Quoted in Pip Pip (Jay Griffiths, 2000):
The more effectively the cycles of life, as essential ecological processes, are maintained, the more invisible they become. Disruption is violent and visible; balance and harmony are experienced, not seen. The premium on visibility placed by patriarchal maldevelopment forces the destruction of invisible energies and the work of women and nature, and the creation of spectacular, centralized work and wealth.
Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
Tuesday, 20 September 2011
Monday, 7 June 2010
695 - Whirred
[photo by giuss95]
Notwithstanding The Language Instinct, by Steven Pinker, that we are essentially a-verbal suggests to me that we can become, perhaps already are becoming, post-verbal.
This, wryly, from Sara Maitland's A Book of Silence: "'Communication' (which always means talk) is the sine qua non of 'good relationships'. 'Alone' and 'lonely' have become almost synonymous; worse, perhaps, 'silent' and 'bored' seem to be moving closer together too.' (p.3)
I was at a discussion at which Sara Maitland spoke, and one of us who had come to listen argued that we are a noisy species, that we survive because of noise - warnings and attraction calls and the like - and that not speaking is therefore unnatural. But I wonder (following Maitland) if it is not quite as simple as that.
I follow Pinker's ideas that our relationship with language, indeed the whole of culture, is sustained through our having evolved brains that can comprehend and develop it; that, to the extent that it is evolutionarily desirable to be fluent, those of us who have an optimum capacity to handle words will, over eons, have passed our capacities down, through genes and culture, so that this generation is likely to be the most fluent ever.
And yet two thoughts intrude. First, what is evolved is the capacity to handle language, rather than language itself; second, verbal communication is incredibly effective, but not necessarily in all (even, perhaps, most) evolutionary niches.
I'll take these in turn (and I know I am using words to do so). It is true that we do, by and large, all speak, but we are not born speaking. What gets us speaking is exposure to parents and peers who can teach us. So whilst there might be a thirst to learn to speak, as there is a hunger for food, what this reveals is a brain fine-tuned to apprehend and adopt words, as a mouth can suck a teat. If every word was suddenly expunged, we would continue to be born with brains to listen for words, at least until evolution had worked its winnowing magic and replacement expressions of life, taking advantage of the distress our word-thirst placed us in, started to prevail.
Therefore a question arises: if our brains' verbal apprehension, creation and distribution technologies were combined with other neural technologies, to effect new communication (or wider than that, life) tools, might we not allow these to grow in place of modern human verbosity. Because not to do so would be to restrict our humanity. This is what has happened with the spread of reading, after all, which co-opts the brain's visual system into working with its language systems. Arguably something similar is happening as text-based communication widens into virtual reality - a phenomenon that neuroscientists are engaged in documenting.
But modern life throws more at us than electronic interfaces. Not least it continues to throw big questions from past eras about our capacity, for example, to adapt to new physical environments. Speech is great, but it'll never work, unmediated, underwater or in space or, perhaps, in noisy, jam-packed cities, where we preserve our personal space only by raising walls through which conversation cannot effectively pierce. And there is always the potential for us to create new neural technologies and subsequently to identify the niches where they can take us, for the sheer joy of it.
Evolutionary niches like cityscapes or wind-swept deserts are presently on the increase. There is no guarantee that the optimum conditions under which our language instinct evolved should continue to prevail. This drives us back to consider what the essence of humanity is. Our modern culture is, certainly, word-based; our post-modern culture less so. Perhaps it becomes more important for us to read one another's emotions projected alongside and concurrent with the brands we are wearing.
Or to adopt opportunities offered by our growing genetic or environmental awareness. If understanding is defined simply as the act of engaging with information packaged and sent between each other, and if we can package that information with greater dexterity and beauty in the form of a butterfly than a word, then our future conversations might be lepidoptic, rather than auditory.
With the hum of insect wings, in future days, words may have whirred into obsolescence.
Tuesday, 16 March 2010
720 - Art; Cosmologies; Bill Thompson
All at Cafe Culture Newcastle last night.
Bill Thompson is a new media critic, a self-described early adopter and technology addict - from last night, quote, 'the way I'm addicted to breathing'. On-line he bases himself here and among other places, here.
He was talking about the digital revolution as one of only a handful of civilization-changing events in human history. It's on a par, he says, with the discoveries of fire and agriculture. As with learning to read (he plugged Proust and the Squid heavily) it is an event which requires the brain to be rewired in new ways. So it raises profound questions about the ways we perceive and structure our identity.
This resonates with controversial works by Rita Carter and Susan Greenfield, which I've blogged about here and here. Not to say that Bill Thompson would agree with them (he would find Susan Greenfield, I suspect, unnecessarily alarmist). But he would find them rather interesting.
Bill sees himself, as an early adopter of technology, as one of a small but significant group of people who define their identities, in part at least, through their life on the web. He defines identity as a loose and provisional 'make-do' response to the essentially random experience of human existence. If the building of this identity should come to include networks of friends on-line, at the expense of those off-line, and if it should include multiple or single avatars, and a growing sense of what is normative, socially, for behaviour on-line, then that's just evolution. It's exciting, anyway.
I asked him what kind of art we might expect to see created through this and other identity-shifting technologies. I've a few ideas already (storying: life-story manipulation as an artform in its own right). He had his own insights.
He could see, he said, in five years' time, interactive user-generated art displays on every surface in the cityscape. Some kind of crowd-sourced imagery, some expression of bottom-up, swarm intelligence, perhaps. He defined art as a manipulation of the technology, to see how far it might go, what beauty could be made from it. I liked that - and it chimes with ideas from evolutionary psychology about art being a demonstration of one's mastery of symbolic thinking, or a demonstration of one's personality, one's openness, for example, and one's intelligence. (More on this another time.)
This was his second answer, however. I liked his first, too, offered provocatively and not pursued. He suggested we should see the network as the artform - the shimmering artform, he called it. The technology to be the artform, and as such, appreciated, untouched, for what it is.
This resonates with me for two related reasons. First, I suspect that if by network he means not just the technology, but the identity shift that accommodating the technology requires, he is providing an image by which I can expand my thinking on storying. Having considered how one can begin to manipulate one's own identity, I now want to explore questions of shared identity. Few stories, after all, concern just one person. Bill Thompson's 'network' will include his friendship network, as well as the hard/soft ware that supports it. Perhaps it can be demonstrated that the proper way to think about networks (including even the inorganic ones) is through narrative.
Second, my ears pricked up at his use of the word shimmering. This is the language of spirit and transcendence. It is religious. Only holy things are pristine. Stars shimmer in the night sky. I remembered the way Steven Johnson started his book, Emergence:
I suspect that for Bill Thompson, the network is such a shape. And if so (and the word was used last night), perhaps he is engaged in building a network-shaped cosmology.
David Lewis-Williams and David Pearce are archaeologists with an interest in what ancient cultures can tell us about the generation of cosmologies. Their book Inside the Neolithic Mind argues that it is a fundamental of human consciousness that new technologies arise alongside imaginative conceptions of the world and humanity's place in it. Sometimes it appears that the cosmology drives the technological advance, in contrast to materialist theories which have argued that new cosmologies come about only as a response to environmental and technological change. If religion's supernatural accretions are separated from its basis in human consciousness, they argue, it can be harnessed by science as a cradle for technological advance. The book focuses on the Neolithic or agricultural revolution - in other words, it is about the second civilization-changing event in human history. To reiterate, Bill Thompson holds that we are witnessing in the digital revolution a third.
On a personal note, I've already expressed my wish to work within a natural world view, this despite personal experiences it is hard not to label supernatural. I'd rather be scientifically rigorous about interrogating such experiences. Any supernatural conception of Love worth supporting has, in my book, to allow us the experience of a totally natural universe, however much else could be going on. If something unscientific, unnatural, happens, then I'd rather redefine science to include it than create a second domain that science cannot touch. That statement might mean my own position is hopelessly untenable (time will tell, I guess), but it does at least allow me to advocate the conclusions of Lewis-Williams and Pearce as a scientifically-literate way forward into the digital age.
Bill Thompson is a new media critic, a self-described early adopter and technology addict - from last night, quote, 'the way I'm addicted to breathing'. On-line he bases himself here and among other places, here.
He was talking about the digital revolution as one of only a handful of civilization-changing events in human history. It's on a par, he says, with the discoveries of fire and agriculture. As with learning to read (he plugged Proust and the Squid heavily) it is an event which requires the brain to be rewired in new ways. So it raises profound questions about the ways we perceive and structure our identity.
This resonates with controversial works by Rita Carter and Susan Greenfield, which I've blogged about here and here. Not to say that Bill Thompson would agree with them (he would find Susan Greenfield, I suspect, unnecessarily alarmist). But he would find them rather interesting.
