Liberals Narrow the Gap

Canadians have offered up the most interesting three-way I’ve seen this year. It’s election season (note the ‘l’), after all.

As the polls seem to show a straight shoot-out between the incumbent Tories, the rising New Democrats, and the resurgent Liberals, Canadian voters are making up their minds not only on a fair judgement of policy and plausibility. Voting-booth decisions are bound up with perceptions of the character, charisma and credibility of each of the party leaders. People want a Prime Minister they can trust. This boils down to the conviction with which leaders speak, and through things less tangible than words.

No Stephen, it's bigger than that

It’s no different when you set out to buy a car. Honest John only has a few minutes to persuade you that the lemon you’re about to buy has had only one careful owner, aged over 60, and the milometer reading really is genuine. In these circumstances, no consumer likes a cheap suit. Nothing screams ‘run away’ so loudly as a polyester two-piece. Luckily for us, car dealers seem not to know this.

Alarming, isn't it Tom?

It’s no different with politicians. As you can see in the montages of the three party leaders I’ve presented here, neither the current Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, nor his most likely replacement, Thomas Mulcair, has any clue that the gap between shirt collar and suit jacket is classically symbolic of a man who doesn’t fit. When the finger goes down the back of a suit collar, the finger goes up to the Suit’s candidacy.

In this respect at least, the Liberal leader, Justin Trudeau, seems to have narrowed the gap. He looks tailor made for the part.

Of course, politicians are cynics. Some might tell you that Harper and Mulcair’s loose looks are deliberate ploys to make them appear men of the people. Maybe so. But what would that say of their view of ‘the people’? In a tight race, where two out of three are going to get it in the neck, I’m looking to the collar.

On Charisma

A charismatic figure possesses above all power. For sorcerers, the power consists in their supposed ability to control nature or humans. The modern scientist as a “wizard” in popular culture disposes over traces of this charisma. Other figures, such as athletes and actors, display more nebulous sorts of charisma. But in general, a person exudes charisma because he or she succeeds as a leader, a hero or Führer, in religious, martial, or other arts. Charisma thus emerges from and inheres in a social relation. A group of people ascribes certain extraordinary abilities or powers to a person. That person has charisma in relation to the ascribing group, whose members become active or passive disciples or followers or fans (William Clark, Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University, Chicago, 2006).

In the world of easy ‘likes’, Twitter armies, and the blogosphere, I rather feel that there is a surfeit of charisma kicking about the internet. There are enough scary nouns in Clark’s little charismatic reduction to make us most wary of it. The concatenation, Joe Public is a monster is a leader, is terrible, and the ethereal world makes it plausible. How many trolls have a few thousand followers or fans, more or less active? Vigilance, more than ever, is required. If charisma is to be so democratic, all the more reason to advocate goodness, virtue, manliness.

Onward, charismatically.

Edward Hyde is Everyman

I recently read Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), and knew that in its pages there was something of value for Beingmanly. But the moral was lost in the chimera, and in my closeness to the text I could not unravel it. I therefore sent a letter to an historian friend of mine, who thinks about these things, and occasionally has a sensible word to say on such matters. With his permission I submit to you his reply, unedited, and with his wish to state the opening proviso in full:

My dear VB,

Your letter finds me between one article and another, and thinking about things far removed from the subject you present. In answering you I must confess that I have had a drink or two, and am in a somewhat altered state. But often the way to divining one’s real thoughts on a matter come in such moments, and since I do not have time to give serious thought to the matter you will have to make do with this.

The chemically induced alter ego of Dr. Jekyll is far too well known for me to shed any further light on Stevenson’s exemplary novella. I’m sure you of all people aren’t too lazy to look after this yourself. But since you crave something useful for your odd little blog, I might say that the Strange Case could well illuminate our own lives to a degree uncomfortable to admit. Taking away the extraordinary excesses of Mr. Hyde, we are left with the statement of Dr. Jekyll that lends the story verisimilitude. For in this statement, civilised men will recognise themselves:

And indeed the worst of my faults was a certain impatient gaiety of disposition, such as has made the happiness of many, but such as I found it hard to reconcile with my imperious desire to carry my head high, and wear a more than commonly grave countenance before the public. Hence it came about that I concealed my pleasures; and that when I reached years of reflection, and began to look round me and take stock of my progress and position in the world, I stood already committed to a profound duplicity of life.

