Pelshval

Antropologiske betraktninger om pelshvaldrift

Category: Outlook (Page 3 of 6)

Change

17.01.2023 /

The very word – change – is a little scary. For a child, moving with parents to a different district means moving away from friends and/or bullies, to potential new friends and/or bullies. As adults we may think we have grown out of such starkly black-and-white notions, yet, we are still vulnerable, maybe as vulnerable as we ever were, because now others depend on us. We have nobody but ourselves to fall back upon, yet we have children, ageing parents, mortgages, etc… The idea that we might not be up to the challenge is chilling.

The prospect of change can invite hope, but the future changes we now see dimly outlined do not.

I imagine myself waiting in the early morning fog at a train station in Germany. I’m on my way to work in a nearby town. A voice on the station loudspeakers announces that the train has been cancelled. The next train will arrive in an hour. The station café is closed, but I get a coffee from a machine. I’m not dressed to wait for an hour outdoors in January, so when the train finally arrives after an hour, I’m shivering and an hour late for work.

Under a cold, grey sky, gloomy confabulations can spiral out of hand: My late arrival at work is deducted from my pay – fair enough – and the subsequent two-week sick leave due to bronchitis is covered by the national health insurance, but my mother, alas…. My mother has been poorly for some time but unable to get a doctor’s appointment, and she dies at the end of the month.

So what do I do? I get awfully angry, for one thing, because I’m pretty sure my mother didn’t have to die. The national health service is a mess. That’s a fact. My dead mother is another fact. Or rather, no, it isn’t, because this was just fiction – rainy-day fiction. Somebody else’s mother will have died, and that will be a fact; not mine, though.

What certainly also is a fact, is that during Covid, nurses and doctors worked their asses off. They are now either ill or on strike, apart from those that have up and quit. The national health service is on its knees here, there, and almost everywhere. As you will probably have noticed.

After Covid, the nurses here, there and almost everywhere, asked for a pay rise. People with wages the equivalent of those of a nurse (R.N.) can afford to live in only 1.5 % of all dwellings in Oslo. The number of dwellings available to nurses has actually decreased, even since 2021 not to mention since 2013. (Meanwhile, between you and me: Who is it, then, who lives in all the other 98.5 % of the dwellings in Oslo?)

Everybody agrees that public health professionals carried more than their share of the burden of Covid. But pay rise? NO.

Prices rise and the cost of living rises pretty much to the point of being sky-high rise-wise, but pay-rise? NO, NO and NO. You see, pay rises generate inflation. Inflation is a magic word these days.

Mainstream media is reluctant about calling “these days” a time of crisis. At a time when the price of petrol has doubled in the course of a year, when the price of heating three rooms has risen ten-fold in the course of a year, when the price of food has risen considerably… mainstream media is not reflecting what at least half the population in most of the western world feels: anger, fear, distrust.

Mainstream media’s main preoccupation now is the war in Ukraine for which Russia is exclusively to blame, of course, Russia on which mainstream media blames just about everything – including Trump. (By the way, did you ever hear who blew up the Nord-Stream cables? It certainly wasn’t the Russians because then you would sure as X— have heard about it.)

But hold on!

What did we learn in Business School? We learnt: “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” (Those were roughly Milton Friedman’s words, I believe.) That was what we learned, and this is definitely a crisis.

So rather than self-medicate or spend hours on our knees at our neighbourhood chapel, rather than rant at our loved ones or serve cookies laced with emetic agents to our bosses, let us put this crisis to good use.

  • Let us kidnap our governments, including prime ministers, presidents, finance ministers, etc, etc and, NOT LEAST, all their business cronies.
  • Let us put them all in a very safe place – informing the entire world that if anybody tries to free the prisoners, each of whom will receive three healthy meals a day and a private room with adequate heating and a bathroom (we are not – repeat – NOT sadists), we will instantly liquidate them, painlessly, of course, since we are NOT, I repeat, sadists.
  • We shall give our prisoners two choices:
    • 1)
      • a) for all nurses of the world: a hefty pay rise
      • b) for all other citizens of the world (including nurses, now that I think of it):
        – adequate heating,
        – (healthy) accommodation,
        – three healthy meals a day,
        – first-class, fully functioning public health services,
        – superb lower and higher public education and
        – efficient public transportation

        or
    • 2)
      • painless liquidation of all the rest of us.

I doubt they will chose option 2 because if they do, they will have nobody to feed them and to replenish their bank accounts.

