The conceptual Stasi which defends multiple Berlin Walls

 Berlin Wall, cultural dissonance, cultural DNA, cultural rub, immigration, in a hole, multiculturalism  No Responses »
Mar 092013
 

I just had this thought:

@goLookGoRead It’s almost as if the subject of immigration is a conceptual Stasi to keep multiple Berlin Walls on their feet.

This was as a result of these two preceding tweets on why politicians seem to love so very much the subject of immigration:

@goLookGoRead Yes. Indeed so. I truly begin to wonder if politicos love immigration ‘cos it mainly serves to prop up their blessed borders.

probably because we’re:

@goLookGoRead In a century when planet-wide borders begin to tumble …

Where might such thoughts finally lead us?  In a world where stateless electronic capital may wander wherever it chooses, untrammelled by focussed political adversity or public criticism of any sustained nature, it could be that immigration as a concept exists so powerfully in our societies not because it is pertinent but, rather, because our politicians find it useful.  I don’t mean in that flag-wrapping way I complained about a couple of posts back.  Instead, I mean as a tool to maintain borders that serve to conserve turfdoms of rather parochial power.  Without the “threat” of the European Union, “foreign” cultures or immigrations various to bring it to heel, surely civil society would go down the line of most pleasure and least resistance: as per cheap holidays, commerce and the freedom-loving instincts of people generally – at least where minimum means to hand exist – we would almost certainly end up following the global rich in their promiscuous relationship with homeland, birthplace and starting-point.

And then, pray tell me, where would that leave the aforementioned politicos of the relatively local?  Their prosaic command over ordinary people’s prejudices would leach out amongst the evermore porous walls of national definition – leach out of those once impervious One Nation dynamics we used to find anywhere and everywhere.

Having already lost the battle with worldly capital, they would proceed to lose all final control over absolutely everyone else.  Voters would become the tail that wagged the oh-so-aged actors of ancient political dogfight.

So why doesn’t it happen – or, at least, why doesn’t it happen more often?

Because this conceptual Stasi I mention above – all this industry around immigration (an industry which should really spend far more of its time operating with economic innovation) – simply serves to maintain all these tiny and considerable Berlin Walls of so very much benefit to all these parochial politicos.

Professionals whose very reason for being has slowly disintegrated with the passing of our century.

Even so – as all professionals must – they resist the passage of time.

So it is that immigration as a matter of great upheaval doesn’t mainly respond to the needs of ordinary voters but, far more importantly, to the needs of the political classes.  In particular, in order that they might maintain their ever-loosening holds over their charges.

Politicians of a certain kind need division.  And focussing our attention on, building an industry in favour of and against, the subject of inevitably destructive cultural dissonance, instead of teaching us new tricks in the broadening fields of sustainable economics, is clearly a distraction – if ever such a distraction existed – of the cruelly and inimitably ruthless.

To no avail, perhaps, if history is anything to go by.  The Berlin Wall collapsed – seemingly overnight.  And here, the same may happen with equal suddenness.

Just to repeat what I’ve already said over the past few days.  The problem is economics, not cultural.  Until we manage to sort out our economies, there is really no point in papering over multicultural cracks.

Especially if, by so doing, we end up reneging on so many human realities and rights.

When cracks appear in a bungalow built over porous land, you might want to pay a degree of attention.  Whatever you do, Polyfilla time it most certainly ain’t.

And focussing our attention on such idle matters of cultural dissonance is pretty much the political equivalent of Polyfilla.  Especially when the real issue to hand has absolutely nothing to do with immigration at all.

It’s official!!! The Tory Party comes out in favour of immigration (well, sort of)

 cultural dissonance, cultural DNA, cultural orientation, cultural rub, football, foreigners, Google, immigration, police, Raspberry Pi, Tories, unclassifiable  No Responses »
Jan 302013
 

We had this headline a couple of weeks back:

Tom Winsor says outsiders will ‘enrich’ the police service

By “outsiders” it seemed, at the time, that he meant those who were not primarily police officers.  In their wide-ranging efforts to de-professionalise our society – and at the same time rid the hold such evidence-based individuals apparently have over the same – it looked like this government was now setting its attack dogs on the police as they looked to apply to allegedly hidebound practice the synergy and synchronicity of other ways of seeing.  Just one more profession in a long line already under fire: lawyers, doctors, nurses, teachers … well, the list could be as long as you wanted it to be – as long as it didn’t include politicians themselves.

