Cassandra Voices

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  • A Hurler’s Silver Branch Perception

    One evening, while walking on Derada Hill, a hare sprung from under my feet. I found myself, all of a sudden, on the ground burying my head in the warm form left in the grass, and I asked that primordial form to act as a poultice, to draw out my expensive European education from my head, because in my western way of thinking I was damaging the earth. It had set me up in opposition to what is natural and native to us. 
    John Moriarty, Nostos, (Lilliput Press, Dublin, 1994).

    I can’t say when I first played hurling. It was with me on all of the great moments of self-discovery I can think of. Once I had a decent footing in the world I became aware of a stick being close by.

    It defined my youth; this game, this skill, this way of spending time. It was frustrating and it was ordinary and it was miserable at times, but a current ran through me, a note that intensified as I played. It got more serious as I grew up, the stakes got higher, my identity hardened, a community of people formed and goals were unconsciously set, if not assumed.

    A former captain of the Wexford Intercounty team, Diarmuid Lyng analyses games for TG4 and Newstalk , and contributes to national print media.

    And when the final curtain fell, amid the chaos of going from the all-encompassing nature of modern sport to the great vacuum of retirement, I found myself in West Kerry, with the writings of John Moriarty, trying to read my way through a depression, in the hope that I would once again, make sense of me, to me.

    I was wandering the countryside a lot during that period, learning to forage wild plants while growing comfortable in swathes of time dedicated to the question of how the outer world was interacting with my inner landscape.

    I remember sitting at the foot of Ceann Sibéal on the evening of an honest storm, marveling at waves rolling in and crashing against the foot of the cliff. Inwardly, I thought of the net in Croke Park shaking. The waves of energy emanating from the player, the sliotar bypassing the goalkeeper and crashing into the net, creating a wave like that at the foot of the cliff in front of me.

    I sat on Clogher Beach and marvelled at the ability of a player standing fully ninety yards apart from another, who hits a ball at over one hundred miles an hour, reaching a height of seventy yards at its apex, and within the first second or two of him striking it – in it’s very initial ascent – to move to the exact spot where the ball arrives so as only to have to extend an arm in order to catch it. What remarkable qualities of mind and body are at work there? What more are we capable of? And why doesn’t anyone refer to this? Shouldn’t it turn our spines in to question marks to interrogate the magnificent of it all?

    Silver Branch Perception

    What I found in West Kerry is that when the fences around me fell away, when I went out to the wild places, the boundaries in my mind disintegrated too, and these thoughts and feelings had their way with me. It brought me back to the soul of the game: to Silver Branch Perception.

    Silver Branch Perception was bestowed on Bran Mac Feabhal by Mananánn Mac Lir in Irish mythology. It is a gift, a way of seeing the world for the paradise that it is; the awareness that when we separate ourselves from our social story, we can see the world paradisally.

    The Tuath Dé would later defend this gift at the Second Battle of Maigh Tuiread against the Formorians.

    Balor of the Evil Eye led the Formorians, who, according to Moriarty, looked on Ireland purely for its resources, the reducing eye – the Súil Mildeagach –seeing only uses and benefits. Thus a cow is looked on as pounds of beef, and a tree for the lengths of its timber.

    The Tuath Dé, led by Lugh, held the Silver Branch and they fought to defend it. According to Moriarty, The Third Battle of Maigh Tuiread is being enacted within us today.

    I recognise from my hurling experiences what he meant. We are disconnected from the parts of the game that are essential to the overall health of society. We have adopted a Formorian mindset, we have assumed Balor’s evil eye. It is disconnecting us from the essence of the game.

    But Nature is lying us down on the psychiatrists couch and asking hard questions. The ash die-back disease is one of the symptoms diagnosed. This will decimate the most common Irish hedgerow tree over the next thirty to forty years. Its chances of survival are uncertain. Still 50,000 trees are cut down a year for 350,000 hurls to keep it business-as-usual.

    But what of the ash tree? Could most GAA players identify what one even looks like? Do we care? Do we feel a responsibility for its survival beyond what is needed for our ‘use and benefit’? Is Nature reminding us of one of the fundamentals of the game?

    We know now that the forest floor is alive with a web of mycelium that function along the lines of the Internet: a ‘tree wide web’. When a bush is sick it can tell a healthy tree, which may send the necessary nutrients to its ailing friend. Can we play the same role for the ash? Can we listen to what the tree needs, and come to its assistance?

    If we don’t go back to listening, to being humbled by nature – if we ignore the possibilities of the Silver Branch – we will be paying lip service to bridging the great disconnect, choosing the dis-ease of the Formorian mindset so prevalent in modern Irish society.

    Spiritually, there is a shift going on here from Rome to the Orient. Meditation, yoga, Tai Chi and mindfulness are rooted in Eastern ideas of existence. True to form, we look beyond our cultural inheritance to negotiate an internal crises in our perception of reality.

    But answers are here, all around us. Let us plant ash trees in every GAA club in the country in the hope of identifying strains resistant to the disease, and ensure its survival. Let us reduce dependence on a food system in danger of implosion, by subsidising polytunnels for anyone willing to work one. Let us go out to the wild places and allow our own wildness to surface, and, in so doing, revive an awareness that what is primeval inside us is not to be feared, but valued.

    I am aware of the intellectual ease with which many will digest this notion, but can we live it? Can we make the hard choices? Colonisation introduced many well-documented ills. Being the bastard child of Americana has brought even greater woes, though less appreciated, as we remain in a cultural, political and economical stranglehold. But as the neon lights of superficiality fade, what will anchor us?

    I think about the role of hurling, the tree, and the way we play the game. I examine my own role. I wonder about my role as a father; I wonder how the win-at-all-costs mentality will affect my son. I wonder about what caused a woman to email me last week to say she was relieved a torn cruciate ligament would keep her away from the stresses of GAA.

    The Minotaur

    I ask Moriarty what we need. He tells me about the Minotaur.

    The great Greek legend of the Minotaur is King Minos’s tale of woe. His wife Pasiphae becomes transfixed with the Bull God that emerges from the sea.

    The Bull won’t mate with any human, so she orders the carpenter Daedalus to construct a wooden cow. Once completed she enters the cow, assumes the position, and the Bull impregnates her.

    Soon she gives birth to a half-man half-bull: a monstrous creation. Out of shame King Minos constructs a labyrinth beneath the city of Knossos and banishes the Minotaur beneath the royal carpet.

    Once a month a virgin child is sent from the city of Athens and dispatched into the labyrinth as food for the insatiable beast. Theseus takes umbrage that the maidens of his city are being devoured, and travels to Crete vowing to slay the monster. There he meets Ariadne, stepdaughter of the king and half-sister of the Minotaur, at the gates of the labyrinth. She gives him a ball of wool to navigate his return.

    Theseus fulfills his destiny as a warrior by killing the monster and emerges in triumph from the labyrinth. That, to Moriarty, is the mythical story, but he sees another dimension.

    The Minotaur represents our animal nature, and it is the appeal of this that Pasiphae has succumbed to. Minos as King has dominion over the people, and regulates his society. Animal nature, primordial wildness, runs contrary to civic virtue. He drives his shame beneath that which he controls. He then must feed that shame with sacrifice.

    Enter the Warrior Theseus. He has bloody murder on his mind and awaits a triumphant return. But according to Moriarty this win-at-all-costs mentality must change; this is where we cross over from the mythological into the real, to the battles at Croke Park.

    We don’t need another Theseus, or another Cuchulainn. We need a medicine man, someone that can dive into the depths of the Irish psyche and take a comb of walrus ivory to Caitlin Ni hUllachain’s hair: to comb our Cartesianism, to comb out our sins against Nature, to comb out our theories and creeds that put us on a collision course with this gorgeous blue jewel hanging in space.

    If Theseus or anyone else wants to be a real hero, he must join King Minos and return to the labyrinth, take the Minotaur by the hand and walk him into the cityscape, accepting his shame in order to transcend it. This is the great journey.

    We have a great opportunity now within the GAA to create a healing space in which coaches can heal: where they can tune into the deeper messages of the game, of the hurl, of the tree. Where they hear the medicines of Nature, which heals them of their anger and shame. Where they reconnect to purpose and are reminded of agency. Where they rediscover their place in the world, and where outcome is secondary to the journey.

    Fulfilling a Heroic Destiny

    Spiritually, we are at sea. That’s why we don’t feel the plight of the ailing ash. The Catholic Church took on the role of guardian of the great message of the Christ story. The message that we can be at one with the unfolding moment, that we can transcend our suffering and open ourselves to a greater potential.

    The Church became moral arbiters of that message and pursued power and control, which divorced them from the source. They were not equipped for the gravity of the message that we are, in fact, already in Paradise. But independently we can create a space to engage with it, with humble invitation, we can heal ourselves and return to abundance.

    Nature is abundant. The law of the universe is balance. When we are in balance we are in abundance. When we chose with agency to be in imbalance, we no longer live in abundance; instead we become locked in a mentality of scarcity, which furthers the imbalance.

    Those that benefit most from these conditions are those that are most fearful of the scarcity complex within themselves. Those that are in imbalance have lost the ability to trust in the unfolding moment. They replace that trust with sufficient control of the moment to ensure they don’t slip into a reality that their minds are incapable of digesting.

    We must deal with our fear in order to be whelmed and overwhelmed by the majesty of the natural world. In crossing that threshold we slip into a paradisal view of the Earth, and no longer want to damage it. This is free energy. We allow ourselves to re-integrate, we play our Orphic note that resonates with the universe.

    This is where we identify our purpose, from this place. As though in sitting with Nature, in being psycho-analysed by Nature, where our preconceived stories about ourselves fall silent; the messages that we need to hear can be heard above the din: from the universe demanding we fulfill our heroic destiny; where we recall our gravity and our greatness, and make the contribution the universe requires of us.

    Then we can identify the most pressing needs in the world, and apply our tremendous talents and resources to meet those needs, therein lies our purpose.

    Croke Park

    I spoke about some of these things in Croke Park recently, ideas that have been forming around me and inside of me, inspired by John Moriarty and my experience of hurling. He gave me leave to understand the world for myself, deferring to no one.

    I don’t need experts to tell me about Climate Change, or the effect of EMF’s on bee populations, or young men’s suicide rate, to know the disconnect is for real. It’s everywhere. It’s screaming at us to stop, to look around, to renegotiate our most sacred and primal contracts with Nature, and hurling has a role to play.

    Moriarty is guide. He is a guide because he went to these places. He let go of his conditioning and walked the earth with a barefoot mind and a barefoot heart. The last pages of Nostos, his autobiography, are written from the paradise he so often refers to. This is not a philosophical concept, it is the reality of the universe, which will lead us away from calamity. I know it is real because I have experienced it.

    Its appreciation brings great possibilities for our young people, who are less hampered by the toxic legacy of shame lying on us as a people, on our language and on our landscape. With minds blown open by the Internet, they have the energy of youth to take great strides, but require mentors more than ever. Can the GAA offer a space where coaches harrow their own great depths to become the mentors we need?

    Can we encourage balance in our young people so they can make their great contribution? Where they play sport to experience the union that is central to all creative pursuit, the feeling that comes when time and effort cease and a blissful harmony prevails. Can we value those moments once again, and in valuing them permit our young people to experience the world in a different way, beyond the limitations of outcome?

    This is a journey Moriarty opened up for me, on which I constantly take wrong turns, but one worthy of continuing. If you are still with me, I encourage you to stand on the edge of a lake, or in front of a tree and just breathe. Breathe and resist the temptation to label and to understand and to intellectualise, and see what fills the gaps. It may be a fleeting experience, it may be difficult to hold on to, but it will heal.

    And if you happen to see the wild form of the hare, bury your head in that wild form, and ask it with humility and reverence to guide you on this heroic journey out of the Formorian labyrinth, and back to the great and sacred Earth.

    Diarmuid Lyng facilitates group exploration of spirituality in nature, masculinity, meditation, resilience, yoga to a wide range of audiences including schools, university, GAA clubs.

  • The Qualities Needed in a Judge

    The task of ascertaining essential qualities required to be a judge is necessary for the preservation of a functioning democracy. Any state demands gatekeepers of independence and probity, and leadership of the just and the wise. Importantly, the qualities that make for a good judge do not necessarily align with the skills of a successful advocate.

    First and foremost, judicial appointments must be transparent and non-political. Peer selection may bring effective appointments, but often cronyism and tribal affiliation leads to the selection of judges lacking independence, and even ensnared by vested interests. Crucially, a judge is not a servant of the state but the Rule of Law.

    The judge who bends over backwards to manipulate doctrine to serve the interests of his paymasters in government is no longer a true judge. The judge who does not approach each case with an open mind also dishonours his role. The judge who protects the state, no matter what its malfeasance, is unjudicial and even subversive.