Bill sees himself, as an early adopter of technology, as one of a small but significant group of people who define their identities, in part at least, through their life on the web. He defines identity as a loose and provisional 'make-do' response to the essentially random experience of human existence. If the building of this identity should come to include networks of friends on-line, at the expense of those off-line, and if it should include multiple or single avatars, and a growing sense of what is normative, socially, for behaviour on-line, then that's just evolution. It's exciting, anyway.
I asked him what kind of art we might expect to see created through this and other identity-shifting technologies. I've a few ideas already (storying: life-story manipulation as an artform in its own right). He had his own insights.
He could see, he said, in five years' time, interactive user-generated art displays on every surface in the cityscape. Some kind of crowd-sourced imagery, some expression of bottom-up, swarm intelligence, perhaps. He defined art as a manipulation of the technology, to see how far it might go, what beauty could be made from it. I liked that - and it chimes with ideas from evolutionary psychology about art being a demonstration of one's mastery of symbolic thinking, or a demonstration of one's personality, one's openness, for example, and one's intelligence. (More on this another time.)
This was his second answer, however. I liked his first, too, offered provocatively and not pursued. He suggested we should see the network as the artform - the shimmering artform, he called it. The technology to be the artform, and as such, appreciated, untouched, for what it is.
This resonates with me for two related reasons. First, I suspect that if by network he means not just the technology, but the identity shift that accommodating the technology requires, he is providing an image by which I can expand my thinking on storying. Having considered how one can begin to manipulate one's own identity, I now want to explore questions of shared identity. Few stories, after all, concern just one person. Bill Thompson's 'network' will include his friendship network, as well as the hard/soft ware that supports it. Perhaps it can be demonstrated that the proper way to think about networks (including even the inorganic ones) is through narrative.
Second, my ears pricked up at his use of the word shimmering. This is the language of spirit and transcendence. It is religious. Only holy things are pristine. Stars shimmer in the night sky. I remembered the way Steven Johnson started his book, Emergence:
Certain shapes and patterns hover over different moments in time, haunting and inspiring the individuals living through those periods.... These shapes are... a way of evoking an era and its peculiar obsessions. For individuals living within these periods, the shapes are cognitive building blocks, tools for thought.
(p.22)
I suspect that for Bill Thompson, the network is such a shape. And if so (and the word was used last night), perhaps he is engaged in building a network-shaped cosmology.
David Lewis-Williams and David Pearce are archaeologists with an interest in what ancient cultures can tell us about the generation of cosmologies. Their book Inside the Neolithic Mind argues that it is a fundamental of human consciousness that new technologies arise alongside imaginative conceptions of the world and humanity's place in it. Sometimes it appears that the cosmology drives the technological advance, in contrast to materialist theories which have argued that new cosmologies come about only as a response to environmental and technological change. If religion's supernatural accretions are separated from its basis in human consciousness, they argue, it can be harnessed by science as a cradle for technological advance. The book focuses on the Neolithic or agricultural revolution - in other words, it is about the second civilization-changing event in human history. To reiterate, Bill Thompson holds that we are witnessing in the digital revolution a third.
On a personal note, I've already expressed my wish to work within a natural world view, this despite personal experiences it is hard not to label supernatural. I'd rather be scientifically rigorous about interrogating such experiences. Any supernatural conception of Love worth supporting has, in my book, to allow us the experience of a totally natural universe, however much else could be going on. If something unscientific, unnatural, happens, then I'd rather redefine science to include it than create a second domain that science cannot touch. That statement might mean my own position is hopelessly untenable (time will tell, I guess), but it does at least allow me to advocate the conclusions of Lewis-Williams and Pearce as a scientifically-literate way forward into the digital age.
Wednesday, 10 March 2010
723 - Family Silver
I suppose that if any Government seriously thought that everything in this country should be understood by its monetary value, they'd sell it all and invest the money in China or India or another boom country.
Just saying...
Just saying...
Monday, 1 February 2010
738 - Storying and Trait Signaling
A longish quote, to start, from Spent, by Geoffrey Miller (2009):
I do think that with storying I've hit on just such an innovation. What one does is deliberately sequestrate one's identity, in the context of a given circumstance - time period, location, role, virtual reality - and proceed proactively to customise it, internally first, then, if one wishes, externally too. Role-play games allow this - perhaps most, if not all, arts do - but key is the internal action. The means by which such shaping occurs are those of traditional storytelling, turned by the teller in upon him or herself.
It certainly would not appear fair to those with traditional takes on identity that one might, by playing the role of a troll, and allowing one's seductee into one's storyspace in a character of their choosing, win their attentions, but the end result, in evolutionary terms, would be social and reproductive success. Fairness, as Geoffrey Miller suggests, need not come into it. Ideas about the multiplicity of a person's identity/ies, as explored by Rita Carter in her book of the same name, might have more to offer such a progressive artform than traditional concepts of an ultimately uniform personality.
To establish whether storying has a genuine appeal, it might be useful to investigate how effective it is at displaying personality traits that might otherwise not be signaled. The artform would be truly revolutionary if one were able to demonstrate, through an understanding of neuroplasticity, perhaps, that one was not able simply to display, but over a short or longer period, alter one's traits. In so far as, say, Christianity is about replicating in oneself the psychological and emotional traits of Jesus Christ, this is a realm already well trodden by religion, and supported by society.
I've had an inkling, and written before, how storying might give rise to issues around the civil rights one possesses over one's identity. Interestingly, perhaps, following his comments on the asymmetrical trait-signaling arms race, Geoffrey Miller explores whether it would be desirable for society to establish the psychological traits of its citizens through the gathering of data from, for example, one's relatives and neighbours; one's private email and social networking footprint; one's brain imaging or DNA testing. He concludes that, although this will become increasingly viable, its value would be suspect, because our most efficient personality detectors are those already hardwired in our brains. If storying ever did take off, however, one might expect a backlash, from traditionalists keen to protect their social and reproductive hegemony, against those enhancing themselves with a more flexible approach to personal identity. In such circumstances, the monitoring, and monochroming, of personality traits might become politically appealing.
Innovations in asymmetric warfare are always initially considered to be treachery and terrorism by the side that believes it is stronger according to traditional criteria. In retrospect, such tactics are inevitably reframed as natural historical progress in the efficient conduct of warfare.
Likewise, every signalling innovation in human culture is at first considered unfair and disreputable, at least by those who excelled at the previous signaling game. Medieval lords were no doubt driven nuts by the minstrels and troubadours who used musical innovations (isorhythmic motets, polyphony, even madrigals!) to seduce their wives and daughters, rather than winning them by the traditional methods (physical force, economic oppression, religious indoctrination). Elvis wasn't playing fair by wiggling his hips and sneering, and Miles Davis wasn't playing fair by being so damned cool, handsome and talented. From the viewpoint of social competitors and sexual rivals who "play fair" by getting formal educations, working full-time jobs, and paying full retail prices, any of these alternative ways of displaying one's personal traits seem like cheating. However, from the viewpoint of rational individuals seeking maximum social and sexual status at minimal cost, all these tactics were wonderfully liberating. Indeed, such signaling innovations seem to drive most of the progress in the technologies, ideas, and institutions that we call civilization.
I do think that with storying I've hit on just such an innovation. What one does is deliberately sequestrate one's identity, in the context of a given circumstance - time period, location, role, virtual reality - and proceed proactively to customise it, internally first, then, if one wishes, externally too. Role-play games allow this - perhaps most, if not all, arts do - but key is the internal action. The means by which such shaping occurs are those of traditional storytelling, turned by the teller in upon him or herself.
It certainly would not appear fair to those with traditional takes on identity that one might, by playing the role of a troll, and allowing one's seductee into one's storyspace in a character of their choosing, win their attentions, but the end result, in evolutionary terms, would be social and reproductive success. Fairness, as Geoffrey Miller suggests, need not come into it. Ideas about the multiplicity of a person's identity/ies, as explored by Rita Carter in her book of the same name, might have more to offer such a progressive artform than traditional concepts of an ultimately uniform personality.
To establish whether storying has a genuine appeal, it might be useful to investigate how effective it is at displaying personality traits that might otherwise not be signaled. The artform would be truly revolutionary if one were able to demonstrate, through an understanding of neuroplasticity, perhaps, that one was not able simply to display, but over a short or longer period, alter one's traits. In so far as, say, Christianity is about replicating in oneself the psychological and emotional traits of Jesus Christ, this is a realm already well trodden by religion, and supported by society.