NB: I don’t mean to force-feed people three times a day. I wish to be very clear on that. For those who prefer heroin to food: it’s their life. Nor do I insist that people living near the equator should be subjected to 24-hour heating. Besides, there are issues such as water or lack of it, locusts, fevers, crime, etc. But all those issues – or a sensible approach to them – start with informed decisions, decisions made for the common good, which is not what our governments are delivering.

Not greed?

04.12.2022 /

Have you heard of the Dominican prelate Bartolomé de las Casas (1484-1566)? Almost any book about Latin American history will respectfully mention him, usually, however, without quoting him – more’s the pity.

He was an eyewitness in Latin America during the early decades of the colonisation, and he addressed an account of his observations to King Filip II. It was subsequently published in 1552 as Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies) and subsequently banned by the Spanish Inquisition in 1659. (However it had been translated by Spain’s enemies, and appeared in Dutch, English, French and even German. It is on the public Domain. I would NOT recommend the 1689 English translation found on Gutenberg.org: apart from being practically incomprehensible, it is full of ghastly errors.

So allow me to provide my own translation of some titbits nipped from three paragraphs of the introduction:

From 2nd paragraph:

God made all the peoples of this part of the world, many and varied as they are, open and innocent, without malice or guile. …They are the most modest, patient, peaceful and calm people imaginable, engaging in no feuds, making no trouble, picking no fights; they know no rancour, hate or vindictiveness. … They are, moreover, extremely poor, with but few possessions – nor do they desire worldly possessions – hence unpretentious, without ambition or greed. Their meals are such that even the Holy fathers in the desert could surely not have been more frugal.

…

From 3rd:

Upon these gentle lambs of said God-given qualities, the Spanish fell like ravenous wolves, tigers and lions of extreme cruelty, as though they had not eaten for days. And all they have done in these parts since, for forty years – and they are still at it – is to tear them to pieces, killing them, terrorising, torturing and destroying them in all manner of strange and varied and unheard of ways that have never before been even read about.

From 7th and last:

The reason why the Christians have killed or destroyed innumerable souls, is that they wished to satisfy their lust for gold, to inflate themselves with wealth in the course of just a few days, and to attain lofty positions regardless of their person. Let it be known that the insatiable greed and ambition that has driven them has been as great as could possibly be imagined in this world, since these lands are so lovely and so rich, and these peoples so modest and patient, so easily subjugated; yet have been shown no more respect, no more due (and I speak truthfully, because I know all that I have seen for all this time) than – not animals, for by God, had they been animals they would not have been so treated – but as dung on the ground.

Hot stuff, right?

So what is my point here?

  1. That Spaniards are the Devil incarnate?
  2. That Dominican prelates are “good”?
  3. That indigenous people from Latin America are genetically better than Europeans?

1) My aim here is certainly not to crucify Spain. On the contrary: I have been given to understand that British, French, Dutch and German colonial powers have left a trail of stories as horrifying as those hinted at above, and very much more recently!

2) As for the Dominican order, I believe it has almost as many sins on its collective conscience as do the colonial powers.

3) The book Potosí that I commented on a few posts back, describes among other things how Quechua and Aymara miners, who have been abused and brutalised for centuries, men who rarely survive to the age of 45, beat and rape their own womenfolk etc. These miners are the offspring of the beautiful mild-mannered people so deeply admired by Bartolomé de las Casas.

As for brutalisation, allow me a few words about the identity of the actual men whose actions the prelate condemns: They were not people like you and me. Many of them were prisoners whose sentences had been commuted to that of “galeotes” (galley slaves). From 1530 on, criminals could be, and were more often than not, directly sentenced to the galleys rather than to prisons, as the traffic on distant Latin America required many hands, and as so many of the crew died on the way. The first ships that set out for Latin America were at any rate manned by the most desperate, brutalised men in the land. Contrary to what some people still appear to believe, life as a galley slave will not make a decent man of you.

Bartolomé de las Casas also wrote a no less remarkable book: The Apologetic Summary History of the People of These Indies, (partially included in vol.V (1876) of his Historia de las Indias on Gutenbeerg.org). It is “apologetic” in the sense that it is a defence of the peoples and cultures that the author visited on his travels. It serves, moreover, as a very early example of what we, today, would call ethnographic studies.

I have declared and demonstrated openly and concluded, … that all people of these our Indies are human, so far as is possible by the natural and human way – and without the light of faith – had their republics, places, towns, and cities most abundant and well provided for, and did not lack anything to live politically and socially, and attain and enjoy civil happiness…. And they equalled many nations of this world that are renowned and considered civilized, and they surpassed many others, and to none were they inferior. Among those they equalled were the Greeks and the Romans, and they surpassed them by many good and better customs. They surpassed also the English and the French and some of the people of our own Spain; and they were incomparably superior to countless others, in having good customs and lacking many evil ones. (Source).

