economistadentata

"My friend wanted to feel like a princess for her wedding day, so I made her marry a man she never..."

Sat, 25 May 2013 16:36:21 -0400

““My friend wanted to feel like a princess for her wedding day, so I made her marry a man she never met in order to secure a French alliance.””

- Via my friend Andrea.

I lol’d.

(via tbridge)

Perfect.

(via door)

The softness of an ocean.

Sun, 19 May 2013 08:25:00 -0400

I’m currently re-reading Iain M. Banks’ Culture novels in sequence, partly as a useless but heartfelt tribute to someone who, sadly, we are about to lose, and partly to make sure there’s nothing too much for my 13 year old (who has just discovered Banks) to encounter in their pages.

The third in the sequence is ‘Use of Weapons’ - the most often recommended starting point for newcomers to the Culture (which also features my favourite drone Skaffen-Amtiskaw). Amongst, well, its genius, is this….

“That’s the way they prefer to work: offering life, you see, instead of dealing death. You might call them soft, because they’re very reluctant to kill, and they might agree with you, but they’re soft the way the ocean is soft, and, well; ask any sea captain how harmless and puny the ocean can be.”

Welcome to English to English

Wed, 15 May 2013 12:46:24 -0400

english2english:

Right, then. Prince Harry’s visit to the USA is as good a time as any to point out that the mutual curiosity shared between British and American cultures is as intense as ever. It’s also a good time to launch this Tumblr.

When Winston Churchill coined the phrase “special relationship” to describe the connection between the two nations in 1946, he was describing two countries whose commitments to similar ideals – for better or worse – have historically meant a keen interest in each other. “Special”, sometimes, doesn’t even begin to cover it.

Read More

redouanelahloul: King Hassan II Mosque, Casablanca -...

Sun, 05 May 2013 12:02:45 -0400

redouanelahloul:

King Hassan II Mosque, Casablanca - Morocco

Mosque Hassan II , Casablanca - Marruecos

مسجد الحسن الثاني، الدار البيضاء - المغرب

In which Niall Ferguson is revealed to have a bit of a thing about Keynes.

Sat, 04 May 2013 16:06:00 -0400

Critics of Niall Ferguson will often offer the caveat, ‘Ah, but ‘The Pity of War’ - that’s a good piece of proper academic work’.

This morning there was a bit of a hoo-ha on Twitter and elsewhere about Niall Ferguson’s comments at a conference, in which it was alleged he linked John Maynard Keynes’ sexuality with Keynes’ economic theories and policy recommendations (eg here: http://www.streettalklive.com/daily-x-change/1688-niall-ferguson-the-great-degeneration.html).

He has since offered a fulsome apology, here: http://www.niallferguson.com/blog/an-unqualified-apology

However.

The remarks which Ferguson called ‘off-the-cuff’ in his apology are echoed, to say the least, in ‘The Pity of War’.

I’ve cited one instance in a previous post (apologies for self-linking but my typing really is appallingly slow)

http://economistadentata.tumblr.com/post/49613464765/from-niall-fergusons-the-pity-of-war-paperback

Another instance of Ferguson’s linking Keynes’ views (this time of the war) to his sexuality is on p. 327:

‘Though his work at the Treasury gratified his sense of self-importance, the war itself made Keynes deeply unhappy. Even his sex life went into decline, perhaps because the boys he liked to pick up in London all joined up.’

The inference seems clear: Keynes was made unhappy by the war, not because he feared for his remaining friends (several close friends died during the war, Rupert Brooke being the most well-known), or because he thought it was being badly conducted, but because it restricted his access to boys.

It should be noted that Keynes, along with several other members of the Bloomsbury group applied for conscientious objector status, which Ferguson dismisses thus:

‘…-nearly all the Bloomsbury men were conscientious objectors (although only Shove was a true pacifist).’

On this evidence, either Professor Ferguson’s recent remarks were not as nearly as off-the-cuff as he would have us believe, or he truly does think that Keynes (and others) views on the First World War, its conduct, and the reparations which followed were influenced by his sexuality, rather than his economic views. I would politely suggest that a further clarification seems to be called for.

