You show me a photograph of your wife.
I show you one of my children.
Everything is surface. Matt finish. Gloss.
We walk upon a world unfurled
like stiff starched table linen,
and raise our glasses,
and raise our open hands up in praise,
and lose our contact lenses on the floor,
and press our retinas flat against the sky
collapsing all illusions of distance
in our doppelgänger dance
folding the world as we link arms, join hands,
putting the world away in our fatal glance,
like a memento of a wedding feast
tucked into a waistcoat pocket,
putting it away like a thief
after that pocket is picked.
The world is a series of rooms,
each door leading from one
opening onto the next.
Depths,
inferred from perspective,
rather than real,
are exhibited, hanging on walls
as we walk from gallery to gallery,
praising the beauties
that can be captured by a camera:
prisoners discussing the merits
of their well-appointed gaol.
We are not alarmed:
we are not dogs, after all,
barking at our own reflection.
It was not always this way.
I opened my door once,
long ago,
further back than I can remember,
to see you there
wearing my face
- wearing my face! -
I stood,
rigid with terror.
I summoned the effort
to overcome my paralysis,
and held out my open hand
in a reflex gesture of welcome,
and reluctantly received from you notification
of the life you wanted me to lead for you.
I opened, unfolded, read, and became
the man I am now, became you,
the words on the page
replacing the ones in my mind,
and I forgot everything I was before,
forgot the benign world I had charted
in eager childhood voyages of exploration
discovering worlds that were new to me,
conspiring with renegade, secret nature
on the wasteground that was its reservation,
luxuriating in our mutual abandonment,
living truths before speaking them,
before even knowing there was such a thing,
as truth: friendly, understanding worlds
that met me like a grandfather's tall tale,
full of love told with honest lies,
back when myth was real
and God was a boy you met once in a dump,
back before I could comprehend malice,
before the blight of self-loathing,
back when to be alone was not to be lonely,
and socialising was not an act of endurance,
and stepped out into this new world
of unyielding reality and binary opposition,
the fold's crease a distant horizon,
and now,
even if I tiptoe to that horizon,
that world's edge,
even if I were to step straight off,
not to fall to the pavement, of course,
not to swoon in abject cowardice,
but to be swept away by the updraft
like a suicide note suddenly seized
and made irrelavant by the wind,
a suicide note made into a paper plane,
to fly up delirious in sky-high suicide,
upward through clouds, abhorring gravity,
lost at last forever
in the limitless ecstasy
of the eternal present,
the fathomless depths
into which I plunge
have I not just opened one more door
and stepped into one more room
and your heart remains as much a mystery
as when I first held you in my arms?
Even
if I meticulously sharpen the world's edge
and make of its shell a spade
and try to break the earth with it,
seeking depths
through which to dig an escape tunnel,
or make of it a blade
with which to search through my own flesh
and swim in underground rivers
rust red with ferrous subterranean ores,
giddy, drunk to exultation with my own blood,
have I not just opened one more door
to deliver a neatly folded note to you,
standing, waiting, wearing my face once again,
and by your expression, not expecting
to receive this visit today?
Friday, 29 January 2016
Wednesday, 27 January 2016
The innocents
Surely God must be there somewhere?
In the quiet midday rubble?
So many children killed
weren't killed for no reason?
It must be because God was among them?
Surely the endless daily routine of pain
and fear and loss and grief and dusty pallor
that suffocates and erases their childhood
is because our rulers heard a rumour somewhere?
Surely shrapnel pierces limbs
and phosphorus burns flesh
and rubble is heaped upon bodies
because our rulers have somewhere heard a rumour,
have a dossier somewhere that describes in detail,
that God is somehow, somewhere among them,
as Herod found out, long ago,
and are exhausting the sum of Man's futile strength,
calling in every air-strike, dropping every bomb,
in jealousy and rage against Him
while we sit safe at home bathed in TV light,
entertained by the tedious percussion of foreign wars?
Is God now a refugee?
Following weary parents
on the long low road to foreign lands
to be greeted with suspicion and denigration
as happened long ago in Bethlehem and Egypt?
Do we turn God away at Yarmouk and Calais?
Do we spit on God and call Him names?
Or have we managed to kill God at last,
relentlessly pursuing Herod's mission to completion,
leaving us with nothing but dead children?
Have we now become the angel of death,
no longer following some divine plan,
not passing over, but unconstrained
except by earthly dictates, flexing air-forces
in ineffective, indiscriminate, macho gestures?
Surely God must be there somewhere?
Please let God be there somewhere.
In the quiet midday rubble?
So many children killed
weren't killed for no reason?
It must be because God was among them?
Surely the endless daily routine of pain
and fear and loss and grief and dusty pallor
that suffocates and erases their childhood
is because our rulers heard a rumour somewhere?
Surely shrapnel pierces limbs
and phosphorus burns flesh
and rubble is heaped upon bodies
because our rulers have somewhere heard a rumour,
have a dossier somewhere that describes in detail,
that God is somehow, somewhere among them,
as Herod found out, long ago,
and are exhausting the sum of Man's futile strength,
calling in every air-strike, dropping every bomb,
in jealousy and rage against Him
while we sit safe at home bathed in TV light,
entertained by the tedious percussion of foreign wars?
Is God now a refugee?
Following weary parents
on the long low road to foreign lands
to be greeted with suspicion and denigration
as happened long ago in Bethlehem and Egypt?
Do we turn God away at Yarmouk and Calais?
Do we spit on God and call Him names?
Or have we managed to kill God at last,
relentlessly pursuing Herod's mission to completion,
leaving us with nothing but dead children?
Have we now become the angel of death,
no longer following some divine plan,
not passing over, but unconstrained
except by earthly dictates, flexing air-forces
in ineffective, indiscriminate, macho gestures?
Surely God must be there somewhere?
Please let God be there somewhere.
Wednesday, 20 January 2016
Towards a Kardashev Type II civilisation
When considering civilisation as an astronomical phenomenon the most convenient formulation to use relates to energy consumption. Energy is the bottom line for all activities and processes, and the ultimate observable on which to base physical insights.
(I would elaborate that the most conducive way to consider energy is in fact in terms of Information Theory, but that is the subject of a different occasional series of blog posts relating to the question "how real is real?". This series is concerned not with the universe in general, but with our place in it. Perhaps the two series will converge at some point since the Anthropic Principle is inevitably invoked in relation to both).
I have written previously in "Towards a Kardashev Type I civilisation" about how our civilisation's energy consumption is propelling it towards a crisis that will transform it. In particular, we will have to adopt a "circular" approach to economics in which non-renewable resources are indefinitely circulated through cycles of economic activity using renewable energy.
This has profound consequences for our concepts of value and the accumulation of wealth which will alter the whole basis on which our economies are conceived and function. We see this crisis manifested in terms of climate change, its impacts and our responses. This transformation is associated with our civilisation achieving Kardashev Type I status.
The Kardashev Scale describes the energy consumption of a civilisation in astronomical terms. Type I corresponds roughly to the consumption of all the energy available on a planet like the Earth; Type II civilisations consume all the energy from a star; Type III civilisations use galactic quantities of energy. A Google search on "Kardashev" quickly yields many hits providing detailed elaboration of these ideas.
The key things I want to talk about here are what is involved in progressing from Type I to Type II status and what is the possible signature that specifically a Type II civilisation might have, in astronomical terms, that would enable its detection by us.
Kardashev himself, a Soviet astronomer who worked on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence in the sixties, stopped at Type III, but the scale has been modified and extended by others since, and there has been speculation about what Types IV and above might imply, with the possibility being raised that Type V or VI civilisations may be able to manipulate and define the laws of physics themselves.
In general, a formulation based on a logarithm of energy consumption provides a useful way of relating the scale to physical observables, in the same way that the qualitative impressions about the brightness of a star can be expressed quantitatively in terms of stellar magnitude. According to this, Humanity currently has a score somewhere between 0.7 and 0.8, and some commentators speculate that it will achieve Type I status within a few centuries.
One thing that interests me about the Kardashev scale is the way it articulates the idea of intelligence (extraterrestrial or otherwise) as a physical process with quantifiable, measurable consequences; the idea of intelligence as an astronomical observable. Ultimately, it is my belief (or hunch) that valid descriptions of the universe, that is, physics, are intimately connected to the way information is processed.
