As a barrister I am given to quoting from Shakespeare’s plays in closing speeches. This may seem pretentious, but I find his acute observations on the human condition continue to speak to juries, and judges. He remains highly relevant to legal education, and indeed the practice of law. I would go so far as to say that a good knowledge of his work provides a real advantage to any practitioner.
William Shakespeare’s Birthplace.
Stratford-upon-Avon
Recently, I was delighted to have the opportunity to appear in a rare in-person trial in Royal Leamington Spa, which is in Shakespeare’s home county of Warwickshire. I recalled John Betjeman’s poem about dying in the town, whose name conjures images of Bertie Wooster on a bucolic retreat:
oh, you know that the stucco is peeling.
Do you know that the heart will stop?
From those yellow Italianate arches
Do you hear the plaster drop?
Times have changed. To my chagrin, Leamington Spa is not actually a spa town – any longer at least – but is just a short hop from Stratford-on-Avon, Shakespeare’s birthplace, where I stayed for the duration of proceedings.
Thehouse where Shakespeare was born was previously an ale house and is now a museum. Nearby, in The Holy Trinity Church, lies his grave, which contains a stern warning that his bones should remain in situ.
Unfortunately, the well-preserved Anne Hathaway House was closed for the duration of my stay, but the exterior and gardens were at least visible. Likewise, the complex of theatres – home to the Royal Shakespeare Company – were also no go in this bleak period for the performing arts.
Shakespeare’s era was marked by recurring plague, tyranny and civil strife, themes according to Stephen Greenbelt’s Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics (2018) the Bard approached obliquely, for fear of persecution. Under conditions of tyranny, public art may still be an outlet for mockery of the powerful. Thus we find in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
In what follows I recite some of Shakespeare’s lines that inform my understanding of our present world.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be. (Polonius, Hamlet)
In the light of the bailing out of toxic banks – socialism for the mega rich – and the infliction of austerity, being indebted now brings serious dangers. With so much crime linked to social exclusion and poverty, it is as if we are returning to an era of Debtors’ Prisons, ubiquitous in Shakespeare’s day.
The late David Graeber’s excellent book Debt: the First 5,000 Years(2011) precisely illustrates how debt, and now student debt in particular, is creating a permanent rentier class with no educational outlet for upward mobility, and low prospects of home ownership, at least for those who don’t have access to the bank of Mum and Dad.
The power of bankers in contemporary society should lead to consideration of The Merchant of Venice, which, apart from dreadful antisemitism – Shakespeare often expressed the prejudices of his day – provides a searing attack on the sin of usury, the existence of which is conveniently ignored by far right Christians today.
In the play, Portia (Bassano’s betrothed who finds himself in a spot of bother after taking on a debt on unfavourable terms from Shylock) presents herself in court, disguised as a male lawyer, and pleads for mercy against the enforcement of the bond, which is the extraction of a pound of flesh.
Shylock and Portia (1835) by Thomas Sully
In a famous passage she argues:
The quality of mercy is not strained, it dropped as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath: it is twice blessed, it blessed him that gives, and him that takes, tis mightiest in the mightiest, it becomes the throned monarch better than his crown, His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, the attribute to awe and majesty, wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings: But mercy is above this sceptred sway, it is enthroned in the heart of kings, it is an attribute to God himself; and earthly power doth then show likes god’s, when mercy seasons justice…
Shylock responds with a narrow vision of justice that sadly is all too familiar in our time of dispossessions:
I crave the law, the penalty and forfeit of my bond.
Portia then shifts ground and cleverly argues that the bond should be enforced but:
The bond gives thee there no jot of blood – The words expressly are a pound of flesh … Then take they bond, take thou thy pound of flesh, but in the cutting it, if thou dost shed one drop of Christian blood, thy lands and goods are by the laws of Venice confiscate … For as thou urge justice, be assured, thou shalt have justice more than thou deserts.
In this morality tale, therefore, Shylock – unlike our contemporary bankers in most cases – is forestalled in his extraction of the pound of flesh. If only such arguments against the extraction of financial flesh were available to barristers defending the disposed today.
Three daughters of King Lear by Gustav Pope
The True Criminals
So who are the true criminals today? Shakespeare offered an answer through the medium of the wise Fool in Kind Lear:
What art mad. A man may see how this world goes with no eyes. Look with thine ears see how yon justice rails upon yon simple thief. Hark in thine ear, change places, and handy dandy, what is the justice which is the thief.
Governments bail out Goldman Sachs and other banks. There are no repercussions for their reckless lending, save in Nordic countries like Iceland. But If Jean Valjean steals a loaf of bread, they pursue him to the ends of the Earth to extract the pound of flesh.
Similarly, if you become a whistle-blower and reveal the machinations of the powerful such as Julian Assange, then you are turned into a criminal, while Messrs Blair, Kissinger, and indeed Varadkar, are never forced to face the music.
Amanda Knox
The lady doth protest too much, methinks, (Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2).
Stacey Schiff’s Witches: Salem 1692 (2015) observes how the hysteria of witch hunts appear to represent a sublimation of pre-existing grievances, and envy. This remains the case for modern day witch hunts such as that directed against Amanda Knox, which have been highlighted by the Innocence Project.
The book makes clear that children can be manipulated into holding false belief, even to the extent that they incriminate themselves. False allegations are also linked to hysterical parents or authority figures. As occurred in Amanda Knox’s case, young minds are easily turned to mush by persistent questioning, fear of authority, and interaction with nefarious police officers and social workers.
This is what is referred to as falsely implanted memory syndrome, on which subject Elizabeth Loftus and Maggie Bruck are experts.
Categorising someone as a witch or a warlock also reflects jealousy if that person holds a gift you do not possess. Seen in Freudian terms, it is a form of transference of perceived inadequacies.
All that glisters is not gold. (The Merchant of Venice, Act 2, Scene 7)
This zeitgeist is one of post-truth amorality, a phenomenon with long antecedents. In King Lear we hear that ‘a scurvy politician seems to see the thing thou does not’; while Henry VI speaks of: ‘Stuffing the ears of men with false reports’, which seems curiously relevant to Covid Times.
Purveyors of nonsense and incomprehensible prose – the structuralists and post-modernists who took over the universities – represent a movement, or grouping, united in their rejection of universal values. Relativism leads to the dismissal of evidence, rationality, science, rigour, precision and all the integrative forces that tie society together, as Noam Chomsky has observed: ‘if I am missing something, then show me what it is, in terms I can understand.’
The first point to note about the post modernists nonsense is that it has encouraged a distrust of the truth and an atmosphere of looseness and imprecision, wherein any old argument, or moral position, is accorded equal weight.
In 2005 the lateDavid Foster Wallace observed that this created an epistemic free-for-all in which any truth is seen from the vantage of perspective and agenda.
Relativistic and structuralist ideas such as the indeterminacy of texts, alternative ways of knowing and the instability of language fed into Trump and his aides saying that every word he utters should not be taken literally. Just as a text by Derrida could contradict itself, similarly Trump can jump from one inconsistency to the next.
The work of The Innocence Project is littered with examples of perjured evidence, false and fabricated claims and cognitive and confirmation bias by experts or pseudo experts, which have led to wrongful convictions. All too many innocent people are incarcerated on the basis of lies. With the embrace of subjectivity, we are celebrating opinion over knowledge, feelings over facts.
Confirmation bias applies where people rush to judgment, and give into their prejudices, rather than evaluating evidence.
According to Evan Davies in his recent book Post Truth, one aspect of all this bullshit is a desire to believe something unreasonable to be true. Pope Francis sagely remarked that ‘There is no such thing as harmless disinformation: trusting in falsehood can have dire consequences.’
There is no such thing as harmless disinformation; trusting in falsehood can have dire consequences.
To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man. (Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3)
In general, social media is weaving a web of deceit and destroying the social fabric through lies, disinformation, smears, and character assassination. Pierre Omidyar a founder of eBay argued that the monetization and manipulation of information is rapidly tearing us apart.
Trolls and bots were unleased by Trump, Bannon, and Cambridge Analytica to spread disinformation in the U.S presidential election, undermining democratic institutions and fact-driven debates.
Now the social media platforms have moved on to shilling for Big Pharma – laying the ground for a Screen New Deal – while shutting down alternative assessments of the pandemic, and unprofitable treatments.
It leads me to an unhappy conclusion that we increasingly developing a generation of technocratic fascist, selfish, materialistic ultra-conformists receptive to post-truth deception. The silos they occupy reinforce their prejudices. It is less important now to establish the truth than to ask whose side you are on.
As Cicero, a minor character in Julius Caesar remarks:
Indeed, it is as strange, disposed time but men may construe things after their fashion clean from the purpose of things themselves.
Lies in fact have become intrinsic to commercial and business interaction. In The People of the Lie(1983) Scott Peck contends that Evil is untruth, undermining life and liveliness. Such people operate by covert means. Evil people, Peck argues, scapegoat others, and cover up their misdeeds. They prevent the rest of us from making informed choices. Evil is also linked to a self-image of respectability and, as Peck defines it, the exercise of coercive power, often by authority figures. Evil is also surprisingly obedient to authority.
In contrast, in times of stress those who genuinely good people, even in times of acute stress, do not desert principles.
Hannah Arendt presaged our Brave New World.
The ideal subject for totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (standards of thought) no longer exists.
Cry “havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war, (Mark Antony, Julius Caesar)
The film, Wag the Dog witnesses the beginning of a fake war. Today, apart from military engagements that are generally played out on our television screens – such as Iraq and Afghanistan – there are new types of fake wars. The War on Drugs is a smokescreen that obscures failure to deal with the root causes in poverty and austerity. Now the war on the virus – a disproportionate reaction to a significant but not overwhelming public health crisis – has generated unprecedented panic.
People are told to comply or face gruesome death. But how safe are we really in these circumstances? We will not be safe in authoritarian police states with restrictions on liberty, freedom of movement, privacy and associational or community ties. Nor will we be necessarily safe from a plethora of hastily tested pharmaceutical products, enforced by so-called vaccine passports.
How to subjugate the world population? Create a hyper real sense of emergency. Engender panic, leading to compliance and deference
Should we disassociate ourselves from the unvaccinated? Even putting it in these terms shows how admen dominate the discourse.
The disproportionate response to the pandemic represents a fascist creep. People are desensitized to loss of liberty once they are in fear of their lives, and increasingly dependent on the state for the pile of gruel it so generously provides, having removed any prospect of employment for hundreds of thousands in precarious work.
Meanwhile, the corporate law firms and mega rich have won big in our new version of disaster capitalism usingModern Money Theory to oil the chains of patronage.
Thus, whether centrally orchestrated, or more likely arising out a coalition of vested interests, and made possible through an increasingly uneducated, desperate and compliant population, COVID-19 has brought us the Shock Doctrine par excellence.
Procession of Characters from Shakespeare’s Plays. Artist unkown.
The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones. (Mark Anthony, Julius Caesar)
The problem of evil in our times is embodied in extremism, fundamentalism, draconian laws, high consumerism, and the negation of the rule of law. Today, unselfish communal behaviour go unrewarded, while the innocent are framed.
What is left of compassion, sincerity, truth, community, and optimism? Well at least we can still find it in the poetry of Shakespeare.
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed.
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owls.
Nor shall death brag thou wander in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’s:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Put simply, love conquers all. Or should. The Bard of Avon has much to say in these troubled times.
Featured Image: Lear and Cordelia by William Blake.
An grá is an gráin, say these two words out loud, say them out loud to yourself, out loud to the listening others around, and feel in your mouth how subtle the shift is between them; how the open mouth of love — grá — gets slighted by the brush of your tongue’s curled tip shaping hate — gráin; feel the quick lick it gives the roof of your mouth. It’s that kind of sliver, isn’t it, the one we know to be true; the one that suddenly shifts the friend or the lover to the one we don’t know or want to know. In shape and in sound, there in your mouth, Irish gathers together a distinction of meaning in a unity of resonance. Where the mind of English fragments and scatters, (say them too out loud, say love, say hate), Irish holds in an elemental poetry we need to participate in to sense.
Sometimes what language teaches us can be that visceral.
I am digging words in the Burren when I hit upon this realisation —
tá go leor eile, more abound, Siobhán chirps; an saoirse is an daoirse, an solas is an dolas; seo é an fhilíocht nádur atá le fáil sa teanga! Siobhán is leading us in an archaeological word excavation, amuigh san aer i gciorcal Hedge School, uncovering from Irish some sense of a way of being in the world we have only just forgotten. If we lost it in a generation, we can reclaim it in a generation. Dictionaries are scattered all around, I hold one in my lap, but there is no discussion here of the tuiseal ginideach, we are not being questioned about the modh coinniollach and all mentions of Peig are with endearment and jest. We are just picking words at random and letting the connective threads be woven from there and we weave them without trying. It feels illicit to use a dictionary in this way, and I love it. Here a space is opened of pure play, without the plámás of getting anything right. Here the severed head of Irish we suffered in school is reunited with our bodies — the vibrations in Irish are cosúil le Sanskrit — tugann sí fuinneamh láidir duit. Just feel and the rest will follow; this seems to be the unspoken mantra of the Wild Irish Retreat weekend.