Today, however, we have a truly pleasing development.  The outsiders Tom Winsor was describing weren’t just other professions: they were – actually – people from abroad.  Yes!  It’s official!!!  The Tory Party comes out in favour of immigration:

Senior officers from overseas will be able to run police forces in England and Wales for the first time, under a government overhaul of recruitment.

Outsiders will be able to join forces as superintendents and recruits can be fast-tracked to inspectors.

Police Minister Damian Green said the service would benefit from a wider talent pool.

In favour indeed, as I say, of an immigration of the most blatant kind.  Right to the heart of the law and order of our state, no less.  Foreigners to be in charge of how we weave the very tapestry of the English and Welsh way of doing things.

Well, sort of anyway.

A couple of caveats, as always with this government.  First, no nasty European-types will be allowed to sully our oppressive instincts, as the Home Office only plans:

  • Opening up chief constable roles to senior officers from countries such as Canada, the US, Australia and New Zealand

We really wouldn’t want untrustworthy horsemeat-eating individuals anywhere near our command-and-control infrastructures, now would we?  Who, after all, could trust a Frenchie with our tasers, rubber bullets and CS gas?

Second, even now, even after all the above proposals have come to light, not quite all immigration is as welcome as it might be.  This, for example, also published today, on the government’s initially wizard wheeze to selfishly cream off entrepreneurial talent from other – perhaps less advantaged – countries where you might think such characters might be just as usefully needed:

Immigration rules intended to encourage entrepreneurs to settle in the UK are being abused and need to be tightened, a minister has said.

Immigration minister Mark Harper said a “meaningful assessment of the credibility” of immigrants claiming to be entrepreneurs would be introduced.

Fake businesses were being created and funds recycled to provide evidence of entrepreneurial activity, he said.

“Legitimate applicants” would not be deterred, he predicted.

Hmm.  Legitimate applicants I hear you say?

One occasion, in fact, where Cameron got it right.

So why is his government so all over the place on this surely self-evident issue?  Of course crossing frontiers and boundaries is good for the countries where this happens.  Of course the sparks that cultural dissonance generates lead to far more creative soups of productive activity.  Of course the good that globalisation can mean will only come out of exchanges of opinions and viewpoints amongst our evermore sclerotic specialisations.

What I really can’t understand, then, being as the Tories claim to be the party of those who wish to get on, is why they aren’t more consistently in favour of immigration as a grassroots process that benefits practically everyone who could participate in its primarily constructive embrace.

Which kind of football team would you really like?  Cherry-picking believers in obscenely buying in top-class players like our very own Manchester City?  Or youth-academy stalwarts investing in the long-term future of a Barcelona?

The kind of place, in fact, where foreigners are welcomed with open arms – and yet are also generously combined with carefully nurtured homegrown talent.

I know which I’d prefer.

The question is: does Cameron’s Tory Party?

In praise of migration (or where Ed Miliband’s getting it right and where he’s not)

 cultural dissonance, cultural DNA, cultural orientation, cultural rub, families, immigration, on a high  No Responses »
Jan 132013
 

Today I read, a little tardy I have to admit, Ed Miliband’s speech to the Fabians.  This is the bit which initially caught my eye:

[...] a young woman came up to me recently and told me she had decided to go to University in Holland because she said she couldn’t afford to do so in Britain.

Believe it or not, to a government minister her departure will seem a success because if more people leave the country it will help them meet their net migration target.

But it doesn’t feel like a success to me to have talented young people fleeing abroad.

Ed’s quite wrong in what he concludes, of course – as, indeed, is the young woman.  Let me explain.

I came out of university in 1983.  It was in the middle of Thatcher’s Britain: an awful time to be young and looking for work.  I lived at home with my parents for several years, trying to make my way as a short-story author.  I even went on training courses as I considered setting up a printing business.

But sometimes what the world wants of one isn’t exactly what one has become – but, rather, what one has been all along.

I was Oxford born and bred.

About as English as an Anglo-Croat could get.

So it was in 1986 that I met the Spanish woman who would later become my wife.  We exchanged letters for a year, whilst she was back in Spain, and then in 1987 I went over for a summer holiday.  By October of the same year, I was teaching English to the Spanish – without formal qualifications except, of course, the degree in Film & Literature I had acquired four years before.