I have begun to describe my intuitions about this in a previous article "how real is real (part 1)?" in relation to the way the universe is described. I will continue this in a future post (working title "how real is real (part 2)?").
There is an encoding of information that can only be implemented on an intrinsically distributed system, that is, one that can and must be embedded in and be part of the universe it is used to describe, and which cannot be simulated to an arbitrary degree of precision using only sequential processes. Structures are encoded such that correlational features of data at one level of nesting are distributional features at another. This means all observable phenomena can be encoded.
The encoding is consistent with the description of entropy in the previous article. It is tempting to speculate that the nature of these phenomena is a consequence of the way they can be encoded if one constrains the mechanism for the encoding to be embedded in or implemented using the thing that is encoded in a lossless and minimal manner. The Universe is the way it is, as we understand it, because there is no other way it could be without invoking some higher reality which then requires further explanation. Time is implicitly encoded: there is no system clock provided by some external deity to run a sequential process that simulates the way time is manifested.
This really constitutes a statement of the Anthropic Principle: the universe is more than just intelligible. It is intelligibility itself. Whatever we understand about the universe is part of the universe. The encoding is intelligence. Perceptions are not recordings made by some sensory apparatus as though our brains were probes for some disembodied intelligence, some ghostly homunculus or avatar.
(To be clear, this is not an atheist statement. Rather, it is nothing more that the observation that divinity will not be limited or constrained by the laziness with which we imagine or represent it)
So if we are seeking extraterrestrial intelligence, we have already found it: all intelligence is extraterrestrial, in that it is a fundamental property of the universe. Our intelligence is extraterrestrial in the same way our substance is: it originated among the stars and was present at their formation. The progress of intelligence through the different stages of development described by the Kardashev Scale is a kind of homecoming. All our music is ultimately the song of an exile seeking to return to the vast silent ego-less monotony of space. This is the nostos of the human epic. With childlike fingers we trace the outline of gods among the constellated stars because of the intuition of what we must become.
So what are the practical realities of our first stumbling childish steps?
I have written in my recent review of 2015, "14 hours and counting" of a developments which may not have attracted as much media attention as their significance warrants. One key development which I believe is more significant even than the Moon Landings of the Apollo Space Programme is the development of truly re-usable space vehicles. In 2015 various companies successfully landed the primary stage of their rocket systems after launch, making it available for re-use. This means space flight can now be an activity that satisfies the requirements of the circular economy of a Kardashev Type I civilisation. Progress towards Type II status would not be possible otherwise.
In the same article I speculated about a number that characterises any space-faring Type I civilisation, which I called "intrinsic countdown" (a clumsy term: I would be delighted for someone to propose an alternative). This is the "integration" time required for a renewable energy system to accumulate the energy necessary to propel material into orbit, expressed in terms of one kilogram of material per square metre of the planet's surface. This number represents a physical limit that constrains a Type I civilisation and which must be overcome to progress to Type II status. Space flight which is undertaken on the basis of circular economics must observe this constraint in a Type I civilisation. Type II status requires space flight that is not thus constrained.
(N.B. the figure of 14 hours in the article was the result of a calculation so rough it did not require all of the back of the envelope on which it was made. Please feel free to do the calculation properly!)
There is a range of possible values for this time. On the one hand the orbit of a planet on which a Type I civilisation develops must be within the "habitable zone". This limits the renewable energy resource per square metre available to be accumulated and indicates a lower limit on the time. The planet must also be massive enough to retain an atmosphere capable of supporting a suitably diverse biosphere. This also means there is a lower limit. An upper limit arises from stellar evolution and the window of opportunity this present to any developing civilisation.
Progress towards Type II status requires us to overcome the constraint imposed by this minimum countdown to lift-off. It requires a process of modification of our civilisation through technological innovation so that we can extend the zone that is "habitable" for it beyond biological constraints to include regions within the orbit of Mercury, where the energy resource per square metre is much more abundant. It is a physical process, mediated by intelligence, that relates renewable energy available from the Sun, and subject to geometric attenuation with distance from the Sun, to the gravitational potential energy of objects here on Earth. It is the process by which the physical observable, intelligence, diffuses and becomes manifested over a region of space associated with a star rather than a planet. Perhaps the term above should be "intelligence diffusion constant" or something like that?
If there is a Kardashev Type II civilisation somewhere already, what does it look like to us?
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence has focussed on two kinds of emission from distant star systems. We might be receiving a signal that has been deliberately contrived to communicate an intelligent origin. Alternatively, we might be able to detect "light pollution", that is, inadvertent emissions corresponding to waste heat from industrial processes with a particular signature in terms of emission lines. So far these approaches have not met with success. However, there is another characteristic we should consider.
A Type II civilisation that has developed along the lines I describe above will correspond to a system in which the energy from its star is transmitted throughout a larger volume to enable the various activities and processes of this civilisation. Therefore, as this energy is used and inevitably lost as waste heat, the volume from which the radiation we observe is emitted will be larger than the volume of the star. We will observe the same luminosity, but it will originate from an object with a larger apparent size than the star to which it corresponds. To be clear, all the energy from the star must be radiated at some point, and the presence of intelligence, in the form of a Kardashev Type II civilisation, means the volume of the object radiating it will be larger than the star.
Again we see intelligence as a physical phenomenon, in this instance one that causes a change in the spectrum of a star. If the energy from the star is radiated after it is used, as it must, then the star will appear to be shifted from the main sequence on a Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. It has the same luminosity, but a different apparent temperature. We should look for Kardashev Type II civilisations among outliers on the main sequence.
There is a scenario where this will not be the case. One can imagine that the transmission of energy between locations within the volume of space occupied by the Type II civilisation could be achieved using narrow energy beams that are not subject to geometric attenuation. Indeed, this may be the only way that it is possible for the civilisation to occupy a volume larger than the narrow orbit dictated by its initial progress from Type I to Type II as described above.
It is possible that, as it moves towards Type III status, interstellar travel is made possible using these narrow energy beams. It may be the case that all of the energy from the star becomes directed along these narrow corridors. Perhaps once Type III status is achieved the galaxy becomes criss-crossed by an intersecting network of energy corridors between stars that are otherwise completely dark. Perhaps we are already surrounded by a Type III civilisation without knowing it. We would only be able to observe a star involved in this civilisation if the Earth happened to cross one of the energy corridors, and it is entirely possible that the chances against this happening may be literally astronomical.
Perhaps intelligence is dark matter, and the stars that we can observe are those that still share our savagery, left there for us to superimpose our childish pictures on by a galactic Type III society. Perhaps the observable universe can only ever be a nursery by definition.
(I would elaborate that the most conducive way to consider energy is in fact in terms of Information Theory, but that is the subject of a different occasional series of blog posts relating to the question "how real is real?". This series is concerned not with the universe in general, but with our place in it. Perhaps the two series will converge at some point since the Anthropic Principle is inevitably invoked in relation to both).
I have written previously in "Towards a Kardashev Type I civilisation" about how our civilisation's energy consumption is propelling it towards a crisis that will transform it. In particular, we will have to adopt a "circular" approach to economics in which non-renewable resources are indefinitely circulated through cycles of economic activity using renewable energy.
This has profound consequences for our concepts of value and the accumulation of wealth which will alter the whole basis on which our economies are conceived and function. We see this crisis manifested in terms of climate change, its impacts and our responses. This transformation is associated with our civilisation achieving Kardashev Type I status.
The Kardashev Scale describes the energy consumption of a civilisation in astronomical terms. Type I corresponds roughly to the consumption of all the energy available on a planet like the Earth; Type II civilisations consume all the energy from a star; Type III civilisations use galactic quantities of energy. A Google search on "Kardashev" quickly yields many hits providing detailed elaboration of these ideas.
The key things I want to talk about here are what is involved in progressing from Type I to Type II status and what is the possible signature that specifically a Type II civilisation might have, in astronomical terms, that would enable its detection by us.
Kardashev himself, a Soviet astronomer who worked on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence in the sixties, stopped at Type III, but the scale has been modified and extended by others since, and there has been speculation about what Types IV and above might imply, with the possibility being raised that Type V or VI civilisations may be able to manipulate and define the laws of physics themselves.