I've had an inkling, and written before, how storying might give rise to issues around the civil rights one possesses over one's identity. Interestingly, perhaps, following his comments on the asymmetrical trait-signaling arms race, Geoffrey Miller explores whether it would be desirable for society to establish the psychological traits of its citizens through the gathering of data from, for example, one's relatives and neighbours; one's private email and social networking footprint; one's brain imaging or DNA testing. He concludes that, although this will become increasingly viable, its value would be suspect, because our most efficient personality detectors are those already hardwired in our brains. If storying ever did take off, however, one might expect a backlash, from traditionalists keen to protect their social and reproductive hegemony, against those enhancing themselves with a more flexible approach to personal identity. In such circumstances, the monitoring, and monochroming, of personality traits might become politically appealing.
Tuesday, 19 January 2010
740 - Clive James on Real Adventure
A lovely, long, inspiring quote about what makes a fine life, from his book, Cultural Amnesia (but what to do when every other sentence is worth quoting?):
The usual division [in social life] is to treat our daily job as the adventure and our cultural diversions as a mere mechanism of renewal and repose. But the adventurous jobs are becoming more predictable all the time, even at the level of celebrity and conspicuous material success. Could there be anything less astonishing than to work day and night on Wall Street to make the millions that will buy the Picasso that will hang on the wall of our Upper East Side apartment to help convince us and our guests that we are lucky to know each other? I have been in that apartment, and admired the Picasso, and envied its owner: I especially envied him his third wife, who had the same eyes as Picasso's second mistress, although they were on different sides of her nose. But I didn't envy the man his job. In the same week, I was filming in Greenwich Village, and spent an hour of down-time sitting in a cafe making my first acquaintance with the poetry of Anthony Hecht. I couldn't imagine living better. The real adventure is no longer in the job. In the job we can have a profile written about us, and be summed up: all the profiles will be the same, and all the summaries add up to the same thing. The real adventure is in what we do to entertain ourselves, a truth which the profile writers concede by trying to draw us out on our supposed addictions to shark fishing, fast cars, extreme skiing and expensive young women. But even the entertainment can no longer be adventurous if it serves a purpose. It will be adventurous only if it serves itself. In other words, it will not be utilitarian. It has always been a part of the definition of humanism that true learning has no end in view except its own furtherance.
Thursday, 3 December 2009
753 - As A Left-Leaning Guardian Reader, Why I'm Looking Forward To A Tory Government
It's about ideals.
I can remember discussing the merits or otherwise of Maggie Thatcher coming to power in 1979 with my friend, James Goodman, aged eight. And I can remember reading about the Falklands in my parents' paper of choice, the Telegraph, before they switched to the (namby-pamby) Times.
But in the eighties, as a teenager, Channel 4 grabbed me, and Channel 4 was the Tube, and Friday Night Live, and late night movies with a triangle in one corner to guarantee something shocking (sex rather than violence, I hoped). And the role-models Channel 4 revealed to me were arty and left-wing.
While the Tories were dying in the early- to mid-nineties, I was discovering and starting to express my ideals. Love, freedom, social progress, tolerance, integrity. The Left gave me a ready language for this, and the Right seemed hell-bent, at least through the media I consumed, on despoiling every ideal I aspired to.
It was pretty tough to discover, post 9/11 (I'm a late developer), that the Left are as capable as the Right of trashing an ideal. Their (our?) response to the Anti-War march in London did it for me.
So now I'm starting to grasp that you don't actually get your ideals, they come and get you. Moreover, they are never trashed: you only ever trash the image you have of them. My ideals are intact: it's just the culture I learnt to express them in that is (for the moment) broken.
I could retreat, bruised. I could try ditching my ideals, for the nastiness in the Nasty Party. But the third option is to make the effort to discover and learn the language by which those ideals are expressed by the Tories.
Short-term pain: accusations of sell-out. Medium-term gain: idealistic bilingualism. Long-term vision: the fulfilment of Labour's vision, by Labour or Tory - I'm really not bothered. But I'd quite like to see the expression in my Tory friends' eyes when they realise the New Jerusalem they've built has Bevan's name on it.
I can remember discussing the merits or otherwise of Maggie Thatcher coming to power in 1979 with my friend, James Goodman, aged eight. And I can remember reading about the Falklands in my parents' paper of choice, the Telegraph, before they switched to the (namby-pamby) Times.
But in the eighties, as a teenager, Channel 4 grabbed me, and Channel 4 was the Tube, and Friday Night Live, and late night movies with a triangle in one corner to guarantee something shocking (sex rather than violence, I hoped). And the role-models Channel 4 revealed to me were arty and left-wing.
While the Tories were dying in the early- to mid-nineties, I was discovering and starting to express my ideals. Love, freedom, social progress, tolerance, integrity. The Left gave me a ready language for this, and the Right seemed hell-bent, at least through the media I consumed, on despoiling every ideal I aspired to.
It was pretty tough to discover, post 9/11 (I'm a late developer), that the Left are as capable as the Right of trashing an ideal. Their (our?) response to the Anti-War march in London did it for me.
So now I'm starting to grasp that you don't actually get your ideals, they come and get you. Moreover, they are never trashed: you only ever trash the image you have of them. My ideals are intact: it's just the culture I learnt to express them in that is (for the moment) broken.
I could retreat, bruised. I could try ditching my ideals, for the nastiness in the Nasty Party. But the third option is to make the effort to discover and learn the language by which those ideals are expressed by the Tories.
Short-term pain: accusations of sell-out. Medium-term gain: idealistic bilingualism. Long-term vision: the fulfilment of Labour's vision, by Labour or Tory - I'm really not bothered. But I'd quite like to see the expression in my Tory friends' eyes when they realise the New Jerusalem they've built has Bevan's name on it.
Monday, 9 November 2009
761 - Flowerbed
These pansies are planted on Roxburgh Terrace, alongside another bed rather more abandoned in appearance. How do I feel about them? Tear-tugged by their scrawniness, cheered to a mini-nova by their aspirations.
I guess the Council gardeners could have planted them, but why then only one out of the two flowerbeds? So part of me wants to believe it's one of the shopkeepers.
Last I heard, the gardeners all get the shove the month before Christmas, before being taken back on every February. I understand the Council (Labour at the time) were using short term contracts as recently as two years ago to this effect, which doesn't sound very legal to me. But maybe that situation's changed.
I was a gardener briefly, sixteen years ago. Vested interest maybe. If I had my way the gardening teams would be tripled in size, and the beds they planted up similarly. They'd be full of perennials, edible at that - massive herb gardens. And the brownfield sites lying idle, they could become allotments, or pocket parks, or communal gardens.
Meantime, I salute the pansies, the weeds that grow between them, the shopkeepers, and the North Tyneside council gardeners. Thank you. Thank you.
Friday, 9 October 2009
775 - Not Of General Public Importance
Gary McKinnon's appeal against extradition refused, because it's deemed by the High Court 'not of general public importance'.
So that's okay. Justice, except when it's not important enough.
For the text of the Home Office letter to me, clarifying their position re: the extradition, see here. That they bothered to write such a long letter to Joe Bloggs on the street argues that it is a little more important to them than the High Court seems to think.
So that's okay. Justice, except when it's not important enough.
For the text of the Home Office letter to me, clarifying their position re: the extradition, see here. That they bothered to write such a long letter to Joe Bloggs on the street argues that it is a little more important to them than the High Court seems to think.
Thursday, 1 October 2009
777 - The Brethren of the Free Spirit
I've come across these people before - Wikipedia is good here - but this quote from Black Mass, by John Gray, is pertinent:
...Whether the people they attracted were affected by war, plague or economic hardship, these movements [inspired by millenarian beliefs] thrived among groups who found themselves in a society they could no longer recognize or identify with. The most extraordinary was the Brethren of the Free Spirit, a network of adepts and disciples that extended across large areas of Europe for several centuries. The Free Spirit may not have been only a Christian heresy. The Beghards, or holy beggars, as followers of the Free Spirit were sometimes known, wore robes similar to those of Sufis, who preached similar heterodox beliefs in twelfth-century Spain and elsewhere, and the Free Spirit may also have imbibed inspiration from surviving Gnostic traditions, which were never only Christian. In any event, before they were anything else - Christian or Muslim - the Brethren of the Free Spirit were mystics who believed they had access to a type of experience beyond ordinary understanding. This illumination was not, as the Church believed, a rare episode in the life of the believer granted by God as an act of grace. Those who had known this state became incapable of sin and could no longer be distinguished - in their own eyes - from God. Released from the moral ties that restrain ordinary humanity they could do as they willed. This sense of being divinely privileged was expressed in a condemnation of all established institutions - not only the Chruch but also the family and private property - as fetters on spiritual liberty.
It might be thought that mystical beliefs of this sort could not have much practical impact. In fact, interacting with millenarian beliefs about a coming End-Time, they helped fuel peasant revolts in several parts of late medieval Europe. In the town of Munster in north-west Germany this volatile mix gave birth to an experiment in communism....