I will not dwell on Freud. Lord knows, enough people have done that. Nevertheless, here we have a description of the internal schism, of propriety and gratification, that blights the lives of men. We measure other men by their adherence to the former, and by the degree to which they fall from this standard. Moreover, men measure themselves in this way, wreaking guilt, anxiety, shame, and so forth, upon themselves.

Our contemporary American Macho type of man, about which you have written, and which is represented, needless to say, across the civilised world, overcomes this schism by simply paying no heed to the marks of civilisation that have, in a roundabout way, produced him. On the contrary, he listens only to the democratic culture – in the Platonic sense – that has fostered his freedom to be licentious, promiscuous, ill-tempered, ill-spoken, and indulgent. The specific manner of this man depends largely upon his access to money, but the differences are of degree rather than of kind. Striking out for himself, he is not gnawed by guilt or anxiety. He is not riven by an internal schism. No, he is already fully realised as civilisation’s Edward Hyde, devoid of conscience, on the make, leaving no avenue of gratification unexplored.

This is one solution to the shackles of propriety. If everyone ignores the restraints we may merrily go the way of the beast. For some, life will be a cruel victimhood. For others it will be nasty, brutish and short. And for yet others it will be an epicurean delight. Let the dice fall as they may.

I would humbly submit that we are not all fighting, internally, against propriety. We shall only be faced with an eternal demon if we give credence to the duality within us. I doubt not that men’s passions overflow on occasion, but this is not our internal other, beating down our public face. We are one, whole, complicated certainly, but ultimately intelligible. Propriety need not be the external force from which we are alienated, but the embraced standard by which men can live. Like the man who tells a lie so often he comes to believe it, propriety can be truly felt. A man must give himself to civilisation, not secretly fight it. He will then find his gratification through his propriety. His desires and his standards will fall into line. He will shake off this Victorian curse and live, contentedly, among the civilised.

Such is the limit of what I can presently communicate on the subject. The whiskey bottle has scarcely enough in it to merit leaving for another occasion, so I will adjourn with it and return to serious thinking. Trusting you will not embarrass me, I shall remain

Your humble servant,

PRB

P.S. There is such a thing as too much tweed, you know. You’re at risk of becoming a bore, if not a boor.

Is Sport Dead? Or, the Lie Detector

Years ago I found the single-best golf membership in the world. At Ampleforth College, a sort of Catholic Eton on the edge of the North York Moors, there is a challenging little golf course primarily for the use of the pupils. There’s also a private members roll, and on enquiry I discovered that the subscription rate for students (as I then was) ran at only £50 for the year. Who could refuse? I sent in my form, and wrote to the secretary asking if he required proof of my student status. The reply was just what you might have expected: ‘The last time I looked’, he said, ‘golf was an honourable game. No proof will be required.’

I had a happy two years in that honourable place, and in the adjacent pub. But I’m given to reflect on the diminution of that spirit of trust in sport in general. The influence of money has corrupted most of the pursuits we love, and the spectre of cheating lies in wait for those activities we cherish as sacred. Baseball has been disgraced; cricket is in the mire; athletics (track & field) has become the least trustworthy display of athleticism known to man; and cycling is a plain farce. I could go on.

Hogarth, Pit Ticket. The shadow of a dishonourable man hangs over the game cocks.

In times past the influence of money was perhaps just as prevalent, but the general sense of shame, or fear of disgrace, checked abuses. In the heady days of cockfighting, which before the 1830s was as popular and as monied as horse racing, those who made false bets were publicly exposed, suspended from the ceiling in a large basket, and alienated from the community until all debts were properly settled. The community regulated itself because the honour was the point of the activity. Winning was hollow unless winning was genuine. And when winning was genuine there was no shame in losing. The better man, or his cock, won, and hands were shaken.

The spirit of fair play is integral to sport, and that is contingent upon trust. Sport must be honourable or else it is not sport. With this in mind I viewed with some horror the latest developments at the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC). The MCC is the home of cricket at Lord’s in London, and upholds everything good about the traditions of the sport. It is stuffy, conservative, and typically reactionary, but it is all these things in the best traditions of the English anti-revolutionary pace of reform.

Enter the Australian: Steve Waugh is a member of the MCC’s World Cricket Committee. He’s a former Australian captain, and a fabulously plucky character. And Steve Waugh is cheesed off. Fed up with being asked how many games he played in were fixed, Mr. Waugh decided to put himself through a lie-detector test. Naturally, he passed the test with flying colours, but in his report to the media he suggested that the polygraph ought to be taken up by the sport so that innocent men could prove their innocence and restore public confidence. The integrity of the sport, he seems to suggest, depends on honourable men being subjected to lie detection.

