modifying its patterns of behaviour to suit the parasite’s demands. Which brings us to the last misconception.
Advertising provides free television
I remember the first time I saw an advert for an advert. In fact the chain was longer. It was an advert for a TV programme which itself was only being shown to get people to sit still long enough to watch other adverts. From the side of a New York city bus smiling anchors invited drivers to tune-in to that night’s news. Although commonplace now, at the time it seemed odd, mistaken, inefficient in the extreme. A commercial station, one which relied solely upon the revenue of advertisers, was itself running advertisements for its own programs. Adverts to make you watch programmes to make you watch adverts.
It was my father, again, who was the first to point out to me the real cost of commercial television. There’s no such thing as free lunch, and commercial television is not charity work. The cost of producing television programmes must be met by the consumer at some point. In the main it is at the point of sale. We pay for commercial television in increased cost of goods. However, the structure of commercial TV being what it is we pay a great deal more for it. Commercial television is a criminally wasteful means of making programmes.
If we pay for television directly, say from a licence scheme or income tax, the money can all be targeted at making programmes, uninterrupted by commercial clutter. Instead, we pay for commercial television by an invisible sales tax, one that has countless other costs to cover before anything can go toward program making. Executive salaries for ad agencies, focus groups and opinion pollsters; technical staff to make the adverts and a host of creatives to dream them up; actors, make-up, caterers, location filming; promotional fees, magazine and billboard adverts to encourage people to watch a program, to watch the adverts. Moreover, there’s the whole array of shareholders, every step of the way, all demanding a return on their investment. After all that, what’s left over can be spent on making programmes. Wonder why the adverts look superior?
What’s wrong with TV is the adverts
In the current climate, bald statements like “Television is bad for you” are quite understandable, but you have to be clear about your meaning of ‘television’. The physical medium, as in two-dimensional images accompanied by sound, is not something intrinsically destructive, no more pernicious than writing or painting. In fact it’s no more, or less, pernicious than those who control its output. Differing forms of ownership give rise to different kinds of television, and what the viewer considers the medium of television to be. Depending where you’re from, television means different things. In the USSR it was state owned and so produced formal state propaganda. In the USA, state licensing and corporate ownership means commercialism and state-corporate propaganda. Neither output is intrinsic to broadcast television, it’s all just historical happenstance. You can’t blame a screen and a loudspeaker for the signals they receive.
One valid objection, regarding my claim that all the money that goes on advertising could be spent on the programs: In truth of course, without corporate sponsorship that money wouldn’t even be on the table. The television industry would be a fraction of the size it is, and would produce a fraction of the programs. Perfectly true, but then would that be a bad thing? It would certainly mean no Big Brother, Topless Darts or thirteenth season of Friends. The only reason such desperate programs get made is because they yield sizeable audiences who then can be made to sit through adverts. Instead TV could return to what it used to be. One or two channels broadcasting for a few hours each day. Perhaps people could rediscover life again. What a frightening thought.
Once again however, it’s the problem of loving your enemy. Commercial TV has eaten its way into our lives. Twenty-four hour junk has become something many would fight to the death to maintain. I overheard an interesting discussion between an American couple on a train out of London. They’d just landed, she for the first time, and he was having difficulty explaining the TV licence system to her. She found it unbelievable that TV could be restricted, let alone that you could end up in prison for not paying: “My Gahd! If they tried that in the States there’d be riots!”, which is probably true.
The fact that television has slipped into corporate hands makes it all but impossible to wrestle back. Corporations own it and they aren’t about to let go. Limitless sex, glamour, romance, violence and the occasional worthy programme are at their disposal, at no visible cost to the viewer. Asking people to pay a new charge to receive only a fraction of current output is a doomed sales pitch. Commercial television has the medium of television by the balls. Before any change can occur corporate power itself will have to be challenged.
The other flaw in the ‘market freedom’ argument is the likely size of any organisation that can afford prime advertising space. Million pound adverts cost millions. Television advertising is never going to help the smaller producer to grow. In fact it’s one of the key methods used by corporations to bankrupt and absorb smaller rivals.
