Discussion Notes

The discussion notes will be added on this page prior to the meeting with the most recent at the top.

To print off a set of notes....

  1. Select the section you want to print using your mouse
  2. Click 'File' in the menu at the very top left of your screen
  3. In the drop down menu click 'Print'
  4. In the dialogue box click the button for 'Selection'
  5. Click 'OK' - only your selected area should print off.

Ritual
Dc Tue 7th Feb 2012 at The Blue Mugge pub
Theme and notes based on submission from Tony Clark

1. The idea arose after hearing that the City of Stoke-on-Trent was planning to stop the Lord Mayor’s ceremonial duties… Significant or a minor issue?

2. Ritual - the meaning of the word; the history of ‘ritual’. Most religions have had, and continue to have, ritual and ceremony at their core. Why?

3. If you are religious (or were to become…) do you (or would you) favour worship of a contemplative Quaker form; or a formalized highly ritualistic and, maybe, ‘bells and smells’ style; or ‘happy-clappy’…; or…. whatever?
Compare and contrast, Political Party ritual.

4. What are the links and differences between ‘ritual’, ‘ceremony’ and ‘tradition’? The importance of music and dance within ritual.

5. Do all, or at least most, human beings, deep down, like and need ritual - in the sense that ‘habit’, ‘repetition’, ‘routine’ and ‘being on automatic pilot’ are not just satisfying but necessary?

6. If so, the dangers that flow from that impulse and need….

7. ‘The British Royal Family (and Advisers…) have a history of creating and using ritual with a skill bordering on genius’ In fact, the English, Scots, Welsh and Irish seem to be exceptionally good at ritual generally, beating other nations hands down?

8. Alain de Botton, humanist philosopher, has plans for a huge Humanist Temple to be built in London (celebrating the awesome nature of the Universe). Richard Dawkins has responded
“Atheists don’t need Temples”. Ritual stimulates Fundamentalists?

9. A few mundane practical issues: flags and flag waving; dress codes - suits, ties and casual wear; non-believers wanting weddings and funerals in church; gay marriages; Parliamentary ritual…

10. So, what rituals and ceremonies do we favour and recommend?

Localism

Dc Tue 31 Jan 2012 at The Blue Mugge pub

Theme and notes based on idea and submission by John Newall, who will chair the session.

  1. The theme of this debate has been prompted by the recent presentation of a petition to the Local Government Minister at Westminster, seeking to have support for the overturning of the decision by the Local Authority to remove Leek’s ‘War Memorial’ roundabout. Several key issues flow from this… What do people want? What do we want – local democracy, and how to achieve it?

  2. Localism - what does it mean to you?

  3. The Localism Act – came into force from Royal Assent, 15th November 2011.

Rationale: “This Bill will shift power from central government back into the hands of individuals, communities and councils. We are committed to this because over time

Central government has become too big, too interfering, too controlling and too bureaucratic. This has undermined local democracy and individual responsibility and stifled innovation and enterprise within public services”.

Agreed?

  1. Recommended to all Muggers - read more detail on this by ‘googling’ Localism Act - then those who have done so will summarise key additional points. From this these key questions:

  2. Is the concentration of power at the centre an inevitable situation, given that so much revenue

comes from central taxation and distribution?

  1. Will devolution of decision-making encourage unjustifiable ‘nimbyism’?

  2. How far should a national entity like the NHS defer to local pressures? For example, not every local hospital can have a specialist department for every disease - implications?

  3. A quick list of examples within Leek of ‘innovation and enterprise within public services’ from the 19th century to 2012: significant and encouraging?

  4. There are though some big issues which simply cannot be ‘locally’ determined - Education for example?

  5. How can the balance best be struck between international, national, regional and local dimensions in our contemporary situation where we have a ‘globalised economy’?

Jeremy Clarkson and Good Taste in Humour
Dc Tue 24 Jan 2012 at The Blue Mugge pub
Idea and notes based on Tony Clark submission. Tony will chair/lead the session.


1. Over recent months there have been several cases where taste in humour has been called into question. Jeremy Clarkson, for example, on 1st Dec (thousands of complaints to the BBC over his ‘striking public workers should be shot’ lissue) and 30th Dec (mocking Indian culture). What do we think of Jeremy, and the Top Gear ‘laddish’ style of humour?
Any similar examples?

2. What do we know of the history of humour and jokes, which relates to this question of taste?

3. Has humour/comedy changed in our lifetime?

4. To say that a person ‘lacks a sense of humour’ is quite hurtful and damning - why?

5. British people like to claim they have a sophisticated sense of humour – revisit earlier Mugge
discussion on national stereotypes: the Germans; Jewish jokes; French wit; the heavy Scandinavians… Examples and challenges…

6. Racist/sexist/ageist/cultural jokes. When was the term ‘political correctness’ coined and how does humour relate to the concept?

7. Is there anything which should not be the subject of a joke?

8. What is the essence of a good joke? Examples…

The Brain
Tue 17 Jan 2012 at The Blue Mugge pub
Notes based on the RI Annual Xmas Lectures for children, BBC Dec 2011


1. Professor Bruce Hood gave a series of three RI talks to children, which was filmed for BBC. There were presentations of an hour broadcast over three evenings – which is now customary in this annual educational series. At least two of us thought the professor this time was rather condescending, and not up to standard. Even so, the programmes were fascinating, at times. Any other views on this? And the general point: Lectures for children – a good way of introducing science to interested, non-specialist, adults? In short, good adult education?

2. For the question, ‘how do we learn?’ the World Memory Champion (8 times winner) was introduced. He demonstrated ways in which he has improved his memory, using various techniques - making the point that are brains are ‘flexible’, ‘adaptable’ and we can help our brains, teaching new tricks!

3. The remarkable ‘plasticity’ of our brains was emphasized - those 100 billion or so neurons each of us have in there, often under-used. ‘Use it, or lose it’ was a message that came across…

4. We humans have ‘social brains’ too, creating ‘empathy’ and the ability to give inanimate objects a ‘personality’. Professor Hood demonstrated his ‘empathy’ point, drinking out of a (clean) toilet bowl. His audience did not want to follow his example. Why?

5. He argued that the new ‘social networks’ illustrate the ‘social brain – theory of mind’:
“Twitter is like a virtual brain”.

From an earlier Mugge discussion on the Brain:
a.   Discuss recent research on the ‘brains’ of our animal relatives.  For example, ants using a ‘collective brain’ with phenomenal success, and the recent TV programme ’Swarm’ showing the Wilderbeast to be a likeable but completely dumb individual,  but collectively, in their herds, they are more ’brainy’ and survive relatively well.     
b.   Do we humans have extraordinary individual brains and minds but collectively, as a species….still lack something?

The Protester
Dc Tue 10 Jan 2012 at The Blue Mugge pub

Notes based on a Trevor Siggers’ initiative: Time magazine, Dec/Jan 2012; plus John Bradshaw mailing from South Africa (the Mail and Guardian) and the www.opendemocracy.net lecture, 16 Dec posting, by Anthony Barnett ‘The Long and the Quick of Revolution’, with references also to the Trout sister-pub discussion the previous evening…

1. Time magazine named ‘Person of the Year’, 2011 - The Protester, with this comment:
“… No one could have known that when a Tunisian fruit vendor set himself on fire in a public square in a town barely on the map, he would spark protests that would bring down dictators in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya and rattle regimes in Syria, Yemen and Bahrain. Or that the spirit of dissent would spur Mexicans to rise up against the terror of drug cartels, Greeks to march against unaccountable leaders, Americans to occupy public spaces to protest against income inequality, and Russians to marshal themselves against a corrupt autocracy.
Protests have now occurred in countries whose populations total at least 3 billion people, and the word protest has appeared in newspapers and online exponentially more this past year than at any other time in history.”
We will discuss this, with more quotations from the many pages Time devotes to the issue, plus other quotes and references, as above.