Earlier that morning, the sun rising from behind Slieve Elva, Cearbhuil leads the women down to the hazel wood chun macnamih a dheanamh, to meditate, and we follow, trusting this woman who is keeper of this land; and we go down to the hazel wood, and there’s a stillness in our hearts. We’ve been invited to observe a noble silence and so our passage through the curly tendrils is punctuated only by snaps of twigs, the brush of branches newly leafing and birdsong from birds I have no name for, not in either tongue. And we pause then as Cearbhuil stops and simply says — éist — just listen. No crossed legs, no chanting, nothing specific to learn, we are simply tuning in to what is here, all around us; we are simply letting our civilised bodies contact the coill, and letting the coill touch deep into us. And later, when Cearbhuil leads us again, now through a forage walk on the land chun lón a sholáthar, we listen then too, not just to the names that fall like small prayers to all the invisible Gods, slanlóg, nóinín, neantóg, casairbháin, but to all the reverence is an méad meas atá ann in this woman’s gestures; we’re listening to all the wisdom in her fingers that know when to pluck, what to leave and how to reap without plundering. It is simple, even obvious, and so all the more unbelievable that we need to be shown how to see what is in front of us and all around us; an leigheas is an maitheas ag fás go fiáin. As if nothing has happened, all the goodness and plenitude of the land is still offered— here, the seamsóg extends itself —here, the seamair dhearg —had we but sense and right vision to see. Tá gach rud fós ann, I hear whispered in my head.
I spoke of these Iseas in Croke Park recently, ideas that have been forming around me and inside of me that were inspired by John Moriarty and my experience of hurling. He gave me leave to understand the world for myself, deferring to no one.https://t.co/b5U0XPU5FD
And then on the beach with Diarmuid, the same principles we have absorbed from Siobhán and Cearbhuil without any direct tutelage apply now to the game of hurling; listen, play, be here in your body. There are real players on the trá, none more so than Diarmuid who seems to skip through the sand goat-like, whilst my legs are heavy pillars that have to be heaved and hefted to keep up with the ball. But this game is not about cé mhéad blianta atá ar do dhroim; it’s not about how many times you’ve kitted out in any coloured jersey. Here, now, with the crashing waves of Fanore in our ears, we return to the pleasure of simply pucking a ball. We léim go hard, we scuttle for the liathróid, we roar anseo to each other, and when we scramble too fast ahead of ourselves, get too caught up in a race to get, Diarmuid beckons us to stop and asks us to check in with ourselves; éistigí cad atá ar siúl i do chorp. Stay with the place of ease, cé comh éasca can you make it lads, don’t strain. And while there may be taithí go leor leis an cluiche ar cuid daoine, none of us have much experience in that. Play till you’re played out; win at whatever cost. Something in us knew that wasn’t the way it had to be, but we had no guidance in respecting the rhythm of our nádur; how to join effort with ease, doing with non-doing. And then, as if in an ancient ritual of bowing to our human limitation, when the hurls are finally cast aside, we throw ourselves into an Atlantach fiáin herself; engulfed in the white and the rush of her embrace; tógtha.
Of course, there is much more that could be shared here about cad atá ar siúl leis an Wild Irish Retreats. I could tell you about the food, not just cé comh blásta is atá sé, but how it is prepared with such care and attention; slow cooking at its finest. And even more, how it is served to you, with grace and kind eyes; accompaniments you didn’t know you needed and that nourish far into the depths of you. And the music, and the fire, and the joy of being together at last. But I am not offering an advertisement here. If this sounds like a sale’s pitch, it isn’t. If you think I’m trying to convince you of something, I’m not. The arguments for Irish are many; many more those for how to rescue ourselves from our current catastrophe and our abominable alienation from the land. This is not a proof, nor is it a plea, this is simply a love song; a song of praise. This is just a need to acknowledge my luck of having returned home, after many years away, to find myself among mo mhuintir arís, ag caint as gaeilge, le mo dhá chosa ar an talamh. This is just to sing that it feels like a dream I am still not waking from; to sing because it is hard to say what it has all opened in me, because I feel it to be opening still. I offer these words as a return song then, a homecoming tune for the other way; what these wild Irish legends are demonstrating. There’s nothing you need to know, nothing to do, nothing to fix, there’s just letting go; there’s just peeling back the thick layers of our resistance, our wilful control, so that other dimension of our being can re-surface; the one who did not get us into this mess; the one whose skin trembles and dances with the sheer delight of being here; the one who is fós fiáin. Go down to Clare, go down to Kerry, and be with the Wild Irish Retreat folk if it calls you, if it be within your means. If it doesn’t, if you can’t, find your own way back. But claim it —claim the part of you that can’t be claimed; the place in you no worldly concern, no worry or slight of ill-will can reach; the place in you that is open, playful, fluid flúirseach. You don’t need anything special. Open your mouth, lig amach í; slip back i ngrá
The appeal of exotic cuisines and esoteric diets has done little to diminish bread’s status as the primary foodstuff of the Western world, and many areas besides. Symbolic as the ‘staff of life’ and ubiquitous, the Oxford English Dictionary describes it in wholesome simplicity as a ‘well-known article of food prepared by moistening, kneading, and baking meal or flour, generally with the addition of yeast or leaven’.
But charges of adulteration have long been laid against the baker, the miller and the farmer. Today, more than ever, bread has departed from the purity of its essential elements: flour, water and usually salt for flavour. In the early modern era, however, fast-acting yeast, derived from brewers’ barm, began to replace the traditional sourdough leaven: simply flour and water containing a live culture similar to yoghurt. The addition of yeast was the beginning of a downward spiral culminating in today’s industrial loaves, products of the insidious Chorleywood Bread Process.
A list of the ingredients, wheat apart, of a familiar brand of sliced white bread reads like pharmacopoeia: Emulsifiers, E471, E472e, Soya Flour, Preservative, Calcium, Propotionate (added to inhibit mould growth), Flavouring, Flour Treatment Agents, Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C), E920, Dextrose. Such bland uniformity and chemical defilement led the great cookery writer Elizabeth David to muse: ‘A technological triumph factory bread may be. Taste it has none. Should it be called bread?’[i]
The quality of loaves from an Irish market worth €1.9 billion in 2019 should be a matter of public concern, as the consequence for our health of inferior bread is devastating. Perhaps more importantly, the satisfaction derived from the breaking of quality bread approaches the divine.
Wheat
The most commonly used grain (or ‘corn’ as this was referred to historically) for bread is wheat. A grass native to the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East, where agriculture and civilization originate, it is now cultivated across the globe, though often in marginal climatic zones. Worryingly, the last century has seen erosion of the genetic variety of wheat strains, and dependence on artificial fertilization.
From the 1940s Norman E. Borlaug and his collaborators developed new strains of wheat, correcting a structural deficiency in the stalk which couldn’t support heavy grains. Previously the most fruitful plants collapsed under the weight of their own seeds, before maturity. Borlaug’s group developed dwarf strains that could stand up to the weight of bulbous grains, thereby more than doubling yields.
Today, almost every kernel of wheat consumed by man and beast is derived from Borlaug’s selective breeding. But the resulting monocultures require greater use of pesticides than genetically diverse plants, while farmers must purchase hybrid seeds from large corporations.
Animal waste and crop rotation – traditional methods of restoring nitrogen to the soil after each growth cycle – are insufficient for the dwarf strains, which require synthetic fertilization. Wheat is now dependent on human intervention, just as modern domestic turkeys are generally unable to reproduce unless artificially inseminated.
The manufacture of synthetic fertilizer requires natural gas, both for heat and as a source of hydrogen. According to Fraser and Rimas ‘without a secure supply of nitrogen the world would starve’.[ii] Our agricultural model, and perhaps survival, is hopelessly dependent on a finite fossil fuel.
Further, it is said that stressed vines make better grapes. The same principle applies to today’s pampered wheat crop, insulated from any struggle with nature by human intervention. The diverse strains of wheat from yesteryear offered superior nutrition, and more varied flavours.
Two Methods
Notwithstanding the use of unleavened bread in Western (though not Orthodox) Christian ritual, it might be argued that such bread is not deserving of the the name, as the flour is not fermented before baking. Fermentation is achieved using one of two agents: the age-old sourdough leaven method, or through the addition of yeast.
Sourdough is a combination of yeast and bacterial culture, which aids digestion of the grain. This compensates for our relatively short intestines compared to dedicated herbivores like cattle. Human ingenuity has produced what amounts to an external stomach.
Good bread, like Swiss Cheese, contains holes or ‘eyes’ left by carbon dioxide produced by fermentation and trapped by glutinous flour. This is especially apparent in strong white flours with a high gluten content; lower-protein ‘soft’ flour is usually reserved for cakes and biscuits, although it is now used in mass-produced breads.
A late-seventeenth century French journal succinctly describes the two methods of fermentation in use at the cusp of modernity:
the most commonly used one, called French leaven, is dough made with only water and flour and kept until it becomes sour… The other, which is called yeast, is the foam released from beer when it ferments. French leaven acts more slowly, causes the dough to rise less, and makes a heavier, denser bread. Yeast ferments more quickly, makes it rise more, and the bread it makes is light, delicate and soft.[iii]
These same methods are in use today, though since the breakthroughs of Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), brewers’ barm (usually derived from barley beer) has been replaced by cultured yeast with the same fast-acting effect but greater consistency.
Sourdough bread, leavened by a fermented dough ‘starter’ which has ‘caught’ yeast from the air, is denser than yeast bread. This starter contains a lactobacillus culture with sufficient yeast for bread to rise, though it is less active than pure yeast. The acetic note – its extent depending on the culture and method used – emanates from lactobacilli assisting the benign bacteria in our digestive tract.
Lactobacillus
Police Enquiry
In the seventeenth century, bread was a vital element of the diet for the average poor Parisian, who ate an impressive kilo-and-a-half per day. Indeed, the price of bread was one trigger of the French Revolution, inspiring Marie Antoinette’s famous – though apocryphal – solution: ‘let them eat cake’.
The perceived adulteration of bread with barm was, therefore, controversial. A dispute between guilds of bakers and innkeepers over the sale of bread brought the matter to a head. Innkeepers claimed that traditional sourdough Gonesse bread, purchased from out-of-town traders for retail, was superior to the yeasted ‘Queen’s bread’ sold by bakers. This bread, the innkeepers alleged, was a corruption of pure bread, i.e. dough made with only water and flour and kept until it became sour.
This early health scare led to the formation of an expert medical panel to address the issue of the use of barm, mostly imported from breweries in Flanders, sometimes in a state of autolysis. The origin of the adjective ‘barmy’ recalls the distrust, even in beer-friendly Britain, for this puzzling, fizzing substance. At that time, as today, wine was the preferred beverage in France and the inclusion of barm from beer in bread making was considered unpatriotic.
Following the debate between the guilds, a French police inquiry observed that one could take precautions against bread that was visibly poorly baked, but added: ‘It is not the same with fermentation, which makes the dough rise; which refines it and makes it lighter. Because the worst is sometimes what gives bread the best appearance of goodness.’[iv]
This echoes the sentiments of Elizabeth David centuries later in relation to the deceptive scent of baking, as she put it: ‘it is a fact of life that all bread, homemade, factory-made, bakery-made, good, indifferent, gives out a glorious smell, but to buy bread on its smell while hot is asking for disillusion.’ It seems that human senses are not always equipped to immediately discern good quality bread. Quality is revealed not just by sight, smell, or even taste, but through digestion, or rather the extent to which micro-organisms have already digested it. This accords with the oft-misrepresented Epicurus, who argued that one should avoid those foods which, though giving pleasure at the time, afterwards leave one feeling deprived.
Peasants sharing bread, from the Livre du roi Modus et de la reine Ratio, France, 14th century.
In condemning the use of yeast, the leading medical expert in the case Gui Patin stated:
To say, as those who defend it do, that they have not seen anyone drop over sick or dead from eating this bread is not a good way to clear it of the faults with which it has been charged. It is like sugar refined with lime or alum, or heavily salted, peppered and sliced meats, or wines in which one tosses lime or fish glue, or other things bad in themselves which men concerned about their health avoid, even if none of these things causes death or threatens one’s health on the day it is ingested.
In spite of this advice the Paris parliament maintained a policy of laissez faire. The preference for yeast may be explained by its faster action than leaven, and in truth many still prefer the fluffiness it imparts. Today in France pain au levain is less common than baguette de tradition française made with yeast, which is now, ironically, a symbol of France. In most countries fast-acting yeast has taken the place of the slow action of traditional leaven. Yet worse was to follow with advances in industrial technology.
