The Big Question

Prospect Magazine poses its big question for 2007 to 100 top thinkers.

We asked 100 writers and thinkers to answer the following question: Left and right defined the 20th century. What's next? The pessimism of their responses is striking: almost nobody expects the world to get better in the coming decades, and many think it will get worse

Their answers are here.
A future cursed by "the tyranny of the majority" and the "end of the executive state". Most of the 100 commentators are worth a read. I liked this, for instance, from Jonathan Rée (a philosopher who gave up university teaching 5 years ago "in order to have more time to think". Wow. ).

When the 20th century began, the main emotion behind most people’s politics was hope of some kind: hope for science, for free trade, for social democracy, for national efficiency, or for world government. And with the emotion of hope came a willingness to investigate options, to analyse, and to engage in genuine, open-minded discussions with those whose views you did not share. 100 years later, the principal political emotion is indignation—against inequality, interference, insecurity, venality or the arrogance of office—and people are more interested in bearing witness to their personal moral righteousness than in engaging with alternative analyses or allowing their own judgements to be tested against those of others. We are now facing a crisis both of hope and of serious collective argument.

The Vico in me however agrees with some of the pundits who argue that the more things change the more they stay the same or with a slow turning of the ricorso of ages from divine to heroic to human. I guess we're on the road somewhere between the latter two ages which would suggest that democracy is yet to come!

Nice South Africans

Dave reminds us thus things are not all hunky dory in paradise at the moment. But whenever I think about where we've come from I am placated. This 1986 (hell that is more than 20 years ago now!) Spitting Image song - "I have never met a nice South African", certainly is ,as this reviewer points out in his solid analysis, :

"more than a little out of date now, as both Apartheid in South Africa and Spitting Image in the UK have bitten the dust. Still, it is quite revelatory of a certain period in the 1980s , and as such is worthy of a little analysis."

Even the most hardened of Aussie cricket supporters would be hard-pressed to admit that they haven't met, or couldn't imagine meeting, a nice South African somewhere along the line. (and by that I mean someone other than the only decent South African Spitting Image said we had in the 80's, Breyten Breytenbach.)

If that appealed you might well enjoy The Chicken Song, the A-side of the single that the the above song backed.

AND NOW FOR SOME SERIOUS ADVICE FROM ME. Please read this piece by Breyten Breytenbach.

Nothing of the above can blur the questions we ought to ask ourselves within Africa in order to release a creative and transformative imagination. I know we think that to admit to our horrors - of our making, our responsibility - is traitorous since it may well reinforce racist type-casting. It will betray the struggle, it is often averred. Also, self-assessment will deprive us of the comfort of being victims of history, of colonialism, of racism, of capitalism, of socialism, of our own innocence and inherent goodness...

We need to start from the terrible and bitter recriminations which recognize that we have by now descended from liberatory euphoria to the heart of darkness. We need to admit that the nation-state concept as existing in Africa at present, accommodating rapacious local elites and corrupt and cynical foreign companies only, is not viable. The democracy which has spread over us, even when sweetened by the poison of elections, is killing us. We need to admit that foreign development aid is not helping us. We know that Africa has to refounded on radical new premises, informed by genuine autonomy and independence - and this is neither the task nor the responsibility of the world out there. We know we need a revolution in ethics, in commitment to the needs of the continent, in paring back our inflated rhetoric and our demagogic posturing.

And a parting comment from Leonard Fleming's short story, "The Man Who Went Away"(1929), in an old 2003 post of mine.

Strange how anybody living in a land of great spaces, great distances, great mountains, could become so narrow minded, shutting one's eyes to the good and the best and only seeing the worst. Perhaps it was the fault of the politicians, so many of them took only the narrow outlook, saw only the worst instead of the best, that must react upon the community :it must sub-consciously affect a people.

Well, no more narrow outlook for him: he had seen the world now, had lived under other conditions in other lands; he knew that he was jolly well off where he was now and that the country would continue to develop and progress as it had from the beginning. There would, of course, be checks and setbacks and disappointments from time to time, but in the long run it would grow and expand, as all healthy babies grow and expand.

