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The Internet: social, educational and political impact.
ODDcircle Tue 9 Mar 2010 at The Blue Mugge
1. The pace of technological development and change in communications stemming from
e-mail and the internet is probably unparalleled in human history. Do you agree?
2. The Virtual Revolution (these notes based on BBC 2 Programme of that title,
30th January 2010, onwards, (linked to the OU, which itself represents a remarkable C20 educational revolution using media technology…)
3. The Internet and the Web: information and distinctions… Origins of the idea: 1960s libertarianism and counter-culture. The dream of levelling, using an empowering tool.
4. Tim Berners-Lee working in Geneva, created the first web-site on 6th August 1991. (Yes, less than 20 years ago…)
He believed in sharing information, resisting authority, enabling all users to have equal access, free to all. He was the web’s inventor, ‘and he gave it away’.
5. 1995, Bill Gates and Microsoft. Internet Explorer, with more than 90% of the market.
Two views of ‘sharing’ -
i) libertarian, free-access
ii) the corporate, involving big money. The dot.com boom - and bust. Now 95% of music exchanged on line and not paid for…
6. The Wikipedia phenomenon. ‘Edited from below’ Discussion on this.
“If you don’t believe in progress think of dentistry”…. Consider a similar argument regarding this aspect of the internet revolution?
7. The down-side, maybe: large % of web sites = pornography; masses of trivia.
Consider, afresh, Frank Furedi’s thesis (Where Have All The Intellectuals Gone? Published 2004).
“The intellectual is an endangered species. In place of (C20) people such as Bertrand Russell,
Raymond Williams or Hannah Arendt – people with genuine learning, breadth of vision and a concern for public issues – we now have only facile pundits, think tank apologists and spin doctors. In the age of the knowledge economy, we have somehow managed to combine the widest ever participation in higher education with the most dumbed-down of cultures.”
8. Very recently from the mid-noughties – the rapidly growing impact of the internet on
politics. Consider:
- the Obama campaign and election.
- www.38degrees.org.uk based on the ‘tipping point’ concept…
iii) Avaaz a 3.8 million ‘member’ global campaign network to ‘inform
global decision-making (Avaaz = ‘voice’ or ‘song’ in many languages).
iv) www.change.orgActionAlert campaign network directed primarily at US policy
makers but: ‘Dear Derek (in Leek) ‘Obama’s new climate policy…’”.
v) our own, and everybody’s, remarkable www.opendemocracy.net
9. The forth-coming election here: political party and other web-sites. What impact?
Shops and Shopping
ODDc Tue 2 Mar 2010 at The Blue Mugge
Last week’s session on Leek History and Heritage only, as ever, scratched the surface on several key issues. This week we will take further some themes raised, but not engaged with, in more detail, beginning with ‘shopping’:
1. Our memories of childhood shops and shopping… No more than 2 minutes each on this.
2. What has changed?
Prioritise, and add to, these thoughts: shopping by car; supermarkets; hypermarkets; out-of-town shopping; internet shopping; smaller trader-independent shops and town centre issues; the Co-op; Charity shops; City Shopping Malls;
multi-national/trans-national conglomerates; consumer capitalism > M&S ‘Simply Food’ developments… Only a few minutes each on these and other added thoughts.
3. Social and psychological impact of the above: ‘retail therapy’; shopping is, apparently, the favourite pass-time/hobby/free-time activity for most citizens… implications?
4. Impact of 2, on city and town centres, villages: advantages and disadvantages.
5. The future - to plan or not to plan…
6. Moving discussion back to Leek; prioritise issues from the above related to
Leek, its Heritage and Future.
7. How many supermarkets? Where, ideally? ‘People-power and the Mighty Tesco’!
8. Leek Market/s and the Roger Warrilow concept: ‘The world’s first open-air supermarket’ launched in Leek…
9. Tourism and shopping. Tourists visit, say, a museum and then buy things there and
locally… Heritage, tourism and the local economy…
10. So, the final big issue for this week: A Leek Arts and Heritage Centre. Where?
The Foxlowe re-visited, maybe…
………………………………………………………………………………..
If we don’t get to 10: to be continued… after Easter.
Leek History, Culture and Heritage
ODDc Tue 23 Feb 10 at The Blue Mugge
Based on notes from John Newall, who has formidable knowledge and experience of Leek’s history and heritage. DT will chair but John – and others in the circle with specialist knowledge – will answer questions on the following, leading to discussion on the heritage issues outlined, and any other key issues raised by the circle.
1. i) Leek has been here for a long time, witness the Saxon Cross in St. Edward's churchyard which must date from between, say, the C5th and C8th…
ii) The Cistercian Abbey of Dieulacres was founded through the influence of Ranulf, Earl of Chester in the mid C13th and St. Edward's Church in the early C14th…
iii) Thomas Parker was born in the building now home to "The Bandits" and Roger Warrilow's cafe and clock-shop at the top of the Market Place in 1666….
iv) Then the Young Pretender made his way through the town in 1745 on his way to Derby.
v) Some time before then, ie in the first quarter of the C18th, the textile industry had started…
vi) Then from 1803 to 1814 there were the Napoleonic French prisoners of war on parole in the town,…
vii) The really strong growth of the textile industry began in the mid-C19th, and the influence of the leading families of the industry such as Brough, Nicholson, Davenport, Hall, Ward, Watson and particularly that of Thomas Wardle is well known. Also the latter's close contacts with the Pre-Raphaelites and the Arts and Crafts Movement in which his friend William Morris was so influential.
viii) We also remember civic benefactors such as Mrs Crusoe and the establishment of the Almshouses on the corner of Compton and Broad St in the C17th.
ix) Then we have the grand houses such as Highfield, Westwood Hall, Ball Haye Hall, Ashenhurst, etc.
x) The great influence of architects - the Sugdens, father and son, and also Norman Shaw - is seen to this day…
xi) As is the heritage of such men of the legal profession like William Challinor and their influence on the Leek Improvemenmt Commissioners in the banishing of water-borne diseases, etc.
xii) Plus the many interests in sport, theatre, the arts and not forgetting the proud history of the Leek Volunteers and the Leek Battery, Royal Artillery, which served with such distinction in the First World War..