My strong feeling is that the fading integrity of the sport is killed outright by such a suggestion. If an innocent and honourable man truly is innocent and honourable, then I will take him at his word. If I am betrayed, no doubt it will come out in due course, and we will shake our heads. But the fundamental point is that we would be better to educate our youngsters to uphold the games they play in the right spirit so that such barbarisms as polygraphy are unnecessary. Doubtless, a return to the glory days of amateurism are not set to return, but that does not mean that we have to accept the notion that financial reward is the raison d’être of sport. Primarily, I expect sportsmen to be sportsmen because they fundamentally love their sport, and love the competition that comes with it. If we can instil this precept, we shall not have to worry so much about corruption.

If lie detectors are really thought necessary, then the sprit of sport is surely dead. I await the outcry of honourable men.

Fighting with Two Chairs

Friends, I am beaten up. Today, as I was bleeding everywhere rather alarmingly, I did have the remarkably sober thought that it was all rather ironic (in the American sense), and probably fitting to actually wear some battle scars from the week.

I walked into a chair. ‘How do you walk into a chair?’ you ask. I do not rightly know, but there it is nonetheless. One thing I can be sure of is that I didn’t see the chair, and its way of announcing its presence was to knock loudly on my skull, with all its wooden might, just adjacent to my right eye. Quite a clout sent me reeling around the kitchen, wondering what the hell, and it wasn’t until I got to a mirror for a butchers that it started spurting, B-movie horror style, all over the place. ‘How do you cut yourself on a chair, even if you manage to walk into one?’ you justifiably ask. Well, I do not know that either, but the half-inch gash in the appointed spot suggests it is possible. There is a pleasant purpling developing all around, and by this time tomorrow yours truly will shine like a black hole.

Yesterday’s fight – well, more of a tussle really – was with a Chair of the academic variety, as I tried once again to find myself some gainful employment (much as I’d rather spend my time chatting with all of you, you’re not sending me too much by way of bread). I came away from that contest unscathed physically, but knocked around a bit all the same. I’m thinking of today’s head-banging as a sort of delayed, but inevitable, reaction. Anyway, fingers crossed that all this rough and tumble ends up with VB’s arm aloft. Nobody ever got where they intended without a knock or two en route, right?

Manfully forwards, ho!

Smoke Signals; or, Love Thy Neighbour

No, really: do you even know who lives next door?

 Image: Neighbourhood Life

I once lived next door to an elderly widow who would probably have loved some company, but most of the time one wouldn’t have known she was there. Her appearance one day at the window during my attempt at a back-yard barbeque was telling: ‘Are you trying to smoke me out?’ she yelled from the top floor of the house. She closed the window and then appeared at the back door. ‘Since my husband died I like to keep the bedroom window open’, she said. I wondered if he was still in there. In any case, it wasn’t an auspicious beginning, and I can’t say a relationship blossomed thereafter.

When I left England and moved to Montreal, my first neighbour there was a pot-smoking loner called Hubert. He really smoked a lot of pot; so much, in fact, that I spent much of the first six months in Canada feeling light-headed while teaching an assemblage of McGill ‘90 Averagers’. I blame Hubert for the smashing of this teapot, as my attempt to remain civilised failed in the drifting haze. I think the breaking of a teapot is a highly significant act, for the teapot is the pivot around which friends and neighbours are meant to gather. To imbibe tea is the modern equivalent of breaking bread. This was altogether a failure in the company stakes.

The German neighbours have been altogether a different kettle. I must say, I’ve become rather fond of our upstairs neighbour here, with his repeated insistence that we should come over and consume alcohol. He’s in his 50s, something of a lone wolf, and a tad deaf. But the act of talking to a neighbour is unlike other conversations. It’s not like talking to a friend, or a family member, or a colleague. After all, what do you have in common, other than your proximity? And to that end, talking to a neighbour reinvigorates the art of conversation, for you escape into chatter about interesting things, sometimes weighty, sometimes trivial, sometimes anecdotal, and find that you have pleasantly escaped your own stressful preoccupations for a while. Our neighbour here helps this along by his conspicuous display of maps and globes, old photographs and books, and a random assortment of antique talking points. It’s a stimulating experience, being inside the character-filled home of another. Think of that the next time you’re tempted to shop at Ikea.

