In Praise of Nivea: The Snow-White Miracle Cream

Although the ingredients for Nivea Creme are openly available on the Beiersdorf website and are little different from other commercial hand and body lotions - Aqua, Paraffinum Liquidum, Cera Microcristallina, Glycerin, Lanolin Alcohol (Eucerit®), Paraffin, Panthenol, Decyl Oleate, Octyldodecanol, Aluminum Stearates, Citric Acid, Magnesium Sulfate, Magnesium Stearate, Parfum, Limonene, Geraniol, Hydroxycitronellal, Linalool, Citronellol, Benzyl Benzoate, Cinnamyl Alcohol - the precise formulation (i.e. how these things are uniquely combined) has remained a company secret for over a hundred years.

I know that such secrecy worries some people and fuels the widespread suspicion (bordering on paranoia) surrounding both the cosmetics and pharmaceutical industries. I am also aware that those eco-ascetics who favour strictly organic beauty products developed by tribal peoples in the rain forests of Borneo, for example, or simply wish to splash cold water on their faces, insist that many of the above ingredients have damaging environmental and/or health effects.

One such critic, for example, writing in The Ecologist, expressed his dismay with what goes into a jar of Nivea and repeatedly played on the concerns of his readership by stressing the terms irritants and sensitizers (i.e. chemicals that, with repeated exposure, may trigger allergic reactions), and, of course, the C-word: carcinogens (i.e. potentially cancer-causing substances). 

Parafinnum liquidum, for instance, is a cheap and easy to manufacture form of mineral oil that acts as a emollient that penetrates the skin and produces a temporary moisturizing effect. But the above critic argued that it destroys the skin's natural oils and thus results ultimately in dryness. Having used the product for many years, I know the former to be true - but I've no idea whether the latter is true, for the writer provides no evidence to back-up his claim. Nor do I know if the synthetic fragrances used in Nivea, such as limonene, linalool, and citonellol can cause eye-irritation, trigger asthma attacks, produce tumours and reproductive abnormalities. They do smell nice, however.  

The point is this: we may not need to use skin creams or perfumes or expensive shampoos, but these things make happy and allow us to dream and have more importance in our lives than we might imagine; which is why it is, I think, that my mother - who is 88 and who, thanks to dementia, has lost her appetite for food, her memories of the past, and even her desire to step out of the house - still insists on applying a generous amount of Nivea Creme each evening before bedtime, in order to keep her face and hands soft and young-looking, just as she has always done. 

That's the beauty of beauty products and the magic of cosmetics and why, for me, Nivea is a snow-white miracle cream; as much of a gift of the German genius, in its own way, as the poetry of Rilke, the music of Wagner, or the philosophy of Nietzsche. 

The Present is a Foreign Country

The Bower, Bedford's Park, Collier Row, Essex

© Copyright John Winfield and licensed for reuse under the CCL

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

Hartley's famous opening line to his 1953 novel, The Go-Between, remains profoundly true; although, of course, it would be equally true to say the same of the future and it's that recognition which so excites the imagination of writers of science fiction.

Indeed, one might also argue that, thanks to the rapidity of cultural, social, and technological change, even the present can suddenly become unfamiliar and alienating, even threatening. Mass immigration, for example, changes an area completely. The newcomers not only do everyday things differently to the native population (eat different foods, wear different clothes, pray to different gods), but they are themselves different; perhaps not radically other, but distinctly foreign-looking and foreign-sounding.

I have experienced this recently after spending time back in the town (and indeed the house) where I was born and grew up. And, I have to admit, it's disconcerting; not to feel cut off from the past or from my childhood, but from what remains and what has replaced the world and the people I knew.

Further, without wanting to sound like a middle-aged Tory, I also have to confess that it's those bits of the past that have stayed pretty much the same - or at least offered the best illusion of sameness, such as landscapes - that provide most comfort and a reactionary though nevertheless joyful feeling of nostalgia.   

A Brief Note on Heaven and Hell

The Amusement of the Saints in Heaven

by Watson Heston

Proponents of heaven and hell usually have very little to tell us about the former; white clouds and robes, unfading flowers, and choirs of angels singing the praises of a God who sits on a large golden throne ... It's a place most memorably described by Christopher Hitchens as a celestial North Korea.

It's the latter destination, hell, that really excites the pornographic imagination of believers; all kinds of obscene torture, violent punishment and sexual humiliation are said to take place there, to say nothing of those caves and ragged clothing and the heat - my God the heat! - that so terrifies Elaine Benes.

And, to top it all off, above the gates of hell is a sign which, according to Dante, reads: Built in the Name of Eternal Love - words even more chilling than Arbeit macht frei.

Nietzsche, however, disputes this and says it displays a certain philosophical naivety on the part of the Italian poet. There is a sign, but it's placed rather above the entrance to heaven and the inscription reads: Built in the Name of Everlasting Hate.

For what guarantees the bliss of those in paradise is nothing other than the spectacle of suffering provided by those unfortunates - including family members and friends - burning below: Beati in regno colesti videbunt poenas damnatorum ut beatitudo illis magis complaceat, as Thomas Aquinas, the great Christian teacher and saint writes in pious Latin. The English translation reads:

"The blessed in the kingdom of heaven shall view the torment of the damned, so that they may better enjoy their own salvation." [Summa Theologiae]

Christianity did not discover cruelty as one of the great festive joys of mankind, nor did it invent the idea of an underworld, but only the Church sanctified cruelty in this manner and gloried perversely in torture porn as a form of moral righteousness.

On the Question of Care

Image taken from Nolen Gertz's amusing blog:

ethicistforhire.blogspot.co.uk

The idea of tying the concept of care exclusively to duty is fine perhaps within a legal context, but not so fine (inadequate as well as inappropriate) when it comes to a personal-ethical situation. For in the latter, care is not just a question of paying back a debt that is owed or meeting an obligation.

Thus when caring for a loved one, such as an elderly parent for example, then to care is to grieve or to mourn their frailty and the fact of their immanent passing (their mortality); in Lawrentian terms, one might say to care is to assist another in building their ship of death.