My knowledge of English in England had done me no good at all.  Meanwhile, my knowledge of English in Spain had automatically found me employment.

The truth of the matter is that crossing frontiers always adds value.  The truth of the matter is that this is why so many people fear immigrants so much.  Immigrants have so much to offer that it’s hardly surprising the value-subtracting natives amongst us should wish to run campaigns to kick them out.

History is now repeating itself.  My eldest son, currently studying Mandarin on his year out in China, is achieving the kind of brilliant marks and results his first two years in the British university system were unable to get out of him.  Opportunities have showered down upon him – the world is his wok, it would seem – and his considerable and manifest joy at learning in a country where they really know the language and how to teach it just makes me realise that by encouraging him to go and study first in England, we – his parents, who thought we knew better – wasted two of his most precious years.

Now it is that my second son is looking to study abroad too.  Anywhere, he says, but Britain itself.

Sad, you may think.  And maybe you’re right.  But equally, maybe you’re not.

So how should we interpret this pattern?  As the young woman in Ed’s anecdote does?  Escaping the confines of a country which cannot pay for her education?

As an example of fleeing a homeland we should not ever care to leave?

I don’t think so.  And this is where the current One Nation rhetoric fails to hit as completely home as it must: yes, as a clever way of re-conceptualising traditional British socialism – the NHS, Legal Aid, free education, subsidised social and disability care – it’s certainly making waves and will begin to powerfully resonate soon enough.  But in subliminally suggesting that we have everything we need on this parochial island, if only we manage to make friends again and learn how to value each other sufficiently, Miliband is ignoring the reality I have already outlined above in this post: fleeing the shores of one’s homeland to make one’s way elsewhere is precisely the best way for an individual to improve their chances of getting on.

It may, of course, not be exactly what monolithic political parties are looking to message their way into our subconsciousnesses – but the truth of the matter is that sensible British socialism has always managed to take account of the needs of restless individuals.

One Nation Labour should do no less.

Before it’s too late, Ed, please do sort out this contradiction: migration is one of the glories of modern human existence.  And funding not the right but the opportunity to experience it would be one of the very best things a globalised economy could agree on.

If, that is, it was up to agreeing on anything sensible any more.

Culture Shock (or how a certain kind of immigration is invading our shores)

 cultural dissonance, cultural DNA, cultural rub, England, English, ideas, immigration, neoliberalism, shock and awe, Spain, Spanish, unclassifiable, USA  No Responses »
Sep 132012
 

My two youngest children, seventeen and fourteen now, are becoming more and more Spanish as they get older.  They miss the ways and wherefores of social integration: the ways people address you and assume your reality.  I had believed life in Britain would’ve become easier as time passed.  But this has most definitely not been the case.

Without wishing to sound too dramatic, they are verging on a state of walking wounded.  They do laugh and enjoy their lives, of course.  I’m not saying they do not.  But Britain – perhaps that’s just England – is such a repetitively insistent society.  Variety is the spice of life – but not in the England we know.

I wonder if this state of walking wounded I speak of isn’t being shared more widely by those who would consider themselves natives.  In the past, we lived our lives in a relatively comfortable environment: our leaders were like us more or less; we were like them; people didn’t fake too much; prejudices were shared.

Now, we find ourselves attacked on two sides simultaneously.

Firstly, from within, and since phonehacking, the Leveson inquiry and now the day-old Hillsborough revelations, it is clear that in what we thought was a representative democracy, the only people truly represented have been the already rich and wealthy.  The police have been found guilty of using their tools against innocent citizens; the tabloids, in particular those belonging to Murdoch’s empire, seem clearly in the thrall of making money over uncovering the truth; and the judiciary and establishment in general have allowed themselves to be distracted by power and status to such an extent that digging deeper was clearer not a goal.  As this by-the-by sign-off from one of the Guardian pieces linked to above indicates, and in relation to Thatcher’s own reign and preoccupations around the terrible events of Hillsborough:

While there was no direct evidence that Thatcher or the cabinet was complicit in a cover-up, it is revealed that the primary concern of the government at the time was the impact of the disaster on its proposed football spectators bills.

The second disorientation I can see, an external one this time, and which is also creating a legion of confused and shocked citizens, comes from the US – a country whose cultural content has to date, quite rightly, entranced and engaged us.  Here, we find that foreign ideas, mostly foreign to our own special form of English socialism, are beginning to take over and invade our very sense of Englishness.  This disorientation leads to feelings of shame and guilt; of anger and fear; of all kinds of uncertainties around not change as such – but bad change as per Cameron and his ideologues.