Of course, it’s not all roses. We were invited to this man’s annual party once, along with an assemblage of life-long friends of his who collectively fit well with the randomness of his furniture. The only thing they had in common was a tendency to chain smoke. Being German, they all smoked inside. Since we’re now utterly unaccustomed to such an atmosphere, it was hard to swallow.

Good Neighbors: my first crush is on the right.

One way or another, it’s better to have neighbours whom you know than otherwise. It’s never a good thing to start a relationship with an argument, but unless you introduce yourself, this is likely going to be the case. So, why not send your people next door a smoke signal? What’s the worst that can happen?

Winning Ways: Observations on Football Management

Times have changed, but the route to the top is the same as it has ever been. Hard work, determination, indefatigability, and self-belief. Repeat 10,000 times.

I’ve been looking over the managerial record of Sir Matt Busby, legendary manager of Manchester United. What a man he was. His single-mindedness was already evident before the Munich disaster, but his resoluteness in creating a team from the ruins of his Babes is still one of the most extraordinary turnarounds in the history of sport. I saw Busby once, just before he died. Children who had heard his name breathed with reverence by fathers and grandfathers lined up to hang onto his coat and beg him for his signature. Sometimes, greatness just is, and everyone implicitly understands it. But Busby was no conjurer. He simply had a vision, put into effect through hard work and discipline, repeated over 25 years.

Busby’s mantel is now worn by another. I’ve never been much of an admirer of Sir Alex Ferguson’s public persona, but Alex Ferguson the manager has my infinite respect. There is only one level at which a player plays for Alex Ferguson. Anything less than 100% will surely result in packed bags and a summer transfer. No player’s reputation is bigger than the club, and no media event is more important than what happens on the pitch. These are principles carried, no doubt, by just about every manager in the league. So it must be something about the man that allows them to be put into effect. He must be a man of immense character to pull it off.

There are several other things that endear me to the nature of his successes. He has consistently believed in youth, in nurturing talent as well as buying it. He absolutely understands that there are traditions and rituals to do with Manchester United that are far more important than his tenure with the team. Indeed, his tenure has been about preserving those things. He is unfailingly loyal – a self-styled servant of the club. In these things he represents what has otherwise been lost from the modern game.

What Busby and Ferguson also have in common, beyond their winning ways, is the faith shown in them by their employers. These days, football seems to be all about winning, or else the manager loses his job. There’s no faith shown in a manager’s ability; no adherence to the development of players, systems, strategies; no long-term planning. Ancelotti won the double at Chelsea, but nothing this year, and now he’s on his bike. What nonsense. Ferguson was appointed in 1986, first winning the league in 1992-3. Busby was appointed in 1945, not winning the league until 1952. Winning did not come by the touch of a magic wand, but through perseverance, experience and practice. It is bewildering to me that, regardless of the continuing presence and example of the finest ever football manager, in the shape of Alex Ferguson, the rest of Football Inc. attempts to emulate his success by following a diametrically opposite strategy. The way to win, despite the times we live in, is the same as it has ever been. 

Confirmed: A Drop of the Black Stuff Is Good for You

But America knew that already, right?

Beasts Within

At whatever point you choose to dip into the history of philosophy, from Plato (or before) to some ephemeral chap of the moment, you’ll find that it’s pretty commonly understood that underlying every man is an animal, and not a cute kitten either. No, not with Darwin did the idea emerge that somewhere within us was the beast, or at least its legacy. One way or another, the history of humanity has revolved around suppressing this thing in us that subverts reason and supplants honour.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn has been finding out about his inner animal, and its consequences, this week. I’m not going to try and convict him here, of course, but the tale is cautionary. Ask around the world of posthumanists and their ilk and you’ll find an overwhelming reluctance to distinguish humans from animals in any sort of meaningful way, despite several thousand years of this being at the centre of the meaning of civilisation. I wouldn’t go so far as to call that a conceit, but it is pretty daring, and is challenged most dramatically when a given human behaves, for want of a better way of putting it, like an animal.

To what standard shall we hold people? To nature? I don’t quite see a basis for morality there. Indeed, in making moral imperatives, and in judging moral transgressions, we always designate something in the man that supersedes the animal in him. At the same time, these codes always acknowledge the animal’s presence, its danger, and its closeness to the surface. To deny its presence is to abdicate vigilance. To celebrate its presence is surely to risk us all. No, our human qualities must cage this beast, subjecting it to an iron will and an unimpeachable reason.