Thus Heidegger was not far off the mark when he linked Dasein's being in the world both to Sorge (care) and to Sein-Zum-Tode (being-towards death).  

The Case of Ghoncheh Ghavami

As profoundly ridiculous as the recent case of the seven young people tried in Tehran for singing and dancing to a pop song was (see the post entitled On the Will to Happiness), the case of Ghoncheh Ghavami is even more absurd and depressing.

For here we find a women's rights activist from Shepherd's Bush with a law degree from SOAS, languishing in an Iranian prison for over a hundred days and presently on hunger strike, for the "crime" of attending - or rather attempting to attend - a men's volley ball match at the Azadi stadium. 

In Tehran primarily to visit family and friends and to work with a charity that teaches street urchins to read, 25-year-old Ms Ghavami fell victim to a law passed in 2012 which bans women from attending all major sporting events - not just volleyball - in order to protect them from the lewd behaviour of male spectators caught up in the excitement of the moment. 

Although formally she has been charged with spreading propaganda against the Iranian regime (a charge that potentially carries a jail term of several years), Amnesty International is right to insist that what Ghoncheh is really being punished for is her peaceful attempt to highlight discrimination against women in Iran.

I wish there was something clever I could say here - a way to give the story a neat philosophical twist - but, as is increasingly the case, my heart's not in it. I simply want this young woman freed and allowed to come home as soon as possible. That, and the end of all forms of sexism, misogyny, and violence against women (particularly when institutionalized at state level and justified by religion).

Prisoners of Fashion

A convict uniform 1830-49

Copyright National Library of Australia

(nla.pic-anc6393471)

I don't know if anybody has ever actually been convicted for crimes against fashion, but it might not be a bad idea for certain individuals to spend some time locked behind bars in solitary confinement, so they might better think through their sartorial choices.

For prison has long been an environment that subjects people to discipline and detail exercised via clothing. Well-known examples would include the classic striped-look, seen for example on Charlie Chaplin in The Adventurer, the heavy-denim outfit worn by Elvis in Jailhouse Rock, and the contemporary bright orange jumpsuits popularized by Guantánamo detainees.

Personally, I've always liked the use of broad black arrows stamped onto a heavy woollen outfit consisting of jacket, trousers and pillbox hat. Often worn by British convicts transported to Australia to work on chain gangs, the arrows signified that they remained subjects of the Crown even when Down Under. Uncompromising hob-nail boots completed a look which was still being used as late as 1922.

I suppose the point is that inmates are expected to reflect upon what they've done and where they find themselves and the wearing of distinctive uniforms designed to shame and stigmatize is meant to assist with this process; that clothes maketh the convict just as much as the chains that are sometimes worn as accessories. But, paradoxically, the uniforms can also produce a feeling of pride and outlaw swagger, which is why many young people often adopt and adapt looks that first arise from within Her Majesty's prisons or American penitentiaries (such as sagging).

Thus, I rather regret the findings of the research conducted during the more liberal periods of the twentieth century which indicated that inmates respond better to the rules governing prison life if they are allowed to wear their own clothes and which led to the phasing out of distinctive prison garb in the UK and elsewhere.

On the other hand, I'm happy to hear that in the United States many wardens are choosing to revive traditional looks, such as the striped-outfit of yesteryear. I'm not sure it will help with rehabilitation, but it will certainly help with giving back to prisoners a distinctive and stylish criminal identity.


Note: the picture shows a lovely magpie style black-and-yellow, hand-stitched convict uniform from Tasmania. The jacket is front-buttoning with a high stand-up collar and long sleeves. The trousers are marked with the famous arrow design mentioned above. It is made from rough woollen Paramatta cloth manufactured in Sydney, Australia. 

A Brief Note on the Case of King Lear (For EF)

Goneril, Regan and Cordelia 

© SingerofIceandFire (2012)

deviantart.com

Is there a more hateful and pathetic figure in Shakespeare than Lear? Self-righteous and self-pitying, he deserves the offspring he begets and the tragedy that befalls him. 

Thankless children might be sharper than serpent's teeth, but vain, selfish parents for whom nothing ever comes of nothing - and nothing their sons and daughters do is ever good enough - leave deeper scars still with their blunt dentures and constant grinding criticism.

More often than not, the young are more sinned against than sinning and blessed is the orphan without the dead weight of family history or filial obligation to pull them down. 

(There's a duty of care, yes, but not at the expense of one's own well-being or sanity ...)

On the Beauty and the Genius of i-Phone 6

Apparently, many buyers of the new i-Phone - the i-Phone 6 - are angry that, due to its slimness, it's easily bent when carried about the person. This has also caused great amusement among Apple's corporate competitors and media detractors. 

But what has been described as a design flaw is actually the beauty and the genius of the i-Phone 6: it has transcended its own base origins in functionality and become a useless object; that is to say, a true work of art. 

Apple have - quite brilliantly and daringly - manufactured the first non-mobile mobile! The idea is not to carry it and use it like lesser though sturdier smart phones, but simply to own it and admire it in its lovely white box. Even, one might adore the i-Phone 6 as a sacred object. For ultimately, Apple wants to create a sense of wonder and reverence amongst its followers; something far beyond mundane customer satisfaction. 

If all you want is a fast, efficient, practical and affordable mobile phone, then buy a Sony or Samsung.

A Thanatological Fragment

First she decided she no longer wanted to go out. Then she decided she no longer wanted to get up. Finally, in death, decision making was no longer an issue and her house-bound, bed-bound days gave way to a period of violent decomposition during which the religious-minded believe souls to be heaven-bound, when really it's merely a return of hydro-carbon atoms to the material world, having broken free from their imprisonment in a particular life-form. 

Whether we like it or not, matter is always struggling to escape essence and to abandon vital complexity; always seeking to return to a state of inanimate simplicity. Our bodies have no loyalty to their own organization or substance; they continually decay and race towards catastrophe (we call this ageing). 

But we shouldn't reify death, nor confuse the fact of our own individual death with non-being. At most, death might be seen as a temporary pause or refreshment before the inevitable return to what Nick Land describes as the compulsive dissipation of life. This sounds a bit like mysticism, but science will confirm that organisms are so vigorously recycled at death that every atom we possess will have already been part of many millions of earlier living (and non-living) things. 