In general, a formulation based on a logarithm of energy consumption provides a useful way of relating the scale to physical observables, in the same way that the qualitative impressions about the brightness of a star can be expressed quantitatively in terms of stellar magnitude. According to this, Humanity currently has a score somewhere between 0.7 and 0.8, and some commentators speculate that it will achieve Type I status within a few centuries.
One thing that interests me about the Kardashev scale is the way it articulates the idea of intelligence (extraterrestrial or otherwise) as a physical process with quantifiable, measurable consequences; the idea of intelligence as an astronomical observable. Ultimately, it is my belief (or hunch) that valid descriptions of the universe, that is, physics, are intimately connected to the way information is processed.
I have begun to describe my intuitions about this in a previous article "how real is real (part 1)?" in relation to the way the universe is described. I will continue this in a future post (working title "how real is real (part 2)?").
There is an encoding of information that can only be implemented on an intrinsically distributed system, that is, one that can and must be embedded in and be part of the universe it is used to describe, and which cannot be simulated to an arbitrary degree of precision using only sequential processes. Structures are encoded such that correlational features of data at one level of nesting are distributional features at another. This means all observable phenomena can be encoded.
The encoding is consistent with the description of entropy in the previous article. It is tempting to speculate that the nature of these phenomena is a consequence of the way they can be encoded if one constrains the mechanism for the encoding to be embedded in or implemented using the thing that is encoded in a lossless and minimal manner. The Universe is the way it is, as we understand it, because there is no other way it could be without invoking some higher reality which then requires further explanation. Time is implicitly encoded: there is no system clock provided by some external deity to run a sequential process that simulates the way time is manifested.
This really constitutes a statement of the Anthropic Principle: the universe is more than just intelligible. It is intelligibility itself. Whatever we understand about the universe is part of the universe. The encoding is intelligence. Perceptions are not recordings made by some sensory apparatus as though our brains were probes for some disembodied intelligence, some ghostly homunculus or avatar.
(To be clear, this is not an atheist statement. Rather, it is nothing more that the observation that divinity will not be limited or constrained by the laziness with which we imagine or represent it)
So if we are seeking extraterrestrial intelligence, we have already found it: all intelligence is extraterrestrial, in that it is a fundamental property of the universe. Our intelligence is extraterrestrial in the same way our substance is: it originated among the stars and was present at their formation. The progress of intelligence through the different stages of development described by the Kardashev Scale is a kind of homecoming. All our music is ultimately the song of an exile seeking to return to the vast silent ego-less monotony of space. This is the nostos of the human epic. With childlike fingers we trace the outline of gods among the constellated stars because of the intuition of what we must become.
So what are the practical realities of our first stumbling childish steps?
I have written in my recent review of 2015, "14 hours and counting" of a developments which may not have attracted as much media attention as their significance warrants. One key development which I believe is more significant even than the Moon Landings of the Apollo Space Programme is the development of truly re-usable space vehicles. In 2015 various companies successfully landed the primary stage of their rocket systems after launch, making it available for re-use. This means space flight can now be an activity that satisfies the requirements of the circular economy of a Kardashev Type I civilisation. Progress towards Type II status would not be possible otherwise.
In the same article I speculated about a number that characterises any space-faring Type I civilisation, which I called "intrinsic countdown" (a clumsy term: I would be delighted for someone to propose an alternative). This is the "integration" time required for a renewable energy system to accumulate the energy necessary to propel material into orbit, expressed in terms of one kilogram of material per square metre of the planet's surface. This number represents a physical limit that constrains a Type I civilisation and which must be overcome to progress to Type II status. Space flight which is undertaken on the basis of circular economics must observe this constraint in a Type I civilisation. Type II status requires space flight that is not thus constrained.
(N.B. the figure of 14 hours in the article was the result of a calculation so rough it did not require all of the back of the envelope on which it was made. Please feel free to do the calculation properly!)
There is a range of possible values for this time. On the one hand the orbit of a planet on which a Type I civilisation develops must be within the "habitable zone". This limits the renewable energy resource per square metre available to be accumulated and indicates a lower limit on the time. The planet must also be massive enough to retain an atmosphere capable of supporting a suitably diverse biosphere. This also means there is a lower limit. An upper limit arises from stellar evolution and the window of opportunity this present to any developing civilisation.
Progress towards Type II status requires us to overcome the constraint imposed by this minimum countdown to lift-off. It requires a process of modification of our civilisation through technological innovation so that we can extend the zone that is "habitable" for it beyond biological constraints to include regions within the orbit of Mercury, where the energy resource per square metre is much more abundant. It is a physical process, mediated by intelligence, that relates renewable energy available from the Sun, and subject to geometric attenuation with distance from the Sun, to the gravitational potential energy of objects here on Earth. It is the process by which the physical observable, intelligence, diffuses and becomes manifested over a region of space associated with a star rather than a planet. Perhaps the term above should be "intelligence diffusion constant" or something like that?
If there is a Kardashev Type II civilisation somewhere already, what does it look like to us?
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence has focussed on two kinds of emission from distant star systems. We might be receiving a signal that has been deliberately contrived to communicate an intelligent origin. Alternatively, we might be able to detect "light pollution", that is, inadvertent emissions corresponding to waste heat from industrial processes with a particular signature in terms of emission lines. So far these approaches have not met with success. However, there is another characteristic we should consider.
A Type II civilisation that has developed along the lines I describe above will correspond to a system in which the energy from its star is transmitted throughout a larger volume to enable the various activities and processes of this civilisation. Therefore, as this energy is used and inevitably lost as waste heat, the volume from which the radiation we observe is emitted will be larger than the volume of the star. We will observe the same luminosity, but it will originate from an object with a larger apparent size than the star to which it corresponds. To be clear, all the energy from the star must be radiated at some point, and the presence of intelligence, in the form of a Kardashev Type II civilisation, means the volume of the object radiating it will be larger than the star.
Again we see intelligence as a physical phenomenon, in this instance one that causes a change in the spectrum of a star. If the energy from the star is radiated after it is used, as it must, then the star will appear to be shifted from the main sequence on a Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. It has the same luminosity, but a different apparent temperature. We should look for Kardashev Type II civilisations among outliers on the main sequence.
There is a scenario where this will not be the case. One can imagine that the transmission of energy between locations within the volume of space occupied by the Type II civilisation could be achieved using narrow energy beams that are not subject to geometric attenuation. Indeed, this may be the only way that it is possible for the civilisation to occupy a volume larger than the narrow orbit dictated by its initial progress from Type I to Type II as described above.
It is possible that, as it moves towards Type III status, interstellar travel is made possible using these narrow energy beams. It may be the case that all of the energy from the star becomes directed along these narrow corridors. Perhaps once Type III status is achieved the galaxy becomes criss-crossed by an intersecting network of energy corridors between stars that are otherwise completely dark. Perhaps we are already surrounded by a Type III civilisation without knowing it. We would only be able to observe a star involved in this civilisation if the Earth happened to cross one of the energy corridors, and it is entirely possible that the chances against this happening may be literally astronomical.
Perhaps intelligence is dark matter, and the stars that we can observe are those that still share our savagery, left there for us to superimpose our childish pictures on by a galactic Type III society. Perhaps the observable universe can only ever be a nursery by definition.
Tuesday, 19 January 2016
Reasons to be cheerful
There has been a certain amount of turbulence in the Scottish Independence movement of late. This has been due to a tendency to allow party politics dictate the terms of the debate in the absence of a referendum campaign in which we can all find common cause.
When considering long term outcomes like Independence, various groups and interests can see it as a vehicle for their own particular aims and objectives, even if these are mutually exclusive over the short term. And so diversity of opinion can co-exist with unity of purpose. Competing visions of a future Scotland can co-exist because they all share the same mechanism for becoming a reality. With one voice we can call for our different priorities to be heard. I have called this the Future Scotland Forum elsewhere.
But when the focus shifts and we are forced to choose between visions over the short term because, for example, an election is imminent, and crosses must be put in boxes on a ballot paper, there is a risk of falling-out. The bed becomes too narrow for the bed-fellows. The struggle to be standard bearer risks the loss of the standard.