2. Any other people or events meriting mention in any short list?
3. How important is Leek’s history and heritage?
4. How many citizens of Leek have knowledge of the above history? 10% 30% 50% 70% or more?
5. What has been done to try to make Leek’s rich history and heritage more widely known and accessible? Is Leek’s exceptional architectural heritage fully appreciated?
6. What more should be done now to improve the situation?
7. More work in Schools and Colleges?
8. Comment on the value of Museums and Heritage Centres for towns generally.
9. Creating one in Leek - when and where? How?
10. Heritage & Tourism: its importance for the economy of Leek?
Englishness and the British State
ODDc Tue 9 Feb 10 at The Blue Mugge
Notes based on articles from www.opendemocracy.net (type ‘Englishness’ for search).
1. What do we know, with the above theme in mind, about the history of England, Britain
and the UK? Relevant key dates?
2. How would you define or identify yourself: English; British; UK citizen;
Welsh-Leekensian; European; Citizen of the World…?
Has your idea on your ‘identity’, as above, changed over the years?
3. Where are your sporting loyalties: The English football team; Rugby? Cricket?
Tennis? Does it matter?
4. ‘Britain is in the grip of a profound identity crisis…’ Do you agree?
5. Not so long ago… ‘England and Great Britain were indivisible…
Devolution changed all that….’
6. ‘The English have begun to separate their English and British identities at a subjective
and psychological level.’
7. ‘Three nations in the UK now possess a representative assembly. The fourth, the
largest – England – does not.’
8. From a research survey, reported in the Telegraph, this month:
Only 1 in 10 MPs support the Parliamentary status quo.
There is, it seems, a clear mandate for reform
However, MPs are intensely divided over what to do –
91% of Conservative MPs believe Scottish MPs should be barred from
voting on English matters
77% of Labour MPs oppose such a move.
There is more unity over the distribution of public spending across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland: 62% of all MPs believe the current distribution is unfair.’
Philosophy - Jean Paul Sartre
ODDc Tue 2 Feb 10 at The Blue Mugge
Notes based on the In our Time broadcast, October 2004. You can listen to this – go to the BBC Radio 4 In our Time website > Archives > Philosophy > Sartre…
1. Jean Paul Sartre (1905 – 1980): French novelist, playwright, philosopher was a mid-century focus of intellectual influence. His own life was coloured by jazz, affairs, Simone de Beauvoir, an extraordinary output of plays, novels, biographies, philosophical treatises and the camaraderie of intellectual discussion in the cafes of the Left Bank…
What else do we know about him? Bourgeois background, education, where he lived, what he looked like, what he did and wrote?
2. He produced some wonderful statements: ‘My heart is on the left, like everyone else’s’ or ‘A human person is what he is not, not what he is’; or ‘We are condemned to be free’.
3. In his first novel, exploring biography and auto-biography - ‘we are condemned to
misunderstand ourselves’… ‘life as stories… but there’s no such thing as a true story.’. His own autobiography: “it’s all an illusive retrospective”… We gain “a sense of ourselves from the world and from other people.”.
4. France and German Nazi occupation: he wrote a Nativity play in a prison camp –
an appeal to resistance; back in Paris, Les Mouches also encouraging resistance.
He survived and was allowed some freedom under the Nazis…
He wrote “The French were never so free as when under Nazi occupation”.
What did he mean by that?
5. ‘Man is condemned to be free’ - it’s about consciousness. We can be aware of what is not taking place… we can always understand things in different ways… This freedom is inescapable and we don’t like or want the responsibility…
6. Writing and politics. Writing is a form of resistance, thinking things out for yourself.. political because challenging. Challenging what? The taken-for-granted.
Of course, one can write supporting the taken-for-granted. But that’s inauthentic, compared with the challenging, committed writing which is authentic.
7. Relationship with Simone de Beauvoir - their lives and intellectual interests inter-twined.
Her book, The Second Sex .. ‘we are born into a set of stories… these are not necessarily your own. You make your own… Femininity is the enemy…’
8. Post-war Paris - food shortages, situation worse than earlier… Issue of occupation:
Nazi, American, Soviet? Sartre threw his lot in with the Soviet Union (few illusions about what had happened there, but that was the side to be on). Camus, very different – working class, Algerian: Camus ‘took a soft line on issues like justice and truth’.
Camus saw the USSR as ‘the big enemy’. They were friends who fell out, over this and Algeria.
9. Existentialism and Marxism. Sartre wanted to link the two – ‘combining a way of thinking about collective experience (class and conditioning) with the idea of making ourselves, our own stories. Marxism ‘a bigger story…’.
10. Sartre’s legacy: ‘a philosopher in the public sphere’…
Women and Domesticity
ODDc at The Blue Mugge Tue 19 Jan 2010
Notes based on BBC Radio 4 Thinking Allowed (TA) November 2008. Please listen to this if you can; go to web archive as above.