(pp. 12-13)
If I'm honest, I feel a lot of affinity with the Brethren, though I'd take issue with any suggestion of exclusivity (as Gray implies) in terms of the experiences that have brought me to this point. Much better in this regard is the approach of Hugh Brody, who has identified a fault line between cultures separating those oriented towards Hunter Gathering and those towards Agriculture - with farming dominant in the 'developed' world, and leading to town and city-dwelling, institutionalism and much of the drive behind politics and technological development. I would therefore situate mysticism not with Hunter Gatherering, but with the realisation that fundamentally different cultural paths are open to anyone, and that therefore, what it means to be human is revealed at a point 'before' such cultural allignments are made.
I reached this realisation after making a six-year adult commitment to Evangelical Christianity, and a subsequent eight-year deconstruction of that commitment. I see no reason why, in the process of growing up, everyone shouldn't pass through some variation of this journey. It need not include passage through an institutional religion. It is probably a natural human process. It might not be tied to a fixed age, though maturity is traditionally recognised as occurring around the thirties - the age at which grandparenting becomes possible, when one becomes less focused on parenting children, and more on parenting the parents they have become; on contributing to village debates; on achieving eldership; on shaping a community's culture, having grown up within it.
What is unusual about periods when groups like the Brethren become visible is that because of culture shifts, different cultural patterns exist in a highly visible way alongside one another. Moreover there may not be an obvious lead towards one pattern above the others. It is not, therefore, surprising to find people stripped of one culture and unalligned to the next. These people may well find themselves nomadic, naked, unaffiliated to institutions and traditional moral formations, and whilst some (but perhaps not all) utopian promises might offer temporary and appealing answers, one can also see that if premature formulations are held out against, maturity might develop, out of which these people can formulate and grow/build wholly new cultures.
We are probably in such a time - the death of old certainties, the reality of environmental degradation, multiculturalism, globalisation, the Nano-technical Information Age. Not surprising then that increasing numbers of us might look and behave like holy beggars, at least until our new cultures grow. I'm guessing this isn't the last we've heard of the Brethren of the Free Spirit.
Oh, and John Gray's from Tyneside.
...Whether the people they attracted were affected by war, plague or economic hardship, these movements [inspired by millenarian beliefs] thrived among groups who found themselves in a society they could no longer recognize or identify with. The most extraordinary was the Brethren of the Free Spirit, a network of adepts and disciples that extended across large areas of Europe for several centuries. The Free Spirit may not have been only a Christian heresy. The Beghards, or holy beggars, as followers of the Free Spirit were sometimes known, wore robes similar to those of Sufis, who preached similar heterodox beliefs in twelfth-century Spain and elsewhere, and the Free Spirit may also have imbibed inspiration from surviving Gnostic traditions, which were never only Christian. In any event, before they were anything else - Christian or Muslim - the Brethren of the Free Spirit were mystics who believed they had access to a type of experience beyond ordinary understanding. This illumination was not, as the Church believed, a rare episode in the life of the believer granted by God as an act of grace. Those who had known this state became incapable of sin and could no longer be distinguished - in their own eyes - from God. Released from the moral ties that restrain ordinary humanity they could do as they willed. This sense of being divinely privileged was expressed in a condemnation of all established institutions - not only the Chruch but also the family and private property - as fetters on spiritual liberty.
It might be thought that mystical beliefs of this sort could not have much practical impact. In fact, interacting with millenarian beliefs about a coming End-Time, they helped fuel peasant revolts in several parts of late medieval Europe. In the town of Munster in north-west Germany this volatile mix gave birth to an experiment in communism....
(pp. 12-13)
If I'm honest, I feel a lot of affinity with the Brethren, though I'd take issue with any suggestion of exclusivity (as Gray implies) in terms of the experiences that have brought me to this point. Much better in this regard is the approach of Hugh Brody, who has identified a fault line between cultures separating those oriented towards Hunter Gathering and those towards Agriculture - with farming dominant in the 'developed' world, and leading to town and city-dwelling, institutionalism and much of the drive behind politics and technological development. I would therefore situate mysticism not with Hunter Gatherering, but with the realisation that fundamentally different cultural paths are open to anyone, and that therefore, what it means to be human is revealed at a point 'before' such cultural allignments are made.
I reached this realisation after making a six-year adult commitment to Evangelical Christianity, and a subsequent eight-year deconstruction of that commitment. I see no reason why, in the process of growing up, everyone shouldn't pass through some variation of this journey. It need not include passage through an institutional religion. It is probably a natural human process. It might not be tied to a fixed age, though maturity is traditionally recognised as occurring around the thirties - the age at which grandparenting becomes possible, when one becomes less focused on parenting children, and more on parenting the parents they have become; on contributing to village debates; on achieving eldership; on shaping a community's culture, having grown up within it.
What is unusual about periods when groups like the Brethren become visible is that because of culture shifts, different cultural patterns exist in a highly visible way alongside one another. Moreover there may not be an obvious lead towards one pattern above the others. It is not, therefore, surprising to find people stripped of one culture and unalligned to the next. These people may well find themselves nomadic, naked, unaffiliated to institutions and traditional moral formations, and whilst some (but perhaps not all) utopian promises might offer temporary and appealing answers, one can also see that if premature formulations are held out against, maturity might develop, out of which these people can formulate and grow/build wholly new cultures.
We are probably in such a time - the death of old certainties, the reality of environmental degradation, multiculturalism, globalisation, the Nano-technical Information Age. Not surprising then that increasing numbers of us might look and behave like holy beggars, at least until our new cultures grow. I'm guessing this isn't the last we've heard of the Brethren of the Free Spirit.
Oh, and John Gray's from Tyneside.
Monday, 28 September 2009
779 - Wasting Space And Childcare
Someone asked me recently how I knew I wasn't being a total waste of space. I think his concern was that I'm not earning currency. If I'm not earning, how can I be contributing, to my marriage, and to the public good?
This seems to be at, or near, the heart of the recent ruling by Ofsted that two police officers, who have entered into an informal arrangement whereby each cares for the other's child when the other is engaged in shift work, are somehow doing something illegal.
The story is well covered by the BBC, and is also to do with registration and child protection, but I want to leave that to one side. About the financial aspects of the case, Ofsted says the following:
"Reward is not just a case of money changing hands. The supply of services or goods and, in some circumstances, reciprocal arrangements can also constitute reward. Generally, mothers who look after each other's children are not providing childminding for which registration is required, as exemptions apply to them, for example because the care is for less than two hours or it takes place on less than 14 days in a year. Where such arrangements are regular and for longer periods, then registration is usually required."
The general consensus by children's charities and government ministers is that this is a failed ruling. Their advice is to continue with childminding arrangements until the mess is sorted out. They are recognising that to a significant extent, the work that keeps Britain going - indeed, that in this instance allows two people to earn money - exists outside our formal economic structures.
In other words, it is an example of wild money.
Britain runs on wild money. Banking and business are formalised, and their money is tame - pegged internationally and bound into institutions. But surrounding the official economy is a much larger unofficial one. Eight hours a day a woman may work for cash, but that leaves sixteen hours in the company of others, many of whom are looking out for her. Some of that care she (or he) may pay for in cash, but much is rewarded in kind. This extends far beyond the immediate family, into friendship networks, village communities, groups with shared interests, nationally and even internationally. When the formal economy crashed last year, what sustained us while the pieces were picked up? The informal economy, in which the formal economy is couched.
It works small as well as large scale. That guy who picked up the scarf you dropped today? You'll never meet him again, much less reciprocate (though the smile was appreciated!). But it did cost him to stoop and pick the garment up. That was work. Also work was the vigilance with which he had been reading the street in advance, which enabled him to spot the dropped item, and link it to a retreating figure, and be prepared to bother to contemplate running after you with it.
More sustained (of course), more nearly formalised, is the childminding entered into by the police officers, the charitable work, the concerted engagement with a local community.
I am hearted by the response of the Government minister, who has asked for Ofsted's ruling to be reviewed. Though there is one niggle.
That's that the mistake was made in the first place. It suggests, like the question of my friend, that many people are getting muddled about what the worth of our official currency actually is. I don't mean worth in pounds and pence, I mean, what it is actually for.
Several movements are gaining huge ground in the UK which rely on money being wild. The Transition Towns project, for example, is reliant on local goodwill and the unpaid graft of, let's be honest, the kind of people (like me) who are not that concerned with shareholders or the bottom line. If Transition Towns create for the UK the kind of resilience which enables the country to withstand the vagaries of resource depletion, even without climate change on top, would it not be foolish to undervalue what they have achieved? Conversely, if legislation and institutional expectation limit such movements before they get the chance to achieve anything, would it not be foolish to describe such limitations as anything but valueless and destructive?
