Sapiens is the book to end all books. Literally. Well, almost.
It tells you everything you need to know about the history of human culture and thought, and then asks where we might be going as a species.
In the process it undermines consumerism, nationalism, the pursuit of individual happiness and the idea that mankind is shaping the planet in a positive way. Having done so, it leaves us with one question for our future: what do we want to want?
It's a question that we might well try to answer by writing books, and once we've settled on some answers we might well try to track our progress towards those answers by writing more books. Hence that "almost" earlier on. But most books have just been rendered pointless. Along with most of everything else.
I've spent my adult life looking for the answers to life's questions in books. How did we get here? Why are things the way they are? Is that how they ought to be? What kind of life should I lead? How can I do that better? Thanks to Sapiens, I now feel like I know most of the answers.
The past 500 years of unprecedented human productivity have given us Shakespeare's sonnets, Mozart's requiems, Leonardo's portraits, Manolo's Blahniks and Gangnam Style. Are we any happier or more satisfied as a result? Nope. Should I bother with them? Eh.
Only two things seem important now: community and the future of human activity. I've long struggled to foment ambitions, and now I think it's because I haven't been focusing on those two issues.
Am I focused enough to do so from now on? I guess I'll find out.
Monday, 15 August 2016
Friday, 12 August 2016
Gaika live at the Roundhouse
Gaika delivered a confident and powerful performance of his 2016 album Security at the Roundhouse on 11 August, overcoming but not quite compensating for the over-hyping of a sparse bill.
The Brixton-raised self-defined Afrofuturist, whose music combines R&B, rap, grime and dancehall, was one of several musicians invited over different nights to make use of Ron Arad's Curtain Call installation at the Roundhouse - a "floor-to-ceiling artwork made of 5,600 silicon rods suspended from an 18-metre diameter ring [that] provides a canvas for films, live performance and audience interaction".
The Roundhouse billed Curtain Call as "incredible" and "epic", but on the basis of Gaika's show, a visual display encircling the audience is a backwards step from the more typical audience-facing live music array, which through multi-sourcing and layering offers far more opportunities to dazzle.
Gaika's show itself was billed by the Roundhouse as an "imaginary club experience" inspired by Security and its "dancehall-tinged songs for the city" but that too proved to be hype: four dancers on podiums were positioned around the Curtained space, and early on in the evening the "club" was guarded by "bouncers", but that was the sum total of the "immersion".
Doors opened at 21.00 and the venue closed at 23.00, already making for a painfully short facsimile of an actual club night, and to add insult to injury the first hour of the evening proved to be nothing but the chance to mill around the performance space while minimal use was made of Curtain Call to some vague musical accompaniment from the VIP bar area. There was no support, and nothing to see. It was a scandalous waste of people's time and ears.
Thankfully Gaika's performance itself, when it finally came, rose magnificently above the inauspicious start to proceedings. Either Curtain Call, the shape of the Roundhouse or Gaika's own proclivities meant that he delivered his performance from a small circular stage in the centre of the space, allowing the crowd of "clubbers" to push up close and move around freely.
It was an inspired choice that made the show much more intimate than most at the Roundhouse, which is a monumental building but, with a maximum capacity of 1,700, not a place where most of the crowd can normally get near the performers.
Gaika kicked things off by exhorting the crowd to rotate around him, which they briefly did before settling down again and remaining mostly static for the rest of the night, bar some self-conscious shuffling. It was possibly an acknowledgement on Gaika's part that he knew he was going to have to single-handedly deliver the 'epic immersion' people had been led to expect.
If so, he delivered. Security is strange beast of an album, claustrophobic and threatening but also heartfelt and at times uplifting and energising, and Gaika managed to translate all of that into the live show with an intense and physical performance. The crowd was an uncommon mix of achingly trendy arty types, tracksuited youths, bespectacled nerds and rather bewildered-looking middle-aged culture vultures, with most of the dancing taking place among those belonging to the first two categories, but those who looked like they'd actually known what to expect, rather than being enticed in by the Roundhouse's hype, appeared to greatly enjoy themselves.
I was one of those, and it was just a shame that the "club" of the billing was indeed imaginary: had Gaika's performance been the centrepiece of a real club night, or even of a properly organised gig schedule, the evening would have been a resounding success. As it was, only Gaika emerged with credibility intact.