As standard histories tell, commercial television was introduced to Britain as a means of re-inflating a sluggish post-war economy. By raising the profile of products it was hoped consumer demand would grow, and along with it industry. Successful though this was, it’s important to note which businesses actually benefited. The first advert, after all, was for Gibb’s SR toothpaste. While this multinational may have helped inflate its own coffers, and those of some retailers, the effect would have been deflating for any smaller rival, a drop in demand. Gibb’s was using glossy imagery to squeeze the life out of smaller, rival tubes.
It doesn’t take long to work out who it was pushing for the introduction of commercial television. Certainly big American players like Kellogg’s and Proctor and Gamble must have been delighted at the prospect. A killing to be made. For the first time tried and tested campaigns could play in British homes. A whole nation to make passionate about soap, and negative towards the humble soap they’d always taken for granted.
Clearly the term ‘re-inflating the economy’ is very subjective. Who gets to re-inflate? One person’s boom is always another’s bust. In the case of re-inflating the economy with expensive adverts it’s clear which section of the economy is going to do the growing. It has to be the big fish. Small and medium bourgeois never get a look in. Television adverts are a means for the already powerful to squeeze out smaller producers. They’re a key tool for corporate globalisation, a great way to slash, burn and strip domestic rivals.
Adverts are warps in the fabric of demand-space. Strange then, one might think, that those who push hardest for commercialisation of television are those who most vehemently oppose state intervention in the economy. It’s characteristic monetarist hypocrisy. Like the other form of demand management that dare not speak its name, military Keynesianism, corporate market interference is an exception to all those free market values. Whereas it’s a crime against the freedom of the market for a government to subsidise public transport, it’s an inalienable right of corporations to use psychological trickery to skew markets in their favour.
That’s the monetarist concept of market freedom: Government must not interfere in the economy, but huge unaccountable multinationals must be allowed to skew it anyway that suits. Governmental attempts to manage demand lead to unfair competition and subsidise inefficiency, but private million-dollar brainwashing campaigns are the stuff of free markets. Adam Smith must be spinning.
The victors
Skewing markets and asset-stripping the losers frees-up a lot of money. This can’t all go to the sponsoring corporation of course. Those who assist receive a share of the booty, ad agencies for one. Then there’s also the transmission medium itself, the television company and the accompanying programmes. And of course there’s the actors and celebrities who play in the commercials. Most will have never seen a pay-check a fraction of the size, even for their most celebrated work
It must be very tempting. Just that one advert won’t hurt. But of course if it didn’t hurt someone the sponsors wouldn’t bother. It must hurt someone’s wallet, or someone’s business, if it can free-up those sort of appearance fees. For an ad to pay it must distort demand sufficiently to pay for itself, and some more. Robbie Coltrane, I’m sure, would argue that the sum Barclays offered him was simply irresistible, enough to sort you out for life. Nevertheless, as with the oil company PR, his contribution was to soften the image of a global corporation. After all, how bad can Barclays really be when big cuddly Robbie will do adverts for them, doing Tai Chi? He’s even made the odd left-wing comment in his time.
It’s horrible to say, but unavoidable to conclude, that by helping to paint Barclays in a good light he was helping them to maintain their record of unethical investment, and getting a slice of the spoils in payment. Where else would that sort of money come from, and that sort of desperation for a cuddly make-over? Same for the distressing sight of Run DMC in a GAP commercial. Whichever way you hold it up it’s Run DMC profiting from foreign sweated labour, and anxious western teenagers.
Sainsbury’s PR department announced with glee that it had caused a palpable warp in demand when Jamie Oliver started to feature in their ads. Prunella Scales ably assists Tesco in its plan to take over the world. There are richer Pepsi directors, and fatter children, thanks to Gary Lineker’s crisp adverts. What other conclusion can you draw? None of these seem unkind people, but the money they were paid certainly has a smell about it.
