From The Morgue

Just watched an excellent BBC4 documentary about Martin Luther King. What a leader he was. But what got to me the most, unsurprisingly, were the man’s opponents; the people shouting at the niggers to go home, the police swaggering with their nightsticks as their colleagues beat a man to the ground, the New York Times saying the point has been made so stop marching, Senator Robert Byrd being just as oily and broken as his reputation indicated he was.
History has passed judgement on all these people, and it was not kind.
I felt revulsion. They believed the rightness of their cause with such passion, and they were so horribly and unarguably wrong. It is a failing in us as humans, that we so often exalt the most noxious and the basest parts of our natures.
(This is something which I need to remind myself – that some of the people I disagree with are not simply of a different opinion, but of an opinion to which the only response is condemnation. There are still such people in this world, and their voices are prominent. One of them leads the most powerful nation on earth, for a start.)
A question that arises from the above: of what value is belief when it can lead us so catastrophically astray?

I’ve been thinking a lot about issues of censorship lately.
* the Birmingham Repertory Theatre closed the play ‘Bezhti’ after mass protests by the Sikh community. The play, written by a Sikh woman, featured a scene of rape in a Gurdwara (essentially a temple space), which was the basis of the protests – it wasn’t the depiction of rape, or criticism of Sikh culture, or presentation of Sikh elders as deeply flawed individuals, it was the use of this sacred space that had people up in arms. (At least, if you believe the protesters were being genuine, and I for one do.)
* the BBC screened ‘Jerry Springer: The Opera’ which commits the crimes of foul language and disrespectful depiction of Adam, Eve, Jesus and God. (Jesus: “I suppose I am a bit gay.”) Massive, organised public outcry from an apparently small Christian lobby (over the television broadcast, note; they have no problem with the ongoing west end run).
* Prince Harry snapped wearing a Nazi outfit at a fancy-dress party, to immense international condemnation
* Anime “Puni Puni Poemi” is banned in New Zealand for its depiction of rape of children, even though it was intended as a barbed and condemnatory satire of exactly that the kind of unsavory content
* a local blogger is sacked from his job at a bookstore for making negative comments about it in his blog, even though the bookstore chain has previously traded on its support for the principle of free speech.
* a Dutch film-maker was killed, apparently in retaliation for his role in making and promoting a film enacting criticism of misogyny in Islam by an (ex?-)Islamic woman
There are other incidents, but those are ones that come to mind right now. In their particulars, they are all quite different and raise different questions, but they all point towards the confusions bound up with the idea of censorship.
I’m not even close to a coherent, resolved opinion on any of these issues. They strike me as a particularly difficult area of ethics and morality that will always be with us, because there will always be a ground where the worthy principles of freedom of expression and protection of the vulnerable come into conflict.
But here are some more thoughts.

Continue reading Gay Jesus, Sikh Rape, Nazi Prince, Childrape Satire and Bastardstones

Preview of the first 4 pages of ‘Concrete: The Human Dilemma’
The first issue of ‘Concrete: The Human Dilemma’ throws out an idea thats a new one on me. In the story, a businessman wants to hire Concrete as a spokesman for his foundation. Here’s what he says about it to Concrete:

——

SAGEMAN: Its mission is to stem the population explosion. That’s a cause I know you’ve embraced in the past. We provide contraceptives and education to women in poor countries – the conventional stuff of which there’s never enough.

SAGEMAN (cont.): But I want to make an impact in this country, too, where each child has a sevenfold impact on consumption. I want to change norms. I want childlessness to become acceptable, even chic.

SAGEMAN (cont.): The foundation will pay young couples to choose education, careers, and good works over childbearing. To receive the entirety of payments, they must be sterilized, graduate from college, and even agree never to adopt.

CONCRETE: Huh!

SAGEMAN: Yes. We’re not dancing in the posies here. The point is, a meaningful and fulfilling life can be made in defiance of the human drive to perpetuae one’s genotype. They’ll be role models. I hope to start a trend.

——

Interesting stuff.

Are we still worried about overpopulation? I didn’t think that was such a problem. If I recall correctly, in developed nations reproduction is currently below replacement level (which is two children for each person). This is why we’ve got an aging population in most developed countries. The problem isn’t overpopulation, but resource management, at least as far as I’m aware.

That said, I think there’s a lot of merit (from an ecological point of view) in limiting human population. Finding ways and means for this that do not injure our collective humanity isn’t easy, though.

The most fascinating thing about this proposal is the way it’s framing its action in terms of a culture hijacking. Sageman hopes to make sterility cool.