Is it possible, then, that just as my daughter and son become evermore Spanish in their instincts, growing up as they are into adulthood, and even as they find themselves in permanent and intimate contact with English society, so native-born English people – whatever their ethnicity – are discovering that the invasion of immigrants from distant and different countries which is most affecting their sense of wellbeing happens to be an immigration of ideas more than people?

That is to say, is it only that my children are growing towards their Spanishness and away from their perception of Englishness – or is Englishness for everyone in general growing away from what we might argue it has every right to remain?

And if the latter, is this a case where we can all agree that immigration is undeniably wrong?  An imposition by the already globally powerful with the aim of organising a society which clearly does not belong to them.

Ways of organisation which manifestly benefit them even as such ideas serve to prejudice the rest of us poor souls.

Yes.  Perhaps this is the final stage of globalisation.  Where ideas underpin the future of money over the future of flesh-and-blood human beings.

Migration and me: a personal story

 cultural dissonance, cultural DNA, cultural orientation, cultural rub, immigration, Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, unclassifiable  No Responses »
Jun 222012
 

I only applied to one university in 1980.  I only applied for one course of study.  I couldn’t see myself lasting out any other of the offerings at the time.  I made a mistake filling out my application form and missed out General Studies.  I was made an offer at Warwick University to study Film and Literature on the basis of the results I was expected to get in the other three subjects I studied at A-level – one of which was, unusually, the challenging subject of Mathematics.

My Mathematics teacher was off for ten weeks with a stroke that year.  He refused to take early retirement; the school neglected to contract a replacement.  My grasp of Maths had never been very good; I clearly should’ve taken English Literature, but parental pressure took me down the scientific route.  The omens were therefore not very good.

And so it was that I was offered a place at Warwick University to study Film and Literature on the basis of A-levels in Engineering Science, Economics and Mathematics.

If I remember rightly, there were around twenty places on offer and perhaps a hundred or two applicants.

There weren’t too many film studies courses around at the time in the UK.

In the end, I failed my Maths A-level – I got another O-level instead – but Warwick very kindly let me in because of my General Studies, where I achieved an A grade.  I wasn’t a brilliant student; I had problems with my study methods.  But I did get a 2(i) at the end of it.

It was 1983.

Margaret Thatcher was holding sway quite despite her disastrous economic policies.  Unemployment was rife.

I wanted to be a writer.

I spent three years living with my parents, writing stories and sending them off.  And getting them returned, often by return of post.  I used a real typewriter at the time; later an Amstrad computer with a WordStar clone.  But the rejections didn’t stop taking place.

By the time I was twenty-four, I felt pretty unhappy.  Then I met a Spanish woman at a birthday party – in Salford, of all places.  She invited me over to Spain in the summer of 1987, after a year of having exchanged letters.  This was way before email was available for the majority of the population.  Perhaps way before email was available for anyone.

In Spain I found myself at home.  I added value to Spanish society.  I was a university-educated English speaker who quickly learnt how to popularly teach the English language to the Spanish.  This would never have been possible in my own country.

Wherever on earth that might have been for an Oxford-born half-Croatian with a sixteenth part Spanish Jew, an atheist English father and a dyed-in-the-wool Catholic-practising anti-Communist mother.

I added value precisely because I crossed those frontiers.  I already added value (just wasn’t aware I did) before I went to Spain – precisely because of the mix of cultures I represented.

I escaped Thatcher’s Britain because in such an environment I believed I was worthless.  I felt that what I represented wasn’t needed by the cost-reducing instincts of a Darwinian capitalism in full pursuit of that deep-pocket-enriching bottom line.

But the Spanish – far more clearly – did need me.

For twelve years.

Then my boss – a man I considered a dear friend and even a kind of partner (perhaps that was my mistake) – broke certain understandings into painful and destructive shards.  I lost a lot more of my family’s money than I had a right to.  Finally, I lost my mind in an awful crisis of confidence.  This has affected me ever since as I struggle and battle to regain the right to become a businessperson again.

Business – good business – involves crossing those frontiers I mentioned above.  Cultural rub, cultural dissonance – these are terms that I have used on these pages before to describe the manifestly creative aspects of promoting difference; of promoting our respect for such difference; of promoting its power and ability to devise new futures.