Thus, whilst there is no personal survival of death - the self is destroyed and not simply transformed or spirited away from the scene of the crime at the last instance - we do house and reincarnate the atomic souls of the dead. This is why death is always our affair and why, ultimately, Nietzsche was right to say that being alive is simply a very rare and unusual way of being dead. 

I thought this in 2006 and I still think it now: I find it helps as I watch my mother, who is 88, and recently diagnosed with dementia, slip away ...

Spicebomb

Since its launch two years ago, the Viktor and Rolf fragrance for men, Spicebomb, has continued to divide opinion and get up certain people's noses; which is not necessarily a bad thing, as nothing can be as deadly-dull as consensus.

Personally, I like it and continue to wear it, for all its rather unrefined characteristics and despite the bottle design by Fabien Baron which - in an age of terror - is somehow not only inappropriate, but also serves to strengthen the depressing link between virility and warfare, masculinity and violence. 

I'm sick to death of incendiary objects - be they grenades, people, or perfumes - which threaten to explode in my face and I really have no wish to be overpowered by brute force. Having said that, when it comes to scents, I do like a touch of vulgarity and a hint of exotic decadence and perfumer Olivier Polge gives us this with his Spicebomb via a clever combination of elements including top notes of bergamot and grapefruit, heart notes of pink pepper, chilli and saffron, and base notes of tobacco, vetiver, and leather accord.

Indeed, the irony of Spicebomb is that for all the macho packaging and posturing of the advertising campaign, it retains a slightly sickly sweetness and a degree of femininity rather than a hard-edged spiciness and it's these qualities that ultimately seduce.

It's not subtle, but it is surprising. And it is subversive; of its own name, its own bottle, and of the gender stereotypes that it initially seems to reinscribe.  
     

Note: Viktor and Rolf's Spicebomb is available from the usual high street and online stores in 50 and 90 ml sizes. Also available as a shower gel, aftershave balm, and deodorant.    

The Case of Alice Gross

Alice Gross isn't the only teenage girl to go missing in the last month. In fact, she's one of many - although, thankfully, most are found or voluntarily return home after a day or two.

But, perhaps because she lives nearby and I've become familiar with her face staring out from the above poster in a Vermeer-like manner, I can't help feeling a particular interest in her case and a genuine concern for her well-being.   

I also think of her family and friends trapped in a chaos of anxiety provoked by her absence and by the solemn wait for news of her whereabouts; fearing the worst, but hoping for the best and shifting between these poles of delirium without any sense of reality or time.

It's pointless to try and busy oneself with daily activities in such a situation. For as Barthes says, there is an entire scenography of waiting in which the one who has been left behind is obliged to constantly replay the loss of the loved object and anticipate what it is to mourn their death.

On the Will to Happiness

Image from the video of young Iranians 

dancing to Happy by Pharrell Williams

A group of young people, arrested in May of this year for making a film of themselves dancing in the streets and on the rooftops of Tehran whilst singing along to the Pharrell Williams huge summer hit, Happy, have been convicted of offending public chastity and encouraging illicit relations.

Six of those involved - including the director of the video, Sassan Soleimani - were sentenced by a court to six months in prison and a public flogging. The seventh participant, Reyhaneh Taravati, received an additional six months jail-time for possessing alcohol and posting the video on YouTube.

The sentences have been suspended for three years, but, really, the arrest, the charges, the trial, and the conviction are all so unnecessary and unjust. Not only was there a predictable international outcry, but even the Iranian President, Hassan Rouhani, was moved to defend the seven on Twitter where he wrote: 'We shouldn't be too hard on behaviours caused by joy.'

Obviously, I agree with this. But, I'm somewhat troubled by another tweeted remark made by Rouhani to the effect that happiness is a human right. This worries me, as it seems to feed into the universal cult of what Pascal Bruckner terms perpetual euphoria and by which he refers to a situation in which happiness is no longer just a pleasant but transient emotion that often arrives unbidden, but an ideal state that one is required to seek out and experience as a kind of duty. 

Thanks to the californication of the world, we're obliged to wear a happy smiling face all day, every day and to clap along with modern pop hymns - such as the one written by Pharrell Williams - which encourage us to believe that happiness is a form of truth to which we must devote (and possibly even sacrifice) ourselves; that there ain't nothing gonna bring us down baby!

So, whilst I don't like restrictions on freedom of expression - and certainly don't wish to be thought of as a puritanical opponent of music, dance, and laughter -  I do think we would all be better off if we accepted that there's more to life than happiness. 

Indeed, even sorrow and suffering must surely be accepted and affirmed, if our lives are to be as rich, varied, and fulfilling as human lives have the potential to be. 

Calimocho: On the Politics of Wine and Cola

 Andy Warhol: Coca-Cola (3), 1962

Probably the most powerful argument for choosing a cool can of Coke over a fine glass of wine remains that made by Andy Warhol and it's primarily a cultural-political argument tied to American consumerism, rather than one concerning taste (in either sense of the word) or sobriety:

"What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you can know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it."   

- The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, (Harcourt, 1975)

This is undeniably true and one senses something of this same patriotism and ironic egalitarianism of the market place - one might almost call it Coca-Cola communism - born of a New World dislike for Old World snobbery, in George Costanza's equally robust defence of Pepsi.

Reminded by Elaine that it's customary for guests to bring a bottle of wine to a dinner party, George informs her that he doesn't even drink wine - he drinks Pepsi. When Elaine scornfully tells him that he can't bring Pepsi to a gathering of grown-ups, George snorts: "You telling me that wine is better than Pepsi? Huh, no way wine is better than Pepsi."

Even Jerry's attempt to intervene by telling his outraged friend that the fabric of society is very complex and that one has to conform to all manner of customs and conventions, fails to placate George on this point. Later, in the car driving to the party, George asks: "What are we Europeans with the Beaujolais and the Chardonnay ...?" 

