O Wonderful Machine: Nihilism and the Question Concerning Technology (Part I)

Charlie Chaplin: Modern Times (1936)

According to Blanchot, Nietzsche is quick to grasp that all the modern world’s seriousness is confined to science and the "prodigious power of technology". Lawrence refers to this (poetically) as the triumph of the machine.

Whilst Nietzsche doesn't entirely deplore this fact, happy, for example, to support the experimental practices of science, he is by no means able to affirm the above development without reservation; not least of all because he identifies modern science as the descendant and heir of Christian moral culture. In other words, it's a machine-embodied unfolding of the ascetic ideal; an expression of mankind's pathological will to truth.

Thus, for Nietzsche, science and technology is fundamentally nihilistic in character, full of thinly veiled metaphysical prejudices and productive of reactive knowledge-forms which may yet prove fatal not only to the Christian moral culture from out of which it has grown, but to the possibility of culture per se as it puts on ice all the illusions which are necessary for the sustaining of culture and, indeed, life itself.

In addition to this fundamental antipathy between vital illusion and the pure knowledge drive, Nietzsche claims that science is incapable of serving as the foundation of culture because, unlike art, it knows nothing of “taste, love, pleasure, displeasure, exaltation, or exhaustion” and so cannot evaluate, cannot command, and cannot create. At best, when coupled to the huge resources of capitalism, science is capable of building a tremendous industrial-technological civilization, such as our own, but, for Nietzsche, this is not a genuine cultural formation because, whilst it is certainly capable of organizing the chaos of existence and constructing a monolithic system or network, it lacks style.

Style, insists Nietzsche, always involves the constraint of a single taste. But it is not merely the imposition of universal laws or categorical imperatives; nor does it seek to make all things and all forces familiar, similar, and predictable. The ideal abstractions of science may very effectively allow for the manipulation of the world and the subordination of life to a tyrannical knowledge form - logic - but this is not the same as mastery and the artist of culture is more than a mere systematizer.

Failing to make the distinction, the technocratic man of reason confuses bullying with a display of strength and mistakes force for power. This is perfectly illustrated in  Lawrence's novel Women in Love by the figure of Gerald Crich; a character driven to impose his will and authority over himself and his workers, just as he does over his red Arab mare. Gerald’s world, the world of industrial civilization, has been described earlier by Lawrence in The Rainbow:

“The streets were like visions of pure ugliness ... that began nowhere and ended nowhere. Everything was amorphous, yet everything repeated itself endlessly ...
   The place had the strange desolation of a ruin. ... The rigidity of the blank streets, the homogeneous amorphous sterility of the whole suggested death rather than life. ...
   The place was a moment of chaos perpetuated, persisting, chaos fixed and rigid.” 

If such a mechanical world essentially lacks style, so too does it entirely lack meaning. At best, it retains a strictly functional residue of the latter that allows it to continue to operate. How to give value back to such a world - and a little loveliness - is a concern shared by Nietzsche and Lawrence. They both fear, however, that so long as the nihilistic-scientific perspective retains its authority, there can be no revaluation. For such a perspective has not only made the barbarism of the modern world unavoidable, but it ensures the destruction of all other perspectives and modes of being.

And yet, perhaps there is hope to be found where we might have least expected to encounter it. This is one of the great lessons of encouragement given to us by Heidegger in his essay entitled ‘The Question Concerning Technology’. At the heart of this work are the following lines from Hölderlin: Wo aber Gefahr ist, wächst / Das Rettende auch.

Commenting on these lines, George Steiner writes:

“To realize that false technicity has edged the human race to the brink of ecological devastation and political suicide, is to realize also that salvation is possible ... It is in the very extremity of the modern crisis, in the very time of nihilistic mechanism, that hope lies ready.”

It is important that we avoid misunderstanding here; hope does not lie in the fruits of science and technology themselves and it is not, therefore, a question of accelerating the production and proliferation of ever-more sophisticated machines in the erroneous assumption that only a micro-chip can save us. If, on the one hand, technophobes who rebel naively against technology and curse it as the work of the devil should rightly be challenged, then, on the other hand, technophiles and neo-futurists who argue for an ever-greater technological manipulation of life deserve also to be met with critical resistance.

Heidegger would surely have agreed with Lawrence that “the more we intervene machinery between us and the naked forces, the more we numb and atrophy our own senses”. Thus, if we are to find our way into a new revealing, then we will have to find a way to creatively manifest these forces. And if we are to deepen our questioning of nihilism and technology, then we will need to resist the temptation of easy solutions and the blackmail of being either for or against science.

It is only via such a questioning - one that manages to touch on the essence of technology - that we can find hope. For it is only by daring to think the latter, which is to say, move closer to the very danger that threatens us, that “the ways into the saving power begin to shine” more brightly.


Bibliography

Maurice Blanchot, 'The Limits of Experience: Nihilism', essay in The New Nietzsche, ed. David B. Allison, (The MIT Press, 1992).
Martin Heidegger, 'The Question Concerning Technology', essay in Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (Routledge, 1994).
D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow, ed. Mark Kinkead-Weekes, (Cambridge University Press, 1989).
D. H. Lawrence, 'Dana's Two Years before the Mast', essay in Studies in Classic American Literature, ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2003).
Nietzsche, 'The Struggle between Science and Wisdom', essay in Philosophy and Truth, ed. and trans. Daniel Breazeale, (Humanities Press International, 1993). 
George Steiner, Heidegger, (Fontana Press, 1989).


Note: Part two of this post can be read by clicking here. 

On Bolshevism and Immortality: the Case of Arseny Tarkovsky

What I know about the twentieth century Russian poet and translator Arseny Tarkovsky can pretty much be written on the back of a postage stamp - such as this commemorative one issued in 2007 to mark the centenary of his birth:

The fact that he featured on a stamp issued by the new regime whilst also having been posthumously awarded the Soviet Union's State Prize in 1989, shows how admired Tarkovsky was across the political spectrum.  

Where he positioned himself on this spectrum is interesting to speculate. Revolutionary-minded, one wonders for example what Tarkovsky made of the way things developed, politically and in the arts, under Stalin.

He obviously didn't feel all that uncomfortable as he volunteered to work as a correspondent for an official Soviet Army publication during the war years and never seriously considered the life of an exile or dissident - not even after his own writing fell foul of the new guidelines established by Andrei Zhdanov.

(It wasn't until 1962, when he was aged 55, that Tarkovsky was finally able to publish a volume of original verse.)

However, one would like to believe that Tarkovsky secretly recognised communism for what it is; a form of political idealism doomed, like fascism, to end in tears, tyranny and state terror.

One perhaps finds a clue to his thinking on this question in a poem whose title is usually translated into English as Earthly; a work in which the fantasy of being an immortal and transcending limitations is decisively rejected.