Big companies, such as supermarkets, might argue that they’re only using advertising to put each other out of business. Whatever the ethics of that, it’s obvious who’ll definitely lose in such a rich man’s game. Some adverts might only target large rivals but their attempts to out-gloss and out-bargain each other can’t help but turn us off smaller producers. Adverts show us how bargain filled, cheap, clean and obliging multinationals are, and even make us feel sophisticated for shopping there. Remind you of many independent retailers? How will Arkwright and Granville ever hope to compete with that?
Adverts are creative
Another grounds for defence of adverts is their occasional beauty, ingenuity and creativity. That they can be so attractive, funny and well made can give the impression that they themselves constitute a valuable part of television. Truth is, all that money and talent could have been spent on making the TV programmes.
“The adverts are better than the programs!” It’s a cliché, but a painfully accurate one. Many programmes do look shabby in contrast to the ads. This is not something to congratulate the ad industry on, it just shows had bad we have allowed things to become. Adverts outshine programs because corporations have gained a stranglehold on the industry. However pretty commercials might seem, they remain parasitic upon the medium of television. We shouldn’t celebrate the fact that a parasite is prospering.
Contrary to common belief not all parasitic growths are ugly and misshapen. Some actually beautify their host. The peacock’s fan is a beautiful thing, but in an important sense the genes that give rise to it are parasitic. Outside a sexual context it’s a huge liability. Extremely wasteful in terms of growth and maintenance, and an asset to predators. It only exists because the genes for big fans in peacocks, and the genes for fancying big fans in peahens, drove each other into orbit. If you could somehow magically erase the genes for peacock’s tail feathers and the genes that make peahens select flamboyant males, the species would make a net gain. They’d be faster, more agile, and have a much smaller dietary requirement.
Like peacocks’ fans, some adverts are highly attractive. However if television is to serve public rather than corporate needs, this is a dire state of affairs. If TV is the host to advertising it is being sucked dry. The parasite grows plumper and more lavish as it suckles. The host becomes the deferent party, modifying its patterns of behaviour to suit the parasite’s demands. Which brings us to the last misconception.
Advertising provides free television
I remember the first time I saw an advert for an advert. In fact the chain was longer. It was an advert for a TV programme which itself was only being shown to get people to sit still long enough to watch other adverts. From the side of a New York city bus smiling anchors invited drivers to tune-in to that night’s news. Although commonplace now, at the time it seemed odd, mistaken, inefficient in the extreme. A commercial station, one which relied solely upon the revenue of advertisers, was itself running advertisements for its own programs. Adverts to make you watch programmes to make you watch adverts.
It was my father, again, who was the first to point out to me the real cost of commercial television. There’s no such thing as free lunch, and commercial television is not charity work. The cost of producing television programmes must be met by the consumer at some point. In the main it is at the point of sale. We pay for commercial television in increased cost of goods. However, the structure of commercial TV being what it is we pay a great deal more for it. Commercial television is a criminally wasteful means of making programmes.
If we pay for television directly, say from a licence scheme or income tax, the money can all be targeted at making programmes, uninterrupted by commercial clutter. Instead, we pay for commercial television by an invisible sales tax, one that has countless other costs to cover before anything can go toward program making. Executive salaries for ad agencies, focus groups and opinion pollsters; technical staff to make the adverts and a host of creatives to dream them up; actors, make-up, caterers, location filming; promotional fees, magazine and billboard adverts to encourage people to watch a program, to watch the adverts. Moreover, there’s the whole array of shareholders, every step of the way, all demanding a return on their investment. After all that, what’s left over can be spent on making programmes. Wonder why the adverts look superior?
What’s wrong with TV is the adverts
In the current climate, bald statements like “Television is bad for you” are quite understandable, but you have to be clear about your meaning of ‘television’. The physical medium, as in two-dimensional images accompanied by sound, is not something intrinsically destructive, no more pernicious than writing or painting. In fact it’s no more, or less, pernicious than those who control its output. Differing forms of ownership give rise to different kinds of television, and what the viewer considers the medium of television to be. Depending where you’re from, television means different things. In the USSR it was state owned and so produced formal state propaganda. In the USA, state licensing and corporate ownership means commercialism and state-corporate propaganda. Neither output is intrinsic to broadcast television, it’s all just historical happenstance. You can’t blame a screen and a loudspeaker for the signals they receive.