Amanda Vickery, Reader in Modern British Women’s History, Royal Holloway, London University talking to Laurie Taylor.
1.Quoting from 18th C. British manuals on Housekeeping and Domesticity:
‘A woman’s place is in the home’
Desirable that ‘a woman of tolerable good sense organises the house’
2.Importance of shopping from !8C - a female province ‘the delicacy of her taste will
delight you’…
3.‘Domestication’ ‘not a word or glamour - rather suggests incarceration…’
4.LT: ‘The desire to have a home of your own, a distinctively British feature of marriage?
Yes, since 17C at least (Northern European…)
In Southern Europe, China etc… more reliance on ‘household of kin’.
5.In Britain, the household seen as a microcosm of the State:
‘The master rules the household, but needs to delegate…
Hence women exert considerable influence and even rule areas of the household.’
(!8th C ‘middling classes’ )
6.The arrival of Tea - crucial for the traffic of ‘visiting’ - women again having considerable
power and influence in this sphere; a division of labour, women responsible for décor
and domestic aesthetics. All this within the ‘middling classes’.
What about the other classes and divisions of labour?
7.That’s history - let’s bring it up-to-date. Women and domesticity in 20C Britain
Taking themes from above and elaborating (briefly) within our up-date.
8.The big issue of child-rearing and nurture. Predominently the women’s responsibility
through the C20 but done without payment (from the State)…
9.The impact of feminism on all this.
10.Recent ‘scientific evidence’ that women are better than men at ‘multi-tasking’..
This going back to hunter-gatherer millenia and therefore deep in our natures and psyches - men single-mindedly hunting, women nurturing and caring for everything back at base
Or is this too bio-deterministic? New men ‘house-husbands’; greater sharing of domestic, child-rearing and household management making men just as good at multi-tasking….
How to talk about things we know nothing about
ODDc Tue 15 Dec 09 at The Blue Mugge
Notes based on OD article (www.opendemocracy.net), 21.2.2008 by Keith Kahn-Harris of Goldsmith’s College, University of London
1. Keith KH refers to several books on this theme leading to focus on these questions: How is it possible to be culturally literate when
a) one cannot read everything b) one forgets much of what one reads
c) one’s knowledge of any book or area of knowledge is always partial?
2. By the end of the 19th Century it had become difficult if not impossible to be a polymath…. to be expert in both the natural and the human sciences; (and more recently) difficult to achieve expertise outside one’s own narrow field…. The age of the expert had arrived.
3. What happens when experts disagree? Experts interpret vast swathes of data in often mutually incompatible ways… Politics consists, in part, in choosing which expert to believe and choosing what response to expert knowledge is most appropriate.
4. The ability to judge things we know nothing about is indispensible …The starting point of this ability should be an admission of the scope and nature of our ignorance. Donald Rumsfeld’s ‘known unknowns’ is helpful here. We cannot know everything but we can, more or less, estimate accurately the dimensions of our ignorance.
5. Examples given of people making arrogant assumptions about things they know
nothing about:
a) Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion - an expert on evolutionary biology writing about the evolutionary value of religion…
b) David Irving denying the holocaust. KKH argues that non-scholars can identify (with help at least) bad scholarship…
6. These examples suggest, paradoxically, that it is through honesty about what we
do not know that we are able to speak with greater authority…
7. Arguments that acknowledge the possibility of being revised (open-ended) are more powerful…than arguments based on arrogance.
8. Owning up to what we do not know is difficult in our political system but for better policy making it is a necessity…
9. How, in a bewildering world, can human beings balance their inescapable ignorance against the necessity to act?
10. We should recognise… areas on the map of knowledge that lie beyond one’s
understanding, should be met by respectful silence… An appreciation of irony, together with a tendency towards self-deprecation, should perhaps be a precondition for contributing to public discussion…
What are the limits of parental control? Does the State have the right or duty to intervene in parental decisions?
ODDc Tue 8 Dec 09 at The Blue Mugge
Notes by John Newall, who will also chair the session.
The theme for this debate has been prompted by the recent case of the 14 year-old Dutch girl, Laura Dekker, who planned to be the youngest person to sail single-handed around the world. Her father encouraged her to do this but the Dutch authorities made her a ward-of-court to prevent him and her from carrying out their wish.
(Note: The word "State" is also taken to mean the "Authorities" in general, be they municipal, health, educational, etc.)
Up until the middle of the 1800's the State had, generally, less control over the actions of individual citizens than is the case today. That is not to say that the Authorities, for example concerning religious observance, did not prescribe certain forms of faith and worship and forbid deviation from those forms and which are now, in Western countries at least, matters entirely for the individual to decide.
What has happened, gradually over the years is that, mainly for humanitarian reasons, society has accepted the need for legislation to eliminate gross injustices, like slavery, and to encourage good behaviour and discourage the bad, eg:
The gradually increasing control of the use of child labour,
Introduction of compulsory education,
Restraint on the possibility of exploitation in all its forms,
The curbing of domestic violence. etc.
These measures over-rode the desires of adults in organizing their own lives and the lives of others, whether dependent or not.
It having become unacceptable to society that children should have to submit to the sometimes violent whims or actions of their parents, The NSPCC was established in 1884.
This increasing recognition of the potentially vulnerable position of children led to the concept of "childrens' rights" and the introduction of rules to protect children still further from potential harm.