In other words, it's the moment when Tarkovsky realises like Tommy Dukes that one has to be human, and have a heart and a penis if one is going to escape being either a god or a Bolshevist ... for they are the same thing: they're both too good to be true. 

Below is a brilliant and startling new translation by Simon Solomon; his alternative title emphasizing the irreverence of the verse:


Soiled Song (after Arseny Tarkovsky)

Were our lives innately fated
to play in gods’ eternal laps
we’d all have guzzled ambrosia
from some Olympian nurse’s baps

and I’d be a river deity or worse,
guarding tombs or blowing corn.
Instead I’m mortal and have no time
for eternity’s celestial porn.

Happy the man whose blistered lips
are not sewn into a ready smile.
So take your polytheologies
and leave me to earth’s salt and bile.


Notes 

Simon Solomon (aka Dr Simon Thomas) is a poet, translator, critic and tutor. He is a professional member of the Irish Writers Centre, Dublin and currently serves as managing editor with the academic journal Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society. He blogs at: simonsolomon.ink 

The Tommy Dukes line can be found in D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1983). 

  

On the Death of a Wellness Warrior (The Case of Jessica Ainscough)

Jessica Ainscough: Wellness Warrior (1985-2015)

Photo by Peter Wallis

The case of Jessica Ainscough, the so-called Wellness Warrior, who, sadly, but unsurprisingly, died last year from cancer despite her fanatic adherence to a range of alternative treatments based on diet and lifestyle rather than medical science - including the ludicrous Gerson therapy - perfectly illustrates the peculiar mix of denial, dishonesty and desperate self-delusion that those who reject chemo and surgery in favour of fruit juice and coffee enemas all too often indulge in.*           

The beautiful young Australian was diagnosed with epithelioid sarcoma of the left arm when she was aged twenty-two. When an isolated limb perfusion failed to destroy the malignant tissue, Ainscough was told her only remaining option was amputation; a traumatic procedure, but one which significantly increases chances of survival.

Refusing to accept this, Ainscough placed her hopes in quackery and reinvented herself as a wellness guru, becoming a pin-up girl for those who believe there's a global conspiracy by the medical establishment (in cahoots with big business and governments) to cover up the beautiful truth about cancer; i.e. that it can be cured with positive thinking and a bizarre range of practices that are basically forms of faith healing and folk magic despite the pseudo-scientific language they are disguised with.

Despite increasingly obvious evidence that her disease was progressing, Ainscough continued to proselytize for her new religion until the very end of her journey (earning a significant sum of money in the process from books and personal appearances).

It's hard to say how many lives have been touched by her - and by touched, I mean fatally compromised and needlessly lost - but it's worth noting that one of these lives was that of her own mother who was diagnosed with breast cancer in April 2011.

Convinced by her daughter's ascetic idealism - and doubtless not wanting to disappoint or embarrass her - Sharyn Ainscough also elected to pursue an unorthodox health regime in order to take responsibility for her illness and find a natural cure. She died two-and-a-half years later; a period of time consistent with expectations for untreated cases of breast cancer.         

The ugly and unfortunate truth is this: abnormal cell growth is a fact of life and cancer kills millions of people globally each year. And the Gerson therapy - for all its living enzymes and coffee enemas - hasn't cured a single case.


* I'm not trying to be flippant, or making this up; the Gerson therapy that Ainscough decided both to follow and advocate really does involve the daily consumption of thirteen glasses of fresh organic juices and five coffee enemas per day. In addition, one must strictly follow an organic whole food plant-based diet, boosted with additional supplements. These measures are designed to optimize health and purify the body of what believers call toxins (but would have at one time designated as evil spirits). 

I have sketched out a brief history of coffee enemas in another post: click here.  And for more information, readers might also like to check out the entry on Gerson therapy in The Skeptic's Dictionary by Robert T. Carroll: click here.  

Strange Fruit: an All-American Festival of Cruelty

Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, lynched in Marion, Indiana, on August 7, 1930 

Photo by Lawrence H. Beitler

According to Nietzsche, cruelty is one of the great festive joys of mankind. Put simply, we delight in the suffering of others and in witnessing the public exercise of power in all its spectacular brutality.

Not only is human history written in blood, but even human culture is ultimately no more than a refined form of torture; a method of inscribing the body with certain spiritual values on which we ironically pride ourselves as signs of our moral superiority as a race or species.  

In addition, displays of cruelty are also ways of keeping those who are despised as inferior and feared as other in their place.

This is perfectly demonstrated by the lynching of African-Americans in the United States during the 19th and 20th centuries; a targeted practice of violence and terrorism, largely tolerated by officialdom, designed to enforce and encode white superiority and traumatize the emancipated black population.              

Between 1870 and 1950 - i.e. the great age of modernity - an estimated 4,000 people were lynched in the (mostly) Southern states. And these murders were not committed secretly or in private, but openly before excited spectators who delighted in seeing strange fruit dangling from the trees.

The sociologists Tolnay and Beck, authors of A Festival of Violence (1995), describe how public these events were:

"Large crowds of white people, often numbering in the thousands and including elected officials and prominent citizens, gathered to witness pre-planned, heinous killings that featured prolonged torture, mutilation, dismemberment, and/or burning of the victim. White press justified and promoted these carnival like events, with vendors selling food, printers producing postcards featuring photographs of the lynching and corpse, and the victim’s body parts collected as souvenirs."

Thus, more than merely an effective mechanism of socio-economic control or a method of killing uppity niggers, lynching has to be seen also as a celebratory act of self-affirmation on behalf of clean-living, hard-working, law-abiding, God-fearing white folk; as American as apple pie.


Notes

The above photo by Lawrence Beitler inspired the poem Bitter Fruit (1937) by Abel Meeropol, which became better known as the song Strange Fruit after being set to music and recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939. Click here to watch her performing it.  

For Nietzsche's thoughts on culture and cruelty, see On the Genealogy of Morality, ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson, (Cambridge University Press, 1994).

See also: Stewart E. Tolnay and E. M. Beck, A Festival of Violence: An Analysis of Southern Lynchings, 1882-1930 (University of Illinois Press, 1995). 

Executing Elephants Part III: The Case of Chunee (Death by Firing Squad)

Both cases of elephant execution I have discussed so far took place in the United States in the early part of the twentieth century; the case of Mary, in Tennessee, in 1916 and the case of Topsy, in New York, in 1903. But our third and final case takes us back to Regency London a century earlier.

This is the fascinating (but equally tragic) case of Chunee, a large but friendly Indian elephant who arrived in England in 1809 and who, after treading the boards in Covent Garden, found himself part of the famous and much-loved menagerie at Exeter Exchange on the Strand, established by Italian-born Stefano Polito. As we will see, the events surrounding Chunee's execution by firing squad in 1826, became something of a cause célèbre provoking a national outcry.   