Elizabeth David.
Caustic Assessment
Elizabeth David’s English Bread and Yeast Cookery, first published in 1977, provides an outstanding contribution to the subject of baking, exploring the history, science and practice of the craft. It offers a caustic assessment of the baking industry that remains as vital today as when first published, though one limitation is that most recipes call for yeast rather than sourdough leaven.
David wrote in the wake of the Chorleywood Bread Process, invented in 1961, and known in chilling Orwellian language as the ‘no-time method’. Eighty-percent of bread in the U.K. is currently prepared using this method, which involves a super-quick fermentation; the slow maturation of dough is replaced by a few minutes of intense mechanical agitation in special high-speed mixers. This sounds miraculous, but solid fat is necessary to prevent the loaf collapsing and a large quantity of yeast is added: David asserts that sixteen times as much yeast is used with the CBP as in some traditional recipes; a bit barmy really.
Such a huge amount of yeast is used in order to speed up the process, and to increase volume by maximizing dough expansion. Powdered gluten may also be added to lower-protein soft flour. Admittedly this has reduced the U.K.’s dependence on the ‘harder’ strains of wheat imported from warmer countries. Writing in the wake of the CBP, Elizabeth David remarked: ‘It will be interesting to see the efforts of the milling industry to sell us bread which is more suitable for cake, or at any rate for cattle cake.’
In fact preparing bread with soft British and Irish wheat strains is possible using artisanal methods, it just requires a longer fermentation period to develop the gluten. Perhaps as a result, over-worked bakers in the past acquired a reputation for being strong, and dumb. But the convenience of modern methods comes at a nutritional cost.
Give Us Our Bread
In the early feudal period a lord of the manor held a milling monopoly over grain grown within his domain. But by the late fourteenth century the situation had changed with the emergence of independent millers, who acquired a reputation for unscrupulous behaviour.
Robin the miller, unknown 15th century artist.
Thus, in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (c.1400), millers are lampooned as cheats who over-charge for grinding corn. This is an enduring stereotype revealing resentment against the wealth of an emerging capitalist class of millers, at a time when field crops formed 80% of the diets of poorer sections of society.
Our bread-dependent civilization has tended to generate and perpetuate social hierarchies dependent on the ownership of land, milling technology and the storage conditions required to preserve a year round supply, and sufficient seed for the following year.
Until recently, when health authorities recognised the importance of roughage in our diets, white or, more accurately, a yellowish-shade of bread was more expensive and reserved for the wealthy. This snobbery against darker loaves can be explained by their common adulteration with inferior grains, unground husks, and even indigestible matter.
Relative whiteness indicated purity, though the bran and wheatgerm was never entirely extracted using pre-industrial techniques. The first roller mill was opened in Glasgow in 1872 and since then white bread has been affordable for the masses, who assumed the bread esteemed by their social superiors was of a superior quality. Soon bread was even being bleached to conform to the consumer’s expectation for pristine whiteness, though most bleaching agents are now banned under E.U. (though not U.S.) law.
Oven Ready
The oven is the last piece in the jigsaw of technology and accumulated wisdom required in bread-making. Bread may be baked in a pan over an open fire in the form of ‘griddle cakes’, but a hot oven serves best, filled with steam which gelatinizes the outer layer of bread to give it a firm crust. A critical mass of population and wealth is, however, required for such ovens to be built, and the necessary fuel gathered. Thus, less technologically developed societies usually heat a cauldron over an open fire, consuming grain in the form of soup called frumenty and other stir-a-bouts.
The Second Agricultural, beginning in the seventeenth, which preceded the Industrial Revolution, led to the demise of most domestic bread-making in Britain: the Enclosure Acts denied rural communities access to common land where fuel could be gathered; it was too expensive for urban households to maintain ovens; and coal which came into widespread use billows black smoke unconducive to baking.
George Russell (Æ)
Over the course of the nineteenth century, shop-bought bread became the norm, especially as many women joined the labour force. In Ireland this process occurred in the latter half of the nineteenth century. In 1913 George Russell Æ observed the effect of the transition in Ireland:
There is no doubt that the vitality of the Irish people has seriously diminished, and that the change has come about with a change in the character of the food consumed. When people lived with porridge, brown bread and milk as the main ingredients in the diet, the vitality and energy of the people was noticeable, though they were much poorer than they are now… When one looks at an Irish crowd one could almost tell the diet of most of them. These anaemic girls have tea running in their veins instead of blood. These weakly looking boys have been fed on white bread.[v]
Cultural Indicator
The story of bread is like a Russian doll, a multi-layered revelation exposing a great deal of our civilization. Perhaps above any other food it requires human ingenuity in agriculture, engineering and cuisine. No wonder it provides the metaphor of transubstantiation.
Sadly, the dominance of indigestible white bread from unmatured dough has been a nutritional and gastronomic calamity. Constipation is the large and rather pained elephant clambering about the room, and bread is now marked with the dreaded sign of fat, as a contributor to the global obesity pandemic. But it shouldn’t be this way: unadulterated sourdough bread combines nutritional benefits with supreme gustatory enjoyment, in the true Epicurean sense.
One issue for us to consider is an over-reliance on hard wheat strains, considering other grains are more suited to our growing conditions. The present fluctuating climate recommends diversity, and as omnivores this is to our nutritional benefit.
The Classical Greek author Atheneaus records seventy-two varieties of bread baked in his time. Today we expect homogeneity. The spectre of food shortages looms, however, due to over-reliance on finite fossil fuels.
Individuals and communities can begin to take control of their own bread supply. Domestic baking is tricky but rewarding. In Denmark all schoolchildren are taught how to bake, a valuable lesson that could be introduced to our schools.
With more time on our hands during lockdown may have shown a willingness to make bread to a reasonable standard. Apart from saving money, this shouldn’t be too labour-intensive as sourdough keeps well without preservatives, and can be baked in batches. For most of us bread is a com-pan-ion for life, and nothing less than the best should suffice.
Feature Image: Daniele Idini
[i] Elizabeth David, English Bread and Yeast Cookery Cookbook, Grub Street, London, 2010,
[ii] Evan D. G. Fraser and Andrew Rimas, Empires of Food, and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations, Free Press, New York, 2014, p.2
[iii] Madeleine Ferrières, Sacred Cow, Mad Cow: A History of Food Fears, (translated by Jody Gladding), pp.111-133
The fusion of mood and setting, the mapping of a landscape of the troubled mind – that is what really matters in Ballard. Martin Amis
I have been drawing attention for some time to the disintegration of a neo-liberal world order. The pandemic has delivered the coup de grâce, but the fighter’s limbs had been flailing around like jelly for some time.
The disease arrived at the perfect pitch of lethality to lay low Western societies drowning in casino capitalism, religious fundamentalism and post-truth delusions. An unravelling natural world, confronting climate change and over-exploitation seems to have cast a last shot at redemption against the latter day conquistadors of Goldman Sachs, and their kind. A multi-variant insidious viral strain has emerged, against which there is no conclusively effective pharmaceutical remedy or long-term immunity.
Covid-19 has wreaked most devastation in countries worst afflicted by the Financial Crash beginning in 2008; the Southern fringe of Europe and especially the U.S. U.K., and Ireland; the underlying health of these populations already undermined by ‘lifestyle’ diseases – especially the stress of living in permanent income insecurity.
Only a few small Western nations preserving vestiges of a Post-War II Keynesian compromise between capitalism and socialism have rejected a feudal property market and death-on-the-instalment-plan living standards. Scandinavian outliers and New Zealand have avoided both excess death and dehumanisation of lasting lockdowns, or Chinese totalitarianism.
In these islands of civilisation there exists sufficient social solidarity, trust in state institutions and a bedrock of economic security for carriers of the disease to isolate voluntarily. Elsewhere, it goes against the grain of pernicious neoliberalism to jeopardise one’s income or sacrifice hedonistic freedoms for the greater good.
For the most part, Ireland differs from the U.S. insofar as rather than religious zealotry, a corporate fundamentalism – with an all-consuming cost-benefit analysis of life – is the dominant paradigm. Among a shrinking Irish ruling class dull anti-intellectualism incubated on the rugby pitches of UCD holds sway, and is muscularly enforced in the Four Courts.
Under lockdown we seem to be entering the territory of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World:
There will be in the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it.
Empire of the Sun
Marooned in leafy Surrey as a barrister-in-law in the south of England during this Covid period I have borne witness to the U.K.’s profoundest Post-War crisis, with deaths per capita from the disease among the highest in the world; although when one takes account of the relative age of each population, Ireland has experienced almost as high a toll. And at least in the U.K. real debate has raged around the erosion of civil liberties attendant to lockdowns; however hypocritical it may be for ideologues of the neoliberal order to reject the lethal fruit of their politics.
Now, surveying the scene, it strikes me that in numerous works J.G. Ballard anticipated a major meltdown.
Ballard was irretrievably damaged as a young boy by internment under the Japanese in Shanghai during World War II. This is vividly captured in the memoir Empire of the Sun (1984) that Stephen Spielberg made into an Oscar-winning film.
The work details executions, casual brutality and dehumanising conditions. Like other Concentration Camp survivors, besides the lifelong trauma, Ballard clearly appreciated the fragility of life thereafter, motivating him to produce almost twenty novels, as well as numerous short stories and works of non-fiction. It also lowered his opinion of humanity, or rather revealed what each of us is capable of doing to one another.
His traumatic childhood left him with the conviction – fully corroborated by events in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries – that order in society has no more substance or solidity than a rackety stage set.
Empire of the Sun is, however, atypical of his oeuvre, as the novels unveil differing dystopian visions. His books are often classified as science fiction, but the writing is of a higher literary calibre than that label would imply, and real possibilities are only slightly exaggerated.
Two early novels The Drowned World (1962) and The Drought (1964) anticipate an environmental apocalypse, although as Martin Amis points out, only The Drought attributes the cause to the Greenhouse Effect.
The Drowned World is set among the last remnants of humanity, where foodstuffs and water are in short supply. In isolation, strange delusions and inner conflicts emerge among the characters, tendencies we may recognise in ourselves during this period of confinement.
The ‘hero,’ biologist Dr Robert Kerans, finds:
His unconscious was rapidly becoming a well-stocked pantheon of tutelary phobias and obsessions, homing on to his already over-burdened psyche like lost telepaths. Sooner or later the archetypes themselves would become restive and start fighting each other, anima against persona, ego against id….
Under the strain of dislocation a new form of humanity is emerging that appears to be a regression towards Cro-Magnon Man:
The growing isolation and self-containment, exhibited by the other members of the unit and from which only the buoyant Riggs seemed immune reminded Kerans of the slackening metabolism and biological withdrawal of all animal forms about to undergo a major metamorphosis … withdrawal was symptomatic not of a formant schizophrenia, but of a careful preparation for a radically new environment.
We may hope our contemporary metamorphosis under lockdown may prepare us for a radically new environment, and that we do not, as in the novel, depart on a suicidal mission, like Kerans, ‘A second Adam searching for the forgotten paradise of the reborn sun.’
Alas the signs are not good as resources dwindle and trickle down trickles out, while our natural inclination towards sociability is undermined by social distancing, enforced by the law.
The Unlimited Dream Company (1979) is a veiled attack on suburban U.K. consumerism. The cold metallic buildings have created a consumer-induced comma punctuated by visits to shopping centres and theme parks. A series of memorable passages evoke the scene:
The pavements were deserted, the well-tended gardens like miniature memorial parks consecrated to the household gods of the television set and dishwasher.
And,
They sat in the sunlight with numerals on their windshields, the advance guard of a digital universe in which everything would be tagged and numbered, a doomsday catalogue listing each stone and grain of sand under my feet, each eager poppy.
The ghostlike narrator, anti-hero, or hero – it is unclear – Blake is a fiendish Pied Piper of Hamlyn with sexual designs on the entire population of men, women and children, who he aims to liberate by teaching them to fly:
I had taught them to fly, by guiding them through the doors of my body, and now they would make their own way to the sun.
Like any demagogue intoxicated by his own rhetoric he believes that evil in this world will give way to paradise in the next:
I was certain now that vice in this world was a metaphor for virtue in the next, and that only through the most extreme of those metaphors would I make my escape.
It is no accident according to John Gray that the narrator’s name is Blake. In a letter, the poet William Blake declared ‘to the eyes of the Man of Imagination, Nature is imagination itself.’ Thus the character of Blake finds:
Already I was thinking of my next vision, certain now that it would not be a dream at all, but a reordering of reality in the service of a greater and more truthful design, where the most bizarre appetites and the most wayward impulses would find their true meaning.
Ballard is suggesting that our dominant consumerism is the living death of a theme-park existence, where all forms culture – or should that be infotainment – has been appropriated, packaged and commodified. This social structure is easily manipulated by the spin merchants that promise flight for all.
