Category: Politics

Ming exhibition – education

In Ming China there were four great cultural pursuits (if I have the names right) – weiqi (go), qin (music, the zither), calligraphy, painting. The BM exhibition has a zither, as early as 13th century, as I recall.

The Romans had the trivium (grammar, logic and rhetoric) and quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy), together making up the seven liberal arts.

Both exclude the practical arts – architecture, medicine and in China especially, military skills, the art of war. The Ming emperors had, I read, up to a million soldiers at their disposal.

The four cultural pursuits and the seven liberal arts are radically different and yet both focus on improving the mind. Today it’s all about English and maths, but China recognised the importance of games and music, and classical Rome the benefits of logic and rhetoric.

Reminders that there are other modes of learning. Encouraging music and writing and painting at an early age, as creative not rote exercises, would be a wonder, and a wide benefit.

Thinking games, what of computer games? The challenge is there of course, and the learning, but it’s solitaire against chess, skills against life experience, a MOOQ against a tutorial or a Q and A at the end of a lecture. We need it person-to-person, better still, to look into the whites of another’s eyes.

Reasons not be cheerful

Two reasons not to be cheerful.

1] To quote a friend of mine: ‘Jihadism, Western consumerism, youth unemployment, the debt burden, stagnating incomes, the growing wealth divide: they’re all somehow linked, and no-one seems to have convincing answers.’

Now there’s a challenge…

2] Immigrants are crossing in their tens of thousands from Africa. Boko Haram terrorises northern Nigeria spreading jihad and seeking to set up its own ‘caliphate’. Neither would have been possible had Gaddafi retained his hold on Libya. And without the French and British bombing campaign he’d have done so. Better to have left him in power? But what of Benghazi? It rose in rebellion against Gaddafi – and how bloody would have been its punishment?  What if war had followed when the Russians sent tanks into Hungary in 1956, or into Prague in 1968? The latter was the Prague Spring. And in 2010 we had the Arab Spring…

Intervention has its place. In Sierra Leone and Kosovo there was a simple humanitarian imperative. Maybe also in the case of Benghazi – but that illustrates how risky any intervention can be. Libya is now a failed state and we’re living with the – sometimes terrifying – unintended consequences.

Ukraine – finding an endgame

Ukraine – the separatists are gathering strength, and Russian troops directly involved, Putin talking of statehood for SE Ukraine.

It’s a confrontation that could intensify further. Support for Russia in the eastern Ukraine is historically and linguistically strong, so we kid ourselves if we see it simply in terms of Kiev government asserting its natural right to govern its territory. The history of ancient Kiev is rather more complicated than that. I see the Economist used the word ‘nihilist’ as something that might describe Putin. Anything but. We should always remember how different the world looks if you’re on different sides of a border.

We have, more locally, the current Scottish debate to remind us of that: it’s as if there’s a border within Scotland. Not so much a territorial border, it’s mapped out in people’s minds. They are one side or the other. There are I know don’t knows – but it’s hard to be a don’t know when so much is at stake.

Back to Russia.

We need  to focus on the endgame, and what that might be. This is one conflict where there has to be be a rational solution, where sabres need to be rattled less, and solutions worked out across tables. Shouting and sanctions are and will be counter-productive. Making Senator John McCain (thank God he lost to Obama) feel good is not the object of the exercise.

I’m not arguing for a moment that NATO shouldn’t be building up its forces or the Ukrainian army not given the material as well as political support to match what’s coming in on the separatist side from Russia. We must build and bolster our negotiating position. Putin would expect nothing less…

I was struck by Putin’s comment: ‘The West should have seen this coming.’ Indeed they/we should. What did we expect of Russia when a pro-Russian government was overthrown in Kiev? That Russia would simply smile and say ‘Fair cop, well done. We lost out.’

Putin holds the stronger cards in this conflict and short of all-out war that isn’t going to change. Finding behind the scenes (avoid public grandstanding) a formula that will satisfy both sides is the only way forward.

It will take wisdom to get us to a solution.  There is no substitute.

Capability – redefined

Once upon a time in a blog I talked about capability. Capability is a right to be enjoyed by everyone, a right to have the opportunity and the means to be the best that we can be. It’s easy to see this as a personal right, with the only limitation that we shouldn’t trespass on the similar rights of others.