If we've learnt anything from the past two years, surely it is that it is time to set our monetary systems free?
This seems to be at, or near, the heart of the recent ruling by Ofsted that two police officers, who have entered into an informal arrangement whereby each cares for the other's child when the other is engaged in shift work, are somehow doing something illegal.
The story is well covered by the BBC, and is also to do with registration and child protection, but I want to leave that to one side. About the financial aspects of the case, Ofsted says the following:
"Reward is not just a case of money changing hands. The supply of services or goods and, in some circumstances, reciprocal arrangements can also constitute reward. Generally, mothers who look after each other's children are not providing childminding for which registration is required, as exemptions apply to them, for example because the care is for less than two hours or it takes place on less than 14 days in a year. Where such arrangements are regular and for longer periods, then registration is usually required."
The general consensus by children's charities and government ministers is that this is a failed ruling. Their advice is to continue with childminding arrangements until the mess is sorted out. They are recognising that to a significant extent, the work that keeps Britain going - indeed, that in this instance allows two people to earn money - exists outside our formal economic structures.
In other words, it is an example of wild money.
Britain runs on wild money. Banking and business are formalised, and their money is tame - pegged internationally and bound into institutions. But surrounding the official economy is a much larger unofficial one. Eight hours a day a woman may work for cash, but that leaves sixteen hours in the company of others, many of whom are looking out for her. Some of that care she (or he) may pay for in cash, but much is rewarded in kind. This extends far beyond the immediate family, into friendship networks, village communities, groups with shared interests, nationally and even internationally. When the formal economy crashed last year, what sustained us while the pieces were picked up? The informal economy, in which the formal economy is couched.
It works small as well as large scale. That guy who picked up the scarf you dropped today? You'll never meet him again, much less reciprocate (though the smile was appreciated!). But it did cost him to stoop and pick the garment up. That was work. Also work was the vigilance with which he had been reading the street in advance, which enabled him to spot the dropped item, and link it to a retreating figure, and be prepared to bother to contemplate running after you with it.
More sustained (of course), more nearly formalised, is the childminding entered into by the police officers, the charitable work, the concerted engagement with a local community.
I am hearted by the response of the Government minister, who has asked for Ofsted's ruling to be reviewed. Though there is one niggle.
That's that the mistake was made in the first place. It suggests, like the question of my friend, that many people are getting muddled about what the worth of our official currency actually is. I don't mean worth in pounds and pence, I mean, what it is actually for.
Several movements are gaining huge ground in the UK which rely on money being wild. The Transition Towns project, for example, is reliant on local goodwill and the unpaid graft of, let's be honest, the kind of people (like me) who are not that concerned with shareholders or the bottom line. If Transition Towns create for the UK the kind of resilience which enables the country to withstand the vagaries of resource depletion, even without climate change on top, would it not be foolish to undervalue what they have achieved? Conversely, if legislation and institutional expectation limit such movements before they get the chance to achieve anything, would it not be foolish to describe such limitations as anything but valueless and destructive?
If we've learnt anything from the past two years, surely it is that it is time to set our monetary systems free?
Thursday, 10 September 2009
786 - Derren Brown Quote
I missed the show last night, where he correctly predicted the lottery numbers, and will miss tomorrow's, where he explains how he achieved his act. But I've been reading Derren Brown's 2006 book, Tricks of the Mind, where he makes clear his theory that the magic in a performance occurs after the performance itself, in our increasingly contorted attempts to reconstruct just exactly what happened.
So for my money, the performance is still continuing, and whatever explanation is given on Friday will, at least in part, take into account whatever everyone is saying about Wednesday's show here and now. Perhaps he has several explanations up his sleeve, and will choose to reveal the one, or ones, that have maximum impact on the day....
As he, like me, was a naive Christian at university, and as he, like me, still appreciates the 'still small voice of loveliness' (Tricks of the Mind, p. 8) at the heart of humanity, but is, like me, prepared to ditch absolutely everything that religion has to offer, I've got an awful lot of time for him. He'd probably agree that the way he has structured his performance this week bears more than passing resemblance to the Christian story, which has its people in a 'not yet' phase of believing, after the Christ event and before Judgement Day - in other words, at a point in time where the magic is still being elaborated in the mind of the witnessing community.
But I didn't come online in order to write that, just to record a quote from his book that I particularly like and will want to return to. It's this (pp. 116-7):
It is a shame that mnemonics are not taught in schools. The Renaissance replaced the love of the imaginary with a love of reason, and the art of memory, which had become associated too often with magic, began to die out. Later, during the Victorian period, science and information become paramount, and education became about rote learning and unimaginative repetition. As important as these shifts were towards embracing reason over superstition, they have meant we now have to rediscover memory techniques for ourselves. There is also a notion held by many teachers that education should be about understanding and reasoning rather than memorization, and that the latter is a poor substitute for the former. While that may be true when viewed from some angles, it does not take into account the fact that for a student the ability to memorize information is of essential importance, and the majority of students seem to value it at least as importantly as what might be seen as the 'higher' faculties. Especially in the case of younger children, learning such systems can clearly be an enormous confidence-booster and can make preparation for tests much more enjoyable.
I think this insight applies to storying as much as to memory skills. It's about the role of the imagination at the heart of what makes us tick, to which our current society plays lip-service, but not much more...
Hence the rarity of events like last night's on the telly. But maybe things are changing?
So for my money, the performance is still continuing, and whatever explanation is given on Friday will, at least in part, take into account whatever everyone is saying about Wednesday's show here and now. Perhaps he has several explanations up his sleeve, and will choose to reveal the one, or ones, that have maximum impact on the day....
As he, like me, was a naive Christian at university, and as he, like me, still appreciates the 'still small voice of loveliness' (Tricks of the Mind, p. 8) at the heart of humanity, but is, like me, prepared to ditch absolutely everything that religion has to offer, I've got an awful lot of time for him. He'd probably agree that the way he has structured his performance this week bears more than passing resemblance to the Christian story, which has its people in a 'not yet' phase of believing, after the Christ event and before Judgement Day - in other words, at a point in time where the magic is still being elaborated in the mind of the witnessing community.
But I didn't come online in order to write that, just to record a quote from his book that I particularly like and will want to return to. It's this (pp. 116-7):
It is a shame that mnemonics are not taught in schools. The Renaissance replaced the love of the imaginary with a love of reason, and the art of memory, which had become associated too often with magic, began to die out. Later, during the Victorian period, science and information become paramount, and education became about rote learning and unimaginative repetition. As important as these shifts were towards embracing reason over superstition, they have meant we now have to rediscover memory techniques for ourselves. There is also a notion held by many teachers that education should be about understanding and reasoning rather than memorization, and that the latter is a poor substitute for the former. While that may be true when viewed from some angles, it does not take into account the fact that for a student the ability to memorize information is of essential importance, and the majority of students seem to value it at least as importantly as what might be seen as the 'higher' faculties. Especially in the case of younger children, learning such systems can clearly be an enormous confidence-booster and can make preparation for tests much more enjoyable.
I think this insight applies to storying as much as to memory skills. It's about the role of the imagination at the heart of what makes us tick, to which our current society plays lip-service, but not much more...
Hence the rarity of events like last night's on the telly. But maybe things are changing?
Friday, 4 September 2009
788 - Gary McKinnon - Home Office Reply
I posted about Gary Mckinnon late in July. I also contacted the Home Office, and earlier this month received a very long and considered reply to my email. See what you make of it (I need to reflect on it before I comment):
Mr Steve Lancaster
Reference: T14011/9
27 August 2009
Dear Mr Lancaster,
Thank you for your e-mail of 31 July about a request from the USA for the extradition of Gary McKinnon.
It may be worth setting out first a brief summary of Mr McKinnon’s alleged offences. He stands accused in the United States of computer offences allegedly committed between February 2001 and March 2002. These involve the unauthorised access from his home computer in London - or “hacking” into some 97 US Army, Navy and NASA computers concerned with national defence, security and naval munitions supplies. Mr McKinnon is alleged to have deleted data, including vital operating system files – causing, amongst other things, the shutting down of the US Military District of Washington’s entire network of over 2000 computers and the rendering inoperable of certain computer systems at a critical period following 11 September 2001. The USA alleges that the conduct was both calculated and intentional; and it states the cost of necessary systems repairs as being $700,000. During interviews under caution, Mr McKinnon admitted responsibility for certain of his alleged actions (although not that he had actually caused damage). He stated that his targets were high level US Army, Navy and Air Force computers and that his ultimate goal was to gain access to the US military classified information network. He also admitted leaving a note on one army computer reading:
“US foreign policy is akin to government-sponsored terrorism these days . . . It was not a mistake that there was a huge security stand down on September 11 last year . . . I am SOLO. I will continue to disrupt at the highest levels . . .”