In a sense, Ballard expressly anticipates the current madness in a later novel Millennium People (2003), as the dark age he referenced is readily apparent – collective hysteria and a sequence of witch hunts.
Millennium People finds members of the middle class resorting to irresponsible revolutionary and terrorist activities. Half-baked as it is, the approach of the terrorists in the novel seems akin to the well-intentioned, but largely irrelevant enterprise of Extinction Rebellion.
Ballard is suggesting that the chattering class have lost their sense of civic responsibility and display an absurd sense of entitlement; a process that has only accelerated in recent times with income structures collapsing before our eyes.
The most controversial book, and a delicate exercise in the boundaries of fiction and bad taste – not unlike Pasolini’s film Salo (1975) – is Crash (1973), which depicts the fetishist behaviour of those who get their thrills out of being involved in car crashes.
The book acts as a metaphor for a thrill-seeking culture that seeks artificial stimulation. Glorification of death and suicidal ideation is evident in contemporary devotion to a blood sport such as MMA, and ‘heroes’ like Conor McGregor.
Hugo Darnaut’s 1885 Ideal picture from the Stone Age.
Mass Media Infection
Several of Ballard’s works refer to our current Post-Truth loss of reason, as well as the onset of various witch hunts. This latter is apparent in the Blairite reforms of the criminal justice system, which brought a return to social primitivism.
The Drowned World’s suggestion of a human reversion to Cro-Magnon Man now appears more and more prescient. Neoliberalism followed by neoconservatism will lead to social primitivism amidst the unravelling of civilisation. This is apparent in the lapse towards authoritarianism in Hungary and Italy; not to mention Mussolini-lite Varadkar in Ireland, the nastier Trump and the insidiously clownish Johnson. And as in Ballard’s imagination, professional standards are breaking down under the strain.
Finally, in The Atrocity Exhibition (1970) Ballard is rightly credited with predicting the Reagan presidency, but in that extended series of essays the overarching theme is how the mass media has infected us all like a virus, leading to docile stupidity or inanity, and inaction through manipulation; such is life, such is the virus.
What we now see is bland consumeristic compliance, fetishistic behaviour, random acts of violence, witch hunts, and media manipulation preceding societal and ecological meltdown; where Millennium People engage in tokenistic act of self-sabotage, as they endeavour to subvert the inevitable.
Featured Image: An aerial view of housing developments near Markham, Ontario
For the past fourteen years I have been a daily swimmer at the Forty Foot in Dun Laoghaire – my home town.
Seven years ago I began documenting this life down by Sandycove, particularly those summer days when the sporadic Irish sun comes out, a signal for Dubliners everywhere to descend on this place to cool down, socialise, get intimate and, above all, have fun.
In winter’s past this small enclave around Sandycove harbour is deserted, bar myself and a few other hardy swimmers and misfits from modern society.
This winter – the year of Covid – things have changed.
The so-called ‘Dryrobes’ crowd have arrived to join our old motley crew this year, as more ‘normal,’ well-heeled Dubliners have come to soak up the magic water, and enjoy, or endure, our icy secret, that used to be the preserve of those of us considered mad by the rest of society. But in the new normal of our world today, what is normal?
The only normal people I know, are the ones I don’t know very well !
The Forty Foot is special to me; three years ago it nearly took my life, when a wild storm hit as I was swimming out by the rock.
But the sea water has helped heal me spiritually, physically and mentally. Every day however cold I swim. Sometimes alone, sometimes with my crew. Nearly always I come out refreshed and feeling alive, even normal.
When the first days of summer arrive, along comes the rest of Dublin to bask by the Irish Sea.
Teenagers come to celebrate the end of school; to have their first drink or maybe first romance – just as I did, decades ago.
The regulars come to top up their all year tans, and take longer swims.
Lovers come to be alone and get intimate; families congregate at the back of the Forty Foot wall, on the small Sandycove beach – the quiet side.
All of this happens around one big rock on the southern tip of Dublin, a place that makes Dublin so special to me, and many others.
These fourteen images from my fourteen year pilgrimage give an insight into this unique Forty Foot life and style, that comes so alive in summer, and even now this winter.
This was back in the days when boys were still called Osmond or Norris, and girls were called Eunice or Mabel. It was a time of Bronco toilet rolls and King Crimson albums. A time when Jack Russell terriers still snapped at the coalman’s feet and your mother bought the weekly grocery shop from the Co-Op on tick.
Every now and then, if you were lucky, you could find someone who kept an open house, someplace to visit on those damp and dreary October afternoons in the 1970s when the cafes were shutting up for the day and when the pubs hadn’t yet opened their doors. When the suffocating bleakness of our provincial backwater became overwhelming, you could always head out to Sadie’s place.
Sadie Bramwell was known locally as a kind of bohemian. She had acted in a couple of horror films when she was young, and counted Patrick Campbell and Vincent Price as friends. Her house was a rambling Edwardian redbrick set in four acres of neglected grounds. It was situated on the edge of a shallow valley that eventually led down to the spread of the Marsh. Her husband, an American, was some kind of professor who taught at Harvard. He was a remote and distant man, and rarely around. When he was at home he would hide in his study upstairs, appearing only occasionally in the kitchen always wearing the same tweed jacket with worn leather patches on the elbows. He would show Sadie a passage from the book he was reading or an article that he was working on before shuffling off back to his study. And there were the two teenaged sons who were mostly away at boarding school. Like their father, the boys were withdrawn and odd, and seemed to spend all of their time in their bedrooms when home from school.
Sadie would hold court in the large kitchen cluttered with books, newspapers and magazines. You could call round any time in the day and help yourself to whatever was on offer, which was mostly tea, or if you were lucky baked beans on toast. And in the colder months there was the Aga to warm your backside against. There would be two or three of us there, and Sadie always seemed pleased to see us. I think she was bored and a little lonely. I could sense there was a kind of resilience at work in her, and that perhaps somewhere in her past there had been great difficulties. Another thing that struck me was that she didn’t seem to like female visitors, and could at times be frosty and imperious with them. My friends Evelyn and Yolanda eventually stopped going there. ‘That witch gives me the heebie-jeebies’, Evelyn would say. I would try to convince the girls that Sadie was all right but they would have none of it.
We would gather around the long table in the kitchen and listen to Sadie gossip about the famous people she once knew. How so-and-so, a faded matinee idol, was in fact gay, and that a certain successful novelist didn’t write his own books. She told us about the time she attended a private reading by Allen Ginsberg when he visited London in 1965. She said the poet sat on the floor surrounded by his ‘catamites’ and that he was picking at his bare feet and how it made her feel quite ill. But the great thing about Sadie was that she was also interested in what you had to say. The conversations were never one-sided.
Sadie didn’t drink alcohol or take drugs, although she did admit to once taking a puff on a joint with Peter Sellers, but she had no time for the courts that locked up the hippies and pop musicians for smoking flowers. ‘These are the very same judges’, she would say, ‘who are cruising around Piccadilly picking up teenage boys to molest in their Mayfair homes.’
But no one took advantage of Sadie’s hospitality by smoking dope inside her house. You could always go out the back and light up in the overgrown garden. There was a marble sundial fashioned like a seraph hidden amongst the high grass that we would cluster around. You could then look out for Oscar, the giant peacock. This huge bird’s iridescent plumage would sometimes fan out and peer through the tangled wilderness of ragged shrubs and couch grass, shimmering like a magnificent thousand-eyed alien. Sadie had inherited Oscar from the previous owner of the house, and she claimed that he was once a female but had changed gender and transmogrified into this splendid haughty male specimen.
During this time I decided I needed to move out of town for a while. I knew some people living out at Mr. P’s farm, so I rented one of the static caravans he kept in the yard. There were always four or five such dwellings there, and people would come and go. The rent was nominal. Mr. P was an eccentric old farmer who lived with his sister who had taken to the bed many years back and was never seen out and about. Mr. P seemed somewhat lonely and liked the company of the various dropouts, oddballs and hippie types that would appear looking for a place to live.
It was one day in October 1972 that Charlie Hardy pulled into Mr. P’s farmyard in a battered old Morris Minor. I was surprised because I had no idea that Charlie could drive, he just wasn’t a driving type of guy. I’d been friends with him for several years and had never once seen him behind the wheel. I didn’t drive at that time and was terrified of being driven around, especially by fast drivers. But somehow Charlie persuaded me to go for a spin. And so we spluttered out of the yard in stops and starts.
‘I didn’t know you had a driver’s licence Charlie.’
‘I don’t’, said Charlie, gripping the steering wheel tightly as he tentatively maneuvered the Morris through the farmyard gate and out on to the road.
‘Are you sure about this Charlie?’ I should have known that the niceties of driving licences, insurance and motor tax were wasted on him.
‘Yeah, we’ll be fine. I got the hang of it yesterday.’ He turned to me and grinned. He was always slightly unkempt and disheveled, but for some strange reason I can clearly recall that exact moment when he turned to face me. I found myself inexplicably staring at the few wispy strands of hair on his chin. For the briefest of moments Charlie looked exactly like that Shaggy character from the Scooby Doo cartoons.
And so we spluttered on for some fifteen miles through the back roads and winding lanes, past a few scattered hamlets, until we eventually pulled up at Sadie’s. The house always gave the impression that no one lived there. At this time of the year it could seem gloomy and forbidding, but I was relieved we had arrived in one piece. And Charlie seemed very pleased with himself. It was as if he had managed, at long last, to accomplish something in life.
I hadn’t visited Sadie for over a year and as always she was welcoming. But there was less of a welcome from the stranger sitting at the kitchen table opposite her. I could immediately sense the waves of suspicion and resentment darting out from his eyes. Sadie would never introduce anyone, so we just ignored this fellow and made ourselves some tea. I tried to get some kind of measure of him out of the corner of my eye, and I could tell he was a rustic type, in working clothes with his neck loose in a worn brown flannel shirt. After a bit of chat with Sadie, Charlie and I went out the back for a smoke. We were glad to escape the brooding presence of this unwelcome intruder.
‘What the hell is he doing here?’ said Charlie.
‘God knows. Did you see the cut of him?’
‘I know him’, said Charlie. ‘It’s Bradshaw. Triangle Head Bradshaw.’
‘Triangle Head!’ I spluttered.
‘Did you not see the head on him?’ Now of course I did. This strange man had a head shaped like an inverted triangle, topped with a flat thatch of tight red curls.
It transpired that Charlie knew Triangle Head Bradshaw from when he was at school. Charlie came from a small town far down on the Marsh, and this lad went to the same school as him. Charlie said that Bradshaw was the son of a cantankerous old farmer known as Ragwort Bradshaw. The Bradshaws were some kind of non-conformist ‘chapel folk’ and had a tumbledown smallholding on the edge of the Marsh where they kept sheep and chickens. Ragwort Bradshaw had the reputation for being a disagreeable old devil, and was often up before the magistrates on matters to do with illegally extending the boundaries of his property. There were three sons. Triangle Head was the youngest.
We heard the sound of a car leaving so we went back into the house.
‘So what’s the story with Triangle Head, Sadie?’
‘Triangle Head?’ Sadie laughed. ‘Oh why are you boys always so cruel?’ Evidently Bradshaw had been calling round to see Sadie for the past year or so. She said she felt sorry for him and that he was harmless. Charlie told her that the Bradshaws were unsocialised hillbillies and that they got on everyone’s nerves down on the part of the Marsh where they lived.
I didn’t see Bradshaw again at Sadie’s house. I wasn’t going round there as often anyway as we were all beginning to drift away. But I did once ask Sadie if he was still visiting her. She brushed the question aside so I left it at that. It was years later that I learned from an old friend of Sadie’s that Triangle Head Bradshaw had begun to make her feel uneasy. It seems he became a bit of nuisance, and that her sons didn’t like him skulking about the place when they were home from school. It was a classic case of unrequited love. Bradshaw was enraptured by Sadie and eventually plucked up the courage to declare his exalted feelings for her. Of course that was it. Sadie had to get rid of him. Nobody knows what was said, but he never came back. But there is a coda to the story of Triangle Head. After Sadie had sent him packing he went directly home to his farm on the Marsh and wrung the necks of all his two hundred and fifty egg-laying hens.
I had second thoughts about boarding a plane to Stockholm to meet Ingmar Bergman twenty-four hours after being diagnosed with a severe bronchitis, possible pneumonia, in the depths of the winter of 2000-2001. But the chance of a rare encounter with the greatest humanist in cinematic history proved irresistible.
Bergman now appears like a colossus among the Lilliputians in our present Netflix-inflected-era of cinema. By the time I met him – Jean-Luc Goddard excepted – he was the last one standing among a golden generation from the dominant art form of the twentieth century. As Gore Vidal put it: ‘The Tenth Muse, as they call the movies in Italy, has driven the other nine right off Parnassus, or off the peak, anyway.’
So, the last of a fine vintage was residing in Stockholm, that Nordic enclave of decency and rigour.
