World citizenship - a vain celebration of the 'one per cent's' power

“Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.”

So exclaimed Thomas Paine the great polemicist of liberty. And it sounds great this 'citizen of the world' stuff. It makes us feel ever so grand, that we have risen above the mundane and fractious things that dominate mere nations - our horizons are broader, our eyes brighter and our nobility nobler that those tied to the narrow bigotry of patriotism.

A short while ago I'd have been with you all proclaiming that there are bigger, grander things than nation and arguing that, like Tom Paine, independence of mind escapes us from the bounds of petty nationalism. And it's a lovely comforting feeling being a citizen of the world except for one minor point - there is no 'world' citizenship for us to hold. For sure there are some world institutions - the United Nations and its assorted children, the World Trade Organisation, FIFA, the Olympic Movement - but these are clubs of countries not things that have citizenship.

But despite this, I'm going to indulge you citizens of the world and pretend that your claim has some merit, that saying "I'm a citizen of the world" is a reality rather than an idle piece of philosophical vanity. What does it mean? As citizens of a country do we have duties or does that citizenship confer on us rights and privileges? As citizens don't we expect some things from the government to which we've handed some of our sovereignty, our liberty?

Here in the UK the deal on citizenship (or subjecthood as we properly are) is that our government protects in various way. We expect a police force to stop bad people hurting us or taking our property. We expect some degree of welfare that supports us when we need help. And we expect to be consulted - imperfectly but consulted nonetheless - on the things the government of our nation does. Citizenship isn't some vague statement of cultural association - "but we've so much to share across the world" - but a real, solid and practical thing. A deal between us as individuals and our nation.

So in this world you say you're a citizen of, how does that solid and practical thing play out? Surely this is the myth of John F Kennedy's foreign policy and the neoconservatism it spawned - the idea that we have some sort of duty to the world to enforce our systems onto other places, by force if necessary? Isn't this world citizenship just a personal justification of 'regime change' - after all those poor Afghans and Iraqis weren't properly citizens of our world so we muse, it's a duty to, bring them into the fold of our world polity? And how do we explain a world for citizens that includes the oppression of women in Saudi Arabia, the executing of gays in Syria and the war-created famines that scourge Africa?

Or is your world citizenship something different? A clubbing together of the "1%", those fortunate and wealthy people from everywhere in world who can gather together in fancy hotels, at swish conference venues and in fine restaurants where they can discuss the plight of the remaining 99% and what should be done about it? Is your world citizenship simply another - slightly self-serving - term for what Harm de Blij called 'globals'. These are the people who in de Blij's words have 'flattened' the earth but who control, dominate and exploit the 'locals', the people who are outside that club of world citizens. Such people remind me of J V Jones' Archbishop of Rorn - superficially caring, splendidly 'of the people', yet in truth greedy, devious and exploitative.

So forgive me if I reject your world citizenship as the vainest of chimera, a thing of little substance and almost no relevance to most of the people living on the world. This isn't to reject cultural (or for that matter physical) exploration or to suggest that my rejecting citizenship is also to reject free trade, exchange and movement. In the end the point is that citizenship only works when it is real, when the citizen can see the benefit and when the polity to which we commit as citizens does its part of the bargain.

In the end these allegiances work when people relate to them. And we know that the strongest ties are those closest to us - family, friends, neighbours. Yes we are shocked by the terrible scenes from a war in the middle east, from a famine in Africa or a flood in South Asia. But we'll pay more attention and are more likely to act on the news that our cousin has cancer. We'll get up from the settee and walk to the village hall if they propose building 500 houses out back. We'll protest about a new landfill or a road scheme. But the most we'll do for the victims of those wars, famines and floods is make a donation when the process is easily done while staying firmly sat on that settee.

None of this makes any of us bad people, it's just that, as Kipling told us, god gave us small hearts and we give those hearts to the places and the people we love. And we're pretty comfortable with living in a place where we share language, history, culture and ideas. Instead of highfalutin' concepts like citizenship, we should instead think of community, of place and how we can, to paraphrase Stephen Stills, love the place we're in.

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On the power of the media...

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We are reminded by Alex Massie:

Speaking of which, we might, when considering over-mighty media moguls remember that Murdoch is not the main player in the British media landscape. That honour belongs to the BBC. Nearly six times as many Britons watch BBC1 than read The Sun. The BBC’s website has more readers than any Murdoch title. And across all platforms, online, on television and on radio, the BBC does more to shape and mould public attitudes than any other media enterprise. This is so even if it also often takes its lead from the newspapers.

This is a central - and important - point in an excellent article on the lynch mob chasing Rupert Murdoch.

