Will Thought-Out

[willthoughtout-blog]

The chickens are revolting!

The other day I rewatched one of my favourite childhood films, Chicken Run, for the first time in many years. It’s still a great film; Child Will had excellent taste. For one thing, it’s really funny - who doesn’t love a good batch of chicken-based puns? Apparently it even has the right sort of humour that makes it suitable for modern internet culture (the first suggestions for a ‘chicken run’ google search include ‘chicken run memes’). 

But on top of that, it turns out Chicken Run can really only be watched as a heroic tale of proletarian unionisation and the ultimate overthrow of capitalism. I guess I now know to blame Aardman Animations for my political views.

Plot

A quick summary in case anyone has somehow contrived not to watch this classic.

The chickens of Mr and Mrs Tweedy’s farm are trying to escape. They are forced to eat feed and lay eggs, until the day on which they can no longer produce eggs, and the Tweedy’s kill them and have them for dinner. Ginger, the leader of the chickens, masterminds various ultimately-flawed escape attempts.

One day, Rocky (a rooster) turns up out of the sky. He’s a flying bird! Ginger and the other chickens are inspired: if he can just teach them his ways, they won’t need to keep digging endless tunnels and creating elaborate disguises - they can just fly over!

But meanwhile, up at the farm, change is afoot. Mrs Tweedy has had inspiration of her own, installing a pie-making machine to upgrade from the paltry egg business (sorry), into the lucrative chicken pie industry.

Time is running out. The chickens’ days are numbered. If they can’t escape soon, they’ll all be turned into pies.

Will they manage it in time?

Analysis

(If you don’t want to know how it ends, stop reading now and go watch this modern classic.)

So, the ways in which this promotes and espouses revolutionary (and potentially Marxist) ideology are manifold.

For one thing, the heroes are the proletarians chickens. They are exploited, made to do slave labour for no pay, and are totally at the whim of their masters. The day they are no longer economically viable is their last day. The chickens’ tale of working together, creating a very cool (and highly implausible) airplane and flying it out of the farm is surely nothing but a tale of the workers of the world uniting to overthrow exploitative capitalism.

Moreover, the villains are the capitalists farmers. Mrs Tweedy and her exploitative regime are depicted as cruel and evil. Her husband and dogs - lower down the capitalist food chain, enacting the bidding of their masters - are understandably shown as complicit fools, while Mrs Tweedy is the embodiment of evil.

Except, is she the real villain? Because beyond her personal malice, a greater force turns the plot of the film. Profit. The film’s turning point comes when she reads an advert, Are you tired of making minuscule profits?, for the pie-making machine. The connection between profit and slaughter is not subtly made, boosting the film’s Marxist kudos.

It doesn’t just stop there, with simple heroes, villains and the overthrow of the exploitation. They replace the system. The chickens start a new life, without farmers, without profit, cooperating with one another in a post-capitalist paradise. This truly is a revolution.

And the revolution comes in sync with Marxist theory. Marx said (somewhere, I can’t be bothered to find a quote) that the revolution would come at a crisis point. The pie-making machine is this crisis point. Before this, the need for uprising is lost on the other chickens - indeed, there is plenty of infighting, for example: 

After this, the pitfalls of the exploitative capitalist system are too stark to ignore, and the revolution commences.

The film also makes deeper points about how ingrained the system is in the minds of the chickens. Engels termed this ‘false consciousness’, where the ideology of the ruling class is accepted by the working class. Ginger is clearly aware of this, declaring: You know what the problem is? The fences aren’t just round the farm. They’re up in our heads. She gets it.

Also, I found it’s perspective on technology interesting. In the hands of the capitalist class Mrs Tweedy, new technology was a catalyst for oppressive destruction chicken pies. But in the collectively-owned hands (feet?) of the proletariat chickens, it was a tool for revolution escape and freedom. This is an insight worth considering, especially given the current discussion on how the rise of robots will effect the world.

I could keep going all day about the parallels between Chicken Run and historical Marxist thought, but that might get dull (if it hasn’t already), so I’ll move on.

Comment

Watching this film, and realising it has all these deeper meanings that would have been entirely lost on me as a child, has made me wonder about careful you need to be about showing children certain stories. For me, I’d be happy to let my kids watch Chicken Run, because I’m all up for the revolution. Happily, lots of other books and films that I liked as a child conform to this - Harry Potter readers, for example, were found in a 2014 study to have more inclusive views for stigmatised groups. 

But what about other stories? My sister used to listen to Enid Blyton’s The Famous 5 at night, which I passively listened to from the room next door. These stories are now often critiqued as racist and sexist. Similarly, I loved Thomas the Tank Engine as a child, but that similarly promotes imperialist perspectives. 

Do these things matter? Is it just a story? Does it depend at what age you read/hear/see these perspectives?

I don’t know, to be honest. I wouldn’t want to be heavily restrictive of the content my children are exposed to, but at the same time, prejudices typically set in at a very early age.

But one thing’s for sure. I’ll let them watch Chicken Run.

[willthoughtout-blog]

I don’t know anything & Viva la Revolution

This was going to be a review for Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. I finished reading it a week or so ago, and thought it was utterly fascinating and completely changed my perspective on a load of different things.

