P J Harvey's Today Program.

PJ Harvey’s editor-for-a-day-ship of the Today program has proved controversial. With poetry, music and considered pieces by experts it resembled R4’s other program, ‘Something Understood’, rather than their usual quick fire three-hour morning news marathon of despair. The BBC’s version of balance resembles the automatic altercations that arise in an inebriated pub dispute where alcohol fuelled egos disagree purely for the sake of proving they exist. And in watching such one’s brain wobbles from the constant head rotations of a compelling tennis match. A majestic lob is countered by a crosscourt backhand freakishly foiled by a sneaky drop shot. It’s a Centre Court show where the listener marvels at the play but never really gets to know the score, other than, that is, the number of deaths involved. Obviously being dead is something not even egos find debateable. Questioners and answerers alike spew out little more than an albeit stylised stream of consciousness, their attempts at context reduced to wild simplistic extrapolations as if every news item is the butterfly wing that might usher in worldwide catastrophe. It’s the twitter-ification of news by self-regarding professionals. News can be seen as ‘what’s just happened’, as in ‘I’ve just been to the toilet and wiped my arse’, or in a broader, more considered and informed context. PJ’s editorship moved the program in this direction. The machine gun rattle of micro-moment claim and counter claim gave way to, how can I put it, thought. It may have appeared left leaning but only because ‘left’ still holds a distant echo of ‘with regard to the needs and rights of ordinary people.’ Be careful who you invite today; tomorrow might need to be different. 

Despair and Fulfilment.

Today’s Today program focused on the findings of a Prince’s Trust survey. That three quarters of a million unemployed 15 to 24 year-olds see nothing to live for. Around a quarter have self harmed and or contemplated suicide. That’s pretty devastating, but what does it mean? True being unemployed makes you feel useless compared with those 9to5-ers ‘needed’ to fulfil some paying roll in our social fabric, but a few weeks serving in McDonalds will prove employment’s not a guaranteed route to personal salvation. But even McDonalds provides context, social connection and occupies one’s brain, so it stops rumination. Perhaps rumination is the problem. Then again Mandela had ample time to ruminate in prison and he came out OK It struck me many years ago that it’s not good to stare at the meaning of life because it’s all too easy to see right through it. Better to clean the drains and enjoy it. So these youngsters have time to ruminate on, well nothing. They see themselves living without the necessity to live. So maybe it’s the loss of necessity at the root of things, but then where does necessity come from? Necessity to do what? I mean it’s not necessary I write this but I feel the desire to. So does desire trigger the whole process? Ah but I have the wherewithal to fulfil my desire, computer, internet access etc. If my desire was to win the lottery or become famous, well that’s another matter. So the desire coupled with the means of achieving it is the key, or at least having a desire that matches the possibilities of what one can achieve. OK so these youngsters have desires outside their means of achieving them: In a sense two non-overlapping zones. As a society we have given them a set of desires and a set of capabilities that don’t match. Their ‘mental problems’ don’t come from disability but from trying to resolve the irresolvable situation we have put them in. TV and the media focus their desires on things to buy yet virtually shun thoughts of being capable. Education, desperately trying to prove itself capable, overlooks its role in creating capability in its students. Its subconscious message is, “Please learn this shit so we can look good.” Its message to students is, “Learning is a load of effort for no real world result.” Many parents thankful for the respite care of TV similarly divest themselves of their role in creating capability in their children. All these factors result in the non-overlapping zones of desire and capability. There is nothing these youngsters want to do that they can do. This isn’t just about employment and earning money. Drawing, painting, writing, singing, climbing, fishing, cooking and cleaning and a host of other things can be enjoyable and don’t cost much but aren’t in their desires zone, and equally there are a host of skills not in their capability zone. It’s not important what the zones contain but that they overlap. If they don’t you’re literally useless to yourself, when they overlap completely you can equally literally do anything you want. One is despair, the other fulfilment. Will think further and come back to you. Happy New Year.

The 3rd Vatican Council.

Well the Pope’s stirring it. The third Vatican Council is like thinking stuff! Didn’t Catholics use to be died in the wool none thinkers, like a rule’s a rule and ever more shall be so? Well not now. “Through humility, soul searching, and prayerful contemplation we have gained a new understanding of certain dogmas.” Lady bishops and even Pope are now a possibility. All religions are now accepted as equally ‘true’. The Bible is great but “some passages are outdated. Some even call for intolerance or judgement.” Call me cynical but all this sounds like Conservative Party policy after consulting a few focus groups. If Catholicism’s truth is love and tolerance how can Islam’s numerous calls for the dismemberment of none Muslim infidels be also true? That’s the trouble with starting to think, you’re not very good at it to begin with. And then Pope Francis spent an hour haranguing racists and governments limiting migration calling them the “ultimate evil in the world”, and “a racist casts aside his humanity to become a beast, a demon! He is the embodiment and personification of evil, a Satan! ….We will consider excommunication for those whose souls willingly dwell in the darkness and evil of intolerance and racism.” Not much love and tolerance there. They seem to have jumped from the frying pan of dogma straight into the fire of teenage self-righteousness where love and tolerance are exclusively reserved for those of a similar opinion and intolerance is the righteous and appropriate response towards those who think differently. I’m beginning to agree with Cardinal Arinze of Nigeria who asked, “what do we stand for if we declare that truth is relative? On the contrary, truth exists independently of our personal feelings. All of this talk of love and tolerance is hollow if we have no identity of our own, if we stand for nothing.” In his country, “under Islamic Sharia law Catholics are no longer free to practice their faith publicly”, adding, “Is it racist to desire to preserve one’s own culture and a future for your people and your children? Have white people gone stupid today?” So Mr Pope welcome to moral complexity. It’s not easy is it. 