One valid objection, regarding my claim that all the money that goes on advertising could be spent on the programs: In truth of course, without corporate sponsorship that money wouldn’t even be on the table. The television industry would be a fraction of the size it is, and would produce a fraction of the programs. Perfectly true, but then would that be a bad thing? It would certainly mean no Big Brother, Topless Darts or thirteenth season of Friends. The only reason such desperate programs get made is because they yield sizeable audiences who then can be made to sit through adverts. Instead TV could return to what it used to be. One or two channels broadcasting for a few hours each day. Perhaps people could rediscover life again. What a frightening thought.
Once again however, it’s the problem of loving your enemy. Commercial TV has eaten its way into our lives. Twenty-four hour junk has become something many would fight to the death to maintain. I overheard an interesting discussion between an American couple on a train out of London. They’d just landed, she for the first time, and he was having difficulty explaining the TV licence system to her. She found it unbelievable that TV could be restricted, let alone that you could end up in prison for not paying: “My Gahd! If they tried that in the States there’d be riots!”, which is probably true.
The fact that television has slipped into corporate hands makes it all but impossible to wrestle back. Corporations own it and they aren’t about to let go. Limitless sex, glamour, romance, violence and the occasional worthy programme are at their disposal, at no visible cost to the viewer. Asking people to pay a new charge to receive only a fraction of current output is a doomed sales pitch. Commercial television has the medium of television by the balls. Before any change can occur corporate power itself will have to be challenged.
Wednesday 20 April 2005
Distorting Demand (Part I)
Distorting Demand (Part I)
To state the obvious, advertisements are out to get you to buy things. They are a means employed by producers to modify consumer demand in their favour. Less obvious are the sacrifices entailed elsewhere. By its ubiquity advertising does a grand job convincing people of its innocence and even its economic and creative worth. Each of the following pieces challenges a different assumption regarding the supposed benign or beneficial aspects of advertising.
Advertising as a natural extension of market freedom
One common-sense defence of advertising is that it is something natural in a market economy. To some point this seems true enough. In a healthy economy producers need a means of promoting their products. Likewise consumers need information about products if they are to make informed choices.
It’s unavoidable. As long as people buy and sell there’ll always be some role for presentation and promotion. It’s only natural to buff the vase the day before auction, or shout, “Forty pence yer bananas!” in a louder or more charismatic manner than the next stall-holder. Every street-traders right. Advertising, the argument runs, is just a logical extension of this freedom.
All quite true. Promotion is bound to play some part in retail. But there are clear lines to be drawn. The sort of promotion that enhances producer and consumer freedom must at least be honest. Telling lies about products doesn’t benefit the consumer, and it’s also unfair competition. Similarly, the fact that some producers can afford colossal advertising budgets is no aid to market freedom. The ability to drown out the voices of other producers does the consumer no favour, and again it’s unfair competition.
Psychological abuse
I’ve a photograph of the forecourt of Kemptown railway station (long since an industrial estate.) Behind the Zephyrs and Corsairs, one wing of the stationhouse bears the sign:
LENS TEAS
And, just in case any drivers were confused:
PULL UP FOR TEA.
Undeniably this is advertising. It meets all the modern criteria and motives. Although I doubt he thought about it in such terms, Len definitely did paint the sign in an attempt to skew the market in his favour. Anyone who pulled up for tea upon seeing his sign was having their demand managed by his promotional scheme. If it worked, alternative transport cafes and teashops lost money in consequence. Perhaps some went bust.