    A first recommendation is that judges should neither be appointed by politicians, nor elected as in the U.S.. Alas even supposedly independent appointment boards are often stacked with the ‘yes’ men of the state, which is another stumbling block to the appointment of truly independent judges. To preserve and promote independence those who select judges must also themselves be independent.

    Secondly, the qualities of the advocate and judge are quite distinct. In Ireland at least, there is far too much veneration of successful barristers, which leads to the assumption that their abilities are those required of a judge. Sir Edward Carson was among the greatest barristers of all time, but a hopeless judge in the House of Lords, where his judgments are often incomprehensible. Partisan, fearless advocacy, so necessary to the stock in-trade of the barrister, is often an impediment to being a judge, who must eschew this approach in favour of dispassionate reflection.

    A judge should sit back and listen, and only selectively intervene, not rush in as if it were a college debate. A person of an adversarial bent is not inclined to be even-handed: he takes sides; rushes to judgment; intervenes and confronts.

    Judges are of course subject to emotions, foibles and prejudices. But to call someone prejudiced is not necessarily pejorative, it merely recognises our flawed humanity. Ecce Homo. What is important is to recognise our prejudices as such, and adjust our responses accordingly.

    II

    The great jurist Jerome Frank argues in Law and The Modern Mind (1930) that in order to predict a judge’s decision we would need a full biography of his life; the politics, morality, race, sex, religion and other factors that shape his character, and which will predict the outcome of any case.

    Frank tuned into how the prejudice of participants in the trial process (judges and indeed jurors or witnesses) influenced decisions, and how selective recall or mistakes in evidence often affected the outcome of cases. Thus, the unpredictability of court decisions resides primarily in the elusiveness of establishing the truth and deep-seated prejudice. He expresses this in two deeply evocative passages:

    But are not those categories–political, economic and moral biases–too gross, too crude, too wide? A man’s political or economic prejudices are frequently cut across by his affection for or animosity to some particular individual or group, due to some unique experience he has had; ….the judge’s sympathies and antipathies are likely to be active with respect to the persons of the witness, the attorneys, and the parties to the suit. His own past may have created plus or minus reactions to women, or blonde men, or plumbers, or ministers, or college graduates, or Democrats. A certain twang or cough or gesture may start up memories pleasant or painful to the man. Those memories of the judge, while he is listening to a witness with such a twang or cough or gesture, may affect the judge’s initial hearing of, or subsequent recollection of, what the witness said…

    Or:

    Jerome Frank 1889-1957.

    When pivotal testimony at the trial is oral and conflicting, as it is in most lawsuits, the trial court’s finding of the fact involve a multitude of elusive factors: First the trial judge in a non-jury trial or the jury in a jury trial must learn about the facts from the witnesses and witnesses, being humanely fallible, frequently make mistakes in observation of what they saw and heard, or in their recollections of what they observed, or in their court room reports of those recollections. Second, the trial judges or juries also human, may have prejudices – often unconscious unknown even to themselves – for or against some of the witnesses, or the parties to the suit, or the lawyers … Those prejudices when they are racial, religious, political or economic, may sometimes be surmised by others. But there are some hidden, unconscious biases of trial judges or jurors – such as for example, plus or minus reactions to women, or unmarried woman, or red haired woman . . . or men with deep voices or high pitched voices . . .

    He concludes: ‘The chief obstacle to prophesying a trial court decision is, then, the inability, thanks to these inscrutable factors, to foresee what a particular trial judge or jury will believe to be the facts.’

    In substance Frank is making two points about the unpredictability of outcomes in trial courts. First, that a judge’s background, prejudices and hunches conditions his decision-making, and secondly that decision are often based on mistaken recollections.

    The usefulness of the judicial hunch – so central to legal realist thought – should not to be dismissed outright. Intuition, common sense, or a feel for an outcome compliments arid rationality, but this has limits.

    A modern variant of the undue application of prejudice is what is called cognitive or confirmation bias, whereby a judge makes his mind up in advance of a trial. A judge who predetermines issues or is influenced by a network of ties, or is simply biased, is failing to preform his job.

    I was recently involved in a case involving a judge of Greek Cypriot origin and a Greek Cypriot complainant. I argued that given Greek Cypriots are a tight-knit community the judge should recuse himself, step aside, which, to his credit, he did. More to the point, he actually brought the matter up himself, which displayed the real qualities required of a judge.

    A judge who fails to disclose any real or ostensible bias is subject to the sanction of breaching natural justice. Thus Lord Hoffman’s failure to disclose his involvement in Amnesty International in an extradition case against Chile’s General Pinochet, which involved the charity, led to a fresh hearing being ordered. The application of the Rule of Law gives anyone a fair trial.

    III

    There have been numerous instances of judges allowing their personal or ideological convictions to influence outcomes. In 1927 the much-lauded Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jerome Frank’s ideal judge, rejected Carrie Buck‘s argument that her constitutional rights had been infringed by being forcibly sterilization for being ‘mentally defective’.

    The attack is not upon the procedure but upon the substantive law. It seems to be contended that in no circumstances could such an order be justified. It certainly is contended that the order cannot be justified upon the existing grounds. The judgment finds the facts that have been recited and that Carrie Buck ‘is the probable potential parent of socially inadequate offspring, likewise afflicted, that she may be sexually sterilized without detriment to her general health and that her welfare and that of society will be promoted by her sterilization,’ and thereupon makes the order. In view of the general declarations of the Legislature and the specific findings of the Court obviously we cannot say as matter of law that the grounds do not exist, and if they exist they justify the result. We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U. S. 11, 25 S. Ct. 358, 49 L. Ed. 643, 3 Ann. Cas. 765. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.

    Surely Holmes’s belief in eugenics and his mistaken embrace of popular prejudice conditions the outcome of the trial?

    On a lighter note, in terms of judicial prejudice, in Miller v. Jackson (1977) isLord Denning refusal to grant an injunction to a family against a cricket club. The family had moved into a house adjacent to a cricket ground, upset by the danger posed to their young children by cricket balls flying into the back garden. The conclusion is startling obvious from the famous opening paragraph.

    In summertime village cricket is the delight of everyone. Nearly every village has its own cricket field where the young men play and the old men watch. In the village of Lintz in County Durham they have their own ground, where they have played these last seventy years. They tend it well. The wicket area is well rolled and mown. The outfield is kept short. It has a good club-house for the players and seats for the onlookers. The village team play there on Saturdays and Sundays. They belong to a league, competing with the neighbouring villages. On other evenings after work they practice while the light lasts. Yet now after these 70 years a Judge of the High Court has ordered that they must not play there anymore, lie has issued an injunction to stop them. He has done it at the instance of a newcomer who is no lover of cricket. This newcomer has built, or has had built for him, a house on the edge of the cricket ground which four years ago was a field where cattle grazed. The animals did not mind the cricket. But now this adjoining field has been turned into a housing estate. The newcomer bought one of the houses on the edge of the cricket ground. No doubt the open space was a selling point. Now he complains that, when a batsman hits a six, the ball has been known to land in his garden or on or near his house. His wife has got so upset about it that they always go out at weekends. They do not go into the garden when cricket is being played. They say that this is intolerable. So they asked the Judge to stop the cricket being played. And the Judge, I am sorry to say, feels that the cricket must be stopped: with the consequences, I suppose, that the Lintz cricket-club will disappear. The cricket ground will be turned to some other use. I expect for more houses or a factory. The young men will turn to other things instead of cricket. The whole village will be much the poorer. And all this because of a newcomer who has just bought a house there next to the cricket ground.

    IV

    A substantial number of roguish characters have been made judges, who like the rest of the speckled timber of humanity inevitably have their foibles. Some judges are perverts, some are alcoholics. A few are both. Far too many are deeply conservative creatures of the establishment. In Ireland, we have our fair share of religious fundamentalists, or worse religious fundamentalist former prosecutors. Perversion in spades.

    Nonetheless, in Ireland, with some notable exceptions, most judges have kept their bibs clean in their personal lives. It may seem controversial to say so, but that should not necessarily matter, at least prior to their appointment.

    A good judge will probably have had wide-ranging life experiences, bringing an ability to empathise with people of variegated backgrounds rather than imposing a class, or caste, credo in increasingly diverse and multicultural societies. I have noticed a significant difference between the smorisgoboard of backgrounds in evidence on the English bench, and the distinct narrowness of background and mentality apparent among their Irish counterparts.

    The more one understands and tolerates the waywardness and infamy inherent in human nature, the more one sees through liars, fraudsters, dissemblers and fabricators among the legal fraternity and their clients. In other words the better one can judge.

    So, what should it mean then to judge? Apart from independence and an ability to acknowledge and submerge personal viewpoints, he has to be, in most circumstances, balanced. He has to weigh and sift and evaluate the evidence and submissions before him. But ideally a judge should not be a narrowly technical lawyer.

    The law must be placed in its social context, and more than a passing awareness of non-legal disciplines such as sociology and philosophy, along with a good dollop of common sense, are required. A judge should be morally-upright, which does not mean sexually-sanitised. Any judge should not be precluded from having a personal life, although this must be, to some extent controlled and restrained. Who you meet and why you meet them could come back to haunt you.

    Self-restraint comes with the territory of being a judge, even though you might not like it. This is not to condone the absurd aloofness, and lack of engagement common among many judges.

    But morality in the sense of integrity is a prerequisite. A judge should not be bought or sold. A judge should not allow personal feelings or attachments to influence decision-making. A judge should always search for the right answer as a matter of principle.

    Technical lawyers often miss the big picture through too narrow a focus. A strict adherence to the wording of an act or case law is often to the detriment of justice. A judge should focus on the spirit of the law, applying a purposive and principled approach.

    If a rule does not conform with basic moral or legal principles then it should be jettisoned or subtly avoided. A judge should have the flexibility and wherewithal – the bag of rhetorical tricks – to cater for that scenario.

    As a realist Frank advocates that judges focus on law-in-action, and think in terms of wider policy

    Lord Denning 1899-1999.

    ramifications. Thus Lord Denning in Spartan Steel Alloys v Martin and Co. Ltd 1973 reasoned that if damages were awarded in the context of a power strike then the electricity company could go bankrupt. He struck out the case on the basis that the public interest lay in maintaining a solvent company to generate electricity supply.

    Denning tended to fashion remedies in a novel and creative way to subvert conventional doctrine. For example, he fashioned the doctrine of promissory estoppel to overcome the strict contract law principles of offer and consideration. He asserted that if someone makes a promise they cannot go back on it. An Englishman’s word is his bond. A norm often lacking in Ireland.

    V

    A judge must have intellectual integrity, which is not to say a judge cannot have opinions. It is just necessary to be up front with preferences or prejudices. Which is not to say that a judge’s opinions are necessarily correct.

    There are numerous academic commentaries regarding the methods a judge may use to interpret a text. I have indicated that literalism and rigidity is a dead-end, but there are other failings.

    The method of strict historical interpretation holds a particular spell over Conservatives in the United States. This imports the anachronistic values of long dead individuals into the interpretation of contemporary law. This allowed Judge Scalia in America to uphold the legality of owning handguns simply because the 18th century forefathers of American constitutionalism ran rampant with muskets.

    The most sinister nonsense of the law and economics movement in America – with two highly placed exponents in Easterbrook and Posner – has given rise to a cost-benefit analysis where wealth maximisation is the defining feature of every legal decision, at the expense of human rights.

    Nonsense has infected our culture, and promotes the agenda of the Far Right and Neoliberalism. The costing of everything in hyper inflated times has destroyed much and continues to do so. The balance is wrong. Not the bank balance but the moral balance. The ledger of life.

    Judges, even the greatest ones, are often ensnared by a viewpoint that does not stand up to intellectual scrutiny over time. Even the great Oliver Wendell Holmes became a proponent of Social Darwinism and eugenics, which led him to permit the compulsory sterilisation of a mentally defective person on the basis that three generations of imbeciles was enough.

    I fear Social Darwinism is back in fashion, but at least in the multicultural environment of London, racial abuse and racism are dissipated. But even here there is growing apprehension. Draconian asylum laws and judgments reflect the slide. The deportation of the undesirable is often the deportation of those you disagree with. The greatest judges have always been immune to ideas of racial hierarchies

    VI

    Every judge should also have an inner voice second guessing them. He or she should hear someone whispering in their ear: ‘Perhaps not’, or, ‘Restrain yourself.’ He or she must remain as neutral as an umpire as in a cricket or a tennis match, evaluating the rules of the game and when matters are out of bounds.

    It is a grave responsibility to sit in judgment particularly in criminal justice matters, and apart from the obligation to sift and evaluate evidence carefully, an obligation always arises to lean over backwards to protect the innocent, or at least to accord them the presumption of innocence.

    To impose any form of punishment on a fellow human being as a judge, without a critical filter and a defined sense of what you are doing and why you are doing it, is to forfeit one’s suitability.

    For judges to collude with state authorities or bend and manipulate procedure and doctrine is a form of intellectual sadism. Many barristers try and avoid particular courts on that basis if they can.