But I’ve been thinking about it some more, and now I’m not sure that the most noteworthy thing is the book itself. Instead, I’m alarmed at how new the perspectives in the book were to me. Why hadn’t I been introduced to them before?

Sapiens is a history of the human race, from pre-historic humans evolving through different ways, then through the Cognitive Revolution, then the Agricultural Revolution, and then modern history. At the end, Harari discusses the future of the human race, and how we might change with gene-editing and so on.

What Harari does brilliantly is tie all of this enormous history together, and put it all in context. This storytelling and contextualisation alone makes this worth reading.

Reading a history where humans were once middling in the food chain. Reading a history that stresses how little we’ve changed since then. Reading a history that relates our current behaviours to evolutionary instincts (for example, the survival instincts that validate binge-eating). These are perspectives that I’d never been forced to seriously consider before. But why?

In my university studies, no one ever presented these arguments. Politics teaches all about recent, local histories - the customs and institutions that shape contemporary decision-making and discourse. Economics, by contrast, focuses on modern market economies, with supposedly natural laws of supply and demand deriving from self interest, featuring ‘rational’ and well-informed consumers. 

Neither discipline apparently saw it necessary to delve into a history that starts more than 2 or 3 decades back, or consider the activities of hunter-gatherer humans that existed for millennia, dwarfing the time period of modern political history. 

In my mind, this is a failing. Both disciplines would be enormously improved if they considered a longer view of history, with more sociological understandings of how humans work.

For example, as Sapiens outlines, racism is basically wholly socially constructed in each society. Depending on the culture and power dynamics of any given society, any one group might be racially targeted. But sexism? Virtually every known society since the Agricultural Revolution has involved patriarchal power relations. Why is this? Basically, no one knows. But in modern political teaching, it feels like sexism and racism are taught as broadly similar traits. How many politics professors stop to ask if they are? Perhaps it’s worth asking if humans are naturally disposed to patriarchal societies, in the same ways that elephants are to matriarchal ones. This doesn’t mean that we should accept unequal power. But surely we need to understand its root causes as much as possible, and I haven’t heard any feminist scholars talking about built-in patriarchy in the human psyche.

And for economists who model humans as broadly self-interested, how is this supported by sociological evidence about communal tribes? I don’t think human genetics radically changed in the 19th century. I think the dominant theories of humans did.

So, the subjects I studied might be a bit narrow. Big news.

But the thing is, it’s really hard to appreciate that what you’re being taught is just a certain set of perspectives when you aren’t taught anything else.

The reason Sapiens was so transformative to my way of thinking was because I’ve never been taught any anthropology. I’m sure it isn’t actually a bunch of whole new stuff - the guy didn’t do the research himself, he just collated it well. If I’d been able to do Anthropology 101 at uni, I’m sure one lecture would have opened my eyes as much as the first few chapters did.

This is what I hate so much about our uni system. It’s built around the idea that you’re being trained in a certain subject. If you study maths, you’re going there to do maths. Why would you learn sociology?

But is uni a glorified vocational training course? Or should it be? I don’t think so. Maybe it is for vets and doctors. But for the rest of us, only a small amount of the things we learn (if any) will be useful in a job. I much prefer the vision of a university that involves broadening our horizons, teaching us about the world and becoming better informed citizens. I’m sure this would make us better at our jobs, too.

The correlation between what people study and what they do later on is already low. This is something we can make the most of - we’re free to make our university system broader. If all the history undergraduates are just going to go into finance anyway, why not teach them about genetic engineering too?

I know we have ‘open units’, but these are just tinkering around the edges. (Also, I didn’t get any, so I’m bitter). 

I think it’s time for a (vomit) American-style system, where you learn about all different subjects, and then towards the end pick a specialist subject (perhaps).

It will teach economics graduates to be better policymakers, if they know that market ideologies aren’t the only way to view the world. It will make finance graduates better traders if they understand the environmental impacts of their trading. It will make genetic engineers better ethicists if they study philosophy. It will make students overall better citizens and democrats if they understand the different oppressive forces that have affected groups over the years, including their own country’s empire.

So, this book taught me a lot of things. But most of all, it taught me about my ignorance. And I think it’s time we changed the educational system that caused that ignorance.

[willthoughtout-blog]

Les Bleus

[Documentary] • Review •

So last night I watched this Netflix documentary about the French national football team (the eponymous Les Bleus - they play in blue) and it was so good. Genuinely really, really fascinating. Obviously it helps that I’m into football, but it also really holds up as a strong insight into evolving French culture over the past 20 years.

It’s helped by the frankly spectacular material that is France’s footballing fortunes over this period. They are gifted with such extraordinary storylines - from the swaggering triumphs of the 1998 World Cup and 2000 Euros, the subsequent collapse, the near-redemption of 2006 before the most unbelievable self-immolation by Zinedine Zidane in the final (getting sent off in extra time for headbutting someone), and then the chaos of more recent years with the players’ ‘strike’ at the 2010 World Cup. It really has it all as entertainment. 

But intertwined with this is a fascinating racial history of France over the same period. I hadn’t expected to think that football was such a striking leader and reflection of societal attitudes towards race, but it’s really difficult to conclude much else after watching this.