There is nothing more exciting than to find oneself a fish out of water – yet able, somehow, to survive.  That change which takes place – and which takes one aback – as sea creatures morph into amphibious beings suddenly able to engineer brand new ways of living.

So after that crisis of confidence – which, in a sense, was my fault entirely; my fault as I failed to properly understand the ins and outs of a culture still foreign to me – I retreated back to the country I was born in.  It was a messy retreat for which I felt a great deal of guilt during a long time afterwards.  Indirectly, if that is at all the right adverb in the context of the verb which comes next, I wrenched my wife and three children out of their home environment – and forced them to study and work as migrants in a country I had never, myself, known how to completely call my own.

For that was the funniest thing: I, also, felt myself a migrant.  A migrant as I returned to my “own” country; a migrant as foreign as they felt.

Blair’s Britain, its five-a-day exhortations, its ASBOs, its LEA letters threatening us with fines if we allowed the children to stay off school … all this did most definitely not seem the green and pleasant land of my childhood, of my Ladybird books, of my graded readers, of my primary education.  Milkmen still existed; but not for long.  I think even two postal deliveries still existed; but, if they did, not for long.  School milk had long disappeared; meanwhile, Microsoft and Dell ruled the education establishments in their shiny and salesperson-driven realities.

The open source software I had stumbled across in Spain was a century – and a world – away from the country I should surely have felt formed a close and intimate part of me.

Even as I didn’t.

So how can one feel a migrant in one’s country of birth?  How is this possible?  Are some of us natural migrants?  Do some of us belong naturally to all countries and none?

What is this strange feeling I have of being a migrant wherever I go?

And will I ever, now, manage to fit in?

Or will I forever be condemned to a state of foolishly square peg in that deceptively round hole – that round hole which belongs to men and women who only believe in people who believe in fitting in?

*

So it was that I studied Film and Literature; taught English for twelve years to the Spanish; had a crisis of confidence; studied to be a publisher; had a second, far worse, crisis of confidence; and then found myself working for seven dispiriting and soulless years in a back-office operation in a bank (even as I rightly fought to make up to my family the mistakes I had committed a decade before).

And where am I now?  What am I now?  A migrant in the country I was born in.  A man who can call Spain his adopted home; Croatia his distant love; and England his resilient oppressor.  England an oppressor?  It both drove me mad during the Iraq War and then, via the NHS, put me back together.  It both educated my three Spanish children and taught them the value of their rather more perfectly formed identities.  It both gave work back to my wife and taught me I was capable of going so far as to damage my body on humble data-inputting production lines – out of love for a family I treasured above everything else.

It also showed me how cruel and ingrained the class system still is in this country – this country which proclaims itself a bastion of opportunity.

Oh yes.  I understand what it is to be an immigrant.  Because, from the day I was born, I never belonged anywhere.

Even as I knew, in my heart and soul, I had the right to belong everywhere.

Creative tension and politics – does Labour still not get it?

 Coalition, creativity, cultural dissonance, cultural rub, Labour, Lib Dems, LibDemVoice.org, multiculturalism, politics, the future, the past, Tories, unclassifiable  1 Response »
Mar 042012
 

I’ve been pointing out recently how top-down traditional politics isn’t the only way into democracy – nor, even, can it now fairly represent the splintering nature of our society.  You can find these pieces here, here and here.

I then read a short piece from Lib Dem Voice, highlighting a recent article in New Statesman.  One line in particular from the Lib Dem Voice post caught my attention (the bold is mine):

Yet the Lib Dem / Conservative Coalition is exerting quite the opposite effect on Labour:
The Labour benches generally feel frozen with caution. The two Eds, Miliband and Balls, advance the party line in increments and then invite the party to toe it without a fraction of deviation. As a result, anything anyone in Labour says that might be decoded as new or interesting causes a sensation, which only reinforces the leadership’s fear of saying anything – or allowing underlings to say anything – egregious*.

Ironically, therefore, it’s the governing parties which feel free to explore new ideas through the creative tension of Coalition. In contrast, HM’s Official Opposition has become scared of its own shadow.