As director (both in film and theatre) and scriptwriter Bergman is almost unsurpassed as a humanist artist in the twentieth century, but he was also unquestionably an autocrat – a quality one might forgive in a director – who could act like a right bastard. Or so it was said. Certainly his relationships with women (of whom in the fashion of a Tudor monarch he married five and divorced four), and the testimony of male colleagues, would suggests he could be quite the unpleasant human being.
When I visited him, I encountered an aged man, but not a paltry thing, devoid of sentimentalism and self-destructive tendencies, notwithstanding unfair attempts to sully his reputation by the Swedish tax authorities in 1976.
This unfortunate episode led to a mental breakdown and a ten-year German exile. In its aftermath, the special prosecutor said that the alleged crime had no legal basis, and that it would be like bringing ‘charges against a person who has stolen his own car, thinking it was someone else’s.’
Revealing, even a society as solidly rational as Sweden’s was inclined to defenestrate its greatest living artist.
Bergman and actress Ingrid Thulin during the production of The Silence, 1963.
Ladies’ Man
Liv Ullman in 1966.
Bergman seems to have been quite the heartbreaker in his time. Although I think men probably hated him more, which he seemed to be clearly aware of. At least some of his lovers did well out of their association, even if he could be merciless about them.
A long-time lover and mother of one of his nine offspring, the Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann used his fantastic script to create the poweful film ‘Faithless’ (2000). It was more his than her own, and she knew it.
His qualities as a martinet are well attested to. Stellan Skarsgård who worked with him and the Danish director Lars Von Trier said that although he thought the latter was probably mentally ill, he considered him, nonetheless, a great person, unlike ‘that not nice guy’ (a.k.a. bastard) Bergman. Sadly, the qualities of greatness are rarely juxtaposed with niceness.
Christopher Hitchens, excluding his worst failure in not opposing the Bush-Blair invasion of Iraq, claimed before his death that he had nothing to be ashamed of, bar a few unforgivable acts with women. Bergman lived much longer and his genius was undimmed, but there were actions for which many in Sweden will never forgive him. I suspect, however, among males of his generation there was a certain sexual jealousy, as well as professional rivalry.
So a distinct singlemindedness did not make for a ‘man’s man,’ but films suffused with such warmth as ‘Wild Strawberries’ (1957), ‘Fanny and Alexander’ (1982) or Smiles of The Summer Night (1955) hardly sprang from the consciousness of a psychopath.
Ultimately, despite a reputation, like Andrei Tarkovsky, for being a difficult bugger, there is an extraordinary humanity to his oeuvre, evident especially in ‘Fanny and Alexander’, along with a contempt for religious fundamentalism and the deliberate infliction of cruelty. That film is a masterpiece of a kind that acts as a building block to civilisation.
I recall viewing it in the old Lighthouse Cinema on Abbey Street in Dublin on its Irish premier in 1982 along with the late Irish film director Kieran Hickey, a big-hearted gay man. Kieran arrived with a strikingly youthful boyfriend, and another Irish film director of international renown (who will remain nameless) in tow. Afterwards in the nearby Palace Bar that well known director was heard to mutter belligerently “The talented bastard.”
Press conference of Ingmar Bergman at The Venice film festival in 1985.
Stockholm Syndrome
So on that flight to Stockholm I was very concerned about my health, but I determined to go nonetheless having secured the elusive appointment with Bergman at the Swedish Film Institute after a lengthy recitation of how I adored his films.
Mercifully and miraculously, the fever and lung condition ceased to trouble me on arrival, perhaps it was the anti-bacterial effect of temperatures fourteen degrees below, or maybe the adrenalin rush of getting out of Dublin and into a new exciting environment such as Stockholm worked the trick. Either way, the cold expelled the demons from my system.
The following day, after a pleasant tour around the so-called Venice of the North, I was feeling chipper and made my way through the unglamorous state-sponsored housing of Stockholm’s immigrant district to the Institute.
Bergman had allocated a half hour of his time, which ran into over an hour. He was both engaged and culturally astute. James Joyce and Samuel Beckett were discussed, the former dismissed, the latter lauded. Although certainly lacking in avuncularity, I did not encounter a numbing coldness in Bergman. On the contrary I discerned a modulated passion, devoid of sentimentality.
He probably sensed he was on his last lap, but it was several years before his final film ‘Saraband’ in 2003. A last, most wintry achievement.
By that time, he explained, he had retired from cinema due to osteoporosis, as his hands could not operate the cameras. The digital age gave him the freedom to create ‘Saraband’ . So he came out of retirement and created a final work of genius.
It is a rare for an artist to produces a great work of art when over the age of seventy. A select list includes: ‘Ran’ (1985) by Akira Kurosawa, Westward-Ho (1983) by Samuel Beckett, containing the immortal pronouncement: ‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better’; Saul Bellow’s final novel Ravelstein (2000), and the late flowering of Michelangelo of course. Bergman thus belongs in the Sistine chapel of talent undimmed by age.
I would not describe Bergman as emotionally closed when we met. Unlike Samuel Beckett, who I also encountered, he was far from reluctant about talking about his own work. Though hardly modest, he was at least self-critical. Such modesty would have been misplaced in a genius.
The exterior of the building was used by Ingmar Bergman for the bishop’s house in the film Fanny and Alexander (1982).
Relationship with Religion
After retiring as a director in 1982, his script writing came to the fore, earning him many awards. Thus, a screenplay about his parents’ lives ‘The Best Intentions’ (1992) brought a Palm D’Or to its director Bille August. ‘Faithless’, (2000), featuring a character called Bergman, and directed by Liv Ullman was also much garlanded, as was his theatre work in that period.
Above all else there are clear intellectual and humanistic themes evident in his work, often demonstrated in stark terms, but leavened by a comic touch.
Where to start with evaluating this genius? It is worth recalling that his father was a conservative Lutheran pastor under whose authority the young Ingmar was locked up in dark closets for infractions such as wetting himself.
While father preached away in the pulpit and the congregation prayed, sang, or listened. I devoted my interest to the church’s mysterious world of low arches, thick walls, the smell of eternity, the coloured sunlight quivering above the strangest vegetation of medieval paintings and carved figures on ceilings and walls. There was everything that one’s imagination could desire—angels, saints, dragons, prophets, devils, humans…
He also bridled at the testing and homework required in secondary school, and was thus considered a ‘problem child;’ it is striking how many artists are ‘problematic’ to authority figures.
Resistance to authority figures and a deadening Puritanism is obvious in a film such as ‘The Seventh Seal’ (1957), which includes the extraordinary scene of a life or death chess match between the knight played by Max von Sydown and Death played – pronounced evocatively as Döden in Swedish – played by Bengt Ekerot.
There is also a precious understanding that children should be children in ‘Fanny and Alexander’, and we find an acute understanding of pain and death in ‘Cries and Whispers’ (1972). Then we find a chilling grasp in ‘Persona’ (1966) of the abusive relationships between women and men, and women and women, based on inequality, intellect and bargaining power.
Despite his early rejection of religion, Bergman displayed a love of magic and ritual in many of his films; while the first part of ‘Fanny and Alexander’ features a release of warmth in what we assume to be a cold person, but is not entirely so. The idea of time passing and emotional disappointment is beautifully conveyed in ‘Wild Strawberries’, which scales the achievements of the Japanese director Yasujirō Ozu.
And of course there is merriment in parts of Fanny and ‘The Magic Flute’ (1975), and the awful deceptions of love in ‘Summer with Monika’ (1950); and above all in the brilliant romantic comedy ‘Smiles of a Summer Night’ (1955), which was turned into a Broadway musical ‘A Little Night Music’ by Stephen Sondheim in 1973, and which also inspired Woody Allen’s ‘A Midsummer’s Sex Comedy’ (1982).
Bergman on the set of ‘Wild Strawberries’ in 1957.
Fårö Away
By the time I met Bergman, he was dividing his time between Stockholm, and a more reclusive existence on the island of Fårö in the Baltic Sea.
Dressed in a duffle jacket and an ordinary pair of jeans he set about recommending various sights to visit in Stockholm and its environs, and spoke at length about Beckett and Tarkovsky who he regarded as a natural successor. He considered Liv Ullmann his greatest muse. Perhaps he considered her the one who got away, given the pair never married, despite having a child together, unlike the other mothers to his other children, all of whom he married.
Victor Sjöström
I recall him also waxing lyrical on the performance of Victor Sjöström – then approaching eighty years of age – in ‘Wild Strawberries’ – which must go down as one the best performances by an aged actor in cinematic history.
After the first hour had elapsed it became clear that I would not be graced by his presence any longer. Genius loves company to quote Ray Charles, but on its own terms, and time was precious.
Bergman was undoubtedly a selfish individual, and an egomaniac, but he was, nonetheless, among the greatest humanist artists of all time.
His work has a lot to say to our own muddled time: that children deserve childhood and not religious intrusion; that fundamentalism of all types is dangerous to civilisation; that bullying can occur between and across genders; that death and plague are omnipresent in the game of life, and that our modern age is precarious and an historical consciousness remains important.
The story of subliminal messaging follows an interesting evolution, one infrequently told about a technique that may have created a monster. Considering this technique in the context of advertising, we can trace its roots back to the post-war 1940’s and 50’s United States. In so doing we must set the stage and, as Voltaire insists, ‘define our terms’.
Post-war America was undergoing an unprecedented economic boom. Manufacturing was in the ascendancy and incomes rising as never before. Modern capitalism was struggling through the birth canal of history and media-advertising was to be its midwife. The somnolent frugality and penury that defined the war years, and especially the pre-war Depression, was steadily usurped by a ‘terrible beauty’; the ‘American dream’ was assuming a material reality in cars, clothes, movies, music, diners and jukeboxes , enterprise, technology and invention; so much and more was coming out of America, and much of the world looked on with envy.
Post-war America thus experienced an explosion in new media; of television, radio, magazines connecting capitalist aspirations, with revenues increasingly derived from advertising.
Those behind the advertising fuelling American economic growth were fondly known as the ‘ad-men’. It was their job to motivate particular behaviours within a newly financially empowered individual, increasingly referred to as the ‘consumer’. Citizens had evolved into civic and economic units, with civic and economic or consumptive obligations. Consumption, despite being a euphemism at the time for the ravages of tuberculosis, was to become the bedrock of democratic capitalism.
By the late 1950’s and early 60’s, however, these consumers had begun to satisfy many of their material wants with products that initially endured, leading to new and more targeted influences. Rather than satisfy real and prescient needs, it became the job of the advertiser to ‘get inside’ the consumers’ minds and encourage them to think and feel differently, about each other, about the world, and about products.
America at the time was rich in oil, steel, lumber, agricultural lands and innovation. Resources were not unlimited, but they appeared so. Notions of conservation, environmental protection, biodiversity or climate change, were barely on the table, at least until Rachel Carson’s seminal Silent Spring was published in 1962.
During those halcyon days the Republican mantra of ‘trickle down economics’ had some substance, as there appeared to be an overabundance flowing down the social ladder. Even ‘socialism’ in respect of constructing roads, schools and other infrastructure enjoyed a share.
Planned Obsolescence
By the early 1950’s, however, it appeared to the captains of industry that the consumer market was becoming saturated. After large sections of the white middle classes had purchased a fridge, a car, a TV, a washing machine and other consumer durables, insiders feared the economy might be headed for a crash. Consumers might purchase enough material conveniences, but would soon begin to purchase less! Limitless economic growth might eventually come to an abortive and premature end.
There were disturbing indicators: for instance, between 1940 and 1950, the proportion of American families with mechanical refrigerators increased from 44 to 80 percent. Indeed, such ravenous consumption of homes, cars, and other goods meant that by the mid-1950s, marketers and businessmen feared, the saturation point was at hand. This fear led to two important marketing innovations. Planned obsolescence, the intentional design of goods to be short-lived, provided consumers with a reason to buy replacement items and created trends that promoted “keeping up with the Joneses.”[i]
Market segmentation arose from the theory that consumers had different preferences, rational and irrational, influencing their purchases. Advertisers began to target consumers on an individual level in order to market goods. These innovations helped advertisers to differentiate products and more successfully market them.
In The Affluent Society (1958), economist John Kenneth Galbraith condemned advertising for creating ‘wants that previously did not exist,’ but recognized its importance in stimulating the consumption that had generated post-war prosperity. Thus, between 1946 and 1955, the amount of money spent annually on advertising in the United States nearly tripled, from $3.4 billion to $9 billion. Consequently, throughout the post-war period, the ad man’s ‘real and perceived abilities to influence politics, culture, and the economy steadily grew.’[ii]
This makes sense: people don’t need to purchase products they already own. Fuelling the fears of a crash, was the reality that products were initially being made to last. Everlasting nylons, everlasting light bulbs, cars and machines with serviceable or repairable parts; permanence and durability were great ideas in the early days, but these ideas soon became dangerous with unfettered economic growth in mind.