Still, none of this serves to explain Jeremy's discomfort at ordering a bottle of Barolo when on a date in an episode of Peep Show. He's obviously put off by the price (£45), but does he really think that wine is less delicious than hot chocolate or Coke? If so, this simply makes him juvenile rather than American does it not?    

Notes:

See Seinfeld, 'The Dinner Party', episode 13, season 5 (1994) and Peep Show, 'Burgling', episode 1, series 5 (2008). 

The Handmaid's Tale

Cover to first hardback edition
(McCelland and Stewart, 1985)

I read The Handmaid's Tale full of high hopes and great expectations, aware of the critical status of this novel and sympathetic to any literary attempt to warn against authoritarian states - particularly ones underpinned by religious fundamentalism. But, I have to say, I found it disappointing.

Atwood rather cleverly combines some of the queer gothic elements of The Scarlet Letter with those twentieth century classics of dystopian fiction Brave New World and 1984. But whereas the latter, for example, challenges us to imagine a future in which a boot stamps on a human face forever, The Handmaid's Tale asks us to believe in a time when power nakedly manifests itself over an illicit game of Scrabble.

This might be making a point about the often banal and domestic character of evil, but, I must confess, I found it ludicrous. And, unfortunately, there were other things which served only to undermine the seriousness and the horror of the story. One should wince at the publicly displayed bodies of executed prisoners, but not at the clunkiness of dialogue exchanged between characters - even when spoken in the Latin that both Luke and the Commander for some peculiar reason had a penchant for.

I also think we could have done without the puns and without Nick, the chauffeur-lover, playing an almost Lawrentian role in the book. As for the 'Historical Notes' which Atwood attaches as an afterword, these too only serve to weaken the power of the novel which ends with an otherwise very memorable and moving last line: "And so I step, into the darkness within; or else the light."

Again, Atwood might be trying to make a (feminist) point about the manner in which an authentic female voice speaking its own experiences and memories is eventually transcribed, edited, and absorbed into an academic world (i.e. a system of power and privilege) still controlled by pricks such as Professor Pieixoto. But I agree entirely with Joyce Carol Oates who comments on the deflating effect of this heavily ironic coda:

"The appendix makes of the novel an astute, provocative social commentary, where its absence would have made the novel an abiding work of art ending with Offred's hopeful voice ..."     

Sometimes, as a writer, you just gotta know when to shut-up. And, ultimately, literature's not about scoring easy points or making lame jokes.  


Note: Joyce Carol Oates was writing in a piece entitled 'Margaret Atwood's Tale', in The New York Review of Books (Nov 2, 2006). Those interested in reading her article in full should click here.

From the Barbary Wars to the War on Terror

Decatur Boarding the Tripolitan Gunboat (1804), by Dennis Malone Carter  Source: Naval Historical Center, Dept. of the Navy, Washington Many people seem to believe that the violent struggle between America and the Islamic world began on that fateful day in September, 2001. But, as a matter of fact, there's a crucial historical context to the present conflict which predates 9/11.

Indeed, whilst some commentators argue that the US inadvertently helped to create IS due to its actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, it's actually more accurate to say that the Arab-Muslim world has determined (and provoked) US armed foreign policy from the very beginning. To understand why this is so, it's necessary to look back to the time of the so-called Barbary Wars at the beginning of the 19th century ...  Deprived of Royal Navy protection following victory in the War of Independence, American merchant shipping became increasingly vulnerable to the attentions of those powers and pirates who controlled the seas along the Barbary Coast of North Africa. Not only were cargoes looted, but crews and passengers were kidnapped and either held for ransom, or sold into slavery. Thus, as early as the 1780s, America was obliged either to take military action, or submit to Arab aggression and the payment of ever-increasing sums of protection money, or 'tribute' as it was known.  Rightly, I believe, under the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, the US decided it had to fight. For not only is it mistaken and shameful to give into extortion, but there were also terrible reports at the time concerning the mistreatment of captured American citizens. And so a fleet was constructed and a new, permanent force of marines assembled.  Of course, Jefferson was primarily keen to secure American access to free trade routes and was not particularly interested in fighting a holy war or crusade against the Muslim states per se. However, as Christopher Hitchens points out, he must surely have remembered what he was told in 1785 when he and John Adams met with Tripoli's ambassador to London, Abd Al-Rahman: demanding to know by what right the Barbary states behaved as they did towards a newly born secular republic which had no quarrel with the Arab-Muslim world, they were informed that God gave them this authority and that it was written in the Quran that they were free to enslave or murder infidels.           Faced with such religious mania and intransigence, conflict was unavoidable. And so, between 1801 and 1805, was fought the first Barbary War. This was followed by a second skirmish over the same issues, directed by James Madison, in 1815. American victory not only meant the US no longer had to pay a percentage of its GNP to rogue states, it also helped bring about an end to piracy in the region which obviously benefited many other nations, including the UK. We should be grateful, therefore, for the courage of US marines on the shores of Tripoli two centuries ago. And we should be grateful that America is still prepared to step up when needs be and send its servicemen and women into battle.

Put on a Little Makeup ...

One of the things that I find a joy to watch is a young woman putting on her makeup in the morning whilst on the tube and, presumably, on her way to work; particularly when she does so with real concern and concentration and completely oblivious to the presence of her fellow passengers. 

For me, there's always something moving and magical about seeing a woman perform an otherwise private function in public; creating a little space and time for herself and about herself in a busy world with nothing more than foundation, blusher, mascara, and lipstick.

One invariably thinks of what Baudelaire wrote on the female use of cosmetics:

"Woman is quite within her rights, indeed she is even accompanying a kind of duty, when she devotes herself to appearing magical and supernatural; she has to astonish and charm us; as an idol, she is obliged to adorn herself in order to be adored. It matters but little that the artifice and trickery are known to all, so long as their success is assured and their effect always irresistible."

                                                                                                                   
- Charles Baudelaire, 'The Painter of Modern Life', in The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, trans. Jonathan Mayne, (Phaidon Press Ltd., 1995), p. 33. 

Happy to Live in a Soulless World

 Cover art for Jean Baudrillard's Carnival and Cannibal 

(Seagull Books, 2010)

According to Roger Sandall, Disneyfication is the fourth and final stage of what he terms designer tribalism; the way in which a primitive, often savage but nonetheless authentic culture is finally reduced to the level of puerility within the Romantic imagination.