Creative rub and cultural dissonance have always been the two grandest virtues of multicultural and multilingual societies.  Is it possible, then, that what we have here in this case is a Labour Party which – in its dynamics of discourse – is heavily anchored in a former “One Nation Britain” approach to politicking, whilst it’s the Coalition government, forced as it is – quite despite its individual party political instincts – into the cauldron of creative tension, that is actually acting out the theory behind modern multicultural and multilingual groupings?

The results, of course, are never going to be guaranteed.  That they preach multicultural and act out mono-cultural is always going to be a possibility.  So I’m not saying the policies themselves that come out of such a process are properly reflecting the dynamics in play.

But if Labour wants to be a radical party and yet also expects us to believe in the past (its ways of seeing and doing, its dynamics of decision-making and implementation) in order to achieve such radicalism, how can it possibly square such conceptual circles and convince us that any of these contradictions are actually going to make any sense? 

That is to say, how can you possibly sell the idea of a content of multiplicity and diversity if the process for arriving at and sustaining such conclusions is so very very one-dimensional?

Wasn’t honest disagreement always a hallmark of the left?

And are we now saying the right have also stolen, from under our very political noses, even this badge of dialectic courage?

The leaf anti-Europeans should take out of the pro-lifers’ book

 anti-Europe, cultural dissonance, cultural rub, Europe, European Parliament, in a hole, multiculturalism, plurality, pro-Europe, pro-life  5 Responses »
Dec 092011
 

Being pro-European is like being pro-life – who could possibly be against it?  The devil, of course, is in the detail of implementation.

That’s the bind we’re in.  And whether we know a lot about the subject from a technical point of view or not (I don’t), we all feel we have the right to express an opinion on the matter because that’s what being part of a democracy is all about.  Even if, in reality, we don’t know what we’re talking about.

Now perceptions is a different matter.  And there we can express ourselves.  Most of us here in England would I imagine perceive the European Union as an overgrown bureaucracy which serves itself instead of the people.  And so – as with pro-lifers – those who declare themselves pro-Europeans back everyone into a corner: you either agree with this version of Europe or you declaim yourself against any version of Europe.  In which case, logically speaking, you must be against the very ideal of the Continent itself.

I’m not much of a fan of the self-styled anti-Europeans but I do think they should take a definite leaf out of the pro-lifers’ book – and begin to describe themselves as real pro-Europeans where this implies a full recognition of the importance of diversity over homogeneity and plurality over corporatism.  It might lead to analogous distortions, I know.  On the other hand, nothing good ever really came out of being against something.

Nor ever will. 

There is, of course, one tiny little problem.  If those very same anti-Europeans, who I suggest might cleverly restyle themselves pro- instead of anti-, are actually in the pockets of the City’s wheelers and dealers (that is to say, they have given up the principles of parliamentary sovereignty for capitalist cronyism), who is there actually left on the political horizon able to put forward a different point of view from the two that currently do battle on our bankrupt stages of foolhardy reasoning?

Anyone care to take up the mantle of this true Europeanism I talk about?

Or have we all – at some unhappy stage or another – been finally bought off and ultimately silenced?

The English language in just ten minutes – only it’s actually eleven minutes thirty

 civic nationalism, cultural dissonance, cultural DNA, cultural rub, EDL, English, English language, exclusion, nationalism, on a high  2 Responses »
Nov 252011
 

So do the extra ninety seconds refer us entirely to the impact the Internet has lately had on our beloved beast?

Anyhow, the brilliant video below – which came my way via Paul – tells it just as it is.  And if – before I saw this today – I felt I was a figurative mongrel without constant identity, you can imagine exactly how I felt afterwards.  Any EDL supporters out there looking to create an excluding English nationalism?  Well, please make the time to watch what’s coming up now – and then try and buck the undeniable facts!  England, at least historically, at least linguistically, even if not now politically, means the richness of cultural rub; the richness of cultural dissonance; the richness of cultural DNA.  And there’s absolutely nothing you can do to get away from it.  Absolutely nothing at all.

Quite fortunately, I should add.  Just in case I wasn’t making myself very clear.


http://youtu.be/gSYwPTUKvdw

Verbal abuse – with words and in their absence

 blogging, cultural dissonance, cultural rub, in a hole, multiculturalism, verbal abuse  No Responses »
Sep 252011
 

This article came my way today on the subject of verbal abuse:

Verbal abuse is a form of battery that involves the use of words, rather than blows and punches. In a verbally abusive situation, words are used to attack, control, and inflict harm on another person. Verbally abusive behavior goes far beyond mean behavior; it involves inflicting psychological violence on another person, attacking the very nature of an individual’s being and attempting to destroy his or her spirit. Verbal abuse can affect people of all ages and in all types of relationships. However, it is especially prevalent in marital relationships.