If it seems weird to think of football as a leading force in racial conversations, then think again. Which other activity is so prominent and inspires such a sense of national unity? And which other activity has such a diverse array of backgrounds on show, given both its universality and also dominance by poorer groups? This combination of high-profile, high-diversity and intense public interest is found probably nowhere else. Football isn’t just a game.

To entice you in, without giving away the whole documentary - take the 1998 World Cup, for example. France hosted this, and used it as an overt celebration of France’s diversity, given its hugely diverse team and changing national demographics. This was both a feature of that late-90s positivity that seems to have pervaded Western politics, but also the unique characteristics of football. But the way this celebration was done - well, you really need to see it to believe it. They had these 4 massive statues for the ‘unofficial’ opening ceremony, each of them a man to represent the ‘4 races’. One of these represented black Africans, and he looked lazy and lethargic, and was surrounded by massive fucking termites. Honestly, it’s absurdly racist. (I’m giving no clues about who the other 3 ‘races’ are - send in your guesses). And this was supposed to be pro-diversity!

That’s just a little glimpse at the way that football sets and reflects the tone of race in France.

Also, a good feature of this documentary is the variety of viewpoints it shows. They have a great selection of people for it - the top footballers of the era, some big politicians (former ministers, and 2 former Presidents), plus some interesting actors, comedians and football managers. There is a general narrative to the documentary, but they let you make up your own mind by showing the opinions of a diverse array of people and viewpoints unfiltered. I was pretty surprised at points at what people were willing to defend, but I suppose that’s good. My favourite was Lilian Thuram (legendary French defender), who really does his bit for debunking that ‘stupid footballer’ trope.

So, I would thoroughly recommend Les Bleus. It helps to be interested in football, it’s true, but it’s not essential. They choose a really interesting lens to look at French society through, and they do it really well.

[willthoughtout-blog]

Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race

[Book] • Review •

I’m just going to expand a bit on my Goodreads review. Overall, I thought this book was a really good discussion of race in the UK.

At the start, she writes that she hopes the book serves as a “tool” for those fighting racism, by providing historical context and persuasive arguments (and counter-arguments) for discussions of race. I think this is a great way of summing the book up, and she makes it a good ‘tool’. There’s a great blending of history and argument, personal experience and intellectual critique, academic language and contemporary examples. I think it’s this smooth transitioning between a range of things that has made it so popular, and makes it so easy to read.

On the subject of intersectionality, for example. There are some terms that are a bit opaquely academic that anti-racism campaigners often use, and this could probably fall into this category. But she justifies its use well, and also the need for it. When I read about feminism as written from a black woman’s perspective - as here - I’m really reminded of why intersectionality is important. I’m often lulled (and I’m sure I’m not the only one) into casually assuming that progress along one axis of equality will be good for all, just by moving in a positive direction. This book is a useful reminder that this is not the case.

The first white woman was elected to parliament in 1918 - the first black woman, not until 1987. LGBT campaigns and pride marches might seem like they celebrate diversity. But this shouldn’t obscure how white people in the UK have moved to accept homosexuality significantly (a good thing), while failing to become similarly forward-thinking on race (less good). You can see this by the recent influence of gay people in the upper echelons of far right movements (e.g. Milo Yiannopolous here and in the US, Anne Marie Waters in UKIP and now her new party ‘For Britain’, Alice Weidel as former leader of Germany’s AfD), and by the persistent homophobia found in gay dating apps. Books like this help me remember that one step forward for one group is not inherently a step forward for all.

Similarly, I found her assessment of class compelling. She argues that race and class are “inextricably connected” in a striking way that I hadn’t properly appreciated before. I think her promotion of the 7-layered class system pioneered by a BBC study is good: the old 3-tiered system is out of date and doesn’t seem to really relate to the post-industrial world. It’s a more useful way of viewing the world, and helps you see the way race and class are inherently intertwined (the ‘emergent service workers’ class who are overwhelmingly BME, for example). Moreover, it helped me appreciate the impact of government cuts more: those have hit public services the hardest, and thus this BME group particularly hard.

(I don’t know if that 7-tier system is the perfect way of viewing class in the UK, but it certainly seems like an improvement.)

Finally, I like the inclusion of personal anecdotes and contemporary issues. Her story of asking her mum, when she was 4, when she would “turn white, because all the good people on TV were white, and all the villains black and brown” is chilling. The idea that 4 year olds want to be someone else, because of the pervasiveness of racial stereotypes, is just so unbelievably depressing. The discussion of issues like a black Hermione Granger (from Harry Potter) or James Bond, and the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ campaign, are also useful, because if that 4 year old wants to stay black, they’re going to have to see these characters on screen. It also makes the book more fun - learning about history is great, but there are battles being fought now that need ready arguments, and she provides good ones here. You won’t always be discussing imperialism with your friends, but a black James Bond will probably come up at some point.

So yeah, I liked it for all of those reasons. I feel like it could maybe have used a better or longer history bit, about colonialism and colonial ideology in particular, but what do I know? It works well, and has the rare feat of being a non-fiction book that is both incredibly informative and not at all daunting. If she could give some economists tips on how to do that, that would be great.