    A judge should also have a commitment to procedural fairness, equality-of-arms, human rights, independence and all the other aspects of the Rule of Law, which has little or nothing to do with judicial pay or pensions.

    In Ireland those who prattle on about the Rule of Law are largely political barristers, the men of the Castle seeking high offices of state, and with much to protect and preserve; deliberately masking self-interest in ruling class chatter.

    The appointment of avowedly party-political judges is a grave danger in any serious democracy. A judge should not have been involved or been a member of any political party prior to their appointment.

    A judge should also give detailed reasons for any decision he makes, and that reasoning should display careful consideration. Failure to do so, or delay, is an abnegation of judicial responsibility.

    As a Dublin-based barrister I endured too many written judgments failed to take into account the depth and sophistication of submissions; where the reasons adduced were a paper mask and compression; where the outcome was never in doubt and equality of arms a charade.

    This leads to the question of when a hearing is fair or not. The most important point in this regard is to distinguish between procedural fairness and the obligation to hear both sides and substantive fairness.

    Substantive fairness, which I have found lacking in Ireland, is always to do the right thing, and bugger the consequences. A judge should not be influenced in reaching a decision by how it will look in the media. A judge is not a fashionista or one of the beautiful people. A judge is not a pop star singing to politicians, though some have advanced that way.

    A judge should fearlessly expose corruption and, above all else, not conceal it or protect it. That obligation is often difficult to follow. Giovanni Falcone was assassinated for confronting mafia corruption in Italy. There are different species of mafia, who may even operate among the ostensible guardians of the state.

    Ireland’s greatest judge, for all his faults, of the last twenty years was Adrian Hardiman. The day after his death I met a judicial colleague of his who remarked: ‘Say what you want, he was a voice of independence in this country’; as if that is exceptional!

    Absent are such independent voices in our present judiciary. The times-they-are-a-changing for the worse, winter is coming and difficult decisions are required, but by people ill-equipped for the task. History will judge our judges as not judging in all of the above senses.

    For a great judge can become an historian, a cultural commissar, a public intellectual, and an arbitrator.

    *******

    A last important point on the qualities required in a judge is that he or she should not have an excessively authoritarian personality. A judge should thus be self-reflexive, and avoid pomposity at all costs. Peter Cooke’s caricature is invaluable for anyone aspiring to be one.

    Above all, as the legendary French writer Camus observed, a judge should be a just man.

  • Leopold Bloom and the Art of Loafing

    What does it mean to be a loafer? Loafing as an activity has always existed. It has been carried out, witnessed, imagined and sung since the dawn of human time; from the ancient Aborigines on their walkabout, to the modern idling of the nineteenth and twentieth century dandies. Today, loafing as a mode of existence, may well be one of the last subversive acts and means of combating and living affirmatively amidst the information and technological age.

    The loafer is more than just a flâneur, epitomised by a Baudelaire or Wilde; he or she can be bucolic or urbane, a scientist or poetic seeker – anyone from Einstein to Yeats. And far from lazy in the vulgar sense, on the contrary, the loafer is never really at rest, but attuned to the present, and observing from various perspectives at the same time.

    A loafer is not bored; boredom comes from a forgetfulness of the power of the imagination; boredom is the great trick of marketers who vomit out messages demanding we purchase our entertainment, and sell us things we don’t need. Most of us live in a world where the power of advertising effectively distracts us from the impact of what we are consuming, and implicitly accepting.

    A loafer can enjoy waiting and musing; a loafer does not become irritated that he or she has to wait an extra minute for change at the supermarket, or partake in beeping and cursing obscenities to others while stuck in traffic, when they are part of the traffic; a loafer does not do a mountain or a country, but rather ascends a mountain and wanders a country. To paraphrase the Irish philosopher John Moriarty, the geography of the loafer’s mind becomes the geography of the landscape he or she travels in.

    As an example, James Joyce’s novel Ulysses emphasises loafing in at least two major ways. Firstly, in its conception, Joyce – as external and internal itinerant – creates a work that is an alternative journey or odyssey on the periphery of war-torn Europe.

    This is a difficult work that unfolds before the reader’s eyes with Joyce making his way as he writes, a book that becomes ever more sprawling as the episodes proceed. It defies schematic dogmatism, but simultaneously the work – merging chaos and cosmos expressed in Joyce’s words ‘chaosmos’ and ‘thisorder’– is contained within strict boundaries. Out of difficulty, arrives a wealth of possibility.

    Hardly any aspect of Western culture is left out in that account of a single day in Dublin on June 16th 1904, the day in which Joyce went on his first official date with Nora Barnacle who would become his muse, lover, wife, mother of his children, and companion throughout his entire adult itinerant life. Thus, the day marks a day of love and affirmation as well as being a universal modern bible of homelessness and homecoming.

    Secondly, there is the main character of Leopold Bloom – the majestic loafer – at once sad-eyed and sharp as a hawk in his observations. If the scientist seeks to understand reality and the mystic seeks to experience it directly, then Bloom, as loafer, does both.

    Statue of James Joyce in Trieste, where he lived on and off between 1904 and 1920.

    Real time is that of the observer. Many Westerners have lost the secrets derived from mystical sources, but these are only other aspects of a wider reality in less alienated societies. Thus deprived, many seek for this connection in exotic realms which are removed from their society and detached from their own suffering. It is often easier to access the magic in strange, unfamiliar landscapes than in one’s own seemingly all too familiar, cynical and faithless culture.

    Throughout the course of our lives, like Leopold Bloom, many of us will be confronted by tragedy at some point or enter dark places from which we find it difficult to escape. And each one of us is going to experience an apocalypse – our own particular death. As established religions have declined, a spiritual void has emerged in many people’s lives. But perhaps our own poetic traditions can offer the solace that many people seek, offering answers to which we are culturally attuned.

    The secrets and the answers are right here in front of us in slowness, in loafing, in singing. Yes, because music too can lift the spirit, as both Joyce and Leopold Bloom attest. As the Irish writer Sean O’Faolain (although himself a chief critic of Finnegans Wake) put it: ‘In the presence of great music we have no alternative but to live nobly’.

    As Joyce famously said himself of Finnegans Wake, if you cannot understand the text – then simply read it aloud and hear the music of it. The same goes for Ulysses. Walter Pater’s line is the key to Joyce’s experimental writing of the challenging music episode of Ulysses when Bloom wanders into the side room of Dublin’s national concert hall in the afternoon: ‘All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music’.

    Loafers have sung eloquently throughout history, from the first Provençal troubadours who invented our modern idea of Romantic love, down to some of our finest popular late twentieth century musicians from the Brazilian Bossanova and Tropicalia movements, to the Celtic Soul fusion of Van Morrison.

    Our contemporary society prizes speed, efficiency and growth and looks askance at activities deemed unproductive. In particular the loafer is anathema to a culture which has absorbed a work ethic equating time with money.

    Yet perhaps the greatest achievements occur when the mind is at rest and seemingly unproductive. Peripheral vision allows us to look beyond conventional ideas and draw inspiration. One has only to think of Einstein discovering the theory of relativity while daydreaming in a patent’s office, or of Newton grasping a theory of gravity while dawdling under a tree. It is often as the poet, the philosopher or the scientist roam the busy city streets, or rolling hills, that the real work is done.

    By embracing loafing now and then, we remove ourselves from the maelstrom of a contemporary culture where slowness and alternative ideas are devalued. The world is motored by rampant consumerism despite our knowledge that it creates great anxiety and is rapidly destroying and usurping much of the landscape for other animal and plant species to continue to exist.

    Only by taking time out for undistracted reflection can we think about what is really happening and what we really need for our wellbeing. Crucially, the loafer Leopold Bloom’s first conversation is not with a human being but with a cat, and he treats the animal equally and with humor and tenderness, and it is from there that Bloom begins his odyssey through Dublin – observing, walking, feeling, ogling, helping, dreaming and loving for the world, rather than merely being in the world.

    Loafing might thus be seen as a revolutionary act, which, if taken seriously, has the capacity to bring meaningful benefit and transformation to individuals and society at large. Our world which, to quote Joyce, is ‘ineluctably constructed upon the incertitude of the void”. This expression, buried deep in the penultimate episode of this colossal book of loafing, may well be the definition of art, beauty, Ulysses and existence itself.

    Bartholomew Ryan is a philosophy research coordinator at the New University of Lisbon (http://www.ifilnova.pt/pages/bartholomew-ryan) and leader of the international band The Loafing Heroes (https://theloafingheroes.bandcamp.com/)

  • Malaysia’s Political Tsunami of Hope

    On May 9th Malaysia’s electorate unequivocally rejected Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak’s Barisan National coalition, including the UMNO party which had participated in every government since the foundation of the state. The demise of this kleptocratic regime was met with shock, even denial, by now unemployed government ministers.

    A democratic, peaceful overthrow took place without a single drop of blood being spilt; no riots or street clashes occurred, despite attempts to destabilise the electoral process with cynical manipulation of racial and religious tensions.

    The defeat of the conservative-centrist, ethnic Malay government to a centre-left multi-ethnic party is a fantasy made possible by unprecedented unity among the electorate. The coalition was led by the Pakatan Harapan (‘alliance of hope’) party, which was founded in 2015 after yet another general election had failed to bring down the government.

    The new party is led by veteran former Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohammad, who became convinced by the need to clean-up endemic state corruption, right up to the highest offices. This meant ousting the party he had led for over twenty years as Prime Minister from the 1980’s onwards. Perhaps he recognised that his own policies had inadvertently bred a culture of privilege and corruption.

    This coalition brings together opposition parties including the Democratic Action Party, Bersatu and Parti Keadilan Rakyat (‘the people’s justice party’), the latter of which is led by Mr. Anwar Ibrahim, who was only released from prison last month. He had been incarcerated on charges of sodomy, and had been the main political rival to Dr. Mahathir Mohammad during his tenure in power.

    In this campaign, however, these venerable political strategists displayed genuine political maturity, setting aside their differences with national progress in mind, to have another tilt at winning high political office. They convinced the people they were the only viable alternative to the seemingly endless extraction of wealth from a country steeped in resources.

    The previous government were implicated in a number of corruption scandals, such as the colossal 1MDB affair, where billions of Rinngit-Malaysia went missing from a development fund, only for a similar value to appear in then Prime Minister (and self-appointed finance minister) Najib Tun Razak’s own bank account.  His claim this was a gift from Saudi Arabia was initially denied, and only later agreed by the Saudi authorities.

    Following on from this Saudi Arabia identified a coalition of Muslim nations, which included Malaysia, allied to their bombardment of tribal villages and unarmed civilians in Yemen. The Saudis brazenly displayed the Malaysian flag, with no objection from Najib’s government.

    Malaysia is an historically neutral country, opposed to warfare, and has played key roles in UN-led initiatives from the Balkans to tribal conflict in Somalia. Najib is also embroiled in alleged cases of murder.

    The people’s victory was made all the sweeter considering the gerrymandering of electoral districts and the tactic of holding the vote on a Wednesday between the hours of 9am and 5pm to the disadvantage of many workers, who could not reach polling stations in time to vote: especially those working outside states they were registered to vote.

    Foreign ballots were also deliberately withheld, so as to make it impossible to return these before the deadline. The more obstacles the government put in the way of the Malaysian rakyat (‘people’) the greater their determination to remove a corrupt elite.

    The core parties elected to run the fourteenth government of Malaysia now hold 124 of the 222 seats in parliament, which includes majority ethnic Malays, Chinese and Indians, as well as representatives of indigenous groups from the states of Sabah and Sarawak on the island of Borneo.

    The post-colonial hang-ups of racial and religious divisions may finally be in retreat, giving breathing space for a more confident and inclusive national identity, drawing strength from its diversity. Notably, when the new minister of finance was asked by a reporter what it felt like to be the ‘first Chinese finance minister’, his answer was: ‘I’m sorry I don’t consider myself a Chinese, I am a Malaysian.’

    It is a work-in-progress for all who voted for this new government to exemplify that inclusivity of Malaysian-ness, and encourage their opponents to recognise the benefits, and stability, this mind-set brings.

    Much work is in store for the new government. They have not been idle, immediately working on policy reforms and creating transparency, as well initiating the process of making accountable those who impoverished the country.

    They plan a root and branch reform of state institutions, beginning with the removal of some seventeen thousand excess contract officers and political appointees.

    Najib and his notorious wife Rosmah – who makes Imelda Marcos seem positively parsimonious – have had their right to travel out of the country revoked; and as many as seventy suitcases filled with cash, and two hundred and eighty-four luxury hand bags (including fifty Hermes Berkini handbags costing up to US$250,000 each) have been seized. This is before their bank accounts, properties and other assets around the world are investigated.

    More importantly, the new government have expressed a determination to relieve the financial burden on the state, the extent of which the previous finance minister had hidden. The new Prime Minister has revealed that Malaysia is in debt of up to 1 trillion Ringgit Malaysia, that is US$250 billion.