A remarkable man, that. One who despite being a Catholic priest could admire people “without the light of faith”, could study their customs for decades, and have the courage to defend them in writing – five hundred years ago. Yet, what fascinates me more, even, than the man who dared admire “heathens” (who were, moreover, mostly naked, although they covered their “private parts”) is something else:

Those heathens were not greedy.
I repeat: They were NOT greedy.

My question to myself, to you, is therefore:

Are humans inherently greedy or is greed a social construct? As Ghandi allegedly said: “The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.”

So, if greed is a social construct, what are the implications for us, today and for the future?

The meaning of life

24.11.2022 /

There were a lot of us – young people during the 70s – who struggled with questions of an existential nature. Although a lot of young Western kids are killing themselves these days – overdose and whatnot – questions about the “meaning of life” do not seem to figure in young people’s cognitive equations. What worries them more is image. Gosh, what a relief not to be a kid!

Ten years later – no longer kids – many of them will have a partner and children of their own. Parenting means – apart from constant sleep deprivation – an incessant sense of letting someone/something down (my partner/our love, my children, my job, myself…) and that is when the “meaning of life” reappears on the mental horizon.

What if the world we are leaving to our children does not bear thinking about? That is where we are today. There are those who will accuse me of fear-mongering. Frankly, they are, at best, ignorant, possibly downright stupid or, at worst, cynical liars. (There are certainly many cynical liars!)

What worries me more are those who accuse me of being depressing. Am I spreading the idea that there is no hope? That would be a great pity. Because change is really possible.

  • Did anybody see that the Berlin wall would come crashing down?
  • Did anybody believe that Pinochet would lose the 1988 vote?
  • Did anybody even in his dreams imagine in 1917, that after years and years of civil war Mexico would adopt a constitution that would serve as a model for the rest of us to this very day. And yes, until 1992, Mexico retained Articles 3 (about a free, mandatory, and secular education), 27 (about return of land to the peasants and smallholders) and 123 (about workers’ rights, 8-hour day and the like)?

Alas, the 90s were a period of deterioration all around, it seems, although most of us who were reasonably well-informed didn’t realise it at the time. Even now we find it difficult to come to terms with the turning of the tide that started in the 70s.

We have been brought up to believe in progress. We have been taught in school and by Steven Pinker that henceforward, progress is more or less preordained; after all, humans are now armed with enlightenment.

Our parents and grandparents have corroborated the view that life can only get better: Consider bathrooms, for instance, they say, sanitary napkins and tampons, not to mention internet. Yes, they are right about all that, but No, progress is not preordained.

***

In the West, we are basically spared old-fashioned dictators. Instead, we are discombobulated by rhetoric. We haven’t yet learnt to deal with discombobulation, but we will, just as people learned in the past to deal with physical oppression.

For the pursuit of (whose?) wealth…Part II

21.11.2022 /

Officially, of course, the motif is never greed. When the British Parliament approved a series of “Enclosure Acts” that culminated in the 18th century, they argued that this was for the common good. However, as more and more peasants were denied access to “common land” and had to leave their homes to seek underpaid labour in the big cities, average life expectancy at birth fell from forty-three years in the 1500s to the low thirties in the 1700s. (Source: Jason Hickel, in Less is More, citing Edward Wrigley and Roger Schofield, The Population History of England 1541-1871.)

They hang the man and flog the woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
Yet let the greater villain loose
That steals the common from the goose.

The law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine.
(source)

Did anybody admit that this theft – for theft it was – was committed out of greed? Of course not! Jason Hickel gives us some characteristic quotes from the period:

“Our forests and great commons make the poor that are upon them too much like the Indians,” wrote the Quaker John Bellers in 1695; ‘[they are] a hindrance to industry, and are nurseries of idleness and insolence’.

Lord John Bishton, author of a 1794 report on agriculture in Shropshire, agreed: “The use of common lands operates on the mind as a sort of independence.” After enclosure, he wrote, “the labourers will work every day in the year, their children will be put out to labour early,” and “that subordination of the lower ranks of society which in the present time is so much wanted would be thereby considerably secured.”

In 1771 the agriculturalist Arthur Young noted that “everyone but an idiot knows that the lower classes must be kept poor, or they will never be industrious”.