The legacy of this revision is now all around us in terms of the environmental costs, and the ‘Growth Delusion’ has been extensively written about. (See Richard Douthwaite’s The Growth Illusion, Lilliput Press, Dublin, 1992) An irony emanating from this era is the permanent shift into our present reality of ‘planned obsolescence’. If products refused to wear out they would need an inbuilt expiry date. One might say with reasonable confidence that from the 1950’s the most enduring material artifact of manufacturing, has not been products, but landfill and human waste.
The task of the ad-man thus evolved from satisfying existing practical needs into creating new ones. Ideally, the ‘need’ for products that would gracefully expire and require replacement. If the products themselves refused to wear-out they would be portrayed as ‘outdated’, ‘outmoded’, or even an embarrassment to the owner.
The enduring, and egregious reasoning for dumping millions of tons of functional material products, in place of more ‘fashionable’ and ‘modern’ alternatives, slowly and effectively became normalised.
To all but the old-school farmer, this modern notion of ‘fashion’ as an important feature of function, persists to this day. The techniques for sustaining this ideology are taught in most universities. Of itself ‘fashion’ is perhaps a strange ideology and so-called ‘fast’ fashion is of course one of the largest contributors to the mass production of human waste. Thus an environmentally inimical notion of style emerged ascendant, and is now practically unassailable. Any questions of the cost or necessity of ‘fashionable’ apparel can readily be dismissed as outmoded.
Freud’s Nephew
This juncture in the history of advertising is best illustrated by the career of Edward Bernays – the nephew of Sigmund Freud – perhaps the most famous ad-man in the history of media. His influence as one of the founders of the ‘science of advertising’ is detailed in a BBC documentary: ‘The Century of the Self.’ He made use of Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis throughout his career to develop marketing strategies that have come to define the industry to this day.
For the advertiser or student of media ‘getting inside the mind of the consumer’ is perhaps an entirely reasonable objective. And yet, when we pause to think for a moment, how many of us would be wary of someone proposing to ‘get inside our mind’?
Bernays most famous use of these ‘new’ psychological techniques, was during his professional association with the tobacco industry. At the time in America, and indeed in many Western countries, most women did not smoke. The practice was socially frowned upon. If they could be encouraged to start smoking, profits would potentially double.
Ingeniously, Bernays effectively enlisted the women’s suffrage movement, by fostering a notion that not smoking was a sign of women’s oppression. His campaign implied that social stereotyping was preventing women from smoking, and that it could become an expression of their equal rights.
This perhaps intimates a familiar failure within feminism, which is the pursuit of equality rather than creating a practical respect for difference. A persistent desire to achieve equality with men, raises women no higher than equality. It sets the bar at the level of ‘man the trousered-ape’. Feminism rarely permits itself to go beyond men, into the realm of an overdue respect for female distinction, especially motherhood.
If men can smoke, then women should be free to do so also. The idea is simple, it contains a simple truth, but is hardly reflective of anything truly ‘feminist’ or ‘feminine’. Here we encounter the original ‘evil’ of the Sophist; the attempt to prove a facile argument by using true facts.
Whatever one’s views on the link between women smoking and their oppression, Bernays’s conversion of smoking into an assertion of equality, was unquestionably marketing genius. It should also be recalled that the harmful effects of heavy smoking were not then as widely accepted as they are today.
A decisive moment in Bernays’ campaign was when he enlisted a group of women to march in the Easter Sunday Parade of 1929. At a pre-ordained moment the women halted the parade, lit up cigarettes and puffed away.
Bernays and the tobacco industry temporarily re-branded cigarettes ‘torches of freedom’ The artfully manipulated ‘scandal’ had the desired effect, connecting smoking with female empowerment, and within a few years, a woman’s ‘right’ to smoke had been largely conceded. The tobacco companies were laughing all the way to the bank.
The successful marketing of cigarettes as progressive statements of liberty, female emancipation or a sign of Western sophistication, continues to this day in Africa and in the Middle East.[iii]
1890s satirical cartoon from Germany illustrates the notion that smoking was considered unfeminine by some in that period.
Old Socrates and the ad-man/Sophist
Of course ‘sublimation’ has a longer history than Bernays and the Manhattan ad-men. One might ask, what exactly does it mean to be a ‘victim’ of subliminal messaging? And when or if the victims deny they have been wronged then the delusion is complete.
Sublimation might be defined as some kind of ‘subversive mind control.’ Yet, perhaps the process is not a dark or subversive tool? Perhaps it is intrinsic to the functioning of group psychology. It may be integral to how our shared beliefs are transmitted, become established and are continually reinforced through a collective and instinctual need for belonging?
When misappropriated this ‘process’ of sublimation, becomes what Freud referred to as ‘mass psychogenic delusion’[iv] or what is sometimes described in Psychiatry as a ‘conversion disorder’. Certainly, when particular ideas are introduced into the sublime – the subconscious mind – there is often no limit to the evils they might engender there.
The ‘message’ is about getting us to behave in a certain way, to convince us to move in a particular direction, despite, or even in contradiction to external evidence, or our own better judgement. Yet this type of definition is equally unsatisfactory. It simply transfers the objective criteria for these newly fostered ‘needs’ to an external place; to someone else, to an ‘outside-of-self’ analysis of what one’s needs really are. This outside or objective ‘other’ must then decide what one’s thinking would normally be, if one’s mind had not been manipulated in the first place.
If I am aware that I am being deceived, I am hardly being deceived. And if someone tries to tell me that I am being deceived, (as with Plato’s cave dwellers), I might prefer to continue with the deception, before having my gullibility exposed.
If someone is apparently thinking or acting against their own better judgement, he or she will require an ‘other’ to identify this for them. It’s a classic Catch-22. If I am to realise that I am mad, someone else must tell me, or I must figure it out myself. If I’m sane enough to figure out I’m mad, I cannot have been that mad in the first place.
Whilst we are ostensibly guided by our own reasoning, we cannot know that our reasoning is being manipulated. Once we become aware of the manipulation; once we have recourse to our own ‘better judgement’ the spell has been broken. But it takes a brave soul to declare to the world: ‘I am being manipulated; I am being controlled or motivated by the ad-man.’
The essential deception contained within all forms of sublimation, therefore, is the requirement to make the subject believe that his newly fostered belief or desire, has not been caused by the advertisement itself. The advertisement has not caused us to desire a product, but has simply reminded us of an endogenous internal need, one that is entirely one’s own. The ad-man like the sophist has proven a false need by using true facts. The need in this case is only true by virtue of the unspoken fact that we have come to believe its ‘truth’.
The fostered desire must be hitched to our own desires, our inescapable instinctual imperatives; our desire to be happy; to live in accordance with reason; to be moral and just; or to be loved, accepted or respected by others. The ad-man must encourage us to ‘realise’ autonomously that life will be better, once we go ahead with the purchase.
There is of course a strong internal bias here. If I admit that my needs are not my own – that they are not genuine but have been hijacked by another – I must then admit to a sort of mental weakness; a failing on the part of my brain or intelligence. It is far easier, and safer, to assume and even insist that my beliefs are my own. That I am too intelligent to be ‘brainwashed.’
The Sophists
Sublimation is as old as civilisation. Socrates was convinced that we never really ‘learn’ anything at all. He believed that all important knowledge is within our minds at birth. That it is merely brought into being or delivered into the world. The midwife in this process is the philosopher. Socrates believed the challenge does not lie in the introduction of novel thoughts or ideas, but rather in altering how we go about our thinking. His solution is a Socratic methodology of thought.
Learning how to count presupposes (in the Socratic sense) an innate knowledge of relative numbers, this knowledge is something that we are born with, and do not acquire. We simply learn how to express and use that knowledge, to apply it in the pursuit of mathematics.
The structure of language might equally be considered an innate tool, as Noam Chomsky argues with the idea of a universal grammar. It is useful in helping us describe our thoughts, but we do not require language in order to have thoughts. We do not need to formally learn how to engage the process of thinking. Language might help us express our thinking, but we are born with an ability to think, and merely learn to express our thinking through the tool of language.
For Socrates, learning how to think is a relatively simple matter. There is a good and bad way of thinking. The benchmark for success being its independent approximation with truth; an absolute truth, a priori, unique, unassailable and independent of man. In the Socratic sense, truth is attainable through reasoned independent thinking: in other words, through philosophy. Independence in thinking was, however, an anathema to Socrates antagonists the Sophists. It remains an anathema to the ad-man, independent thinkers are rarely fashionable.
The main point here is that Socrates is of the belief that there is a distinction between acquiring information or skills, and understanding or correct thinking. What we should ‘do’ with information as it is acquired or learned through our senses, is already known to us innately. The truth is already within us, it is the ‘good as such;’ the ‘good’ in all of us. It is not acquired or purchased from another. It need only be brought into the world by learning how to think correctly, independent of any motive other than truth.
So here’s the rub, the crucial distinction between Socrates and the Sophists is that the Sophists were uninterested in an internal, a priori truth or the ‘good as such’. They defined ‘good’ as being in the realm of the external, material world. In simple terms, they correlated ‘good’ with success and power. ‘Justice is what is good for the stronger’ is the first Sophistic argument that Socrates refutes in the opening chapter of Plato’s Republic.
For the Sophist, understanding or philosophy is not to be confused with an inner or a priori ‘good.’ Instead it connotes success in the world. There is a very important distinction between the type of thinking advocated by Socrates and that of the Sophists: the former encourages an evaluation of one’s thoughts from the perspective of an internal uncompromising ‘good as such’; the latter identifies truth on the basis of its success or value in the material or external world.
Social Media
Whilst Socrates would have little interest in a ‘like’ button on social media, a Sophist might feel that the number of likes ascribed to a particular thought or idea is a good reflection of its inherent value, and even truth.
Socrates had little concern for the external world, which he likened to mere shadows upon the wall of a cave. He cared only that he might reconcile his existence in the world with his inner good or an internal a priori notion of truth. If that is accomplished, or at least pursued in an unbiased and philosophical manner, the affairs of society and the world will largely take care of themselves. Socrates’s ideals coincide with Confucius’s wise words:
To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order; we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right.
What distinguishes Socrates from the Sophists is that the latter were practical teachers. They charged a fee, and considered knowledge a commodity. Socrates on the other hand always insisted that he had nothing to teach anyone. The wisest man is the fool, or at least he who knows the true extent of his own ignorance.
The Death of Socrates
For the Sophist, winning an argument is not simply a question of truth or falsity, but rather devolves to how the argument is presented. Using true facts to win false arguments is the criticism that is levelled against the Sophist, and indeed it is the essential meaning of the word Sophistry.
In this ancient contest we find the unacknowledged origins of advertising, and the ‘art’ of persuasion itself. Winning a false argument by using true facts, often entails convincing another of an untruth through recourse to simple self-evident facts. The other’s mind might then be hijacked into thinking and acting upon an idea that he might otherwise find repugnant. Subliminal advertising has its roots in this essential contest.
If you have been convinced by an external agency to desire popcorn or Coca-Cola at the cinema, then it is not unreasonable to assert that you have fallen prey to a certain type of invidious sophistry.
The Popcorn Experiment
By all accounts James McDonald Vicary – a late contemporary of Bernays and graduate of the University of Michigan – was an interesting ad-man. He presents a very interesting contrast to Bernays. He began his marketing career as a boy while in the employment of a company conducting a political poll for the election of a city mayor.
Sent about town in a cab, he interviewed passers-by to determine how they were going to vote. Vicary came from a humble background, having lost his father at a young age, and his family had struggled to make ends meet. A biographer informs us that his trip about the town was his ‘first time in a cab,’ and the success of his polling data in the prediction of the election outcome, confirmed his career in marketing research.
In 1957 Vicary issued a press release in which he described the results of an experiment he had conducted on the good people of Fort Lee New Jersey. The experiment is famously known as the ‘Popcorn Experiment’ and it is often referred to as the first documented use of subliminal messaging in advertising products.
Vicary claimed to have conducted his experiment on 46,599 movie goers, who, whilst watching a movie at a theatre in New Jersey, were exposed to screen images telling them to ‘eat popcorn,’ and ‘buy Coca-Cola.’ During the movie the ‘messages’ flashed on the movie screen in 1/3000th of a second, and as such were too brief to be consciously recognised by the viewers. Nevertheless, Vicary reported that these ‘subliminal messages’ resulted in a 57.5% increase in popcorn sales and an 18.1% increase in Coca-Cola sales during the movie.
Now you see it…
What is perhaps most interesting about Vicary’s story is that the experiment generated a public outcry, and was soon dismissed as a hoax or at worst a fraud. Either way, Vicary himself later declared that the results were fabricated and that the experiment never even happened.
It is important to contextualise Vicary’s renunciation. Amid the hue and cry, he was asked in an interview whether he had obtained people’s consent to have their minds ‘altered’ in the manner in which he claimed? It is quite possible, given the level of opprobrium he faced, and fearing potential claims for compensation, that he chose to distance himself from his work and quietly disappear into historical obscurity.