[willthoughtout-blog]

84 Charing Cross Road

[Film] • Review •

The other night I watched 84 Charing Cross Road, the film adaptation of a book I read a couple of years back. It was one of those days where I just fancied something simplistic and escapist: it was the same day that a shooter was running round not far from my house. This is a story about a charming pen pal friendship and a love of books, and that’s it. Sometimes you just want uncomplicated cheeriness in your day.

Letters

The book is a collation of letters between an American book-loving woman in New York (Helene), and the head of a bookshop in London (Frank), located obviously in Charing Cross Road. She writes to him asking for old, out-of-fashion books that she can’t find in New York, and he writes back, sending her the requested books where possible. From this initially functional relationship blossoms a genuine friendship, born of shared book loving and growing into a charming 20-year relationship.

I think a large part of the story’s charm comes from its real-life basis. Of course, it’s a little dramatised in the film, but I’m just not sure it would have the same weight if the personalities were characters, rather than real people. I read another collation of letters, Adressat Unbekannt (‘recipient unknown’ in english), a few months ago - a correspondence between a fictional American Jew and a German during the Nazi era - and I found it completely uncompelling, despite the emotional content.

For me, what makes letters special is how they let you peek inside a person. They’re intended for a sole person, not edited for a public audience; they go into depth, not truncated for back-and-forth conversation; and they’re deeply personal, letting you get a glimpse of something inside. I’m unconvinced that even a beautifully-written fictional letter would evoke similar meaning to a standard correspondence between close friends.

Era

I also liked how the story captured a particular period of time (specifically, 1949-1968).

The letters are part of this. It captures a narrowing distance in the world. America and the UK were connected enough for Frank and Helene to communicate with each other, but not to really know each other. They could write, but not Skype. They could trade, but not meet. The opportunities for friendship were expanding in a way barely recognisable from just decades before, but yet with a tantalisingly stubborn distance. For me, it captures the excitement of contact with new people, without the perhaps excessive nearness we have today. When I get a text from a friend on the other side of the world today, it is no revelation - in fact, I might put off a response for a while, depending on my mood. This is a nice immersion in a world where hearing from your far-flung friends is a novel event, and worth cherishing.

The books are another part. International trade had long been around, of course, but ordinary individuals being able to purchase specific items abroad feels exciting and new here. The growing inter-connectedness of the global economy enables Helene’s passion for English literature. Set against a backdrop of UK citizens enduring rationed meat supplies, you get a sense of the world on the cusp of new integration and opportunities for trade. The film personifies this, with an individual buyer ordering from a personalised seller, and the film gives the dazzling opportunities for trade, and the ability to explore our own personal passions, a human touch (something I’ll appreciate when my Hertha Berlin football shirt arrives in America).

Friendship

I’m tempted to say the most charming part of the film is the growing friendship between Helene and Frank. But this isn’t really true. Rather, it’s the way this friendship is a vehicle for kindness spiralling into other people’s lives. Frank makes the effort to find obscure books for Helene. In turn, she sends a ‘rescue package’ to the meat-deprived, rationed workers in Frank’s bookshop, full of exotic foods like tinned ham and eggs. We see how this delights all the workers in the shop. We see how this then delights their friends and relatives when they bring the food home. We see how this is matched in turn by Frank’s neighbour sewing a Christmas present for Helene. 

There’s a term for one small event happening in one place, sparking ever-greater changes elsewhere through knock-on effects: the butterfly effect. The correct usage of the term centres more scientifically on changes in environment, but I feel it also applies somewhat more poetically here - a small act of joy spreading more joy, much as a butterfly might do when it flies by.

Film

I don’t think it won any awards, this film. In many ways it’s an odd choice for a film - a collection of letters isn’t obviously dramatisable, and little happens in the way of plot. My dad went to bed early and asked me the next day if anything happened in the end, and of course the answer was no. It’s not a blockbuster. I’m not even sure the film itself carries the sort of charm I attach to it myself - I think this is derived at least partly from my having read the book before.

But it captures something pure and joyful. Acts of kindness made in no attempt to get anything in return. The shared deep love of something quaint like old books. It doesn’t matter much to me that the plot is unstimulating, or that the dialogue is massively limited. It makes me happy.

[willthoughtout-blog]

Beach Blanket Babylon

[Show] • Review •

Last night I went to see Beach Blanket Babylon in San Francisco.

According to Wikipedia, this is the world’s longest-running musical revue (a multi-act show combining music, dance and sketches, apparently). This is useful, because I’d have no idea what to call it otherwise. It was essentially a barrage of energy - songs, dances, celebrity impersonations and wild outfits.

The basic idea of Beach Blanket Babylon is that Snow White is looking for a husband. But that is little more than a framing device to cram in a load of action. It starts in San Francisco, goes onto Rome, Paris, the Star Wars galaxy, and a bunch of other places probably. Along the way, Snow White and her changing female mentor (sometimes a fairy godmother, sometimes a Jewish mother, sometimes a Parisian prostitute) meet a bunch of famous people. A tiny tiny fraction of these include: Michael Jackson, Tina Turner, Bill Cosby (...), Barbra Streisand, The Beatles, Nicki Minaj, Madonna. Possibly hundreds of others are featured. The cast was about 12 people, and each of them must have had about 15 roles. 

It was quite the spectacle.