From Niall Ferguson's 'The Pity of War' (paperback edition)

Sat, 04 May 2013 15:04:00 -0400

p400

There is, however, no question that a series of meetings with one of the German representatives at Versailles added an emotional dimension to Keynes’ position. Carl Melchior was Max Warburg’s right-hand man (……..) It may be that Keynes’ subsequent declaration that he ‘got to love’ Melchior during the armistice negotiations at Trier and Spa obliquely alluded to a sexual attraction. As we have seen, Keynes was an active homosexual at this time. However, it seems more likely that Keynes was simply captivated by the sound of his own pessimism…..

So Ferguson has previous on this…..

Keynes, Lopokova and the 'little bun'.

Sat, 04 May 2013 06:43:00 -0400

From Robert Skidelsky’s one volume biography of John Maynard Keynes, pages 403-4:

It was Keynes’ links with the theatre that brought Cambridge into Lydia’s orbit. Lydia was thirty-five in 1927. She had steered clear of any further ballet engagements in order to have a child. The letters she and Maynard exchanged give only vague hints of what happened. There is some suggestion that she miscarried in May 1927, Keynes assuring her that ‘we shall have in the end what we so much long for’….Then apparently she became pregnant again. On Monday 10th October 1927, Keynes wrote: ‘Dearest Lydochka, Well, I have had the telegram - the sad deed is done and my dear little bun has had its throat cut. No more to be said until I see it [you?], except a tender touch where the sweet bun was.’

Niall Ferguson is an oaf.

Thatcher, Mandela, and it's a bit more complicated than that.

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 10:54:00 -0400

I said I wouldn’t. I promised myself I wouldn’t. Blogging about Thatcher this week if you’re a lefty is like re-inserting a clot into one’s vein post-triple bypass. But. Margaret Thatcher being cast as a lion in the struggle against apartheid? It just won’t wash.

To listen to some people with either short memories or a factual deficit, apartheid was essentially social racial discrimination writ large. This would be bad enough, of course; in reality it was worse, far worse, because rather than merely enabling discrimination to occur unaddressed, in actively legislating for discrimination it made racial discrimination mandatory. Its sins were of commission, not omission.

And those sins were many. For a government to oppress 92% of of a country’s population takes work, and successive National Party governments went to theirs with a will. Aside from the laws enforcing racial segregation (their names will give you the gist: the Group Areas Act, the Mixed Marriages Act), a comprehensive list of the tools used to combat dissent included (but was not limited to): Censorship of literature, music, and naturally the press, state violence, banning orders against individuals (which were so stringent they left some parents unable to attend their own children’s birthday parties), political assassinations both in South Africa and abroad, the arming of paramilitary groups, the outlawing of unions and the use of the police and the army to break up strikes (which were illegal, naturally), conscription for white males between the ages 18-21 with effectively no right of conscientious objection, indefinite detention without arrest or trial, wire taps….The list goes on and on and on. And all in pursuit of keeping political power in the hands of a privileged minority.

You would think, wouldn’t you, that a grocer’s daughter who had made it to Prime Minister in the face of undeniable obstacles would have some sympathy with those systematically denied access to the means to ‘improve themselves’ (as she would probably put it)?. And to be strenuously fair, she did speak out against apartheid, repeatedly and on the record. But apartheid, as the ANC and its allies knew all too well, was never going to be ended by rhetoric alone. Deeds not words were what were called for, and time and again Thatcher steadfastly refused to act either by implementing sanctions or by retracting her description of the ANC as a terrorist organisation - a description repeatedly deployed by the apartheid state as justification for its repression of any dissent. So..why? Why would someone who proclaimed her enthusiasm for liberal individualism, for get-up-and-go, for democracy, for freedom stand by and do nothing in the face of a system denying all those things to the majority of its people not as a incidental consequence, but as its raison d’etre?

I would argue that the reasons lay not in any one person’s credo, but in the contemporary global political context in which whose credos found expression.

A point that has been largely ignored this week with regard to Thatcher’s engagement with the apartheid state is the strategic importance of South Africa during the Cold War. Sub-Saharan Africa was one of the theatres in which the geopolitics of the Cold War were played out by proxy in the civil wars between Western client states and the (broadly socialist) resistance movements. These struggles, of course, arguably represented a continuation of colonialism by other means -a point neatly underlined by Mrs Thatcher’s insistence that she knew better than the internal resistance what would bring about apartheid’s demise, and the most appropriate means to pursue that end.

