Month: November 2013

Heard Roberto Unger talk last night on BBC R4 Analysis, at LSE with a student audience I believe, on the subject of democracy and freedom.

Suffice to say he reinforced my points in the recent “Everybody Wants a Revolution” series of posts.

Democratic freedom comes with “obligations” – not to be confused with coercion and enforcement – we are all individually free to ignore our obligations, so long as you’re prepared to take the social consequences.

Similarly those obligations involve taking action towards social solidarity – helping others – in addition to using those freedoms to make your own way in the democratic world.

Disruption can be a valid tactic, but the aim should always be towards solidarity. Refusing to engage in the current political system, not voting, can have protest value, but is not constructive. Interesting in societies where voting is “compulsory” (see above) not voting has greater visible impact and value. In any event the aim must be towards something better, having some idea of what it might take to be better – greater value to the whole.

[Links to add later.]

I blogged recently on having seen Roy Harper at Bridgewater Hall in Manchester in October, and having been very disappointed in his well below par, distracted, forgetful performance. In compensation I’ve been listening to his back catalogue almost constantly since, including his epic (one of his many epics) Lord’s Prayer, a complex 20 minute poem / modal song in seven parts variously voiced over atmospheric background music and sung to melody and accompanying musical arrangement (*). It’s one amongst the immense back catalogue I’ve been revisiting since the summer when looking forward to the autumn concert – where I discovered total recall of every word, note and nuanced sound, despite previously not listening to regularly for 35 years or more.

Tragic to hear last week that the reason for his distraction was the fact that the week before the concert he’d been formally charged on child sexual abuse (9 counts, 1 12 year old girl) in 1975/78. I’m still struggling to imagine how his lifestyle at the time could have led to such a situation, but as someone else commented, he has never been the kind of public celebrity likely to attract false attention-seeking accusations.

I’ve been listening to his back catalogue again with even greater intensity. I came across this recent (9/11 2012) posting on his blog on the demise of James Edgar (James Irish Jimi Edgar Schwartz-Schmaltz, Jimmy The Ghost, artist-shaman, 1939-2012) and the story of how he and his hand-tinted encyclopedia photo of Geronimo were the original inspiration for Lord’s Prayer. The Lifemask cover described is illustrated on-line here. Although the “aboriginal” imagery of the piece always reminded me of the American Indian vs White Man angle also used by Robert Pirsig, and let’s face it “I Hate The White Man” is a recurring theme, I had completely forgotten the visual imagery and explicit Geronimo references in the original album artwork. One thing you lose in these times of disembodied electronic media.

Sense amid the none sense.

[(*) – I can’t think of a track less like “driving music” than Lord’s Prayer, unlike the more promising Highway Blues, but it’s a track I find myself constantly listening to in the car.]

Oh no, it’s far worse than I feared. That last failed 3.6.x to 3.7 update followed by 3.7.1 bug fix has resulted in even greater damage than I feared. Not only do I still have to rebuild the social media and comment notification functionality, but I see now that all internal media and file links have been reconfigured somewhere – so all the links are broken in 13 years worth of content, some 3 or 4000 posts and more. Bastards. Effing bastards.

The “Everybody Wants a Revolution” theme continues from the last post, and a the post before that, with a few post-notes inserted along the way.

Interesting in this Guardian interview Brand continues the “don’t ask me I’m no expert” line, and admits he’s only recently taken an interest in the topic of alternative governance, so the warning remains that “do something to change things” hand-wringing and drum-banging is really only supported by half-baked, dangerous and positively misguided advice.

Don’t Vote vs Spoil Vote choice ? The real reason to go for the latter is obvious. The self-disenfranchisement of non-voting is a technicality, and yes, as a protest it devalues the hard-won freedoms of having popular democracy in the first place. No, the real practical reason is because a spoiled-vote is a protest which is visible, countable and accountable. Not that these are themselves naturally valuable virtues, except in any “system” where it’s the count of popular votes that counts, some variant of which is likely to be true in any free democracy. (Something completely other than some form of democracy ? Unlikely – conceivable, but unlikely – see Churchill.)

The Political Classes rhetoric? I’ve said enough. We are they. It’s “our” responsibility to change things. The more people who wake up to that the better, well done Russell, but in order to take responsibility we, some of us, need to think about what better governance would look like, and how we might get there, rather than just knock the poor sods who find themselves incumbent.

Protest(s) ? Hmm. Need to understand what protest is about and for, and what is protected by democratic freedoms. Protest votes and boycotts, protest stands and marches – all valid. Best if they are visible to those who the message is aimed at, obviously, that can’t be ignored, but of course the actual message, we/they are free to ignore if it doesn’t contain any sound advice or novel ideas. Something’s wrong, please fix it, is hardy news. Protest does not include rights to interfere or break laws (see trust & respect, below) though of course every protester (and whistle-blower) is physically entitled to do so, provided they accept the legal consequences (that means you Greenpeace).

Anonymity? Unless anonymity is the point of a protest, which it can sometimes be, anonymity is not a freedom or democratic right. Obviously anonymity as cover for illegal acts and threats of mob-rule is a no-no. Guido Fawkes has symbolic value as a mask, relevant in changing governance, sure – but don’t confuse that with any right to anonymity.

Respect and trust? Related to personal responsibility for rights and actions, which count against any rights to anonymity above, there is a basic need for trust and respect between individuals. Any form of democratic governance, includes accountability sure, but depends on trusting those to whom (any) power to decide and act is delegated, and mutually those entrusted need to trust their “constituents” in return. There is no system of free democratic governance that can dispense with interpersonal trust and respect for the governance arrangements. Brand needs to be very careful of hypocrisy in commenting on personal responses to his intervention, whilst indulging in personal (even witty, humorous) mudslinging rhetoric against political classes and named individuals. The other side of any change (call it evolution, revolution or paradigm-shift) we’re going to need mutual trust and respect.

In the previous post “Everybody Wants a Revolution” one of my links was to Nick Maxwell’s Knowledge to Wisdom campaign – the call for a revolution in academe.

Also on The Global Circle blog Allan McKenna posted a simple plea for specific advice to individuals at incremental stages in academe between undergraduate and tenured professor. Today I saw this piece tweeted by media scientist writers Graham Farmelo and Lisa Jardine – which instantly reminded me of the piece posted on Facebook by philosopher Stephen Law – on career directed degrees, though the former is about PhD’s rather than first (major) degrees.

I all three cases my instant reaction was to think of the adage:

“Don’t confuse your life’s work with your day job.”

And the best rendition of that I’ve come across, is this 2004 Colby College commencement address by Richard Russo.