One of the amazing tricks Chunee was trained to perform involved taking a sixpence from visitors to the menagerie with his powerful trunk, before gently returning it. Lord Byron, who visited in November 1813, was so impressed by this and so taken with the elephant's general demeanour that he expressed a wish that the seven ton beast might serve as his butler.

(Wordsworth was also charmed by Chunee, but it is not known if he too wanted to make him part of his household.)

Unfortunately, the good times entertaining poets and princes couldn't last forever and as he grew older Chunee grew increasingly aggressive. This was attributed to an annual paroxysm aggravated by a rotten tusk. Whatever the cause, on 26 February 1826, whilst taking his regular Sunday stroll along the Strand, Chunee suddenly rebelled and ran amok, killing one of his keepers.

Over the days that followed, Chunee - perhaps in a state of musth - became ever more violent and difficult to handle. Eventually, it was decided that he was simply too dangerous to keep. And so, on March 1st, his keeper was instructed to poison him. Chunee - enraged, but not stupid - refused to eat, however. Soldiers from nearby Somerset House were therefore summoned and instructed to shoot the troublesome elephant.

Kneeling down as commanded, Chunee was shot by 150 musket balls, but still refused to die. He was finally finished off like a brave beast in the bullring when someone plunged a sword into his mighty form. It was said that the sound of Chunee's agonised cries were louder and more alarming than all the soldiers' guns combined.      

Afterwards, the public were invited to pay a shilling to witness his body being butchered and then dissected by medical students from the Royal College of Surgeons. So, even in death, Chunee was the star of one last grisly show.

The disgraceful manner of Chunee's demise was widely publicised and widely criticised. Letters of protest were printed in The Times condemning not only the circumstances of his death, but the cruelty of his former living conditions too. Poems and plays were written in memory of the elephant and many illustrations of Chunee's last moments were printed in the popular press (rather bizarrely and insensitively alongside recipes for elephant stew).

The Exeter Exchange menagerie never quite recovered from the deluge of bad publicity and numbers of visitors fell sharply after Chunee's death. The other animals were eventually moved to Surrey Zoo in 1828 and the building was demolished the following year.

So, arguably, in a sense Chunee had the final (posthumous) laugh; if dead elephants can laugh that is.


Note

Part I of Executing Elephants: The Case of Mary (Death by Hanging), can be read by clicking here. 

And Part II: The Case of Topsy (Death by Electrocution), can be read by clicking here. 

Executing Elephants Part II: The Case of Topsy (Death by Electrocution)

Thirteen years prior to the macabre public execution of poor Mary discussed in part one of this post, was the equally gruesome murder of Topsy at an amusement park in Coney Island, New York by a combination of methods, including electrocution.    

Topsy was a female elephant born in SE Asia around 1875, smuggled into the United States in order to become part of a herd of performing circus animals. Like many others of her kind, however, Topsy didn't enjoy a showbiz lifestyle and rebelled against it, gaining the reputation as a troublesome beast. 

In 1902, after killing an idiot spectator who thought it would be amusing to stub out a cigar on her trunk, she was sold to Luna Park where she again became involved in several well-publicised incidents. Not wishing to tolerate a bolshie elephant, the owners of the park decided to hang Topsy in a pay-to-view, end-of-season public spectacular. This plan was abandoned, however, following objections from the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. 

Nevertheless, a new event was quickly arranged; one for invited guests and members of the press only. It was also agreed to use a more certain - and thus arguably more humane - method of strangulation; Topsy was to have large, heavy ropes tied to a steam-powered winch put round her neck. She was also to be given poisoned carrots to consume and electrocuted for good measure.  

On January 4, 1903, in front of a small audience, poor Topsy was duly killed; the 6,600 volts of electricity providing a sizzling coup de grâce. Among those present was a film crew and the resulting snuff movie was released under the title Electrocuting an Elephant. This was available to view via coin-operated kinetoscopes at the time and can still be watched today on YouTube by those with a ghoulish disposition [click here]. 

Doubtless because of the existence of this film, Topsy the elephant has secured her place within the popular cultural imagination.

Finally, it is interesting and I think significant to note that the name, Topsy, was taken from that of a female slave character in Uncle Tom's Cabin - demonstrating how racism and speciesism, as well as violent misogyny, belong to the same matrix of fear and loathing: niggers, women, and dumb animals are all regarded within the white male psyche as dirty and dangerous; creatures in need of taming with a whip and being shown who's boss.  


Note

Part I of Executing Elephants: The Case of Mary (Death by Hanging), can be read by clicking here. 
And Part III: The Case of Chunee (Death by Firing Squad), can be read by clicking here. 

Executing Elephants Part I: The Case of Mary (Death by Hanging)

Having read the recent post written on Tyke, the so-called elephant outlaw [click here] who killed her abusive trainer and rebelled against a life as a circus performer - briefly enjoying a few moments of rampaging freedom before being shot and killed by the police - Zena writes and asks if I'm familiar with any other similar cases involving captive elephants.

Well, it just so happens - even though I make no claims to being an expert in this area - that I am aware of three such cases, the first of which, the case of Mary, I'd like to briefly recount here.

Mary was a much-loved circus elephant, famous for standing on her head, playing musical instruments and pitching baseballs with her trunk. Tragically, after killing a trainer in Tennessee in September 1916, she was put to death by hanging.

The unfortunate - and unqualified - trainer, Red Eldridge, who drifted in and out of employment when not living the happy life of the hobo, was sitting atop Mary as she led the elephant parade through Sullivan County. After apparently stopping to eat a watermelon by the roadside, Mary was given a sharp prod behind her ear with a bull-hook. This proved to be a fatal, final act of cruelty on Elridge's part. Enraged, Mary snatched the puny human off her back, threw him to the ground and stepped on his head - crushing it, ironically, like a watermelon.

Details of what happened next are confused and contradictory; forever lost in a mix of sensationalist newspaper accounts and popular legend. Although it seems that Mary quickly calmed down and didn't make any attempt to run off or hurt any onlookers, locals demanded violent retribution; an eye for an eye and a tusk for a tooth.  
 
Fearing for the future of his circus if he didn't comply with this demand to punish the elephant, Charlie Sparks reluctantly agreed to a public execution. Thus, on a miserable day in Erwin, Mary was taken to a railroad yard and hanged by the neck from an industrial derrick crane in front of two-and-a-half thousand cheering spectators (including most of the town's children).  

The first attempt to execute poor Mary failed when the chain round her neck snapped, causing her to fall and break her hip. Severely wounded, she was hoisted back up with a new chain and killed on the second attempt. Mary was then buried by the tracks, but only after a vet examined the corpse and discovered that she had a severely infected tooth that would have caused her great discomfort precisely in the spot where Eldridge foolishly prodded her.


Note

Part II of Executing Elephants: The Case of Topsy (Death by Electrocution), can be read by clicking here. 
And Part III: The Case of Chunee (Death by Firing Squad), can be read by clicking here. 