I have no arguments with this, but what Sandall doesn't seem to recognise is that the West has ruthlessly subjected its own culture and history to a similar process - something that Baudrillard was at pains to point out in a late essay entitled Carnival and Cannibal. 

Thus, whilst it's true that the West has obliged non-Western peoples the world over to accept modernity and wear a smiley white face, so too do we figure in this grotesque masquerade, effectively having carnivalized and cannibalized ourselves long before exporting such practices globally. 

The fact is, modernity spares no one: it's a great collective spectacle and swindle wherein "multiracial civilization is merely a trompe-l'oeil universe in which all particularities of race, sex and culture can be said to have been falsified to the point of being parodies of themselves". 

In other words, Western civilization has not triumphed - or, if it has, it has triumphed at the cost of its own soul. Still, this may not be a bad thing ... a soulless future and a disenchanted world may yet be the most beautiful (in its indifference, its irony, and its seductive emptiness). 

And if you think you might prefer to live instead in a world of fundamental values and absolute certainty, of sincerity and sovereignty, authenticity and enthusiasm, then I suggest you pledge allegiance to the Islamic State.

Notes

Roger Sandall writes about Disneyfication and the other three stages of Noble Savagery in an Appendix to The Culture Cult, (Westview Press, 2001), pp. 179-81.

Baudrillard's essay, Carnival and Cannibal, is translated by Chris Turner, (Seagull Books, 2010). The line quoted from is on p. 9.  

These are a Few of My Favourite Things: Sitcoms

Image via http://www.middlechildmade.com/shop/i-love-sitcoms/

I have spoken elsewhere on the political and philosophical importance of lists, but we should not overlook the pleasure aspect: quite simply, lists make happy; they are fun to write and fun to read.

So, here's a list of my thirteen favourite sitcoms - assembled not in order of preference nor following a critical assessment of humourous value, but alphabetically by series title. For compiling lists should not be simply another excuse to exercise judgement and construct hierarchies. I love all of these shows, not equally, but in any order that one might care to watch them and the only logic that links them is the fact that they have continually given joy (perhaps more joy than anything else).

I am not of the view that comedy serves some kind of radical function; I certainly don't think we can simply laugh all our worries or problems away. But I do think it's a higher form than tragedy.

Note that I have decided to exclude any animated shows - otherwise The Simpsons would certainly be on this list. 

Bilko (The Phil Silvers Show)

Cheers

Curb Your Enthusiasm

Hancock's Half-Hour

Extras
Father Ted
I'm Alan Partridge

Man About the House

Peep Show

Rhoda

Rising Damp

Seinfeld

Thirty Rock 

La tyrannie de la pénitence

Princeton University Press (2010)

Described by Douglas Murray as one of the landmark books of our time, Pascal Bruckner's The Tyranny of Guilt develops a line of argument that he first advanced two decades earlier in The Tears of the White Man. Namely, that the Western world has spent the last sixty years so consumed by remorse for its own history that it is now on the verge of apologizing itself out of existence.    

Our self-hatred and self-contempt is matched only by our sentimental insistence on the innocence and innate moral goodness of those peoples upon whom we once imposed our imperial values and the evils of slavery, racism, and genocide; evils which, mistakenly, the West now believes it invented and have a monopoly on.

Nietzsche describes this pathology of guilt, shame, and self-division as bad conscience and whilst Bruckner doesn't refer directly to the second essay of the Genealogy, he acknowledges that Nietzsche understood better than most how the internalization of cruelty, practiced so remorselessly within Judeo-Christian culture, was continuing within secular liberal society; intensifying the pain and creating a duty of repentance.       

Bruckner seeks to understand this phenomenon and how it unfolds in the world today. And, importantly, he attempts to counter it by offering us some theoretical tools of opposition. Of course, to his enemies - and he has many - this attempt at a revaluation of values within the West is seen as reactionary and ethnocentric. He is accused in France of neo-conservatism and Islamophobia due to his opposition to multiculturalism, his staunch defence of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and his admiration for the United States. 

But accusations such as this are as tiresome and as trite as they are predictable. Bruckner may not get everything right, but he deserves to be read and taken seriously. The Tyranny of Guilt is a brave, lucid, and provocative text that challenges readers not only to think - but to care and be concerned about the world in which they live. 

 
Note: Pascal Bruckner studied under Roland Barthes and belongs to that generation of French intellectuals who emerged during the 1970s known as les nouveaux philosophes. He is the award-winning author of many works of fiction and non-fiction, including the novel Lunes de fiel (1981), which was made into a little remembered film, Bitter Moon (1992), directed by Roman Polanski, starring Hugh Grant and Kristin Scott Thomas.

The Culture Cult

Westview Press (2001) 

The fact that this is a badly written and bad tempered book with a strangely dated frame of reference, lacking both philosophical rigour and insight, certainly detracts from but doesn't entirely negate the fact that it's an interesting study on what has once more become a vital question - namely, that of culture and civilization. Or, rather, culture contra civilization.

Roger Sandall - a former lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Sydney - is not a man who likes to leave anyone in any doubt where he stands. In The Culture Cult he offers an unambiguous critique of romantic primitivism and an unapologetic defence of modernity and Western civilization. He also analyses how designer tribalism is used to undermine the values and achievements of the latter by people who, for one reason or another, choose to reject civil society, science, and secularism.

For those who often violently oppose corrupt (i.e. complex) modernity in favour of pre-modern ways of life - such as radical Islamists, for example - human rights, healthcare, and education are besides the point. They insist on the moral superiority of their traditions and beliefs and offer a fictionalized account of the past to justify this insistence. Depressingly - and disastrously - as members of religious and/or ethnic minorities who have migrated to the West, they are encouraged (often by those who mean well) to effectively lead separate lives based on practices and views that are at irreconcilably at odds with the world around them and which thus keep them trapped in poverty, superstition, and ignorance. This often leads to resentment, criminal behaviour and, ultimately, opens a pathway to extremism. 

