Category: politics

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Book Review: Prisons We Choose To Live Inside, by Doris Lessing

House of Anansi Press has re-released their excellent CBC Massey Lectures Series. These are expansive, thought-provoking works which aim to push our understanding of society and the individual in the late-20th (now early-21st) century. The series includes works from many different points of view: A Short History of Progress by Richard Wright, The Unconscious Civilization by John Ralston Saul, and Beyond Fate by Margaret Visser are only a fragment of this extremely revealing and influential volume.

Prisons We Choose To Live Inside, a collection of five lectures author/novelist Doris Lessing gave in Canada in 1986, is a fine introduction to this astutely-observed collection. Clocking in at a mere 76 pages, Lessing lays down a sobering, eye-opening conception of the place of the individual in modern-day society. Her points are clear: history (the study of which she advocates with Cassandra-like insistence) clearly warns us against the perils of becoming embroiled in “mass emotion” and the inherent fascism of group-think. Repeatedly, she advocates the need for cool, objective distance from events and society – even at the peril of seeming an elitist.

With succinct skill and a preference to reference personal experience over statistics, she lays down her points consistently throughout:

 

I think when people look back at our time, they will be amazed at one thing more than any other. It is this – that we do know more about ourselves now than people did in the past. But that very little of it has been put into effect.

 

She makes it clear that there is little excuse, living in an age where social sciences (psychology, sociology, social behaviourism) have flourished, for society to not be equipped with an understanding of the basic underpinnings of society and human behaviour. Yet we don’t; the information never trickles down from academia in a way that can be instilled easily in our public schools, perhaps because the message is largely: group-thinking and mass emotions are our undoing – at risk of ostracism, it’s best that you question everything.

 

One of the many examples she lists is how Stalin, at the time when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, was referred to in Allied propaganda as ‘Uncle Joe’ and how the Russians’ defiant struggle was our struggle…only to turn on a dime after the fall of Hitler and turn against ‘Uncle Joe’, decrying every aspect of the Soviet Union not only as backward – but evil. This last word is very important within the context of Lessing’s lectures because historically it tends to come up every time a group wishes to strengthen their moral stance – and eliminate dissent. It isn’t enough to politely disagree – you must denigrate and vilify. Lessing speculates the reason behind this lies with our animal instincts: the instinct to separate into good/bad, black/white etc..

One of her more chilling statements, which she uses when talking about her childhood in war-torn Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), is that we have to accept that there are people in all parts of the world – in every society – who quite simply enjoy barbarism. They enjoy it, and, when society is on the verge of a conflict, these same people will move to the forefront to push things towards violence.

Again, sobering – and pertinent – stuff. Lessing’s tone is unapologetic, yet she does pepper her lectures with humour (albeit darkly at times). One thing to be aware of is that the original lecture was given in 1986; her examples refer to the British mining strike of ’84, the Falklands War, and then-Communist Russia. Obviously, for those not born early enough to remember these conflicts, it may be good to have Wikipedia nearby for a little context. However, her analogies and references are universal and certainly applicable to the debacles we face today. Her speculations are haunting in their honesty and relevance, and I am reminded of someone’s reference to John Ralston Saul’s Voltaire’s Bastards as “a hand grenade disguised as a book”.

Quite true, and we are all the better for reading books such as these.

Prisons We Choose To Live Inside is available for sale at a fine independent bookstore near you, as well as…Powell’s, Amazon, Chapters.

Published by House of Anansi Press (ISBN: 0-88784-5215)

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"Wild Speculation"

…is the response from the president of the U.S. regarding a recently published report detailing alleged White House/Pentagon preparations to preemptively attack Iran.

In The Iran Plans, published in the latest New Yorker, Seymore M. Hersh outlines conversations with several leading Pentagon advisors and international diplomats privy to the escalation of a military plan to ‘address’ the problem with Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Some excerpts:

One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for
the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was
premised on a belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will
humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and
overthrow the government.” He added, “I was shocked when I heard it,
and asked myself, ‘What are they smoking?’ “

Good question. Although there are politically moderate movements in Iranian society – contrary to the country’s depiction in news snippets – bombing the country would probably do more to antagonize these potential allies.

In the words of a Petagon adviser:

He warned [the administration], as did many others, that bombing Iran could provoke “a chain reaction” of attacks on American facilities and citizens throughout the world: “What will 1.2 billion Muslims think the day we attack Iran?”

I would replace ‘1.2’ with ‘6’ and ‘Muslims’ with ‘people’, otherwise – in the grand scheme – we slide into an ethnocentric us vs. them dialogue.

The Pentagon adviser said that, in the event of an attack, the Air Force intended to strike many hundreds of targets in Iran but that “ninety-nine per cent of them have nothing to do with proliferation. There are people who believe it’s the way to operate”—that the Administration can achieve its policy goals in Iran with a bombing campaign, an idea that has been supported by neoconservatives.