This is an essential and on-going task of the individual and of the society. If we fail, we shall lose the meaning of the ‘inhuman’, and if we reach that point, send us all to Riker’s Island.

What Goes Around...

‘I perceive,’ said Coningsby, pursuing a strain of thought which the other had indicated, ‘that you have great confidence in the influence of individual character. I also have some confused persuasions of that kind. But it is not the Spirit of the Age.’

‘The age does not believe in great men, because it does not possess any,’ replied the stranger. ‘The Spirit of the Age is the very thing that a great man changes.’

‘But does he not rather avail himself of it?’ inquired Coningsby.

‘Parvenus do,’ rejoined his companion; ‘but not prophets, great legislators, great conquerors. They destroy and they create.’

‘But are these times for great legislators and great conquerors?’ urged Coningsby.

‘When were they wanted more?’ asked the stranger. ‘From the throne to the hovel all call for a guide. You give monarchs constitutions to teach them sovereignty, and nations Sunday schools to inspire them with faith.’

‘But what is an individual,’ exclaimed Coningsby, ‘against a vast public opinion?’

‘Divine,’ said the stranger.

Disraeli, Coningsby, 1844.

Seve: Goodbye to a General

To define what makes a leader of men has always been difficult, but it is perhaps more so than ever in a world that lacks obvious examples. One such man has recently passed, albeit, his world was merely golf.

Sport is an analogy for life: it is contest, struggle, defeat and victory. It defines joy and misery. Men win and lose as individuals and as teams. In all this, through highs and lows, some stand out as shining examples of honour, charisma, magnanimity, inspiration, and courage. Seve Ballesteros was such a man. He combined the abilities to charm the media, to dazzle the ordinary onlooker, and to enthuse men with an unbeatable spirit. His talent was peerless, but even as physical deterioration deprived him, and us, of its use, he brought to bear his extraordinary leadership on a group of men who seemed otherwise to lack lustre and desire. The 2010 Ryder Cup was won, so the players attest, for him, on the back of a rousing speech given by telephone. We do not know the content of that speech, but it moved men first to tears and then to resolute action. Few can arouse such things.

It was not the first time. Seve’s speeches over the years have been said to count for a number of victories. And now, in death, I expect his memory will also serve to inspire men. At the 2012 Ryder Cup at Medinah, don’t be surprised if all Europe says with one voice, ‘win it for Seve’.

Rest in peace, genius.

Uncertainty; or, Paddle Your Own Canoe!

Faithful followers, forgive my absence. England made me ill, as usual, and the last few days back in Berlin have been consumed with filling in blanks. Every year around this time the plans for the next year emerge all at once. Until this week, I knew not where I would be come September. It transpires that I shall remain in Berlin another year, which is really not such a bad thing. Memories of winter bleakness are fading quickly among the blossoms.

I’m not sure there is anything more difficult for a man than uncertainty. One tries to stride forth manfully, but one risks looking a fool, at best, when one marches headlong into a crevasse. Knowing where one is going is key, even if one only has a rough bearing, but sometimes it seems as if one must wait for outside forces to determine the direction. Here I usually turn to Baden-Powell.

‘Paddle your own canoe!’, sayeth Sir Robert, and we heartily concur. The river flows this way and that, and will take us where it will if we let it. Should we sit back and wait for fate, the river will crash us over falls and dash us against rocks, drown us in maelstroms, and strand us on unfriendly shores. We cannot help the river’s current, but we can negotiate it with tenacity, strength and skill. Paddle the bloody craft, and set course. When faced with uncertainty, one must take control of what one can. Specifics may remain hazy – geography, job, and so forth – but this haziness does not prevent one from keeping a firm grip on one’s oar, one’s purpose.

If anyone needs me, I’ll be on the Spree, paddling my own canoe.

Manly Haunts

I have de-camped to Manchester, where it is still winter. Normal service will be resumed here next week. Thought I’d keep you going with some images of my favourite character-filled haunts in North London. I love being in these spots, for in these places are things almost extinct – a sense of tradition, of place, of old communities, of conviviality, and of movement.