2. We will focus especially on the significance for The Protester of new technology and media networks. Anthony Barnett says in his lecture: ‘Five billion of us now have mobile phones’. So what?

In the News - Prayers and the Leek Roundabout…
Dc Tue 6 Dec 2011 at The Blue Mugge pub
In our programme this is a ‘To be decided, topical issue…’ week. We had Happiness and Why Marx was Right, Part Two short-listed. These themes will now feature in the 2012 programme because we are focusing on the two topical issues in the news last week as below:

1. BBC News 30 November 2011 Bideford Town Council prayers challenged at the High Court
i) The National Secular Society (NSS) will argue that the Council’s ‘archaic’ ritual is inappropriate and a breach of human rights

ii) A suggested period of silence was also rejected by the Council, the NSS said..

iii) NSS lawyers argue that Council Members of no religion are being indirectly discriminated against without justification, which it claims is unlawful

iv) The NSS President said that religious prayers in a multi-faith society had ‘potential for conflict’.

v) He cited a case in Portsmouth earlier when a Councillor walked out of a Council meeting because an imam had been asked to deliver an opening prayer.

2. BBC News 1 December 2011 Roundabout fight goes to 10 Downing Street

i) Protesters will converge on 10 Downing Street to deliver a 10,000 plus petition (this could only happen in Leek? - DT) in opposition to Sainsbury’s plans to strip out the 80-year old floral island adjacent to the Nicholson War Memorial in Leek.

ii) The £40 million out-of-town superstore has sparked controversy in the town

iii) Mrs Pam Wood, who was elected to the SMDC on the back of the campaign said ‘The petition is now signed by nearly 10,700 people (Leek has a population of not much over 20,000) which shows strength of feeling against the plans’.
iv) Debate on ‘Tescopoly’ - supermarkets and their power in the contemporary market place.

JP Sartre and Free Will
Dc Tue 29 Nov 11 at The Blue Mugge
Based on In our Time (Oct 2004 on Sartre and March 2011 on Free Will)
1. A brief outline of Sartre’s life and work - from those who have heard the programme or had a quick look at Wikipedia…

2. Biography as ‘stories’ - how we are, who we are: ‘the sense of ourselves comes from other people’

3. ‘The French were never so free as when under Nazi occupation’ What did Sartre mean by that?

4. ‘We are condemned to be free’

5. The idea of ‘bad faith’ - human beings have so much responsibility…too much responsibility and most prefer not to have that degree of ‘freedom’?

6. ‘The Second Sex argument - ‘women born into a set of expectations’… hence ‘femininity is the enemy of women’?

7. Sartre and Camus: differences of background…
After liberation at the end of the second world war, ‘things got worse in France for two years’ Choice - Soviet occupation or American occupation?
Sartre siding rather with the Soviet view, but for Camus the enemy was the USSR…

8. ‘Each would have loved to be the other’
Camus a genuinely political animal, with roots in working class Algeria

9.Two big 20th century isms; Existentialism and Marxism
Reconciling these two, infusing the idea of conditioning and economic determinism with freedom and individuality ‘we become who we are through the stories we tell ourselves’

10.So, the argument for free will - our human feelings about duty, responsibility, gratitude,
resentment and morality means we pre-suppose free-will. We cannot help believing in it?

 

 

The British Love of Gardening
Dc Tue 21 Nov 11 at The Blue Mugge pub
Notes based on BBC radio 4 Thinking Allowed, Dec 2007


1. The British love gardening… If so, why? Going round, each who wishes responds
Don’t the French, the Germans, the Americans love gardening as much?

2. Origins and history of gardens, from The Garden of Eden on… does this history involve myth and nostalgia?

3. The TA programme focused on ‘home gardens’ with two anthropologists offering views on ‘sites of sociality’ and ‘plants and social relationships’. Does this strike a chord with anybody in the Mugge?

4. Gardens we knew as children… any changes through to today?

5. Allotments - a fascinating social history?
The 1922 Allotments Act - no trade allowed…
Rules of behaviour - allotments ‘create very moral communities’?
Research on 22 allotment holders = 87 crop types; 311 names species…
Contemporary social and political value: allotments in Cuba
‘refugees for wild bio-diversity’; organic and eco. Issues….

6. Gardens and the media: Gardeners’ Question Time on radio from 1947…
Books, Magazines, TV programmes… Garden ‘celebrities’ now
Hugely important - is it ‘recreation’, ‘craft’, ‘art’, ‘therapy’ and more…
Gardens and gender: some exceptionally talented plants-women?

7. The Garden Business and Economy - Garden Centres….
Visiting Gardens, large and small… the NT and leisure industry

8. What gardens reveal about those who create and cultivate them… Gardens in Literature.

9. The Garden City movement; parks and gardens as urban ‘lungs’?

10. Jokes and humour based on gardeners: The Good Life – a superb sit-com?

Why Marx was right
Dc Tue 8 Nov 11 at The Blue Mugge

Notes based on book of same title by Terry Eagleton (TE) - Yale, 2011. TE takes ten of the most standard criticisms of Marx and tries to refute them one by one, in 240 pages… The arguments are summarized below. Everything in italics and within inverted commas below is from Eagleton (unless otherwise stated).
Huge, contentious issues which could take more than one session!

1. Going round, anyone who wishes, can respond to the question:
What do you understand by ‘Marxism’?

2. Marxism is finished. It might have had some relevance to a world of factories and coal miners but it certainly has no bearing on the classless, socially mobile, post industrial Western societies of the present.
On the contrary, the global economic crisis, with anti-capitalist protesters gaining support from unlikely quarters, puts Marx firmly back on the agenda… John Gray, a non-Marxist philosopher, speaking on Radio 4 ‘Points of View’ a week ago said: ‘More now think Marx was right: capitalism is inherently unstable and we are currently experiencing a process of creative destruction. The middle class (the bourgeoisie) also now with little effective control over their lives…younger people likely to have a lifetime of insecurity. “Everything solid melts into air”, as Marx and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto 150 year ago.’

3. Marxism may be all very well in theory. Whenever it has been put in practice, however, the result has been terror, tyranny and mass murder on an inconceivable scale.
No-one in the Mugge – and few anywhere now - will seek to defend Stalinism or Maoism. Was that form of Communism inevitable given that the revolutions occurred in countries which were not capitalist bourgeois democracies? Were there not, in any case, some positive features within C20 communism - for a time East Germany (GDR) had the best, most generously funded, child-care facilities; Cuba with exceptionally good health services?

4. Marx was a materialist and an economic determinist, seeing men and women simply as the tools of history. He had no interest in the spiritual, draining humanity of all that is most precious about it.
A materialist, yes; and his locking together of ‘class struggle’ with ‘mode of production’ provides an approach to history which is ‘Marxist’. ‘A mode of production for Marx means the combination of certain forces of production with certain relations of production’. Clear? If not, someone will attempt to explain. This will be linked to consideration of the ‘economic base’ – the real foundation - of the ‘legal/political/cultural superstructure’. Is this too deterministic?
Engels denied that ‘he and Marx ever meant to suggest that economic forces were the sole determinant of history’. Human labour and production are vital but ‘the word ‘production’ in Marx’s work covers any self-fulfilling activity: playing the flute, savouring a peach, wrangling over Plato, dancing a reel, engaging in politics, organizing a birthday party for one’s children’.