The case has been, of course, the subject of much Parliamentary, press and public interest. Many have formed a sincerely held view that Mr McKinnon should not be extradited. We take careful heed, of course, of all the points which have been urged on his behalf. But it is also necessary to make a number of other points both about the case and more generally. First, that in the scheme of the 2003 Extradition Act, the Home Secretary has an important but limited decision-making role. Indeed, the ‘Act’ provides – and the courts have affirmed - that he must order extradition unless one of four conditions is met. (None of those conditions, I should say, arose when we first considered Mr McKinnon’s case in July 2006). Second, that the United Kingdom has important international obligations towards its many extradition partners. It takes those obligations seriously and, within what the law permits, regards it as its duty to render maximum assistance. We expect no less in return from the UK’s extradition partners. It is a very rare event for a UK request to the USA to be turned down and never at all in over five years. Third, that the US request for Mr McKinnon’s extradition had already been the subject of very rigorous judicial scrutiny before, last August, there was a supervening diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome – a matter currently before the courts.
Judicial scrutiny of the case to date can be summarised as follows. Mr McKinnon was arrested here for extradition purposes in June 2005. There followed a hearing at City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court where, in an attempt to defeat the US request for his extradition, Mr McKinnon and those acting for him sought to raise certain statutory barriers to surrender. (Those are all set out in the Extradition Act 2003). In May 2006, however, the District Judge concluded that none of those safeguards applied and, in the ordinary way, he accordingly sent the case to us for a decision as to surrender.
At that stage, Mr McKinnon had an opportunity to make representations to Ministers directly against his surrender – but, as above, only on certain limited grounds set out in the ‘Act’. And where, as in this case, such representations are found not to be applicable or not to be made out, the law requires the Home Secretary to order surrender. That decision was reached in Mr McKinnon’s case in July 2006.
As was his right, Mr McKinnon then appealed to the High Court, both against the Judge’s decision of May 2006 and that of the Home Secretary in July 2006. The High Court dismissed those appeals in April 2007. Mr McKinnon then took his case to the House of Lords which, in July 2008, also dismissed his appeal. Mr McKinnon then made an application to the European Court of Human Rights which in August 2008 rejected the application.
In this way, you will see that the case had withstood the closest possible judicial scrutiny before a supervening diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome was brought to our attention. Notwithstanding the Home Secretary’s limited role in the process and the late stage in the case at which Asperger’s Syndrome was diagnosed, you will understand that extradition may not take place if to extradite would be incompatible with a person’s rights under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). In these exceptional circumstances, it was therefore agreed to consider fresh representations, including on grounds of Mr McKinnon’s diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome, as to whether the order for Mr McKinnon’s surrender to the USA should be upheld. Notwithstanding what has been reported in some quarters, that is not to say that we were able to approach the case with a broad, residual or general discretion: the correct legal consideration was whether to proceed with extradition was compatible with Mr McKinnon’s human rights. If extradition is not compatible with Mr McKinnon’s human rights extradition would have to be halted, but if extradition is compatible with the ECHR there is a legal duty to extradite and to act in any other way would be unlawful. The decision as to the effect extradition would have on Mr McKinnon’s human rights was not a decision to be taken lightly; but, after examining all of the material and evidence relied upon, we concluded in October 2008 that the material and evidence relied upon against Mr McKinnon’s extradition to the USA did not engage his rights under the ECHR. Accordingly, there was an obligation under the Extradition Act 2003 to give effect to the order for extradition.
As was their entitlement, however, those acting for Mr McKinnon then sought and obtained the permission of the High Court for a judicial review of that further decision.
During May, Mr McKinnon also lodged a further application for judicial review, this time against a CPS decision in February 2009 not to bring a prosecution against him in the UK.
Following hearings of both matters (which included a careful weighing of all the evidence as to Mr McKinnon’s Asperger’s Syndrome), the High Court delivered its judgment on 31 July. They found that extradition would not contravene his human rights and that accordingly there was a statutory duty to proceed with extradition. Contrary to misleading reporting in some quarters of the press, the High Court specifically rejected the suggestion that there was any discretion which could be exercised to halt extradition. In view of the High Court’s conclusions it would (subject of course to any successful challenge to their decision) be unlawful to seek to halt extradition.
In the other matter, the High Court refused Mr McKinnon permission to mount a judicial review challenge to the decision not to institute criminal proceedings in this country. The High Court considered that the US was the better place for prosecution. The Court also considered that the challenge to the decision of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) not to institute proceedings in the UK was ‘unarguable’. They also expressed the view that the challenge to the DPP’s decision was really a collateral challenge to the extradition process and that this was a ‘wholly unacceptable state of affairs’.
Mr McKinnon’s lawyers have given notice of their intention to seek leave to appeal to the Supreme Court (as the House of Lords is soon to become). I do not therefore propose to say more at this stage about the facts of the particular case – other than to hope that this background may be of some assistance not only in clarifying the Home Secretary’s role in the extradition process but also in demonstrating that those acting for Mr McKinnon continue to avail themselves before the courts of every opportunity to contest extradition. In this way, it may clearly be seen that the final outcome of the case and the UK’s treaty obligations are being subjected to the closest attention and to the greatest possible procedural fairness.
If Mr McKinnon is extradited and is subsequently found guilty and receives a prison sentence in the United States, it would be open to him to apply to serve that sentence in the United Kingdom. The application would require the consent of both the American and British Governments. The British Consulate in the United States would explain to Mr McKinnon, at his request, how to apply for the transfer.
Yours sincerely,
Miss C Johnson
Mr Steve Lancaster
Reference: T14011/9
27 August 2009
Dear Mr Lancaster,
Thank you for your e-mail of 31 July about a request from the USA for the extradition of Gary McKinnon.
It may be worth setting out first a brief summary of Mr McKinnon’s alleged offences. He stands accused in the United States of computer offences allegedly committed between February 2001 and March 2002. These involve the unauthorised access from his home computer in London - or “hacking” into some 97 US Army, Navy and NASA computers concerned with national defence, security and naval munitions supplies. Mr McKinnon is alleged to have deleted data, including vital operating system files – causing, amongst other things, the shutting down of the US Military District of Washington’s entire network of over 2000 computers and the rendering inoperable of certain computer systems at a critical period following 11 September 2001. The USA alleges that the conduct was both calculated and intentional; and it states the cost of necessary systems repairs as being $700,000. During interviews under caution, Mr McKinnon admitted responsibility for certain of his alleged actions (although not that he had actually caused damage). He stated that his targets were high level US Army, Navy and Air Force computers and that his ultimate goal was to gain access to the US military classified information network. He also admitted leaving a note on one army computer reading:
“US foreign policy is akin to government-sponsored terrorism these days . . . It was not a mistake that there was a huge security stand down on September 11 last year . . . I am SOLO. I will continue to disrupt at the highest levels . . .”
The case has been, of course, the subject of much Parliamentary, press and public interest. Many have formed a sincerely held view that Mr McKinnon should not be extradited. We take careful heed, of course, of all the points which have been urged on his behalf. But it is also necessary to make a number of other points both about the case and more generally. First, that in the scheme of the 2003 Extradition Act, the Home Secretary has an important but limited decision-making role. Indeed, the ‘Act’ provides – and the courts have affirmed - that he must order extradition unless one of four conditions is met. (None of those conditions, I should say, arose when we first considered Mr McKinnon’s case in July 2006). Second, that the United Kingdom has important international obligations towards its many extradition partners. It takes those obligations seriously and, within what the law permits, regards it as its duty to render maximum assistance. We expect no less in return from the UK’s extradition partners. It is a very rare event for a UK request to the USA to be turned down and never at all in over five years. Third, that the US request for Mr McKinnon’s extradition had already been the subject of very rigorous judicial scrutiny before, last August, there was a supervening diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome – a matter currently before the courts.
Judicial scrutiny of the case to date can be summarised as follows. Mr McKinnon was arrested here for extradition purposes in June 2005. There followed a hearing at City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court where, in an attempt to defeat the US request for his extradition, Mr McKinnon and those acting for him sought to raise certain statutory barriers to surrender. (Those are all set out in the Extradition Act 2003). In May 2006, however, the District Judge concluded that none of those safeguards applied and, in the ordinary way, he accordingly sent the case to us for a decision as to surrender.
At that stage, Mr McKinnon had an opportunity to make representations to Ministers directly against his surrender – but, as above, only on certain limited grounds set out in the ‘Act’. And where, as in this case, such representations are found not to be applicable or not to be made out, the law requires the Home Secretary to order surrender. That decision was reached in Mr McKinnon’s case in July 2006.
