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.