The irony here is that Vicary is still considered the father of subliminal messaging in advertising, and the result of the experiment was believed (or at least feared) by many to be substantially true. Indeed, there have been subsequent experiments proving the effectiveness of subliminal messaging in influencing our behaviours. The technique was quickly banned in America, and elsewhere. It seems unlikely that it would be banned if there was no possibility of effectiveness.
Although the experiment was dismissed as fraud, the unreal or ‘faked’ results convinced more people of the effectiveness of the technique than might have been convinced if Vicary’s results had been deemed truthful. Thus, ironically the faked results had an apparently greater impact in convincing people than the truth might have done. This recalls Nietzsche’s assertion that mankind is too often inclined to hold untruth in greater esteem than its inverse.
For our purposes the question is a simple one: what is the difference between the sublimation described and conducted by Vicary, and that same sublimation that was described and conducted by Bernays?
Vicary’s experiment resulted in an immediate backlash, and intervention by the U.S. Congress prohibiting such techniques. In contrast, Bernays continued to enjoy a favourable reputation and career. In the wake of his success with the ‘torches of freedom,’ he achieved legendary status within the marketing world. His books are still widely read and his techniques continue to be taught and applied.
Why is that Bernays enjoyed fame and fortune, whilst Vicary was compelled to vanish into obscurity, probably relieved that he had not ended up behind bars?
Perhaps the distinction between Bernays and Vicary’s approach, might be summarised as follows: as long as the individual subject can be preserved from the truth that they have ‘given up’ control of their mental faculties; as long as they remain convinced that the sublimated idea is compatible with their own thinking, the sublimated message will be readily accepted as an endogenous idea – one that has merely been reinforced or brought to light by the ad-man.
The Algorithm
In the wake of the 2016 American Presidential election evidenceof Cambridge Analytica meddling first came to light. It became apparent that algorithms had been applied to personal data, gathered from social media, which had then been used to manipulate voting patterns. The Western world (for a brief time) was horrified that minds had been tampered with, unbeknownst to those minds. Subliminal messaging had reared its ugly head once again.
It is highly likely, however, that the outrage was neither felt nor voiced by the true ‘victims’ of the algorithms. Rather, the anger emerged from the ‘other side.’ It was articulated, often by journalists, who felt that ‘other’ minds had been controlled, and the election of a President had been secured by devious means. This is an important distinction, and it reminds us that the victims of mind control tactics or subliminal messaging are very unlikely to admit to its effect, let alone develop an awareness of the tactics deployed on them.
Alexander Nix of Cambridge Analytica (2017).
And so it might follow that, if we, (the big ‘we’) are victims of subliminal mind control, how would we know? Who will tell us? In political parlance: only the left will inform on the right, and only the right will inform on the left. For each side of the political divide to label its antagonist as ‘brainwashed’ is nothing new. But what happens if each side is not in the habit of listening to one another, and if both sides are indeed correct?
Today we don’t have to look too far to find the evolution of sublimation: Bernay’s techniques are everywhere. Closer to home, sublimation is nowhere more obvious than in the practice of ‘predictive text,’ and the algorithms employed on social media.
When I begin to reply to an e-mail, my e-mail account offers to finish my sentences, and even offers complete sentences on my behalf. What is happening here? Why am I not insulted by a computer presuming to know my innermost thoughts, before I have taken the trouble to think them myself?
How is this process any different from what Vicary attempted in his Popcorn Experiment? Who controls this algorithm that presumes to think on my behalf? How deep into my psyche do these algorithms and advertisements reach? These are questions that we ‘victims’ rarely care about sufficiently to ask. The process appears benign and refined. Frighteningly, I cannot deny that those words the algorithm suggests do appear to coincide with what I might write, were I presumptuous enough to persist in thinking for myself!
Shouldn’t I steadfastly preserve my right to think autonomously? Perhaps I should respond like an inebriated rock star, and throw my computer screen out a hotel window in disgust at this presumptuous hijacking of my thoughts.
Tucker & the Gadfly.
I have a very close friend who does not read much. I love him dearly because he is straight and honest with me. I value his opinion because he is often more honest with me than I sometimes care to be with myself.
This friend recently introduced me to a Fox presenter whom I had never heard of called Tucker Carlson. One evening he insisted that I watch one of Carlson’s shows. Initially, I was surprised and somewhat amazed at what he had exposed me to. I forget what Carlson was talking about, but I remember being struck that he seemed quite sincere, and that much of what he was saying appeared to make sense, despite the way he was contradicting many of my core beliefs.
Tucker Carlson (2018).
Some days after watching, I decided to return to Carlson in order to better understand him, to recognise what he was trying to convince me of, and how he was going about it.
I watched two more episodes and the techniques he was employing gradually became obvious. It was not entirely clear at first, hence my perplexity and compulsion to watch him again. His techniques are no different to those used by Bernays or the sophistry of using true facts to prove false unspoken arguments. The facts were obvious, but the arguments, particularly in the arena of race, or race relations, were subtle: concealing dark convictions that align with primitive fears and aggressions.
There is a certain type of mind that is drawn to people like Carlson; a mind like my own that engages with the world with a set of hard-wired preconceptions, fears and desires. Yet Carlson was not music to my ears because I don’t harbour a fear-based love for guns or a suspicion of black people. Some of my fears I am conscious of, others less so.
If, for example, I were fearful of Black America, of its claims in respect of racism, slavery, inequality; if I were subconsciously fearful that equality or reconciliation was a threat to me; to my wealth; my morality, or my entitled share of wealth, then Carlson would be my man. It is not simply because he is racist or that he does not believe in ‘equality’. Carlson is interested in attracting an audience, and what he offers in return is a sublimated validation of one’s prejudice and fear.
One need only watch him at work to see this. The language he uses is openly about freedom and democratic values, and yet, there is a subtext that is difficult to identify immediately, or pick out with direct quotation marks. There is an artful use of words, not quotable sentences but words, interjected into sentences, which serve precisely the same purpose as ‘Eat Popcorn’ or ‘Drink Coca-Cola.’ or ‘torches of freedom’.
One quickly gains the measure of Carlson’s deeper opinion, or at least of what would likely be his opinion upon issues like gun control, or socialist initiatives such as universal health care, race relations, capitalist wealth, or global warming.
His unspoken ‘opinions’ or sublimations in respect of race are particularly invidious. The young black American is more often portrayed as a criminal thug, a gangster, a cop-killer. Yet this criticism of Carlson cannot be sustained easily, as there are protective ‘pro-black’ images interspersed in his monologues – ordinary black folk occasionally behaving like decent white folk.
I imagine the deception is so complete that Carlson has many black subscribers. It is almost as though he is reiterating the traditional racist slur that ‘not all blacks are bad people.’ Subtle slurs like this, provide the racist with a moral foothold.
It is once again a truth that is used to prove a false argument. Undoubtedly, it is a slur that some Black Americans reiterate and perhaps unwittingly inflict upon themselves. In essence the same sentence may be seen as a subtle evolution of outright racist contempt.
The former traditional slur has a sublimated racism, whilst the latter outright form is openly vile. The former in its disguise is perhaps more invidious, the latter whilst more grotesque, is at least openly so. Carlson’s racism is in the realm of the former: the sophisticated truism that has its racism concealed beneath the surface.
But the point here is not a critique of Carlson’s techniques. Instead it is a warning to avoid the same mistake as I made. After watching two final episodes of Carlson in an attempt to gain the full sublimated picture, I then tried to get rid of him out of my life: to cleanse myself of the poison.
Unfortunately, however, my YouTube feed now regularly spits Carlson onto my screen. I only ever watched two of his shows, yet he finds me at almost every login. I often watch shows about vintage cars, van-lifers and philosophers, yet regardless of my previous choices the algorithm has decided that I am – or should become – a fan of one: Tucker Carlson, an anathema.
The algorithm has made me one of his countless millions of viewers. Perhaps I would have done less harm to the ‘greater good’ had I watched two episodes of a different kind of porn.
The modern advertisement might have been defined by Bernays, but the algorithm that finishes my sentences, sends me ‘likes’, and has wedded me to Carlson, was engineered by a small group of techies in Silicon Valley. They apply the most up to date science and research in their engineering. They reach into our minds every time we interface with social media platforms, with the Internet and the ubiquitous smartphone. The purpose of the Internet we are informed is simply to turn a profit. But what is the product they are selling, when most of these platforms appear to be ‘free’?
I have often heard it said of social media: ‘when you cannot see the product being advertised, it’s because you are the product.’
Our preferences and opinions become part of the programme, encouraging certain types of thoughts and behaviours in others. The ‘like’ button is integral to the function of social platforms and yet what purpose does it serve in respect of the data or information that is being liked or disliked? Behind the like button lies one of the core values of the algorithm itself; the Sophistic assertion that truth is dependent upon likes. That ‘truth’ becomes truer when enough people ‘like’ it.
Human behaviour is predicated upon thought: what we do and when we choose to do it; how we portray ourselves; how we are perceived by others; all of these facts become lines of code within the algorithm.
If we can assert that the history of sublimation reaches as far back as the Greek mind; what can we say of the philosophy of the algorithm? When enough thought becomes manipulated, we may well move into a world where the dominant mode of thinking becomes that of the algorithm itself.
What if the algorithm has already become our new master, the predominant mechanism for thought and the architect of empirical reality? Does it contain a few lines of code that might define or preserve a moral truth of some kind? How would we know if the algorithm is out of control, if it has ‘gone viral’?
The Sophists may have had a counterbalance, a devil’s advocate in the form of Socrates the ‘old gadfly.’ Man has always had a counterbalance, a morality of some kind. If the advertisement and the algorithm have managed to move beyond morality, beyond good and evil, ‘it’ rather than we, has become what Nietzsche referred to as the ubermensch.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)
What role does the Algorithm play in the election of a President? In taking to the streets in Dublin because a black man is murdered in America? What role does it play in hatred? In being afraid of a virus, or in wearing a face mask? In taking a vaccine, or in taking one’s own life? The darkness in our world may not be the workings of conspiracy – nor the consequence of irrational political allegiance – it might just be a consequence of sublimation: of a gullible embrace of the thoughts of others.
What has become of old Socrates, that he cannot and will not come to our rescue? Perhaps he is dead, and perhaps as Nietzsche said of God, ‘we have killed him’?
Feature Image: Alan Curtis & Patricia Morison in ‘Hitler’s Madman’ (1943).
[i] ‘Invisible Commercials and Hidden Persuaders: James M. Vicary and the Subliminal Advertising Controversy of 1957’ Kelly B. Crandall HIS 4970: Undergraduate Honors Thesis University of Florida Department of History, http://plaza.ufl.edu/cyllek/docs/KCrandall_Thesis2006.pdf
[ii] Kelly B. Crandall, Invisible Commercials and Hidden Persuaders: James M. Vicary and the Subliminal Advertising Controversy of 1957. HIS 4970: University of Florida, Department of History, April 12, 2006
[iii] Amos, Amanda, and Margaretha Haglund. “From Social Taboo to “Torch of Freedom”: the Marketing of Cigarettes to Women .” Tobacco Control 9.1 (2000). Web. 28 Apr 2010.
[iv] Bartholomew, Robert; Wessely, Simon (2002). ‘Protean nature of mass sociogenic illness’ (PDF). The British Journal of Psychiatry. 180 (4): 300–306. https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/2BDC2262E104B8A33F3DD49773DA0D8B/S0007125000268578a.pdf/protean_nature_of_mass_sociogenic_illness.pdf
Under normal circumstances tourists flock to Ireland for its rich cultural inheritance and traditions. Indeed we live atop generations of history. When the soil offers its secrets in the form of ruins and artefacts, we either attempt to preserve or reduce them to rubble. More often than not, we choose to tear down or bury the past. This often occurs without the general public being aware of what is happening.
Perhaps our relationship with heritage is conditioned by a colonial past, with buildings associated with the legacy of an occupation.
Thus, in 1944 Minister for Lands, Sean Moylan, described the Big Houses of the Protestant ascendency as ‘tombstones of a departed aristocracy’ remarking ‘the sooner they go down the better. They are no use’. More recently, Nuala O’Faolain admitted: ‘We cannot, or at least I cannot, look at the Big House without some degree of rage.’
Moore Hall, County Mayo, a Big House burnt down by the IRA in 1923, and subsequently abandoned.
But this attitude towards our heritage seems to run deeper as the approach towards even pre-English history demonstrates.
The Wood Quay Dublin Council webpage describes what is there as ‘a stretch of the original Hiberno Norse (Viking) City Wall dating from 1100AD.’ This, however, is a far cry from what previously lay there. The site of about four acres consisted of the remains of around one-hundred-and-eighty houses, thousands of artefacts, and a wealth of information.