Tuesday, 21 June 2016
Book review: Not The Chilcot Report, Peter Oborne, 2016
In Not The Chilcot Report, journalist Peter Oborne shows that Tony Blair outright lied to Parliament on at least one occasion and repeatedly deceived Parliament by distortion or omission, that several of his inner circle aided him in this, that his presidential style of government bypassed essential checks and balances, that he was fixated on regime change and prepared to try to game the U.N. Security Council to achieve it, that intelligence services allowed their work to be misrepresented in Parliament and the media, that Parliament and journalists were slipshod in not holding Blair and his circle to account at the time, and that Parliamentary committees of inquiry failed to do so subsequently.
He also asserts that these lessons have yet to be learnt. Chilcot is published on 6 July. Get ready for fireworks.
He also asserts that these lessons have yet to be learnt. Chilcot is published on 6 July. Get ready for fireworks.
Wednesday, 15 June 2016
Friday, 3 June 2016
Brexit #2: what is and what might be
Vote Leave figurehead Boris Johnson has been taking flipflopping to new lows in his hijacking of the EU referendum, but even the most decided of the rest of us would probably admit to thinking there are pros and cons to being in the EU (although for us those pros and the cons will be different things).
I wonder though how many of us would admit that at least part of our inclination to vote one way or the other is due not to some fixed aspect of the EU's setup, but to our desire to either keep or change some temporary political circumstance that just happens to be the way we do or don't want it to be for the time being?
For example, I'm more in agreement overall politically with the current inhabitants of the EU institutions than I am with the current Tory UK government, due to our stances on issues like the refugee crisis, climate change, workers' rights, etc, and I can't deny that that's one of the attractive prospects about voting to remain. Of course if we were to vote to leave the EU then the UK government could theoretically reinstate many of the things I like that the EU currently gives us, like the maximum 48-hour working week, but would it?
In this FT article Joshua Chaffin wrote about how "Cornwall took in more than €654m from Brussels during the EU’s 2007 to 2013 budget cycle" (as part of the EU's scheme for taking money from wealthier areas and giving it to more deprived ones), and whether that's having an impact on Cornish residents' voting intentions. Boris has said the UK could redistribute money like this on its own without cycling it through Brussels first if we vote to leave, but one resident told Chaffin that "The EU’s been a much better mechanism for getting money from the wealthier parts of Britain to the poorer parts than our own government’s ever been”.
Likewise, when I spoke to an academic for a Brexit piece I contributed to for work, and put it to her that the UK government could, if we vote to leave, choose to more-than replace the research funding we currently receive from the EU with the money leavers claim we'd save, she said: "Nobody can convince me that if we weren’t part of the EU then the amount of research funding that’s available for the humanities around minorities or marginal groups would be increased under the present government. That’s absolutely inconceivable.”
In both of these examples, short-term thinking brushes up against long-term, and pragmatism up against wishful thinking. I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about these situations.
In his book And The Weak Suffer What They Must?, former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis writes about how "Greek and Italian politicians [...] extended an intriguing offer to voters fed up with them" when their countries were considering joining the EU's single currency: "Keep voting for us and we shall soon rid you of ... our rule! Once monetary union is complete, our country will be administered de facto by Northern Europeans [...] Most Greeks I know secretly welcomed that offer [...]"
And look where that got them...
Maybe it isn't wise to make long-term decisions on the basis of short-term circumstances.
Right now I dislike Tory austerity (with the UK not in the Eurozone, we don't have to worry about Eurogroup austerity) and like EU's stance towards online privacy protection, for example, but in the future might I lament a more left-wing UK government being unable to introduce a Robin Hood tax on financial transactions because a more right-wing EU doesn't want one?
I think the best thing on June 23 will be to vote in line with whether you think the fixed aspects of EU membership or non-membership are good or bad: having a continent-wide system of governance, being able to influence that governance, being in some respects controlled by that governance; free movement; free trade.
But I suspect transient concerns will end up playing as big a role, if not bigger.
I wonder though how many of us would admit that at least part of our inclination to vote one way or the other is due not to some fixed aspect of the EU's setup, but to our desire to either keep or change some temporary political circumstance that just happens to be the way we do or don't want it to be for the time being?
For example, I'm more in agreement overall politically with the current inhabitants of the EU institutions than I am with the current Tory UK government, due to our stances on issues like the refugee crisis, climate change, workers' rights, etc, and I can't deny that that's one of the attractive prospects about voting to remain. Of course if we were to vote to leave the EU then the UK government could theoretically reinstate many of the things I like that the EU currently gives us, like the maximum 48-hour working week, but would it?