Once the Cold War was over (and only a fool would deny Thatcher’s key role in that conflict, whatever your view of her ideological rectitude), then the ‘glue’ that had held South Africa in an alliance with Western interests simply melted away. It is at this point, perhaps, that a debate could be had about the indirect role she therefore played in ending apartheid - but it’s a debate far more intricate than the ‘No more apartheid because Thatcher’ spiel emitting from some commentators. Apartheid’s end was due to far more complex forces than the actions of any one individual.

Which bring me, of course, to Nelson Rolihlala Madiba Mandela, often held up as the exemplar of the difference one person can make, the light that one conscience can shine into dark corners, and the redemption one man’s forgiveness can offer, which overblown rhetorical bollocks (I’m looking at you, Bono), throws into sharp relief the difference between Thatcher’s cult of the individual & the collective moral force exerted by many, if only by way of contrast. Mandela himself has not only always acknowledged the moral complexities thrown up by an armed struggle in pursuit of freedom, but also that that struggle was a collective endeavour. When, at Thatcher’s urging, the apartheid state offered him his freedom after over twenty years in prison on condition he renounced the use of force, he refused, saying he was a disciplined member of the ANC, it was not for anyone individual to decide the course of the fight for his country’s freedom, and making the point that outside of a fully democratic state, a contract between a state and its prisoner made purely on the state’s terms has no moral legitimacy.

Both Mandela and Thatcher are often held up as being somehow more, somehow better, than mere politicians by both their supporters and their detractors. The tributes paid to Thatcher this week have harped on this point again and again. However, the contrast between the reality of the Thatcher engagement with apartheid state and the version we’re now being given undermines that claim to its destruction: politics, whether domestic or global, is driven by the will and actions of many forces, not just those of individual men and women. But as I’m sure the late Lady herself would point out, probably tersely: I would say that. I’m a lefty.

This government has a 19th century view of poverty? If only.

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 09:50:00 -0400

A frequent accusation thrown at Iain Duncan Smith is that he has a ‘Victorian attitude towards the poor’.

If only.

One of the problems with throwing the epithet ‘Victorian’ around, is that like the terms ‘God’ or ‘reasonable’ it tends to reflect the beliefs of the person using it, rather than any objective set of social phenomena. In fact, the Victorian attitude to poverty underwent a profound shift, ending as one I would characterise as significantly more progressive than that of our current government.

The initial Victorian responses to the new phenomenon of mass-scale urban poverty were simply cruel. The New Poor Laws, the early workhouses with their stated intention of making life there so hellish that people would do anything to avoid seeking help…I could go on, but you get the drift.

But as Victoria’s reign progressed, these cruelties by commission and ommission were exposed. And increasingly rejected: for example, by the late 1840’s although workhouses still existed, they were at least subject to regulation and inspection which ameliorated conditions.

Running alongside were the improvements in working conditions (Factories Acts), the extension of the Franchise (for men; as usual women had to wait), the Education Acts, the great reforming surveys into the conditions of the poor by, for example, Charles Booth, and later Seerbohm Rowntree, and ongoing improvements in medical care.

In short, whilst things were still desperately grim, there was at least a desire to try to improve the lives of the poor: for their sake, as well as for the good of all.

Here comes the caveat: yes, I know this desire to ‘improve’ was patronising. Yes, I know poverty was still an unspeakably awful existence and that massive social injustices still existed. The point I am trying to make, however, is about the direction of travel: from bad to better, if not perfect.

So. Let me now turn my basilisk stare to the current….*sighs* administration.

A significant feature they do have in common with successive Victorian governments, is the utter absence of a modern democratic mandate. I remain stunned by the insouciance with which the country’s ‘Meh’ has been transmuted into an effective landslide, simply by the swaggering entitlement of the Cabinet and ‘The Quad’ (Cameron, Osborne, Clegg and Alexander) in particular. In 1997 Labour stuck to Tory spending plans for two years; this lot had an ‘Emergency Budget’ within eight weeks.

Much is made, principally by him, of IDS’ time in Easterhouse, and his apparent Damascene conversion there; it is interesting to note Bob Holman has since characterised IDS policies in office as a volte-face (http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jun/19/thanks-iain-duncan-smith-poor-must-cry), motivated by purely political considerations.