The question is:
Does the State have the right or duty to intervene when the child's or young person's rights are not being abused and the question of safety can be regarded as a matter of opinion, not fact? One thinks of the recent case when the Authorities wanted two mothers who looked after each others' children in turn, an arrangement which had lasted for several years, to undergo CRB checks to establish their suitability and non-criminality.
Does the State have the right to intervene in some cases, eg Laura Dekker, perhaps, because if the parent makes an error of judgement and something goes wrong, a whole range of actions - coastguard, police, rescue and medical services etc. is called into play, largely paid for by the State and levied in taxes?
But why should the State think that its collective judgement is more sound than that of an individual? Have we reached some kind of end-point, however ill-defined, beyond which we cannot go?
All life involves a risk. The State can't legislate for every aspect of human activity. Should people be free to live their own lives, take their own decisions and live with the consequences of their actions, "warts and all"?
The Fibonacci Sequence and Symmetry
ODDc Tue 1 Dec 09 at The Blue Mugge
Notes based on IoT broadcasts April and November 2007. The IoT archive can be accessed on the BBC Radio 4 website.
1. ‘1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21…. This is the beginning of the Fibonacci sequence, an infinite string of numbers named after but not invented by the 13th Century Italian mathematician Fibonacci. From the Parthenon to pine cones, from the petals of a sunflower to the paintings by Leonardo da Vinci the Fibonacci sequence … is all around us.’
This extraordinary and important mathematics was known about in India six centuries earlier and written about in Islamic Spain two centuries before Fibonacci.
Did you learn anything about all this at school?
2. The relationship between the F. sequence and the Golden Ratio - member/s of the group
will explain briefly…
3. In Nature - rabbits, cauliflowers and pineapples…
4. Mathematics underpinning aesthetics
In Art - Leonardo
In Music - Bach, Bartok and Debussy
In Architecture - Corbusier
5. In the 1990s it was discovered that the sequence is the best and most efficient form of
‘packing’ – getting the most into the least.
6. ‘Symmetry: from the most perfect forms in nature like the snowflake and the butterfly to
our perceptions of beauty in the human face
Aristotle: Symmetry is one of the greatest forms of beauty in the mathematical sciences.’
7. Define ‘Symmetry’
8. A brief history of symmetry in science - from the broadcast
9. Symmetry in nature, art and music
10. Group theory, Einstein, atoms, the building blocks of nature, matter and anti-matter, a slightly non-symmetric universe, the Monster… How does all this affect our real, everyday world in Leek?
A collective attempt to clarify and explain…
The State of India
ODDc Tue 24 Nov 09 at The Blue Mugge pub
1. General impressions. What image/s do you have of India? Is part of the problem we’ll face in this discussion the sheer size, scale and diversity of the place?
2. Another problem may be that we know little, in detail, about the history.
What do we know, for example, about:
* The Indus Valley Civilisation
* The Harrapan Civilisations … ‘advanced in science and even dentistry;
urban planning, world’s first sanitation system’;
* The Maurya Dynasty… religions of that time
* The Golden Age of India
‘Huge achievements across sciences and arts (decimal numeral system
and concept of zero)’
* The Middle Kingdoms of India
* The Mughal Empire
* The British Raj
* Ghandi
3. How much were we taught about any of the above at School?
Issues that flow from this…
4. India today - The State of India - Federal, 28 states and 7 union territories.
The Indian Parliament, with state legislatures, elects the President.
So, there are different states, and this makes generalisation difficult –
take Kerala, for example, with an over 90% literacy rate (the highest in
India).
5. Tensions and conflicts in contemporary India.
The caste system; religious differences; regional and national conflicts.
6. 18 languages recognised in India by its constitution. On a bank note, 15
languages are represented. There are 1600 minor languages and dialects.
7. Literature and film: for example, Western perspectives: ‘A Passage to India’,
‘Slumdog Millionaire’; consider, Bollywood.
8. Indian food - curry now the favourite British dish…
9. Other important issues…
10. What role will India, with its 1.17 billion people, play in 21st century global
economics and politics?
Football
ODDc Tue Nov 17 2010 at The Blue Mugge
Notes from Deborah and Martin Hofman, with Derek Tatton
1. “Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it's much more serious than that.” (Bill Shankly).
2.What were the major development shifts in professional football over the last 50 years?
Consider:
Players: Cf. Stanley Matthews, George Best, David Beckham.
Managers - a book and film about Brian Clough, for example
Owners
Fans
Football hooliganism
Stadia: ‘Cathedrals of the 21st century’
Commentators and the media: the ‘Match of the Day’ phenomenon
3.Is football a reflection of our society, or is it an influence on it? Or both?
- Football as a microcosm of society and globalization?
- Football and class; football and language ‘He’s a quality player…’;
- Race, racism > black players, managers and owners…
4. ‘The beautiful game’ - is this part of its enduring, ever growing, appeal?
- “Aesthetics and football: You must be joking?”
5.Has the connection between professional clubs and their home towns gone forever?
Does it matter who plays for the club you support?
……………………………………………………………………………………………
6.Wealth and celebrity issues.
7.‘Religion … is the opium of the people’’ Karl Marx1848
‘Football… is the opium of the masses’ Marxist, 2005.
8.Gender issues: women are now fans, players and owners… Future take-over…
9.Rugby and Cricket are different… Hockey certainly is… or is all sport going the same way?
10. “Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy,
boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other
words it is war minus the shooting.”
George Orwell, 1950.
Why the enduring/ever increasing appeal of watching/supporting football ?
Why has it never sustainably taken off in North America ?