In terms of energy, dancing, songs and general entertainment, it was really good. The variety of songs was great, featuring many of the most famous songs of the past 40 years. Some of the performers had great voices, noticeable on songs from people like Tina Turner, James Brown and Adele.

However, there is something slightly draining about relentless spoofs and impersonations. At times, there was a new character being introduced every 5 seconds. Being encouraged to laugh non-stop for an hour and a half (and to be clear, that is all we were encouraged to do - there wasn’t much in the way of plot to admire) is just a bit much. Comedy is nice as relief, or at least with build-up. If someone reads you a one-liner, you might laugh. If someone reads you 200 one-liners in a row, you’ll probably get a little tired, even if the jokes are still good. And that’s kind of what it felt like.

Plus, some of the jokes weren’t even good. The reason it is so long-running is that it updates itself with new cultural trends (enabled by the plotless script). So, a revue that started in 1974 now includes Gangnam Style (felt a bit dated but whatever), Colin Kaepernick, and Kim and Kanye West. What this meant was that of course they included Trump. I was dreading this until it came, and then it did. Obviously. I suppose they had to, but has anyone actually done a funny Trump impersonation? Ever? He’s too absurd, it just doesn’t lend itself to satirisation.

But that aside, it was a thoroughly enjoyable ridiculous spectacle.

I have to give a shout out to the hats, which make our Chelsea Flower Show (I think it’s that one) attempts look pathetic. Take a look below:

I should stress, this is an entirely typical scene from the show. 

From my vague recollection, from left to right we have: 

Snow White’s fairy godmother

Elvis Presley (spoiler alert - Snow White’s husband in the end)

San Francisco personified

James Brown (I think) 

King Louis XIV

So, yeah. It was a little bit wild.

6.5/10

[willthoughtout-blog]

Do social media echo chambers ruin our politics?

I’ve been thinking about how people can change other people’s minds a lot lately.

The idea that our politics in the UK and the West generally is more partisan and divided than it has been in recent years is widely accepted, and it seems true to me. A number of people have attributed the rise of social media to this, with a large emphasis on the ‘echo chamber’ idea. This asserts that basically we curate our own newsfeeds on Twitter, Facebook etc and end up only following and interacting with those who share our basic dispositions. As a result, we only hear one side of the argument, and each side becomes more entrenched in their views.

This is an argument that I’d broadly agreed with - it seems to make sense. However, I saw an academic paper the other day, and it’s made me reassess my stance.

The paper

This paper is worth reading in its entirety, but I’ll summarise it here:

An experiment was run in the US, where a bunch of Democrat voters and a bunch of Republican voters who all use Twitter, were paid to follow some bots for a few weeks. These bots retweeted high-profile politicians, non-government workers, activists, columnists etc of the ‘Other Side’ (so, Democrats saw tweets from high-profile Republican/Conservatives, and vice versa).

What they found: after exposure to these tweets, the people were not more susceptible to opposing arguments. Instead, Democrats became slightly more liberal (although the effect wasn’t statistically significant), and Republicans became significantly more conservative.

Echo chambers

This is of course only 1 paper, with a specific methodology, and so you can’t read too much into it. However, it does make me think, because it completely undermines this ‘echo chamber’ argument about social media driving polarisation. If exposure to tweets from opposing groups increases partisanship, then this argument doesn’t hold much water.

Personally speaking, this makes some sense to me (although I hadn’t really thought about it before). I’ve been aware of this idea that we don’t expose ourselves to enough alternative voices, and so have followed conservatives/pro-Brexiters on Twitter a few times. However, this rarely works - basically, I sometimes find their views interesting, but then they end up tweeting something I consider to be stupid or offensive, and I get rid of them. There are a few people this doesn’t hold true for, but that’s basically because they’re more centrist, I think - so our differences aren’t that large. So it makes sense to me that people being forced to follow others with very different views just reinforces ideas that the other side is stupid or offensive, because I have to say that I can share this experience.

An alternative suggestion

So perhaps it isn’t the echo chamber effect that makes us more polarised?

Perhaps instead, social media is contributing to this polarisation, but in a different way.

Something that I think is under-considered is that people are more or less susceptible to changing their mind depending on how they argue. Characteristics of a debate where you might be open to changing your mind could include:

You can empathise with the person you’re disagreeing with

Debate doesn’t go awry due to misunderstandings

Tension can be diffused with non-verbal cues

Both parties are attempting to find a solution or common ground, rather than just ‘win’

Arguments are presented at length, rather than simplistic short interjections

To me, social media debates lack all of these characteristics. By contrast, real life debates with friends, or other members of committees/jury services/group projects, seem far more amenable to decent interaction.

Firstly, because heightened tension can be more easily detected and diffused with non-verbal interactions. Secondly, the level of empathy is much higher because you can see the person and their emotions, in stark contrast to the high dehumanisation involved in online debate that rarely feels real or tangible. Further, the point of the argument may be more constructive, aiming at finding common ground, whereas online the point is much more often to have a public victory (as encouraged by likes, retweets, etc.). Also, the potential for miscommunication is far higher with text than speech. And lastly, short online comments lack the nuance and persuasion of long written or spoken arguments.