 Bedford Place

 Bedford Square

 The Princess Louise pub

 The newly opened St. Pancras hotel

St. Pancras station

Marathon Memoir, Part II

Back in November I pledged to you that I would take on a couple of new challenges, after my maiden marathon run in Montreal last September. I also promised not to bore you with the details of the process, but to let you know when successes could be chalked up. Yesterday I ran the Berlin Half Marathon, on an unexpectedly hot day, in 1:40:08. This was within 8 seconds of my target time, which I can live with given how crowded the run was (25,500 registered), and about four minutes faster than I’ve covered that distance previously. Given the difficulties of winter training, and an ill-timed ear infection at the peak of the training schedule, I’m really rather pleased with it. I’m inclined to say that I still don’t much like running, but I do respond well to concrete, if self-set, challenges. If one is stubborn minded enough, hating running seems to be more help than hindrance: one wants it to end as quickly as possible. If giving up isn’t an option, running fast is all you’ve got. The next part of the challenge is to run a five-minute mile by November. I have no idea if this is possible, but the endeavour should be interesting.

One has to put these things into perspective. How do these achievements fit into a life? What do they mean? Aside from the fringe benefits of being fit, being able to eat whatever I please, and being on the whole a bit more even tempered, why bother? Some would say, perhaps, that these things are enough, and indeed they might be for some. But it doesn’t quite cut it for me. The real importance has to do with the value one attaches to a life. We are too given to reduce achievement to possession, to salary, to sealing deals that nobody will remember. In short, we are defined by ‘work’ in the narrowest sense of that term. If we are not careful, life will pass us by in the pursuit of green, and when we collapse with heart disease just after our hard-earned retirements, people will gather and say ‘what a waste’. 

Making music, listening to music, reading with all my attention, these activities are part and parcel of my life; to call them hobbies would make a mockery of them… [T]here is no hard and fast opposition between my work itself and what I do apart from it. (Theodore Adorno, Free Time).

I am a firm advocate of work, but I prefer to interpret the term much more broadly. Victorian gentlemen understood that work was necessary, even if money was no object. A vocation is required of a citizen, for to be a drone is to be a drain. These men went about their work with a zeal rarely seen among today’s workforce. But they also went about their recreation with a similar zeal. In essence, there was no difference in spirit between ‘work’ and ‘play’, in the best traditions of the amateur. It was all done with serious intent. Whereas we are wont to have a ‘hobby’, a word that tends to connote frivolousness and idle pleasure, they held their pursuits to be an important reflection of their character and, writ large, of the state of society. Ultimately then, play is also a form of work, and our attitude towards it tells us, and the world around us, something about ourselves. 

On Purpose

Oh how easy to drift along allowing things external to ourselves to determine what we do. People will become agitated if you tell them they lack agency, for we all wish to be our own masters; and yet common-or-garden frustration is borne precisely from a feeling that matters are beyond our control. Whether it be work, geography, money, relationships, family, friends, dependencies, or just the bloody weather, a moment’s self-reflection often leads to feeling of smallness and futility, immediately followed by a kind of fatalism. We are but small boats on a big ocean, and we daily curse the moon.

I’m not about to turn around and tell you that all of this is not the case. But I do maintain that the feeling can be managed, and that what we identify as the fates can be defied, at least in spirit. Fundamentally, each individual needs a purpose: a reason to go through life. It might be a duty of care. It could be a pursuit intellectual or physical, or perhaps political. It is probably not reducible to the acquisition of money, for mere accumulation still begs the question ‘what for?’. Likewise, ambitions are not purposeful, for what happens if you realise them? The process itself must be the reward. For many men out there, the process of self-betterment is their purpose. Whatever comes their way, this resolve steers them straight. But whatever be your purpose, if you hold fast to it you will be able to endure and surmount the circumstantial obstacles that seem to block your way. The challenge is part of the actualisation of self. Capitulation, after all, is never partial. To give in is to abnegate the self.

Illustration by Bill Ross

My purpose is to write, for to write is to engage. It is an end and a means to other ends: discussion, education, learning, entertainment. The where, what and how of the writing process is up for negotiation, but the object is constant. Of late there have been many obstacles to pursuing my purpose – funding being not the least – but to hell with them. My wants are, after all, meagre. Consider this a re-statement of intent, albeit with many of the details omitted.

What is your purpose? What keeps you going? And by what means do your steer your craft, in defiance of the tide?