5. Marxism is a dream of utopia. The fact that we are naturally selfish, acquisitive, aggressive and competitive creatures is simply overlooked. The true complexity of human affairs is passed over for a monochrome version of history.

‘Just as the Jews were traditionally forbidden to foretell the future, so Marx the secular Jew is mostly silent on what might lie ahead. He had little to say on the detail about what a socialist or communist society would look like.’
However, ‘For Marx, we are equipped by our material natures with certain powers and capacities. And we are at our most human when we are free to realize these powers as an end in itself…’ Sure, he knew that humans had demonstrated in abundance the above negative qualities but our ‘nature’ is malleable - we can also be kind, considerate, loving, empathetic, cooperative: ‘Communism organizes social life so that individuals are able to realize themselves through the self-realisation of others… Genuine equality means not treating everyone the same but attending equally to everyone’s different needs’.

6. For Marx the end justifies the means, however many lives may be lost, through violent revolution and the state imposing its will on the majority. In any case, all the most interesting radical movements of the past four decades have sprung up from outside Marxism: feminism, environmentalism, gay and ethnic politics, animal rights, the peace movement…
‘Marx believed that some revolutions might be peacefully accomplished, and was in no sense opposed to social reform. He was even more hostile to the state that right-wing conservatives are, and saw socialism as a deepening of democracy, not as an enemy of it. He lavished praise on the middle class and saw socialism as the inheritor of its great legacies of liberty, civil rights and material prosperity. Was ever a thinker so travestied?’ Asks TE in conclusion.
Are the real contemporary problems with Marx (and Eagleton) those of markets and agency.
Everyone is aware that rampant unregulated market forces can lead to the chaos we are experiencing, but markets - of some kind – are essential in any complex society? Could a variety of cooperatives, mutuels and self-governing companies operate effectively, with a check on the adequacy and rationality of democratic planning since - in Trotsky’s words “economic accounting is unthinkable without market relations”?
Given the weaknesses of the traditional left - trade unions and political parties – where are the social and political agencies to make the global ‘anti-capitalist movement’ effective?

 

Conversation - Rules of Engagement
Dc Tue 1 Nov 2011 at The Blue Mugge pub

Notes based on article Rules of Engagement by Alain de Botton, New Statesman, 1st April 2011. ‘Most conversation is just idle chatter, so how do we make talking to each other more worthwhile?’

1. ‘Modern society is notably sociable in temper… When guidebooks wish to praise a city they point to its number of bars and clubs… Yet, despite this deference to the idea of communion it is striking how bad most of us are at holding a conversation’. Agreed? Why?

2. So what can be done to help liberate us?

Consider the history of great conversations…

3. Plato’s Symposium: ‘Eight intellectual Athenians take turns to discourse on the nature of love (while eating a banquet…). A close eye is kept on the clock. People are asked to define their terms and avoid unnecessary digressions. There is no mention of the weather’.

4. Salons in 18th century Paris. ‘One of the greatest blue-stockings of the period, Sophie de Condorcet, wrote down a set of rules for a successful evening of conversation - topics to explore over dinner, ‘and it was the other guests who were to provide the insights’. Examples of fitting topics included: What are the duties of children to their parents? What is the wisest way to approach one’s own death? Can governments make us good, or only obedient?

5. The academic, Theodore Zeldin, launched a series of public meals in Oxford a few years ago. Strangers, at dinner, were provided with a specially designed conversation menu, getting them to consider: ‘Which of my ambitions is likely to remain unfulfilled?’, or ‘Is sex overrated?’

6. So, philosopher Alain de Botton argues ‘We should be more brave… be more demanding of our social lives. Rather than seeing a successful encounter as a rare gift, we should expect to engineer one regularly.’

7. ‘The history of conversation suggests that it is when there are heavy-handed rules around that our spirit can be best set free. We may be tempted to giggle at the artificiality of the conversation menu, or the pretentiousness of Sophie de Condorcet’s dinner parties - and yet we should welcome them for helping us to the elusive, spontaneous and sincere bits of ourselves’.

8. Have we been and are we, in some ways, ahead of Alain de Botton, in The Mugge, The Trout and Merseyside pubs?

 

Chaos Theory and The Neutrino
Dc at The Blue Mugge Tue 25 Oct 2011

Notes based on BBC In our Time, May 2002 and April 2011.

1. The 2011 programme on The Neutrino in April this year could go on any short-list for the most boring, useless, of any in the whole IoT series? Listeners unfortunate enough to access the IoT archive, as recommended, may wish to comment?

2. Unless any one present wants to engage further we will allow these ‘weird, no-thing’ 60 million or so neutrinos to pass through the walls of the pub and each of us, each second, at the speed of light on their way wherever - and move on to something more important…

3. Meanwhile, though, it is worth asking whether we have experience of some of the great mysteries of science and the universe being communicated in a helpful, accessible way: a teacher, a book, a TV series and presenter (like Dr Bronowski?). Maybe, Brian Cox on ‘The importance of the Neutrino’ could be a revelation for lay wo/men of a certain age?

The Chaos Theory programme raised a cluster of big questions:
4. Is the universe chaotic or orderly?

5. According to chaos theory the world is far more complicated than previously thought – but if it’s so complicated why does night follow day?

6. ‘And what’s going on in that most complex machine of all – the human brain – to filter and construct our perception of the world?’

7. Susan Greenfield on the radio programme argued that the human brain is not like a machine or a computer – it reacts, is sensitive, to everything going on around, so we’re even more complex and clever than we thought!

8. But does unfathomable complexity, chaos in that sense, mean total unpredictability? No, because there can be patterns and symmetries deep down.

9. They discussed some down-to-earth examples: the weather, traffic, football.

10. It seems that the universe and us human beings like there to be some kind of balance or hinterland between chaos and order, between predictability and irregularity. The music of Bach, for example…

 

Nothing and Nothingness
Dc Tue 11 Oct 2011 at The Blue Mugge

Discussion based on Nothing Matters – a book about nothing (iff-Books, August 2011)

  The author, Ronald Green, has most helpfully provided notes 3 – 10 below based on his book – which is available from Leek Library and it can, of course, be purchased as above.
1. In the beginning, there was the Big Bang and the start of the Universe… Before the Big Bang there was er… Nothing?

2. A Spanish saying ‘How nice it is to do nothing – and then take a long rest afterwards…’
Actually, human beings find it hard to do nothing?
………………………………………………………………………………..

3. ‘The struggle to understand the concept of absolute emptiness, the absence of everything, has been going on for some two thousand years, for at least as long as there have been written records of what people thought is important. Those who have made it their business to think have been puzzling at “nothing”, wondering what it was, whether it was anything at all, whether it existed, in fact, and if it did, how it affected things around it. Religion, the arts, science, philosophy – all struggled with trying to get to it. Why?’
 
4. ‘There are two types of “nothing”: the absence of something (which I call nothingness), and the absence of everything (which is nothing).
The struggle with understanding “nothing” – from Parmenides through Aristotle, Galileo,
Descartes, Kepler, Newton, Sartre, Heidegger, Einstein, among a long line of philosophers and
scientists – is due to the inability to separate nothing and nothingness.
When I say that I have nothing in my hand, I mean that my hand is empty, i.e. there is an
absence of something. Of course there are “things” – microbes, dust, etc. – in my hand.
Nothingness can be silence, or the gap between objects. Nothing is none of those, yet it
includes all of those.’
 