I have a bunch more ideas loosely connected to the issues raised here. But I’m not gonna write about them now. Instead I’m going to say: buy this comic. It’s six monthly issues, the first one is out now, and it’s going to be all good.

Not sold? Okay: there’s also boobies. And a three-legged dog. Now go to your local comics shop and buy it.

A quick note, cut and pasted from my Livejournal:
Some of you may be interested in some photos taken while Cal and I were wandering around Ireland.
Here they are:
http://www.apocalypse.gen.nz/ireland/
There are links inside there to my travel emails. If you haven’t signed up to my roving reports, you bloody well should. I go to interesting places, me. It’s a topica email list and you can sign up by sending an email (blank) to:
morgueatlarge-subscribe@topica.com
You can of course unsubscribe at any time. If you want to see what you’re getting yourself in for, you can read the archives here:
http://lists.topica.com/lists/morgueatlarge/read
While I’m at it, might as well note that I’ve revised my personal website too:
http://www.apocalypse.gen.nz/

It seems that this blog is now allowing comments and new entries again! Hurrah. Here’s one I prepared earlier:

Matt has made a few comments that I�ll address together.

I stand by my claim that the principal cause of global poverty is �the exploitation of the free-market system by economic hyperpowers, with all the structural consequences that follow. As long as corporate power is largely untamed in a global economy, there will be poverty.�

This is admittedly an oversimplification. The principal cause is far from singular. Additionally, this focuses on poverty as a global and international phenomenon, as opposed to one that is internal to a society. The two are related but distinct. The cultural rationalisation of poverty (Matt uses Indian religion and culture as his example) is an important factor, but I believe its importance is small relative to the global economic structures within which that culture exists. The relief of poverty will require a profound cultural change, but I am convinced that a structural change must happen first � which brings us back to the economic hyperpowers.

This situation is also a new one. A global economy has not really existed until this past century, reliant as it is on a magnitude of information and goods transfer impossible before recent technological developments. This magnifies a structural inequity that has been around for as long as there have been economies. Poverty has existed as long as economic systems have existed, but the economic systems have changed radically.

Matt also questions another theory of mine: �Not sure I agree. I don’t think that civilian giving shames governments and governments giving shames corporations. What gives you that idea?

This, of course, is not something that can be proved. I think it can be convincingly argued that civilian giving has encouraged greater governmental giving, certainly in the UK; although this can never be confirmed, because no government would ever admit to such a cause. There are, no doubt, other influences as well, but this one should never be underestimated, especially in the UK where the tabloid press would love nothing better than to call the government to account for stinginess. I think this link is relatively uncontroversial.

The link between governmental giving and corporate giving is much less clear, and basically an assumption based on how I think corporations make all such decisions. Any giving will, I believe, be made with one eye on the government, and the other on the public. I don’t think such decisions are made in a vaccuum, and the government’s giving sets a social context that corporations must respond to when making their own decisions. Even the most sincere of corporate donors cannot fail to be at least subconsciously influenced in their calculations by the number of zeroes in the government’s donation.

All of these points are quite theoretical. On a more practical level, Matt reminds us of the incredible difficulty of even so fundamental a task as ensuring economic aid gets to those who desperately need it. Like him, I have no solutions to offer. Perhaps – and I can’t believe I’m suggesting this seriously – aid money should be used to send auditors into the stricken zones?

Windy today in Edinburgh. (Well, not by Wellington standards, but y’know.) Christmas trees lying on roadsides waiting for collection are sliding into the middle of streets, as if the invisible hand of market forces was pushing them.
Must make driving interesting. It’s hair-raising enough to watch from the roadside.
———-
In comments to my previous entry, Karen questions whether there will be any “sea-change in how we in the developed and wealthy west regard our wealth” (my words).
She makes two good points:
* she doubts people will make a connection between a one-off ‘act of god’ and the ongoing structural situation of poverty
* showing generosity in this case is easy as it requires no ongoing effort, unlike the challenge of poverty
Hard to argue with both of them. My point was really somewhat tangential to these – I basically want the developed to world to associate its wealth with global responsibility. It’s playing with symbols and framing, again, working on the hidden level of culture-as-intuited. Such transitions are hard, but by no means impossible, to engineer. It is extremely unlikely that this disaster will lead to this kind of meaning-transition as a single revolution, but such changes rarely happen as a single moment of revolution anyway. If this seeds the relationship
between wealth and responsibility still deeper, all the better.
Additionally, it is precisely because of the act-of-god nature of the event that we can hope for such an idea to take deeper root. There are no political actors to blame, and thus no spin that absolves us of responsibility. All there is, is deprivation and need, and our wealth. It is a simple equation, and all the more powerful for it. The re-emergence of the Bam earthquake into general discourse is another helpful sign.
(Of course, talking about culture change is only one level of what’s at issue, and we aren’t going to get very far just sitting back waiting for deep cultural change to solve all our problems. )
Karen finishes on a question – “what DOES one do to address poverty?”
I suspect that was a rhetorical question 🙂 I’ll throw out part of an answer anyway. I consider poverty to be the outcome of a number of factors, but principally the exploitation of the free-market system by economic hyperpowers, with all the structural consequences that follow. As long as corporate power is largely untamed in a global economy, there will be poverty.
Hmm. Can it be said that the first world is outsourcing its poverty and exploitation to the third?