I wonder if we could add to that latter example – marital relationships – a considerable proportion of the blogging that takes place these days (if, that is, we might stretch the meaning of “verbal” to that of “written word”).  And perhaps even widen this to political reporting across the wider non-mainstream and mainstream media.  Reputations are continually being made on the back of unpleasant things people say and point out about each other.  Debate is not always couched in terms of the real issues to hand but, rather, in terms of how by raising a particular matter most damage might be made to another’s reputation.

The similarities are striking.

Perhaps the more vigorous bloggers and commenters amongst us are, in some way, sons and daughters of verbal abusers.  On the other hand, as in all these questions, one may deliberately choose the route of making a conscious effort not to do to others as one has been done.

In any case, I would argue that verbal abuse not only occurs in the presence of words but also in their overwhelming absence.  The silence of implicit and disowned disapproval can damage a person just as dramatically as the noise of a more clearly owned oppression.

And in multicultural contexts, where disagreement is often alleged to take place as a result of cultural dissonance, silence can be just as damaging – even when not intentional.

http://youtu.be/I6Y0HAjLKYI

Is nicknaming someone owning them or befriending them?

 cultural orientation, cultural rub, nicknames, Spanish, unclassifiable  3 Responses »
Sep 042011
 

I hardly ever use nicknames – unless, that is, the individual in question seems to like their nickname better than their real name.

In fact, if truth be told, I rarely use names at all – my memory for names and faces is pretty poor and, used as I was whilst a teacher in Spain to being greeted out of the blue by ex-students from five years previous, I simply gave up on remembering the blessed things: far preferring to practise that professional teacher’s smile which readily comes to one in such circumstances.

And I’ve always felt at a disadvantage in this kind of face-and-name blindness of mine.  In the corporation I used to work for I saw people who exhibited a brilliant ability to remember such details rise to the very top echelons.  It seems that success is assured when your first impression lasts – and the words that pop out of your mouth manage to be so effusively personal and warm.

But names are one thing – so what about nicknames?  My wife’s family, for example, has a long history in nicknaming their nearest and dearest.  A couple of examples to give you an idea: first, you had “Los Bacalaos” – next-door neighbours who’d sun themselves religiously on the balcony most afternoons where the weather permitted.  Bacalao is Spanish for cod – and the nickname I believe came from the Faroe Islands’ tradition of laying out cod to dry in salt.

Another neighbour, meanwhile, is called the “Sobrasada” – sobrasada being a very greasy and fatty kind of spread and filling for pastries.

I shan’t go into the details of why this name might have been considered appropriate for the individual it describes.

But more than the details or examples themselves, I find myself interested by the cultural differences.  I don’t really see or notice the habit of nicknaming people here in Britain – it doesn’t really happen, does it?  Meanwhile, at the drop of a hat, my wife is more than likely – without malice of any kind – to describe someone as “El Gafitas” (Glasses Guy would be the most exact translation I guess) when wishing to draw my attention to someone.

Or when simply predicting who might win the next round in a reality TV show of some kind or another.

It’s this casual redescribing of someone – even when their real name is known – that makes me wonder, when we do such things, whether it’s a question of possessing someone or making someone closer.  That is to say, is it a question of owning someone or – instead – curiously befriending someone?  By imposing a nickname on someone – or even something – are we, in fact, serving to distance them from their own reality or, actually, bringing them closer to our own?

And is this truly a Spanish/Mediterranean/non-Northern European tendency – or am I simply oblivious to it when it occurs in my own language?

More on the debate over at Munguin’s Republic

 Blogger, blogging, comments form, cultural DNA, cultural orientation, cultural rub, Munguins Republic, unclassifiable, writing, www.BestOfTheRest.org  No Responses »
Aug 252011
 

Monty, over at Munguin’s Republic, posted the following not long ago on the subject of the cultural identity project BestOfTheRest.org:

tris / Mil..