Of course, the opponents of Scottish Independence are counting on this effect. They will be quietly sitting in their club on Pall Mall, nursing a single malt no doubt, enjoying a Cuban cigar, surrounded by Victorian spoils of conquest congratulating themselves on the success of another imperial divide-and-rule gambit, as momentum is lost and relationships turn sour in another remote rebellion.
However, they are forgetting one thing.
As I have described when suggesting IndyRef 2020, the recent referendum campaign was the cause, and the subsequent electoral success of the SNP was a consequence, of a crucial decoupling of the credibility of Scottish Independence from the competence of any particular party that advocates it. The turbulence we are experiencing at the moment is actually a very good and healthy sign. It is a symptom of the emergence of the multi-party pluralistic democracy that we require to be mature and functioning in time for the first parliamentary elections in an Independent Scotland.
In the meantime, to be clear, I advocate voting SNP on both ballots as the best route to a second referendum.
The fate of Scottish Labour will depend on whether they are able to re-align themselves as participants in this process, offering an authentic choice as a potential government of an Independent Scotland, or whether they will remain, as they currently are, mere managers of industrial decline in an imperial outpost, making sure no-one has any unrealistic hopes or ambitions for themselves beyond access to the imperial pap in London. And it is not enough to merely cease and desist from the betrayal they have perpetrated for generations. There must be acknowledgement, apology, truth and reconciliation, for their transformation to be accepted as genuine. At the moment the free reign still given to the vaulting yet petty ambitions of its careerists does not bode well.
So what we are seeing is not the stagnation and fragmentation of the Independence movement. On the contrary, the turbulence arises from the energy and vitality of the movement.
And the tensions we are experiencing are birth pangs.
When considering long term outcomes like Independence, various groups and interests can see it as a vehicle for their own particular aims and objectives, even if these are mutually exclusive over the short term. And so diversity of opinion can co-exist with unity of purpose. Competing visions of a future Scotland can co-exist because they all share the same mechanism for becoming a reality. With one voice we can call for our different priorities to be heard. I have called this the Future Scotland Forum elsewhere.
But when the focus shifts and we are forced to choose between visions over the short term because, for example, an election is imminent, and crosses must be put in boxes on a ballot paper, there is a risk of falling-out. The bed becomes too narrow for the bed-fellows. The struggle to be standard bearer risks the loss of the standard.
Of course, the opponents of Scottish Independence are counting on this effect. They will be quietly sitting in their club on Pall Mall, nursing a single malt no doubt, enjoying a Cuban cigar, surrounded by Victorian spoils of conquest congratulating themselves on the success of another imperial divide-and-rule gambit, as momentum is lost and relationships turn sour in another remote rebellion.
However, they are forgetting one thing.
As I have described when suggesting IndyRef 2020, the recent referendum campaign was the cause, and the subsequent electoral success of the SNP was a consequence, of a crucial decoupling of the credibility of Scottish Independence from the competence of any particular party that advocates it. The turbulence we are experiencing at the moment is actually a very good and healthy sign. It is a symptom of the emergence of the multi-party pluralistic democracy that we require to be mature and functioning in time for the first parliamentary elections in an Independent Scotland.
In the meantime, to be clear, I advocate voting SNP on both ballots as the best route to a second referendum.
The fate of Scottish Labour will depend on whether they are able to re-align themselves as participants in this process, offering an authentic choice as a potential government of an Independent Scotland, or whether they will remain, as they currently are, mere managers of industrial decline in an imperial outpost, making sure no-one has any unrealistic hopes or ambitions for themselves beyond access to the imperial pap in London. And it is not enough to merely cease and desist from the betrayal they have perpetrated for generations. There must be acknowledgement, apology, truth and reconciliation, for their transformation to be accepted as genuine. At the moment the free reign still given to the vaulting yet petty ambitions of its careerists does not bode well.
So what we are seeing is not the stagnation and fragmentation of the Independence movement. On the contrary, the turbulence arises from the energy and vitality of the movement.
And the tensions we are experiencing are birth pangs.
Monday, 18 January 2016
The Future Scotland Forum
We need better focus in the Yes Movement. Our enemies are happy to see infighting and fragmentation, indeed they are counting on it. Without the focus of a campaign for a specific referendum outcome to align disparate interests and points of view around a common cause, there is a risk of precisely the fragmentation and dissipation of momentum they seek.
While we benefited, prior to the referendum, from unforced errors on the part of our opponents, the shoe is on the other foot now. They are now able to adopt the dictum "don't interrupt your enemy while he is making a mistake" and quietly give us enough rope, which we will hang ourselves with if we are not careful. Unity, focus and resolve are more important now than ever.
At the same time that necessary focus cannot be the electoral fortunes of an individual political party. That would be divisive when we now enjoy an embryonic pluralism in the nascent parliamentary democracy of an Independent Scotland, with the SNP and the Greens being joined by RISE and others. This pluralism is necessary. We need mature responsible political parties, offering the electorate a genuine choice, prepared and ready for the first election to the parliament of an Independent Scotland once that is achieved.
However, while an election is not just about our party of government, but also our form of governance, a united position is required to achieve that very Independence, and so I advocate voting SNP for both constituency and list this May.
Nevertheless all possible future Scotlands must be open for description and discussion in a way that transcends party politics and allows everyone's voice to be heard, and a suitable forum is required. This forum is currently lacking. The referendum provided a focal point for these discussions previously, and in the absence of the Yes campaign that we could unite behind then, we need something else now.
Therefore we need either a new campaign around a specific date for IndyRef 2 (I have suggested 2020 previously) to provide the necessary focus, or a civic forum with an advisory role to be set up which can consider long term issues such as Independence, social justice, climate change, and so on, without seeking to influence the outcome of an election contested between political parties - a sort of Future Scotland Forum.
This Future Forum must be free to acknowledge disparate views, and would not promote any particular set of policies, which could be construed as support for a particular party. Rather than make submissions to parliament or the country, it would receive submissions for discussion, and need not conclude discussions with a single set of recommendations. Various proposals can be entertained, with the single thing they all have in common being that Independence is required to fulfil them.
Thus we can preserve the diversity of opinion combined with the unity of purpose that we enjoyed two years ago, and rehearse the debates that will become necessary when a new date is set in a spirit of open and respectful enquiry.
While we benefited, prior to the referendum, from unforced errors on the part of our opponents, the shoe is on the other foot now. They are now able to adopt the dictum "don't interrupt your enemy while he is making a mistake" and quietly give us enough rope, which we will hang ourselves with if we are not careful. Unity, focus and resolve are more important now than ever.
At the same time that necessary focus cannot be the electoral fortunes of an individual political party. That would be divisive when we now enjoy an embryonic pluralism in the nascent parliamentary democracy of an Independent Scotland, with the SNP and the Greens being joined by RISE and others. This pluralism is necessary. We need mature responsible political parties, offering the electorate a genuine choice, prepared and ready for the first election to the parliament of an Independent Scotland once that is achieved.
However, while an election is not just about our party of government, but also our form of governance, a united position is required to achieve that very Independence, and so I advocate voting SNP for both constituency and list this May.
Nevertheless all possible future Scotlands must be open for description and discussion in a way that transcends party politics and allows everyone's voice to be heard, and a suitable forum is required. This forum is currently lacking. The referendum provided a focal point for these discussions previously, and in the absence of the Yes campaign that we could unite behind then, we need something else now.
Therefore we need either a new campaign around a specific date for IndyRef 2 (I have suggested 2020 previously) to provide the necessary focus, or a civic forum with an advisory role to be set up which can consider long term issues such as Independence, social justice, climate change, and so on, without seeking to influence the outcome of an election contested between political parties - a sort of Future Scotland Forum.
This Future Forum must be free to acknowledge disparate views, and would not promote any particular set of policies, which could be construed as support for a particular party. Rather than make submissions to parliament or the country, it would receive submissions for discussion, and need not conclude discussions with a single set of recommendations. Various proposals can be entertained, with the single thing they all have in common being that Independence is required to fulfil them.
Thus we can preserve the diversity of opinion combined with the unity of purpose that we enjoyed two years ago, and rehearse the debates that will become necessary when a new date is set in a spirit of open and respectful enquiry.