When the Churches, and charitable organisations (many of whom were newly founded in the nineteenth century) exposed the reality of lives lived in poverty, they would at least be heard. Nowadays the CoE is likely to be denounced as being ‘socialists at prayer’, and charities as ‘vested interests’ (unlike, I presume, the Institute of Directors). Any criticism of current and proposed cuts affecting both the working and non-working poor is not given any sort of hearing, but dismissed with a sneer.

‘Self-help’. ‘Freeing’ people from the welfare state. Fine words provide neither butter nor parsnips. The brutal truth of current welfare policy is to not encourage people to work for their own benefit, but for that of corporate interests (which oddly align rather closely with those of the government’s millionaires and their chums) . Forcibly, and without pay if necessary. Quite a contrast from the Victorian move from forced work in the workhouse to a more humane system of poor relief.

All this against a wilful manipulation of the truth of lives lived in poverty, the egregiously mendacious deployment of outlier cases as though they were the norm, the rejection of objective data, the removal of the means of redress, the lying and smearing of opponents, undertaken by what were once the great offices of State who in the Victorian period and at their considerable best, acted with a constant awareness of the awesome responsibility their position conferred.

The Victorians were not perfect, far from it, but they would have looked first in horror, then in rage at what this bunch of spivs are doing in the name of those old Victorian values of self-reliance and self-help, to their party, their people and their country. IDS, a Victorian? Not even close.

Bankers have no armies.

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 09:50:00 -0400

“My lord,’ he says. “You have said what you have to say. Now listen to me. You are a man whose money is almost spent. I am a man who knows how you have spent it. You are a man who has borrowed all over Europe. I am a man who knows all your creditors. One word from me, and your debts will be called in.’

“Oh and what can they do?” Percy asks. “Bankers have no armies.”

“Neither have you armies, my lord, if your coffers are empty. Look at me now. Understand this….The King will take your title away, and your land, and your castles and give them to someone who will do the job you cannot.’

“He will not. He respects all ancient titles. All ancient rights.”

“Then let’s say I will.” Let’s say I will rip your life apart. Me and my banker friends.

How can he explain it to him? The world is not run from where he thinks. Not from his border fortresses, not even from Whitehall. The world is run from Antwerp, from Florence, from places he has never imagined….Not from castle walls but from counting houses, not by the call of the bugle but by the click of the abacus….by the scrape of the pen on the page of the promissory note that pays for the gun and the gunsmith and the powder and the shot.

Thomas Cromwell tells Harry Percy how their world works.

How our world works.

April's Cruel Day.

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 13:09:00 -0400

Polly Toynbee has written elsewhere about the cruelties this April will bring to the most vulnerable, ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/28/benefit-cuts-monday-defines-government ), but this is specifically about the changes I’ve seen as a volunteer.

The vulnerable people I see are: homeless or precariously housed (sofa-surfing/squatting/about to lose their tenancy); most have alcohol or drug addictions; many have Mental Health issues; many have a dual diagnosis, or we suspect that they may; the vast majority have poor levels of literacy, numeracy and computer literacy; some have criminal records.

They are all human as you and I are human. As David Cameron, George Osborne, and Iain Duncan Smith are human.

When I began volunteering in 2004, the charity was an addition to the welfare state. We directed clients to (free!) courses in literacy and numeracy, helped with CVs, or practical skills such as woodwork. Or simply sat and talked to people who were lonely, afraid, lost.

We helped people with benefit forms, but more often than not, they were assisted by the JobCentre+ staff. There were sanctions cases, of course (people without alarm clocks or phones have a tendency to poor time-keeping), but more often than not they could sort it out, and get the result for themselves. It didn’t need endless phone calls, endless arguments followed up by letters: clients could visit the decision-makers in person, just around the corner. Who were also human. And humane.

Since 2012, clients can be effectively fined £50 for mistakes on their benefit forms (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukdsi/2012/9780111524244/pdfs/ukdsiem_9780111524244_en.pdf the term used by the DWP is ‘negligently giving incorrect information’). Given our clients’ literacy levels this means we receive more requests to fill in these forms. But sooner or later, I will make a mistake. I won’t face the sanction. My client will. But he can appeal, right?