The Reverend Joseph Townsend emphasised in 1786 that “it is only hunger which can spur and goad them on to labour”. “Legal constraint,” Townsend went on, “is attended with too much trouble, violence, and noise … whereas hunger is not only a peaceable, silent, unremitted pressure, but as the most natural motive to industry, it calls forth the most powerful exertions … Hunger will tame the fiercest animals, it will teach decency and civility, obedience and subjugation to the most brutish, the most obstinate, and the most perverse.”

David Hume: Tis always observed, in years of scarcity, if it be not extreme, that the poor labour more, and really live better.

Patrick Colquhoun, a powerful Scottish merchant, saw poverty as an essential precondition for industrialisation: “Poverty is that state and condition in society where the individual has no surplus labour in store, or, in other words, no property or means of subsistence but what is derived from the constant exercise of industry in the various occupations of life. Poverty is therefore a most necessary and indispensable ingredient in society, without which nations and communities could not exist in a state of civilisation. It is the lot of man. It is the source of wealth, since without poverty, there could be no labour; there could be no riches, no refinement, no comfort, and no benefit to those who may be possessed of wealth.”

The cynicism of these quotes is all the more striking in view of the idleness and indolence of the British aristocracy. However, the aristocracy had a lot to defend! (See Piketty: UK distribution of property 1780-2015). It also had the means to do so, as even in 1820, only 5 % of adult men were sufficiently wealthy to be eligible to vote, not to mention to be elected to Parliament. (See Piketty: Male suffrage in Europe 1820-1920).

In Chapter V of Capital and Ideology, Thomas Piketty explains just how the aristocracy was able to cling to power in the face of emergent humanitarian ideals in the 19th century. Basically the House of Lords controlled Parliament until 1911.

No wonder, you will say, no wonder the aristocracy clung to their beautiful palaces and gardens. But as we all know, all those empty rooms and all those acres require care, i.e. staff that must be paid, so stealing the commons from defenceless peasants and using the land to produce crops to put on the market, must have seemed like a splendid idea.

To this very day, the Conservatives tend to have the upper hand in the UK. That must mean that their rhetoric is well attuned to people’s dreams, ideas and beliefs. Alas, our fascination with and shamefaced admiration of the rich and beautiful is our Achilles heel. It undermines our better judgment. By the way, was the dress worn by Florida’s first lady made of lamé?

The poor and wretched don’t escape
If they conspire the law to break
This must be so but they endure
Those who conspire to make the law.

The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
And geese will still a common lack
Till they go and steal it back.

(source)

More than bombs

24.08.2022 /

War is more than collapsed buildings, deaths, and lots of people maimed for life. It is also paralysed infrastructure. We have just seen the beginning of the war with Russia. We have not seen the end of it.

As I write tonight, I find myself without internet. The internet service provider assures me that the break is due to a ruptured cable. That may well be the case, but what is also the case is that it could have been caused by Russia. Russia might yet decide to create havoc on our electrical grid, our water mains, etc. After all, war is war, and we (Europe) are in it, contributing in a big way to its perpetuation.

So we may all wake up one day to find that we have no Internet, no Facebook, no Instagram, no Google… That would be scary! But what if we have no water? In much of Europe, water is coming to an end due to droughts and heat waves. What if it disappeared altogether?

Russia has made it clear that they do not want to precipitate a nuclear disaster. Nor do “we”, obviously. But disasters do happen. And there are other forms of disasters that most of us lack the imagination to envisage. Such disasters are truly disastrous – not least for the allegedly innocent party.

Are we an innocent party? You might be interested in what Jeffrey D. Sachs has to say about that.

Yesterday, I spoke with compatriots who complained: “We were used to differences being sorted out with diplomacy and dialogue, and suddenly Russia attacks us!”. Was that really what happened? Did “we” (NATO/EU), prior to this war, really try to sort out differences with Russia with dialogue?

After the war started, did “we” belatedly try to halt its progress, settle differences?

In countries at war, dissidence is not tolerated. In Russia, individuals openly expressing opposition to the war are being arrested. In my country this is not yet the case, since no dissident voices are heard at all. Hence dissidence represents no threat to the powers that be. On the contrary: Support for NATO has never been greater in this country. I am tempted to maintain that the propaganda machine is more effective in Norway than in Russia

That, Mr Putin, is something you should consider. You may win the war in Ukraine, you will probably see Europe reduced to indigence, but you will be facing the hatred of Europeans.

Does Mr Putin care? Do we care? Alas, war turns us into primitives.