Hope these all help !
See you next week.
Kindest regards
Martin
P.S. Deborah and I have booked for the Socrates weekend !
Socrates
ODDCc Tue 10 Nov 09 at The Blue Mugge
Notes based on the IoT broadcast, Sep 07 also published in the book In our Time edited by Melvyn Bragg (2009)
1. What do we know about Socrates? Did you learn anything about him or about philosophy at school? If not, do you think you should have done?
2. Why didn’t he write anything down?
‘… there are dangers in the art of writing. Because you can’t discuss with a book,
it can’t answer you back.
Basically, he thought once it was written down it wasn’t malleable, it wasn’t
plastic, it was set in a stone no idea should be set in…
He…claimed he didn’t know anything – he didn’t have any understanding, he was
still working on it. And, therefore, he wasn’t in a position to write a book… his
philosophical activity was essentially an oral, interpersonal, interactive one.’
3. What was ‘the Socratic method’?
‘His method has come to be known as the elenchus, which means cross-examination
or interrogation or quizzing. Plato regarded him as the founder of dialectic, which is
really the science of working towards truth.’
4. Fundamentals? He ‘…took the view that the most fundamental question you could ask
people about anything is - what is it? Take for example ‘Is virtue teachable?’
… first of all we need to know what ‘virtue’ is?’ Let’s try this out: is virtue teachable?
5. There had been earlier philosophers… what was radical and new about Socrates?
‘Cicero put it well… he says that Socrates was the first to bring philosophy down from
the heavens and into the towns and people’s homes…. He starts off with what he
believes should be the fundamental question of life - how should it be lived?’
5. His own answer is maybe more controversial - ‘life should be lived flourishingly… and the virtuous life is the flourishing life… the Greek word is audaimonia and there is an element of subjective happiness and feeling good in it… but it’s also a more objective concept… actualising your potential as a human being.’
6. ‘… if virtue is knowledge, then we get to his most radical claim of all, which is that vice is ignorance.’
7 ‘It is interesting how much he was mixed up in war, he was deeply mixed up in politics, he was deeply mixed up in philosophy…’ Readings and comment on this.
8. The trial of Socrates and his death sentence - short readings, then comment on this.
9. Socrates’ philosophical influence: ‘… the only important good is wisdom…
‘all philosophical questions must admit to opposed points of view, they can never be
closed down… you can never rest content with your beliefs… every question must be
re-opened and re-examined…. That was invariably the message of Socrates and that
was what made Socrates’ life an exemplary life.’
10. ‘The unexamined life is not worth living’.
The Future of Books and Libraries
ODDcircle Tue 3 Nov 09 at The Blue Mugge
1. Books in your life - how important? When, why? What kind of books do you read now?
2. Some more quotes: ‘A book is made better by good readers, and clearer by good opponents’ Nietzsche
‘All books are divisible into two classes: books of the hour; books of all time’ Ruskin
‘The true university … a collection of books’ Carlyle
3. Libraries in your life - when, why?
4. What do we know about the history of libraries? Fill out from this -
- In Britain, early town libraries - Norwich in 1608 followed shortly after by Ipswich, Bristol and
Leicester.
- The 1850 Public Libraries Act was the foundation of the modern public library system.
5. In what ways are book buying and borrowing changing?
‘Book issues have seriously declined in recent years’ Society of Chief Librarians.
Closures of 2nd hand book shops. On the other hand, books relatively cheap to buy...
6. Current funding problems for libraries: cuts, closures and reduction of capabilities.
Changes in many libraries:
a) for example, shelves now in Leek Library devoted to: ‘romances’;
‘crime’; ‘celebrity biographies’; ‘thrillers’; ‘Sci-fi and fantasy’. No Dewey system, no
Dostoevsky, no Flaubert, no Thomas Mann, little poetry available!
b) Universities - concentrating on set-texts; selling, or getting rid of, a wide range of ‘old’ books.
7. ‘Dumbing-down’ re-visited: Frank Furedi’s argument ‘In the age of the knowledge economy we
have somehow managed to combine the widest ever participation in higher education with the most
dumbed-down of cultures’. Furedi’s book Where Have all the Intellectuals Gone? (subtitled:
‘Confronting 21st century philistinism’ (2004) was stimulated by his under-graduate students telling
him that, in many cases, students could spend an entire year at university without reading a whole
book’.
8. Little more than 50% of the population use public libraries. What % never read a book? The recession
making this worse – in the USA reports that some of the 16,000 public libraries could be shut down or
privatised. Similar in Britain?
9. More optimistically, maybe: Google’s plans to digitize the world’s books and create the world’s largest
library on-line. The rise of e-books….
“Libraries benefit from rise of e-books” Telegraph headline, 26 Oct 09.
10. The word ‘library’ is set to fade from our vocabulary - but not because we’ve fallen out with books.
Welcome: ‘Idea Stores’ with coffee bar, crèches, and multi-media offerings. The rise of ‘reading
groups’ and ‘loud rooms’ that promote public discussions and group projects that are taking over
from the bookish quiet spaces…; placing greater emphasis on local issues and local politics,
providing information for an informed citizenry….
CITIZENSHIP - 5
Open Circle or ODD Group
Tuesday 27th October 2009 at the Blue Mugge pub, Leek
This is the fifth visit to this theme. Previous discussions examined:
* Citizenship as a national curriculum subject (2002) and the Power Inquiry (2006) challenged the perception of political parties and the citizens’ role;
* Whether community groups, residents associations, etc could generate better understanding in applying citizenship as a theme in traditional subjects and for living;
* Sustainable Communities Act (2007) as a means of generating social well-being – but central govt obsession with ‘leadership’ may frustrate this;
* Case study of Democracy4Stoke; was it inevitable that central govt would dictate to local ? Also asked if a written Constitution and greater political literacy would help.