Elephant Rebellion (with Reference to the Case of Tyke)

Tyke the elephant packed her trunk and said goodbye to the circus ...

Photo: Honolulu Star (1994)

Perhaps the most (in)famous recent case of so-called elephant rebellion involved a large, 20-year-old African she-elephant called Tyke, who regularly performed with a circus, before one day deciding that enough was enough.

During a show in Honolulu, Hawaii, on August 20, 1994, Tyke killed her trainer, Allen Campbell, and seriously injured a co-worker. She then bolted from the arena and rampaged through the streets of the Kakaako central business district for more than thirty minutes with a trumpety-trump, trump, trump, trump!

Fearing for the safety of the public and of damage to private property - though seemingly unconcerned about Tyke's obvious distress (not to mention the years of abuse and humiliation she'd suffered leading up to the incident) - the authorities immediately issued a shoot to kill policy.

After firing almost a hundred rounds of ammunition at the poor beast, the cops eventually stopped Tyke dead in her tracks; traumatizing many spectators to the event in the process.

The attack on her human captors, her escape, her brief moments running free (if never, alas, running wild), and, finally, her bloody execution, were all captured on video and this shocking footage is central to the excellent if harrowing documentary made by Jumping Dog Productions entitled Tyke: Elephant Outlaw (dir. Susan Lambert and Stefan Moore, 2015).

Anyone moved by the plight of Tilikum in Blackfish (2013) - and you'd have to be heartless and inhuman (in the bad sense of the term) not to be - will rightly be angered and upset by the story of Tyke as well.

Having said that, it's mistaken to think of elephants as gentle giants, or spiritual creatures; even in a natural environment they can display aggressive and destructive behaviour. Hardcore animal rights activists may like to think that man is the only violent and vindictive animal, but that's clearly not the case.

Indeed, one is tempted to suggest that even the most kindly and intelligent elephants can only ever be virtuous in a herd manner or Christian sense; they can display pity and forgiveness, for example, but because they can never forget they're likely to be prone to some form of ressentiment and thus never truly noble.

Of Man and Dog - A Guest Post by Catherine Brown

Penguin, 2012

I have recently read In Defence of Dogs by John Bradshaw, biologist and founder-director of the Anthrozoology Institute at the University of Bristol. The font is academically-small and intimidating. The book is good.

I will pass on its arguments as though they are true. For Bradshaw has done a great deal of research into canine behaviour and, though his findings and inferences are controversial, I have no independent reason to doubt them. In any case, whether they are true or not, they have prompted some interesting reflections in me about pooches and people.

I.

Bradshaw describes the generic mutt; for example, the village dog that one finds all over Africa. They all look roughly alike and share a common evolutionary history that made them perfectly fit for purpose. Selective breeding, however, at the hands of man over millennia, has necessarily produced dogs which are rather less fit. Unfortunately for them, dogs no longer get to choose their own sexual partners and the characteristics for which they're selected, such as utility or good looks, often don't have anything to do with ensuring their survival or improving their health.

It's little wonder therefore that veterinary science is now needed to bridge the fitness-gap that's been opened up and that animal trainers and psychologists are required to deal with dogs that are deemed suboptimal companions. Given that we don't breed certain types of dog primarily for fellowship, it's a bit rich when we complain of aggression or anxiety in our animals, as though these traits were not entirely of our own creation.

Fortunately, we humans, by contrast, resemble village dogs. Except in aristocracies, which have their own problems with fitness, we breed more or less at will, in order to be all-round, well-adapted men and women. Ease of long-distance travel has broadened our gene pools still further. Huxley's Brave New World gives us one vision as to what would happen were it otherwise. Dogs give us another. Were we to be bred by a scientific elite or an alien master race, it's perfectly feasible (and amusing to imagine) that we too might become subdivided into human equivalents of Schnauzers, Dobermans, Bichon Frises, Golden Retrievers, Boxers, Borzois and the rest.

So, in short, most dogs in the Western world are now more pedigree than mongrel; even what is called a mongrel is likely to have at least one pedigree parent or grandparent. By contrast we are for the most part comfortably and healthily mongrel. We don’t need annual vaccinations and monthly worming, as our dogs do, and we are all the better off for it.

II.

Dogs are wolves at arrested stages of development. Even the skull of a little Pekingese resembles that of the wolf foetus; it just doesn’t keep growing into the long, narrow skull of the wolf. Unlike wolves, however, dogs continue to play when they are adults, and are dependent on humans throughout their lives. They therefore never become psychologically mature and independent, as wolves do. Because of the consistency of food supply throughout the year, they are fertile all the year round, unlike wolves, which mate in winter in order to give birth in spring. But because the food that humans can spare for dogs is limited, they are smaller than wolves. They are less fussy about sexual partners than are wolves, which pair-bond, whereas dogs are promiscuous.

And so we, people, are more dog than wolf. We are smaller than earliest man because of our more herbivorous diet (we are only now re-approaching the size of early humans). We are fertile all the year round, and, although we pair-bond to a degree, we are more promiscuous than wolves are. We play, with our child toys or our adult toys, at our child games or our adult games, throughout our lives. Of course, this dogginess is unsurprising, given that we bred dogs in our own image.

Yet the wolves from which we created dogs are not today’s wolves. Since we have persecuted wolves almost to extinction, we have negatively selected those which are most distrustful of us to be the survivors. It is likely that dogs descended from wolves living around 20,000 years ago which had a mutation which enabled them to form relationships with more than one species - our own as well as their own. This mutation served them well; their numbers now dwarf those of wolves.

But, especially in the twentieth century, dog psychology has misleadingly tried to understand dogs with reference to a) modern wild wolves, which are a distrustful, persecuted minority, and b) captive wolves, which, not being able to form and dissolve their own packs, are far more agonistic and violently hierarchical than are the internally-peaceful nuclear family packs of the wild. These false reference points, combined with the false assumption that dogs are essentially wolves in dogs’ clothing, has led to the stress on dominance in dog training.

The assumptions are: every dog wants to be top dog; dogs treat humans as members of their pack; every attempt at dog dominance must be thwarted, and so on. In fact, dogs relate very differently to humans as compared to others of their own kind, and tend to be far more dependent on the former, even in households of multiple dogs. At our own best, we are dog-like in our sociability with all other members of our species, not just within our nuclear families. Where we become wolf-like, in our rivalry with and violent hostility towards other packs, is at the level of the nation. Best to keep dogs within our sights.

Finally, one of the things that makes us human (and dog-like) is our ability to interact with, and nurture, multiple species. This is apparent in the story of the evolution of dogs from wolves. The explanation that wolves were initially tolerated as scavengers in villages is not sufficient by way of explanation of the beginnings of domestication - why would wolves prefer human scraps to the far better and more plentiful food that they can hunt for themselves? Nor is the idea that humans consciously took wolves to train them for various useful purposes, such as those for which working dogs are used today, sufficient as an explanation.