However, while this certainly is advertising it’s a world away from the methods of the Saachis. It’s one thing to announce, “I have hot tea to sell” but quite another to associate your tea with Yorkshire firesides, or, God help us, sex. Such associations are patently false, deliberately out to mislead. Nothing to do with the reality of the product. Certainly not included with the product. That sort of advertising can’t be defended as a freedom. Lying and brainwashing are not the friend of a free market, they’re its enemy.
That difference, the difference between truth and falsehood, is one key test as to whether an advert can be considered just. After a lifetime’s exposure it can be hard to see the difference. This abuse crept up on us slowly, advertising industry included.
A glance at older ad campaigns brings us back to earth. Not so long ago adverts concentrated on the use value or quality of the product itself. Tellingly, there was a time when it was still deemed necessary to include a verb in an advert. “Smoke Regal”, “Take Courage” “Drink Coca-Cola”. Although all these campaigns were out to skew markets at least they remain close to the reality of the product. (Mind you, the illegitimate association of tobacco with royalty, and ale with bravery, hints where all this will lead.)
Since then some sort of sea change occurred. It no longer mattered what you did with the product, just that the name and some associated concepts entered you consciousness. Welcome to Marlboro country. Don’t think of petrol think of tigers. Don’t think of crumbly chocolate bars, think of blow-jobs. Don’t think of smoking and coughing and dying, think of prairies and jack-rabbits.
My father was loathing of advertising to the extent that he fixed our TV to only receive the BBC. Not a man to hold much of a theory of ideology, he claimed commercial television led to ‘Worms on the brain!’. Though the image fits, if anything it downplays the severity of what commercials do. Rather than writhing, maggot-like in our brains, adverts alter them, wholesale. When they succeed they make us feel differently about the world and all its contents, not just the one product.
Like all propaganda, adverts work by restructuring minds in a manner beneficial to those who sponsor them. This could just mean honest product information, but it can also mean extreme cynicism and abuse. At the moment the culture seems pretty much anything goes. Advertisers would have us think anything if they thought it would move more units.
When we finally did get ITV I was delighted and revelled in the commercials. Nothing difficult, just great jokes and jingles and special effects and animation, and all of lavish quality compared to the programmes. Me and my sister were so spellbound we’d shout, “Ads!!!” up the stairs to each other each time they came on (I think the old man would have smashed the damn thing up on the spot if he’d ever heard that!)
And what good did it do? Thanks to advertising a mass of the concepts that make up my consciousness are stupid lies about the world. To my shame, thirty years on I can still sing the Tetley tea-folk song, recite the punch-lines to PG Tips adverts (“Can you ride tandem?”) and the catch-phrase for Quick Brew (“It’s me little perforations!”). Junk memes nailed into my head firmer than Shakespeare or trigonometry ever will be.
Worse still, it’s never a neutral waste of brain-space. Invariably, adverts work by inducing anxiety in the consumer. In the long run the aim is to make money, but more often than not the means is by making people feel bad about themselves, envious of what others supposedly have. Amongst all the excitement I also remember a glum feeling of jealousy during jeans adverts. Levi’s and Wrangler and Lee Cooper, everybody strutting around cool and sexy. Didn’t look much like me and my friends, even with the jeans. Still bought a pair, of course, to be on the safe side.
Inducing consumer anxiety is a cruel but lucrative trade. Again it’s difficult to recognise how unpleasant it is when you’ve lived in it so long. It’s easier to see it when its being done to another culture for the first time. A few years back I saw a familiar looking advert on Moroccan TV. A beautiful brown mother twirling a beautiful brown baby overhead, all gurgles, blue skies, and impossibly white cotton. Handsome father smiles on from the veranda. It was the start of the big wind-up. Morocco’s first chance to share the delights of whiter than whites. Now they can learn to worry about all the important things we’ve been worrying about for the past fifty years. Worry that their neighbours might live more cleanly than their own family, might be more happy generally. All to shift more units of soap powder. Happy with your wash? What about deep down?