As was his right, Mr McKinnon then appealed to the High Court, both against the Judge’s decision of May 2006 and that of the Home Secretary in July 2006. The High Court dismissed those appeals in April 2007. Mr McKinnon then took his case to the House of Lords which, in July 2008, also dismissed his appeal. Mr McKinnon then made an application to the European Court of Human Rights which in August 2008 rejected the application.
In this way, you will see that the case had withstood the closest possible judicial scrutiny before a supervening diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome was brought to our attention. Notwithstanding the Home Secretary’s limited role in the process and the late stage in the case at which Asperger’s Syndrome was diagnosed, you will understand that extradition may not take place if to extradite would be incompatible with a person’s rights under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). In these exceptional circumstances, it was therefore agreed to consider fresh representations, including on grounds of Mr McKinnon’s diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome, as to whether the order for Mr McKinnon’s surrender to the USA should be upheld. Notwithstanding what has been reported in some quarters, that is not to say that we were able to approach the case with a broad, residual or general discretion: the correct legal consideration was whether to proceed with extradition was compatible with Mr McKinnon’s human rights. If extradition is not compatible with Mr McKinnon’s human rights extradition would have to be halted, but if extradition is compatible with the ECHR there is a legal duty to extradite and to act in any other way would be unlawful. The decision as to the effect extradition would have on Mr McKinnon’s human rights was not a decision to be taken lightly; but, after examining all of the material and evidence relied upon, we concluded in October 2008 that the material and evidence relied upon against Mr McKinnon’s extradition to the USA did not engage his rights under the ECHR. Accordingly, there was an obligation under the Extradition Act 2003 to give effect to the order for extradition.
As was their entitlement, however, those acting for Mr McKinnon then sought and obtained the permission of the High Court for a judicial review of that further decision.
During May, Mr McKinnon also lodged a further application for judicial review, this time against a CPS decision in February 2009 not to bring a prosecution against him in the UK.
Following hearings of both matters (which included a careful weighing of all the evidence as to Mr McKinnon’s Asperger’s Syndrome), the High Court delivered its judgment on 31 July. They found that extradition would not contravene his human rights and that accordingly there was a statutory duty to proceed with extradition. Contrary to misleading reporting in some quarters of the press, the High Court specifically rejected the suggestion that there was any discretion which could be exercised to halt extradition. In view of the High Court’s conclusions it would (subject of course to any successful challenge to their decision) be unlawful to seek to halt extradition.
In the other matter, the High Court refused Mr McKinnon permission to mount a judicial review challenge to the decision not to institute criminal proceedings in this country. The High Court considered that the US was the better place for prosecution. The Court also considered that the challenge to the decision of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) not to institute proceedings in the UK was ‘unarguable’. They also expressed the view that the challenge to the DPP’s decision was really a collateral challenge to the extradition process and that this was a ‘wholly unacceptable state of affairs’.
Mr McKinnon’s lawyers have given notice of their intention to seek leave to appeal to the Supreme Court (as the House of Lords is soon to become). I do not therefore propose to say more at this stage about the facts of the particular case – other than to hope that this background may be of some assistance not only in clarifying the Home Secretary’s role in the extradition process but also in demonstrating that those acting for Mr McKinnon continue to avail themselves before the courts of every opportunity to contest extradition. In this way, it may clearly be seen that the final outcome of the case and the UK’s treaty obligations are being subjected to the closest attention and to the greatest possible procedural fairness.
If Mr McKinnon is extradited and is subsequently found guilty and receives a prison sentence in the United States, it would be open to him to apply to serve that sentence in the United Kingdom. The application would require the consent of both the American and British Governments. The British Consulate in the United States would explain to Mr McKinnon, at his request, how to apply for the transfer.
Yours sincerely,
Miss C Johnson
Friday, 31 July 2009
796 - Gary McKinnon
Because we live in a country where a man with Asperger's Syndrome chasing alien conspiracies can be extradited to the USA without any evidence being produced, please stop believing all the big causes have been fought for and won.
At the very least our government has shown cowardice by not stepping in to press for his trial to be held in the UK. At worst it is cruel and dismissive of its citizens. It has got this badly wrong.
I believe in love, in people, in non-violence. But if my government no longer believes in the nation state, I don't see why I should.
Please persuade me otherwise.
At the very least our government has shown cowardice by not stepping in to press for his trial to be held in the UK. At worst it is cruel and dismissive of its citizens. It has got this badly wrong.
I believe in love, in people, in non-violence. But if my government no longer believes in the nation state, I don't see why I should.
Please persuade me otherwise.
Wednesday, 3 June 2009
823 - Monkey High Soft Play Area
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Did you guess right?
Monkseaton High School is sponsored by, among others, Microsoft. I use Microsoft. As it has a de facto monopoly on workplace and home software, I don't have a choice. It's okay, usually, but it's not brilliant.
So to see its branding scattered over the top of a school, where the bright colours and excess make it look like a fairy-cake decorated by a hyperactive five-year-old, packs a visceral punch. Unless it is toned down, this architectural statement says to me: you've got no choice in the brave new world we're building. Get used to it. You're globalised brand-fodder.
I guess it's not realistic, if Microsoft have put such money into the project, for no acknowledgement of their generosity to be made. I'd hate for local councillors to have to exercise their courage and actually stand up to the business. Who stands for genuinely unbiased education nowadays anyway?
But think of the scale of the branding. Not just how out of place it looks on top of a genuinely impressive new building, but how it lies across our field of vision, seventy or so feet up, as we look across green fields towards the coast, or out of our beds as we recuperate at North Tyneside NHS Hospital, or from miles around as we travel on the Metro to and from Newcastle. The only scale on which such an outsize logo could possibly seem appropriate is the one offered by the Google Earth Satellite. Oh. Maybe I see.
But look, Microsoft UK. You're shooting yourself in the foot. Do you really want to present yourself as perpetrators of an exercise in local disempowerment? Particularly when it's a school, with kids, for heavens's sake? Take a screen-grab from your own software. I'm looking at the Windows logo at the foot of my screen. It's tiny. It's plenty big enough to remind me whose software I'm using. But any bigger and it would get in the way.
Therefore, by all means leave four coloured blocks on top of Monkseaton High School to remind us of your investment - one red, one green, one yellow, one blue. But paint the other twenty or so grey, in keeping with the rest of the school. For enlightened self-interest, if nothing else.
Saturday, 23 May 2009
831 - Games
On Wednesday I joined E and half a dozen others at the Culture Quarter offices opposite the Playhouse for an evening of Mind Games.
We played Bananagrams (a kind of speed-Scrabble, with a heavy banana motif), Othello, and a complicated game based on the German postal service, with tiny wooden houses, a map of Central Europe, and several decks of cards.
In addition, this game contained a written endorsement by the heiress of the family who rolled the postal service into being, portraits of whose patriarchs graced the board, intimidating modern players from a century and a half beyond the grave. This was a little disturbing, and you were left half expecting to get an invitation to join the Bilderberg Group if you scored high enough.
Whatever conspiracy of events led to Whitley Bay becoming the first North East team to play at the new Wembley, play and win, whilst three of the four teams wrestling it out to avoid relegation from the Premier Division tomorrow are the big hitters from the North East, I don't know.
Similarly I struggle to fathom the depths of local politics, and doubt there are any big conspiracies behind the power-play talk of regenerating Whitley Bay, despite the games asserting the opposite regularly played on the letter pages of the News Guardian.
I feel strangely comforted by my ignorance. Bilderberg can wait.
We played Bananagrams (a kind of speed-Scrabble, with a heavy banana motif), Othello, and a complicated game based on the German postal service, with tiny wooden houses, a map of Central Europe, and several decks of cards.
In addition, this game contained a written endorsement by the heiress of the family who rolled the postal service into being, portraits of whose patriarchs graced the board, intimidating modern players from a century and a half beyond the grave. This was a little disturbing, and you were left half expecting to get an invitation to join the Bilderberg Group if you scored high enough.
Whatever conspiracy of events led to Whitley Bay becoming the first North East team to play at the new Wembley, play and win, whilst three of the four teams wrestling it out to avoid relegation from the Premier Division tomorrow are the big hitters from the North East, I don't know.
Similarly I struggle to fathom the depths of local politics, and doubt there are any big conspiracies behind the power-play talk of regenerating Whitley Bay, despite the games asserting the opposite regularly played on the letter pages of the News Guardian.
I feel strangely comforted by my ignorance. Bilderberg can wait.
Wednesday, 1 April 2009
861 - Flob Mash
Here's the text of the email I sent to Keith Barrett last night, stepping back from my undertaking to organise a flash mob for the pre-World Ocean Day weekend celebrations in Whitley Bay. It's meant in the spirit of 'I'm not sure if I'm right or wrong about this one, but if I step back, then at least we know where we stand'. On reflection, I sound a bit full of myself at times, don't I? Sorry.