Sunday, 17 January 2016
The testicle donors
People don't do what they do because of the material reward they get for doing it. They do what they do because of who they are and the chance doing it gives them to be themselves.
Inequality places an undue emphasis on remuneration which distorts this natural arrangement. Some people can't afford to be themselves. Others are lured into inauthentic activities by greed.
On the one hand talent is squandered as people toil in low wage tasks unrelated to their potential and inclinations in order to fulfill pressing wants and needs that are entirely a consequence of corporate and governmental incompetence. At the other extreme we see mathematical genius wasted in quantitative analysis roles in the City, inspecting the entrails of the market to augur pointless prognostications, discerning patterns in the noise, deriving meaning from its clamour, with fear and greed the only instruments to promote unanimity.
There are few things more corrosive to society than the entirely false idea that the City should be the preferred destination for our brightest and best; that the individuals employed there somehow represent our most talented and intelligent sections of society. They are not the most intelligent. They are merely the most greedy, and that is not the same thing. That other choices are not as well rewarded financially does not make them less valuable. They are a priesthood of greed exercising a spurious authority, supported by teachers and doctors and engineers and countless others whose efforts enable society to function but whose efforts they do not acknowledge. Indeed they cannot, because to acknowledge those efforts would be to expose the antisocial character of their own motives. Instead prestige is conferred on a variety of occupations that contribute nothing to society and which offer no intrinsic fulfilment.
So inequality does not just cause poverty of circumstance. It causes poverty of ambition. Inequality misdirects our genius.
And we find the economy once again poised for financial crisis, and with those responsible insulated from all consequences of their incompetence, their bonus protected, their pensions secure.
So I propose that this time round we make some things clear in a way the parasites in the City understand. For every billion pounds bailout the banks require, they must forfeit one bollock, starting with the board. Cash in exchange for castration. Is that too much to ask?
Inequality places an undue emphasis on remuneration which distorts this natural arrangement. Some people can't afford to be themselves. Others are lured into inauthentic activities by greed.
On the one hand talent is squandered as people toil in low wage tasks unrelated to their potential and inclinations in order to fulfill pressing wants and needs that are entirely a consequence of corporate and governmental incompetence. At the other extreme we see mathematical genius wasted in quantitative analysis roles in the City, inspecting the entrails of the market to augur pointless prognostications, discerning patterns in the noise, deriving meaning from its clamour, with fear and greed the only instruments to promote unanimity.
There are few things more corrosive to society than the entirely false idea that the City should be the preferred destination for our brightest and best; that the individuals employed there somehow represent our most talented and intelligent sections of society. They are not the most intelligent. They are merely the most greedy, and that is not the same thing. That other choices are not as well rewarded financially does not make them less valuable. They are a priesthood of greed exercising a spurious authority, supported by teachers and doctors and engineers and countless others whose efforts enable society to function but whose efforts they do not acknowledge. Indeed they cannot, because to acknowledge those efforts would be to expose the antisocial character of their own motives. Instead prestige is conferred on a variety of occupations that contribute nothing to society and which offer no intrinsic fulfilment.
So inequality does not just cause poverty of circumstance. It causes poverty of ambition. Inequality misdirects our genius.
And we find the economy once again poised for financial crisis, and with those responsible insulated from all consequences of their incompetence, their bonus protected, their pensions secure.
So I propose that this time round we make some things clear in a way the parasites in the City understand. For every billion pounds bailout the banks require, they must forfeit one bollock, starting with the board. Cash in exchange for castration. Is that too much to ask?
Wednesday, 13 January 2016
Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense
I have been thinking a lot lately about male violence against women, particularly as a result of the New Year's Eve attacks in Cologne.
I have been thinking about how men feel permitted to commit such acts on a structural basis: the way a man may think he is allowed to behave this way because patriarchy assigns a role of "provider" or "protector" which may be suspended if he perceives a woman is not fulfilling the obligations of the "protected"; the way she is oppressed by the very role of beneficiary that has been assigned to her without her consent; the way, in a sense, that patriarchy is a form of protection racket.
My thoughts spun off to considerations of codes of chivalry, and I felt the contrast between the foundation of the Order of the Garter by Edward III of England and the rape of Joan of Kent, Countess of Salisbury, by his son the Black Prince, made this point quite well. So I wrote this poem about it, trying to contrive ironies that adequately sublimated my rage.
I have been careful to describe the rape using only contemporary reports.
I have not touched on the origins of the accused in Cologne. The incidents are primarily about violence against women. I don't think the victims really care about the colour of their assailants skin.
Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense
In olden days, a glimpse of stocking
Was looked on as something shocking.
But now, God knows,
Anything goes.
A flash of thigh reveals a garter.
It causes quite a stir as it falls to the ground
during some sort of Plantagenet Can-Can
and the king picks it up and settles things down:
"honi soit qui mal y pense" he says,
which means shame on him who thinks ill of it,
and everybody laughs, and carries on partying,
and later they form a special club,
a sort of garter appreciation society,
for privileged men who protect women,
an order of chivalry, an indulgence in fantasy,
with bizarre initiation rituals
and wild parties.
Joan of Kent is "the most beautiful woman
in all the realm of England" says Froissart.
The prince is "stopping her mouth with such force
that she could only cry two or three cries"
and he has "left her lying in a swoon
bleeding from the nose and mouth
and other parts".
After all, "honi soit qui mal y pense",
which means he reserves the right to do
whatever he would protect her from in others,
and if she should refuse his protection
he'll make her regret it, his chivalry
I have been thinking about how men feel permitted to commit such acts on a structural basis: the way a man may think he is allowed to behave this way because patriarchy assigns a role of "provider" or "protector" which may be suspended if he perceives a woman is not fulfilling the obligations of the "protected"; the way she is oppressed by the very role of beneficiary that has been assigned to her without her consent; the way, in a sense, that patriarchy is a form of protection racket.
My thoughts spun off to considerations of codes of chivalry, and I felt the contrast between the foundation of the Order of the Garter by Edward III of England and the rape of Joan of Kent, Countess of Salisbury, by his son the Black Prince, made this point quite well. So I wrote this poem about it, trying to contrive ironies that adequately sublimated my rage.
I have been careful to describe the rape using only contemporary reports.
I have not touched on the origins of the accused in Cologne. The incidents are primarily about violence against women. I don't think the victims really care about the colour of their assailants skin.
Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense
In olden days, a glimpse of stocking
Was looked on as something shocking.
But now, God knows,
Anything goes.
A flash of thigh reveals a garter.
It causes quite a stir as it falls to the ground
during some sort of Plantagenet Can-Can
and the king picks it up and settles things down:
"honi soit qui mal y pense" he says,
which means shame on him who thinks ill of it,
and everybody laughs, and carries on partying,
and later they form a special club,
a sort of garter appreciation society,
for privileged men who protect women,
an order of chivalry, an indulgence in fantasy,
with bizarre initiation rituals
and wild parties.
Joan of Kent is "the most beautiful woman
in all the realm of England" says Froissart.
The prince is "stopping her mouth with such force
that she could only cry two or three cries"
and he has "left her lying in a swoon
bleeding from the nose and mouth
and other parts".
After all, "honi soit qui mal y pense",
which means he reserves the right to do
whatever he would protect her from in others,
and if she should refuse his protection
he'll make her regret it, his chivalry
no more than a protection racket.
"Like father, like son" the mother-in-law thinks
remembering the day she suffered the same way,
and the day her rapist laughed it off
over a discarded garter.
And so today cabinet ministers and princes of the realm
must be allowed to get up to all the things described
in disappearing dossiers and deleted hard drives
protected by the blue riband of their order,
and shame on him who thinks ill of it.
"Like father, like son" the mother-in-law thinks
remembering the day she suffered the same way,
and the day her rapist laughed it off
over a discarded garter.
And so today cabinet ministers and princes of the realm
must be allowed to get up to all the things described
in disappearing dossiers and deleted hard drives
protected by the blue riband of their order,
and shame on him who thinks ill of it.
Tuesday, 12 January 2016
Cringeworthy
I remember watching an episode of QI in which the host, "national treasure" Stephen Fry, seemed to delight in discomfiting Scottish panellist Fred MacAulay with a list of thing commonly associated with Scotland for which alternative origins could be cited. The intention was clearly not to inform but to make Fred feel uncomfortable. It did rather confirm for me my suspicion that Fry is just another self-satisfied Oxbridge tosser, along with the likes of David Mitchell and so on.
