Another Gray Day

Definitely another grey day as the snow continues, so went to see “10,000BC” en famille.
Another Roland Emmerich effects splurge, with lovely woolly mammoths, sabre-tooth tigers and the inevitable hide couture. It seems to me like RE is really more of a manager than a director, since all the SFX strands are pulled together efficiently, o time and on budget etc. But rather like Peter Jackson with “King Kong”, the film has no real emotional core. whereas you can look up Hollyoaks on Youtube any day of the week and find tragedy of epic proportions. In fact, Richard Thompson does a better job of tragedy in three minutes of “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” than Roland E does in 1:48 of 10000BC. Which isn’t really tragic since there’s a happy ending of sorts. And they all spoke perfect French, except for the Africans and Egyptians who were acting out their stereotypical roles, being slaves and pyramid-builders respectively.
Although the theme of the film is “the first hero”, it doesn’t really convey the feeling of there being something really huge in the balance, like the future of humankind or Becca’s love for Jake (Hollyoaks again). Sure, the main man’s beautiful girlfriend has been kidnapped, but that’s about it. The film assumes that the human emotional universe was up and running 12000 years ago, rather than evolving gradually into the state in which it is now. Which is not to say that emotions did not exist, but we can’t easily recreate how they would have felt. In some ways they are a luxury, to be indulged once hunger, thirst and cold have been overcome. And with mammoth on the menu, that probably took a while.

Just enthused by a “what-if” that has become a ‘wow!’. What if you could organise files, such as journal articles, using iTunes? Look it up on Google, there are quite a few independent discoveries of the way you can use iTunes to organise .pdf files, using a completely separate library. Why is this useful? Because you can plonk your files into playlists more than once without actually creating copies and filling up your hard disk. Therefore you can have a group of articles about one topic, and a different group about another topic, with as much cross-referencing as you like. Clicking on the files opens them using preview or adobe reader. (incidentally with preview you can copy and paste,unlike reader, great for references.)
There must be something in this since even Windows users of iTunes are using it.
Whatever next?

In educational circles people are always trying to avoid “top-down” approaches to things, preferring the obvious opposite, “bottom-up” (i.e. no funding, but everyone agrees with whatever it is). Same with sustainable development, right? No way. If ever there was a case for something top-down being required, it’s the recent USAF order for refuelling tankers. Won by Airbus (hooray) but about as sustainable as a relaunch of the Austin Allegro (well it might sell in Japan). Obviously there are military arguments, but the environmental cost of the whole inflight refuelling process is…it’s as if we all drove FI cars up the motorway with pit stops every 50 miles. The military side is the what if…? argument (enter the foreign government of your choice). Time for some risk assessment, boys. which is more likely - climate change or WW3?

Recently started to peruse the transcripts of the Scott-Baker inquest into the Diana/Dodi/Trevor crash, not because I was a big fan or because I believe the conspiracy theory, but to find out what happened to the mysterious Fiat Uno (no definite news yet). Several things struck me, firstly the extreme courtesy and consideration shown to witnesses by the eponymous Lord, secondly the extreme lengths to which the inquest is going in order to find out what happened. Unfortunately there are already signs that they won’t establish anything definitive except for disproving the barmy Prince Philip-told-MI6-to-do-it theory, although equally they don’t seem too keen to actually ask him.
It does give interesting insights into MI6, as you thought but hoped otherwise, it turns out to be much like any other civil service department, with arcane filing systems and much talk of budgets. And it doesn’t look like there is much chance of them assassinating any of the various dictators out there who really deserve it.
The point here is that memories are not very clear, not surprisingly in some cases, more surprisingly in others, such as the ex-defence minister who couldn’t remember which side was which in Angola. So, as in Kurosawa’s film Rashomon, there are several stories about the same event, none of which can exist unproblematically alongside the others. I wonder if things will be different ten years from now, or will all those blogs and twitters drift away like our memories do? And if they don’t, what use will it be recreating the past anyway?