On Bullies and Accomplices

Tom Brown’s Schooldays is not my favourite text, but it is full of educational and relational ideals that seem to endure, especially now, when they are so seldom observed. Not least among its lessons is the attitude towards bullying, a theme that recurs throughout the novel. I’ve been given to turn once again to these pages after having witnessed the video of the Australian bullying and the victim’s rather emphatic response to it. That young man has made something of a name for himself, but his notoriety saddens me to some extent. The idle idiots who shot the video, and who then presumably submitted it to the local news, succeeded in getting both boys suspended from school. And now he’ll spend the rest of his childhood being ‘the fat kid who fought back’. He did the right thing, but it should have been private. He should have been able to fight his own battles and have the satisfaction of prevailing. Now he has lost control. In joining the fray of commentators I realise I’m adding to that loss, but the example – since it is public – must now serve to assist the thousands of others undergoing his torment. Those idle bystanders who have brought Casey Heynes to international attention represent the silent culprits complicit in bullying everywhere. Whatever we think of Heynes and his bully, we must roundly scorn those who implicitly endorse bullying by their inaction.

Let us turn to Thomas Hughes. Tom and East dig in and beat off their assailant (the scene depicted above), but in return the bully Flashman sullies their reputations. The legacy outlasts his presence. It is easier to follow the bully than to strike out for what is right: 

If the Angel Gabriel were to come down from heaven, and head a successful rise against the most abominable and unrighteous vested interest, which this poor old world groans under, he would most certainly lose his character for many years, probably for centuries, not only with upholders of said vested interest, but with the respectable mass of the people whom he had delivered. They wouldn’t ask him to dinner, or let their names appear with his in the papers; they would be very careful how they spoke of him in the Palaver, or at their clubs… But… bear in mind that majorities, especially respectable ones, are nine times out of ten in the wrong; and that if you see a man or boy striving on the weak side, however wrong-headed or blundering he may be, you are not to go and join the cry against him. If you can’t join him and help him, and make him wiser, at any rate remember that he has found something in the world which he will fight and suffer for, which is just what you have got to do for yourselves; and so think and speak of him tenderly.

Not every boy will have the power to overcome his bullies. Sometimes guile must serve in the stead of brute force. Sometimes reserves of fortitude must be drawn upon. But he must give no quarter; must not comply. He must know, deep down, however much it hurts, and however much the fear debilitates, that his tormentor is more afraid than him. The tormentor is the coward, the uncertain, the envious. However unhappy the boy, the bully is more so. The boy must dig deep, for right is on his side. And when he does fight his battles, he should fight them without the world’s attention. But he would be helped if his peers, knowing right from wrong, and being cognisant of his plight, did not follow the bully’s path of least resistance. If I were to suspend anyone in Casey’s case, it would be the girl with the camera on her phone. She had her chance to do the right thing, to do something, and she failed. The bully got what was coming to him, and may have learnt his lesson. That should have been an end to it. But what has she learnt?

See One, Play One

Not a post about cards, although it is high time I ventured in that direction. No, I merely wanted to say that I was buying groceries yesterday and picked up a bunch of tulips for Mrs. VB while I was at it. The guy behind me had a bottle of cheap red and a lump of cheese on the conveyor belt. He looked at my lot, tapped me on the shoulder, and asked where I got the flowers. He looked insecure. I pointed, and he went and fetched a matching bunch. He looked a lot happier for it. Being a gentleman isn’t all about sense of self. One leads by example, even when completely unaware that one is being observed.

Guttenberg’s Last Stand; Or, The Tyranny of Democracy

The people want Mr. Guttenberg back. Numbers are on their side. Shouldn’t they get what they want?

A friend of mine, when first showing young undergraduates that they had never really thought about anything, used to ask them to think of all the reasons why democracy was bad. Blank looks generally abounded, and so he would say the following: 

There are nine people in a room. A motion is tabled that all nine people should wear yellow. It is put to a vote. Four people vote against, on the basis that yellow just makes them look sickly. Five people vote in favour, so all nine have to wear yellow. Why should five people tell four people what to do?

And here is the rub. If politics is really about what different people want – and let’s be clear about this, politics is about interest – then aside from the most basic of common desires, a political victory for one will always be a political failure for another. The desire for a thing, if it is allowed to be put to a vote, will almost always divide. Coming together, crossing the floor, talking about the common good – all these things work only insofar as a particular want is held in common. There will always be dissenters. When they lose, they will be unhappy. If it is a close-run thing, almost as many people will be miserable as will rejoice.