Sandall regards everything associated with noble savagery and the culture cult as bad news. And he is at pains to remind us that most traditional cultures "feature domestic oppression, economic backwardness, endemic disease, religious fanaticism, and severe artistic constraints", concluding that if you want to live a free and full life then it might be worth your while defending civilization - not stone age stupidity or a sentimental ideal of Otherness.

Remember: the life of the Maasai warrior who drinks fresh blood from the neck of a cow, is no more noble, authentic, or spiritually enriched, than the life of an American tourist sipping a can of Coke.  

These Are a Few of My Favourite Things: Films

I have spoken elsewhere on the political and philosophical importance of lists, but we should not overlook the pleasure aspect: quite simply, lists make happy; they are fun to write and fun to read.

So, here's a list of my favourite films - assembled not in order of preference nor following a critical assessment of cinematic value, but alphabetically by title. For compiling lists should not be simply another excuse to exercise judgement and construct hierarchies. I love all of these films, not equally, but in any order that one might care to view them and the only logic that links them is the fact that they have continually given amorous pleasure. 

Two final points to note: Firstly, I've selected only a single film by any one director. Obviously I could list several by those directors of whom I am especially fond, but I didn't want to do that. Secondly, I have only selected English language films made in the US or UK, even though there are obviously foreign language movies that I love; perhaps I'll make a separate list of these at another time.

Annie Hall, (dir. Woody Allen, 1977)

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, (dir. George Roy Hill, 1969)

Carry on Screaming (dir. Gerald Thomas, 1966)

Fight Club (dir. David Fincher, 1999)

Goodfellas (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1990)

Housesitter (dir. Frank Oz, 1992)

My Cousin Vinnie (dir. Jonathan Lynn, 1992)

Paper Moon (dir. Peter Bogdanovich, 1973)

Please Sir! (dir. Mark Stuart, 1971) 

Pulp Fiction (dir. Quentin Tarantino, 1994)

Sons of the Desert (dir. William A. Seiter, 1933)

The Apartment (dir. Billy Wilder, 1960)

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (dir. Sergio Leone, 1966) 

The Prime of Miss Jean Brody (dir. Ronald Neame, 1969)

The Thirty-Nine Steps, (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1935) 

Twins (dir. Ivan Reitman, 1988)  

Reconsidering the New Philosophers

BHL: king of the nouveaux philosophes 

 Photo: Corbis / Richard Melloul

Les nouveaux philosophes are members of a generation rather than a school or group of French thinkers who came to prominence in the 1970s and include Bernard Henri Lévy, André Glucksmann, and Pascal Bruckner. 

If they decisively rejected Marx on the one hand, they had little time for Nietzsche on the other - or, indeed, for any writers whose work all-too-conveniently lends itself to non-democratic systems of power and authority. Politically, they can thus be described as neo-liberals who unashamedly subscribe to the ideals of the Enlightenment.  

Perhaps not surprisingly, Deleuze hated them. Indeed, in a famous text dated 5 June 1977 and given away free in bookstores in an attempt to counter the growing popularity of the New Philosophers, he claimed their thought was entirely devoid of real ideas, even if full of puffed-up concepts and large egos: 

"This wholesale return to the author, to an empty and vain subject, as well as to gross conceptual stereotypes, represents a troubling reactionary development." [139-40]

The reason for their success, Deleuze explained, was because the New Philosophers were media-savvy and  understood how to market themselves and their works in a brilliant fashion. They effectively turned themselves into a brand and theory into a form of journalism or a series of soundbites perfect for TV. And this, says Deleuze, is conformist to the highest degree and marks a humiliating submission of thought.       

For Deleuze, the New Philosophers pissed on the events of May 68 and declared revolution - which is only another word for vital creativity - impossible; where once a little breeze was blowing, now there was a closed window:

"This is the total negation of politics and experiment ... the New Philosophers incarnate the disease that is trying to stifle all that. There is nothing alive in their work, but they will have fulfilled their function if they can occupy centre stage long enough to give whatever is creative the kiss of death." [147]

Deleuze has one more problem with the New Philosophers apart from the fact that they are TV-buffoons and their work is, in his view, shit. And that is that their humanism is overtly moral in tone and feeds off the suffering of others:

"What I find really disgusting is that the New Philosophers are writing a martyrology: the Gulag and the victims of history. They live off corpses. They have discovered the witness-function ... But there would never have been any victims if the victims had thought or spoken like our New Philosophers. The victims had to live and think in a totally different way to provide the material that so moves the New Philosophers, who weep in their name, think in their name, and give us moral lessons in their name. Those who risk their life most often think in terms of life, not death, not bitterness, and not morbid vanity." [144-45]

Now, to be fair, I think Deleuze makes some valid points here and raises important concerns. Whenever one sees BHL, for example, interviewed on TV looking like a playboy intellectual and pleading the case for humanitarian intervention whilst promoting his latest book, one does feel a little creeped out.

Having said that, however, I can't help feeling that the New Philosophers do have import and that André Glucksmann's book Les maitres penseurs (1977) posed a crucial question: How had he, like many others of his generation, been so prone to murderous political fantasies and what role did texts by some of the great thinkers of philosophy play in this? As James Miller points out:

"Whatever its other merits, Glucksmann's book was a trenchant piece of self-criticism. The totalitarian impulse, as he stressed, was not something external, to be smugly denounced as it appeared in others; rather, this impulse affected everyone. Each of us was 'dual', caught in the snares of power, and prey to the temptation to abuse it. And 'if one takes account of this internal division', he concluded, 'it becomes impossible to imagine a single, ultimate revolution ...'"

Obviously such thinking infuriated Deleuze, but Foucault, however, was far more sympathetic and in a review of Glucksmann's book he praised the younger thinker and conceded that the revolutionary ideal itself needed to be questioned - be it in its Marxist or Dionysian form. Without explicitly saying so, Foucault was ratifying Glucksmann's move away from Maoism towards liberalism and, by so doing, furthering a philosophical and political rift between himself and Deleuze.

