Muddy and most of all short

Trouble with me is that when I'm face down in the mud being shouted at by a man in camouflage; I think about Thomas Hobbes.

British Military Fitness is refreshingly untouchy-feely. No excuses, no gloves, no water and you do those press ups properly. Because it is blokey and bantery and the trainer knows what he's doing, it is great fun. We did it as a one off work thing, me and the Finance department had a lovely time.

Made me think Hobbes was on to something 

Hobbes says a strong all powerful leader is vital for a state. The alternative being the freedom which results in chaos and crime. Famously he said life in the state of nature is bloody, brutal and most of all short.

Better to submit to supreme authority and have the trains run on time.

Coats and hegemony

I've never had much truck with it. I'm a liberal who isn't writing in a civil war context. I don't undertand why there isn't a middle ground between obeying God's representitive on earth and starving to death. Liberal democracy? 

Sometimes though it works much better to just be told what to do, rather than tedious consultation that results in grey compromise.

I also read in the Economist that periods of one state hegemony tend to result in better conditions for free trade. Hegemony meaning sustained dominance, cultural, military and economically (USA recently). It's the same idea; things work better when you just do what the man says.

Hobbes also wore the same coat for 40 years. There's a theme with philosophers and coats, I'll return to it another time.  

Soft skills or hard cash? Blair, determinism and the misplaced ego

Tony Blair recently said that he was so good as an international peace summit mediator because had had empathy.

He understood the pain of one party and was able to convey those emotions to their enemies. We all, at root, have human feelings and children to protect.

I won't dismiss these soft skills entirely. Experience at work tell me that the talent, determination and people skills of individuals are ultimately the key the getting stuff done. I think there's more to it though.

It's all about the cold hard cash?

Blair also said that this modest recognition of his superior empathetic qualities was a hard thing to accept as he'd been brought up in the Marxist school of economic determinism.

This states that the world evolves though economic states inevitably and there's nothing the individual does that affects that. Feudalism, capitalism and finally socialism will happen due to factors inherent in those system. For example the competition for finite resources and markets must lead to conflict within capitalism and to it's decline. The world rolls over us, we don't really make a difference.

As a liberal I'm a champion of an individual's impact on the world. Not least as it's depressing to be subject to external forces. But there's something in this underlying forces argument.

Individuals are just the icing on the cakes

The soft skills argument oversells itself. The waring parties wouldn't be at the table if the threat of US military wasn't lurking. I wouldn't be at the table being all caring with Tony because I'm not the prime Minister of a G8 country with a massive army, a predilection for invasion and a say in the movement of E.U. cash. Tony's Princess Di eyes are just the icing on the cake.

The X Factor winner is Christmas number 1 every year because the machine behind it provides 20 weeks of prime time advertising. The pretty singer can sing, the tune might be ok but if they had all that when they still worked in Greggs and no-one bought their records then. Icing on the cake.

Finally to Orwell: 'Pacifism is the preserve of people who live in a country with a large navy'. His point being that if you are overrun by goths, you would grab your pitchfork. Only in the Home Counties, over a glass of Chianti can you afford the luxury of such values because the Royal Navy sits in the channel sinking Vikings.

Larger forces are at work than the emotional intelligence of men who have honed their soft skills.         

Walkie Scorcer and schadenfreude

There's a new glass skyscraper in London nicknamed the Walkie Talkie and it's gone a bit wrong.

Its concave shape is channeling the unusual 2013 summer sunlight back into the street in a 'death ray' (no-one has died but that's what they are calling it for headline purposes) of ultra violet. It is now nicknamed the Walkie Socrcer.

I find this very funny. It's a really big problem (to make a whole London street unusable) on a really big scale. And it's cost billions.

It is satisfying when really big things mess up, why is that? We do enjoy a tall poppy with egg on its face (we also do enjoy a mixed metaphor).

For me it is because I earn very much less than these people who make really big mess-ups and yet I rarely mess up in my job. Well I do mess up, let's be honest but not often and only on a small scale. 

The architect in this case is cheerfully blaming other people for all this. Maybe it's just chutzpah that separates high earning fallible humans from low earning fallible humans? Someone clever than me will solve this problem though, don't ask a non-quaified schmuck like me to.