Legal aid is being cut from £22 million to £3 million. So people will not have access to legal assistance in their battle against the state (side note: you’d think those of a libertarian bent would love legal aid, enabling as it does the little guy to go up against the state with expert help. Oddly, not, it seems.) - they will have to go it alone, sorry, take responsibility for their own defence/court case/appeal. Meanwhile, one presumes the DWP will still have recourse to the finest barristers in the land. Paid for by the same taxpayers, who if claiming housing benefit, are regularly denounced as scroungers by the Secretary of State from his bully pulpit.

The changes the government are proposing are based on a lie. Their stated aim is a desire to replace the welfare state with the ‘Big Society’, encouraging people to take responsibility for their own lives, drawing us all together in a civic union free of the heavy hand of the state. Sounds great, doesn’t it? But the reality is quite other.

Our clients, and volunteers like me, are being asked to assume the responsibilities of the welfare state without, crucially, having any actual power. I can phone up, and argue, and recite regulations, I can ask a friendly lawyer for advice, but the actual power to change a decision still lies with the DWP. And what makes it insupportable is that we are no longer arguing the case for the improvement of people’s lives through access to skills: we are having to argue for their right to obtain the very necessities of life. On top of which, the time this takes up reduces the time we have for the ‘softer’ aspects of volunteering, the talking and the listening.

Power without responsibility is the prerogative of the harlot, the saying goes. Whilst I hesitate to attribute moral motives of quite such dubious origin to Her Majesty’s Secretary of State, his proposals do rather make me wonder if we are all to be set quite so free, what purpose does his office have - unless of course it is to instruct us all on how responsibility without power is all the vulnerable (or ‘undeserving’ to use his terminology) and their supporters can expect.

Vignette.

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 09:42:24 -0400

A man bedding down for the night, opposite the High St Job Centre, his eyes as empty & dark as the shut-down shop in whose doorway he sleeps.

This isn't the piece I meant to write

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 13:36:00 -0400

Consider these two facts:

The Labour Party is assisting the government in rushing through emergency retroactive legislation to enable to government to avoid repaying illegally-imposed sanctions on those placed on workfare schemes.
The government is proposing childcare tax breaks for families with joint incomes of < £300,000.

I am, for my many and various sins and those of my forefathers and -mothers before me, Old School, Fabian, tribal Labour. Growing up, of course my family voted Labour. It’s just what people like us did. We’d no more think of voting Tory than we would consider eating our own children.

Not because we were (or are) working class, (I remain deeply sceptical about the whole class warfare schtick of some on the Left; I can see why it works for them, but I’d rather unite around our common humanity, thanks. Yes, I know; I would say that) but because it was a matter of simple human decency.

Low-paid work is shitty. Often literally. Doing it, not as a laugh whilst between school and University ie on the way to doing a not-shitty job, but day-in, day-out in order to put food on the family table demands that the people doing it have access to certain things, as a matter of social justice: decent houses to live in, decent schools for their children to attend, and decent healthcare. Labour was the party that stood up and argued, proudly, for those rights. Above all they argued for the right of the poorly-paid to have the value their work added to a company’s profits acknowledged via the medium of a decent living wage.

The debate of the right level of a minimum wage (or if there should be such a thing-guess which side of that row I’m on?) is for another day. Suffice to say, if a family is bringing in £150,000 pa they’re probably not working as cleaners. Or in childcare. Twice that? Well….call me old-fashioned, but I rather think they can cough up for their own au pairs. Either that or perhaps they could benefit from the same help with budgeting that is so often advocated for the poor whose children are going to school hungry.

This is the point at which someone will jump in and say things about: how much revenue the well-off bring to the Treasury, how they create employment, how they pay for school fees and nannies out of their taxed incomes, how long the hours are in the City, and my goodness, recession or no recession have you seen the price of a house in London these days? Oh and there’s usually a swipe about the ‘politics of envy’ with a dash of ‘taxation is theft’ on the side.

I know. No really, I do-because old school Labour or not, my family are those people with houses in London, who have paid school fees and hired cleaners, who work in the City (both Grandads, Dad for years, & Mummy as a trail-blazing woman (gasp!) in the Sixties). Why would I be eaten up with envy of those people? I am those people.