The 2009 Reith Lectures, given by Prof. Michael Sandel of George Washington University, examined the concept of a new “Politics of the Common Good” which had two strands – the moral limits of the market and a public debate on morality.
1. He claims that the last 30 years in the USA and the UK have seen markets used to achieve the public good through ‘market mimicking governance’ but although the financial crisis ended ‘market triumphalism’ there was no new philosophy to replace this model. (Or was it that governments felt they could correct market failures by the use of taxes and/or subsidies ? What other mechanisms exist to fill this vacuum ?)
2. The use of cost benefit analysis to justify policies puts a monetary value on human life. The example of Philip Morris persuading the Czech Govt that it was in their interest not to tax tobacco since smokers die earlier and this saved $147m a year in pensions, health care, etc took no account of their quality of life. Many other examples point to spurious calculations to correct ‘market failures’ used by the Reagan and Thatcher governments due, for example, to pollution or where it is impossible to collect a charge from a consumer. (The 1971 book “Limits to Growth” pre-dated some of this argument. Was this ignored due to the operation of vested interests ?)
3. The arbitrary value put on intangiblesled Clinton and New Labour to think they could ‘tweak’ markets by governance but democracy is more than just improving markets and includes a notion of justice in ensuring healthy institutions through solidarity. Sandel quotes MacMillan and JFK on pragmatism – especially the former’s; “If you want a sense of purpose go to an archbishop – not a politician”. (Have we drifted away from social solidarity ? Why ? Can we reverse this trend ?)
4. Movements for social reform change attitudes as well as the law. Sandel gives the example of health where (in the UK) a taxpayer-financed system does not rely on the consumers’ ability to pay and uses social solidarity to justify this. In the US Obama has not yet managed this since it has not been possible to summon the social solidarity necessary – which demands certain responsibilities of citizenship. (In the UK recent changes in the law have promised this but have they delivered ?)
5. Inequality has increased in the last 30 years and has meant the ‘hollowing out’ of social life and the growth of ‘gated’ communities, private health clubs etc. Rather than focusing on private consumption a politics of the common good would rebuild social infrastructure (schools, transport, health, etc). Sandel rejects as ‘outlandish’ the notion that ethics, altruism and fellow-feeling are scarce resources which become depleted with use - like commodities. He claims, on the contrary, that these values actually become stronger with use, rather like the muscles of the human body, and more involvement would draw people into a democratic citizenship. “The politics of civic and moral renewal depends on a more strenuous exercise of these civic virtues”. (Sandel has just published a book on ‘justice’ based on some of the above and a few weeks ago we referred to another book, “The Spirit Level”, which looked at equality and ‘happiness’ using the ‘gini index’. What will persuade governments to take these arguments on board when drafting and implementing social and economic policies?)
redmik.
The Chinese Capitalist Revolution
ODDcircle Tue 20 Oct 09 at The Blue Mugge
Notes based on TV documentary, summer 09, with the same title, odn articles: China Local/China Global by Kerry Brown, Beijing’s Credibility Crisis by Datong and What Was Communism by Fred Halliday.
1.
Comment by those who saw the TV programme and/or have read the above or any other relevant book/s or articles.
2. What do we know about Mao, Maoism and the Cultural Revolution?
3.The exceptionally good and informative TV documentary focused on Deng Xiaoping’s (1904 – 1997) leadership in China from 1978 to the early 1990s.
4.His economic policies were at odds with Mao – he was purged twice during the Cultural Revolution.
5.
Deng was ‘a reformer who led China towards market economics’Issues and problems - relations with USA; 1980s state industries no longer under state control, factories closed, crime soared, inflation went up, corruption scandals, Martial law, Tianamin Square, Deng forced into retirement then in 1991 (aged 87) his ‘southern tour’ inaugurated the second round of reforms, establishing a market economy.
6.
Deng led Chinese economic reforms through a synthesis of theories known as ‘socialist market economy’.
What is ‘socialist/communist’ in contemporary China?
7.
When Deng died in 1997 the Chinese economy growing at 10% pa. The TV programme credited Deng with advancing China into becoming one of the fasted growing economies.
8.
Our commentators (above) present a more nuanced, sombre, picture…
9.The credit crunch has arrived… college students facing unemployment, colleges told to sell off land, get more fee-paying overseas students… Conflicts, violent protests
and disorder across a range of issues and geographical areas.
10.
Democratic reforms - from Deng onwards…
11.‘Old style communists who have survived the period when capitalism ruled in all but name say they were right all along. The once might system of Western Capitalism is in deep trouble’.
The way forward now for this huge country and economy?
Humour – and Stand-up Comedians
ODDcircle Tue 13 Oct 09 at The Blue Mugge
Notes based on Lecture by David Kelso delivered in Esperanto at Festivals in Kondoros, Hungary and at Barlaston, Stoke-on-Trent, Summer 2009.
- The first, most ancient, theory about the human sense of humour was the ‘superiority theory’. A clown in a circus, or the King’s Court Clown, creating amusement by humiliating himself – falling over, saying and doing silly things – and hence helping his spectators feel superior. This kind of humour may also involve mocking the weak, the less intelligent, the less talented, the lower orders – again feeding the sense of superiority in the audience.