(*cough* like Dresden?)

According to a “government consultant with close ties to civilians in the Pentagon”:

The broader aim […] is to “encourage ethnic tensions” and undermine the regime.

As if “ethnic tensions” can be turned on and off like a switch (furthermore – as if they couldn’t come back, a la bin Laden in Afghanistan, to bite the encourager).

I’ve been debating this report with some associates today. One of them thinks that the US will make a move prior to the elections later this year, in the hope that a refreshed ‘wartime administration’ can survive falling polls and drooping support at home. He argues that if the Republicans lose the power of Congress it will be harder for them to make the offensive possible. I personally think this is a very tall order and that, Congress or no Congress, the current US administration will use any means necessary to justify their interpretation of the foreign affairs.

One thing is for sure – the drip, drip, drip of a complacent American media will help to foment support via the usual techniques: a sense of inevitability, fear, and profound doubt in anyone (ie the IAEA, the UN) being able to offer a better solution.

In related news, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is insisting on visiting Germany to boost Iranian team support at this summer’s World Cup. A bit of trivia: the last time the U.S. met Iran at the World Cup, Iran beat them 2-1. Although both countries qualified for 2006, they are in separate groups and neither will find it particularly easy to progress for a possible re-match. Dare to dream.

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Comment: Watch the Packaging

We have never lived in a more duplicitous age of mass-communication.
Partisan propaganda is becoming more insidious and sublime than
ever before.

Here’s the classic setup:

1) First, the delivery: matter-of-fact, neighbourly, and gently
authoritative.

2) Second, the offence: more than just choosing a random offender,
but an offender who acts as a subtle metaphor for a greater (more
dire) concern. For example, rather than choosing someone who (let’s
say for naive reasons) refuses to honour fallen WWII soldiers,
choose someone who is also a university student. Student council would be
perfect: corruption at the root of education. Suddenly (seamlessly) your target
becomes indicative of a classic hate-mongering cliche: the
ungrateful and radical liberal post-secondary environment. This is
the classic stereotype – worked great in Cambodia.

3) Third, compound the offence with a black and white conflict:
heroes and villains. Follow the naive student’s debacle with an
earnest recapitulation involving inarguable tales of those who
bravely fought for our freedom from fascism. Talk about how evil
lurks at every corner and does not care about the democratic rights
of civilians, and how the only tonic for this insidious evil is a
militarised environment: soldiers, police, guards, controllers.
Slowly draw this together with the events proceeding September 11th
2001 and proudly unfurl the [place country here] flag.

4) Fourth, summarize. Condemn the naivety of post-secondary
environments – portray them as liberal oases for myopic elites, while
our downtrodden guardians fight without asking for thanks, against
an all-pervasive evil which is thankful for student dissent.

5) Conclude with a question for the general public: who’s side are you
on?

This is the overarching style indicative of news media formats
today: rhetorical, manipulative, and hate-mongering. It’s all in the
packaging, not the individual stories themselves. Who wouldn’t
believe the student is a naive idiot? Who wouldn’t believe that
soldiers put their lives on the line everyday? Put the two together
and you have cause to be suspicious about what goes on in
post-secondary environments – about the students, teachers, and
those who defend their rights.

It’s similar to documentary filmmaking: there’s no such thing as
objective. The minute you edit footage you are making an intentional
move to direct the discussion in a particular way/format. Words like
‘fair’, ‘balanced’, and ‘objective’ have been twisted like toffee in
the last five years. The end result is: you’re on your own.

Utilize critical thinking at all times. Ask yourself if you’re being
shown the big picture or simply baited. Ask yourself if there is a
perspective that isn’t being allowed into the picture. Ask yourself
if the questions asked are not actually questions, but assumptions
(ie. How long until Quebec separates?).

When you turn on the news, you have no friends.

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CopyWrong

I once watched a PBS-televised lecture featuring writer Clifford Stoll. He wrote one of the first true-life hacker books, called The Cookoo’s Egg (ISBN: 0671-72688-9), about his efforts to track a “telnet” hacker who was using the Berkeley University server hub as a means to tap into the Department of Defense. A very, very good book.

In the lecture he was discussing copyright issues and how it is becoming harder and harder for people to express themselves due to large corporations buying-up the rights and then registering patents for everything from Mickey Mouse to mere phrases/ideas written on cocktail napkins. He said the following (note: I’m paraphrasing due to the fact that it was over 5 years ago that I watched it):

“If we had the same copyright protection rules historically that we have now, you know who the richest people on Earth would be? The League of Greek Mathematicians; because every time you used the Pythagorean Theorem you would have to pay a fee.“

I cannot have chosen a better way to convey how utterly stupid and self-destructive the current copyright laws have become. I’m not arguing against someone protecting the fruits of their invention, however I neither support legally protecting a concept nor extending the patent protecting an invention for more than a reasonable fixed period of time. Historically the reason for patenting an invention was so that the originating inventor would have unabated means (in the marketplace) to collect the rewards of their work/investment – but it wasn’t meant to last forever.