This is the more significant mechanism by which social media polarises our politics, in my opinion. It isn’t the quantity of debates we have (specifically with the ‘other side’) that many people suggest is lacking - on the contrary, the likelihood of interacting with someone with a different worldview seems much higher online than in real life, where you typically engage with people with similar demographics and therefore likely similar worldviews to you. Rather, the quality of debate is massively deficient, owing to the inherent features of social media - specifically its dehumanised, short-form, text-based communication that is so antithetical to the way humans have interacted throughout our species’ history.

Of course, we have always been pretty flawed at diffusing tension with opposition groups (look up the Wikipedia page for ‘War’). But interacting with groups of people that are ‘like us’ has always pervaded human societies. What has changed is how we are interacting. And this doesn’t seem to be helping.

[willthoughtout-blog]

To bear in mind when criticising Israel

Today, there was a protest outside Parliament attacking anti-Semitism within the Labour party, and specifically anti-Semitism within Corbyn’s faction of the Labour party.

This marks an important moment. As far as I’m aware, protests against institutional anti-Semitism are rare within the UK. When we think of racism here, we tend to think of anti-black or Islamophobic racism, among others. What this protest shows is that something has changed.

At the core of the protest is this:

The protesters say there is pervasive anti-Semitism within the Corbyn-led faction of the Labour party that is now dominant.

The counter-protesters say this is a) politically motivated (MPs known to dislike Corbyn took part) and b) the party is not anti-Semitic, it simply criticises the Israeli government.

So I want to talk about this notion that is frequently repeated by people I often agree with on other matters - that it ‘isn’t anti-Semitic to criticise Israel’.

I understand the logic of this argument. I held it too, I think, in a vague way before I took more interest in the topic. My first protest was a pro-Palestine, anti-Israel protest (my friend, who was more into it, dragged me along - I didn’t know the first thing about the situation to be honest).

So I understand the logic of those attacking the anti-Semitism protesters. But I disagree. I don’t think saying ‘it isn’t anti-Semitic to criticise Israel’ is good enough. This is for a number of reasons. Firstly, because it is often false - it ignores the fact that many who criticise Israel are anti-Semitic, especially within these groups Corbyn associates with. And secondly, because there are massive consequences of such a casual attitude to anti-Semitism - this racism is on the rise in UK politics, in large part because of these groups. And, to be honest, I’m not a massive fan of increasing racism.

The UK left, and anti-Semitism

There seems to me to be 2 potential reasons why someone might criticise the current Israeli government:

Genuine disgust for the crimes committed by the Israeli government (I share this opinion)

Hatred for Jewish people (because of Israel’s status as a Jewish state)

The UK left has been massively focused on the Israel-Palestine conflict for years now. Unfortunately, I think this is a meshing of the 2 reasons above, rather than a pure governmental critique.

The evidence for this is not hard to find.

Corbyn, for example, has campaigned in many pro-Palestine groups and events that I’m sure are perfectly well-intentioned. He has, however, supported groups strongly linked to Holocaust deniers. The latest controversy, which sparked today’s protests, were about the following mural:

This is so blatantly filled with anti-Semitic tropes, it’s difficult to even know where to start. The rich bankers, the large noses, the Illuminati conspiracy triangle. And the controversy is that Corbyn defended the artist who designed this, when he said it was being removed.

Another prominent leader of this group is Ken Livingstone (former 2-term Labour Mayor of London), a close ally of Corbyn’s. He’s made such a range of dubious comments about Jews, it’s difficult to know where to start (just check his Wikipedia page out). Corbyn was recently lenient on him when he seemed to suggest that Hitler wasn’t fundamentally so anti-Jew, it was just that he ‘went a bit crazy’.

There are others - it is far from just those at the top - but these are the 2 most powerful and prominent people in this faction.

Anti-semitism on the UK Right

A further problem is that anti-Semitism is not just confined to the likes of Corbyn and Livingstone. It is spreading across our society, and has popped up in the far right areas too.

Nigel Farage, for example, said recently that the ‘Jewish lobby’ has too much influence on US politics. He has also attacked George Soros, a Hungarian Jewish billionaire, for being some sort of traitor against Britain. As a Jewish billionaire (who, incidentally, has done lots of great pro-democracy work), it’s mind-numbingly predictable that he would be the subject for anti-Semitic attacks.

And this is occurring in more than just the fringe Ukip-parts of the conutry. This was the Telegraph’s front page recently, written by the former right-hand man of our current Prime Minister:

The anti-Semitic tropes (a rich Jew, ‘secret plot’, subverting our democracy etc) are again so blindingly obvious.

The emerging picture

The point is that we are a country experiencing a rise in anti-Semitism. This cannot be overlooked.

And this is not just happening in the UK, but across the world. Conspiracies about Jewish media and financial elites, George Soros, the Rothschilds, etc are international phenomena. This is because anti-Semitism (like many of other forms of prejudice) transcends country lines.

For proof, just check out the anti-Semitism Wikipedia page. There’s a whole host of examples:

A massacre in Germany in 1096

An expulsion from England in 1290

A massacre in Spain in 1391

An expulsion from Spain in 1492

A massacre in Ukraine in the 1650s

Pogroms in Russia throughout the 1800s

And so on.