But how do we define ‘best’ – is it to earn the maximum possible, to have a fulfilling job, to be a successful member of society? Could be. But to that I’d add being a contributing member of society. True capability opens the door not just to opportunity but to compassion. The highest human attainments are those shared with others – from great advances in science to simple acts of kindness.

How do we create a society where we all contribute, where we all expect to contribute? Empowering local government, certainly. David Marquand suggests citizen assemblies: could that be a more constructive more local less vituperative version of TV’s Question Time, but with ordinary people the panellists? I’m not certain about the idea – but it’s the kind of thinking we need.

How can we develop, over time, a simple expectation that we – all of us – take on a contributing or caring role of some kind?

The trouble is that cynicism rules, motives are assumed to be impure, anything politicians espouse gets hammered, as did the Big Society as a concept. Maybe the Big Society deserved to be hammered: old-style Tory paternalism doesn’t go down too well. But a society in which we all engage – that would be a big society.

Pipe dreams? If we stay forever cynical, then indeed that’s the way it will be.

So, another challenge, how to do away with cynicism?

The Fourth Revolution

What might the fourth revolution be? What are, or were, revolutions one, two and three? Not the Glorious Revolution or the French Revolution. But political revolution – changes driven by ideas developed and ingrained over time.

And what form should the state take in future – in what direction should it be evolving?  Political theory is too often disparaged: cognoscenti have to work behind the scenes and pretend they know nothing.  We prefer to deal in simple solutions, absolutes of right and wrong. Not sadly of now and then. More now and forever: the certainty of the believing moment dictates policy and attitudes. Not the wisdom of the past.

John Mickelthwait and Adrian Woolridge, respectively editor-in-chief and editor of the Schumpeter column on the Economist, make a pretty good stab at serious informed political theory. They sketch a brief history of the last four hundred years, from the rising nation state (and Thomas Hobbes) by way of the 19th century liberal state (JS Mill) to the welfare state (Beatrice Webb)… and then turn futurologists and with Woolridge’s omnivorous capacity for detail outline the brave new world of the smaller state. Private enterprise drives both the economy and the state, power is devolved, and initiative lies at the individual level. Friedman and Hayek would rejoice – but only to a point. California at the mercy of propositions (referenda) has made good governance almost impossible, and the authors have a more than sneaking admiration for Lee Juan Yew’s Singapore. And indeed China, dirigiste in most things save the absolute right to engage in making money and building businesses.

So their model in more measured, more cautious, less neo-liberal than we might have expected. The closest to their ideal they find in Scandinavia. The Nordic model marries clear direction from government to social responsibility, and in Sweden, since big changes back in 1991, it seems to have worked.

Maybe it’s all a bit glib. This is the way the authors believe it should happen, but how can you create circumstances where it really will happen? The Tea Party fragments rather than encourages responsibility. Traditional political parties as agents of change aren’t listened to or respected. Pressure groups as matter of pride and preference keep their focus narrow.

It is a valiant and impressive and entertaining (well almost) attempt to point a way forward.

But making it happen – there lies the challenge.

 

Martin Buber

I mentioned in another post that he was a hero of mine. Rather than paraphrase, best to quote from the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

“In debates following violent riots in 1928 and 29 on whether to arm the Jewish settlers in Palestine Buber represented the pacifist option; in debates on immigration quotas following the 1936 Arab boycott Buber argued for demographic parity rather than trying to achieve a Jewish majority. Finally, as a member of Brit Shalom Buber argued for a bi-national rather than for a Jewish state in Palestine. At any of these stages Buber harboured no illusion about the chances of his political views to sway the majority but he believed that it was important to articulate the moral truth as one saw it rather than hiding one’s true beliefs for the sake of political strategy. Needless to say, this politics of authenticity made him few friends among the members of the Zionist establishment.”

There were I must assume, many outside the Zionist establishment who saw the world as he did. He was a man with a big reputation in Germany before he moved to Palestine in 1938, as an educator, philosopher and religious thinker. He also had a major role in building a Jewish cultural awareness within Zionism, not least by his wonderful Tales of the Hasidim.

Like so many I discovered Buber when I encountered his essay, I and Thou, in my college days. An ‘I-it’ relationship refers to the world of sensation and experience. In an ‘I-thou’ relationship sensation and experience are abandoned, the relationship with the other party is paramount. He called it the dialogic principle, but let’s skip that. For Buber, God was the ultimate relationship, ever-present in human consciousness.