This took intellectual courage and integrity on Foucault's part I think. And, also, looking back from where we find ourselves today, it was the right thing to have done and not just a brave and honest move. In the final years of his life, Foucault helped inspire a new style of political conduct and commitment (acute, but cautious). André Glucksmann rightly praised him after his death in 1984 for breaking with the terrorist radicalism of the theoretical avant-garde.

This is something we have all had to learn to do ...           


Notes

The interview with Gilles Deleuze from which I quote - 'On the New Philosophers (Plus a More General Problem)' - can be found in Two Regimes of Madness, ed. David Lapoujade, trans. Ames Hodges and Mike Taormina, (Semiotext(e), 2006). 

The passage from James Miller is taken from The Passion of Michel Foucault, (Flamingo, 1994), p. 296.

Designer Tribalism and the Racism of Low Expectations

Romantic primitivism in all forms is absurd and deserves to be ridiculed. But when it emerges out of multiculturalism as a designer tribalism that incorporates superstition, violence, corruption, and misogyny - when it effectively keeps people locked into poverty and failure by perpetuating the soft racism of low expectations - then it demands serious critical examination.

White liberals with their touchy-feely morality and political correctness are always overly keen to show how sensitive they are to racial and religious difference. They believe it's crucial that immigrants arriving in Europe from Asia and Africa are allowed to keep their own beliefs, traditions, and practices in order to maintain their identities and self-esteem. It follows from this that they should therefore be allowed to have their own schools, places of worship, community centres, shops, newspapers, radio stations, and, perhaps, even their own legal systems.    

Ayaan Hirsi Ali ruthlessly tears this well-intentioned but profoundly misguided and ultimately disastrous way of thinking to shreds. She writes: "The idea that immigrants need to maintain group cohesion promotes the perception of them as victim groups requiring ... an industry of special facilities and assistance" and results in the creation of ghettos.  

In other words, the ideal of cultural diversity is one that ends in social failure. Rather than producing "a rich mosaic of colourful and proud peoples interacting peacefully ... it translates into closed pockets of oppression, ignorance, and abuse."

Immigrants might preserve their arts and crafts, be able to eat the foods they like and wear traditional styles of dress, but this comes at a tremendous cost. For they are effectively complicit in a system which preserves them in the same manner it preserves endangered wild life; they are patronised and encouraged to remain loyal to a way of life which is untenable, inappropriate, and often in direct conflict with the society around them.

If this means their children do badly at school, can't find employment, and drift into crime, well, that's just too bad. Members of the liberal establishment overlook this just as they turn a blind-eye to the those unfortunate cultural practices such as honour killing and female genital mutilation. Their determined celebration of exotic otherness allows them to demonstrate just how tolerant and understanding they can be - and that's what they care about; atoning for the sins of their imperialist forefathers and exorcising their own guilt.

One is grateful to Hirsi Ali for speaking up and speaking out on this topic with her customary intelligence and integrity. 


Note: lines quoted from Ayaan Hirsi Ali can be found in Nomad, (Simon and Schuster UK Ltd., 2011), pp. 212 and 213.  

Peep Show Proves We're a Long Way from Wuthering Heights

"We're a long way from Wuthering Heights ..."

With this devastating line, Houellebecq refers to the progressive effacement of human relationships and a kind of vital exhaustion - particularly in the bedroom - which characterizes the early 21st century.

Ours is an age in which people continue to fuck and to feign an interest in romance, but their fascination for eroticism is completely artificial and they are, in fact, bored beyond stiffness by the endless orgy in which they find themselves; thus the growing need for pornography, sex toys, and Viagra.

We simply don't feel or even truly understand what fictional lovers such as Cathy and Heathcliff are said to have felt; their passion has become embarrassing and slightly repulsive. We don't want intense emotional commitment; rather, we prefer to fake our own feelings and simply replay old scenarios whilst lacking in any conviction. For us, sex is all about a nostalgic staging of desire and its dispersal. 

Ultimately, all we'll be left with are the signs and simulations of sex circulating via the media creating a world characterized by what Baudrillard refers to as virtual indifference. This will doubtless have many consequences, including the fact that novels, such as Emily Brontë's classic, will become impossible to read, or even talk about in and on our own terms; as evidenced, for example, in Peep Show series 7, episode 3.

Chairman Mao and the Swindle of Traditional Chinese Medicine

Image of Chairman Mao:
uncyclopedia.wikia.com

Traditional Chinese Medicine is, of course, an entirely bogus modern phenomenon; a pseudoscience promoted by Chairman Mao that possesses no valid mechanism of action or evidence for its treatments. It's no more effective than the equally dubious remedies offered within European witchcraft.  

Not that this stops millions of believers around the world using obscure herbal remedies, ingesting ground up animal parts - such as tiger bone and rhino horn - or having pins stuck in them in order to release a flow of vital energy along the body's meridians. Attempts to locate these mysterious pathways, or to identify this potency known as qi, have so far proved fruitless. Primarily, this is because they don't exist.

   

Practitioners of alternative medicine, however, don't allow such minor details or anatomical facts to stop them peddling their services and products. If modern knowledge of human physiology and pathology proves problematic to their teachings, they simply start talking about cosmic notions of yin and yang, patterns of harmony and disharmony, or the five phases. Such traditional Chinese wisdom is also, of course, entirely false - if pleasing to metaphysicians everywhere.

Happily, at least some Chinese philosophers are prepared to admit as much. In 2006, for example, Zhang Gongyao published an article entitled 'Farewell to Traditional Chinese Medicine', arguing that TCM in both theory and practice was absurd and should be exposed as such. The Chinese government, however, keenly aware of global export revenues, insisted that it had an important role to play in healthcare and deserved future development. 

And this brings us back to Chairman Mao, who, almost single-handedly invented TCM as we know it today. Let me elaborate by summarizing a recent article by Alan Levinovitz, who is an assistant professor of Chinese Philosophy and Religion at James Madison University ...

Initially, following their victory in the Civil War, the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party ridiculed TCM as irrational and backward; something contrary to the Party's programme of modernization and scientific progress. However, when it became clear that they would never be able to afford to establish a national healthcare programme reliant upon highly skilled doctors, expensive drugs, and advanced surgical techniques, Mao revised this position. Now TCM was proudly held up as a great national resource to be developed in opposition to the bourgeois medicine of capitalist imperialism. 