On the heels of science fiction

17.08.2022 /

Do you sometimes come out of a building and feel that the world outside is somehow unreal? Maybe if you have been very immersed in your work, or if you have seen an engrossing film or even just read a thrilling saga?

Recently, I have had that feeling almost every day, but not when I relocate between physical spaces. No, I am discombobulated by a sense of unreality every time I enter the space of – the enormous space of – mass media.

During Covid, we clung to mass media, not only for entertainment. Banned from the real world, many of us had to resort to laptops, mobile phones and TVs, to see a beach, cows in a field, and the delightful hubbub of a train station. We even turned to broadcasting outlets for comfort and reassurance.

In my country, the benign, familiar face of one of our news anchors would remind us every evening to maintain a two-metre distance distance, wash our hands thoroughly, and wear the mask properly. We would anxiously wait for the daily figures (remember the Worldometer?) – active cases, critical cases, deaths…. Almost every evening, the news included a brief lesson, such as “How to put on your mask”, “How to wash your hands”, “How to sneeze”, “What to do when you feel ill”.

In Norway, there was hardly any political opposition to government imposed measures regarding Covid. In fact, there was practically no political debate at all during the Covid regime.

We hoped, month after month after month, that it would soon end, that this was only a parenthesis in our normality, but it lasted for two years. Strictly speaking, it is still not entirely over. And we all know that it will happen again. And again.

Yet, we return with a vengeance to a semblance of normality, to a pretence of normality – to the realm of make-belief. News anchors are still telling us that everything is fine, except of course in Ukraine, but we will all do our bit to help Ukraine, and everything will soon be all right there too. Of the looming energy crisis in Europe, particularly in Germany and UK and of the numerous apocalyptic fires devouring hundreds of square kilometres (yes, kilometres, not acres) of forest, not to mention homes… hardly a word. As for the tension in South-East Asia – all China’s fault, of course, just as the war in Ukraine is all Russia’s fault – we choose to hope that justice will prevail, and justice is, of course, on our side. No doubt about that, at least.

There are doubts, though, fears even. Not about justice’s being on our side. We are, after all, like all human inhabitants, inculcated with certain values. (Inculcation is just a polite word for indoctrination – which, of course, is only practised by “Commies” (i.e. the Russians and Chinese). So justice is no doubt on our side, and we believe in progress, and just look at what science has accomplished, even in our lifetime.

Yet, something feels wrong, and definitely not right. Deep down, under our apparent complacence, there is angst. Everywhere.

Overnight, in my country, the mainstream press has become monolithic. Faced with a common enemy, Covid, the competing news outlets joined forces. Now that the threat of Covid may or may not be over, there are still threats, most notably that of Russia. Russia stands accused, and no news outlet or newspaper will allow the defendant to state his case.

As for the rest of us, we all know that the government is and has always been lying about the energy situation and about the urgency of the climate situation, yet, we put up with increasing militarisation, the theft of our hydroelectic energy and the refusal to seriously cut back emissions. Every evening, the benign, familiar face of one of our news anchors still tells us that everything is fine except for the people in Ukraine, and since most of us feel, for some reason or another, more kindly towards Ukrainians than to Syrians, we hope and believe that NATO’s defence of democracy and liberty will prevail.

Hope?

20.12.2021 /

LOOK TO CHILE

LOOK TO CHILE

LOOK TO CHILE

Challenging neoliberalism, fake news, and mainstream (neoliberal) press is only the first step. Winning an election against such formidable foes, however, is nothing less than fantastic, almost sci-fi.

What remains to be seen is whether the beautiful forces of mostly (but certainly not only) young people demanding a decent life, a fair constitution, and basic human rights will survive past the almost paralysing astonishment at their actually having won the election.

Hope is definitely not dead.

Democracy

14.10.2021 /

Have I made fun of the term? I bow my head in shame.

Yes, it is true that being allowed to vote once every four years for some caudillo to lead your country is not really worth fireworks. However, Democracy is not only about ballot boxes! Sometimes, you only understand that, when Democracy has been lost. And it is so easily, alas, lost.

Democracy requires “Separation of Powers” (a concept commonly attributed to Montesquieu). “Separation of Powers” means that the executive branch (i.e. the president, the army, the police and the secret service) have no powers over the judiciary (i.e. the courts) and the legislature (i.e. the National Assembly or whatever assembly determines what laws should apply in a country.) Separation of powers is absolutely quintessential for a “Democracy”. Every once in a while, we see that a hotshot decides that he should be his country’s emperor, like Napoleon. Alas, the basis for such a decision is more often than not sociopathy; certainly not wisdom.