Dear Keith,
Thank you for a really good meeting last night.
First of all I want to apologise for the lateness of the hour at which I'm writing. Do please feel free to challenge me about this email come daylight! - though I often get my clearest thinking at this time, which is why I'm writing as I do. And second, to clarify a little, I ought to say that though I often come across as an enthusiastic naif, I'm actually pretty canny - my forays into art, as into the rest of my career, come second to a deeper commitment to people: I self-define as a post-establishment, post-religious vicar (which is, admittedly, a lot of 'posts').
I've been giving some thought to the 'flash mob' idea, and more particularly the commitment I made to you and the others to lead in its organisation. The truth is, on reflection I don't think I am able to, reasons to follow.
Most importantly, I am not able to square the 'bottom-up' - or better, non-hierarchical - nature of a flash mob, with the need to fit it under a North Tyneside umbrella. When the council arts officer - as was entirely proper, I know, given her role - spoke about the need to pass plans before the council for a health and safety assessment, I cringed. You were quite right to point out that what we would be talking about wouldn't exactly be a flash mob. And I think this gives rise to two issues.
First, it's important for me, personally, to maintain objectivity in the distinction between top-down and bottom-up activities, otherwise I cannot support people in both camps as I would like. To be calling something a flash mob when it isn't wouldn't be helpful, either to the council, who would be open to the accusation of bandwagon jumping (as T-Mobile, because of their ad, is), or to genuine flash mobbers, who would find the prophetic edge of their action blunted. I'm pretty sure, one day soon, that that won't be a problem, but I do think at the moment it is.
Second, more pragmatically, if North Tyneside does pass some kind of mass improvisational activity, it's worth asking whether, if the 'flash mob' title were adopted, people who used the name in its pure sense might not organise their own action and overshadow the official version. Better, I think, for the organisers to be up-front from the start, and call the activity 'Improv Street Performance' or something. In that case, I have to be honest, I would not be the best person to organise it: someone schooled in drama, professionally or ad hoc, would.
So on two counts I've ruled myself out. Clay Shirky, in 'Here Comes Everybody', is good on the nature of flash mobs, and I'm also going by the reading I've done around wild and (non-violent) anarchist philosophy - by people like Hugh Brody and Jay Griffiths. Ultimately, because these form the political principals I wish to be defined by, and as I believe they underpin current political structures, but that these structures need periodically to be deconstructed, and now is probably such a time, I wish to continue to work outside the box, meaning that I forego some great opportunities, like the current one.Therefore, once again, my apologies. I'm sorry to have made my commitment before I backed out of it, but hope that by being clear, as early as possible in the day thereafter, I've not caused you too much trouble, and that if you do see a way to proceed with the flash mob idea, it is carried off with great success.
(I also think there's mileage, one year, if not this one, in the 'Free Seas Freeze' idea.)
I look forward to meeting you again soon,
With all good wishes,
Steve
Wednesday, 18 March 2009
879 - Two Quotes on Identity and Civil Rights
The first from Susan Greenfield:
The second from David Lewis-Williams, and anthropologist writing about Upper Paleolithic cave painting
The two authors are writing about the same subject, creativity interacting with community, but Greenfield writes about the 21st century, Lewis-Williams about the 120th century BC. Both recognise the potential for social discrimination in the way creativity is handled.
Three things chill me about Greenfield's analysis.
The first is that, although she herself does not advocate the suppression of creativity (explicitly, she chooses 'a different tack', though not before sketching the social engineering that would be necessary in order to limit the number of creative people to a minority), other policy makers, more pragmatic and less ethically motivated, might.
The second is that I strongly suspect that her partition of life into four equal mindsets - creative, individualist, community-minded and full of wild abandon - is simply wrong. Rather, it seems to me, creativity expresses itself through the other mindsets, allowing us to transcend them. Categorising creativity on a par with the others implies that there are times when creativity is not appropriate, but, say, drudgery for the common good is. But doesn't this remove the imagination that could transform the drudgery, through hope of better times, subversive humour, and inventiveness? Leading rapidly to a situation where those that are privileged are able to remove themselves from the need to slog, at the expense, by default, of those - the identity-poor? - whom they legislate to stay in place, keeping an unequal society ticking over.
The third is that Greenfield assumes that only thanks to technology do we have the ability to shape a fully integrated human life. This theory hobbles us, tying us to tools that only the rich, individually and as nations, can afford. It belies the evidence of evolution and extant hunter-gatherer communities, as Lewis-Williams' quote implies, as well as those creatives who we let ourselves celebrate, but maintain are dysfunctional, forgetting that their dysfunctionality is as likely to be a product of the suppression of creativity elsewhere in post-agricultural society as it is a personal disability. If only technology can fix it, we have a license for physical intervention and legislation. But if it is part of our humanity to be creative, such restriction can at best challenge us, at worst harm us.
What would it actually be like to have a community where everyone was fired up, excited by the act of revelation and discovery, with such a strong and robust sense of self that each was impervious to the needs or reactions of others?...
One answer might be to limit the number of those in society who were creative...
[Or] lets take a different tack. Perhaps the answer might lie, not in contriving different stereotypes, but in drawing on the advantage that each offers to society.... All four scenarios - Someone, Nobody, Anyone and Eureka - have their place in the narrative of a human life story, as well as in enabling a fully functional and successful society. The problem until now has been that the balance hasn't been right - neither for the individual nor for the particualar society in which they live. But now, for the first time in human history, the technology is there to enable us to have not just the technological toolkit but also the time and space to shape a world that creates an environment where all four personas can be developed into an integrated portfolio....
(Greenfield, i.d., pp. 290-1)
The second from David Lewis-Williams, and anthropologist writing about Upper Paleolithic cave painting
Here I examine interaction of mental activity and social context: how, I ask, do notions about human experience that are shared by a community impinge on the mental activity of individuals and how does socially controlled access to certain mental states become a foundation for social discrimination?
(Lewis-Williams, The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art, Thames & Hudson, 2002, pp. 9-10)
The two authors are writing about the same subject, creativity interacting with community, but Greenfield writes about the 21st century, Lewis-Williams about the 120th century BC. Both recognise the potential for social discrimination in the way creativity is handled.
Three things chill me about Greenfield's analysis.
The first is that, although she herself does not advocate the suppression of creativity (explicitly, she chooses 'a different tack', though not before sketching the social engineering that would be necessary in order to limit the number of creative people to a minority), other policy makers, more pragmatic and less ethically motivated, might.
The second is that I strongly suspect that her partition of life into four equal mindsets - creative, individualist, community-minded and full of wild abandon - is simply wrong. Rather, it seems to me, creativity expresses itself through the other mindsets, allowing us to transcend them. Categorising creativity on a par with the others implies that there are times when creativity is not appropriate, but, say, drudgery for the common good is. But doesn't this remove the imagination that could transform the drudgery, through hope of better times, subversive humour, and inventiveness? Leading rapidly to a situation where those that are privileged are able to remove themselves from the need to slog, at the expense, by default, of those - the identity-poor? - whom they legislate to stay in place, keeping an unequal society ticking over.
The third is that Greenfield assumes that only thanks to technology do we have the ability to shape a fully integrated human life. This theory hobbles us, tying us to tools that only the rich, individually and as nations, can afford. It belies the evidence of evolution and extant hunter-gatherer communities, as Lewis-Williams' quote implies, as well as those creatives who we let ourselves celebrate, but maintain are dysfunctional, forgetting that their dysfunctionality is as likely to be a product of the suppression of creativity elsewhere in post-agricultural society as it is a personal disability. If only technology can fix it, we have a license for physical intervention and legislation. But if it is part of our humanity to be creative, such restriction can at best challenge us, at worst harm us.
Sunday, 1 March 2009
892 - This Is Not A Political Blog...
...but what the heck does Harriet Harman mean by this quote about Sir Fred Goodwin and his overwheeningly fat pension?
"And it might be enforceable in a court of law, this contract, but it is not enforceable in the court of public opinion and that is where the government steps in."
Does the government really govern by rating public opinion over the rule of law? Did it step in over Iraq? Does it over the death penalty? No (I hope) and no and no.
So there is no consistency to this argument at all, and unless it is argued out properly, through parliament and the courts, acting on it could be perceived as an abuse of power.
Not a political blog, but I lean leftwards, just so that you know where I'm coming from.
"And it might be enforceable in a court of law, this contract, but it is not enforceable in the court of public opinion and that is where the government steps in."
Does the government really govern by rating public opinion over the rule of law? Did it step in over Iraq? Does it over the death penalty? No (I hope) and no and no.
So there is no consistency to this argument at all, and unless it is argued out properly, through parliament and the courts, acting on it could be perceived as an abuse of power.
Not a political blog, but I lean leftwards, just so that you know where I'm coming from.
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