In this FT article Joshua Chaffin wrote about how "Cornwall took in more than €654m from Brussels during the EU’s 2007 to 2013 budget cycle" (as part of the EU's scheme for taking money from wealthier areas and giving it to more deprived ones), and whether that's having an impact on Cornish residents' voting intentions. Boris has said the UK could redistribute money like this on its own without cycling it through Brussels first if we vote to leave, but one resident told Chaffin that "The EU’s been a much better mechanism for getting money from the wealthier parts of Britain to the poorer parts than our own government’s ever been”.
Likewise, when I spoke to an academic for a Brexit piece I contributed to for work, and put it to her that the UK government could, if we vote to leave, choose to more-than replace the research funding we currently receive from the EU with the money leavers claim we'd save, she said: "Nobody can convince me that if we weren’t part of the EU then the amount of research funding that’s available for the humanities around minorities or marginal groups would be increased under the present government. That’s absolutely inconceivable.”
In both of these examples, short-term thinking brushes up against long-term, and pragmatism up against wishful thinking. I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about these situations.
In his book And The Weak Suffer What They Must?, former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis writes about how "Greek and Italian politicians [...] extended an intriguing offer to voters fed up with them" when their countries were considering joining the EU's single currency: "Keep voting for us and we shall soon rid you of ... our rule! Once monetary union is complete, our country will be administered de facto by Northern Europeans [...] Most Greeks I know secretly welcomed that offer [...]"
And look where that got them...
Maybe it isn't wise to make long-term decisions on the basis of short-term circumstances.
Right now I dislike Tory austerity (with the UK not in the Eurozone, we don't have to worry about Eurogroup austerity) and like EU's stance towards online privacy protection, for example, but in the future might I lament a more left-wing UK government being unable to introduce a Robin Hood tax on financial transactions because a more right-wing EU doesn't want one?
I think the best thing on June 23 will be to vote in line with whether you think the fixed aspects of EU membership or non-membership are good or bad: having a continent-wide system of governance, being able to influence that governance, being in some respects controlled by that governance; free movement; free trade.
But I suspect transient concerns will end up playing as big a role, if not bigger.
Sunday, 29 May 2016
Book review: Democracy Without Nations? Pierre Manent, 2006
In Democracy Without Nations? Pierre Manent poses an interesting and important question, fails to answer it convincingly, but in tackling it leaves it all the more interesting.
The question, more fully articulated than in the book's title, is essentially: can Europe survive without its nations?
Manent's answer is no. Manent loves nations, and admits as much: "my own national passion, which is undoubtedly quite real". But why does he think Europe can't do without them?
He gives three reasons.
The least convincing is that "After more than half a century of trying, the European enterprise, the effort "to construct Europe", has not succeeded in overcoming our old nations."
The easiest demonstration that this is unconvincing is that Manent has felt the need to write his book: he feels the nation needs to be defended. Nations can't be both weak enough to be in existential crisis and strong enough to necessitate their continued existence. Manent is trying to have his cake and eat it.
Second, he likes the size of nations - they're "at once quite ample and neatly circumscribed". They're "the middle ground between the puny and the immense, the petty and the limitless".
That's a more reasonable point, but it overlooks the fact that China is a nation of about 10 million square kilometers and 1.3 billion people, whereas Luxembourg is a nation of 2.5 thousand square kilometers and half a million people.
Perhaps these nations are absurd outliers - the federal nature of the USA and India points to that - but the fact remains that China, Luxembourg, the USA and India are all reasonably well-functioning nations. There's nothing necessary about the size of the UK, France and Germany.
Manent does ask whether Europe can become the new nation that subsumes existing European nations, as I'm implying is a viable course, but he seems to reject the viability of this possibility simply because it hasn't happened yet, as in point 1. He criticizes Europe's "refusal to define itself politically", or in terms of either a territory or a population.
Although I find this unconvincing in terms of the answer to the overarching question, I think Manent has a point, and this is one of the most interesting parts of the book. He says "Europe cannot construct itself meaningfully unless Europeans in the various nations identify themselves with a common European political action", and I agree with him; but he ends the sentence with "and for the foreseeable future that means with the common action of European nations", and there I disagree.
Firstly: has Britain defined itself any better than Europe? Has France? Second, take the Pirate Parties, which are uniting people worldwide around a single thread of causes.
Manent touches on this - on how globalisation is allowing or causing people to identify with each other across the world based on shared interests and experiences - but he says that "Communication by itself does not create a true bond among people [...]", and here again we diverge.
Although I agree that "Today's popular term identity is a terribly impoverished substitute for the older term community", I think he's mistaken that nations can any longer be the site of community, if they ever were. Do I really identify more with a British criminal in Newcastle or a British Baron in Cornwall than I do with someone from another country who lives alongside me in London and shares my work ethic and lifestyle? Non, nein.