Love your enemy
Some campaigns are more subtle, but as often as not they serve to convince us of greater and more terrible falsehoods. Advertising is, after all, just a branch of PR. It’s the branch that deals with getting us to think more about shopping than we otherwise would. Whereas PR is about distorting public perception in general, advertising specifically distorts demand for goods. However, these boundaries are not set in stone. Advertising is frequently used as a medium for full-blown political PR, or propaganda as it used to be known.
For example, it is political benefit BP and Exxon gain from much of their advertising and sponsorship deals. Such campaigns are out to baffle our critical abilities, soften our hearts towards these titans, make it harder for us to be angry with them when we hear what they’ve been up to, again. If the brand name ‘Shell’ is generally encountered in the context of wildlife preservation or arts funding the company’s human rights record and its true impact on the environment is obscured. It’s harder to form a critical opinion of an environmental and social abuser when you’re bombarded with lavish exaggerations of their occasional charity work. These ads are still about selling oil, but indirectly. They’re about making the world seem different in such a way that it facilitates further plunder.
Rather than extolling the virtues of a product much of modern advertising aims to radically restructure consumer minds, i.e. people's minds. Here’s another that worked on me: A few years back Lloyds bank ran a campaign featuring huge lumbering Jim Henson-style trolls. Seemed very odd at the time. An international bank buying thirty seconds of prime time advertising to bring us cuddly monsters hitting each other with massive rubber clubs. What were they thinking of?
Although there was the pretence of a money-related narrative, (about how wise trolls invested their gold pieces, or some such) it’s clear that wasn’t the thrust of the campaign. The chief intention was to change peoples minds about banks, specifically this bank. The subliminal message was, ‘Everything you ever believed about banks, wooden panelling, stuffy time-served counter staff, “Capt. Mainwaring will see you now!”..…all that’s gone. Don’t take us so seriously. We’re really all about FUN!’
It was a clear case of brain-washing. Fight it though I might, my notion of banks changed forever. To this day they still seem less stuffy and intimidating. That strange campaign successfully modified my mind in Lloyds favour. (The Egg credit card, a front for the stuffy old Prudential, takes this approach to its ridiculous conclusion: Running up debt is so wacky!)
It’s quite a price pay. Advertising has us running in circles, worrying about nonsense, chasing rubbish. It paints corporate abusers as saviours and makes environmentalists seem like cranks. It encourages us to eat high-fat food then makes a fetish out of being thin. It goads children into pestering money out of parents, and leaves parents feeling guilty if they can’t provide. Instead of compassion towards others it promotes endless concern with the self. It turns neighbours and strangers and friends into people to compete with, people to worry about. It makes last year’s cool into this year’s joke. Better get the new one.
I won’t be offering any other prescriptions regarding adverts, but there is one: Stop watching them. Don’t engage with them. Turn over or just kill the sound. That’s the real liberating power of the remote control. Adverts are out to make you anxious. Logically then, avoiding them can make you less anxious, happier, something no soap-powder will ever do. Like any other rogue on the doorstep don’t let them in. Just watch the programs and let the sponsors pay.
Part Two now posted above.
To state the obvious, advertisements are out to get you to buy things. They are a means employed by producers to modify consumer demand in their favour. Less obvious are the sacrifices entailed elsewhere. By its ubiquity advertising does a grand job convincing people of its innocence and even its economic and creative worth. Each of the following pieces challenges a different assumption regarding the supposed benign or beneficial aspects of advertising.
Advertising as a natural extension of market freedom
One common-sense defence of advertising is that it is something natural in a market economy. To some point this seems true enough. In a healthy economy producers need a means of promoting their products. Likewise consumers need information about products if they are to make informed choices.
It’s unavoidable. As long as people buy and sell there’ll always be some role for presentation and promotion. It’s only natural to buff the vase the day before auction, or shout, “Forty pence yer bananas!” in a louder or more charismatic manner than the next stall-holder. Every street-traders right. Advertising, the argument runs, is just a logical extension of this freedom.