    While it will be a major task to meet debt commitments, if this government puts in place convincing policies of transparency, coupled with fair allocation of resources, trust will be engendered.

    Moreover with the political nous and experience of Dr Mahathir Mohammad at the helm the crisis seems likely to be overcome. It was his brainchild to peg the ringgit to the US dollar during the catastrophic wipe out of South East Asian economies in 1997. This and other measures made Malaysia the fastest recovering economy in the region, a strategy dubbed Mahathiriskonomisme by developmental economists: combining Mahathir with the word risk and economy.

    From an Irish perspective, Malaysia offers parties here who have never served in government a good lesson in thinking big. For too long we have been ruled by the tweedle-dum of Fianna Fail and the tweedle-dee of Fine Gael, in rotation, since the foundation of the state.

    The Irish political establishment have presided over a succession of failing state institutions from a crumbling health care system, to an on-going housing emergency, banking and police corruption, to name but a few. Promises of reform are clearly subordinate to Neoliberal corporate-state relationships.

    Perhaps it is time for opposition parties, in particular Sinn Fein, People Before Profit, The Left Alliance and independents to get their act together, place differences aside and move against the status quo. Then under one banner restore the rule of law and accountability, re-imagining Ireland in a way that speaks to the immediate needs of the people, and behaves as an honest broker in its foreign policy. Backed by a population which believes in a better future, just as the Malaysian people did, perhaps Ireland could reinvigorate national pride, our economy, and finally put an end to the emigration brain-drain.

    Tabek (respect) Malaysia: whilst operating in globalised capitalist times, your overthrow of a corrupt regime shines as a beacon to the rest of the world. Now walk the talk Putra Jaya parliament, the Malaysian political tsunami can rise, and will rise again.

    Aminah Dastan is a recording artist and music activist based in Ireland, founder of small not for profit music festival Sundown Gathering. She has an honors degree in Environmental Biology and postgraduate in Cultural Event Management. She grew up in both Ireland and Malaysia and has a keen interest in social inclusion and development through participation in the arts and sustainability.

  • Drinking from the Waters of Prevention in Public Health

    The Lancet’s recent editorial, ‘Austerity in Spain: time to loosen the grip’, argues that low government expenditure was ‘undermining the principle of universal coverage’ in that country. They point to pensioners devoting a substantial proportion of their incomes to medicines, and warn of excessive delays in elective surgeries being carried out. Detrimental effects are particularly evident among socially marginalised groups, such as migrants, they contend.

    Yet in spite of these privations the authors note that life expectancy in Spain had reached 83 years in 2015, up from 79·3 years in 2000, the highest, on average, of any EU country. Unconvincingly, they assume the repercussions ‘of the financial crises are not necessarily all detrimental: ‘increases in healthy behaviours (eg, cycling, walking) and reductions in risky activities (eg, consumption of alcohol or tobacco) might occur’.

    It is a common misconception that increasing health expenditure in any Western society will bring about a rise in life expectancy. In fact, there are rapidly diminishing returns on investment. Primary care, especially in maternity services and pediatrics (including selective use of antibiotics, and vaccination), certainly minimises premature deaths, but most healthcare addresses the symptoms rather than acting on the lifestyle triggers of the diseases that are now the greatest cause of mortality (and morbidity) in the Western world.

    This reflects the Tudor-Hart Inverse Care Law, which states: ‘The availability of good medical care tends to vary inversely with the need for it in the population served. This … operates more completely where medical care is most exposed to market forces, and less so where such exposure is reduced.’ In other words, efficiency declines as expenditure increases, and the freer the health market the worse the outcomes.

    The two main causes of mortality in the Western world are cardiovascular disease and cancer. An early diagnosis may indeed nip a problem in the bud, but does not address the social and environmental drivers of these maladies. The hospital experience itself may even be unhealthy, as an expansive 2014 Swiss cost-benefit analysis of Mammogram services suggests. One in five of the cancers detected with mammography and treated was not a threat to the woman’s health, and did not require treatment such as chemotherapy, surgery or radiation.

    In fact, the adverse effect of medical treatment is one of the leading causes of death in most developed countries: especially the high-spending United States, where in 2000 Dr. Barbara Starfield estimated:

    • 12,000 deaths/year from unnecessary surgeries.
    • 7,000 deaths/year from medication errors in hospitals.
    • 20,000 deaths/year from other errors in hospitals.
    • 80,000 deaths/year from nosocomial infections in hospitals.
    • 106,000 deaths/year from nonerror, adverse effects of medications.

    More recently in 2016, a John Hopkins team calculated that 250,000 deaths were caused by medical errors each year, making iatrogenic illness the third leading cause of death in the U.S., after cardiovascular disease and cancer. This serves as a particular warning to those countries converging with U.S. norms, where health care is largely left to market forces.

    Yet health discourse continues to promote the scientific holy grail of the wonder cure, even for ailments intimately related to lifestyles and environmental factors. This approach may be traced to a Romantic era of science at the end of the eighteenth century, and has profound implication for government funding of health services.

    Moreover, when a person is afflicted with serious a disease the demand for a cure becomes a matter of life and death. Most of us will do anything in our power to survive, crying from the rooftops if necessary. A healthy person, on the other hand, is generally oblivious or uninterested in why they remain hale and hearty. Stories focusing on the affordability of medicines or failures in health services have far greater news currency than the multifarious reasons why one society is less prone to disease than another.

    A rational health system would continue to pursue medicinal breakthroughs, in collaboration with but not at the behest of the pharmaceutical industry, but place greater emphasis on addressing the complex aetiology of pathologies, in particular lifestyle and other factors that give rise to cancers and cardiovascular diseases.

    II Lifestyle Factors

    The advancement of lifestyle change, as opposed to dispensing medicines, would also require a cultural shift among the medical community, which could have revolutionary ramifications for society.

    By and large doctors are trained to intervene against clearly defined pathologies, mainly through medication, and have less training in ‘soft’ psychological skills, which might alter self-destructive behaviours at source. Psychiatry, psychology’s close relative, is a specialised branch of medicine, overwhelming devoted to treating mental illness rather than providing guidance to society at large. Moreover, the complexity of lifestyle factors often renders research data unsatisfactory, with findings easily dismissed as conjecture or mere correlation.

    Nonetheless, in a research paper this year entitled: ‘Impact of Healthy Lifestyle Factors on Life Expectancies in the US Population‘ researchers attempted to show that countering a range of unhealthy conditions including being a smoking, maintaining a high body mass index, taking little or no exercise, and consuming a poor diet and alcohol to excess, could significantly increase life expectancy:

    The United States is one of the wealthiest nations worldwide, but Americans have a shorter life expectancy compared with residents of almost all other high-income countries, ranking 31st in the world for life expectancy at birth in 2015.3 In 2014, with a total health expenditure per capita of $9402,4 the United States was ranked first in the world for health expenditure as a percent of gross domestic product (17.1%). However, the US healthcare system has focused primarily on drug discoveries and disease treatment rather than prevention. Chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease (CVD) and cancer are the commonest and costliest of all health problems but are largely preventable.

    It is notable that the U.S. spends the highest proportion of its GDP on healthcare in the world, yet witnesses poor outcomes relative to other developed nations. This reflects the Tudor-Hart Inverse Care Law, which Obama’s Patient Care and Affordable Care Act (so-called Obamacare) redresses. Ironically, this is being whittled away by the Trump administration, who enjoyed support in the Presidential election from states where more than four out of five of those who rely on Obamacare reside.

    Aside from insufficient access to Primary Care, the U.S.’s disease burden also arises from addictions to junk foods, drugs and cars. Medications or surgery do little to confront the obesity pandemic, or drug dependencies, including the opiate crisis which killed more than 33,000 thousand in 2015.

    Rather than ramping up access to healthcare the authors instead recommend adherence to a ‘low-risk lifestyles, which could:

    prolong life expectancy at age 50 years by 14.0 and 12.2 years in female and male US adults compared with individuals without any of the low-risk lifestyle factors. Our findings suggest that the gap in life expectancy between the United States and other developed countries could be narrowed by improving lifestyle factors.

    The logic of this emphasis is consistent with the explanation of the authors of The Changing Body: Health, Nutrition and Human Development in the Western World since 1700 (Floud et al., Cambridge, 2011) for why average life expectancies have risen across the world over the past three centuries.

    Crucial breakthroughs in raising global life expectancy arrived first in England in the late eighteenth century with government intervention in the grain market, which stabilised prices, thereby averting periodic famines. The average age at death climbed more dramatically once clean drinking water became available at the end of the nineteenth.

    An important consequence of early-nineteenth-century urbanisation had been ‘the deterioration of the quality and quantity of the water supply(1)’. Drinking water only improved after substantial state-funded infrastructural investment in the 1890s. Thereafter, a range of water-born diseases like diarrhea, cholera and dysentery ceased to trouble the population to anywhere near the same extent.

    The authors make a significant claim:

    it would be easy to exaggerate the importance of scientific medicine when one considers that much of the decline in the mortality associated with infectious diseases predated the introduction of effective medical measures to deal with it(2).

    They acknowledge that drugs like insulin, penicillin and prontosil as well as the mass immunizations of the post Second World War era made a difference, but maintain that adequate nutrition and clean water were the main determinants which overcame the infectious diseases which had carried off most of the population until that point.

    III Smoking and Obesity

    Today the drivers of disease in developed countries are manifold, but one factor often overlooked is the stress of living in perpetual income insecurity. This goes some way towards explaining why it tends to be the poor who make unwholesome food choices, especially favouring refined sugar, and continuing to smoke in spite of vivid health warnings.

    Wolfgang Schivelbusch describes the ubiquity of smoking as a clear index of the state of civilisation: ‘If smoking is defined as an ersatz act which absorbs the increasing nervousness of civilized man, affecting the body’s chemistry as well as motor function, then this penetration of our culture by smoking demonstrates to what depth the culture is permeated by nervousness.(3)’

    Moreover, the medical writer Kurt Pohlisch describes how: ‘In the act of smoking the nervously restless hand fixes on a purpose.’ He continues: ‘Smoking creates both a feeling of activity in leisure and one of leisure in the midst of activity … In terms of motoricity, pharmacology and sense psychology, smoking creates a cheerful mood, highly varied nuances of physical feelings, an agreeable stimulation with which to perform intellectual work, a pleasant sense of calm, a state of contentedness, satisfaction [and] easy cordiality.(4)’

    Consequently, a substantial minority continue to smoke, despite constant and graphic advice to quit. What the campaigns against smoking fail to recognise is the role played by smoking – and the use of other drugs – in relieving the stress of living in perpetual income insecurity.

    Smoking: ‘activity in leisure and one of leisure in the midst of activity’.

    Similarly, sections of societies living under free market conditions are prone to unhealthy dietary patterns. Avner Offer asserts: ‘Among affluent societies, the highest prevalence of obesity is to be found in countries most strongly committed to market-liberal policy norms.’ He argues: ‘if stress generates obesity, then welfare states protect against stress, and are likely to have lower states of obesity.’

    He says: ‘it is appropriate to think of the rise of obesity as an eruption, and to look for another eruption to explain it’. He identifies this as the emergence of the New Right in the late 1970s, and the market-liberal regimes that subsequently carried out their economic and social programmes in the main English-speaking countries, and elsewhere.

    He argues ‘the economic benefits of flexible and open market liberalism, such as they are, may be offset by costs to personal welfare and public health, which are rarely taken into account’, citing the example of the UK where adult obesity has tripled since 1980. An obesogenic environment was actually largely in place by the 1970s: car-use and television-watching were well established, and food was already sugary, cheap and plentiful before Margaret Thatcher came to power. The same stress-inducing conditions emerged in the United States under Ronald Reagan.

    Increased stress levels, especially fueled by employment uncertainty affect dietary choices: ‘Physiologically, stress leads individuals to prefer fatty and sweet foods, and frequently to consume more calories, exacerbating weight gain, especially in the form of risky abdominal fat.’ The idea of a link between insecurity, stress and obesity is supported by the ‘social gradient’ of obesity’: it is most prevalent among those at the bottom of the social ladder.

    Illuminatingly, in the month after September 11th, sales of snack foods increased by more than 12% across the United States as paranoia, verging on hysteria, swept through the country. Overall: ‘among rich nations, the USA and Great Britain have experienced the greatest income inequality since 1980 and the greatest increase in the prevalence of obesity(3)’.

    Peter Whybrow connects these responses to our early evolution. He argues that stress causes the lizard core of our brains to release dopamine, a hormone connected to pleasure, after consuming fatty and sweet food.

    He paints a lurid picture: ‘In the presence of continuous psychosocial shocks, a complex work environment, repeated deadlines, a difficult marriage – the alarm bells are continuously ringing and the stress response is continuously in play. In consequences, the body is maintained in a high state of psychological arousal, where the vulnerability to chronic illness is increased, with obesity as no exception.(4)’

    IV The Miracle Cure

    Richard Holmes argues that several crucial misconceptions crystallized around the idea of science at the start of the nineteenth century, aspects of which continue to confound our understanding of public health.