Strangely, this was thwarted by a man who will probably go down in history as “Cher’s first husband”, Sonny Bono. He involved himself in politics and fought (until his death) to extend copyrights indefinitely. One can only speculate that he was concerned “I Got You Babe” wouldn’t net him any more proceeds. Details of this law (amended and passed) are here.

My reasoning is this: the evolution of an idea is often the result of a collaboration of thinkers over a long period of time. When the Principia Mathematica was published, Sir Isaac Newton – when asked about his breakthrough idea of gravity – said that he was only “standing on the shoulders of giants”, namely the likes of Galileo, Kepler, and Copernicus: those who had come before him and provided the necessary groundwork to provide Newton with the tools to complete the picture.

The current environment is simply bad capitalism: dramatically limiting competition and the free evolution of ideas for short term profit. Sad.

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The Vagaries of Vagueness

I would hazard to say, standing in my media-saturated 21st century Western society, that being ‘vague’ is worse than being ‘wrong’. Today, you can be concisely misleading yet never be taken to task by your peers, whereas if you are perceived (even falsely) of ‘waffling’, it is presumed that you are a lower life form and a drag on the sail of civilisation.

Ask John Kerry, the gentleman who ran against the incumbent president of the United States in 2004. Although a confident public speaker, arguably his great shortcoming was an inability to distill his ideas (and, as the campaign wound-down, his reactions) in a precise way. Although he performed well in the presidential debates, off-stage he was generally unable to articulate a clear message at crucial junctures to a large population, many of whom were shopping for a new president. It didn’t help of course that his competitor’s well-funded propaganda machine (abetted by a democratically impotent news media) raised as many distracting peripheral issues as they could. Arguably, by the time Kerry could get back to the task of getting elected, he’d wasted much of his steam as well as the hopes and patience of the US public.

On the other side, the incumbent succeeded in spite of the fact that his administration was clearly contemptuous of journalists, artists, and anyone else who dared to posit difficult questions (being hallmarks of democracy the last time we checked). In other words, in spite of the fact that the administration treated the very people whose job it is to articulate the world around them like rubes, they won. They won a majority. But damn was he clear. Unlike his rival, George W. Bush was firm: cut-and-run, bait-and-switch, flip-flopper. These hyphenated accusations clearly, if inaccurately, conveyed moral and ethical failures within his opponent’s character and ideals. Whether or not his policies were realistic, they were precisely worded: we will not abandon our cause. If you asked what the cause was – easy: democracy.

What I’m saying is that we increasingly reward firmly-stated obfuscations over less impermeable truths.

I often wonder why there is so little true debate in our society, outside of academia. I’ve found that it’s because truth is neither precise, nor is it unyielding. Knowledge is inherently vague – and by knowledge, I don’t mean the concept of knowledge, but rather its practical application in society. Truth is messy; it’s neither red, nor blue, nor grey. Truth is moderated by the lack of absolute answers. The problem of course is that this doesn’t make for nicely-packaged media clips, so what we end up with are endless volleys of increasingly intolerant hyperbole.

When foisted truths are painted in the absolute (some would say fascist) colours of rhetoric the middle-ground of debate is sufficiently suffocated; the public is the loser. And when society’s moderators, the media, are complicit, debate is a moot point altogether. Even a cursory glance at the major news networks (in particular Fox and MSNBC) reveals this partisan implication. Not only is there a lack of interest in debate, but I would dare say that debate is increasingly synonymous with treason. For the last few years, treason has been the word often levelled at anyone questioning America’s involvement in Iraq. Recently, in Canada, the Prime Minister’s office has refused Parliamentary debate of our involvement in Afghanistan, citing ‘security reasons’. We are given the Bush administration’s long-standing argument: we will not cut-and-run. However, I can’t recall anyone initially stating: “Hey, let’s cut and run.”.

There are people, however, who indeed ask necessary questions: the whys, the hows, the whats, etc.. Contrary to the muffling rhetoric from government spokespeople, these necessary questions are not preludes to surrender, nor are they indicative of moral ‘waffling’. They are hallmarks of the very democracy our soldiers are trying (and dying) to instill. When questions that would necessarily draw out a less-than precise response are posited, they are either ignored or condemned. In doing so, our society continues to favour the impermanent solidity of rhetoric. The less solid but more applicable truths wait to be acknowledged, and I fear they will only be addressed in retrospect.

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