The evidence is that hunter-gatherers, past and present, adopt a variety of baby animals to bring up alongside their own young, simply for the joy of the process, a delight in their cuteness, a delight in play, and, in some cases, the status that accrues from having pets. Amongst today’s Penan of Borneo, and the Huaorani of the Amazon rainforst, parrots, toucans, wild ducks, raccoons, small deer, rodents, opossums, and monkeys are all adopted. Indigenous Australians foster dingo puppies, which, when they become unmanageable adults, are simply driven away to reproduce in the wild. It is likely that the same happened with wolf puppies - and that, eventually, a few of the puppies became domesticated as well as tame, so that they consented to reproduce in a human environment, and thus were set on their course to become dogs.

This is one of the most charming things about humans that I know - that we care about the survival of species other than our own, for reasons other than utility. We delight in nurturing, cuteness, and play, will spend our limited resources on these things, and have done so for as long as we have been human.

Catherine Brown is an English literature academic who also blogs, tweets, and writes for the media. Her literary interests centre on novels and plays of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the wider cultural histories of England and Russia. Her tweets tend to be about D.H. Lawrence; her blog posts are mostly reviews of books, films, plays, and exhibitions, or reflections on politics and religion. 

Catherine appears here as part of the Torpedo the Ark Gastautoren Programm and I am very grateful for her kind permission to reproduce, revise and edit this text, which originally appeared on her own blog. 

Gotta Gettaway (Confessions of a Desperate Housewife)

Front cover to SLF single Gotta Gettaway 

(Rough Trade, 1979)

Although Daventry Road is far, far removed from Wisteria Lane - and although I'm certainly no Bree Van de Kamp - it appears that my Essex exile has resulted in my becoming a desperate housewife caught up in an endless cycle of cooking, cleaning and caring.

None of these activities are particularly objectionable in themselves, I suppose. And it's true that Lawrence was never happier than when baking bread or attending to the daily chores whilst Frieda lounged in bed smoking cigarettes and thinking of her lovers. 

But the domestic life isn't for everyone: even as a young child I despised carpets and comfortable chairs, potted plants and knick-knacks. I could see they were covered not only in layers of dust, but in falsehood. 

As I grew older, I realised that at the heart of every family home lies none of the humility and sweetness spoken of in the song, but secret hatred and unspoken disgust between the sexes and generations.

And this was why the Stiff Little Fingers single Gotta Gettaway (1979) struck such a powerful chord with me at the time and continues to resonate even now ...  

Reflections on Exile

Able was I ere I saw Essex

It's been suggested, rather snidely, that my Essex exile is entirely self-imposed; something voluntarily entered into and which I'm thus responsible for.      

Of course, I'm far too fatalistic a thinker to accept this piece of naive psychologizing which rests upon the rational-moral fallacy of a free-willing subject exercising complete control over the course of actions and events.

But, however it came to pass, my Essex exile is an unfolding reality and a profoundly unpleasant one at that.

It's not that I feel banished from a beloved homeland - something that the Greeks regarded as a fate worse than death - so much as shut-out from a way of life which, limited as it was in opportunity and human contact, was nonetheless my own; i.e. a piece of chaos to which I'd given style. 

Thus my Essex exile is more a form of aesthetico-existential deprivation rather than geographical displacement. I do miss London: especially Soho. But mostly I miss the series of small habits, daily routines and rhythms that enabled a reassuring and necessary consistency and continuity of self (or at least the impression of such).

As Deleuze and Guattari note, even nomads happy to wander homelessly in that savage realm of dangerous knowledge outside the gate have to keep enough elements of subjectivity in order to be able to respond to the dominant reality when they wake up in the morning.

And so, as poets from Ovid to Oscar Wilde have discovered, exile isn't much fun or easy to bear if it involves a loss of soul and not merely a loss of familiar streets and favourite haunts.  

Gokkun: Notes on the Swallowing (and Spitting) of Semen

Artist's impression of a woman drinking semen

wikipedia.org 

Whilst it's certainly the case that semen can contain some nasty surprises - and whilst I'm not insisting anyone should swallow if they'd rather spit - the fact is protein-rich, fat-free male ejaculate contains a harmless (arguably beneficial) mix of elements including amino acids, sugars, minerals, and other nutrients.

So it appears to make good sense - on slightly spurious health grounds at least - to gobble down as much of the stuff as possible whenever you have the opportunity to do so (unless you happen to be one of those unfortunate individuals who suffers from the rare condition known as seminal plasma hypersensitivity).    

Of course, there's always the issue of taste to consider; not everyone is going to like a mouthful of spunk, no matter what the reputed health benefits may be. Some find it bitter, some find it salty, and some - because of the high zinc level - find it slightly metallic on the tongue. Others just find the very thought of it disgusting; Anaïs Nin, for example, rather surprisingly listed penis-sucking as among her pet hates, even though her formula for happiness involved having multiple male lovers.

Obviously, the health and diet of the donor will significantly contribute to the flavour. If you want to sweeten up your semen then drinking lots of fresh pineapple juice is advisable. Other ingredients that are said to improve the palatability include cinnamon, lemon, and green tea. (It's probably best to lay off the red meat and black coffee unless your partner happens to like that distinctively sharp-strong taste.)

Interestingly, a study conducted in 2002 suggested semen may even act as an anti-depressant for heterosexual women - but only if absorbed through the walls of the vagina, so that's not really pertinent to our discussion here. Also, despite their regular contact with and consumption of semen, homosexual men have statistically higher rates of depression. Thus one should probably exercise a degree of skepticism in relation to this question of semen and its beneficial properties.

Whilst ingesting it is not going to kill you, neither will it really work wonders for your physical and psychological well-being. For despite what some people like to believe, seminal fluid really isn't a magical elixir of life.

And those men who take mortal offence when their partner's prefer not to swallow - as if it were an outrageous slight on their precious manhood - are usually just wankers who narcissistically fetishize their own virility and bodily fluids; which is fine, but not when it results in coercion in the bedroom.

Everyone has the right to refuse to engage in sexual acts they are uncomfortable with or find unpleasant: everyone has the right to spit.      

On the Cancerous Downside of Cunnilingus (with Reference to the Case of Michael Douglas)

Image: someecards.com

I've long admired the work of American actor and producer Michael Douglas; ever since his days alongside the magnificent Karl Malden in The Streets of San Francisco in fact. 

For whatever reason, throughout a period stretching across three decades Douglas displayed a brilliant knack for making critically interesting and commercially successful movies that perfectly captured the cultural, political and sexual concerns of his era. These include The China Syndrome (1979), Fatal Attraction (1987), Wall Street (1987), Basic Instinct (1992), and Joel Schumacher's controversial drama Falling Down (1993).