    There emerged at that point, ‘the dazzling idea of the solitary scientific ‘genius’, thirsting and reckless for knowledge, for its own sake and perhaps at any cost’. This is closely connected with the idea of the ‘Eureka’ moment: ‘the intuitive inspired instant of invention or discovery, for which no amount of preparation or preliminary analysis can really compare(5).’

    Western medicine perpetuates what is essentially a mythology of invention, assuming genius will produce a wonder cure for diseases such as cancer; just as Edward Jenner developed the idea of vaccination for small pox by infecting a young farm boy with the disease after first giving him a dose of cowpox. He had learnt from local folklore that milk maids who developed that mild condition never contracted the deadly pox.

    The chronic conditions we confront are not, however, susceptible to silver bullet breakthroughs in the form of drug interventions or vaccination. Medications may extend lives but generally fail to eliminate the diseases or address underlying causes. Nonetheless, the media is transfixed by tantalising cures lying on the horizon.

    One notable exception is the long-standing campaign against smoking, but as indicated, governments fail to recognise why people refuse to give up. Meanwhile, we see desultory efforts to warn against or tax consumption of ‘pure, white and deadly’ refined sugar, or red and processed meat, categorised as possible and probable carcinogens by the WHO. Likewise the transport infrastructure of most developed countries is designed primarily for motor cars, leading to a serious lack of physical activity.

    In the past doctors displayed greater awareness of the lifestyle factors that lead to disease, including the health benefits, or otherwise, derived from staple foodstuffs.

    By the seventeenth century bread was a vital element in the diet of most Parisians, who, on average, ate a remarkable one kilo-and-a-half per day. At that the time the perceived adulteration of bread with ‘barm’ or yeast, as opposed to the traditional sourdough ‘levain’ method, produced a medical controversy, leading to the formation of an expert medical panel.

    In condemning the use of yeast, the leading medical expert 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(6).

    In spite of his advice the Paris parliament maintained a policy of laissez faire. The preference of bakeries for yeast is explained by it acting faster than levain. Since the arrival of the Chorleywood Process we have reached a point where most bread is no more than a junk food, which is surely a significant, slow-burning cause of disease. Indeed, the quality of a country’s bread may be an overlooked comparative indicator of its overall health.

    The early nineteenth century radical doctor Thomas Beddoes defined the philanthropic doctor as ‘one who is humane in his conduct not so much from sudden impulses of passion as from a settled conviction of the miserly prevailing among mankind(7)’. Many doctors today display these qualities, but are often ground down by a system which processes disease. As specialisation increases compassion declines, with the body reduced to its composite parts. The pharmaceutical industry also increasingly distorts priorities, even in ostensibly publicly funded systems of healthcare.

    As his career drew to a close, Beddoes made a number of simple proposals for raising public health: he suggested that all wives should be provided (free of charge) with anatomy lectures, washing machines (steam-powered), fresh vegetables and pressure cookers(8). These proposals would not be out of place today.

    The emphasis of public health should shift to the general practitioner, whose role could be more educative (lessons in anatomy that Beddoes speaks of) than prescriptive, and the idea of general physician perhaps revived.

    V The Wide Angle

    ‘The Second Battle of Moytura’ is the centrepiece of a ninth century Irish mythological cycle. It consists of a series of fantastical episodes of enduring interest. One such is the story of Nuada who loses his arm and authority in battle. We learn that the court physician Diancecht fashions him a prosthetic silver limb in its place.

    In the meantime, Diancecht’s son Miach begins to heal Nuada’s real severed arm, but the father prefers his own methods and surgically kills his son by removing his brain. Miach is buried by his sister Airmed and from his grave sprout three hundred and sixty-five healing herbs, which she orders in her cloak. Diancecht has other ideas, however, scattering the herbs, each of whose value would remain obscure.

    The possibilities of Miach’s more complimentary approach, rather than Diancecht’s artificial limb, suggests that healing may come from within the body itself, while the scattering of the healing herbs represents ignorance of the cures available in Nature.

    Diancecht wish to preserve the dominance of his profession might serve as a metaphor for the approach of the pharmaceutical industry. Ben Goldacre’s Bad Pharma (London, 2012), in particular, has drawn attention to serious corruption in that industry. But medication will remain all-important as long as disease, not health, is the focus of public policy.

    Human beings cannot expect to live forever, but serious reductions can be made to the burden of disease. We can address drug addictions, the quality of food and increase physical activity, but stress and low-level depression, lead to unhealthy lifestyle choices. If you take your meal in a car, as is the case with up to twenty per cent of those consumed in the U.S., it is more than a nutritional issue.

    The culture of Spain is notable for its conviviality, although one could overstate how mealtimes are not rushed affairs, or that work can always be done manana. Nonetheless, the siesta is still respected, and the life-affirming fiesta an important dimension of civic life. However, the recent economic crisis, and current political turn, may be eroding aspects of this way of life. Moreover, the Mediterranean diet is no longer followed, and obesity increasingly apparent.

    Notably, the generation in Spain enjoying such longevity today spent most of their working lives in a political system that protected industry from foreign competition, and, especially after the Socialists came to power at the end of Franco’s dictatorship, lived under a welfare state.

    The generation at work in Spain today, or not as the case with so many, are subject to greater uncertainties in life than their parents, with potentially long-term health consequences. Indeed across Europe life expectancies have actually gone into decline for the first time since records began. This may reflect the stress induced by increasing income insecurity and inequality  in the era of the euro.

    Altering any culture is slow work, but a rational view of public health should recognise a cultural dimension to most infirmities. A breakthrough in public health could be to see all medicine ‘as a branch of psychiatry, and psychiatry as a branch of philosophy’, as Iain McGilchrist put it.

    We may also return to a more general appreciation of our reality that animated the first generation of scientists, including polymaths such as Alexander von Humboldt who wrote: ‘In this great chain of causes and effects no single fact can be considered in isolation.’

     

    (1) Roderick Floud, Robert W. Fogel, Bernard Harris, and Sok Chul Hong The Changing Body: Health, Nutrition and Human Development in the Western World since 1700 (Cambridge, 2011), p.173

    (2) Ibid, p.178

    (3) Wolfgang Shivelbusch Tastes of Paradise: A Social History of Spices, Stimulants, and Intoxicants (New York, 1992) pp.96-111

    (4) Ibid, pp.96-111

    (5) Avner Offer, R ‘Time Urgency, Sleep Loss, and Obesity’ in Avner Offer, Rachel Pechey, and Stanley Ulijaszek, Insecurity, Inequality, and Obesity in Affluent Societies (London, 2012) pp.129-141

    (5) Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science (London, 2008) p. xvii

    (6) Madeleine Ferrieres Sacred Cow Mad Cow (Translated by Jody Gladding) (New York, 2006), p.188

    (7) Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science (London, 2008) p.286

    (8) Ibid, p.302

  • Spirit Animals

    ‘I had a dream about you last night.’

    Sarah, stuffing wet tuna into pitta pockets and wondering if she could just put the same tangerine, uneaten from yesterday, back into Noah’s lunchbox, stiffened. The now-familiar tightening of her neck, shoulders and arms at the sound of Juliette’s voice went through her like one of those lock-and-load scenes in shoot-em-up movies; a rippling of ‘click, click, click’, on and on until everything tensed.

    ‘Me?’ Noah said. He put down his spoon. ‘What dream?’

    ‘I dreamed first of a snow fox, then of a snow wolf.’

    Sarah could hear Juliette settling into herself, into her dream and her visions. She leaned closer to the little boy. Her voice dropped; mysterious, revelatory. ‘The snow fox was running and leaping through deep, white snow, glad to be alive. Then the snow wolf appeared and at first it hunted the fox, but then they became one and together they were more powerful than before.’

    ‘Where was I?’ Noah asked. ‘In the dream.’

    ‘You were the snow fox, but then, when the wolf came, you were the wolf too. So I know now – a snow wolf is your spirit animal.’ She paused, for drama. ‘And Noah, it’s an incredibly powerful spirit animal. It means you have an appetite for freedom.’

    Sarah wished there was a polite way to tell someone who sat in your kitchen, lived in your house, to shut up. Not someone though, Juliette. Juliette, who had the word ‘fearless’ tattooed on the inside of her arm, and ‘I was not built to break’ in curly script under her hipbone. Juliette, who marked herself before life could do it for her. As if that could stop anything.

    Juliette. She had been christened Juliet, had added the final ‘t’ and the ‘e’ herself, ‘because it sounds better,’ she had once explained to Sarah.

    ‘But they’re silent,’ Sarah had protested.

    ‘Not entirely,’ Juliette had said, smugly. ‘They draw the sound out at the end, just enough.’

    Enough for what Sarah had wondered? Enough to be incredibly annoying?

    That was before Juliette, after yet another failed relationship, another failed attempt to live ‘a meaningful life’ – meaning she seemed to find only in weird diets and crystals, Sarah noted, never in work or anything useful – had come to live with them. Now, Sarah tried not to remark on anything she said, in case doing so prolonged conversations she didn’t want to have.

    Are you finished in the bathroom? Can I change the channel? Those were the realms where she wanted conversation with Juliette to stay.

     

    ‘What is a spirit animal?’ Noah asked, not unreasonably Sarah thought. She closed the lunchbox with a snap.

    ‘Noah, finish up. You need to hurry,’ she said.

    ‘Your spirit animal is the shape of your soul,’ Juliette said, ignoring the urgency in Sarah’s voice, the urgency of a Wednesday morning, with school and work and time-pressure – all the things Juliette had decided not to bother with. ‘It’s your guide and helper, in this world but also in the other world.’ She dropped her voice low on ‘other’, drawing it out long.

    ‘Noah, come on.’ The irritation Sarah felt seeped into her voice, making it sharp, so that Noah looked up too fast and said ‘What’s wrong?’ too loudly.

    ‘Nothing. Nothing’s wrong. Just that we’re going to be late.’

    ‘Ok.’ Then, ‘what’s your spirit animal,’ he asked Juliette.

    ‘A black panther,’ Juliette said.

    ‘Of course it is,’ muttered Sarah to herself as she grabbed Noah’s coat. Of course it bloody is. Funny the way no one ever had a mouse or a rat as a spirit animal. Or remembered past lives in which they were filthy, flea-ridden serfs; always Egyptian pharaohs or high-born ladies. Was it only the very powerful who reincarnated, or did every crackpot suffer pathetic delusions of second-hand grandeur?

    ‘We’re off,’ she called from the front door. ‘See you later.’ She wondered would Juliette clear away the breakfast things, or leave them there for Sarah to do when she got back from work. It could go either way, she knew.

     

    ‘She’s supposed to be looking for a job,’ Sarah had complained to Brian only the day before. ‘But all she ever does is meditate and cook horrible desserts made with barley malt and cocoa powder.

    ‘I know,’ he had said, rueful, but not angry, ‘I buy the ingredients. They cost a fortune.’

    ‘So stop buying them. Say we can’t afford it. She can buy her own. We’re already not making her pay rent, because she’s your sister and you feel sorry for her.’

    ‘Sarah, she can’t afford to. You know she can’t,’ Brian had said gently. ‘That’s why she’s here. I know it’s hard, but it’s only for a while, until she gets herself sorted out.’

    ‘It’s been months, and she doesn’t show any signs of ever leaving.’

    ‘Just give her time. She’s good with Noah. He loves having her here.’

    ‘That’s the worst of it. She fills his head with nonsense. She talks to him about such rubbish – his aura, the healing power of the mind, how he can do anything if he visualises it.’

    ‘But he likes it.’

    ‘Maybe, but it’s not good for him. He pays it too much attention. You know he does.’ They didn’t talk about Noah that way, so she veered off. ‘He should be outside, playing with other kids, not in with her painting pictures of his aura.’

    ‘It won’t be for much longer,’ Brian had said.

    ‘You keep saying that.’

     

    In the car on the way to school, Sarah tried to do what the teacher had suggested to her at their last talk: prepare Noah for the day ahead so that he understood what he would be doing. In its own way, she saw, this wasn’t unlike Juliette and her ‘visualising.’ Except that this was practical. Had purpose. And so it was nothing like Juliette.

    ‘You’ve got your hurl and helmet,’ she said. ‘It’s hurling practice today.’

    ‘Yes.’

    ‘And you’ve got reading in the morning, before Little Break. You’ve done your book report for that.’

    ‘Ok.’

    ‘And I’ll pick you up, same as usual.’

    ‘Ok’

    Every day, his resignation hurt her more. She felt she was driving a small, scared prisoner who had learned not to thrash or fuss. Had learned that no help was coming. She imagined him counting hours the way prisoners counted days in the old films; vertical lines scratched on a wall: one-two-three-four-five-six then a diagonal line through them for seven; another week gone. Noah, counting hours until she came to pick him up: first the morning session, then Little Break, then the middle bit, then lunchtime where the trouble might come, then the last bit, then home.