All quite true. Promotion is bound to play some part in retail. But there are clear lines to be drawn. The sort of promotion that enhances producer and consumer freedom must at least be honest. Telling lies about products doesn’t benefit the consumer, and it’s also unfair competition. Similarly, the fact that some producers can afford colossal advertising budgets is no aid to market freedom. The ability to drown out the voices of other producers does the consumer no favour, and again it’s unfair competition.
Psychological abuse
I’ve a photograph of the forecourt of Kemptown railway station (long since an industrial estate.) Behind the Zephyrs and Corsairs, one wing of the stationhouse bears the sign:
LENS TEAS
And, just in case any drivers were confused:
PULL UP FOR TEA.
Undeniably this is advertising. It meets all the modern criteria and motives. Although I doubt he thought about it in such terms, Len definitely did paint the sign in an attempt to skew the market in his favour. Anyone who pulled up for tea upon seeing his sign was having their demand managed by his promotional scheme. If it worked, alternative transport cafes and teashops lost money in consequence. Perhaps some went bust.
However, while this certainly is advertising it’s a world away from the methods of the Saachis. It’s one thing to announce, “I have hot tea to sell” but quite another to associate your tea with Yorkshire firesides, or, God help us, sex. Such associations are patently false, deliberately out to mislead. Nothing to do with the reality of the product. Certainly not included with the product. That sort of advertising can’t be defended as a freedom. Lying and brainwashing are not the friend of a free market, they’re its enemy.
That difference, the difference between truth and falsehood, is one key test as to whether an advert can be considered just. After a lifetime’s exposure it can be hard to see the difference. This abuse crept up on us slowly, advertising industry included.
A glance at older ad campaigns brings us back to earth. Not so long ago adverts concentrated on the use value or quality of the product itself. Tellingly, there was a time when it was still deemed necessary to include a verb in an advert. “Smoke Regal”, “Take Courage” “Drink Coca-Cola”. Although all these campaigns were out to skew markets at least they remain close to the reality of the product. (Mind you, the illegitimate association of tobacco with royalty, and ale with bravery, hints where all this will lead.)
Since then some sort of sea change occurred. It no longer mattered what you did with the product, just that the name and some associated concepts entered you consciousness. Welcome to Marlboro country. Don’t think of petrol think of tigers. Don’t think of crumbly chocolate bars, think of blow-jobs. Don’t think of smoking and coughing and dying, think of prairies and jack-rabbits.
My father was loathing of advertising to the extent that he fixed our TV to only receive the BBC. Not a man to hold much of a theory of ideology, he claimed commercial television led to ‘Worms on the brain!’. Though the image fits, if anything it downplays the severity of what commercials do. Rather than writhing, maggot-like in our brains, adverts alter them, wholesale. When they succeed they make us feel differently about the world and all its contents, not just the one product.
Like all propaganda, adverts work by restructuring minds in a manner beneficial to those who sponsor them. This could just mean honest product information, but it can also mean extreme cynicism and abuse. At the moment the culture seems pretty much anything goes. Advertisers would have us think anything if they thought it would move more units.
When we finally did get ITV I was delighted and revelled in the commercials. Nothing difficult, just great jokes and jingles and special effects and animation, and all of lavish quality compared to the programmes. Me and my sister were so spellbound we’d shout, “Ads!!!” up the stairs to each other each time they came on (I think the old man would have smashed the damn thing up on the spot if he’d ever heard that!)
And what good did it do? Thanks to advertising a mass of the concepts that make up my consciousness are stupid lies about the world. To my shame, thirty years on I can still sing the Tetley tea-folk song, recite the punch-lines to PG Tips adverts (“Can you ride tandem?”) and the catch-phrase for Quick Brew (“It’s me little perforations!”). Junk memes nailed into my head firmer than Shakespeare or trigonometry ever will be.
Worse still, it’s never a neutral waste of brain-space. Invariably, adverts work by inducing anxiety in the consumer. In the long run the aim is to make money, but more often than not the means is by making people feel bad about themselves, envious of what others supposedly have. Amongst all the excitement I also remember a glum feeling of jealousy during jeans adverts. Levi’s and Wrangler and Lee Cooper, everybody strutting around cool and sexy. Didn’t look much like me and my friends, even with the jeans. Still bought a pair, of course, to be on the safe side.