An excellent if somewhat lengthy documentary from the European TV channel Arte about conditions in Hungary serves as an illustration of what happens when one man holds too much power. It should give you goosebumps as it thoroughly illustrates at least three points, of which the first, that Hungary is now only nominally a Democracy, is only a prelude. Let me cut to the quick: In the midst of the EU, then, you have a country led by a governmental crime syndicate; a rather chilling thought.

The deceased Portuguese novelist José Saramago wrote a wonderful novel that humorously illustrates how easily Democracy could be subverted, even without violence: “Ensaio sobre a Lucidez”, literally Essay on Lucidity, 2004, (the English translation of which is called “Seeing”). I recommend an article about the book in the Guardian by Ursula K. Le Guin. She concludes:

He has written a novel that says more about the days we are living in than any book I have read. He writes with wit, with heartbreaking dignity, and with the simplicity of a great artist in full control of his art. Let us listen to a true elder of our people, a man of tears, a man of wisdom

The novel can be read as a sequel to “Essay on Blindness” (1997). Whereas the “Essay on Blindness” is horrifying, the tardy sequel is kind to the reader. Yet, it leaves no doubt: On a rainy day, Democracy can be undone by a mere gesture, or absence of gesture, of the hand.

As we all know, of course, many countries are run by autocrats and/or de-facto crime syndicates. Many, many countries. Hungary, however, is in the EU. The EU prides itself on transparency and rule of law. Indeed there is no concealing from the EU what is going on in Hungary and Poland. But as you will see in the documentary recommended above, there is nothing the EU can legally do about the matter. So far.

What about your country? Does it claim to be Democratic? Is it really?

We all saw how close a call the US had, when the country’s voters nearly gave Trump “four more years” in “fair and Democratic” elections. What would happen to France if Eric Zemmour becomes that country’s president in “fair Democratic” elections? (And what will then happen to the EU?

No, I do not subscribe to the idea that Democracy is outdated. China and Russia may believe in authoritarian leadership, in imprisoning or even killing whistle-blowers and journalists that ask difficult questions and expose abuse of power. I do not. I should add, for the record, that China and Russia are not the only countries where constructive criticism is unwelcome. And in case you have forgotten, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden are still wanted by you-know-what country.

No the problem is not that the US and the EU are too Democratic, but that they are not Democratic enough.

Who voted for Trump and who will vote for Zemmour, and why?

I find myself wondering whether sex slaves vote and if so, who do they vote for? They make up a small, yet not totally insignificant proportion of most countries’ populations. Imagine your country as a large empty aquarium. Pour in all your country’s sex slaves and they will just barely form a film over the floor of your aquarium. Add all the people who fill the shelves of all your country’s grocery stores. Add all the street sweepers, all those who wash all the floors in hospitals and all the floors of your cities’ innumerable office buildings… The tide is rising in the aquarium. You still haven’t added the unemployed.

What about the majority of your rural population, which is probably “at risk of poverty and social exclusion“, as the EU puts it: “The at-risk-of-poverty rate is the share of people with an equivalised disposable income (after social transfer) below the at-risk-of-poverty threshold, which is set at 60 % of the national median equivalised disposable income after social transfers.”

Please, PLEASE note that we are talking about 60% of the MEDIAN “equivalised disposable income”. In plain English: half the population have an income above the median and half have an income below it. In my country 18 % of all fully employed people are “at risk of poverty and social exclusion”.

Who do they vote for? Do they vote for Labour, or whatever the equivalent of Labour is called in your country? Will our Labour-equivalents truly improve their conditions? Will any major party that respects rule of law? My guess is that the answer to that question is “no”, and that our “at risk of poverty and social exclusion” voters know that.
No wonder, then, that wild-eyed preachers, charlatans, megalomaniacs and sycophantic scoundrels find it easy to deceive consumers and even voters by offering a deceptive ray of hope.

Take a look at your country’s median income in 2021. You might consider how far the median income would get you if you had to pay rent, electricity, transportation, childcare, insurance, internet, phone bill, etc. etc. etc. oh, and I forgot food.

A Saga

04.07.2021 /

During the period 1122–1133, Ari Froði (the Learned) wrote Íslendingabók “the Book about Iceland”. This remarkable piece of scholarly literature was written in Icelandic, or Norse, if you will, although the writer was probably much more fluent in Latin, at least when writing. In those days, Latin was the language of choice for European scholars, of whom there were embarrassingly few, most of them clergymen.