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Disappointment...

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The Coalition has done some fine things - free schools, started to sort out welfare, help the line on shoring up the economy, made some (but not all) public services face up to what they spend as well as how they spend it. There's no doubt that the Coalition is an vastly superior administration to the egregious administration of Gordon Brown.

But. There's always a but. And Graeme Archer, as he often does, puts his finger on that but:

...I could wish that a Conservative Mayor, a Conservative Prime Minister, and a Conservative-led government would spend a little more time discussing how they might dismantle the apparatus of power that protects the bankers, the trades unionists, the quango kings and queens.

This is the disappointment that the public see. Not all the cant about "cost-of-living" or "hard-working families" but a sense that some people - those bankers, trade unionists and quangocrats - seem able to browbeat the ordinary man without any seeming control over their actions.

I could add the former Labour spin doctors and 'spads' who have sashayed neatly into powerful positions in charities, the cluster of 'progressive' campaigners who (from their comfortable London homes) berate and lecture the ordinary person on their personal choices. And the politicians do nothing for those grandees are the people they see at meetings every day, those people Graeme speaks of are inside the tent influencing the attitudes, outlook and decisions of government.

To win the next election the Conservatives have to show they'll do just what Graeme says. The alternative is that Labour, the former party of the workers, now the political wing of those fussbucket grandees forms a government. A government where lecturing, hectoring, banning, controlling and directing what us regular folk do is the order of the day. Ordered about by those grandees.

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As society becomes less religious I find myself profoundly unmoved

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Yesterday evening I watched two episodes of The Borgias - there I saw, just as I did reading Neal Stevenson (and others) work, The Mongoliad, the reality of organised religion. Not the honest piety we are told is its feature but rather the rapacious pursuit of power and the aggressive destruction of anything that seems to be competition. Having cowed and captured the state, religion took the instruments of the state's power - swords, soldiers and torture - and used them to exercise and sustain control.

Not in the interests of salvation but in the service of power. It was a reminder that, however much we may wish otherwise, the nature of religious authority is more political that spiritual - even if they no longer carry on quite so rapaciously as did Rodrigo and his family.

So today, with that reminder in my mind, I was struck by the Heresiac's observations on a YouGov poll:

A new YouGov poll confirms that religion among the younger generation is in headlong retreat. A mere 25% said that they believed in God. A further 19% said that they believed in a "greater spiritual power", while a full 38% now claim to have no religious or spiritual beliefs at all. The remainder were agnostic. Essentially, then, this is a non-believing generation. 10% said that they attended religious services at least once a month (this is quite close to the long-term average for the population as a whole), but the majority (56%) said that they never went. In perhaps the most significant rebuff to traditional religion, 41% thought that it was the cause of more harm than good in the world. Only 14% (a considerably smaller figure than that for belief in God) thought that religion was, on balance, a good thing.

It seems that far from (as some foolish stats-mongers contend) us having a Muslim majority in a few years, the reality is that we will have an atheist majority. Perhaps some fear this eventuality - I find myself unmoved. Not by the prospect of atheism - it is a foolish belief - but by the obvious failure of organised religion to grasp the ideals and ideas of today. I have a feeling that religion as a great institution is nearing its final days - all the baggage of the state tacked onto god (as if we still need our rulers to have some pretence of his endorsement) no longer works.

This will not make us a better society or less divided. But we will not be the worse for the demise of organised religion.

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EU regulations - we shouldn't laugh...we should cry...

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Chris Snowdon reminds us of the lunacy that is EU regulation:

For example, the Commission wants to ban cigarette packs which are 54 mm wide, but will allow packs that are 55 mm wide (and only 55 mm wide). It will allow cigarettes to be sold if they have a diameter of 7.5 mm, but no more and no less than 7.5 mm. Only cigarettes which have a flip top lid will be allowed. Menthol cigarettes will be arbitrarily banned. Cylindrical rolling tobacco tins will be banned, but rectangular pouches will be tolerated. Packs of 20 will be OK, but packs of 19 will be illegal.

There will be some cod public health reason for each of the daft proposals. But, the complete picture is of an organisation so far up its bureaucratic backside that it simply doesn't comprehend how it destroys freedom, choice and independence.

And it's not a joke - however much we want to laugh about bent cucumbers or straight bananas. The result of this endless rule-making is to allow those with the cash to buy politicians or bureaucrats or the time to camp out in Brussels the power to damage our interests while pursuing their profits, prejudice or power.

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The Banker's Dance

It is like watching one of those symbolic war dances – a haka perhaps or more likely one of those morris dances with sticks. Lots of faux anger and great threat but in the end none of the participants suffer – the violence, the punishment or the attack never happens.