But this sort of stuff is lapped up by those Scots burdened with that anti-syzygistic self-loathing "cringe" that comes from having ceded authority over your own narrative about your identity to someone else with a different agenda. The Scottish Cringe is due, at least in part, to this process: a certain class has legitimised its wealth, privilege and authority on the basis of a foreign (in this instance Anglo-British) narrative and has come to despise their native one as a consequence.
The process becomes automatic, until a transition is made from learning nothing about your own narrative to thinking there is nothing to learn. Eventually you are able to discuss your Scottishness only in terms that would not be incongruent at a Home Counties garden party, utterly alienated from yourself, unable to imagine yourself as anything other than something exotic, foreign, fleetingly peripheral, at one moment an entertaining distraction to the other guests, at the next a nuisance beneath contempt, your bank notes hilarious and quaint right up to the moment you try to pay your way with them, as you suppress your accent to make yourself understood.
These are the sort of people who write articles such as this one in the Scotsman today, following the pattern of which Stephen Fry provided another example I mentioned above, in which Scotland and Scottishness is deemed invalid or illegitimate simply because it does not exhibit some impossible degree of autochthony that is not required of any other nation or community.
Consider how ridiculous it would be to say the following:
How utterly ridiculous! Of course cricket, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, and the name "England", are all quintessentially English. Everything I have just said is just a series of tedious, tendentious, vexatious, utterly pointless quibbles. If I was at all serious I could justifiably be accused of trolling, of casually demeaning the English.
So why does the Scotsman feel the need to quibble about whether golf, whisky, tartan, and so on are "really" Scottish? It tells us more about what Scotland means to the writer than the Scottishness of what he writes about.
Too often these days journalists in the mainstream media in Scotland are nothing more than trolls on a payroll.
But this sort of stuff is lapped up by those Scots burdened with that anti-syzygistic self-loathing "cringe" that comes from having ceded authority over your own narrative about your identity to someone else with a different agenda. The Scottish Cringe is due, at least in part, to this process: a certain class has legitimised its wealth, privilege and authority on the basis of a foreign (in this instance Anglo-British) narrative and has come to despise their native one as a consequence.
The process becomes automatic, until a transition is made from learning nothing about your own narrative to thinking there is nothing to learn. Eventually you are able to discuss your Scottishness only in terms that would not be incongruent at a Home Counties garden party, utterly alienated from yourself, unable to imagine yourself as anything other than something exotic, foreign, fleetingly peripheral, at one moment an entertaining distraction to the other guests, at the next a nuisance beneath contempt, your bank notes hilarious and quaint right up to the moment you try to pay your way with them, as you suppress your accent to make yourself understood.
These are the sort of people who write articles such as this one in the Scotsman today, following the pattern of which Stephen Fry provided another example I mentioned above, in which Scotland and Scottishness is deemed invalid or illegitimate simply because it does not exhibit some impossible degree of autochthony that is not required of any other nation or community.
Consider how ridiculous it would be to say the following:
- Cricket isn't English, it is derived from games already played in France that were possibly imported to England by the Plantagenets. Edward II and Edward I, French-speaking Plantagenet kings of England, are known to have played a game of "creag" at Newenden, Kent in 1301. In Old French, the word criquet meant a kind of club or stick. The earliest written evidence of the game of cricket dates back to France, in a letter written to King Louis XI in 1478, by a man named Estiavannet. This suggests that it shares its origins with croquet, which also involves "wickets" with the innovation in cricket being the striking of a ball raised off the ground. The word "wicket" is from the Old French "wiket" meaning a small door or grille.
- Roast beef isn't English. Meat from cattle has been cooked using fire probably as far back as the advent of Homo Erectus 1.5M years ago.
- The Duke of Wellington, victor of Waterloo, wasn't English. In fact he was from Ireland. Arthur Wellesley was born in Dublin and was made the 1st Duke of Wellington after distinguishing himself in military command with an exemplary battle record in India, Iberia and ultimately at Waterloo.
- The queen isn't English. There is no such thing as the "Queen of England". The queen is styled as monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and her other realms. It makes as much sense to call her "Queen of England" as it does "Queen of Surbiton". And of course the individual who currently occupies the throne is a member of the German family of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (they changed their name to Windsor during the First World War to differentiate themselves from our enemy at the time, their cousin, the Kaiser).
- England isn't English. In fact, it is named after a district of Denmark call Angeln from which a people known as the Angles originated. The term "anglo-saxon" is a modern scholarly invention that combines a name for people from Angeln in Denmark with another name for hired thugs that was current in the Low Countries at the time, saxons, or men who had a saex (a type of sword). A more accurate designation for England might be Greater Wessex or Ny Angeln ("New Angeln" in Danish).
How utterly ridiculous! Of course cricket, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, and the name "England", are all quintessentially English. Everything I have just said is just a series of tedious, tendentious, vexatious, utterly pointless quibbles. If I was at all serious I could justifiably be accused of trolling, of casually demeaning the English.
So why does the Scotsman feel the need to quibble about whether golf, whisky, tartan, and so on are "really" Scottish? It tells us more about what Scotland means to the writer than the Scottishness of what he writes about.
Too often these days journalists in the mainstream media in Scotland are nothing more than trolls on a payroll.
Star Wars Episode VII: A New Jacket
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, there was a fighter pilot called Poe Dameron who owned the coolest jacket in the galaxy.
People were envious of the jacket, and coveted it, especially the First Order, a group of disgruntled customers of a mail order company called Republic Clothing from which Poe had originally obtained his jacket. They were unsatisfied with a bulk order of clothing that had been delivered to them, but had been unable to return or exchange this "first order" of clothing. As a consequence they all had to wear matching clothes that were precisely the wrong kind of retro. They were very angry about this sub-standard level of customer service.
Then they heard that an old guy on a planet called literally "Jacket" had the address of an old Jewish tailor who could make jackets just like Poe's. The problem was this tailor had gone missing. People knew this old tailor, the last Jewish tailor in Glasgow, lived somewhere in the Southside, but no-one really knew exactly where the Southside was, as it lay beyond the outer rim of the Glasgow Underground system, and so they realised they would need an address, or a postcode at least, if they wanted to find him.
But before they could get the address, Poe got to the old guy first and got the address details off him for a second hand clothes shop just off Byres Road in the West End, called Resistance, who wanted to preserve the vintage status of Poe's jacket and prevent any dodgy knock-offs being made that might reduce its value.
The First Order captured Poe, and their head buyer, a guy called Kylo Ren, struck a serious pose. He had a special power that allowed him to breathe out of the palm of his hand, and he tried to force Poe to smell his breath. But his breath was so bad it made Poe scream in agony and he had to get away somehow.
Fortunately there was a junior member of the First Order, whose name at this point consisted mainly of chest and neck measurements or washing instructions or something, who simply could not tolerate wearing such a restricted pallete of colours any-more. He helped Poe escape and in return Poe changed the guy's name to Finn.
Then their spaceship crashed and in the debris Finn saw the jacket just lying there. Poe was nowhere to be found. Only his jacket could be seen. So, once Finn was sure he would get away with it, he just took the jacket and wandered off. While wondering what to do next, a woman called Rey and a robot who recognised the jacket attacked him. To make them let him keep the jacket, he told them Poe was dead, and that he was a sales assistant at Resistance. So they all headed off in the direction of the West End to sort things out.
On the way they bumped into a former employee of Resistance, who could remember back when it was called Rebellion, before it changed its name, a guy called Han Solo. They went to the Scotia Bar with him for a drink, where Han bumped into his ex, Leia. She accused him of wearing an old jacket. He said "no, it's a new jacket". He just liked to get the same kind of jacket. "I know what I like and I like what I know", he said.
It all kicked off and in the melee Poe turned up, throwing punches. Apparently he wasn't dead after all. Finn offered to give Poe his jacket back but Poe just said "keep it, it suits you" and Finn began wondering if perhaps Poe fancied him.