    Every day, he was waiting for her, bag hoisted on his shoulders. Around him, other kids played, wrestled, jeered each other cheerfully, begging for five more minutes to play. Not Noah.

    ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

     

    ‘Juliette says my spirit animal is a snow wolf,’ he said now, proudly. ‘And hers is a black panther. What’s yours?’

    ‘I have no idea,’ Sarah said airily. ‘I don’t really believe in that stuff. It’s just stories.’

    ‘But if they’re true?’ he persisted. ‘What would you be?’

    ‘I don’t know, maybe a chicken.’

    ‘You wouldn’t be a chicken,’ he said, offended on her behalf. ‘Maybe Juliette knows what you are.’

    ‘It’s just stories,’ she said. ‘Juliette doesn’t know.’

    ‘Juliette has pink hair,’ he said then.

    ‘She dyes the front of it pink, yes,’ Sarah said. Then ‘You have art today as well. You like that.’ Even though she knew he didn’t. Not in school anyway. It was one of the ‘relaxed’ classes where children were free to wander around the classroom. Wander and linger and question and prod. ‘Your smock is in your bag.’

    ‘Ok.’

    At the gates, she slowed down. ‘Do you want me to park and come in with you?’ she asked. ‘Carry your helmet?’

    ‘No thanks,’ he said.

    ‘I love you, darling, see you later. Have a good day.’

    ‘See you later.’ He never said he loved her at the drop-offs, although he was vocal about it at other times, especially before he went to sleep. ‘I love you so much mummy. You’re the best mummy in the world.’

    ‘And you’re the best son in the world,’ she would answer, rubbing his nose with her nose.

    But in the mornings, he wouldn’t play that game. Instead, he started shutting down as soon as they left the house, so that by the time they got to school he was the silent, reluctant child his teacher described.

    She watched him now, squaring his thin shoulders beneath the heavy bag as he walked across the playground. She wanted to run after him, grab the bag from his back and say ‘not today! Let’s not go today. Let’s go somewhere else, just us.’ She wanted to hold him tight; be the person who protected him, instead of the person who abandoned him every morning to a fate she pretended she didn’t understand. How much longer would they give it, she wondered as she drove on to work, lurching from red light to red light, speeding up, slowing down, stopping, going. Another month? A year? Til he was in First Class? And then what?

    ‘He’ll settle,’ Brian had said, after that first awful meeting in junior infants, where the school suggested they have Noah “assessed” so they could “give him the support he needs”. ‘He just needs time,’ Brian had said. ‘He’s young for his age.’

    Sarah had agreed ‘Of course he will. He’s nearly the youngest in the class…’ even though she knew that Brian didn’t understand that it wasn’t just being babyish that set Noah apart. It was something else, something that was in him. A weakness the other children sensed through smell or instinct, that made them turn and want to hurt him, not help him.

     

    ‘Let’s go,’ Noah said that afternoon. He was, as she had known he would be, waiting. But before they could escape, Ms Ryan was upon them.

    ‘Can I speak to you quickly before you go,’ she asked, a hand out towards Sarah’s arm.

    ‘Yes, of course.’ Sarah’s heart sank. ‘Noah, wait here for me, I won’t be long.’

    The classroom smelled of chalk and feet and cheap disinfectant. The smells of Sarah’s childhood. More and more, the smells of Noah’s childhood.

    ‘There was an incident during hurling practice,’ Ms Ryan began quickly. She looked shifty, so that Sarah decided that this one would be complicated. Sometimes they were, sometimes they weren’t. ‘I didn’t see how it started,’ Ms Ryan said, ‘But Noah hit another boy with his hurl.’

    Complicated.

    ‘I see.’ Sarah waited. Experience had taught her that it was better to wait. Let them fill in some of their own blanks.

    ‘As I say, I didn’t see what happened first, and Noah did say that the other boy started it, but I asked the other children, those who did see—’

    The officious little girls, Sarah was willing to bet. The ones who brimmed over with ‘Miss Ryan, Miss Ryan, Noah spat his lunch at me.’ ‘Miss Ryan, Noah said Johnny was a pig.’ ‘Miss Ryan, Noah isn’t doing his work, he’s just drawing pictures on his copybook.’

    ‘—and they said that the other boy didn’t do anything physical.’ No, Sarah thought, he wouldn’t have to. Not at this stage. The groundwork had been so effectively laid.

    ‘Noah wouldn’t hit anyone without provocation,’ Sarah said. ‘Even then, there would have to be considerable provocation.’

    ‘I’m sure that’s true,’ Ms Ryan said, ‘but at this school we have a policy of no tolerance for hitting.’ Of course you do, thought Sarah. Anything easy, you have a policy for. Where is your policy for protecting a child for whom every day in your care is confusing and lonely, and now dangerous?

    ‘I was wondering,’ Ms Ryan continued, ‘if you had thought any more about an assessment?

    ‘I haven’t.’

    ‘Perhaps you should. At the moment, I am left with no choice except to take action in accordance with the school’s code.’ Give me an out, she was clearly saying. Give me an excuse, a piece of paper that says ‘spectrum’ or ‘disorder’ so that I can use it and spare us all from this.

    ‘I’ll think about it,’ Sarah said.

    And she would have to, she knew. Even though she didn’t believe that whatever it was about Noah could be pinpointed by an ‘assessment,’ or helped by bending the school’s policies in the light of it.

    Whatever it was about Noah, it was more, and less, than could be detected by the kind of process they described.

    ‘Let’s go.’ She took his hand on the way to the car because the playground was empty now, and he let her. She led him to the car, hand held tight, wondering would he ask what Ms Ryan had wanted. He didn’t but he was more silent than usual on the drive home. Normally, the self that he put away on the journey to school – the funny, curious boy who chatted to her about what he saw and thought – would slowly re-emerge on the trip back. But today he stared out the window and said nothing until they reached the house. Then ‘what day is it today?’ he asked.

    ‘Tuesday,’ Sarah said. ‘Why?’

    He didn’t answer, but she knew he was calculating in his head: if it’s Tuesday then tomorrow is Wednesday, then it’s Thursday and then Friday, and then the weekend.

    It was what he did. Broke his week into bits so that he could manage it, always striving forward towards weekends and holidays.

    They went into the kitchen where Juliette was baking. She had cleared the breakfast bowls but there was cocoa powder on the pale wooden countertop and some of those red goji berries that she ate. They stuck in her teeth, like she’d been gnawing on raw meat.

    ‘I’m making chia brownies,’ she said, to both of them. Then ‘do you want to help?’ to Noah.

    ‘Yes please,’ he said. ‘Can I stir the bowl?’ She pulled a stool out for him and lifted him onto it.

    ‘Of course you can stir. It’s hard work, because of the chia seeds but they’re incredibly good for you. They have loads of protein to make you strong.’

    Sarah watched them, the boy’s head bent over the bowl, wooden spoon in his hand as he stirred the thick mixture. It looked disgusting, she thought, with bits of black in it like flecks of soot, and was clearly thick as mud because he could hardly get the spoon round. But Juliette put her hand over his, to help him, and together they stirred the sludgy mixture.

    ‘That’s good, Noah,’ Juliette said. ‘You’re getting so strong.’ And Sarah, just as she had known that the concern in Ms Ryan’s voice was fake, heard that the love in Juliette’s voice was real.

    ‘Tell me more about Noah’s spirit animal,’ she said suddenly. ‘It’s a snow wolf, right? So what does that mean?’

    ‘It’s a really powerful sign,’ Juliette said. Noah stopped stirring and turned his head to look at her.

    ‘Go on,’ Sarah said, pulling out a stool.

     

    Emily Hourican is a journalist and bestselling author. She has written features for The Sunday Independent for 15 years, as well as for Image magazine, Conde Nast Traveler, Time Out and Woman and Home. Her first book, How To Really Be A  Mother was published in 2013, followed by The Privileged in 2016 and White Villa in 2017. Her latest novel, The Blamed, is out in June 2018. Emily grew up in Brussels, where she went to the European School, then studied at UCD. She lives in Dublin with her husband and three children.

  • Ibrahim Mahama: Negotiations of spaces

    Ibrahim Mahama grew up in Tamale, north Ghana, where he was in daily contact with objects and materials that developed a double meaning for him. His artwork began as a collage and patchwork of items surrounding his daily life, without being explicitly political.

    Out of his own lived experiences he re-contextualises spaces and working processes, capturing the body and skin of functional tools.

    From a point of crisis Ibrahim starts and develops his artwork.

    Used jute sacks sewn together in Ibrahim’s artwork are the skin, containing Ghana’s main export commodity, cocoa beans. Consumed and re-purposed for carrying rice and other commodities across borders, their final use is usually to transport charcoal.

    The artist, however, involving local collaborators, revives these in creative re-composition. He began by covering some of his country’s public buildings, which are often out of sympathy with the surrounding lives and spaces.

    Now his works cover walls and palaces all over the world, and bring together local collaborators from different cities. The creative process itself is part of this negotiation of spaces, with the collaborators jointly sewing every sack, reviving a use for them after carrying charcoal.

    Global transactions and capitalist structures are an important reference, but Ibrahim Mahama has a greater motivation: he intersects occupation and coexistence in creating a new language of objects and signs, revealing their own reasons and story.

    Ibrahim’s work develops a new convivial shape, an architecture in dependence, as he called one of  his latest exhibitions, inspired by Sarah Ladipo Manyika’s book by that name, which is a 1960s love story between a young Nigerian who had moved to study at Oxford, and the daughter of an ex-colonial officer.

    Shoe-shining boxes, used to carry tools to repair and polish shoes, are the tiles of Ibrahim’s new mosaics, a massive assemblage that recalls rural workers migrating to Accra, the capital of Ghana, and their role in the local economy. The boxes, like the sacks, incorporate a personal dimension of life and character, their bodies are covered with stickers and names, just as the sacks have printed codes, the skin of immigration in political tattoos.

  • LA RÉSISTANCE

    Missiles flashed, and it was beautiful—
    flares in the darkness of a fallen world
    where Satan plays the good guy in a wig.
    I’m in my safe space, a battered easy chair,
    swearing at the laptop, at the stream
    of video and voices, overlaid
    on top of breakfast. Coffee’s gone lukewarm,
    the trail’s gone cold. The woman on TV
    hasn’t realized it yet. Her show
    is sub-LeCarré trash, the waking dream
    of self-styled cells in Williamsburg, Crown Heights,
    Bushwick, even Windsor Terrace now.
    They’ll surely man the barricades some time
    after the co-op shift, when work slows down
    and the app is live and making NASDAQ bank.
    The cast of Hamilton will sing a song—
    a poem by Ocean Vuong now set to music
    by some ex-junkie from the punkoisie
    while bombs explode, bigger than before,
    to make a new crater in Afghanistan.

     

    Quincy R. Lehr’s most recent poetry collections are The Dark Lord of the Tiki Bar and Heimat. He teaches history in Los Angeles.

  • Against the Muses: Dragana Jurišić

    I first came across Dragana Jurišić’s work in the National Gallery of Ireland, when her ‘Tarantula’ was displayed as part of the ‘After Vermeer’ exhibition in 2017. ‘Tarantula’ was a contemporary response to the Vermeer exhibition, which featured a series of photographic self-portraits of overlapping dancing figures. Jurišić says she was ‘immediately struck by the two main subjects of Vermeer’s paintings: ‘women in domestic settings and the light’. Depiction of women in Vermeer’s portraits led Jurišić to consider the female condition, and ‘pre-conditioning’ more generally, in terms of the rules women must follow in life; their pensiveness and meditative status, which gives way to a mesmerised storm.

    Jurišić recalls the main character of Nora in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, first performed in 1879. Nora leaves her designated role in life, daring to partake in the dancing ‘struggle for life’. Similarly the mythical Tarantati women of Italy, once bitten by the spider, succumb to ‘trance-like dancing’, as the only way to access the euphoria of free expression. Jurišić’s dance, without resorting to provocative suggestions or techniques, traces a visual experiment that almost fulfils the lines of a classical figure, a preparatory drawing disclosing the artist’s creative process. As in Michelangelo’s sculpture ‘The Dying Slave’, these are unfinished sculptures, undressing themselves in the social marble, liberating their true shape from a carcass, not fully, but without shame, while displaying the melancholy and conflict of the process of self-cognition. Vermeer’s women are stuck in a composed, but not acquiescent pose, which recalls contemporary anxieties. Jurišić untangles Vermeer’s forms and empowers the female, and herself as a woman, unmasking the muses, symbols that still inform contemporary culture appreciations.[i]

    Some months later I walked through Jurišić’s latest exhibition, ‘My Own Unknown’, at the Gallery of Photography in Dublin’s Temple Bar, which recalls women who wanted to free themselves from patriarchal constraints. Into Jurišić’s personal story is sewn the mysterious life of her aunt Gordana Čavić. Čavić, like Ibsen’s Nora, disappeared from her assigned role, and native country, Yugoslavia, in the 1950s, dying in Parisian exile in the 1980s: ‘A life shrouded in mystery, it involves tales of multiple identities, illicit sex and espionage’. Out of Jurišić’s archival photographs, the artist recreates a diary of a personal rebirth from a cryptic loss, defining her life as woman and artist:

    My initial questioning of this statement took me to Paris to commence an exploration on L’Inconnue de la Seine, the name given to a young woman whose body was allegedly recovered from the River Seine, and whose death mask was cast in a bid to identify her. Her serene and quiet beauty became a muse for artists.