Parenthetically, I should add that in Spain there were lots of scholars at the time, not least Arabs and Jews, and lots of linguists. In the thirteenth century, Spain was even lucky enough to have a king (Alfonso el Sabio 1221–1284 ) who understood the potential of the country’s wealth of learned subjects. Under his reign, tomes and tomes of invaluable scientific literature from all over the world were translated into the vernacular and Latin. Had it not been for this tremendous effort to translate as much as possible of all available knowledge, goodness knows how long Europe would have continued to languish in darkness.

So, during Europe’s Dark Ages, a light shone in the South, in Spain, and in the far North, in Iceland. In the rest of Europe, almost nobody could read or write, and even the Bible was just abra-cadabra for almost everybody.

Ari Froði writes in the “Book about Iceland” that all of the island’s farmsteads date from the first 60 years after the initial settlers arrived in (according to Ari himself) 870. Each and every one of the settlers who reached Iceland’s shores during those first years, is accounted for in another truly iconic historic document, it too in the vernacular, Landnámabók, presumably also written during the first part of the 12th century; author unknown. Of course, the settlers must have had slaves, livestock, wives and children, though there is no mention of livestock, and only occasional mention of wives and children. (An infinitesimal proportion of the settlers were, actually, women!)

Landnámabók sometimes mentions slaves (mostly Irish), either because they were particularly deserving, or because they betrayed their masters, and in some cases, we learn how many slaves a settler brought. Please note that these slaves had been captured or ensnared, as wild animals are captured or ensnared, during their owners’ raids on the British Isles. In other words, the brave and supremely enduring settlers were, in most cases, the same brutes who killed left, right and centre, on their jaunts through Europe.

Yet, having reached Iceland, they almost all demonstrated extraordinary courtesy, asking previously arrived settlers for permission to go ashore. Iceland appears to have been, until about 1262, an anarchist’s wet dream. People (mostly men) occupied large tracts of an otherwise vacant island, respecting the rights of both prior and subsequent arrivals until the island was “fully settled”.

In other words, they were all miraculously governed by a system of common consent which soon evolved into a body of laws recited once a year at Thingvellir. “He who recites the laws” was elected at regular intervals from among the country’s wisest men. There was no army, no police, no king, no president.

What’s more, we must assume that many of them could read; otherwise, why would Ari the Learned have written his book in Icelandic? Not only that: many of them could write! They wrote the most wonderful stories, lots and lots of them, the Sagas.

They had their feuds, true; they sometimes killed a man or two and were driven from the land, as a result, but by and large, they took pride in doing the honourable thing, whatever that was, and were extremely civilised.

WHY? How come bloodthirsty bandits turned a country into a lighthouse on a dark and gloomy continent? I have a theory about that: Of course they had common sense, and common sense told them that unless they were able to cooperate, they wouldn’t survive.

Almost equally important, though, was their concept of honour (sæmd). They knew their actions were being recorded and would go down in history. They assumed that not only their offspring, but whole generations, followed by generation after generation, would know the name not only of every hero but also of every bastard that had ever lived on the island. They behaved well in the hope of immortalising their honour.

Alas, common sense is not our strongest suit. A human being will only be guided by common sense up to a certain point. The same sense of honour that prevented Golden Age Icelanders from misbehaving, would drive them to exterminate one another in a series of skirmishes, including an utterly ludicrous naval battle, during the first half of the 13th century (described in Islendingasaga by Sturla Þórðarson, written early in the 14th century.) Rather than live sensible lives, they died ludicrously honourable deaths.

The chieftain Kolbeinn Tumason allegedly offered up his prayer “Heyr himna smiður” the night before his ludicrously honourable death in 1208. The translation is literal and does not convey the musical beauty of the verse. (Source: Wikipedia as at 4/7/2021)

Hear, smith of the heavens,
what the poet asks.
May softly come unto me
thy mercy.
So I call on thee,
for thou hast created me.
I am thy slave,
thou art my Lord.

In the course of the following three centuries, Iceland would turn into a depressing blot on European maps. For hundreds of years, the godforsaken island would be inhabited by near-starving bedraggled primitives. WHY? How come these eminently civilised farmers in the far north lost everything?

For the same reason that those of us who live in wealthy countries in the twenty second century are soon going to lose everything: Common sense, I repeat, is not our strongest suit.

The nice part of this story is that even after Iceland was virtually wiped off the map, its people’s sagas would live on, translated into many languages. To this day, then, readers all over the world can enjoy compelling tales about how Icelanders dealt with greedy bastards. No doubt, in time to come, future generations will read about our scuffles with the greedy bastards who will have turned our beautiful planet into a wasteland and our young democracies into neo-liberal fiefdoms.