Back in the 60s, I and Thou resonated. Some question it as philosophy but as an instinctive truth it still resonates today.

I’ll end with another quote, which for me makes a connection between Buber the Zionist and the Buber of I and Thou.

(Jews and Arabs must) “develop the land together without one imposing his will on the other. We considered it a fundamental point that in this case two vital claims are opposed to each other, two claims of a different nature and a different origin, which cannot be pitted one against the other and between which no objective decision can be made as to which is just and which is unjust.

“We considered and still consider it our duty to understand and to honour the claim which is opposed to ours and to endeavor to reconcile both claims… We have been and still are convinced that it must be possible to find some form or agreement between this claim and the other; for we love this land and believe in its future; and seeing that such love and faith are surely present also on the other side, a union in the common service of the land must be within the range of the possible” (quoted in Mendes-Flohr, 1994).

Which newspaper to read?

Which paper to read? Does it even matter these days when so much news is online, and we can switch (firewalls permitting) at will, and link to sites and sources around the world.

Let’s assume it does, for some of us anyway.

Compassion and a natural liberal instinct dictate the Guardian but I’m almost too much at home there. I am from Manchester after all. As it’s too easy for the opposite reason to read the Daily Mail: every article makes the hackles rise, apoplexy only just contained.

But I must be objective…

Middle ground, campaigning on key issues … maybe the Independent. Neo-liberal, small state… the Telegraph or Mail. Respectable, establishment, with several fine columnists… The Times.  But The Times is the tame face of Murdoch,  the not so fantastic  Mr Fox.

Social welfare, social justice, yes, we need a big state, and a spending state. And yet, the welfare budget is too big, and benefits can act as a big disincentive to finding work. I accept both arguments. And so…

Read everything, or dip into everything. Try the Huffington Post online. Specialise a little and read Foreign Policy magazine. Go weekly and read the New Statesman, the Spectator or the Economist. Read The Week and be bombarded from every point of view.

Be brave and watch Fox TV. Restore your faith in humanity and watch Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show. Try out salon.com   My true colours show I’m afraid – but don’t dismiss the arguments of the other side. Avoid easy answers. Capitalism and compassion can and must exist side by side.

Follow the middle way, as the Buddha taught.  Wisdom does not inhabit the extremes, it seeks to balance them.

Read often, read widely, read wisely. That is the zenpolitics way.

Israel and Palestine

I’m white, Anglo-Saxon, pro-Israel, pro-Palestine, and bitterly opposed to Israel’s actions in Gaza.

I’ve been pro-Israel since I was 8 or 9 years old, and first read of the fight to establish the modern state of Israel. Some of my best friends at school were Jewish, my father’s friends likewise, the finest teachers I ever had (postgraduate work at the Warburg Institute) were Jewish (Aby Warburg was Jewish), my best friend in book publishing was Jewish. The remarkable world of early 20th century Vienna, with Mahler and Freud prominent, was one of the great intellectual and cultural moments in history. My professor at the Warburg, Ernst Gombrich (also a Jew from Vienna), suggested my PhD subject might be the Jewish ghetto in Venice. Visiting Cordoba many years ago and seeing the bust there of Maimonides was a reminder of that remarkable Jewish culture that shared cultural supremacy with Islam back in the 12th century. And I could go on.

As for the bible (the Old Testament as Christians know it), for me it is the most remarkable and inspiring record of any people in history.

Opposing Israel’s relentless attacks on Gaza is not anti-semitism. It is the reverse. I’m passionate about Israel. I wanted to work on a kibbutz when I was in my 20s. But other angry, intolerant and and often fundamentalist forces have taken government in Israel in another direction. There is talk of ‘deligitimising’ the Israeli state. My fear for Israel is that if they continue on their current path that may in many eyes be just what happens.

Talk of double strandards – why oppose Israel when violence elsewhere is as bad or worse – is wide of the mark. Israel was in its early days a society predicated on Western values of tolerance, individual freedom and natural justice. It is its departure from those values, and its massive devaluing of each Palestinian life compared to an Israeli one, which may yet undermine it.