The question then, for democracy, is who gets to table a motion? If anyone can put their wish to a vote, we shall have chaos, or Switzerland, neither of which is desirable (as anyone who has followed Swiss democracy in the last couple of years would know). Who gets to decide that ‘we should all wear yellow’ should go to a ballot? In sensible places, an executive would veto such nonsense. Politics must be serious. It can not be petty, or foreground petty concerns. It concerns me that this has been so thoroughly forgotten.

A basic rule of liberty is that you may do as you please so long as it doesn’t displease anyone else. So, wear yellow; but don’t try to force me to do the same. These kinds of questions are not, and should not be, political. Democracy is often conflated with freedom, but one sees in this kind of equation that liberty and democracy are difficult bedfellows. It may be your express desire that I do not write this article, and you may find many more people who will back you up than I can find to support me. Will that make a democratic vote on the matter valid? Will it be a good advert for freedom if I am not permitted to publish it? Of course not.

I’m given to write about all this because of the extraordinary outpouring of feeling in Germany at present about the former Defence Minister, and former Ph.D holder, Mr. Guttenberg. It seems that the vast majority of Germans are aghast that this man has been forced to resign for being found wanting in integrity and character. Most people, if the numbers are to be believed, would want him re-instated. It’s one of those times that I really loathe the common notion of democracy. Just because a lot of people want something, they think they should have it. The fact that it is not right is irrelevant to them. The fact that it is not just is also irrelevant to them. And the fact that it is not in their best interests to have such a political leader, seems to have passed them by. Should these people be allowed to tell the others what to do, or what to submit to? Or should we hold to higher principles of the kind of moral fibre we should like to see in our political leaders, and hold fast to those principles regardless of what the popular clamour insists upon? In those principles we shall safeguard our freedom. In blind ‘democracy’ we may risk it.

Guttenberg Jokes No Longer About Steve!

What happens when an aristocrat, whose aristocracy has become practically meaningless, sees the need to acquire a professional qualification, but doesn’t see the real merit in earning one? Just ask Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg, who was until today Germany’s Defence Minister.

Mr. (for he is no longer Dr.) von and zu Guttenberg had his past catch up with him in the last couple of weeks, as it was revealed that he had largely plagiarised his Ph.D thesis. Plagiarism is the cardinal sin of academic life, akin to incest or cannibalism in the social world, and it generally sinks the plagiarist into an irredeemably dishonourable position. Mr. Guttenberg copied, stole, and used public funds to have others do his work for him. All this, one presumes, because of Germany’s social reality that places the intellectual elite in a position of greater esteem than its old monied and plutocratic class. It was useful and desirable for this man of very old blue blood to gain this most modern title, which not too long ago might have been considered vulgar. The only trouble was that Mr. Guttenberg seems to have been incapable of actually achieving such a distinction, so in the best tradition of politicians, he found a way to get what he wanted despite the obvious barriers.

Politicians cheat and lie: it’s what they are for and we should not be surprised that they do it. The good ones simply don’t get caught. There is such a thing, however, even among the political movers and shakers, as honour among thieves. I come from a culture where a man caught red-handed must hold up his hands and say ‘it’s a fair cop’, and take the consequences. It is the natural result of getting caught. Once the game is up, the game is up. No one would want to heap dishonour upon dishonour. Yet Mr. Guttenberg chose to fall on his sword and resign only after he had been practically pushed onto his blade by the collective outcry of the German academic community. 

At first he and his Chancellor, who has never swerved in her public support of the guilty party, maintained a line of argument that disassociated the academic dishonour from the public role he held. Such pedantic demarcations do not wash, for public life is about character, and Mr. Guttenberg was found to be lacking in that department. Uncovered as a fraud, dishonoured, and soundly mocked for the pretentiousness of  his conspicuous blue-bloodedness, of course his position as a Minister was immediately untenable. He should have resigned at the earliest opportunity: it is the only way back from political scandal. Having failed to do this, he proved himself thoroughly unmanly into the bargain, and his career now lies in tatters. Mrs. Merkel has been embarrassed by association and looks a little less manly herself.

“But the lie was only this big...

There should be a lesson learned here. Politicians insult the intelligence of the voters all the time. They would do well to remember that it is better not to insult the intelligence of those voters who have actually made careers out of being intelligent. No other group is so motivated by the smell of blood in the water.