Due to an unfortunate series of events I’ve just watched what is certainly the new no. one in my top ten of the worst films of all time, Borat. No doubt I am asking for trouble, since the film seems to have been a critical success etc etc, and is of course deliberately and ironically offensive to almost everyone. I didn’t laugh, I cried at the waste of money which could have been spent making any number of other films. I’d even give the money to Woody Allen even although Match Point was my previous number one worst film.
Of course it’s seen as successful because people like me get annoyed about it. OK, no problem, but anyone who enjoyed this should be strapped to a chair and made to watch Klimov’s Come and see or Pasolini’s Salo until they repent. The most horrible thing about it is what it says about the mentality of the people who finance films. I just wish some of the punters who got annoyed on camera had actually kicked him (Baron Cohen) in the bollocks, which is less than he deserves and might actually have been funny.

Went out last night to watch the eclipse of the moon, a mildly frustrating trip due to the cloud cover, but eventually saw the sinister red planet view which we’d been waiting for. I suppose the power of the eclipse to produce dread comes from the human-scale speed of the changes and the related feeling that there is a mysterious purpose to them. Something is going on up there. Knowing that it is a harmless astronomical coincidence doesn’t make it any less powerful, nor does the fact of the Apollo landings.
Maybe the Moon’s gravity sweeping through the trawl and string of memory reminds us of something vast which we have forgotten.

Oh dear, a portentious title again! Inspired by watching “House of Sand and Fog” again on DVD, I began to think about what tragedy really meant. The Greeks seem to have thought of tragedy and the existence of gods as being closely related. In the film, the personal god of the only character to invoke one, Colonel Behrani (Ben Kingsley) is impassive in the face of pleas to save his dying son. Do the gods enjoy tragedy and suffering? No doubt there is a science fiction story somewhere out there which suggests the Earth as a sort of cosmic Playstation, amusing cruel beings from some other star system. There are certainly plenty of games to choose, from moronic teenagers in Warrington kicking people to death, to Dien Bien Phu, the Armenian genocide and on, and on. All in memories, somehow accessible at quantum level…
The horrible thing about tragedy is that it is always a result of decision, somewhere along the line, avoidable or unavoidable, Everest expeditions, genocides, car bombs, happy slappings. And of course the opposite decisions, the non-events, are never seen as heroic, for we have the germs of that alien compulsion to tragedy within ourselves. The amazing thing about social acivities like education is not how much disruption there is but how much actually gets done, by kids who simply decide not to, by dictators who don’t dictate. It isn’t even a case of ‘just say no’ but a case of just ‘don’t’.

Like a lot of people I bristled and fizzed when the Archbishop of Canterbury was reported as suggesting that some elements of Sharia law could be allowed to function in parallel with the British legal system, in fact that this was unavoidable. However, I did download the text of his lecture - and will post it here - because he is not stupid and because I don’t suppose many people have actually read it. As an academic paper, it reads well and has a serious argument at its core. Basically, citizenship is inevitably more than just being a paid up member of a nation state. It also has cultural elements which exceed the grasp of any codified law. Thus, any attempt to strip out the cultural from any socio-legal system, in favour of pure rationality, is doomed. He uses the example of France in 1790 and China in the 1970s -as failed experiments in social engineering. Neither example stands up, since the French system is in many ways still standing, whilst no-one could describe Mao as rational (read the Chang and Halliday book, Mao-the unknown story for more on that).

The French system as it survives is flawed when it comes to education and other areas where the recognition of difference is effectively prohibited. Equality of legal standing does not equate to equality of opportunity. Nevertheless, there is a level of mutual respect which permeates most areas of French society and transcends its Governmental elitism and even youth culture. There is thus a kind of belief in the State which traces directly back to the revolution yet which does not impose itself dogmatically and uncritically.

RW’s vision is of a society where different cultural ‘communities’ both conform to the legal framework residing in the State whilst offering their own ‘brands’ of justice in certain areas such as marital disputes. Citizens would be free to choose, on the basis of their own cultural background, which judge, board, panel or whatever, to provide arbitration in their own case. Naturally, this is hedged around with provisos about preserved rights and compatibility with State law. Some critics have argued that this makes it pointless to have additional jurisdictions. Although that is probably valid, it is not his main point, which is that in discussions of law, ‘theology still waits for us around the corner of these debates”. This is a troubling vision.