Just then news came in that the First Order had totally lost it and had fire-bombed the Republic Clothing warehouse in Springburn. Resistance sent in a crack team of fashion stylists to try and co-ordinate things, and it was at this point that Rey got a chance to try on Poe's jacket briefly as a consequence of a continuity error. A tall unshaven delivery van driver from Aberdeen with an impenetrable accent tried to offer Han Solo a coat because it was cold, but Han scorned such practicality.
In a flashback sequence we discover Kylo used to hang around with the other goths at the GoMA steps. But Han had put a stop to that by insisting he get a Saturday job in a clothes shop. Han was his dad.
So Kylo killed Han with a magic red laser sword. Then he got into a fight with Rey and Finn and totally trashed the jacket (which Finn was wearing again, thanks to poor continuity) by slashing it right down the back with his magic red laser sword, and Finn swooned.
So Rey had to use the address details, including postcode, to go to the Jewish tailor on the Southside, to get the jacket repaired. She got a lift to the Southside off the unshaven tall Aberdonian delivery van driver, and climbed up to the tailor's shop, which was near Langside Monument, and offered him a magic blue laser sword in payment.
Then she realised she had forgotten to bring the jacket.
The End.
People were envious of the jacket, and coveted it, especially the First Order, a group of disgruntled customers of a mail order company called Republic Clothing from which Poe had originally obtained his jacket. They were unsatisfied with a bulk order of clothing that had been delivered to them, but had been unable to return or exchange this "first order" of clothing. As a consequence they all had to wear matching clothes that were precisely the wrong kind of retro. They were very angry about this sub-standard level of customer service.
Then they heard that an old guy on a planet called literally "Jacket" had the address of an old Jewish tailor who could make jackets just like Poe's. The problem was this tailor had gone missing. People knew this old tailor, the last Jewish tailor in Glasgow, lived somewhere in the Southside, but no-one really knew exactly where the Southside was, as it lay beyond the outer rim of the Glasgow Underground system, and so they realised they would need an address, or a postcode at least, if they wanted to find him.
But before they could get the address, Poe got to the old guy first and got the address details off him for a second hand clothes shop just off Byres Road in the West End, called Resistance, who wanted to preserve the vintage status of Poe's jacket and prevent any dodgy knock-offs being made that might reduce its value.
The First Order captured Poe, and their head buyer, a guy called Kylo Ren, struck a serious pose. He had a special power that allowed him to breathe out of the palm of his hand, and he tried to force Poe to smell his breath. But his breath was so bad it made Poe scream in agony and he had to get away somehow.
Fortunately there was a junior member of the First Order, whose name at this point consisted mainly of chest and neck measurements or washing instructions or something, who simply could not tolerate wearing such a restricted pallete of colours any-more. He helped Poe escape and in return Poe changed the guy's name to Finn.
Then their spaceship crashed and in the debris Finn saw the jacket just lying there. Poe was nowhere to be found. Only his jacket could be seen. So, once Finn was sure he would get away with it, he just took the jacket and wandered off. While wondering what to do next, a woman called Rey and a robot who recognised the jacket attacked him. To make them let him keep the jacket, he told them Poe was dead, and that he was a sales assistant at Resistance. So they all headed off in the direction of the West End to sort things out.
On the way they bumped into a former employee of Resistance, who could remember back when it was called Rebellion, before it changed its name, a guy called Han Solo. They went to the Scotia Bar with him for a drink, where Han bumped into his ex, Leia. She accused him of wearing an old jacket. He said "no, it's a new jacket". He just liked to get the same kind of jacket. "I know what I like and I like what I know", he said.
It all kicked off and in the melee Poe turned up, throwing punches. Apparently he wasn't dead after all. Finn offered to give Poe his jacket back but Poe just said "keep it, it suits you" and Finn began wondering if perhaps Poe fancied him.
Just then news came in that the First Order had totally lost it and had fire-bombed the Republic Clothing warehouse in Springburn. Resistance sent in a crack team of fashion stylists to try and co-ordinate things, and it was at this point that Rey got a chance to try on Poe's jacket briefly as a consequence of a continuity error. A tall unshaven delivery van driver from Aberdeen with an impenetrable accent tried to offer Han Solo a coat because it was cold, but Han scorned such practicality.
In a flashback sequence we discover Kylo used to hang around with the other goths at the GoMA steps. But Han had put a stop to that by insisting he get a Saturday job in a clothes shop. Han was his dad.
So Kylo killed Han with a magic red laser sword. Then he got into a fight with Rey and Finn and totally trashed the jacket (which Finn was wearing again, thanks to poor continuity) by slashing it right down the back with his magic red laser sword, and Finn swooned.
So Rey had to use the address details, including postcode, to go to the Jewish tailor on the Southside, to get the jacket repaired. She got a lift to the Southside off the unshaven tall Aberdonian delivery van driver, and climbed up to the tailor's shop, which was near Langside Monument, and offered him a magic blue laser sword in payment.
Then she realised she had forgotten to bring the jacket.
The End.
Wednesday, 6 January 2016
Kumaraswamy World
There has been a lot of discussion of minimum or basic incomes lately, for example, following recent Finnish initiatives.
But we should also have a maximum income to accompany this. Income should follow a Kumaraswamy Distribution between a minimum and maximum level with most wealth distributed in the middle income bracket, rather than an exponential allocating obscene levels of wealth to the top 1%. Some suitable ratio of maximum to minimum could be set, for example, 5:1.
Individuals can still earn more than the maximum, they simply can't dispose of that income in a manner than exclusively benefits themselves. Therefore those incapable of ambitions higher than the mere accumulation of wealth can aspire to civic benevolence and philanthropy.
But we should also have a maximum income to accompany this. Income should follow a Kumaraswamy Distribution between a minimum and maximum level with most wealth distributed in the middle income bracket, rather than an exponential allocating obscene levels of wealth to the top 1%. Some suitable ratio of maximum to minimum could be set, for example, 5:1.
Individuals can still earn more than the maximum, they simply can't dispose of that income in a manner than exclusively benefits themselves. Therefore those incapable of ambitions higher than the mere accumulation of wealth can aspire to civic benevolence and philanthropy.
Indyref 2020
The 700th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Arbroath will occur on April 6th, 2020.
This document contains many stirring passages. The most important, however, is not necessarily the most famous.
Every school child in Scotland should be able to recite that "it is not for honour nor glory nor riches that we fight, but for freedom, and that alone, which no honest person gives up but with their life". Every child should know that it is possible to resist oppression "so long as but one hundred of us remain alive". However, the earlier passage regarding the kingship of Robert I offers key words of contemporary relevance: "if he should give up what he has begun [...] we should exert ourselves at once to drive him out as our enemy [...] and make some other man who was well able to defend us our King".
Something important happened during the Wars of Independence. The cause of the king and the cause of the country were decoupled. One was pursued only in service of the other. I have spoken previously about what motivated a small nation to resist the cupidity of one of Europe's foremost military powers of the day. It certainly wasn't feudal obligation. They didn't fight for the king's sake. And it wasn't because they felt like it. The threat that was resisted touched every hearth and home then as it does now.
One thing that this decoupling between the leadership of a movement and its objectives achieves is resilience to attempts to suppress the movement by decapitation. The imperialist play-book includes a few standard easily recognisable moves we have seen employed by oppressors throughout the ages - divide and rule, sectarianism, encouragement of competing classes within the oppressed community so that at least some of the oppressed can be distracted into complicity in their own oppression, and so on - and perhaps one of the most familiar is decapitation, the removal of strong, able leadership, the elimination of the ring-leaders.
But when a movement consists of well-motivated, well-informed followers with clear objectives, no leader is irreplaceable. The hand upon the shaft may change but the standard around which we rally and unite stays the same. And that standard is the sovereignty of the people.
The sovereignty of the people is a key principle of Scottish politics today as much as in 1320, when any king could only ever hope to be primus inter pares, the first among equals. Sovereignty resides among and is exercised only on behalf of the people and only with their explicit consent. This was asserted in the Claim of Right in 1989, it was codified by George Buchanan in De Jure Regni apud Scotos in 1579, manifested in the practice of tanistry before it was replaced by primogeniture in the 11th century BCE and was traced back to a mythical Fergussian consitution in the 4th century BCE in order to support the legitimacy of its later practice in the deposition of monarchs.