The scale of community is dozens or hundreds, or a few miles, or dozens of conversations; the scale of politics ...? For me, as is enshrined in the EU's subsidiarity, it depends on the scale of the problem.
Finally, and perhaps most convincingly, Manent criticizes the effectiveness of the EU's instruments, which he says "prevent any individual or collective action that is not the simple application of a rule or regulation authorising rights". Unfortunately he provides no examples and barely elaborates; the argument is the most convincing of the three because of what has happened in Europe to countries like Greece since the financial crisis, but DWN? was written before the crash, and I don't know enough about institutions like the European Central Bank to be able to judge whether their weaknesses are terminal or skin-deep. That's covered by the next book I'll read; for the time being all I can say is that Manent is too brief on this point.
So DWN? failed to convince me that the nation must remain the primary site of politics, although I'm happy to concede it could well remain a secondary or tertiary one. Questions about the level at which democracy works best and about how people will associate in this globalised age are fascinating ones, and DWN? is a fairly though-provoking read even if far short of being the definitive text. Probably no such text exists yet...
The question, more fully articulated than in the book's title, is essentially: can Europe survive without its nations?
Manent's answer is no. Manent loves nations, and admits as much: "my own national passion, which is undoubtedly quite real". But why does he think Europe can't do without them?
He gives three reasons.
The least convincing is that "After more than half a century of trying, the European enterprise, the effort "to construct Europe", has not succeeded in overcoming our old nations."
The easiest demonstration that this is unconvincing is that Manent has felt the need to write his book: he feels the nation needs to be defended. Nations can't be both weak enough to be in existential crisis and strong enough to necessitate their continued existence. Manent is trying to have his cake and eat it.
Second, he likes the size of nations - they're "at once quite ample and neatly circumscribed". They're "the middle ground between the puny and the immense, the petty and the limitless".
That's a more reasonable point, but it overlooks the fact that China is a nation of about 10 million square kilometers and 1.3 billion people, whereas Luxembourg is a nation of 2.5 thousand square kilometers and half a million people.
Perhaps these nations are absurd outliers - the federal nature of the USA and India points to that - but the fact remains that China, Luxembourg, the USA and India are all reasonably well-functioning nations. There's nothing necessary about the size of the UK, France and Germany.
Manent does ask whether Europe can become the new nation that subsumes existing European nations, as I'm implying is a viable course, but he seems to reject the viability of this possibility simply because it hasn't happened yet, as in point 1. He criticizes Europe's "refusal to define itself politically", or in terms of either a territory or a population.
Although I find this unconvincing in terms of the answer to the overarching question, I think Manent has a point, and this is one of the most interesting parts of the book. He says "Europe cannot construct itself meaningfully unless Europeans in the various nations identify themselves with a common European political action", and I agree with him; but he ends the sentence with "and for the foreseeable future that means with the common action of European nations", and there I disagree.
Firstly: has Britain defined itself any better than Europe? Has France? Second, take the Pirate Parties, which are uniting people worldwide around a single thread of causes.
Manent touches on this - on how globalisation is allowing or causing people to identify with each other across the world based on shared interests and experiences - but he says that "Communication by itself does not create a true bond among people [...]", and here again we diverge.
Although I agree that "Today's popular term identity is a terribly impoverished substitute for the older term community", I think he's mistaken that nations can any longer be the site of community, if they ever were. Do I really identify more with a British criminal in Newcastle or a British Baron in Cornwall than I do with someone from another country who lives alongside me in London and shares my work ethic and lifestyle? Non, nein.
The scale of community is dozens or hundreds, or a few miles, or dozens of conversations; the scale of politics ...? For me, as is enshrined in the EU's subsidiarity, it depends on the scale of the problem.
Finally, and perhaps most convincingly, Manent criticizes the effectiveness of the EU's instruments, which he says "prevent any individual or collective action that is not the simple application of a rule or regulation authorising rights". Unfortunately he provides no examples and barely elaborates; the argument is the most convincing of the three because of what has happened in Europe to countries like Greece since the financial crisis, but DWN? was written before the crash, and I don't know enough about institutions like the European Central Bank to be able to judge whether their weaknesses are terminal or skin-deep. That's covered by the next book I'll read; for the time being all I can say is that Manent is too brief on this point.
So DWN? failed to convince me that the nation must remain the primary site of politics, although I'm happy to concede it could well remain a secondary or tertiary one. Questions about the level at which democracy works best and about how people will associate in this globalised age are fascinating ones, and DWN? is a fairly though-provoking read even if far short of being the definitive text. Probably no such text exists yet...
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