-
But consider the Clown further - amusing and comical, yes but characteristically face-painted to convey unhappiness, tears and no smiles: Take Charlie Chaplin as a clown - minor catastrophes, suffering, tragedy even, but we the non-sufferers may enjoy our security, our seeming superiority watching the pitfalls, his failures.
-
Another interesting theory: humour and games, including word-games. Children enjoy role-play (doctors, nurses, fathers, mothers, soldiers, conflicts) and through these simulations help adapt, learn, develop in a secure not-so-threatening way.
Humour operates similarly.
-
Why so many ‘mother-in-law’ jokes? Actually, the relations between men and women, husbands and wives, mothers and daughters, family and social mores are exceptionally complicated - intimate and personal yet social and convention-determined. Humour helps us negotiate this difficult territory.
-
Move on to the ‘Relief Theory’ - arguably the most important. Humour offering
liberation, freedom from stress, enabling difficult and embarrassing things to be
said and engaged with, but not head-on. Freud advanced this theory – human
existence is inevitably stressful so it’s necessary for us to develop strategies to
relieve the angst, the stress. Humour can work wonders, helping us deal with taboos, tricky and dangerous subjects – like mothers-in-law!
-
Taking this further: humour through a kind of game, allows the ego to escape the taboos of the super-ego. Our conscience/ego does not permit certain dark and dangerous thoughts. Deep down this creates frustration but, according to Freud, the resulting psychic-negative-energy escapes, is released, through humour.
‘Laughter is the best medicine’ - recent evidence supports this.
- Consider this aphoristic summary; ‘Humour deals in surprises, shocks, without menace’ Some jokes that illustrate this….
- Is humour universal? National stereotypes - the German sense of humour?
Jewish jokes, jokes about Scots, the Irish… humour and racism, sexism, ageism…
There are limits, we assume…
- Researchers in a university have been trying to find ‘the best joke ever…’ One or two examples. Stand-up Comics. A review of the phenomenon: over-rated, over-paid, over-the-top - or, more positively….
- Humour in Literature, Drama, Film and on TV. It’s a funny old world, maybe.
Philosophy - Hobbes
ODDcircle Tue 29 Sep 09 at The Blue Mugge
These notes based on the In our Time broadcast, December 2005.
1. Comment by those who have listened to the programme (accessible on BBC IoT archive)
giving a little information on Hobbes’ life and times and key points from the programme for discussion - if not mentioned below.
2. The most famous quote from Hobbes is that where he describes human ungoverned existence as ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’.
3. “In the state of nature, ungoverned man lived life in ‘continual fear and danger of violent death’. The only way out of this ‘solitary, poor etc.‘ existence is to submit to one all-powerful absolute sovereign.
4. Hobbes assumed that man is naturally selfish, driven by appetites to increase pleasure and avoid pain. There is no natural limit to these clashes of individual wills.
5. So, it is rational for human beings to give up their individual selfish rights to one sovereign
supreme body (which may be a person or deliberative assembly…). Hobbes supported an absolute monarchy - the problem with democracy is that it is difficult (and slow) to make decisions.
6. Hobbes was a materialist. He could see no objective foundation for moral concepts like
‘goodness’. Moral words are not clear, they are coloured by our appetites. We’re basically concerned about what’s good for me. We, therefore, create our own ‘good’.
7. Hence, we enter into a covenant or social contract handing authority to a sovereign body to act for us. This authority has military power but also ethical/religious power offering otherwise isolated and vulnerable individuals ‘conditions of protection’.
8. Hobbes did not believe in ‘the soul’ or ‘spiritual beings’. The origins of all our cognition =
our senses. He wanted to liberate people from hell and devils. These beliefs were, of course, consistent with his materialism, but he faced heresy charges for holding and advancing them.
9. The foundation of Hobbes’ pessimistic political philosophy is that of ‘fear’. What we ask, and need, of the State is protection. Legitimate government involves the power to protect and terrify (to maintain order).
10. To escape the state of war, we enter a social contract (self-interested co-operation) and any abuses by the sovereign body are accepted as the price for peace.
DT
Target Culture’ and ‘Performance Management’
ODDc Tue 22 Sep 09 at The Blue Mugge pub
Notes using comments from John Newall (not unfortunately able to attend the meeting) and a letter from Bill Cawley with the head-line Target-led culture destroying way of life in this week’s Post and Times.
1. “(Targets) … introduced with the best intentions… but so often fall into the hands of … ‘zealots’ who push the thing to …counter-productive extremes (the latest proposals regarding child protection are a case in point).
2 “The Culture encourages two things: a) Box-ticking… enables organisations to produce a ‘clear bill of health’, which may not bear much resemblance to the real state of affairs.
b) Over-centralisation and target setting has been the bane of everyone’s life. Started under MaggieT. the present Labour administrations have made it worse… control from the centre… slowly killing this country”. JN
3. “The news that SMDC is to get tough with errant motorists… issuing more parking tickets because of a failure to meet a target… follows a trend. Last Christmas, traffic wardens gained publicity because parishioners attending Christmas Eve Mass were issued with parking tickets outside a church in Hanley… enhanced bonuses for the wardens.”
4. “In education, nationally imposed targets – according to a Cambridge University report on Primary Education – are impoverishing the learning of young students.”