Sadly, in 2010 it was announced that Douglas had been diagnosed with an advanced form of throat cancer (later revealed to actually be tongue cancer), for which he would undergo chemotherapy. As well attributing the cancer to stress, heavy drinking, and a lifelong cigarette habit, Douglas also indicated in a 2013 interview with The Guardian that he blamed it on his penchant for cunnilingus.

Whether the latter was a contributory factor or not, I don't know. But it's certainly the case that human papilloma virus (HPV) can be spread via oral sex and is known to cause cancer. In fact, it's estimated that around a quarter of all mouth cancers and a third of throat cancers are HPV related.

It's also known that HPV related oropharyngeal cancer is twice as common in men than women and is most common of all in heterosexual men. This indicates that giving head to a woman is not only more complex and uncomfortable than fellating a man, but also a far riskier proposition; the thinner, moist skin of the cunt containing a much higher concentration of the virus than the dry skin of the penis (though it should be noted that HPV can certainly be passed on in semen).               

All of which is unfortunate for devotees of pussy-licking - though health concerns happily never deter illicit lovers ...  


Note: despite the advanced stage of his cancer, I'm pleased to report that the treatment Michael Douglas recieved was effective and he is (as far as I know) presently in good health. 

Vaginal Seeding: Why C-Section Babies are Dipped in Love Juice

Illustration by Cara Gibson (2015) of vaginal seeding procedure. 

The left panel shows a sterile gauze incubating in the vagina prior to C-section. 

The right panel shows the gauze colonized by vaginal microbes being swabbed on the newborn. 

mostlymicrobes.com

In the UK today approximately 1 in 4 births are by Caesarian section. This figure is lower than the US and Australia where around a third of babies are delivered via surgical incisions in the abdomen and uterus, but it has significantly increased during the last couple of decades. In 1990, for example, still only around 10% of births were C-sections and these were mostly carried out on medical grounds to protect the well-being of mother and child.  

Doubtless there are many reasons for this development; pregnant women in the West are often now much heavier and much older, for example, and this may necessitate the real or perceived need for a Caesarian.

But we must also mention the narcissistic arrogance of those women too posh to push who regard giving birth 'naturally' as messy, painful, inconvenient and archaic. For such women, a Caesarian is not so much an emergency procedure as it is a combination of human right, professional expediency, and a sign that one can afford to be bang on trend when it comes to the latest fashion in obstetrics.

Of course, it's not simply the mothers-to-be to blame; as with the boom in cosmetic surgery the medical profession is doubtless complicit in the insidious rise in the number of C-sections performed and the normalization of such. It's worth noting that in the US a hospital can charge many thousands of dollars more for a non-vaginal delivery.

And then there's the Hollywood factor: I read recently in a popular fashion and gossip magazine, that it's not only the biggest names in film, TV, and popular music who are electing to have their babies this way: Even C-list celebrities are crazy for C-sections.

Whatever, the reason, the sad fact is that children born in this manner seem to be more prone to a range of medical conditions including asthma, obesity and, later in life, diabetes. The reason for this brings me back to a topic currently of much interest: vaginal fluid.

It seems that babies born via the birth canal receive a sticky coating of lubrication containing a vital cocktail of immune-boosting microbes. Babies delivered surgically, however, miss out on this and as a result suffer a bacterial deficit which, some scientists now speculate, may be a key factor in the health problems more frequently found in those born by Caesarian.

I find it interesting and amusing that the same salty elixir that is deadly to sperm due to its acidity and which commonly carries the cancer-causing HP virus that nearly did for Michael Douglas, is so beneficial for babies that even C-section newborns are now being swabbed with their mother's cunt juice.

Pussy Juice (Isis Unveiled)

Isis Unveiled - Print by Linda Hill (2014)

theredseeds.wordpress.com

One of the most pleasing aspects of Lawrence's rewriting of the Resurrection myth is that the man who died at last surrenders to the temptations of the flesh and finally discovers the unique joy of deeply penetrating the interfolded warmth of a living body.

By going unto the woman of Isis, he overcomes his fear of physical touch and exchanges the stale smell of the tomb for the exquisite scent of her cunt, which, Lawrence writes, is like the essence of roses. The man who died thus learns that there are many ways of entering into holy communion and serving God without having to deny the world or martyr oneself. 

In other words, between the limbs of a pagan priestess the man who died abandons his virgin idealism; she washes away his youthful fanaticism, his self-disgust and his pain, not with tears, but with the secretions of her vagina.

Being a fertile young woman, sexually aroused by a stranger she mistook for Osiris (i.e. the god for whom she had long searched in order that he may fecundate her womb), we can assume her cunt to be naturally well lubricated at the time of coition.

But it's interesting to note, is it not, that the actual lining of the vagina contains no glands and it's plasma seepage from the vaginal wall due to vascular engorgement that is thought to be the chief source of moisture. This is topped up by mucus from glands located near the vaginal opening and cervical secretions at the time of ovulation (the fact that the priestess is impregnated by the man who died provides us with evidence of where she was on her menstrual cycle).  

The resultant fluid, or pussy juice as some like to call it, varies in consistency, texture, colour, odour and taste depending on a variety of factors. These include the level of arousal, time of the month, health and diet. Although some lovers like to think of it as sweet honeydew, vaginal lubrication is actually quite acidic in composition, normally somewhere between 3.8 and 4.5 on the pH scale, in (deadly) contrast to the neutrality of semen which is typically between 7.2 and 8.0.  

Thus, ironically, although a kind of paradise offering those who enter a form of bliss that is immanent to desire, the cunt is a fairly inhospitable environment; not only actively hostile to sperm, but a place where insects and deities lose their way.


See: D. H. Lawrence, 'The Escaped Cock' in The Virgin and the Gipsy and Other Stories, ed. Michael Herbert, Bethan Jones and Lindeth Vasey (Cambridge University Press, 2014). 

Of Mites and Men (Notes on the World of Dust)

Apart from having to listen all day (and often all night) long to my mother's babbling stream of consciousness - an inane interior monologue involuntarily made public thanks to her dementia - one of the more depressing aspects of my Essex exile is living in a home in which dust is a permanent and triumphant feature.

Like many people, I used to subscribe to the comforting myth that dust is essentially made up of dead skin cells; i.e. human in origin and harmlessly inert. But, thanks to Mr Sheen, I now know that this isn't the full story. In fact, the composition of dust is far more complex, far more vital, and potentially far more menacing.

For house dust not only contains human detritus, but also insect remains, plant pollen, animal hairs and various fibres, materials and pollutants found in the local environment all of which create a perfect feeding and breeding ground for microscopic, translucent-bodied arachnids known as dust mites.