Back in the 1930s there were those who argued that Jew and Arab, already fighting each other at a local level, could still live side by side. I’ll mention Martin Buber, an early hero of mine, in another post. They imagined then a worst-case scenario but could they ever have anticipated the current reality?

America is not united in its support for Israeli actions. Liberal Judaism is more critical, the 18-25 age range opposed, but the old consensus still holds sway, and Hilary Clinton’s loading of blame on to the Palestinians in Gaza doesn’t bode well for sanity in post-Obama American policy.

A two-state solution need not be far away. But there are powerful forces arguing against it, for whom repression is the only answer. How it will work out in time I doubt even if God knows.

The perils of intervention

Just one word this morning – intervention.

When to intervene and when not to? The right (and it’s true, not only the right) would have us intervene in Syria, as we did in Libya, but not, for America at least, in Gaza, where the intervention is already happening, and longstanding. But the USA doesn’t have proxies in other parts of the world. The reverse is true. Intervention couldn’t be by subtle diplomatic means, in the current state of things, so it would again be by bludgeon.

And when did bludgeon last work? Melanie Phillips, way off-beam as so often, describes the West as being ‘rudderless’ and ‘leaderless’, and blames Obama for no longer being prepared to defend Western interests. What are Western interests? Can we win favour by more violence? Can we import democracy into countries unwilling to accept it, and unable to define it as we do? Even Turkey – what of Turkish democracy reinterpreted by Erdogan?

What chance intervention working had it happened in Syria in 2011? Fragmentation and violence as is now the fate of Libya would have been the likely outcome. The same result as non-intervention. But that’s another story, and I wouldn’t want to oversimplify it by anything I write here.

As for intervening by way of wider sanctions in Ukraine, they have a poor history. When applied against Saddam Hussein they were riddled with holes. Against Iran in recent years they have put big pressure on the economy, and arguably had an impact. But Russia isn’t Iraq or Iran, and Putin knows it. He’s recently been, after the shooting down of MH17, in Latin America, signing deals. Likewise recently (before MH17 ) with the Chinese. The Russian economy may suffer from sanctions the West imposes but he has too many friends elsewhere for sanctions to have a chance of bringing him down, or even changing his policy.

I’m not opposed to sanctions per se, but I doubt the efficacy of further sanctions. They will polarise, drive both sides further part, they will not advance a solution.

Charles Krauthammer (National Review), in the context of Ukraine: ‘History doesn’t act autonomously. It needs agency.’ Responsible leaders, he argues, have a duty to try and shorten the time span of dictators. ‘History inevitably sees to the defeat of their [the dictators’] malign policies.’ But does it, and if it does, what replaces them? Misplaced agency is a fool’s errand. Follow Krauthammer and you’ll follow more of such errands.

Obama is playing a longer and wiser and braver game. It requires patience, and a determination to work with local people, local agencies, local parties. Think Pakistan, where we can all understand American policy toward the Pakistani Taliban, but the great majority of Pakistanis view America as the great satan. World opinion outside of the West is weighted against America. Obama is trying to readjust that balance. It will be a long game, and there are and will be shrill and foolish voices crying against it.

The appalling violence of the jihadists in northern Iraq is a mighty challenge to that policy. Stopping that violence is a necessary intervention, and it could have come sooner. But, beyond that, Obama’s aim is to work with and support the Iraqi and Kurdish goverments and military.  Reclaiming territory must be handled by local and not American forces.

Where we might intervene, and with success, is in Gaza. Intervention would be to stop violence, engineer peace, seek a two-state solution, but with Israel a proxy for the USA, what chance is there of that?

 

 

 

 

 

‘Not some sort of illuminati lizard creature’

… this being what, in Russell Brand’s view, Barrack Obama is not. But it is, in his view, how Judge Jeanine on Fox News would have us perceive him.

Russell Brand lost my vote when he ranted on about democracy in his TV discussion with Jeremy Paxman, but he’s clawed back my favour with his online TV show, The Trews, to which my kids (very grown-up kids) have alerted me.

Check out ‘Is Fox News More Dangerous Than Isis’ on YouTube. His interlocutions are brilliant. He sums up: ‘That attitude [Fox News] is more dangerous than ISIS.’

He feels a little sorry for Obama and the flak he’s receiving, and that’s where the crazy ‘not some sort of illuminati lizard creature’ comment comes in.

We need Russell Brand, as we need Jon Stewart.