Inducing consumer anxiety is a cruel but lucrative trade. Again it’s difficult to recognise how unpleasant it is when you’ve lived in it so long. It’s easier to see it when its being done to another culture for the first time. A few years back I saw a familiar looking advert on Moroccan TV. A beautiful brown mother twirling a beautiful brown baby overhead, all gurgles, blue skies, and impossibly white cotton. Handsome father smiles on from the veranda. It was the start of the big wind-up. Morocco’s first chance to share the delights of whiter than whites. Now they can learn to worry about all the important things we’ve been worrying about for the past fifty years. Worry that their neighbours might live more cleanly than their own family, might be more happy generally. All to shift more units of soap powder. Happy with your wash? What about deep down?
Love your enemy
Some campaigns are more subtle, but as often as not they serve to convince us of greater and more terrible falsehoods. Advertising is, after all, just a branch of PR. It’s the branch that deals with getting us to think more about shopping than we otherwise would. Whereas PR is about distorting public perception in general, advertising specifically distorts demand for goods. However, these boundaries are not set in stone. Advertising is frequently used as a medium for full-blown political PR, or propaganda as it used to be known.
For example, it is political benefit BP and Exxon gain from much of their advertising and sponsorship deals. Such campaigns are out to baffle our critical abilities, soften our hearts towards these titans, make it harder for us to be angry with them when we hear what they’ve been up to, again. If the brand name ‘Shell’ is generally encountered in the context of wildlife preservation or arts funding the company’s human rights record and its true impact on the environment is obscured. It’s harder to form a critical opinion of an environmental and social abuser when you’re bombarded with lavish exaggerations of their occasional charity work. These ads are still about selling oil, but indirectly. They’re about making the world seem different in such a way that it facilitates further plunder.
Rather than extolling the virtues of a product much of modern advertising aims to radically restructure consumer minds, i.e. people's minds. Here’s another that worked on me: A few years back Lloyds bank ran a campaign featuring huge lumbering Jim Henson-style trolls. Seemed very odd at the time. An international bank buying thirty seconds of prime time advertising to bring us cuddly monsters hitting each other with massive rubber clubs. What were they thinking of?
Although there was the pretence of a money-related narrative, (about how wise trolls invested their gold pieces, or some such) it’s clear that wasn’t the thrust of the campaign. The chief intention was to change peoples minds about banks, specifically this bank. The subliminal message was, ‘Everything you ever believed about banks, wooden panelling, stuffy time-served counter staff, “Capt. Mainwaring will see you now!”..…all that’s gone. Don’t take us so seriously. We’re really all about FUN!’
It was a clear case of brain-washing. Fight it though I might, my notion of banks changed forever. To this day they still seem less stuffy and intimidating. That strange campaign successfully modified my mind in Lloyds favour. (The Egg credit card, a front for the stuffy old Prudential, takes this approach to its ridiculous conclusion: Running up debt is so wacky!)
It’s quite a price pay. Advertising has us running in circles, worrying about nonsense, chasing rubbish. It paints corporate abusers as saviours and makes environmentalists seem like cranks. It encourages us to eat high-fat food then makes a fetish out of being thin. It goads children into pestering money out of parents, and leaves parents feeling guilty if they can’t provide. Instead of compassion towards others it promotes endless concern with the self. It turns neighbours and strangers and friends into people to compete with, people to worry about. It makes last year’s cool into this year’s joke. Better get the new one.
I won’t be offering any other prescriptions regarding adverts, but there is one: Stop watching them. Don’t engage with them. Turn over or just kill the sound. That’s the real liberating power of the remote control. Adverts are out to make you anxious. Logically then, avoiding them can make you less anxious, happier, something no soap-powder will ever do. Like any other rogue on the doorstep don’t let them in. Just watch the programs and let the sponsors pay.
Part Two now posted above.
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