Earlier in the lecture he makes a point about the Sharia law on apostasy (religious conversion away from Islam) being, in the view of some Muslim scholars, a response to a historically specific situation. A re-interpretation of Sharia law on this point is therefore appropriate. However, this is the problem with the Abrahamic religions in general. Dietary laws, monogamy (or otherwise) and various other prescriptions were probably once there for a purpose, and may even serve some purpose today. Or they may not. The problem is that once interpretation and adaptation is allowed, the distinctiveness of the cultural heritage vis- a-vis secular law begins to seep away. All legal systems require interpretation and renewal, the question being how and by whom these are to be legitimated and performed. Religions are ill-suited, both in principle and in practice, as vehicles for change, since their existence depends on the exact opposite. Not that they don’t try, but, as with the Anglicans, they risk tearing themselves apart in doing so.

RW refers to the Enlightenment as ‘a necessary wake-up call to religion’ and we could perhaps see his lecture as a wake-up call to the Enlightenment, which is still with us despite the best efforts of both academics and archbishops. But in waking the Enlightenment, he may have - to over-extend the metaphor - caused it to sit up and take heed of the dangers facing it. The point about religious difference is that it is fundamental to religion - minor differences in the interpretation of a sacred text are turned into dogma through the mechanisms of faith and belief, and off goes another group to found its own brand. Allowing difference in legal systems, as opposed to respecting difference through legal rights and provisions, is like privatising the railways - it solved one set of problems but created another unforeseen set in doing so. Just because you can get a reasonable coffee on Virgin doesn’t make that the right way to resolve the problem of underinvestment.

So, I think the Archbishop is wrong, we should not adopt any aspect of Sharia or any other law traceable to faith, even if at some points in history religions have upheld human rights rather than suppressed them. Nor is it ‘unavoidable’ that we will ahve to do this. But he is, after all, a scholar, and in saying what he has said, he is doing his job, not trying to destroy British culture.

There seems to be a lot of rhetoric around evidence based policy, but banks seem to be exempt. The evidence is that banks are greedy, stupid, inefficient and a drag on the economy, yet they continue to dictate to the rest of us as if they had the slightest clue as to what they are doing. In reality banks are still in the era of the horse and cart, at least when it comes to retail customers, yet the scum who make money by gambling with our savings (such as they are) can run up ridiculous debts (Societe Generale). Those same scumbags can trade billions instantaneously, yet it take weeks for the average retail customer to move money from one bank to another The established banks have a de facto monopoly on shifting money around, and consequently can survive being stupid and inefficient. If only Google did banking….

The essence of purpose is to DO something, for example saving the earth by putting on a huge rock concert to which thousands of people will drive from faraway, which will burn through millions of kilowatt-hours and which will live forever, or at least it will on youtube. But there can be negative purpose. I remember saying something to Bono (yes really) on night in Notting Hill, about how U2 had shown how surrender could be seen as a positive act. That might also be phrased as an act of negative purpose. We have become so fixated on competitiveness and goals (in the American psychology sense) that we cannot comprehend their opposites. We cannot just be. Worse, we cannot let anyone or anytthing else be.

Even if there is some cosmic purpose or some sense in which human progress has to be kept on track through willpower (and I think there is), we have multiplied everything present so many times that there has to be room for the opposite of presence, absence. There is no need to write the next great novel or direct the next (insert director of choice) film (let’s face it you couldn’t do any worse). Someone else will do it, you will think you could have done it and you are probably right but you don’t actually need to. The only time I really felt needed in a job was as a taxi driver in Barnsley (who else wanted to do that?). Even when I thought I was being the great humanitarian, driving to Romania, someone else was doing it a lot better. So there is do and do not, and do not is often better. Imagine how much better life would be if certain politicians had done not, or whoever invented pop-up ads.

On the other hand, now is the time for action (Secret Affair, c 1980). How to decide? You’ll have to buy the book…