Further, Mao realised that if only the traditional methods could be marketed in the right manner, they could be sold to gullible foreigners. And so the Chinese Communist party set about standardizing TCM into a single theoretical and practical system that could be taught as an alternative (holistic) science concerned with preventative and complimentary healthcare. 

Next, they set about providing Westerners with sensational - but faked - evidence of what TCM could do. Eager to subscribe to the myth of the ancient wisdom of the east, this was, outrageously, accepted at face value by large numbers of the public, as well as many professionals who really should have known better. Before long a craze for TCM - particularly acupuncture - boomed and today you can get all kinds of quack treatments on the NHS! 

Levinovitz nicely puts this into a cultural and historical context:

"The reason so many people take Chinese medicine seriously, at least in part, is that it  was reinvented by one of the most powerful propaganda machines of all time and then consciously marketed to a West disillusioned by its own spiritual traditions. The timing couldn't have been better. Postmodernism was sweeping the academy, its valuable insights quickly degrading into naïve relativism. Thomas Kuhn had just published his theory of paradigm shifts and scientific revolutions ... Alan Watts was introducing hippies to mind-blowing Eastern philosophy; Joseph Campbell was preaching the power of myth. Sick of Christianity and guilty about past imperialist sins, the West was ready to be healed by Mao's sanitized version of Chinese medicine."  

He concludes:

"Ultimately, however, the existence of qi, acupuncture meridians, and the Triple Energizer is no more inherently plausible than that of demons, the four humours, or the healing power of God. It's just that Mao swindled us ..."

Notes: 

Alan Levinovitz's article in the online magazine Slate entitled 'Chairman Mao Invented Traditional Chinese Medicine', can be found by clicking here.

My thanks to Zena McKeown for inspiring this post following a recent conversation on the topic.  

Foucault's Islamic Folly

Photo from the front cover of the Turkish translation of 

Foucault and the Iranian Revolution

Michel Foucault wanted more than anything to be generous to the Iranian revolutionaries when he arrived in Tehran in September 1978 in order to report on events for an Italian newspaper. 

Despite their aggressive xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and fetishization of martyrdom, Foucault was keen to counter the idea that these bearded opponents of the Shah were simply political extremists or religious fanatics. On the contrary, he argued, their demand for the impossible was perfectly reasonable and their goal of establishing a new Islamic order held out the hope of a genuine revaluation of all values; the first great insurrection against global hegemony inspired by a creed of combat and sacrifice.      

Just a few short months after writing this, Ayatollah Khomeini and his mullahs assumed power and established a murderous theocracy which has endured to this day. For a while, Foucault continued to defend the regime - or, rather, he continued to promote his quasi-mystical belief in ecstatic violence and revolution as a crucial form of limit-experience (however tragic the outcome). But, eventually, Foucault was obliged to break with what André Glucksmann described as the terrorist radicalism of the theoretical avant-garde. 

Indeed, before his death in 1984 Foucault even found it possible (and important) to rethink questions central to the Enlightenment and to liberalism. He conceded that whilst the concept of human rights is a political fiction, it's nevertheless a useful fiction which needs vigorously defending; as does secular society when threatened by militant religious fascism.

And this is something I wish more of our intellectuals, media commentators, and public officials would have the courage and the tactical intelligence to acknowledge today.   

Note: those interested in reading more on this topic should see Janet Afary and Keven B. Anderson; Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Islamism, (University of Chicago Press, 2005).

Qué Barbaridad

Flag of the Islamic State 
(formerly known as ISIS or ISIL)

One of Nietzsche's concerns in his later writings is with the question of how a stronger species of man might arise from out of modernity, which he regards as a form of corruption. A people possessing the ability and the desire to impose themselves upon others can, he says, grow up only out of terrible and violent beginnings. And so he awaits those he terms the new barbarians ...

But just as the Nazis were not those whom he anticipated and called forth, neither are the militants of the Islamic State - presently fueling chaos and committing a series of grotesque atrocities across Syria and Iraq. For whilst these jihadis may display some of the traits that Nietzsche admired, they nevertheless remain barbarians of the depths, rather than those who come from the heights and who, like Prometheus, bring something genuinely new into the world.

Unfortunately, their asceticism remains tied to a spirit of revenge and is born of sickness and inferiority, rather than a union of spiritual superiority, well-being, and an excess of strength. For all their sincerity and violent enthusiasm, they're essentially decadents full of all the same modern vices - such as an addiction to modern technology and social media - as the rest of us. This is why when, not praying or fighting, they seem to spend most of their time tweeting, or posting vile images on YouTube and Facebook.

 

Ultimately, if holy war can be the source of stimulation in a mankind grown soft via the resurrection of the most savage energies "in the shape of the long-buried dreadfulness and excesses of the most distant ages", it can do no more than this. Significant change requires something else. Not something bigger or more catastrophic, but, on the contrary, something much more modest; something requiring not just cruelty, but the exercise of great caution.

Ultimately, we will reflect on the attempt by these Islamofascists to trigger a revaluation of values as Nietzsche looked back on the French Revolution; i.e. as nothing more than "a pathetic and bloody piece of quackery". They might inspire believers with their neo-archaic fantasy of a global caliphate, but, the attempt to reterritorialize upon the ruins of a despotic state machine and fragments of a seventh century Arabic text is, thankfully, doomed to failure.     

Notes:

For Nietzsche's thinking on the question of barbarism and the new barbarians, see, for example, notes 868, 899 and 900 in The Will to Power, ed. Walter Kaufmann, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, (Vintage Books, 1968), pp. 464-65, 478-79. 

The line quoted from Nietzsche in paragraph four is from Human, All Too Human, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), I. 8. 463, p. 169.

The line quoted from Nietzsche in paragraph five is from Daybreak, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), V. 534, pp. 211-12. 

For a more extensive discussion of this topic see my study of Nietzschean and post-Nietzschean politics, Outside the Gate, (Blind Cupid Press, 2010), particularly part three.