Thinkers on schadenfreude

Schopenhauer thought our delight in others' mishaps was 'the worst trait in human nature'. Kant said it was a 'devilish wickedness'. Now i'm starting to feel bad.

Phycologists put the need to enjoy poppy wilting down to low self esteem. So now I feel guilty and worthless.

There's hope though. John Portman of Virginia University is my savour (2004). He thinks we do it because of our sense of justice. We think somehow others are deserving of their banana skin. Whether they actually are deserving is less important than the fact that society works better when we have a sense of justice. A sense of consequences for bad behaviour and reward for harmonious traits. 

Phew, I can laugh at balls-ups afterall.

       

Marx, the Pet Shop Boys and matters of the trouser

The song 'Love is a Bourgeois construct' (Pet Shop Boys) came on the radio the other day and my companion asked what they were on about.

The DJ of course made a proud boast of his ignorance. We do in Britain, we hate clever. 

This is what it means:

Marx thought the monogamous relationship and the family were just ways of perpetuating the class system. Capital flows to the heir, the rich stay rich and the class system wins.

Communal living and free love were much preferred.

Romantic old devil wasn't he?

It seems a bit silly but the Victorian family was a pretty easy thing to dislike. The hypocrisy of men enjoying the female servants, the clear subordination of women and the shoving of children up chimneys.

Much easier to fault that than our current view of cuddles (say, that of Kendal and Briers in The Good Life).  

Marx also disliked things which made poor people a bit happier and distracted them from their condition. This prevented revolution. Snogging and football (religion famously) keep you off the baracades. 

It's pleasing to summarise swathes of political history

Sitting in an English garden waiting for the sun, on Sunday, I was asked to describe the relationship between the political parties and business. No really.

Seeing as I'm always pleased with concise summary, I'll share what I said.

The Tories in the C19th were the party of the landed aristocracy. It was the Whigs who represented the emerging new money of business spawned by the industrial revolution. The whigs were for free trade against the vested interests of an old order which inhibited business.

By the turn of the C20th the Conservatives had bolted on nationalism while keeping their Burkean opposition of change. The Liberals had emerged from the Whigs to now champion the beginnings of a welfare state. Labour had appeared and was the party of the working man.

By the late C20th the Conservatives had embraced a free market ideal more akin to the old Whigs. When Labour dropped it's fourth clause (which stated business should be nationally owned) all three main parties ended in pretty much the same place with regard to the market. Give or take a penny on capital gains tax here or there.

While Liberals had various other core principles it could be a lack of clear representation of either business or worker hindered it's electoral chances through the C20th.

My listener seemed quite happy with that.

The Germans have a word for being alone in the woods

The Germans have a word for being alone in a forest. I've been alone in a German forest and I think, frankly, they need to go further and be more specific.

Waldeinsamkeit a sort of wooded-loneliness, is one of those words we don't have in English (there are lists of these pleasures on the thingyweb).

Years ago I walked down the Rhine south of Koblenz, alone. I loved it.

Walkers and follow-your-nose runners will know if you don't know an area then certain things help you not get lost: hills, landmarks, clear lines of sight.

Woods can be very disorientating. A lost path with no reference points is confusing.

I found on my Huensruck ramblings that pine forest is worse. It's quieter. There are fewer things living there than in English broadleaf so no comforting chirp and scamper. The needles or their acidic drop undergrowth inhibitors also muffle.

Yes, I did just write acid drop undergrowth inhibitors and shame on you, you are still reading.

So a German forest is altogether worse for getting lost in, when you are alone. And everyone knows some sort of Grimm hag or goblin oven fate awaits you in the Teutonic arboreal.

Just saying they need to beef their word up a bit.

Augurs well that ends well

The phrase 'it augurs well' comes from the Roman augurs who predicted things. They told the future by watching the flight of birds (amongst other things) and so this phrase and the word eagle are linked in their origin.

So there's me having a run around Ickworth National Trust grounds in Suffolk and having to make a decision. There was a shorter 6km route or a longer 11km route and I was approaching the junction at which I'd have to make the call.