Anti-Semitism has been going on for a millenium or more. It is serious. And it’s becoming bigger in the UK right now.

Criticising Israel

This of course doesn’t mean that someone can’t criticise Israel - indeed, in my opinion, we all should criticise the Israeli government. Its crimes against the Palestinians are horrific.

But it’s important to notice who you’re agreeing with and standing alongside when you do this.

When I criticise Jeremy Corbyn (who I helped elect as leader of the Labour party), or Ken Livingstone (who I think was a really good Mayor on the whole), I’m criticising people who I have time for, and share some common ground with.

Too often it feels like people on the left are unwilling to criticise other people in their own tribe.

And other people don’t criticise this for another reason - that they aren’t too bothered about other people, they just want to shine a light on this critical issue of the Israeli government’s crimes against the Palestinian people.

But what does that say, if you’re willing to stand alongside anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers? What does that say to the Jewish people in the UK?

It’s possible and commendable to criticise the Israeli government. Just make sure you’re paying attention to how you do it.

[willthoughtout-blog]

Hamilton

[Play] • Lin-Manuel Miranda •

This was probably the best play I’ve seen: the hype is well justified. The songs are so good and so varied, from the ballad-style Wait for It, to the melancholy One Last Time, to the comedic You’ll Be Back, and loads more. The acting was superb. It’s just so good.

It’s also really interesting. I could praise the songs, acting and direction for ages, but I can’t be bothered. Instead I’m going to write about it as a piece of art, and a political one at that. Here are my thoughts on a few topics that it covers:

Race

The Hamilton case is famously diverse. It’s a retelling of the story of the founding of the modern USA, with a cast of different ethnicities. This has obvious upsides - opportunities for actors, role models for ethnic minority children, etc. For me though, it’s interesting as an attempt to reclaim American patriotism for non-whites. The play is unashamedly patriotic - celebrating freedom, celebrating the American Revolution, talking about a nation ‘we built’, etc. It does this by retelling the white nationalist foundation of the USA as a story of ethnic minorities and immigrants. It is pro-immigration, celebrating the French native Lafayette and his centrality in the war against Britain, with the pointed line “Immigrants, we get the job done”, and most obviously by telling the story of Alexander Hamilton, an immigrant from the West Indies. This makes sense, and it does it well. However, this is complex, and raises the question of whether this history should be reclaimed. These ‘Founding Fathers’ were white, and they had to be white. They owned slaves. They drafted a Constitution in which a black person legally counted as 3/5ths of a white person for the census. When George Washington is portrayed as a black man, it makes the idea of him owning slaves seem absurd. The whitewashing of this history is complex, and by promoting this positive take on the USA’s origins, it might make it easier for ethnic minorities to feel a part of their nation, but it also might limit claims for contemporary retribution for historical crimes. The play barely mentions slavery - it doesn’t fit into its narrative. And for all the positive racial elements of the play, this reclaiming vs. acknowledging conflict at the core of American racial history has not been won simply by the superb writing and acting that underpins Hamilton.

Nation building and politics

For me, I like to interpret Hamilton in part as a celebration of a certain style of politics. This is a style that focuses less on personalities and elections and exciting things, but on boring stuff like good institution building. (This is of course not wholly true - personalities are critical, the play focuses on the life of one man after all). But nonetheless, Alexander Hamilton was never President, and not especially popular with the people and his political contemporaries. As a result, his story has, until now, not been told with the same fervour as others who made it to be President. But he has a remarkable list of achievements: defending the US Constitution, setting up America’s financial system, setting up the US Coast Guard. All of these have outlived him significantly. By telling Hamilton’s story, this is a celebration of a political style that puts long-term national interests and good institution-building first, and makes petty partisan feuding (from the likes of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Aaron Burr) seem comparatively unworthy of history’s attention. It is Presidents, Kings and Queens who normally get plays about them, not Treasury Secretaries. But this Treasury Secretary shaped America’s future by institution building, not by winning an election, and I’m glad this is celebrated.

The other politician to come out well from Hamilton is George Washington, and with this another strand of politics is celebrated: the upholding of democratic norms. In One Last Time, Washington steps down before he is politically compelled to do so, making the point of teaching the nation about democratic transition in the aim that “the nation we built ... outlives me when I’m gone”. I thought the celebration of this stance was a subtle but strong critique of contemporary politics (especially in America), with its undermining of institutions and democratic norms. This was only a small part of the play, but it was done well.

Women

I had conflicting views on Hamilton’s approach to women as I watched it. The story itself isn’t rife with opportunities to tell a strong female narrative - this is politics in the 1700s, a story of the ‘Founding Fathers’ after all. But it makes an effort to include women, with a couple of interesting characters in Eliza and Angelica Schulyer. But they are still both depicted as helplessly in love with Hamilton - Eliza’s first song is, in fact, ‘Helpless’, covering this very topic - while Hamilton is preoccupied with his work. Contrastingly, but similarly reductively, Hamilton’s affair with Maria Reynolds is also depicted in a stereotypical manner. He is barely blamed, while she is a seductress in a red dress, with dark music and dimmed lighting. The simplistic narrative of a near-blameless man and a tempting seductress is a little disappointing.