5. ‘Zero is not nothing. It is a definite something in mathematics. Yet, because it was conceived as nothing in the Middle Ages by the Church, Western science and mathematics were held back for some 600 years when the Church refused to allow the new numerical system containing zero, even while it was being used in Muslim Europe. For the Church, zero was associated with “nothing”, which was a theological no-no.’
 
6. ‘Western monotheistic religions and Eastern beliefs have “nothing” in common. It’s not that they deal with “nothing” differently, but that they refer to different “nothings”, and it is here that my dichotomy between nothing and nothingness comes into play.’

7. Consider this Chinese proverb and whether it may help: “To attain knowledge, add something every day; to attain wisdom, remove something everyday”. In other words, ‘…when we go towards nothingness as within Eastern faiths, knowledge is different - it is knowledge gained through losing earthly thoughts.’
 
8. ‘The difference between nothing and nothingness puts a new complexion -- both for religion and for science -- on the mystery of the universe supposedly coming from nothing, with science having it no easier that does religion in giving an explanation.’
 
9. ‘The raison d’etre for every religion, belief, faith, cult is denial of death being the end. This all has to do with fear of nothing?’
 
10. So, ‘Does nothing exist?’

 

Beauty
Dc on Tue 4 Oct 11 at The Blue Mugge


1. Going round, try getting to the essence of ‘beauty’ with any definitions, thoughts or issues to add to those below…

2. ‘Combination of qualities, as shape, proportion, colour, in human form, or in other objects, that delights the sight’ (Concise OED).

3. Compare and contrast ‘beautiful’ with - ‘attractive’ ‘pretty’ ‘charming’ ‘lovely’ ‘appealing’ ‘sexy’ ‘stunning’ and so on…

4. Can we relate beauty to almost anything - take ‘the beautiful game’, for example…
Or ‘As a white candle / In a holy place, / So is the beauty / Of an aged face.’ Joseph Campbell

Philosophers, writers and poets on ‘beauty’:

5. ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know’ John Keats

6. The changing concepts of Beauty across cultures and over time.

7. Beauty contests are no longer in fashion. Why? The fashion industry seeking to beautify thrives despite the recession?

8. If you are able, please bring one image and one small object you consider to be beautiful. We will discuss.

9. ‘Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless: peacocks and lilies, for instance.’ John Ruskin

10. Beauty in art - re-visit The Mona Lisa and other favourites

 

Children’s Games and Parties
Dc at The Blue Mugge Tue 20 Sep 2011

Idea and notes provided by Tony, with a couple of additions by Erica and Derek…

1. What games do you remember playing as a child?- with whom did you play?- where did you play?- when did you finish playing, if ever … (when I was a child I .........)?

2. From personal experience what do we know of the play experience of the present generation of children?

3. Is playing important?

4. Have Health and Safety issues and Stranger Danger killed off adventure?

5. Does “political correctness” stifle play or is it a means of ensuring that play is appropriate to the age we live in?  Where today can you buy caps for a Lone Star Winchester Rifle?

6. What makes Pirate Parties acceptable at schools and play groups?  What would the reaction be to a “Slavers” party or even a St George’s Day party

7. Have the new technologies altered the nature of children’s/adults’ play? Recent evidence, quoted only last week in the media, that expensive hand-held technologically sophisticated ‘toys’ and games are making children more inward and ‘individualist’, limiting social and communal interactive experience and skills… Do you agree with a report published in the same week which stated that we adults have become too concerned with childhood?

8. Do many parents and grand-parents spend too much money on children’s presents and toys? (A New Yorker magazine in the 1950s had a satirical cover picture of children in a large home garden, surrounded by unwrapped toys, playing with the cardboard box containers… still apt?).
Would you agree that Britain’s children have a less happy childhood than children of other nationalities because their parents don’t have the time to play with them?

9. Is parent organized/directed play/activity a good or bad thing?  Should children be encouraged/pressured/forced by parents into attending ballet lessons, football coaching sessions, learning a musical instrument/foreign language etc?

10. Today, do parents live their own lives through their children more than parents did in the past - the status symbol child?

Riots
Dc at The Blue Mugge Tue 13 Sep 2011

These notes based on comments and references sent through by our Mugge regulars, John Newall and David Whalley - who will not be present.

1. A quick survey of our views, going round, on the recent August riots, noting especially any issues not referred to below, and attempting to compare and contrast with earlier riots, even across centuries.

2. Kenneth Clarke wrote in The Guardian on 6th September ‘Almost 75% of those aged over 18 and charged with offences committed during the riots had prior convictions’ and he referred to ‘a feral underclass cut off from the mainstream in everything but its materialsm’
He continued ‘…the general recipe for a productive member of society is no secret: …having a job, a strong family, a decent education > attitudes shared in the values of mainstream society’.

3. On the other hand, in The Times the following day ‘there’s an excellent article by the author of a recently published book, “Kill all Enemies”, Melvyn Burgess. He points out that, in spite of what Kenneth Clark …. wrote in “Guardian” (implying that the rioters were unworthy of any“sympathy”), these are often people who have become without hope and turned to opportunistic crime as an outlet.’

4. ‘The question that society has to tackle is “why?” Where have governments, law agencies,
schools and above all parents gone wrong and so helped to create the situation, and what can
be done about it?’ 

5. One answer ‘that far more money has to be spent on educational and employment strategies for both parents and youngsters. They must be given hope. It would cost a lot of money but it costs just as much, if not more, in policing, court and prison time, “sticking plaster” counselling and the rest.’

6. ‘The riots were pointless. What did the Tottenham and Croydon ones do? Did they really advance any “cause” by destroying a septuanarian’s little business in the one, and the furniture store of a local well-known social benefactor in the other? Past riots, like the Gordon Riots or those of South Wales miners had a genuine cause, right or wrong, with which even bystanders could identify but the recent ones had nothing.’
 
7. Was it though, as The Times writer suggested: a “howl of anger” when they see all around them their so-called “elders and betters” from MP’s to City bankers getting away with their cheating or greed and, in the case of bankers and financial manipulators, with no personal penalties whatsoever. In fact bonuses have increased, for heaven’s sake!’

8. Another commentator, Ferdinand Mount - former Head of No 10 Policy Unit in Mrs Thatcher’s time – in his 2005 book ‘Mind the Gap’ ‘is challenging on the disengagement of those with very limited life chances in the increasingly unequal UK… He blames both Tories and Labour for turning their backs on their disengagement over a very long period.’
 
9. The CE of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation ‘Making Sense of the Riots’ notes that ‘the overwhelming majority living in poverty had nothing to do with these riots… so there are dangers in connecting poverty, weak parenting etc. with these shocking events without researching links thoroughly’

10. In one city area the rioters ransacked, burned and looted every shop and store around except Waterstones - the book store. Does that say anything?

 

How to Change the World
Dc Tue 26 July at The Blue Mugge


1. Many individuals have sought to change the world for the better. Any in our view who have succeeded, however modestly? A short-list…

2. Take, for example, Aung San Suu Kyi… and Peter Benenson, who wrote an article for a Sunday paper which led to the foundation of Amnesty International. Other examples - including local people who have had an impact on furthering the general good.

3. What are the big issues for our children and grand-children? Another short-list, including actions to change the world for the better?

4. Working through this short-list - the agencies best equipped to enable progress?

5. The world, natural and human, is changing at quite a pace anyway. A time to take fresh bearings?

6. If there’s time - consider this from The Telegraph (22 July 2011):

‘I’m starting to think that the Left might actually be right’
What with the phone-hacking scandal, the eurozone crisis and the US economic woes, the greedy few have left people disillusioned with our debased democracies…’
Charles Moore.
On the other hand, ‘The Left’s blind faith in the state makes its remedies worse than useless’?