Fortunately a little egret (a white bird like a small heron) was on hand (on wing) at the junction to clearly point me left by flying and facing that way. Remembering my Romans I did as advised but did actually say out loud that I'd hold him responsible if he'd led me to boggy fiendishness.

It chose the longer route, the eejit egret.

All this is amusing if not entirely rational though there are sound principles at work here. Running experts will tell you that you can break up a hill or a long slog by distracting yourself. Checking clever timing devices, aiming for a certain point, speeding up, all take your mind off the breathlessness and joint throb. I'd used my augur for that purpose.

Sense of IT and my silly old sensibilities

During a meeting this week a man from IT said that he wasn't interested in the look, the words or the usability of a product, just the functionality. If A led to B led to C then engaging copy and the right shade of pink could go hang. And if people were confused at how to use it that was their problem.

When I disagreed with this I continued a debate that's been going on for centuries: science versus art, reason versus emotion.

I'll take you through the years with four big hitters.

Plato thought we appreciate music because we get the maths (the patterns, the intervals in harmonies and so on) rather than because as individuals we just happened to dig it. Ratio versus sensus in his terms.

Austen in sense and sensibility gives us two sisters, one who suppresses her her emotions for greater responsibilities and another who is a whimsical old loved up dreamer.

The book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Pirsig 1974) says everything comes down to classic versus romantic. These terms are more commonly known for music and architectural periods. You knew what would happen when in Mozart's classical structures but Wagner might lead you up an odd sounding horny helmeted path for hours breaking lots of musical rules.

To build a symmetrical columned building, with correct (Fibonacci) proportions, in the Roman and Greek style was classical. Later to be frilly and turreted (think Disney castles or The Palace of Westminster) was romantic.

In 1959 C.P. Snow argued that Two Cultures existed. The divide between science and humanities was a barrier to our progress.

This divide will be familiar to all teens being asked to choose three science or three humanity A-levels. To the engineer student unable to get off with the floaty-minded girls who do drama. To me trying to make web content that doesn't baffle.

I don't think you can lump things or people into one of other category. Everything is a bit of both. People are complicated individuals and most things are more nuanced. I fall into both camps.

But it does keep coming up doesn't it?

The certainty of youth is best for spouting

In a debate by letters in C18th baroque Germany, Heinrich Bokemeyer suddenly realised that his views on the musical form canon, were complete bollocks:

'When I look at my old ideas, I am filled with the greatest disgust'.

I'd been discussing a similar notion earlier in the day with a colleague. We'd been wondering if she'd be better off writing opinion columns (or 'blogs' as we the call great-unread call them) now or in a few years when she'd seen a bit more life and had more to inform her barbed pen.

While you would have thought experience would benefit knowledge and so inform your opinions, there can though be an adverse effect on your spoutings. As Bokemeyer found there is certainty in youth.

The more you know the less certain you are. Plato knew this and was fond of saying philosophers knew they knew nothing and were always trying to find more out.

There's usually another side to a story and if you've read a bit and lived a bit you can probably sympathise with it.

Politicians tend to be very certain. It's been argued this is because they aren't as clever as some.

So if you want to proclaim with zest, do so in youthful ignorance. If you want to be balanced and correct, wait a bit.

'As mad as I am but no madder' or why J.S Mill would like my new hat

There's a Fry and Laurie sketch where a man goes to the doctor because he's a little bit mad. Not very much, just a tad. His only eccentricity is putting toast in his shoe.

'I'm as mad as I am but no madder' he declares.

I am boring. In fact i'd go as far as saying I'm balanced and rational. However I have just got new hat which gives me a tiny flicker of eccentricity.

OK so it's the equivalent of the accountant who wears a Homer Simpson tie but it's a start.

TRILBY

J.S Mill would approve.

He thought conformity curtailed our freedom as much as any laws. It was tyranny. A culture is stultified and constrained by everyone just fitting in and not rocking the boat.

Because of this tyranny he finds a genuine good in being different. In being eccentric, within the limits of not harming others.

The person who is different might be right. They might create life enhancing art or make a discovery.

Progress in society depends (amongst other things) on me wearing a Trilby in public.