Fleeting visit

And so, I emerge, ever so briefly from exhaustion, from spreadsheets and unreconciled reconciliations to say a cheery "Hi" to the blog world.

An interesting article here (via unfogged.com) by Meghan O'Rourke at Slate.com.

The new generation of "college kids" is now the "hooking up generation". Really not much different from my early 90's campus life. And as O'Rourke so keenly puts it.

From at least the 1920s (when everyone thought flappers were destroying manners) on through the 1980s (when teen pregnancy rates had everyone alarmed), girls have been hearing that their sex lives are the symbol of generational decadence.

I wouldn't hesitate to suggest that this commodius vicus of recirculation originates way earlier than that.

What has happened in the last month or so? Britney now has no hair*, Bobby Skinstad has a mohawk and a bit of game time for the Sharks, & Harry Potter has no kit on at all.

I am however, just the same as ever - just severely distracted by the pressing need to get some clarity of where and how things stand in my company.

5 months ago I was battling Johannesburg traffic and peddling my dubious skills by the hour for my global master, all work subject to rigorous review. Now, gone is the timekeeping and traffic but I remain under the thumb of a hard task master - all manner of skills being drawn on - a one man, most of the company buck stops at me kind of role. Hiring, retrenching, buying, selling, bargaining, budgeting and unpacking the level of risk that my messy forefathers in this organization left for me. Scorpions under every rock that I dare upend and a flood of cash flowing through a hole somewhere that I have to find before I can plug.

My previous post refers: do I really have any choice at this? Am I predetermined to slave away at my desk, delicately squeezing in what little leisure and family time I can afford to. Could I really tell my boss to bugger off, I'll finish the budget when I have the time. No, hell no. I have no choice. To blog or not blog? I have no choice. I do it when I can. I can only do it when my brain lines up the signals in the right way and lets me do it. A mere treadmill, but one worth deceiving oneself that we have a choice whether to make the most of it or not.

And this children's book furore is a whole lot of balls.

"Scrotum sounded to Lucky like something green that comes up when you have the flu and cough too much," the book continues. "It sounded medical and secret, but also important."

"The word is just so delicious," Ms. Patron said. "The sound of the word to Lucky is so evocative. It's one of those words that's so interesting because of the sound of the
word."

No promises (I have no choice, remember) but hope to back a bit more regularly from here on in.

* check out the bald memorabilia on eBay. Many quick to the bandwagon offering shaved dolls - It's a hoot.

+ as an even more circuitous aside - I arrived at unfogged via the unablogger (who has sadly slowed up his cheesecake delivery to an erratic trickle). Strange being, this internet thing.

We have no choice…

Via Commentary . The Economist reports on progress in the field of neurology that is threatening what little hope we cling to assert ourselves as free and individual.

It is also emphasising to a wider public that the brain really is just a mechanism, rather than a magician's box that is somehow outside the normal laws of cause and effect.

Scientists have looked at anger and violence, though, and discovered genetic variations, expressed as concentrations of a particular messenger molecule in the brain, that are both congenital and predisposing to a violent temper. Where is free will in this case?

Our freedom may well be an illusion – but it’s an illusion that my brain (mechanism or not) wants to believe in. I want to know that the bit of individuality that I exert on the world is really my doing, not that of an automaton.

There’s a great scene in the David Lynch movie Wild at Heart where the Nicolas Cage character Sailor Ripley excitedly trumps his snakeskin jacket as a symbol of his own free will. It’s an enthusiasm about being individual and masters of our fate that we all share, some more quietly and openly than others.


19. EXT. PEE DEE COUNTY WORK FARM - DAY

Sailor is waiting out front as Lula pulls up in her T-Bird - throwing out a cloud of dust. They’re both smiling.

LULA Hey baby...

SAILOR Peanut...

They kiss tenderly and then Sailor walks around the car to get in while Lula opens up a suitcase and gets out his snakeskin jacket.