In 1978 the site was owned by Dublin Corporation. Despite the High Court declaring it National Monument, Dublin Corporation found a legal loophole to allow them to build new civic offices there. Despite this declaration and a ‘Save Wood Quay’ campaign involving over twenty thousand protesters, a petition, and Operation Sitric – a sit-in protest where people occupied it for three weeks – construction went ahead. It was a devastating loss for Irish heritage.
Wood Quay, 1978, Dublin City Council Photographic Collection
The O’Rahilly House
A recent loss has been The O’Rahilly House on 40 Herbert Park. Michael Joseph O’Rahilly, who lived at the house with his wife and family, was the only leader of the 1916 Rising to be killed during the fighting itself. In the hours after the fatal exchange of gunfire on Sackville Lane (now O’Rahilly Parade off O’Connell Street) he wrote a letter to his wife who lived on 40 Herbert Park in Dublin 4.
The house had been the site for many meetings of the signatories of the 1916 Proclamation. It is likely that three former Irish presidents, Eamon de Valera, Sean T. O’Ceallaigh, and Douglas Hyde, had all passed through its doors at one time or another.
The house was demolished in September 2020 to make way for a twelve-storey hotel, and an apartment development, in the face of opposition from several residents associations, the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, the 1916 Relatives Alliance and Relatives of the Signatories of the 1916 Proclamation, and Proinsias Ó Rathaille (The O’Rahilly’s grandson). Apart from the building’s historical significance, there were other problems identified with the project, including the disproportionate height of the proposed building.
As of October 2020 an application for a judicial review of the planning forms for the site has been approved by the High Court. The Pembroke Road Association has been getting donations from all over the country on a daily basis towards the estimated €50,000 needed to bring the application. There was also talk about potentially rebuilding the house, or turning the site into a park for children, and to commemorate the 1916 Rising. Perhaps this site will fare better than Wood Quay, but since the building itself no longer exists, and Dublin City Council are involved, I am not holding out much hope.
40 Herbert Park, before demolition.
Literary Houses
Hoey Court is where the satirical author of Gulliver’s Travels (1726) Jonathan Swift was born, in 1667. All that remains of it now is a plaque on a wall near Dublin Castle. This would surely have been a fantastic site for a museum dedicated to this world renowned writer.
I hadn’t even been aware of its existence until I went on a tour on Dublin’s Dark side, led by John Caffrey. It’s a pity these aren’t the places we learn about in school.
The House of ‘The Dead,’ James Joyce’s final story in Dubliners at 15 Usher’s Islandis the latest of Dublin’s historical buildings to be refurbished. Joyce’s great-aunts rented the upper floors of the house in the 1890’s and ran a music school there. Joyce spent sufficient time there for it be used as the location for his famous short story.
Since then it has gone from being a virtual tenement, to a refurbishment under Brendan Kilty’s ownership. But he went bankrupt in 2017. It was then ignored by Dublin City Council, before being purchased by private investors Fergus McCabe and Brian Stynes.
Dublin City Council have granted planning permission to turn it into a hostel. This has brought complaints from some quarters about Dublin losing its character with the number of hotels being built and writers, artists and Dubliners being pushed out of the city due to exorbitant renting and housing prices.
Indeed in November 2019 a slew of Irish and internationally-renowned writers signed an open letter calling on Josepha Madigan, then Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, and Owen Keegan, Dublin City Manager to intervene in the investors plans. The letter stated that: ‘In the decades since Joyce’s death, too many of the places that are rendered immortal in his writing have been lost to the city. Let us not repeat this mistake today.’ A compromise for both sides could be to keep the rooms as used by Joyce’s aunts for use for literary events and to proceed with the planned hostel rooms for the rest. That way the building isn’t falling into ruin and still preserves its history.
The examples I have provided are among the many buildings that have been, or will be, lost and there are undoubtedly many more such notable buildings in Ireland that few know about. It is just a pity that we learn so little about this heritage in school.
The National Monuments Act
According to the 1930 National Monuments Act: ‘a ‘national monument’ means a monument or the remains of a monument the preservation of which is a matter of national importance by reason of the historical, architectural, traditional, artistic, or archaeological interest.’
It also states that a building/site can only be tampered with in the interests of public health and safety or in the interests of preserving archaeology. The most recent addition to the National Monuments Act as of 2004 actually weakens the protection that National Monuments receive. This includes provisions for the partial or complete destruction of National Monuments by the Government of Ireland if such destruction is deemed to be in the public interest.
According to section 14 the Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht can also choose to alter, remove, preserve or demolish a site for road works.
The site of Carrickmines Castle fell victim to this provision. Previously classified as a National Monument it was the site of historical battles during the 1641 Rebellion and later the Irish Confederate Wars 1641-43. It seems that this particular amendment was brought in specifically for the M50 road to be built across the grounds. Yet the original plan was for the road to bypass the Castle grounds.
Latest Developments
A happy ending for one ancient history site is the incorporation of glass floors in new Lidl that opened on Aungier Street. The ruins consist of an eleventh century house, a stone-lined cistern and the eighteenth century Aungier Theatre staircase. It’s a way of keeping history alive and ads an unusual dimension to one’s weekly shop, in a time when we are crying out for positivity.
Shoppers at a new Lidl store in Dublin will get a unique insight into the city's medieval past. The remains of an 11th century house are clearly visible beneath a glass section of the floor of the store on Aungier Street in the city centre. https://t.co/3BHKEu6Pjv via @rte
Another excavation which will hopefully have a positive outcome is taking place on Ship Street near Dublin Castle. It began in March 2020 as part of an office block construction. The dig is near the remains of one of Dublin’s oldest churches, St Michael le Pole that was founded in the 6th century. There have been a few interesting discoveries already, such as the city’s oldest police cells, a punishment burial, and the skeleton of a ten- to twelve-year-old child. Other discoveries indicates that Dubh Linn (Black Pool), and in turn the Viking settlement, was larger than previously assumed.
Heritage should be celebrated, not destroyed. One solution to address this problem would be to introduce a mandatory amount of time for an archaeological survey to occur, which would be factored into construction schedules regardless of whether any artefacts were found.
As the Lidl on Aungier Street shows, it is possible to incorporate archaeology into the building in a way that preserves it, allowing the public to absorb the history of the site. Finally, where a change is suggested to the status of a building or site which is of significant historical interest and designated a national monument it should require a vote to be taken in Dáil Eireann.
What is the point in having national monuments if they are going to be destroyed without public oversight? Successive governments have failed to preserve our heritage yet continue to sell this to tourists. If we continue on our present course precious few of our historical buildings will be left for future generations to consider the civilisations that have preceded us.
With lockdown actively under consideration in some European states once again, including Ireland, we look back on a selection of testimonies from a period many of us thought we had put behind us.
It all happened too fast, so quickly that we didn’t have time to fully understand. The night before we were sipping beer and eating tapas and waiting for spring to come in the warm evening breeze; the following day we were on the sofa consulting the Netflix schedule for the umpteenth time, without finding an entirely satisfactory choice.
Our bodies, already weakened by sedentary lifestyles, are becoming weaker, muscle-mass decreasing quickly through lack of exercise. We do what we can, setting up home gyms, doing yoga in our bedrooms, a few push ups in the morning. No running, swimming, no going for walks; hardly breathing in the fresh air, panting, moving, or sweating. I do a little gardening in pots on the balcony, which I hadn’t done before. All of a sudden tomato seeds seemed the most important item on my shopping list during my weekly, stressful visit to the supermarket.
We can have a gnawing sense that our civilisation got things wrong, that it is being, somehow, punished. A year ago I heard a retreat-giver say that we had lost the ability to read the signs of the times. We had belonged, or thought we belonged, on a planet that although under threat, and although subject to disaster more or less randomly distributed, was broadly on a path of progress, of improvement, even for under-developed regions. Nature mostly provided balance and harmony.
Modern science reinforces this optimism at the cosmic level. We now know that the total universe that includes our Milky Way as one of nearly a hundred million galaxies has been expanding since the Big Bang. But if the rate of its expansion had been even a millionth of a percent slower, the whole thing would have collapsed, imploded in upon itself. There was fine tuning. Now trust is at issue with a particularly severe jolt for the Western world. It could be said that most of our strategies of coping are in the nature of distraction. To the extent this is so, the underlying unease remains. Call it dis-ease in fact.
What I, other immigrants, and the Portuguese hope is that we can return to the life we had before, and be able to leave this prison, without bars, that our homes have become. While we try to renew ourselves, the city is still and visibly lacking the energy and joy of the local population.
What is most intriguing in this situation, at least for me, is that we are trying to reinvent ourselves. For example, I have started to cook a lot more during these days of confinement, learning new recipes, in addition to adapting the house for new activities we never used to do at home, like dancing and exercising.
Despite everything I believe that together we will overcome this difficulty, which is happening on a a global scale; staying at home admiring the birds and their songs that echo along with an inaudible cry for freedom from the citizens.
I had booked a hotel – but ended up alongside five families living in a large apartment for seven days. Only two of us were allowed outside to buy food – everyone else had to stay inside. Before leaving we were covered head-to-toe, in gloves, face masks and head coverings. On our return we went through elaborate cleaning procedures before re-entering the apartment. We had to remove our ‘outside’ clothing and spray everything with 75% alcohol.
No cars with registrations from outside the capital city were allowed in. The schools were on holiday and due to return the first week in March but are still closed all over China. Only students doing important exams at the end of term will be allowed to return initially, which hasn’t happened yet.
Leaving Beijing, I returned to my home city of ****. You are supposed to scan your phone so they can track potential carriers arriving into the city – which I hadn’t, having used a private firm for the airport collection. This meant my car registration didn’t show up on the cameras. So the next day the authorities were in touch to find out how I made it back from the airport.
Illustration by Malina Molenda/Artsyfartsy for Cassandra Voices
What if I had to take care of my little ones? While my mom goes outside to try and bring a little money in. What if she loses her job because of the pandemic? Then our only source of sustenance would be gone. Then we would be relying on the government even more than what we were doing before. What do you call that? Resting on the government? Relaxing on the government? Maybe even sleeping on the government because of the sheer amount of people whose lives were turned upside down because of it. As if living life sideways was any easier.
The Swedish approach to the Covid-19 pandemic is a sign of underlying differences in how they understand morality in the public sphere, and how they relate with each other: this comes from a more utilitarian perspective.
Utilitarianism has earned a bad reputations as it has been incorrectly conflated with crude capitalism, when it is really about taking peoples’ wellbeing seriously, or ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number.’ As Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mills understood it, utilitarianism is extremely equalitarian .
Notably, the Swedish government has taken the advice of moral philosophers who come from a moral utilitarian perspective. The core difference between their approach and what we are seeing for the most part elsewhere is they attempt to avoid an understandable reaction to save lives immediately. They put aside an emotional response and consider the future consequences.
Across the hall, the atmosphere is suddenly lifted by the wit and humour of a ninety-odd year-old who has somehow escaped the dementia and delirium that pervades here. Unlike his fellow residents, this is a man who never wears his breakfast and is more recognisable to me in crisp shirt and tie, top button fastened. When we first met some months ago I doubted his cognition on hearing him shouting instructions to ‘Alexa’ across the room, but it turns out that I was the one that was out of touch. I look at his records – not for resuscitation, not for transfer. Despite his joviality, the oxygen levels already look poor. Given that it is still early on in the course of his infection, it is only a matter of time before he will crash and be gone.
As the nation scrambled to prepare itself for the deluge of demand on ventilators, this was the kind of man who was never to have been deemed eligible. Yet in spite of the full newspaper spread photos of busy intensive care units, I know there is room for him, and that he has the will to live. Despite his age, were he to defy the admittedly poor odds, he has a quality of life to return to. We embark on the conversation that echoes a distant role-play from medical training which treads gently but directly on taboo. How is it you wish to die, and what interventions might be acceptable or worthwhile to try to prevent that?
Fear plays a major role in influencing the decisions we make and the actions we engage in. Research has shown that there are sound evolutionary reasons for this. The selection pressures from these types of danger have resulted in domain-specificity in the reactivity of the fear system, meaning that the system has evolved special sensitivity toward such dangers. However, ‘not all human fears are instinctual and hardwired—we need to learn what to be afraid of.’ [i] While this capacity is critical in helping humans deal with the different environments in which they find themselves and which present different sources of ‘danger’, it can also be abused by those seeking to advance their own interests at our expense.
The resorts of Magaluf, Palmanova and Santa Ponça on the southwest coast of Mallorca are among the island’s most popular destinations. By May, they are usually heaving with a mix of young families, pensioners and stag and hen parties – all availing of cheaper low season prices and temperatures in the high 20s and even low 30s.
The first point to note about the post modernists nonsense is that it has encouraged a distrust of the truth and an atmosphere of looseness and imprecision, wherein any old argument, or moral position, is accorded equal weight.
The only normal people I know, are the ones I don’t know very well !