 

Good and Evil
Dc Tue 19 July 11 at The Blue Mugge
Notes based on: BBC In our Time broadcasts on this theme, April 1999 and May 2001 (visit IoT archive to listen to these); and Terry Eagleton’s book On Evil (2010).


1. Which of these was evil? Hitler; Myra Hindley; Stalin, Dr. Harold Shipman; Thompson and Venables (ten-year olds), who tortured and murdered toddler James Bulger.
Brief answers and comment.

2. We’ll seek to provide a short-list of five famous 20th century names we could call ‘good people’.

3. German philosopher Nietzche said ‘Evil was invented by the Church’. Do we think Christianity created ‘evil’? Do we agree with the view, expressed on the radio programme, that ‘evil’ is an out-moded concept?
The classical Greek philosophers were basically optimistic: ‘being is good’ Hence, ‘evil’ is unnatural, a dysfunction. So, Aristotle was not interested in ‘evil’. He, writing about ethics, was concerned with the ‘human capacity to become virtuous’.

4. ‘Put a scorpion in your hand and tell me that there is not an evil Creator’.
Aquinus argued that there is a ‘natural evil which is inevitable in the material world - with lions, tigers and lambs etc’. (As with Nietzche: ‘It is natural that big fish swallow small fish’).
But there is a distinction between that ‘natural evil’ and the human capacity for evil?

5. From Darwin on: what human personality and psychological traits are good for survival?
Do ruthless, arrogant, scheming, competitive individuals tend to win? (Cf. The Apprentice)
Where do we place ‘affection’, ‘loyalty’, ‘friendliness’, ‘trustworthiness’ and ‘cooperation’
in the survivability stakes? Comment on “The goodness of Mother Theresa in the ‘struggle for survival’”.

6. ‘William Golding seems to believe in his novel Lord of the Flies that a bunch of unsupervised schoolboys on a desert island would slaughter each other before the week was out’. Had he put schoolgirls alone on the island presumably the same would have happened, but earlier and more subtly?

7. Consider these questions (if not already dealt with from above): Is evil really a kind of nothingness? Why should it appear so glamorous and seductive (a huge proportion of film and TV drama is about murder)? Why does goodness seem so boring? Is it really possible for human beings to delight in destruction for no reason at all?

8. More examples from Literature – evil actions must involve choice and free-will? Shakespeare’s Richard III with his defiant “I am determined to prove a villain”; the Satan of Milton’s Paradise Lost with his “Evil be thou my good”; or Jean Paul-Sartre’s Goetz in the play Lucifer and the Lord “I do Evil for Evil’s sake”.
An Iago will always be more interesting than an Imogen?
Finally, take Oliver Twist’s goodness and virtue: where does that come from?
‘If Oliver just can’t help being good, his virtue is surely no more to be admired than the size of his ears?’

 

The Future of the NHS
Dc Tue 12 July 11 at The Blue Mugge


1. Our experiences of the NHS - going round each who wishes to comment…

2. All the opinion surveys reveal that the NHS is a remarkably popular institution;
Doctors/GPs consistently come near the top, if not at the top, when British people are
asked ‘Whom do you most trust? …. with a list of professions and occupations.
(Estate Agents and Journalists always come near the bottom, just above Politicians!)
Comments…

3. The NHS is huge, employing vast numbers… It must adapt, change, modernize constantly?

4. The Coalition Government’s proposals for change and modernization:
A summary of the proposals, responses and current developments… one or more of our
circle will contribute to this summary (no more than 2 minutes each!). Debate.

5. The management of the NHS (hospitals, health centres etc. etc..) will always present challenges. How are these best addressed?

6. The current edition of Private Eye (8-22 July) carries an ‘NHS Whistleblowing Special’.
This begins with the statement:
‘Healthcare is complex, rapidly changing and dangerous;
Staff are fallible, variably trained and widely spaced; and demands are huge with
resources limited. No matter how much is spent on regulation and risk management…
mistakes, incompetence, inhumane treatment and corruption -will always happen.’
Fair comment?

7. So, the NHS will always need whistleblowers? Specific points from the Eye special:
Great Ormond Street hospital, and Baby P…
The Mid Staffs NHS Trust, where up to 1,200 patients may have died due to appalling conditions of care
‘The National Harm Service’ - ‘overall, one in ten patients are harmed by their healthcare…’ - the heart scandal at the Bristol Royal Infirmary…
Dr Harold Shipman…
Other examples?

8. ‘Prevention is better than cure’.
‘We all know of the huge improvement in life-expectancy brought about by improved
sanitation and housing since 1900. Less well-known is that even since the NHS was
founded only 30% of the continuing improvement is down to medical interventions’.
Discuss in relation to issues like: smoking; drinking; drugs; obesity…and
Future living and life-styles generally…

 

 

Coincidence

Dc Tue 5 July 11 at The Blue Mugge

Theme and notes based on suggestion from circle member, Trevor Siggers - and the books, The Coincidence Engine by Sam Leith (2011) with The Roots of Coincidence by Arthur Koestler (1972)

  1. Any coincidences in our own lives, worthy of comment?

  1. Take these, provided by Trevor:

a) ‘On the evening of 11 Sep 2002, the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the three winning numbers in the NY State Lottery were 9-1-1’

b) ‘British twins John and Arthur Mowforth, lived 80 miles apart. On an evening of May, 1975 both fell severely ill from chest pains. The families of each man were unaware of the other’s illness. Both men were rushed to separate hospitals at approx. the same time, and both died of heart attacks shortly after arrival.’

c) ‘In 1898, M. Robertson’s novel Futility imagined an ocean liner called Titan - ‘unsinkable’ with a minimum number of lifeboats – going to the bottom after a collision with an iceberg in the N Atlantic. Robertson struggled to find a publisher because his book was regarded as too far- fetched…’ Comments?

3. The relationship between ‘chance’, ‘coincidence’, ‘luck’ and ‘fate’… Definitions? Comments

Coincidence and faith… Comment

4. ‘Character is Fate’ do we agree?

5. ‘Chance governs everything and yet at the deepest level we wish it didn’t’. (Leith) Agree?

6. ‘Paradoxically, what makes gambling a waste of time is also what makes it a central human activity. It puts us in touch, even in the desperate denying of it, with the importance of chance in our lives’. (Leith).

7. Koestler’s 1972 book is very much concerned with the phenomenon of Extra Sensory Perception (ESP) and developments in contemporary physics. We don’t hear so much of ESP now - why?

8. Recent evidence that dogs, for example, can ‘sense’ that their human owner is on the way home, yet the owner is miles away… ESP in animals, including humans? Where does that lead?

 

Why Paint? The relevance of art today
Dc Tue 28 June 2011 at The Blue Mugge

We will be comparing and contrasting two paintings:- Picasso, Still Life with Pitcher, Candle, and Enamel Pot Oil 1945, and Matisse Harmony in Red Oil 1908. Copies of the paintings will be available on Tuesday, but see if you can find them beforehand.


Through sharing our thoughts on these two paintings, we will be considering our theme.

  1. Have you seen the original paintings? Are they familiar to you? What is your immediate response to the two images?

  2. How has each painter used space, shape and colour?

  3. Do they convey any message which , it could be argued, is quite independent of the subject matter of each painting?

  4. Is Picasso right in stating ‘……painting is not interior decoration. It is an instrument of war for offense and defence against the enemy.’ ?