This is the Banker’s Dance – a stately affair involving bankers, regulators, civil servants and politicians performing to an audience of PR consultants, financial advisors and management consultants while us ordinary folk press our eyes to a crack in the fence hoping to catch a glimpse of the grand ball.

Today – on top of screwing small shareholders, excessive and unjustified bonuses, complacency in the face of crisis and crippling the economy to pay for their misdeed – these people, the bankers, regulators, civil servants and politicians, have revealed that they don’t mind fixing the system in their favour. We’ve known that politicians and civil servants have done this for years – responding to the clamour of public opinion through the temporary manipulation of markets. A tax rise here, an interest rate cut there, maybe a new road or an extra payment for pensioners – spending other people’s money to cadge a few votes.

But now the partners of those politicians and those mandarins – the bankers – are shown to be cheats too. And that their so-called regulators were either complicit or too stupid to care. We – by which I mean the man in the Ford Mondeo and the woman on the 8:35 from Beckenham Junction to Victoria – are shafted but these grand people do nothing except play the game of false anger, mock condemnation and contrived critique. The words are there:

 

“This is a scandal. It is extremely serious. They've had a very large fine and quite rightly. But frankly the Barclays management team have some big questions to answer,"

"It is clear that what happened at Barclays and potentially other banks was completely unacceptable, was symptomatic of a financial system that elevated greed above all other concerns and brought our economy to its knees."

But does anyone believe this is different from that Maori rugby player screaming death and blood at his opponent? After the game – after the Commons statements, frowny appearances on the BBC and “we will act” articles in today’s chosen Sunday paper – the people making these statements (Osborne, Cameron, Miliband, Balls) will be stood at the bar with the people they condemn.

The stately dance has become a dark ritual, a celebration of the demonic bargain struck by politicians with banks to allow them the means to use tomorrow’s tax (and today’s inflation) to bribe chosen groups of voters. Not satisfied with encouraging us to vote to spend other people’s money, we voted to spend money that didn’t exist, to create a magical money tree.

And all the while the dancers piled up cash, assets and power while we – the poor suckers – piled up debts. Yet we carried on- and as we’ve seen in Greece will always carry on – pretending (are we really such fools) that it isn’t us who do the living and dying round here – that the magicians of government will solve all the problems.

That dance – that black dance – was the deal that made this possible. And it was, is, will be a monstrous deception. The greatest of great lies.

The thing we thought was a money tree? It’s a gibbet. And those dancers will hang us from it.

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The Force of Nature - a meditation on hubris

We think it can be controlled, directed, bent to our purposes. We believe we are above it - better, stronger, in control, responsible. We blindly - gleefully even - lay claim to being responsible for all of nature's ills. It must be man we cry!

Yea, even when disaster strikes, we still want the crisis to be of man not of nature. We have turned our backs on the force of nature, waved away the truth that we are but scurvy ants scurrying on the surface of a small planet in a small solar system - a place governed by nature's power not the power of man.

Sometimes nature reminds us - in the most terrible, terrifying of ways - of her power. She says to mankind - I am in charge not you. You are nothing.

But we don't listen choosing instead to find reasons in the actions of men to explain the majesty of nature. Instead of recognising the sovereignty of nature, we look instead for man-made disaster.

Our breath is taken away when nature visits us with terror - we cannot explain, we cannot comprehend, we just have to cope. And to cope we must make our own, self-built disaster from the ruins of nature's act.

That, my friends, is hubris.

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Fantasy politics - a world without the Party

I have been reading one of those substantial, detailed fantasy epics. You know the sort – sweeping vistas, warring kingdoms, dark lords and magic everywhere. This one – Wolfblade – is slightly unusual in that it’s written by a woman, which seems not to change the nature of the narrative style or the complicated array of lords, barons and knights so typical of the genre.

However, the description of politics in a fantasy world got me to thinking about how a polity without political parties founded in ideology might look. And how the politics might play out in such a place. Even – and I’ve restrained my fantastical urges here – where there are no mages, sorcerers or wizards.

We have got used to a land where political parties are the entire – or almost the entire – basis for political competition. Even down to the level of little town councils in small market towns, we find elections contested between the parties of left and right, liberal and conservative, authoritarian and free. The presentation of politics by the media, the analysis by academics and even the cynical public bar conversation – all these are formed round the assumption that politics needs the political party.

But let’s fantasise for a moment. Let’s consider a world without political parties. Where everyone is “independent”, where there are no whips, no ‘lines to follow’, no tribal politics. Rest assured my friends, I’m not getting like that dreadful fraud, John Lennon, and imagining some nonsensical utopia – indeed the world without political parties may be dystopian rather than utopian!