But where (& the rest of my tribe) part company from those arguing that the rich are in fact poor-ish, whilst poor simply lack motivation is this: we know how bloody lucky we are. Yes, lucky. And we pay our taxes, all our taxes, so people who cannot find work, or who are disabled, are not forced to work, free-at-the-point-of-use for their ‘employers’ instead of receiving support until they can find work that pays a wage.

Workfare is an abomination. It cuts the link between back-breaking/boring/dull work and the reward of the hard-earned pay packet at the end of the week. It is the worst sort of welfare; welfare for companies and therefore for the already-wealthy who are their shareholders. It make a mockery of this government’s stated political aim to shrink the state as it makes the state a recruitment agency for the private sector.

Ah, yes. The politics. Well, people on high incomes who feel poor are the Tories core target constituency, that’s true. And bashing the poor for the failings of the wider economy is as Tory as fox-hunting. It was ever thus. But this is what has changed: there was a time when Labour MPs would have spat in the face of the idea of workfare. And laughed at anyone advocating ‘help with the costs of the help’ for the rich. The Tories haven’t changed. But Labour sure as hell has.

I am Labour in my bones, my very DNA. I have stuck with it through thick, thin, the Michael Foot years, an illegal war, three consecutive election victories and endless bloody leafleting rounds. But enough.

‘Don’t leave’ some friends and family have said, ‘Stay and make it better’. But that’s just it: I haven’t left my party. I could never leave my party. It has left me.

AFTERTHOUGHT: A further note about the politics: why, exactly, does the PLP think that the same Secretary of State who will cheerily introduce retroactive legislation in order to duck the consequences of his own department’s failings, will honour in perpetuity any concessions the PLP have ‘won’? It’s quite an achievement to be both profoundly naive and horribly cynical over the same issue, but it seems to me they may just have managed it.

On being ill

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 15:19:48 -0400

I have, as followers of my nonsense on Twitter will already know, Been Ill, with first a sickness bug and now a dreadful cold/flu. Not seriously ill, not requiring a hospital stay or even a GP’s visit, but ill enough to need time off work and volunteering and to leave me feeling grimly frustrated and tearful at my inability to live my life without thinking about it for the last ten days.

Walking to the shops is exhausting. I can’t breathe properly, or sleep. I can’t concentrate. My throat is agony & I’ve come close to losing my voice. Last week…well, I’ll draw a tasteful veil over it, suffice to say I spent rather more time in the bathroom than usual, and not for reasons of vanity.

I am utterly sick and tired of being sick and tired. But I know I will get better.

This afternoon the thought struck me: what if I didn’t know when or if I was going to get better? What if I wasn’t even sure what was wrong with me, and my GP couldn’t tell me? What if, in short, I was in the same place as sufferers of conditions like ME, arthritis, or god forbid, cancer?

And then add to that the rhetoric coming from government about ‘scroungers’, the pressure and contempt from the DWP, the fear of losing one’s income and one’s home.

What if this wasn’t for 10 days, but potentially for ever? I have suffered from depression before and know what it’s like to not be able to see an end in sight: but at least I knew why.

The last ten days have been completely infuriating: and they have made me more appalled than ever by this government’s complete disregard for the long-term sick. So, when I do get better, I’ll confront their inhumanity with even more determination, on behalf of those who through no fault of their own, can’t muster the resources.

Now, can someone pass me the tissues? Thanks.

thirstygargoyle: bapesaurus: avoids eye contact I’m afraid...

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 12:31:08 -0400

thirstygargoyle:

bapesaurus:

*avoids eye contact*

I’m afraid it’s not just scientists who do this. Journalist-historians are as guilty…

No comment. None….

jothelibrarian: Pretty medieval manuscript of the day is a...

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 17:46:58 -0400

jothelibrarian:

Pretty medieval manuscript of the day is a sumptuous fifteenth century Italian manuscript. On these pages we see the annunciation, the nativity, a depiction of the madonna and child, and the adoration of the magi. There is so much going on here, and lots of sparkly gold and glorious blues. No mistaking it is Italian!

Image source: Creative Commons licensed by Saliko, via Wikimedia Commons.

Δώρια by Ezra Pound

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 15:26:42 -0500

Be in me as the eternal moods

of the bleak wind, and not

As transient things are -

gaiety of flowers.

Have me in the strong loneliness

of sunless cliffs

And of grey waters.