These cosmopolitan little creatures are the major inhabitants of dust and they flourish in the dark, warm spaces provided by mattresses, bedding (particularly pillows), upholstered furniture, carpets, etc. Unfortunately, their faeces is known to contain an enzyme harmful to people, particularly those with asthma who are commonly allergic to such. Dust mites are also thought to be a cause of eczema.

As if the thought of these mites creeping about shitting everywhere weren't bad enough, scientists who have studied the subject also estimate there are more than 70,000 types of fungi and over 125,000 kinds of bacteria contained in the dust we vainly try to keep at bay and which we inhale with every breath.

One day, perhaps, it might be possible to artificially control and manipulate the dust; to fill our homes with microbes that actively improve human health. Until then, the best we can do is either wipe and vacuum with renewed vigour, or hope that Quentin Crisp was telling the truth when he observed that after four or five years the build up of dust plateaus.


Notes 

Photo of Quentin Crisp (NYC, 1999) by Piers Allardyce. 

Readers interested in dusty ecosystems and bacterial diversity might like to explore the online public science project established by the Rob Dunn Lab entitled Wild Life of Our Homes.

On Revolutionary Fun (A Message for May Day)

If you make a revolution, writes Lawrence, don't act with ascetic militancy in the name of some grand ideal, or in order to seize control of the economy; make it simply for the pleasure of gobbing in the eye of those who would assert authority and the anarchic joy of upsetting the old order.

As a manifesto, this will doubtless strike many terrorists of theory interested in preserving the pure order of politics and the serious business of revolution, as puerile and irresponsible; the sort of romantic tosh that only a poet can get away with.

Nevertheless, it rather nicely anticipates the poststructuralist thinking that flourished prior to, during, and after the festive upheaval of May '68 and, indeed, encapsulates the insouciant nihilism of punk as conceived by a Situationist-inspired Malcolm McLaren in the mid-late Seventies.    

What unites Lawrence with Deleuze and ties Anti-Oedipus to Never Mind the Bollocks, is a perverse refusal to conform to the accepted way of doing things as prescribed by tradition (be it a literary, philosophical, or artistic tradition); they challenge and change the terms of the debate and shift the zone of combat, discrediting old idols in the process.

But above all, these figures and these works show us that we do not have to be sad or self-serious in order to be radical. Thus, paraphrasing Lawrence if I may: If you want to torpedo the ark, don't do it in ghastly seriousness, don't do it in deadly earnest - do it for fun.


See: D. H. Lawrence, 'A Sane Revolution', in The Complete Poems, ed. Vivian de Sola Pinto and F. Warren Roberts, (Penguin Books, 1977). 

Some Wear Leather, Some Wear Lace

Some Wear Leather, Some Wear Lace (front cover photo)

The rapid evolution of popular music and youth culture in the wake of punk continues to fascinate many commentators, including some who weren't even born in the wildly exciting and experimental period between 1979 and 1984.

Despite their non-being during this era, Andi Harriman and Marloes Bontje have lovingly assembled a visual and written record of the time when some wore leather, some wore lace, but all of us - with a greater or lesser degree of success - wore eyeliner and adopted a somewhat gothic sensibility (transforming from punks to pagans and swapping safety pins for magical amulets).

Why things mutated in the manner they did - why kids who started off pogoing at the 100 Club ended  up posing at the Batcave - is a question that the above authors don't really address in a book which, although rich in photos, is disappointingly light on theory. But it's not one I pretend to know the answer to either.

I've heard it suggested, however, that the nihilistic energy and almost childlike joy in destruction of punk was not only impossible to sustain, but quickly became emotionally unsatisfying for those sensitive and creative individuals interested in developing a more sophisticated and glamourous aesthetic that would allow them to express feelings other than anger, boredom and hatred.

I suspect there's something in this argument.  At any rate, better Siouxsie and the Banshees than Sham 69 ...        

See: Some Wear Leather, Some Wear Lace: The Worldwide Compendium of Postpunk and Goth in the 1980s (Intellect, 2014), by Andi Harriman and Marloes Bontje. 

Note: those who are interested in knowing more about the above authors and their work should visit the Postpunk Project by clicking here. 

Never Mind the Bollocks (On Nietzsche, D. H. Lawrence and the Sex Pistols)

Punk Nietzsche by Gary Neill (2010) on Tumblr

Someone writes and asks why it is that so many posts on Torpedo the Ark invariably refer back to either Nietzsche or D. H. Lawrence. What is it about these two figures that first attracted you and why is it they continue to fascinate?

In order to answer this, it's important to clarify that I'm someone whose intellectual background is neither in German philosophy nor English literature. Rather, it's in art, music, fashion, and radical French politics as filtered through the imagination of Malcolm McLaren. And thus what initially attracted me to Nietzsche and Lawrence was the same that attracted me to McLaren's punk revolution; the attitude, the style, the humour, the extreme nature of their call to arms. 

For like the Sex Pistols, Nietzsche and Lawrence demand an intense level of commitment from their devotees, whilst also encouraging a great level of individual freedom; they don't want you to follow them faithfully, but to lose them and find yourself.

Further, they allow outsiders to feel heroic members of a counter-cultural elite; part of a subversive secret society and part of an adventure - if not, indeed, a crusade that pits you against everyone and everything (certainly against all authorities and all orthodoxies).

Ultimately, if you're a Sex Pistol, then everything else is bollocks and of no vital concern. Likewise, if you're a lover of Nietzsche or Lawrence, then all other philosophers and novelists suddenly pale into insignificance.

That's not to argue, obviously, that there are no other great thinkers or artists with genius. But there's certainly very few who belong like Nietzsche and Lawrence to that order of genius which, in the words of Henry Miller, beats out the boundaries of human experience and widens the frontiers of life.    

Why I Don't Much Care for the London Marathon

Logo of the 2016 London Marathon (with official corporate sponsor) 

A friend, Annette, sends me a text from the London Marathon. "How wonderful", she says, "to see 40,000 people - all shapes and sizes, all creeds and colours - running in perfect harmony and raising money for good causes." 

She's German. And a vegan. So her idealism and admiration for körperkultur doesn't surprise me. But I was a bit disappointed that she should know me so badly, after so many years, that she thought I'd share her enthusiasm for this ersatz sporting event. Because I don't.

In fact, I find its mix of fun-running, charity, narcissistic athleticism, media hype, and commercial sponsorship all wrapped up in Lycra and covered in sweat, deeply offensive. It's an example of what Lawrence terms sport in the head and, like him, I loathe those individuals who parade the self-conscious mechanism of their bodies whilst reeking with smugness and self-regard.       

Baudrillard is no fan either of idiots endlessly pounding the pavements. He rightly characterizes jogging, for example, as a type of ascetic idealism born of consumerism and the Californian cult of the self; a form of socially approved masturbation, the pleasure of which has nothing to do ultimately with either sport or sex.

I can't imagine what Pheidippides - who ran with real joy and purpose and not simply to comply with an obligatory performance principle - would have made of what passes for heroism today ...