  5. Is Matisse right ‘If I want to paint my tomatoes blue…’?

  6. What is creativity? Is it a trait confined to humans?

  7. In what sphere of your life do you consider yourself most creative?

  8. How important is it?

  9. How do we ‘judge’ a painting, decide on the monetary value of a painting? How do we mark an individual’s work? What criteria would we use?

  10. Which contemporary painters do you consider will stand the test of time?


EB

 

Daoism – ancient Chinese philosophy and religious belief
Dc Tue 31 May 2011 at The Blue Mugge pub
Notes based on BBC radio In our Time, Dec 2010 and web article Daoism - a short introduction.


1. What do we know about Daoism? Start with those who’ve heard and/or read the above…
anyone in the circle who wants to comment…

2. Did we learn anything about Daoism at school, or later in formal education? Should comparative religion be taught in schools today? Given the increasing economic power of China, will Chinese history, philosophy and religion feature more in our Western education and consciousness anyway? Examples of this already - as below?

3. ‘Philosophy and religious belief… ‘ What’s the difference? Are they always closely related?

4. A brief outline of the history of Daoism - more than 2000 years in 2 minutes for each who can offer some facts and commentary…

5. Key features: Dao = The Way/The Path… to where, to what?
‘the natural flow’… ‘go with the flow of nature, if you resist, you undermine…’ ‘effortless action’…. ‘action in inaction’ … helping connect with ‘the flow’ through meditation, dietary practices and physical exercises…

6. Texts: aphoristic, proverbial… ‘The journey of 1000 miles starts with a single step’…
‘words cannot adequately grasp the reality of things’…
Essentially - ‘Everything in the universe has its own virtue or power (de) which if permitted to flourish brings natural order and harmony to the world.’
‘The enlightened ruler can cultivate order and harmony within a small community by cultivating spontaneity in himself and by following the path of non-aggressive action.’

7. Compare and contrast Confucianism and Buddhism…

8. Examine the significance of the Yin and the Yang

9. Feng Shui (pronounced fung-shway) = the concept of good energy, seeking ‘the perfect spot/location’. In recent decades this ‘adopted’ as a Western practice/fashion/cult?

10. Any further lessons, potential developments?

 

 

The Age of Absurdity
Re-visited, helped by Arthur Schopenhauer. Dc Tue 12 Apl 11 at The Blue Mugge

Theme suggested by Trevor Siggers and last December we did discuss why Modern Life Makes it Hard to be Happy – the sub-title of Michael Foley’s book The Age of Absurdity. We will continue on this theme, assisted by a superb In our Time (IoT) broadcast on Schopenhauer, Oct 2009, which you can listen to on the archive, going on the web to bbc radio 4, IoT, philosophy archive. Strongly recommended, but not essential for next Tue!

1. We’ll start with a Spanish proverb ‘How nice it is to do nothing – and then take a long rest afterwards’. Well no, the paradox is that we human beings actually prefer to be doing something, to work, not to rest all the time. Schopenhauer: “We take no pleasure in existence except when we are striving after something”.
Is that your experience? Each who wishes can comment, briefly…

2. Some background on Arthur S. from those who have heard the programme and/or who have mugged up on his life (no more than two minutes), moving to bigger themes:
his engagement with Kant and Hegel. Brief comment on why these two major philosophers are so important for this discussion.

3. What Schopenhauer made of the phenomenal (world of experience, the world as perceived) and the noumenal (the true world, independent of experience, the thing-in-itself). He’s challenging on this - our human consciousness gives us, ‘through inner access to the body’, access to the citadel, the true world, the thing-in-itself..

4. This consciousness and our Reason, does not though make us any happier; like all animals we are driven by ‘the Will to life’, to produce more life, driven by appetites, unconscious sexual desires. Even unhappier, maybe, than animals who live in the continual present, we’re constantly looking back and forward - imprisoned by The Will, blindly striving… ‘the desires of the will are boundless… and every satisfied desire gives rise to a new one.’ Agreed?

5. Foley in his book links this to consumerism: people moving up the scale of desirables – TV, car, house, foreign holidays, 2nd home, conservatory, mo-ho… etc… when acquired, take for granted, move to the next… As Schopenhauer put it ‘With possession or the certain expectation of it, our demands immediately increase and this increases our capacity for further possessions…’ Fair comment?

6. S. is profoundly pessimistic. All this desire and striving can lead nowhere. Our essence is not rational; true, we are cleverer than other animals but often just clever at harming others.

7. Any hope of escape from this egotistical Will? Yes, with a struggle.. He read the Upanishads every day (someone can have two minutes on this) and he took an early interest in Buddhism. Striving causes suffering and a key escape is to cease to yearn and desire…

8. We can also escape egotistical desires and drives through compassion – helping other beings. He praised the British for their concern for animal welfare.

9. There is also hope of relief and escape through Arts and Music – the latter special and at a peak because ‘the most immediate of all the Arts’… through which we gain ‘a feel for our nouminal essence’. Wagner, as we might expect, rated Arthur S. highly.

10. If we have not already realized it - Schopenhauer can be hopelessly wrong on some big issues. His views on women ‘woman is by nature meant to obey’; eugenics, politics… reviewed, for example. Does all this illustrate that important philosophers, however wrong, can offer enduring insights?

 

‘Cities and Ethnicities’ & ‘Balti Britain’
DC Tue 5 Apl 11 at The Blue Mugge
Notes based on BBC Radio 4 Thinking Allowed (Web Archive) Apl 2008 and Sep 2008… plus Trout notes on Multiculturalism, visit: oddc website. Listening and reading recommended.

1. What does ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘ethnic diversity’ mean to you?

2. French and British history and approaches to ethnic diversity and multiculturalism compared:
French universalist idea; prescriptive; ‘create patriots for the Republic out of immigrants…’
British less rigid, more pragmatic, not trying to prescribe anything, muddling through…
Strengths and weaknesses? Britain has been better able to adapt, the experts said on the programme…

3. Relative success in Britain with black and ethnic minorities in professions, politics, the media and a political debate on racism and identity. The French had claimed that racism does not exist – the Republican ideal is at the heart of the State… Only recently has racism been discussed top of the agenda in France…

4. The issue of segregation and ghettos - occurs in both countries and not just residential but related to schooling, employment, faiths…

5. Choice or compulsion? What to do? ‘We cannot disperse people’.

6. Need to think about diversity in a more sophisticated way - ‘mixed race is the fastest growing ethnic group…’ On Balti Britain programme talk about new ‘hybrid identities’ – 2nd generation immigrants ‘want to be different’. Stuart Hall (OU Prof. of Socilogy) ‘Over the years there has been in Britain greater tolerance and more acceptance of diversity of culture’.
Agreed?

7. Cities and identities: British Asians asked ‘Are you Asian?’… Answer, ‘No, I’m from: country/city/village/religion…’ ‘Actually, there are hundreds of ethnicities and identities’.
Are there problems/advantages with a ‘Leekensian’ identity?

8. ‘City identity is useful for cohesion, especially for the young’ Rather than ‘British’ identity ‘which has baggage’ a Manchester, Liverpool, City-local identity is different… Importance of football team identity.
We all have multiple identities anyway? Notes above from 2008 programmes – any changes since then?

9. Values we all share? Integration - to what, on whose terms?

10. Are there a common set of values for the British ‘nation’? The Welsh, Scots Irish nations?

 

The Spirit Level – Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better
Dc Tue 29 March 11 at The Blue Mugge
Notes based on the book of that title by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett (2009) and 2nd edition published in UK, February 2010. The book continues to generate exceptional interest and controversy. Much more can be read about all this by simply googling the book title or looking at the Equality Trust website.