But myths are not my concern here. The reality is that this concept has de facto, if not de jure, prevalence in Scottish constitutional thought. This is how Scots think of themselves, whether or not it is reflected in the deliberations of a remote parliament at Westminster that has ideas above its station. Once the people assert their sovereignty it cannot be denied. No de jure objection raised by a government can prevail against the de facto will of the people, and any constitution that pretends otherwise is a con trick. The will of the people is the only form of sovereignty that is self-ratifying.
The revolutionary aspect of the Yes Movement has been precisely this assertion of popular sovereignty motivated by utter abhorrence at the actions taken by Westminster in our name, and Scotland has been fortunate in having the cause of self-determination to allow this to be expressed productively in the form of a progressive agenda. We still require unity to complete the unfinished business of Independence, and this is why I advocate voting SNP on both ballots in the forthcoming Holyrood election. Indeed, the situation has only deteriorated with respect to the original complaints that the possibility of self-determination was raised to address, and Independence only becomes more urgent with the passage of time. The obscenities of poverty, prejudice and war are more acute now than they were in 2014.
This need for unity does not prevent every voice being heard in the Yes Movement, and the SNP are not above criticism. At the same time, it is not the SNP's responsibility to formulate Labour party policy for them, and if the Labour party cannot attract more support amongst the electorate that is entirely their own fault. The fundamental problem Labour has is that they have been utterly found out, and they still seem incapable of grasping the magnitude of the transformation required for them to regain any semblance of trust. The only future Labour have in Scotland is as a potential government in an Independent Scotland, not as managers of industrial decline and guarantors of our subordination.
One of the great achievements of the Yes Movement has been to decouple the parliamentary fortunes of the SNP from Independence. We do not seek Independence for the SNP's sake, our support is not unconditional, we only invest our hope in the SNP while it offers a route to the honest, competent government of an Independent Scotland. The Yes Movement can still be the political laboratory in which we test many possible futures against the litmus of informed argument.
Before the Yes Movement, the opponents of Scottish Independence would undermine the case for Independence by criticising the SNP policy platform as though one depended on the other, and indeed this approach gained traction before the SNP's first administration demonstrated their competence, while they were still arguing for the very feasibility of Independence. Gibes and slanders such as "Tartan Tory" which now seem juvenile and ridiculous were taken seriously and had influence with voters generationally inclined towards Labour. This was all an exercise in decapitation, an attempt to discredit the ring-leaders.
But as a result of the Yes Movement, the credibility of Independence no longer relies on the competence of a particular party. The case is not fatally undermined on the basis of party policy, just as no-one would contest the sovereignty of any country that is currently independent on the basis of the policies of the governing party. Scottish political debate is no longer a feasibility study. It is a crucible in which a sovereign people are finding their way towards self-awareness and self-expression.
There is now a generation that is well-informed, engaged and motivated, for whom Scottish Independence is axiomatic. This is what determines the trajectory towards 2020.
Because "so long as but one hundred of us remain alive, we will not submit".
Tuesday, 5 January 2016
Love remains
Firstly, it should be understood that for me all creativity, all artistic output, is the product of a form of religious ecstasy.
I do not dwell on something that has actually happened to me and document its emotional reality. I am interested in the impossible. My aim is always to invest a single moment of experience with such life and heightened reality that the idea that it should end assumes eschatological significance. The creation and reception of the experience should be a form of trance. The resources to achieve this must be found in inaccessible extremities where one's inner life is welded to the limits of space and time.
This is not to say that this is any better or any worse compared to other approaches. It is simply the case that I am incapable of doing it any other way. Indeed, I am in awe of those who can produce breath-taking works of beauty which are entirely beyond my powers: those songs I would give my right arm to have written, because hearing them reveals how utterly useless my right arm is anyway while attached to me and employed in the usual way.
The second thing to understand is that I believe love is a physical reality, indeed, the only reality. I don't mean that in some vague sense. I have a relatively strong background in the physical sciences. I have degrees in astronomy and physics, information technology, and a PhD in nuclear physics, so I am accustomed as a result of my training to describing reality with consistency and precision.
And when I contemplate the universe with the benefit of this training I realise that the difference between the meaningless and the miraculous is love. A world of meaning is a creation of pure love.
Bearing all that in mind, this is the first poem I have written this year.
Love remains
Words cease,
but love remains.
Breathing stops,
but love remains.
Disintegration and decay leave nothing
to bear resemblance to the departed any more,
yet love remains.
Ashes are adulterated with alien dust,
diluted, depleted of meaning,
swept out of reach,
and made something strange and foreign,
by the all world's waters and its winds,
but love remains.
Time passes,
memories fade,
priorities change,
but love remains.
Cherished keepsakes become trinkets
sold for what they're worth
once they've lost all sentimental value
by generations yet unborn
to whom they are just metal,
but love remains.
Clouds gather in October
over a hill,
where grief once drew mourners to a grave.
That place can no longer be found.
The passage of time has unsanctified this ground,
and only an anonymous love remains.
With tectonic inevitability
we suffer a loss all the greater
for the impossibility of its reckoning.
We read a book
whose pages vanish as we turn them,
a book we forget we ever opened
even as we finish it and set it aside
and close our eyes to sleep,
and in dreams we don't remember
love remains.
And when the world ends,
and all the forests we once cut down
erupt from the ruins of everything we ever built,
to be patrolled by monsters grown fat on our souls;
when every zero sum is settled, every debt repaid;
when entropy slips from its straitjacket,
to prowl empty corridors, muttering
and whispering boasts in the abandoned madhouse,
until everything passes at last to silence,
and the stars finally fall, never to rise again:
then, in the endless night that follows,
all our unremembered dreams are the same dream,
and the mystery of love is finally revealed.
I do not dwell on something that has actually happened to me and document its emotional reality. I am interested in the impossible. My aim is always to invest a single moment of experience with such life and heightened reality that the idea that it should end assumes eschatological significance. The creation and reception of the experience should be a form of trance. The resources to achieve this must be found in inaccessible extremities where one's inner life is welded to the limits of space and time.
This is not to say that this is any better or any worse compared to other approaches. It is simply the case that I am incapable of doing it any other way. Indeed, I am in awe of those who can produce breath-taking works of beauty which are entirely beyond my powers: those songs I would give my right arm to have written, because hearing them reveals how utterly useless my right arm is anyway while attached to me and employed in the usual way.
The second thing to understand is that I believe love is a physical reality, indeed, the only reality. I don't mean that in some vague sense. I have a relatively strong background in the physical sciences. I have degrees in astronomy and physics, information technology, and a PhD in nuclear physics, so I am accustomed as a result of my training to describing reality with consistency and precision.
And when I contemplate the universe with the benefit of this training I realise that the difference between the meaningless and the miraculous is love. A world of meaning is a creation of pure love.
Bearing all that in mind, this is the first poem I have written this year.
Love remains
Words cease,
but love remains.
Breathing stops,
but love remains.
Disintegration and decay leave nothing
to bear resemblance to the departed any more,
yet love remains.
Ashes are adulterated with alien dust,
diluted, depleted of meaning,
swept out of reach,
and made something strange and foreign,
by the all world's waters and its winds,
but love remains.
Time passes,
memories fade,
priorities change,
but love remains.
Cherished keepsakes become trinkets
sold for what they're worth
once they've lost all sentimental value
by generations yet unborn
to whom they are just metal,
but love remains.
Clouds gather in October
over a hill,
where grief once drew mourners to a grave.
That place can no longer be found.
The passage of time has unsanctified this ground,
and only an anonymous love remains.
With tectonic inevitability
we suffer a loss all the greater
for the impossibility of its reckoning.
We read a book
whose pages vanish as we turn them,
a book we forget we ever opened
even as we finish it and set it aside
and close our eyes to sleep,
and in dreams we don't remember
love remains.
And when the world ends,
and all the forests we once cut down
erupt from the ruins of everything we ever built,
to be patrolled by monsters grown fat on our souls;
when every zero sum is settled, every debt repaid;
when entropy slips from its straitjacket,
to prowl empty corridors, muttering
and whispering boasts in the abandoned madhouse,
until everything passes at last to silence,
and the stars finally fall, never to rise again:
then, in the endless night that follows,
all our unremembered dreams are the same dream,
and the mystery of love is finally revealed.
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