What is Democracy?

08.02.2021 /

For various reasons, a growing number of people are beginning to wonder whether Democracy is just a fading daydream. The long-predicted effects of climate change are one by one starting to unfold and are shaking our faith in the future. Meanwhile, the spectacular cognitive contortions of many politicians and their followers have seemed beyond belief and have generated distrust in our governments. Finally, people like Bolsonaro, el-Sisi, Duterte, Trump, MBS, Netanyahu (Apartheid politician), Erdogan, Putin, and Burmese generals … to mention just a few, do not inspire hope for the human race, far less for Democracy.

But I put to you that in spite of all this, Democracy is not an illusion, not make-belief, not a silly fantasy!

There is nothing wrong with the concept of Democracy as outlined, however roughly
by the Encyclopedia Britannica:

Democracy is a system of government in which laws, policies, leadership, and major undertakings of a state or other polity are directly or indirectly decided by the “people,” a group historically constituted by only a minority of the population (e.g., all free adult males in ancient Athens or all sufficiently propertied adult males in 19th-century Britain) but generally understood since the mid-20th century to include all (or nearly all) adult citizens.

and recommended by the United Nations:

When the founders of the United Nations drafted the United Nations Charter, they did not mention the word democracy. In 1945, many of the UN Member States did not endorse democracy as a system, or didn’t practice it. Yet, the opening words of the Charter, “We the Peoples”, reflect the fundamental principle of democracy – that the will of the people is the source of legitimacy of sovereign states and, therefore, of the United Nations as a whole.

The problem we are facing these days is not that the concept Democracy is any more fantastical than it ever was, but that the word Democracy has been high-jacked by the United States – where it has been married to an economic (and governmental) system, commonly referred to by detractors as Neoliberalism – and where it has failed ignominiously to curb ubiquitous economic and racial injustice.

Since time immemorial there have been, here and there, patches of what could be called Democratic societies: A model example is that of the San [quote from Wikipedia]:

Traditionally, the San were an egalitarian society. Although they had hereditary chiefs, their authority was limited. The San made decisions among themselves by consensus, with women treated as relative equals. San economy was a gift economy, based on giving each other gifts regularly rather than on trading or purchasing goods and services.

True the San may not have exercised “separation of powers” (legislative, executive and judiciary) and a transparent system of checks and balances, without which I cannot conceive of a modern Democratic society. On the other hand, they managed something no “modern” society would: to survive in the Kalahari Desert.

With or without separation of powers, one thing is certain in the Kalahari Desert as in a post-modern society: Democracy is contingent on informed choices, and that is what has been missing in so many so-called democracies all over the world. The San People will not have known about quantum physics, but what knowledge they had, they shared and without shared knowledge, there is no Democracy.

Again I quote Encyclopedia Britannica:

The hallmark of democracy is that it permits citizens to participate in making laws and public policies by regularly choosing their leaders and by voting in assemblies or referenda. If their participation is to be meaningful and effective—if the democracy is to be real and not a sham—citizens must understand their own interests, know the relevant facts, and have the ability to critically evaluate political arguments. Each of those things presupposes education.

Education, then, is key!

But who gets to decide what goes onto the curriculum? A bellowing bull in Ankara (who is at this very moment clamping down on his countries’ universities)? Or a Christian fundamentalist? Well, that’s where the free press comes into the picture, isn’t it, because if either one or the other fiddles with the curriculum, the press pounces on them, unless…

Unless what? Well, the press isn’t entirely free, is it. The press has powerful owners and/or backers; military dictators, autocrats, Savonarolas, billionaires, cranks, Qanonites and nut cases who will apply every trick in the book to gain and retain control, including the tricks of editing curriculum and controlling the press.

So Democracy is not something that just falls into our laps and stays there. We have to work for it, and we have to defend it. Mind you, this is not new. Since time immemorial, the world has been hectored by power freaks, and has survived. But one thing has changed: change itself, or rather, the speed of change.

Like it or not, change happens and will continue to happen at a breath-taking speed.

Change brings us pandemics, but also improved vaccination technology. Change brings us affordable audio-visual communication across continents, but also the means to whip up insurrections through social media.

More than ever before, education – good education – is needed so that we all can contribute, each in our different ways and to the extent of our capacity – by asking questions, answering questions, squabbling about the answers; by conducting research and questioning results. Like the San, we must share available knowledge about what lies ahead so that we all can take part in deciding how to deal with it.

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