1) We discussed themes from the book at the Mugge in October 2010. Critical points following from that discussion will be engaged with tonight. First though we’ll revisit the word itself. What does ‘equality’ mean to you? Each who wishes can respond briefly, suggesting maybe any issues for discussion not mentioned below. The book argues that there are "pernicious effects that inequality has on societies: eroding trust, increasing anxiety and illness, (and) encouraging excessive consumption." It shows that for each of eleven different health and social problems: physical health, mental health, drug abuse, education, imprisonment, obesity, social mobility, trust and community life, violence, teenage pregnancies, and child well-being, outcomes are significantly worse in more unequal rich countries. Statistics for the largest 23 rich countries and for the 50 states of the United States of America are used. The book contains graphs that are available online. Opportunity to comment further on this basic theme bringing in the view expressed in October that ‘cultural and historical influences were never to be under-estimated when attempting to assess correlations, causes and consequences’.

2) Examining statistics and data…(Copies of graphs of the five issues below provided in the pub – these from the book and web – please bring your own if you can) … We will look at the evidence presented in the following spheres but first a general question: What are the main problems for you with statistics?

3) Education – ‘children do better at school in more equal societies…’

4) Social Mobility: ‘There is more social mobility in equal societies… LSE data comparing eight countries…’

5) Drug Abuse: For example ‘Among the 50 States of the USA drug addiction and death from drug over doses are related in inequality. Again we found that the more unequal states had high death rates’.

6) Violence: ‘the link between inequality and homicide rates have been shown in as many as 40 studies and the differences are large.’

7) Obesity: ‘is increasing rapidly throughout the developed world. In some countries rates have doubled in just a few years’.

8) Everyone will agree that the five above issues are vitally important with major problems to be addressed. What are your solutions?

9) A question of sport - our October discussion raised the important question about the need to be up-to-date on information and data when generalising about trends. It was felt too that sport can offer some special insights on equality and inequalities… American football and the Tour de France… more examples?

10) The French and American Revolutions asserted a fundamental principle: ‘all men are created equal’. Is this mainly what the current revolutions in the Arab world are about?

Rural Women in Nepal
DC Tue 22 March 2011 at The Blue Mugge
Notes based on information sent by our partner/ correspondent in Kathmandu, Nepal, Alexandra (Lex) Delaney. (For more information on RUWON, Nepal and partnership arrangements, visit www.raymondwilliamsfoundation.org.uk …)
1. What do we know about Nepal ? Comments from those who wish, based maybe on a visit or information gathered from Wikipedia…

2. Some recent UNICEF statistics: Delivery care with skilled attendant at birth = 19%
Humia District: 73rd out of 75 in poverty and deprivation index, Nepal Districts.
Life expectancy for women 53; child mortality up to 30%; Drinking water access = 64%
% of families using toilets = 25%; Total literacy rate, female = 8% (male = 36%);
child illiteracy (10-14 yrs) = 45%; enrolment of children in primary school = 25%.
Up-date from feature by Lex in the Kathmandu Post, March 2011: ‘Despite some recent government improvements, 71% of births in Nepal take place without a skilled birth attendant, one of the world’s worst records’, and ‘many girls still marrying well below the legal age..’

3. Contextual information about women’s lives in Nepal (hand-out of notes from Alex will be available at the meeting…)

4. Comment on all this… solutions?

5. Compare and contrast with what we know about rural women in the Staffordshire Moorlands.
How far back could we go before conditions and experiences here might be similar:
50 years, 100 years, 300 years, the plague?

6. Problems with cross-cultural, trans-continental, historical comparisons….

7. On the other hand, lessons learned from history which may apply generally…

8. Help from outside: aid and charities. Take Red Nose Day, for example…

9. Consider this, quoted at a recent ‘Funding the Future’ Conference for national charities:
‘Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day; teach him to fish and he’ll eat for a year’.
Same for women, of course…

10. Those of us, men and women, British born from, say 1930s to 1950s… why should we be so lucky?
No war service or direct experience, no poverty - a Welfare State, education and work opportunities…
Now, not just Nepal, our children and grand-children facing a different world?

 

Munch and ‘The Scream’

DC 15 March 2011

The Blue Mugge

To what extent is there a division between the modern painter and the general public today, over one hundred and thirty years after the first Impressionist exhibition? What problems do you have in appreciating abstract art?

The programme on Edvard Munch (Radio 4, In our Time, March 2010) engages to a large extent with his life and upbringing: does it help us to respond more sympathetically to his work?

We will engage with the above issues in comparing and contrasting three paintings:-

· Vermeer—The Girl with a Pearl Earring 1665

· Edouard Manet Bar at the Folie Bergère 1882

· Edvard Munch The Scream 1883

Copies of these paintings will be available on the night but please do bring your own copies if you can - the more the better...

  1. Are these pictures important?

  2. Which of these pictures would you take home with you?

  3. Should the state help sustain the modern art scene, or would funding required be better used elsewhere?

  4. What role/s would these painters have played in their society?

  5. What points would you make with regard to the different approaches of the three painters under consideration this evening?

  6. Is it necessary, or desirable, to know something about the life and times of the painters in assessing their work?

  7. Would you consider that there are different levels of creativity at work in these three paintings?

  8. How important is the creative process?

Three Big Issues in Education
Dc Tue 8 March 11 at The Blue Mugge
Participants were asked at the Mugge last week for a list of current issues in education from which this meeting will be able to prioritise and discuss three, or more. Within a few minutes these ideas, quotes and issues were suggested:


1. Comment overheard regarding wedding plans: “Sad, he (the bridegroom) is only a plumber’. Big issue there on underlying attitudes to vocation…

2. Define ‘vocation’, ‘vocational’ and ‘education’ - you have 60 seconds to say (if you wish) what the essence of each word conveys to you. Agreement on meaning/s within these words? Then, the skills vs. knowledge arguments.

3. How far can politicians improve education – would it not be better if they interfered less and let teachers get on with it?

4. With such a huge investment in education why do we still have large numbers of young people (and adults) unable to read and write? Solution/s?

5. Linked to 4, maybe, return to earlier Mugge issue: ‘We have the highest number ever in Higher Education and yet we have an increasingly dumbed-down culture’ (Frank Furedi). Seek an up-date of views on that statement.

6. Boys are currently doing less well than girls in pretty well every measurable sphere within school and college. Why? Implications for the future?

7. Exceptionally high youth unemployment among young people with few or no qualifications: According to the Financial Times (07/11/10) 30% of young people without A-levels were unemployed. The big issue of apprenticeships…

8. Why are examination-boards privately owned? Why is any educational provision private? Currently, 23% of British school educational spending goes on the 7% of pupils privately educated (OECD, 2009) A quick review of the old public/private education argument.

9. How can schools, education and life-long learning best foster a tolerant, educated and participative democracy? RH Tawney wrote last century about the ‘anti-social egotism’ which parental pushing and choice can foster. Still relevant?

10. To be continued, no doubt - but on which issues in particular?

 

‘The Arab revolt is changing the world’
Dc Tue 1 March 11 at The Blue Mugge
Reports and articles on this everywhere, but www.opendemocracy.net recommended, as ever.


1. What’s happening, where, why, and what are the implications globally and for Britain?
You can offer, if you wish, priorities for our discussion on these huge questions.

We may consider, for example:
2. David Cameron’s view, finding the uprisings in the Arab world ‘hugely inspiring’.

3. Ed Milliband’s agreement on this, adding ‘All western governments have been taught a lesson – democracy has been shown to be valued by ordinary people in the Arab world as much as it was in eastern Europe in 1989 or in the western world before’.