The Moon at the End of My Street

According to Lawrence, who insists on an essential and dynamic correspondence between man and the heavenly bodies, the moon is a strange, white, soft-seeming world; a great cosmic nerve centre from which we quiver forever. 

Now, as readers of this blog may know, I'm philosophically hostile to such naive vitalism and what Quentin Meillassoux terms correlationism. However, la luna continues to attract my interest and affection and I agree with Lawrence that it's a far lovelier thing than merely a dead lump of rock in the night sky. 

And so it is that - just the other evening - I took the above photo of the moon at the end of my street, which, coincidentally, happens to be the title of a new collection of poems by Isabel del Rio, who, kindly, has given me permission to reproduce the following lines from a verse entitled 'If you and I did not have the moon':

    

If we did not have the Moon,
we would not know what to call
the night, perhaps only
darkness, we would describe it
only by its colour, black,
by its lack of purpose, pointless.


Other lunar-inspired verses in Ms del Rio's new book include 'wondering moon', 'this Moon is but a quaver on the sky', and 'Moon Haiku Number 1':


Like you, the Moon is
not in the universe, but
is the universe


Obviously, as a poet, there are moments when Ms del Rio falls into the same anthropocentric idealism and affectation as Lawrence. It's not so much that either author wilfully privileges the human over other objects, but each seems unable to help thinking the latter unless they conform to the mind of a knowing subject and in this way become products of human cognition and aesthetic fancy.

Still, it's been said that I often do the same, despite my best efforts to adhere to a strict form of speculative realism and object-oriented ontology (i.e. to know that the moon and stars exist independently of Man and are not ontologically exhausted by their relation to us), so who am I to criticise ... 

Note: Isabel del Rio is a writer and linguist, born in Madrid and living in London. She writes in English and Spanish and has published fiction and poetry. Her new book is published by Friends of Alice Publishing (2016).  

(No) Sympathy for the Rich

Christian Michel

In wake of the recent publication of the so-called Panama Papers, the French libertarian writer Christian Michel advises that we resist the urge to howl with predictable moral outrage and instead express our gratitude towards those who are wealthy enough to be able to afford to significantly reduce their tax bills.

In other words, we should sympathise with the super-rich, not curse them. Michel writes:

"It's hard to be rich. I pity the billionaires who, with a bit of hard work and an immense amount of luck, have managed to offer us products and services we want to buy. The public brings billions to their coffers. Then the public unfairly blames them for amassing those billions.

Of course the rich don't pay more taxes than they are required to; they are just like you and I. Who writes a check to the NHS for a treatment that comes free? Or pays TfL full fare when one is entitled to a discount? We don’t believe in paying government bodies more than called for and it so happens, when it comes to taxes, that legal opportunities exist to minimise the burden.

Thus this is not a moral issue. When some politician admonishes corporate executives on their greed and immorality they threaten all our freedom. A government function is to produce legislation. What the legislation allows is no longer the remit of government.

Commentators may choose to debate the perfectly legal behaviour of individuals, but government officials should not do so. That’s a condition of our security. If zoning laws state that you may build a house up to ten meters high, the council’s mission is to check the highest tile is not higher than 10 meters. That’s all. It is not their business to discuss your taste in decoration, or whom you choose to share your home with.

Likewise, if the rich choose to make use of perfectly legal tax havens, that's their business and their right to do so. Some people may resent it, but the law affords protection to all - even the rich.

Cheating, of course, is a different matter. There exist so many ways to mitigate taxes legally that you wonder if it is laziness or simply stupidity that makes some cross the line that separates tax avoidance from tax evasion. (Of course, it may be the source of the funds that's the decisive issue here, but that's another question.)

Ultimately, everyone - rich or poor - wants to protect their own interests and maximise their own advantages and we should not only acknowledge this fact, but encourage it and celebrate it as fundamental to the workings of a mature, liberal society."

Now, although I'd not describe myself either as a liberal, or a libertarian, I'd pretty much agree - perhaps to Christian's surprise and the disappointment of others - with what's said here. It's not that selfishness and greed is good, but rank hypocrisy and politicised moral ressentiment is worse and arguably more dangerous in the long run.

Having said that, it would really stick in my craw having to express sympathy, gratitude, or admiration for the 1%. That's simply not going to happen. In fact, like Joe Strummer, I don't wanna hear about what the rich are doing and I don't wanna go to where, where the rich are going. For great wealth - like great poverty - deforms and makes ugly at last. And wanting to be rich is a sign of low vitality.  


Notes

Christian Michel is a London-based, political theorist and activist; un homme de lettres et un homme de la ville. He teaches courses on economics and is regularly asked to speak at international events as a leading figure within the libertarian movement. Christian also organizes a twice-monthly salon at his West London home known as the 6/20 Club and facilitates the Café Philo at the Institut français on Saturday mornings. His text, which has been slightly edited, is used with kind permission. 

Joe Strummer was the lead singer of British punk band The Clash. The lines quoted are from a song written by Strummer entitled 'Garageland' which appeared on their eponymous debut album (CBS, 1977). Click here if you want to hear it.   

Non est Consummatum

She's done it again.
My mother: Lady Lazarus.
Back from the hospital, back from the brink.

A sort of slow-walking miracle,
With skin as dry as a Nazi lampshade.
Still smiling with a full set of teeth.

If dying is an art like everything else,
Then it's one like cooking she does exceptionally badly,
Suspended in a grey twilight of forgetfulness.

Note: I have obviously sampled Sylvia Plath's magnificent poem 'Lady Lazarus', first published (posthumously) in Ariel (Faber and Faber, 1965). Although this has been done without permission, I hope it shows my affection and admiration for Plath whose writing so often provides inspiration and, indeed, solace in times of crisis.      

April is the Cruelest Month

Despite the horror of the night before, in the morning the birds still sang, the flowers still opened and the sun continued to shine regardless ... And it is this surging indifference of the world to suffering, particularly noticeable in the spring, that strikes some minds as cruel.

But, for me, it allows petty personal concerns to be placed within a wider (non-human) perspective; enabling one to see as beautiful what is necessary in things. I draw much comfort knowing there is an eternal return of the natural world the same as ever and thronging with greenness.

In fact, sitting at the hospital, I wonder how those individuals who fail to encompass their own lives within what Lawrence terms the blue of the Greater Day manage to find the courage that is needed to survive and flourish in the face of a mortal existence that brings with it an enormous quantum of pain and sorrow.

If they can't transform the undifferentiated black-nothingness of death into a line of flight and fiery resurrection, then it's no wonder they become possessed by that spirit of revenge which animates so many who slander life as it is and long for spiritual immortality and heavenly reward.

Ultimately, it's not Eliot's moral idealism but Nietzsche's perfected nihilism that makes innocent and sets free; which shows us joy in a handful of shit ...