5. “NHS CEOs’, under duress are forced to enact obligatory performance targets that have had a corrupting influence on the delivery of care in the NHS, which is seen at its most stark in Stafford hospital.” (Another example) … “Trolleys in hospital corridors have their wheels removed so they become beds, thereby meeting a target”…
6. Costs - (consultants, computer-systems…) “It has been calculated that performance management costs an average size local authority £1,000,000 per year.”
7. “National targets constitute a narrowing view about what the public service is there to provide – the targets become an end in themselves…”
8. “Performance management culture and the targets that underpin this thinking are exercising a corrosive influence on public life.”
BC
9. “We live in measuring times… Nothing escapes the modern measurers”
Journalist, Martin Kettle.
Can we think of any activities that have escaped?
10. Finally, tease out the wisdom of this:
“We should measure that which is valuable,
but not just value that which is measurable.”
DT
Grandparents
ODDc Tue 15 Sep 09 at The Blue Mugge pub
- A few personal comments and reflections from those who wish - maybe, raising themes which we may develop :
- Grandparents through history. Comment on changes across different social and cultural experiences.
- ‘It’s great to be grand’. The pleasures and the advantages…
- 4 in 5 teenagers say grandparents are the most important people outside immediate family.
- Demographic change and the grandparent agenda:
- the extended family getting more complex, fragmented…
Consider these facts – in Britain there are:
- 14 million grandparents; 1.5 million are under-50
- 300,000 children are being raised by grandparents
- Several million grandparents look after their grandchildren for
5 days a week.
- 1 million children are unable to see their grandchildren because of
family separation.
- Many children have more than four grandparents (step families)
- “The state of grandparents’ rights is terrible” says a US family lawyer who frequently goes to the courts representing grandparents seeking visitations or custody.
- Review the current situation in Britain on rights and responsibilities.
- There are now a number of grandparent self-help groups and networks.
Poems from Paintings
ODDc Tue 21 July 09 at The Blue Mugge pub
Images of the paintings will be available. The debate will centre round the paintings and the poems that have resulted from them.
Old Master - Breughel's Fall of Icarus
W.H. Auden Musee des Beaux Arts
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking
dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood;
They never fogot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance; how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
…………………………………………………………………..
Painting - Van Gogh Portrait of Dr Gachet - 2 poems
Not part of the Health Service;
no-one to pass his failures
on to.The eyes like quinine
have the same medicative
power. With one hand
on cheek,
the other
on the equivocal foxglove
he listens to life as it describes
its symptoms, a doctor
becoming a patient himself
of art’s diagnosis
He lacked the connections
that ordinary folk use
to make sense
of the world
until he found paint
Still he had to write to
his brother to
explain himself.
Why couldn’t they see
his power to connect
was enough to blow
one’s head off?
Degas Absinthe - 2 poems
She didn’t want to go;
she couldn’t resist.
It was an opportunity
to be like other women,
to sit at an inn table,
not drinking, but repenting
for having drunk of a liquid
that made such promises
as it could not fulfil.
Her clothes are out of the top
drawer, the best her class
could provide. The presence
of the swarthier ruffian
beside her guarantees
that she put them on in order
to have something good she could take off.
by R. S. Thomas
All speaks loneliness -
does he do this?
Not just the drooped
shoulder, the empty
face and downward
glance - nor the
companion with his own
thoughts and pipe to appease
rather the geometry
tribute to the camera -
snap-shot frozen image
of a bit of life
including empty tables,
with a linking newspaper
which zig-zags us away and
back towards the void.
by A. N. Other.
What are Universities for?
ODDc Tue 14th July 09 (and replacing The Lunar Men which will feature in the autumn programme) at The Blue Mugge pub
1. The Ancient Universities - what were they for?
Issues will include, links with the monastic idea; ‘a community of scholars’;
religious foundations with relatively narrow curriculum… all male institutions.
2. Red-brick Universities > The New Universities. Why? What changes? Science, technology and engineering coming through… The Keele University Foundation Year (now no more…).
3. Late C20 to present: from Polys > Uni’s. Aim for 50% of young people attending University. Why? The issue of elitism.
4. Consider these who did not go to University: Leonardo da Vinci, William Shakespeare, Josiah Wedgwood I; James Watt; The Brontes and Charles Dickens; Prime Ministers: Winston Churchill and John Major; Monarchs, Elizabeth’s I and II; Richard Branson;
Glenda Jackson; Michael Parkinson etc.
Raises the question - Is a university education over-rated?
5. Universites mentioned above are all residential institutions, following the Ancient University pattern. Residentiality is valuable but expensive? How do we assess its value?
6. The OU from the 1960s has demonstrated that the best kind of university education can be gained through ‘distance learning’, without residentiality (or at least, through short-term residence, like Summer Schools).
7. Problems and tensions in contemporary universities: pressures on funding related to the ‘competitive global market’. Impact on ethos and teaching and issues around work-related training and education.
8. Re-visit Frank Furedi’s argument ‘In the age of the knowledge economy, we have somehow managed to combine the widest ever participation in higher education with the most dumbed-down of cultures’.
9. What’s in a name? Consider the University of the Third Age; Schools of Medicine; Polytechnics; Institutes of Technology; Faculties of Engineering; Colleges of Humanities; Research Institutions… Then, debate whether all those institutions needing specialist residential spaces for teaching and research in HE need state funding. Some in HE and the Government are now arguing that many students can study staying at home, so where residentiality is not essential it should be phased out, taking the OU as model?
10. Use the money (£billions) thus saved for what?
- more resources for educating the very young.
- take ‘life long learning’ seriously
- use existing residential universities and colleges for programmes of short-term residential university courses of which many could be open to older adults too.