4. The role of the internet, facebook, twitter… in a world where the 86 year old ruler of Saudi Arabia experienced the telephone as a novelty… How will he cope?

5. Economics, politics and revolutions: oil revenue is crucial – dictators do not need tax revenue and can, therefore, ignore civil society… Not any longer?

6. Other big issues…. Iran, Israel… Religious fundamentalism; military and defence expenditure when the ‘people’s movement for democracy’ is fearless…

 

English – the International Language?


Discussion Circle - Part two on this theme: Tue 22 Feb 11. This following on from Tue 16 Nov discussion when we got to point 4…
Notes based on The Adventure of English by Melvyn Bragg (2003) and The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language by David Crystal (1987) and some help from Esperantists

1. ‘Somewhere out on the plains of India more than four thousand years ago, began the movement of a language which was to become English’. Exchange of information and ideas on what we know about the origins and evolution of languages generally and, specifically, English. A brief exchange on ‘language’, ‘dialect’ and ‘ideolect’.

2. ‘Chaucer was the first writer of the newly emerged England’ Reviewing what we know of English from Chaucer onwards and especially the crucial role of other individual poets, authors and translators in the creation of the language: Wycliffe, Shakespeare, Milton, Dr Johnson..

3. Take Shakespeare in more detail: ‘Well over two thousand of our words today are first
recorded by him, either plucked out or invented… ’. ‘Hamlet… is full of quotations…’… (Shakespeare) ransacked everywhere for words…. As with Shakespeare, so with the genius of English itself: plundering every other language for words? Shakespeare also backed and invented losers… His longest word, ‘honorificabilitudinatibus’ (meaning ‘with honour’) has, alas, fallen out of fashion. Any lessons?

4. American, Indian, West-Indian, and Australian English… expanding towards a global language with new words coming through all the time: Which of these recent words (and others of your choice) do you like and dislike: ‘pear-shaped’; ‘fashionista’; ‘blogger’; ‘heightism’; ‘areligious’; ‘fabless’, bar-b-q; bling-bling; spinmeister; Corrie.

5. So, what makes an ‘international language’? David Crystal’s view: ‘… a language becomes an international language for one chief reason: the political power of its people –especially their military power…’. The spread of English he maintains comes because having achieved power through the sword and sea power, it was retained through trade. English was not, of course, the first lingua franca - others: where and why?

6. Will English retain its primary international language status? The top 20, according to Crystal: Mother tongue speakers: 1st Chinese (well ahead); 2nd English; 3rd Spanish…
Inc. second Language speakers: 1st English 2nd Chinese (not far behind); 3rd Hindi….
This list is in Crystal’s book of 1980s… Today’s list - Chinese likely to be stronger still?

7. Weaknesses of English as international language: a) Difficult to learn but then, Chinese more difficult… b) Which English? American English and there are now far more speakers of English as second language than native speakers.
c) Power and imperialism - linguistic imperialism a growing issue?

8. Esperanto has, of course, failed as the international language for obvious reasons (from 5
above): no political power, army, nation, or trading power… But interesting to explore paradoxes on the power of language, and prejudices therefrom. Many people have fought and died in the name of linguistic independence… Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin persecuted minority language speakers including especially Esperantists. Why?

9. Is E-o ‘artificial’? For over 100 years it has been a ‘living language’ (with poetry and ‘culture’) like any other, but it is about 5 times easier to learn. Its founder raided all the languages he knew (living and dead) for ideas and root-word vocabulary. Acquisition of E-o assists learning other languages and it is exceptionally useful for ‘language awareness’. Maybe because it has no ‘power’ - ie neutral - it could gain strength? On the other hand…

10. Language is crucial for identity and belongingness. Which will succeed in this sphere?

Philosophy Today – And AC Grayling
15 Feb Blue Mugge
Based in part on these links http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8979000/8979047.stm
http://www.thoughtfortheworld.org/2009-02-09_acgrayling.php
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/a-c-grayling-in-search-of-the-holy-grayling-525764.html


1. An adult education philosophy tutor:   'There's no point in thinking about or discussing the length of this table before me - we can get out a tape measure, and agree its length.   The things it's important to discuss and debate are those questions to which there is no answer we can agree on.  A key aim of philosophy is to explore these big questions, trying to find answers...' What do we think? 

2. According to Stephen Hawking "Philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in physics and biology. As a result, their discussions seem increasingly outdated and irrelevant," Is philosophy irrelevant today?

3. On the other hand “P4C” has been trying for 15 years to get Philosophy taught in secondary schools. What memories of philosophy do we have? Should we teach philosophy to children?

4. AC Grayling born in 1949 in an expat community in Luanshya Zambia. Arrived in England in his teens is now Prof of Philosophy at Birkberk College London.
Why he became a philosopher...  "...a state of dazzlement before the power and beauty of ideas... and of being fascinated by both (from the age of 12)...   by the past and the products of man's imagination.  It was a fever that took hold early and never afterwards abated".     Can that happen to anyone, at any age?   In other words, are we all philosophers really? 

5. The philosopher, thinks Grayling, should not confine himself to debating ever-finer points of conceptual analysis, thus allowing himself to be caricatured as Mencken's jackass. His job is to get out there and engage with the big issues. "Not drawing philosophers into public discussion," he says, "is like having doctors but not employing them in hospitals.”
'A human lifespan is less than a thousand months long.   You need to make some time to think how to live it'.
Philosophy is relevant to everyday life?

6. AC on free speech …” free speech is fundamental…..(but) is not absolute. It has to be responsibly used….. To speak insultingly or act discriminatorily with respect to other people’s race, sex, sexuality, age, or disability, is unacceptable. These are things over which individuals have no choice. Regarding what people can choose, such as their political or religious commitments, say what you like: people must bear the consequences of their choices, including the disagreement, even the contempt, of others. “Feeling offended” is no defence against attack on your opinions by those who don’t share them.” Job done eh? Should this be enshrined in UK law?


7. 'I'm a vegetarian but I wear leather shoes.   Some people say that's a contradiction.  I say I'm doing my best'. ………. Refreshing?

8. He compares the bombing of Hamburg and Hiroshima with 9/11 saying they are all very wrong and against the moral teachings of 2000 years of history.
Would the Americans agree?

 

Voting Systems – the AV Referendum

Dc Tue 8 Feb 11 at The Blue Mugge

  1. On 5th May this year the country will decide whether we want to change our voting system to the Alternative Vote system (AV). Why?

  2. Each present, who wishes to, will offer views on voting and voting systems.

  3. A quick factual review of the main systems (those present with knowledge will pass this on…): The First-Past-the-Post (FPTP); AV; Single Transferable Vote (STV); other systems…

  4. Arguments for and against the different systems

  5. Whatever system we have there remains the contemporary phenomenon that political leaders and politicians in general are deeply distrusted and unpopular. Why?

  6. Maybe we should consider getting rid of ‘the political class’ … back to Athenian Democracy; ie direct democracy but now including women and ‘slaves’.

  7. Take the recent Leek referendum, for example…. Arguments for and against referenda in general.

  8. The future of party politics from now - the end of ‘tribal’ party support; more fluid and flexible than in the C20?

  9. On the other hand – take Churchill, switched parties, was very ‘flexible’ on major policies (accepting the NHS and the Welfare State in the ‘50s) and according to all opinion polls the most popular political leader in British history to date…

  10. It is now technically possible for direct democratic decisions on big issues to be made from the arm-chair using computers and postal voting. Can’t be worse than some political leadership we’ve had recently - from Iraq, through faith schools to privatizing woodlands and forests - all not popular with most of the electorate?

 


 

 


 

 

Back to top