Strictly.

Strictly’s finished and Abby Clancy is a goddess but what’s in there to learn? Well I for one am a lumpen flaccid automaton devoid of elegance, and with the dress sense of a pigeon. I live in a world where my brain orders movement as if my body is a waiter serving pottage. My protestant work ethic has reduced it to the mechanics of doing. I’m a bird tethered in a guinea pig wheel trudging ever on to’rd a dangling seed. Like a Dodo I watch Strictly and somewhere deep inside I seem to remember that I can fly. Not elegance prescribed by some android etiquette but the elegance of responding to air, to my natural substance. Under my pigeon grey I see exotic plumage, a rainbow fan of glittering feathers as I beam at the memory I can’t recall. And the shapes and tactility of genders writ large, female grace to male strength, feminine strength to masculine fragility, in a flurry of twirls and lifts. Limbs moving to the elegance of wings, necks to the grace of swans and hips to the beat of eons, all held in the long lost memory of our bodies. How have we been reduced to this plod? And the contestants reawakened beam and stroke, kiss and hold and tingle, not for the scores but the gift, not for the graft but the opportunity given. An opportunity within our own gift should we have the courage to take it. This isn’t ballroom; this is Strictly, strictly as in the demands of something necessary to avoid the flabby trudge along the passage of time.

The Hacker’s Tale.

Jason had always been a wiz at computers from his love of logic and mathematics. People used to call him a binary poet for his ability to create new meanings out of code and data. Though he could hack any system he only used it to get information, he had no malicious intent. He worked on the flocking of birds, how by a few simple rules held by each individual he could predict the movements of a thousand allowing them to fly with less effort and safe from predators. As a result he predicted the gusting of wind as each atom of air ‘flew’ by similar rules. From there he began to work on human conflict as a similar complex system. He noted the parameters, their interrelationships and feedback systems and wrote a program to model their progress from the first aggressive act to the last. He tested it out on historical battles and wars and its prediction always tallied with the well documented results. He could predict their length, numbers killed, the effect on each side on their economy, standard of living, even residual attitudes. Historians not normally interested in esoteric mathematics declared it an amazing achievement. Governments and the military welcomed it as a means of predicting the armaments and men needed to win future battles. Industry could use it to organise production. Everyone welcomed it in their own way. Welcomed it that is until a new conflict appeared on the horizon. Jason gathered the information and let the program run. The results appeared and there on the printout were the years, the deaths, the cost and the winner. Attitudes began to change. ‘It would be different this time. How could software predict the result? It was a just fight that needed to be won.’After three conflicts had been accurately predicted the nay Sayers lost all credibility. As the forth loomed and the years, the deaths, the cost and the winner were printed out, what to do? The losers didn’t want to fight just so they could lose and the winners didn’t want to fight at such a cost when they would inevitably win anyway. The game of winners and losers had been broken and a compromise was found to the mutual benefit of both. Jason was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, which, as it happens, was the very last one.

Mandela's Word.

In a TED Talk a South African, son of a white safari owner and who met Nelson Mandela as a boy, eulogised also over an employee born under a tree and brought up in the bush. This employee could turn his hand to anything which, considering his simple upbringing, the guy found amazing. He was also ‘pathologically helpful.’ The guy used this employee as an example of ‘ubuntu’ an African word meaning; “I am because of you”, but that I know as a version of the Linux open source operating system. So how did this employee who didn’t know the meaning of the word school learn so many skills? Could it be because of ubuntu? It feels an almost perverse concept when we’re used to thinking in terms of self-expression, self worth, success, celebrity and hierarchical power that our schools, commerce and politics are structured on. But ubuntu turns them on their head. It suggests a state of being where our very existence is predicated on being in an equal relationship with everything we encounter. Imagine then the employee’s reaction to a broken down truck. He knows nothing of mechanics but will ‘see’ what’s in front of him in a spirit of curious helpfulness. He is both the servant of the truck and its master mastering the fault and serving the truck. He will enjoy his personal achievement and the achievement of the truck in equal measure. He will learn ‘because of the truck’ and be grateful to it. Personal progress, self-expression and self worth will result from the experience but it will not have been his goal, he will have served the truck not bettered it. He will not in his ubuntu relationship with the world feel a jot elevated or more important.

Ububtu shows the disaster that is our education system. In almost every respect it is the reverse. I know precious few people who approach life in this ubuntu way but those that do are immensely capable, knowledgeable and inevitably successful. 

Visions.

Been reading about Black Elk’s amazing vision when he was twelve. He was a Lakota Indian and during a fever was taken by two lightning warriors to meet the grandfathers who showed him amazing visions of the future of his people and bestowed on him the power to lead them. He became a medicine man and played a large part in bringing peace between the Indian nations, travelled to England and met Queen Victoria and died around 1950. His account of this vision would make a CGI blockbuster any day of the week. I would like to add that as a teenager I also had a dream of some significance. I was lying on my back and from the sky came an enormous stone tablet. As it drifted down towards me I could see it had writing chiselled into it but I couldn’t make it out. As it came closer I became excited because it obviously had a message of great importance, the meaning of life, my future or what I was here to do. As it came almost close enough to read it drifted back into the heavens. I remember waking up very disappointed. I’d come so close to some revelation that would have set me apart as one of the chosen ones and perhaps told me of my great role in life. But it was not to be. A little later I realised I had in fact received a message even though I couldn’t read it, that, “You’re just going to have to fucking sort it out yourself.” I mean on the one hand that’s a bit of a slap in the face from those above but on the other maybe they just trusted me to get on with it. Either way it’s made life a lot more interesting.