I am heartened by seeing, pretty much everywhere I look, collection buckets for tsunami appeals. On every till in the supermarket I ducked into this evening, for example.
There seems to be a real penetration of the idea that our sacrifices, however small, can make a real difference.
I’m hopeful that this marks something of a sea-change in how we in the developed and wealthy west regard our wealth, as something bringing great responsibility as well as opportunity. Something of a re-emergence and re-legitimisation of the UN may take place as well, to the good of us all.
But, as has been frequently pointed out, the disaster in Bam a year ago – an order of magnitude less than the tsunami but still a level of destruction almost beyond comprehension – is still far from healed, and aid from the west didn’t all come through. Let us keep that disaster in mind as we look toward renewal from this one – the lesson, if we are to learn it, comes from the earthquake as well as the tsunami.

Watched the Lord of the Rings marathon today. Pressed play at 11.15am, turned off RotK at 11.33pm.
My brain is somewhere in Ithilien, I think.
Also noted by me for the first time: the lost fifth hobbit, Fatty Bulger (The One Who Stayed Behind) does make an appearance in Fellowship, getting namechecked by Bilbo. Maybe those of you who would care already knew this, but I didn’t. Still no sign of Bombadil however.

Styley cafe the Elephant House was packed this arvo, a long queue for the counter, quite unusual. Got chatting to a guy in the queue with me over the sign by the tip jar saying that the staff had pledged their tips for the week to the tsunami appeal, and that management would match it – they’re a good bunch there. This chap was really interesting and as the queue meandered forward we got deep into a discussion about spiritual journeys and his own path which led to him converting to Islam. He was really quite interesting and bought me my latte, and I hope I run into him again.
(Obligatory disclaimer: No, mum, I’m not becoming a muslim.)
My plans to do some writing were scotched by sharing a table with an incredibly talkative Italian girl who talked and talked and talked for about ninety solid minutes. Still, since she was talking in Italian, I was able to do some reading and got stuck into Ulysses. I’m about 200 pages in and it’s a revelation to me. I was, I’ll admit, a bit intimidated going in, but it has been nothing but engaging and readable since word one. Thoroughly enjoying it.
I also managed to go through my general notebook and scribble some developments on various projects and ideas that are bubbling up, some of them dating back five or more years but finally finding a place to stand of their own. some of them only a few weeks old. It was invigorating to see so much energy in these ideas, and I bounced off down the hill with enthusiasm when time came to go home.
(Also enthusiastic because the first new issue of Paul Chadwick’s great comic Concrete in about eight years was in my hot little hands. I’ll be talking about that again.)
The evening has been spent watching DVDs. We’ve watched episode 2 of Doctor Who: The Caves of Androzani, episode 1 of series one of Teachers and we’re about to watch episode 2 of series one of Twin Peaks. It is SO GOOD to have old TV on DVD. The world has changed so much since I was fifteen, and ratty VHS copies of old TV broadcasts were passed around among near- and total-obsessives.
When I was fifteen I convinced my English teacher to let me and some friends go home in the middle of the school day to watch an episode of Twin Peaks, under some dubious rationale. That was pretty cool.
Hmm. Toastie pie. Yum.

Finally got around to making a donation to one of the appeals (the DEC here in the UK).
If you haven’t yet, do it. The scale of loss and deprivation is astonishing. But, most importantly – every bit of civilian giving shames governments into giving more. (Sure, it’s your tax money they’re using, but it’s worth it for the next step – every gift by the government shames corporate entities into giving more. And that’s where the real money is.)
Happy new year! Mine was cool. Hogmanay in Edinburgh – magic.