    The mask and idealistic form is an object of veneration: the fake perfection of a muse, veiled by cultural layers, and detached from any real process of accomplishment. Jurišić’s own undressing, displaying her true ‘body’, provides an unflinching interpretation of her own form.

    What Jurišić knew for sure was that Gordana Čavić was made of much harder stuff than L’Inconnue de la Seine:

    Suddenly I was back at 11 years old, looking at a funeral procession that was beyond extravagant. … Who was she? I asked my grandmother, She just shuffled uncomfortably in response. Behind me I could hear whispers of two men from down the road.

    L’Inconnue de la Seine represents the inspiring  perfection ‘protecting’ the viewer from experience of the real body; the ‘other woman’, which could alter the common sense experience, and reinforce devotion to old beliefs. Who is she? Who is Gordana Čavić, Nora, or the artist Dragana Jurišić?

    In Ibsen’s Women Joan Templeton observes the muse’s path through the centuries. Her powerful analysis of femininity recalls Jurišić’s artistic ambitions: ‘For Gilbert and Gubar … the lady is our creation or Pygmalion’s statue. The lady is the poem.’[ii] The lady is the sculpture, the statue Pygmalion carved and fell in love with, like L’inconnue de la Seine. This is a cast and frozen idealization of femininity. Templeton approvingly cites Simone de Beauvoir:

    But women exist without men’s intervention and thus while ‘woman’ incarnates men’s fantasies, women proves the falsity of the fantasies … Man’s need for woman to remain always the Other. … Woman is necessary to the extent that she remains an idea into which the man can project his own transcendence; but she is danger as an objective reality existing for herself and limited to herself.

    A more urgent consciousness is emerging in our daily experience, beginning with many women’s revelations of sexual violence during the #MeToo movement, and willingness to alter a passive condition of acceptance. Contemporary women are fighting back against an old, still unresolved disadvantage: their objectification as muses.

    Why is ‘the woman’ still an ideal, mythical presence, her real body still censored by intangible projections? Why do many men feel an inadequacy in front of real presences, to the extent of displaying hostility or aggression – real or unconscious – towards that which is not a fantasy? Why are artists still confronting opposition to representations of real existing forms, from ludicrous rules against displaying women’s nipples on social networks, to outright censorship of nudes in exhibition advertisements, while at the same time, our visual environment is filled with sexualised content? Are these taboos veils that hide the truth? Is it the ideal of the muses we are still battling against?

    Not only is the idea of woman in need of revolution, our concept of masculinity needs to be reappraised. According to Dr Arne Rubinstein in The Making of Men: ‘in the healthy man’s psychology, a man sees himself as part of the universe, not the centre of it; he takes full responsibility for his actions, he deals with his emotions and he looks for a healthy relationship with the feminine.’ But ‘the role-modelling and mentoring for boys and teenagers is very poor, and the messaging is terrible.’[iii] Rubinstein’s organization attempts to reconcile the masculine and feminine in men.

    In her 1929 novel A Room of One’s Own Virginia Woolf endeavoured to awaken awareness of gender inadequacy. She suggested society should reconsider and re-educate our basic perceptions of sexuality, and the condition of women in the world, beginning with the artistic and creative processes:

    For certainly when I saw the couple get into the taxi-cab the mind felt as if, after being divided, it had come together again in a natural fusion. The obvious reason would be that it is natural for the sexes to cooperate … But the sight of the two people getting into the taxi and the satisfaction it gave me made me also ask whether there are two sexes in the mind corresponding to the two sexes in the body, and whether they also require to be united in order to get complete satisfaction and happiness?[iv]

    In the last part of her exhibition ‘My own Unknown’, Jurišić explores her self-portraits and diaries, concluding the exhibition with a previous work made in Dublin in 2015, employing the same technique as ‘Tarantula’, but overlapping photographs of one hundred women posing as nude muses in front of her. They direct their own poses using a chair and a veil, each identify themselves with one of the nine muses of Greek mythology: Calliope, Clio, Euterpe, Erato, Melpomene, Polyhymnia, Terpsichore, Thalia and Urania.

    One of the final portraits is ‘The Mother’, an overlap of all the muses. This is Mnemosyne, mother of all the Muses, goddess of memory. On top of one another the bodies look like layers of negatives, memories overlapping into a majestic image. This conveys a scribble, an incomplete creative process, an operation of cognition in the ‘struggle for life’. Jurišić writes:

    The idea of the muse often evokes images of a male artist and a passive female muse. The female muse is often depicted as nude in visual art. And in turn “the nude” – one of the biggest clichés of Western art tradition, is a genre predominantly inhabited by male artists. At the beginning of April 2015, I began the task of photographing 100 female nudes over a period of five weeks.

    A powerful expression of ourselves is still needed, not only a female view on female gaze, but an entire recreation of feminine and masculine interpretation. An ‘ownership over their body’.

    Gordana knew that she came to Paris to survive. Survive at any cost. Shed her skin. Shed her past. Forget about the people she left behind. Or not. But she is not going back. She will never go back.

    The goddess mother of all the muses is the goddess mother of a faded memory, like Jurišić’s aunt Gordana Čavić who ‘was so beautiful, like she was her own creator.’[v]

    [i] National Gallery of Ireland, ‘Dragana Jurisic: Tarantula’, https://www.nationalgallery.ie/dragana-jurisic-tarantula, accessed 15/11/18.

    [ii] Joan Templeton, Ibsen’s Women, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp303-305

    [iii] Quoted in: David Leser, ‘Women, men and the whole damn thing’, Sydney Morning Herald, 9th of February, 2018, https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/the-great-sexual-reckoning-how-did-we-get-here–and-what-happens-now-20180124-h0npcc.html, accessed 23/11/18.

    [iv] Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, London, Hogarth Press, p.113

    [v] Dragana Jurišić ‘My Own Unknown’, 2014, http://www.draganajurisic.com/my-own-unknown/4587594312, accessed 15/11/18.

    Dragana Jurisic, ‘Tarantula’. Archival pigment print, 2017. © the artist.

     

    L’Inconnue de la Seine, http://draganajurisic.com/my-own-unknown/458759431
    Dragana Jurisic, Erato. © the artist.
    Dragana Jurisic, Euterpe. © the artist.

     

    Dragana Jurisic, The Mother. © the artist.

  • Venezuela Sinks in the ‘Excrement of the Devil’

    It is as if anyone writing about Venezuela must pass through the red channel, for all have something to declare. The competing narratives of Left and Right offer ideologically-tainted accounts, often saying more about any commentator’s domestic politics than Venezuela’s predicament. But even diehard supporters of the country’s charismatic former President Hugo Chávez cannot deny that Venezuela is now facing a humanitarian disaster under his incumbent successor Nicolás Maduro, with a refugee crisis in train, and rampant inflation amid reports that nearly nine in ten of the population have difficulty purchasing food, while three out of four have lost weight – an average of nineteen pounds in 2017 alone.[i]

    I determined to find out for myself what has happened to a country that was a beacon of hope for the Left. Thus far, my main interaction with Venezuelans has been as a teacher to those wealthy enough to study in private colleges in the U.K.. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I cannot think of any one of them who displayed affection for the country’s charismatic former President Hugo Chávez, who died in 2013, having held the presidency, with one brief interruption, since 1999. Chávez built a political movement out of marginalised sections of that society, which sought to use the country’s fabulous oil wealth to develop a socialist state. With Cuba’s Fidel Castro as a father figure, he reprised his countryman Simón Bolívar’s ultimately vain pursuit of Latin American unity.

    Naturally, I arrive at an analysis of Venezuela with my own set of assumptions, such as that oil wealth, which depends on little toil or ingenuity, corrupts all but the most ordered of societies (like Norway); and that central to the U.S.’s long-standing Monroe Doctrine – claiming Central and South America as a U.S. ‘sphere’ of influence – has been the development of a comprador class of go-betweens, often working to the detriment of their own societies. I endeavour to avoid doctrinaire assumptions, however, as I am aware how apparently socialist regimes often breed apparatchiks, who plunder the resources of the state and commit human rights abuses. Indeed, Antonio Gramsci, the great Marxist Italian political theorist, recognised that ‘(t)he prevalence of the bureaucratic in the State indicates that the leading group is saturated, that it is turning into a narrow clique which tends to perpetuate its selfish privileges by controlling or even stifling the birth of oppositional forces.’[ii]

    A trip to Cuba in my twenties disabused me of the notion that Caribbean Socialism brought any kind of utopia. The level of prostitution at the time was staggering: as European males we were accosted by women who were clearly desperate for money, rather than for us. Moreover, notwithstanding the reputation of its health services, we found anecdotal evidence of Cubans being unable to afford basic medicines. Also, major cities were in an advanced state of dilapidation, which can be charming for tourists but less enchanting in a tropical storm. Much of that poverty can be attributed to the American embargo at the time, but equally Uncle Sam could be used as an excuse for petty corruption and repression. Nonetheless, what Cuba has achieved in terms of life expectancy and a low-input agriculture compares favourably with most of the failing post-colonial states in the same region, all of which share a legacy of genocide against native communities, slave plantations and attendant ecological destruction, along with over two centuries of self-motivated U.S. interference.

    Venezuela shares much of this inheritance with its Caribbean neighbours, but its history since the early twentieth century bears the influence of another salient feature: oil. Venezuela has greater reserves even than Saudia Arabia, making it ripe for investment, and outside interference. Oil exerts a profound effect on the entire social fabric. According to Miguel Tinker Salas: ‘Like a lubricant coating the various parts of an internal combustion engine, oil literally permeates every aspect of Venezuelan society in ways that are not apparent to an outsider.’[iii]

    While acknowledging that any commentary arrives via individual bias, we tend to place more trust in the dispassionate analysis of august publications such as The New York Review of Books. After reading its March 8 – 21, 2018 edition, however, my confidence was somewhat shaken. I am referring to the article by Enrique Krauze on Venezuela entitled ‘Hell of a Fiesta’ which appeared on the front cover. Krauze states that between 2013 and 2017 the country’s GDP fell more precipitously than that of the U.S. during the Great Depression, or in Russia after the end of Communism, but he omits to emphasise that in that period the price of oil, overwhelmingly Venezuela’s main export, more than halved in price. Krauze is building a case, and by giving such prominence to his article The New York Review of Books appears to be endorsing his stance.

    Krauze points to the serious current humanitarian crisis brought on by government mismanagement – which appears largely indisputable – as well as evidence of repressive measures taken to curb dissent, all of which cohere with Gramsci’s account of a bureaucratic state at saturation point. But to say: ‘The full responsibility lies with the Chávez and Maduro regime … which for fifteen years had a windfall of petroleum resources comparable only to those of the major Middle Eastern producers and yet wasted that income recklessly’, accords no relevance to the legacy of Venezuela’s troubled history, and ignores entirely the progress that had been made in alleviating poverty.

    For Krauze Venezuelan history appears to have begun at about the point the historian Francis Fukuyama made the outlandish claim that history had come to an end.[iv] Krauze’s critique recalls the great U.S. writer Gore Vidal’s description of a ‘United States of Amnesia’, where the past is wilfully forgotten. Vidal identified striking similarities in media accounts of ‘democratic’ elections in post-invasion Iraq, and the coverage of events in Vietnam forty years earlier. An editorial in The New York Times in 1967 might have appeared in response to that later conflagration:

    U.S. encouraged by Vietnam vote: Officials cite 83 percent turnout despite Vietcong terror… A successful election has long been seen as the keystone to President Johnson’s policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam.[v]

    There exists a similar suspended reality to U.S. coverage of Venezuela, heightened by the presence of the key strategic asset of oil. Crucial to U.S. success has been the projection of ‘soft’ power, especially of a middle class wedded to U.S. consumer lifestyles. Advocates of U.S.-led globalisation, such as Krauze, trumpet the need for ‘free’ elections, and ignore gross inequalities. If human rights abuses are committed by regimes supportive of the U.S., these tend to be forgotten, or absolved as ‘a son-of-a-bitch but our son-of-a-bitch’.