Eliza does assert more control over the story as time passes, and isn’t wholly pathetic. She gets the final word, with a powerful last song. But nonetheless, the play’s radicalism on race is not matched in its approach to gender.

Historical look at politics

I enjoyed the insight into a past era of politics. Political debate is primarily conducted through writing - Hamilton writes endless essays and opinion articles to promote his positions. This is notably different to the modern style of TV interviews, Facebook adverts and so on. I don’t have much to add on this topic, but it was an interesting different style of politics which appealed to me, with debate more extensive and intellectual than modern politics. It’s hard to imagine political elites nowadays having the intellectual capacity to set up something as complex as the US financial system, never mind being able to justify it in writing to unconvinced peers who belonged to diffferent parties.

Men

However, just because much debate takes place through essays, it doesn’t mean this is a spectacle of well thought-out, reasoned political debate. Masculine desire for violence (and establishing one’s dominance over other men) pervades the play. First, with Hamilton’s raging desire to prove himself in war, and later with duels as way of settling debate and matters of ‘honour’. Two deaths (including Hamilton’s - belated spoiler alert) result from these duels. The importance of essays may make me a little nostalgic for an era of politics I never experienced. The duels, not so much.

So, to sum up, the play is pretty interesting on a number of fronts. And for me, what makes it remarkable is how good it is, while also being interesting. Some shows attempt to be radical on race, and in the process sacrifice quality (see: the messages in Master of None vs. the acting). Hamilton is a play that has taken popular audiences by storm - it is the most significant theatrical event of the 21st Century - with phenomenal acting, amazing songs, and much more. But at the same time, it also pushes boundaries on race, and makes interesting timely commentaries on the conduct of politics. This is impressive. It is also a nice sign of where we are at as a society, that something so radical can also be so popular - in large part because it is so radical. 10/10 for Hamilton.

[therrblog-blog]

Urbanised (2011) - Documentary

6.5/10

A documentary about… cities. And urban planning. But beyond that, it’s really quite difficult to say what it was about. For a film centred on intricate planning, it was oddly lacking in itself in any coherence and narrative. Perhaps, this is no bad thing - perhaps a documentary does not have to be a deep dive into one specific area. There is always room for the appetite-whetting Week 1 Introductory Lecture before the drab Week 10 Methodology & Statistics course. But nonetheless, the whistle-stop tour from Chilean participatory house building, to New York transformation of post-industrial structures, to civic participation in Stuttgart rail developments, to security innovations just outside Cape Town, left me in a bit of a daze about what the purpose of the whole film really is.

That isn’t to say this eclectic case-study approach doesn’t have upsides. The broad scope leaves room for each viewer to be energised in their own way. For me, this was the case with the work of no-bullshit, car-hating former mayor of Bogotá, Enrique Peñalosa. His prioritisation of high-class cycle lanes, proudly laid next to pitifully neglected roads, and brand new buses flying past endless traffic jams on new bus super-highways, is a welcome contrast with the relentless car prioritisation in the UK and elsewhere. His declaration that a bus with 50 passengers ought to be valued 50x higher than a car with just 1, ought to be heard by UK policy makers, as they continue relentless cuts in bus services overwhelmingly used by the poor, while fuel duty is inexplicably kept low at environmental and fiscal cost, in an effective give-away to drivers. His transport-led populism might understandably not inspire the whole world, but the documentary’s variety gives a bit for each viewer to enjoy.

But there are knock-on effects of the kid-in-a-sweetshop approach to chasing new and innovative developments in urban design, with little apparent logic or consistency into how in-depth a look each segment receives: for example, the controversial Stuttgart 21 rail redevelopment project receives an inordinate amount of time for something that fails to draw many broader conclusions, while the fundamental question of Densification vs. Sprawl and Suburbanisation is left somewhat underdeveloped. Counter-arguments against the film’s pro-city anti-suburbia perspective are limited to an effective Human Straw Man, with an apparently otherwise-irrelevant wealthy American man proudly declaring that he likes his suburban life with a swimming pool and a garden. Compelling data and analysis-led arguments are left wholly unexplored, instead replaced with Thoughtful Architects on the one hand and Selfish Homeowners on the other. The success of a documentary such as Cowspiracy in effecting popular change rests in its combination of a compelling narrative alongside hard evidence, while Urbanised seems content merely to have a ‘respectable voice’ suggest that ‘environmental concerns’ justify their position, and assume that suffices.

One thread that Urbanised does consistently link well, however, is its support for people-based, bottom-up movements. Again, the film falls short of forming a fully-fledged manifesto - a further genre it dips its toe into, without fully committing to the 3.5 Forward Somersault and Entry - but it does offer insights into leading change. Well-worn methods of community gardens are highlighted alongside recent Behavioural Economics innovations in neighbourly comparisons of energy usage, to inspire competitive energy conservation. The idea of a people-centric view of urban planning, rather than 1950s and 60s highway-based planning from a bird’s-eye view, is compellingly explored, and its diversity of subjects, from working-class people in Detroit to Rio to Chile, is refreshing.

Overall, the film is an interesting entry into the world of modern cities, and ideas for future planning. It is perhaps not overly rigorous for those already invested in the topic (guilty), but the breadth and scope make it well worth watching for those Normal People who don’t listen to public transport-based podcasts in their spare time.