SAILOR Hey, my snakeskin jacket... Thanks,baby... Did I ever tell you that this here jacket for me is a symbolof my individuality and my belief in personal freedom?

LULA’Bout fifty thousand times. I got us a room at the Cape Fear, and guess what?... I hear Powermad’s at “The Hurricane.”

SAILOR (smiling)Stab it and steer.

Lula tromps it and throws out an even larger cloud of dust.

Full text here.http://www.un-official.com/wildatheart.txt

While I’ve always felt the arguments for Determinism to be particlularly convincing I enjoy the faint hope that just maybe I do have free will. It will be sad to have this thrill pulled from under us by science.

Additional reading – the more serious stuff. Ted Honderich is one of the best academics in the game.

The Determinism and Freedom Philosophy Website A comprehensive collection of important papers on the philosophy of free will, freedom and determinism. By Prof. Ted Honderich.

And I love the work of Dan Dennett. (though I don’t necessarily agree with him much).

"Human freedom," he writes in his book Freedom Evolves , "is not an illusion; it is an objective phenomenon, distinct from all other biological conditions and found in only one species, us."

Fossilised Sharks

I nearly died. I'm not sure where I was late last year when this news broke, but Bob Skinstad has signed for the Sharks next season.

Keo has the story (and about 2500 comments!).

I'm just utterly amazed at this story and keep looking at my calendar to see how close we are to the 1st April. I am also mighty curious as to what sort of compensation could lure him from his part-time lower leagues rugby playing and Saatchi&Saatchi golf , ahem, sponsorship manager, job in the UK to come and warm the Sharks bench.

Monty (age 32) AJ Venter (age 33) & now Skinstad (age 30+). I know that sharks as species are from the prehistoric era (somewhere between the late Silurian to early Devonian period - around 400 million years ago) - but surely the Sharks players don't have to hail from the same time!

Well, ironically - good luck to the man - so long as his "friendship" with coach Dick Muir and director of rugby, Rudolf Straueli doesn't permit him preferential treatment in getting onto the match park ahead of youngsters like Kankowski.

I always felt that his Springbok selection of a then inform Andre Venter against Scotland in 97 (I think) was a turning point for the worse of Bok rugby at the time. Hopefully something sensible comes out of this. I'm not really holding my breath though.

Cheongyecheon

Reminded by this article in the M&G.

Just more than a year ago several million people headed to a park in the centre of Seoul, the capital of South Korea and seventh-largest city in the world. They didn't go for a rock festival, a football match or a political gathering, but mostly just to marvel at the surroundings, to get some fresh air and to paddle in the river.

The tale of reclaiming the 160,000 car a day freeway and returning it to the Cheong Gye Stream or Cheongyecheon in Seoul is both heartening in its boldness and rousing in its result.

As seen by this picture I took in September it is a place where all and sundry of Seoul's citizens and tourists frolic and enjoy the break from their daily routine.
Read the wikipedia article or a good old Google search (did I just call google old?) for the full story.

While some have criticised the project as being an expensive ($900m) symbolic folly the level of enthusiasm that still embraces the project a year after its completion and the pride that the South Korean people display when discussing and using the river is for me sufficient justification. The fact that a freeway and underground sewer has been converted/restored to open river and park is an inspirational triumph over industrialisation. It also felt safe enough to walk along (alone & and well before dawn) – but that’s probably just to me.

It is also fascinating physical example of the Braess Paradox . This paradox indicates that by removing space in a road network you can actually increase the flow of traffic, and, by implication, by adding extra capacity to a road network you can reduce overall performance.

I wonder if we could intelligently apply this to Jozi traffic. Would the closing of Witkoppen Road improve the traffic flow? Sounds counterintuitive doesn’t it but if you read the Braess link above and follow the theory then perhaps it would make a positive difference?

And I can think of a good freeway in Port Elizabeth to get rid of.

And a railway line and road in Fish Hoek.....

Mother Knows Best