    Krauze is a Mexican public intellectual, and apparently a liberal, a term that means very little any more. He has advocated privatising the extraction of oil in his home country, for reasons of efficiency, and in pursuit of shale oil and gas[vi]. In an article in 2015 he described Chávez’s attempt to emulate Cuba politically as an ‘an inexcusable choice.’[vii] But considering the dire poverty and inequality in Venezuela when Chávez came to power, describing his socialist policies, which would not be out of place in Norway, as “inexcusable” seems rather an extreme assertion. Krauze conveniently overlooks how by the end of his tenure Chávez had cut poverty in half and reduced extreme poverty by more than seventy percent.[viii]

    Little now remains of Venezuela’s indigenous civilisations. As is the case across the Americas, the native population was almost wiped out by a combination of conquest, enslavement and contagious diseases. Perhaps the most stirring cinematic depiction of that period is Werner’s Herzog’s 1972 film Aguirre Wrath of God, starring Klaus Kinsky as a deranged conquistador in search of El Dorado – a land of gold that has given way to ‘Oil Dorado’.

    The origin of the name of the country is subject to controversy. The best indication is that the explorer Amerigo Vespucci (whose own name survives in two continents) was reminded of Venice by the thatched palm-covered residences erected on wooden poles over lakes by the native Arawak people. Later the humanitarian writer Barolomé de las Casas is credited with using the term ‘little Venice’ on a map he sketched after visiting the area. By 1528, the name ‘Venezuela’ had appeared on another map used by the Spanish Crown.[ix]

    With the native population all but wiped out, creole settlers chose to import African slaves to work on their plantations, especially chocolate and coffee. Slavery was carried over into a state, which first declared independence in 1811, with lasting repercussions. Venezuela’s most famous revolutionary son was El Libertador, Simón Bolívar (1783-1830). His Irish aide-de-camp Daniel Florence O’Leary noted in his memoirs that Bolívar’s ‘imperious and impatient temperament would never tolerate the smallest delay in the execution of an order.’[x] Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s 1989 novel The General in his Labyrinth paints a picture of an exiled leader driven to the edge of reason by the enormity of his ambition to reform the post-colonial society he inhabited. According to Tinker Salas: ‘the wars of independence may have resulted in a rupture with Spain, but they did not produce a social revolution that altered pre-existing class relations or redistributed wealth.’[xi] Ultimately Bolívar would despair: ‘I blush to say this: independence is the only benefit we have acquired, to the detriment of all the rest’, but his legacy of attempting to bring unity to the region remains an intoxicating elixir to his heirs.

    The ‘peculiar institution’ of slavery was not abolished in Venezuela until 1854, and leaves an enduring legacy, as elsewhere, of exclusion, racism and sense of entitlement among elites. In 1918 ‘non-white’ immigration was prohibited, while Europeans continued to be encouraged to settle in the country. There were no segregation laws, however, and miscegenation was common. In 1944 the poet Andrés Eloy Blanco coined the term café con leche to describe the Venezuelan racial makeup.[xii] Nevertheless, Hugo Chávez was subjected to racist taunts over the course of his rule.

    Social exclusion and the low education levels of so much of the population meant democracy in Venezuela could not take root throughout most of the twentieth century. The first peaceful handover of power by one regime to another only occurred in the 1960s. Gramsci believed that ‘democracy by definition cannot mean merely that an unskilled worker can be skilled, it must mean that every citizen can ‘govern’ and that society places him, even if only abstractly, in a general condition to achieve this.’[xiii] Likewise, any understanding of Venezuelan democratisation must recognise that the low level of development in the country has created disorders that ‘free’ elections do little to cure. What is more, mere technical education is insufficient to incubate the capacity of any Venezuelan citizen, in theory, to govern.

    After tapping into oil wealth, Norwegians drew on the austere historical experience of a homogenous society on the polar frontier of human habitation, and a ‘Protestant’ work ethic including a strong educational tradition, to develop an egalitarian democracy. Norwegians believed themselves to be the equal of one another, permitting, abstractly at least, any Norwegian to govern another. Venezuela, on the other hand, after the discovery of oil, was saddled with hierarchies of wealth and race, and a tropical climate, which makes labour challenging. Equipping the poor with technical skills, as Chávez’s government sought to achieve, did not instil a capacity to govern. Moreover, mutual trust evaporated in the class war which at times he appeared to foment. True democratisation is a process that usually takes decades, or even centuries, to engender a stable and representative political system. The material improvements Chávez brought to the lives of the poor could only be a precursor to the real adjustments, in education in particular, that any society requires in order to develop harmonious governance.

    Looking back, the exploitation of oil, which began in earnest in the 1920s, created a stratum of society susceptible to the corruption associated with unearned wealth, allowing US oil companies to get along with the job of extracting the black gold. The windfall led to the country becoming a net food importer by the 1930s,[xiv] which served to diminish food sovereignty, reflected in the high prices of staples today. Especially after World War II, radical, including Communist, ideas filtered through to the Venezuelan people, leading to periodic outbreaks of violence. In response oil companies formed an ‘Industrial Security Council’ to coordinate security with the American embassy and its military attachés. Tinker Salas claims that the Pentagon was behind a coup d’etat in 1948.[xv]

    Awareness was growing among the wider populace of the incredible wealth the country possessed, and that this was not being devoted to the betterment of the population at large. On the international front, Venezuela was one of the founding members of OPEC in 1960, and domestically pressure mounted on the government to nationalise reserves. U.S. attitudes to the country are epitomised by a Newsweek cover from 1964 entitled ‘The Promise and the Threat’, featuring an image of President Rául Leoni with Fidel Castro looming behind him.

    In 1976 one of the chief Venezuelan architects of OPEC, Pérez Alfonzo, published a collection of essays entitled Hundiéndonos en el excremento del diablo, ‘We are sinking in the excrement of the devil’, which concluded that after nationalisation ‘el petróleo es nuestro, lo demás lo importamos’ ‘the oil is ours, everything else we import.’[xvi] He revealed an intuitive understanding of what economists call ‘the natural curse’, or ‘the paradox of plenty’, which diminishes self-reliance and entrepreneurship. That same year the government finally nationalised the industry. The U.S. companies were not entirely displeased, however, as the law allowed for contracts with foreign firms. Venezuela had become a classic rentier state which derived all or a substantial portion of its national revenues from the ‘rent’ of indigenous resources to external clients. A two-tier society endured, with the higher echelon embracing a U.S. consumer culture. A particular feature of this was a veneration of female beauty, indicative of a society where women are treated as ‘luxury mammals’, to use Gramsci’s description of the wives and daughters of American industrialists between the wars.[xvii]

    A proliferation in beauty pageants yielded seven Miss Universe and six Miss World crowns on the international stage, and transformed an ideal of female beauty into a national obsession. This stimulated demand for cosmetic products, exploited by organisers of the pageants who distributed a wide range of beauty treatments, and brought a thriving industry in plastic surgery. The ideal of beauty that was promoted was distinctly white European.

    In 1999 the country was subjected to a series of mudslides, the Vargas Tragedy, that witnessed the deaths of between fifteen and thirty thousand people. The uncertainty around the number of fatalities is indicative of a lack of concern for those living in shanty towns on the part of the governing elite. Successive governments had permitted houses to be built in unsuitable locations before the ‘natural’ disaster took place.

    Thus, the phenomenon of Hugo Chávez cannot be abstracted from Venezuelan history as Krautze in his New York Review article suggests. As a post-colonial society, Venezuela brought a host of problems into the twentieth century, especially the social exclusion of the bulk of the population and a toxicity in ‘race’ relations. The challenge of development in a tropical environment also cannot be discounted.

    Over decades of oil wealth, Venezuelan elites had failed to distribute the nation’s resources effectively, a pattern seen throughout the developing world. In these circumstances, for a left-wing populist such as Hugo Chávez to emerge was predictable, if not inevitable, but many of his aspirations can be lauded. During 2002 poverty gripped 49.6% of the population, with 32% destitute. This had fallen to 27.8% and 10.7% respectively, by 2010.[xviii] Chávez’s period in office as president between 1999 and 2013 incontrovertibly brought substantial improvements to the lives of the poor. Whatever about the methods employed, or the current crisis under his successor Nicolás Maduro, the achievements of that period cannot be ignored.

    A constitution promulgated in 2000 established access to education, housing, health and food as inalienable rights guaranteed by the state. The standing of women and indigenous communities was also raised, while special status was bestowed on the environment, with the state committed to guard against ecological degradation. Such aspirations would not appear out of place in the constitution of a mature democracy.

    Chávez’s rule was far from exemplary, however, as corruption became rife, but the continued intransigence of the wealthiest stratum destabilised the country to a point where a coup d’état was launched in 2002. The U.S. government, if not involved, was clearly supportive. Presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer claimed that Chávez had brought the coup on himself, while, perhaps more surprisingly, an editorial the day afterwards in The New York Times read, without irony: ‘with yesterday’s removal of President Chávez Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator.’[xix] Chávez survived the coup after a popular uprising, which underlined his appeal among the most marginalised in that society. Tinker Salas discounts the view that this was based purely on client-patron relations, and suggests that national pride, left-wing policies, his African heritage and a general loss of faith in the political process all played their part.

    According to Tinker Salas, Chávez’s death highlighted the strengths, but also the limits, of ‘an all-powerful hyper-presidentialism expected to resolve the country’s deep-seated problems.’[xx] His successor Nicolás Maduro is not of the same calibre. His survival, having emerged victorious in the May 2018 election, whose validity is contested, depends on the extent to which he can continue to mobilise the support of the poorer sections of society. As regards Venezuela’s long-term possibilities one can only hope that more is done to heal a corrosive addiction to oil revenue – “the excrement of the devil” –  which has bred corruption and complacency since its discovery. Venezuelans would do well to learn from how Cuba survived oil shortages at the end of the Cold War, especially when its agriculture was denied access to petro-chemicals.

    Moreover, the status of Venezuelan women as “luxury mammals”, dependent on beauty for their status, is a clear pathology. As Gramsci points out: ‘Until women can attain not only a genuine independence in relation to men but also a new way of conceiving themselves and their role in sexual relations, the sexual question will remain full of unhealthy characteristics.’[xxi] Finally, coverage of the country has often tended to highlight poverty and violence, but Venezuelans often have a happier disposition than is evident among people living in stable democracies. This point is affirmed in successive polls, and accords with my own dealings with Venezuelans.

    *******

    In The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East (London, Fourth Estate, 2005), Robert Fisk describes the role of the journalist as being to write the first draft of history. This ought to be the case, but the reality is that the market now demands obsessive focus on a self-perpetuating news cycle, which Benedict Anderson characterised as the ‘obsolescence of the newspaper on the morrow of its printing.’[xxii] The slower pace of the journalist-historian who carefully interrogates sources to develop evidence is increasingly rare. Today, a figure of Fisk’s type, writing independently from a conflict zone, which he knows intimately, for decades, is, if not extinct, then highly anomalous. The new reporters are often unprofessional bystanders who live stream events on camera phones, while the digital medium we increasingly rely on lends itself to distraction and manipulation. Now the ideology of a newspaper or broadcaster often trumps integrity. During his long career, Fisk witnessed the extent to which news could be manipulated to justify military invasions: the “United States of Amnesia” at work. The justification for any humanitarian intervention remains elusive as international institutions fragment, but once the cost-benefit analysis is complete, it could be Venezuela’s turn for the ‘tough love’ of the West.

    [i] Centre on Foreign Relations, ‘A Venezuelan Refugee Crisis’, Contingency Planning Memorandum No. 33, February 15th, 2018. https://www.cfr.org/report/venezuelan-refugee-crisis, accessed 14/11/18.

    [ii] Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, edited by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Smith, London Lawrence & Wishart, 2003, p.189.

    [iii] Miguel Tinker Salas, Venezuela: What Everyone Needs to Know, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2015, p.3.

    [iv] Francis Fukayama, The End of History and the Last Man, New York, Free Press, 1992.

    [v] Gore Vidal, Point to Point Navigation, p.55, London, Little, Brown, 2006.

    [vi] Enrique Krauze, ‘Mexico’s Theology of Oil’, New York Times, October 31st, 2013.

    [vii] Enrique Krauze, ‘Rough Seas for Venezuela’, New York Times, February 15th, 2015.

    [viii] Mark Weisbrot, ‘Venezuelans Will Vote with Their Wallets’, New York Times, June 20th, 2016.

    [ix] Tinker Salas, 2015, pp.18-19.

    [x] J. B. Trend, Bolívar and the Independence of Spanish America, New York, Macmillan, 1948, p.225.

    [xi] Tinker Salas, 2015, p.39.

    [xii] Ibid, p.79.

    [xiii] Gramsci, 2003, p.40.

    [xiv] Tinker Salas, 2015, p.66.

    [xv] Ibid, p.85.

    [xvi] Ibid, p.104.

    [xvii] Gramsci, 2003, p.306.

    [xviii] Tinker Salas, 2015, p.192.

    [xix] Editorial, ‘Hugo Chavez Departs’, New York Times, April 13th, 2002.

    [xx] Tinker Salas, 2015, p.217

    [xxi] Gramsci, 2003, p.296

    [xxii]  Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, New York, Verso, 2006, p. 34.