Which takes us back to Wolfblade and the world of fantasy. The book details a politics founded on competition between Warlords moderated by the need to retain national unity against the possible – even probable – external threat. The contest is driven by two factors – self-interest and strategic difference. And we should note that these factors are not separate but weave together in determining the factions, interests and politics of the realm. This is the world without political parties – at least as we know them. Different factions – parties if you must – exist but their contest is not ideological but practical, strategic – even tactical.

In the world without political parties, we focus more strongly on leadership, on character and – trumping all this – on our own self-interest. Our support – whether it be votes in an election or troops in a battle - is governed not by ideology or the political tribe but by which person best represents our interests. It becomes a true politics, one determined by consideration rather than habit and where we choose as out representative one who represents our interest not that of some distant party headquarters.

Or at least that might be so. But just as likely is the triumph of the courtier – the man whose sole purpose is to secure power. For sure, these men – and women – abound in our politics already. For every honest politician – for each Philip Davies or John McDonnell – there’s a dozen or more interested mostly in preferment and in power. In a world without parties – in my fantasy – we might find ourselves in a darker world of corruption, power-broking and destructive government.

And this is the theme of so much fantasy literature – the contest between a fearful, corrupt world under some dark lord and a brighter, chivalrous world under some shining king or queen. But what we should remember – and Tolkien knew this – is that even the best can be corrupted by power:

In the place of a Dark Lord you would have a Queen! Not dark but beautiful and terrible as the Morn! Treacherous as the Seas! Stronger than the foundations of the Earth! All shall love me and despair!

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Wednesday Whimsy: A little Practical Magic

Let’s begin this with a disclaimer. If you think practical magic is something to do with spells, charms or incantations then you’ve come to the wrong place. Magic isn’t something we invoke; it’s something that’s there all around us waiting to be used.

So to practical magic and where better to begin than with Frazer:

“Regarded as a system of natural law, that is, as a statement of the rules which determine the sequence of events throughout the world, it may be called Theoretical Magic: regarded as a set of precepts which human beings observe in order to compass their ends, it may be called Practical Magic.”

So the practice of magic isn’t about spiritual salvation, doesn’t concern itself with god or gods and cannot provide a guide to living. But just as much the practice of magic isn’t about power as we tend to understand power in our frantic modern lives. To understand this you must understand what we mean when we say ‘magic’. In part an exclamation of joy, pleasure or excitement, magic also represents an expression of disbelief.

“How did he do that?” We exclaim, “Its magic!”

But magic is more an expression of synergy – yes, an awesome, magical sunset can be described prosaically by a scientist. But that does not explain why it is magical – the synergy between nature’s genius, our mood and our senses produces the magic. And we know we can use that magic for our ends – to further our desires. As Hoagy sang:

Ole buttermilk sky

Don'cha fail me when I'm needin' you most

Hang a moon above her hitchin' post

And hitch me to the one I love

The strength of practical magic lies not in compulsion but in mood. There is no magic to be found in rage, it is a thing of calm. Speed holds plenty of awe, masses of excitement but little magic. For magic we slow down, take a deep breath, sigh, look about us and say, “what a great place.” Then we see the magic that makes us love, the magic of contentment and the ultimate magic of shared experience.

People who look to magic for power, control or destruction are fools. The magician understands – as Himmagery in Sherri Tepper’s True Game – that people need only recognise his command of magic, there is not need to exercise that command. Practical magic does not need practice to be effective.

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Apple iPad - carved from the living earth and powered by pixies

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke, "Profiles of The Future", 1961 (Clarke's third law)


It seems that Steve Jobs has either taken the sage words of Arthur C Clarke to heart or else his Californian researchers really have discovered the practical application of sorcery. The iPad is says the advert:

“…a magical and revolutionary device.”

So forgive me if my mind glimpses a picture of cloaked and hooded men (and probably women too in this modern age of magical equality) gathered in secret cabal. Here, deep in some mystical crystal cave the spells are cast that create – from the living earth – this artifact of great power.

And elsewhere, in some sylvan glen a ritual takes place. Slender maidens and beautiful youths dance and sing. Noble gifts of food, drink and video games are laid on the soft, mossy forest floor. The little folk, the pixies, are contacted. And with these gifts the deal is struck. Oberon agrees to the project. The light from the will ‘o the wisp, the speed of the fairy herald, the strength of the gnome and the cheek of the brownie will be marshalled.

The iPad – that magical device – will live!!

Carved from the living Earth and powered by pixies!

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