Let the gods speak softly of us

In days hereafter,

The shadowy flowers of Orcus

Remember thee.

johnthelutheran: brownpau: please put them in nature. *dies...

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 11:27:08 -0500

johnthelutheran:

brownpau:

please put them in nature.

*dies of cute*

shame /SHām/ Noun A painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong...

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 11:45:13 -0500

shame

/SHām/

Noun

A painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior.

Verb

(of a person, action, or situation) Make (someone) feel ashamed: “I shamed him into giving some away”.

Synonyms

noun. disgrace - dishonour - dishonor - ignominy - opprobriumverb. disgrace - abash - dishonour - dishonor

Shame is arguably an emotion without which, we are not fully human: to have lived without having felt shame is to be unaware of other people’s opinions & or in extremis, even the possibility of their existing. Humankind being as we are, only a extreme narcissist or an utter fool would think this possible or desirable.

Shame is the emotion which polices the boundaries of acceptable behaviour: Adam and Eve lived without shame until falling prey to the temptation to ignore the rules by which Eden was governed. In a post-theocentric world, the role played by God in this set-up is now filled (rightly or wrongly) by social institutions, most prominently the various branches of what used to be called the Establishment.

The government is looking at measures other than income to measure child poverty. These include, at present: drug/alcohol abuse in parents, worklessness, family stability, unmanageable debt, parental mental health diagnoses, and access to quality education. Measures of income, particularly relative measures are increasingly dismissed as ‘not telling the whole story’.

No-one in their right mind would argue that money tells the whole story of a child’s life chances: absent or indifferent parents, frequent changes in school, and poor role modeling can all have a deleterious effect, regardless of the wealth of a household. But just as more money can ameliorate those effects, having less will surely exacerbate them.

All the factors cited by the government in the person of Iain Duncan Smith will have socially-expressed effects on a child: whether it’s embarrassment at not having the right shoes on PE days & then being told off by a teacher for it, not feeling able to invite a friend round for a meal, being teased for being unwashed, feeling ashamed of Dad turning up reeking of drink on Sports’ Day- all these are things felt by the child. The responsibility lies foursquare with the adults: but the effects are visited upon the person least able to change their material circumstances.

One thing that truly shocked me on becoming a parent is just how strong a child’s desire to ‘fit in’ is, both with their family and with their peer group. There will always be the cheerful, charming eccentrics, gamboling like lambs in the face of others’ disapproval-I count several amongst my dearest friends-but relying on this to dismiss most people’s need to belong is misguided, at best. Children need to feel they belong: shame tells them they don’t.

Shame felt about an action or an attitude that can be redressed or changed is one thing: it has a social utility. But shame about something we cannot control is something else entirely. A child becomes ashamed not of something they have done, but of who they are. You don’t have to think very hard to see where this leads: a child ashamed of themselves is clearly less likely to speak up, to join in, to ask for help, to aspire to better, for fear of inviting further condemnation as being ‘wrong’. Better by far, to keep one’s head down.

This government has repeatedly, to its eternal discredit, encouraged the judging, the shaming, of those who are poor for no other reason than their poverty. Moreover, the contrasting tendency over the last 30-odd years has been to lionise the rich for no other reason than their wealth. It is not merely in terms of wealth that the top and the bottom have been falling out of touch.

The factors that are cited as being causes of poverty- alcohol abuse, mental health problems, poor literacy, poor life choices (read any tabloid if you want proof that these things are not the sole preserve of the poor) are primarily manifestations of existing poverty. It is very hard to make good choices when your horizons have been constrained since birth by a want of financial resources.

The government has made great play of its emotional literacy, its wanting to think outside of mere numbers in order to tackle the root causes of child poverty. Fine. Perhaps they might like to ask poor children about how often & how intensely they have felt ashamed of themselves, their families and their lives & use their answers as one of the DWP’s indicators. But I suspect for that to happen, the Cabinet might have to feel some shame themselves, a human gesture of which on the existing evidence, they seem utterly incapable.

childofaphrodite: jinglearoundtheclock: the lamp just sat...

Sun, 20 Jan 2013 16:24:15 -0500

childofaphrodite:

jinglearoundtheclock:

the lamp just sat there like an inanimate object

I will never not reblog this.