Has this idea not been tried before and watered down the strength of individual blogs ? A sort of ‘Huffington Post’ type scenario where lots of writers eventually nuance into a blob of boring contemporary left wing ideology. Rather than having quirky blogs you get a left wing , tree hugging , righteous website.
There are probably hundreds of good writers on Huffington Post but I’d never find out as they sound too precious for me so I wouldn’t visit. The owner eventually sold out to big business I think. Once money is involved that’s usually what happens.
I may have got your plan wrong though.

My response, which Blogger didn’t allow me to post in the comments box (probably needs a better editor than I clearly am to go properly to town on it!), runs as follows:

@Monty – group blog isn’t exactly the word I’m looking for. Group curation. Maybe what Bob does at brockley.blogspot.com, with a different focus and different mission (as well as shorter), when he writes an overview or catch-up in terms of what others are writing on their own blogs.

I’m really looking for people who can tease a common theme or two – say for example “Tory disarray on SNP’s plans for ‘x’” – not because the writer of the overview that is published on BestOfTheRest.org wants to write about it, but rather because other non-mainstream writers who continue to write on their own blogs and blogging platforms are currently writing about it, and we want to publicise more widely their contribution to democratic discourse.

We would have our own ideology and mission, but even so the people-curated and written overviews (not the group blogs) which would be the substance of BOTR’s content (made up of links to, quotes from and extensions of the content other writers would be writing) would *follow* always what the original posters (who would continue to post on their own blogs and blogging platforms) decided were the agendas of the day.

It’s a group curation of other people’s content rather than a group blog: the difference compared to Google News or webs like the News Portal is that we don’t use algorithms to create the mix of content but rather our own knowledge of what the grassroots around us is saying *off-mainstream-media-land*.

I’m looking for bloggers or editor-curators who like writing in the original tradition of logging the web of its best material, as well as being able to add pertinent and quirky comment to tie all the links together.

So four things to keep in mind:

1) have an ideology and mission behind BOTR which defines readership and reasons to read/support/subscribe

2) identify sharp non-mainstream writing out there in the four areas/nations I mentioned which continues to operate as is *on its own blogging platforms and places*

3) choose, link to and comment on such writing in easily consumible overviews so that over time our ideology and mission is sustained (we follow but also shape)

4) build up a faithful readership willing to consume the overviews we produce via open web – as well as Kindle, KindleApps on other devices, and other future means of generating income

The role of BOTR – with this kind of structure – would not be to bring together everyone on the same blogging platform – yes, that *would* dilute individuality and has failure designed into it. Rather, it’s to use BOTR as a launching-pad for good writing, which our overviews will make visible on such writing’s *own terms*, and draw people’s attention to on a daily basis with the objectives, ideology and mission I suggest.

There are hundreds of “objective” news portals out there which simply recycle the agendas, headlines and stories of standard media as well as stuff from the blogosphere – in Labour land, there’s a portal called Labour2 I think, which from a technical point of view does this very effectively. But with BOTR I’m looking to add real value to mathematics by implicating people in the search, description and defining of the purpose of the project – do, if you like, what Facebook has done for search (make it human again, in people’s hands), instead of rely so heavily on simply drawing together relatively random content.

As far as selling out to big business is concerned, I’m a big fan of charging for adding value to services rather than content. That’s an open source philosophy – we’d charge for Kindle distribution because portability, readability and legibility are highly enhanced, not because of the content we’d produce itself wasn’t to be available on the open web. If you set up a grassroots editorial proposal, it has to stay with the grassroots. I’m looking to earn a living here as a writer and – in particular – editor, as well as improve democratic discourse and its attachment to the people it should serve. The purpose is not to set up an empire to be sold on. Any business structure required in the future would make this clear – I’d be happy to involve cooperative structures for example as a way of guaranteeing sustainability and trust.

I’ve also mentioned monetisation for writers we’d link to and comment about – micro-payment systems do exist and I think this is an avenue to be explored. If the site was only open web and no income was generated, then it would be unreasonable. But if ads and subscription generated income, it would only be fair to contemplate.

Finally, support for new writers from an editorial point of view, as with editors of old, would I think be a value we could add, especially in the context of political writing.

So all things which need to be discussed – but first, agreement and support for the original proposal needs to be gauged and understood.

Does that make anything clearer or just muddy the waters and frighten people off?

BestOfTheRest.org: a call for editors, content curators and non-mainstream authors to participate in a new editorial project on cultural identity

 blogging, cultural DNA, cultural orientation, cultural rub, editing, ideology, Kindle, monetisation, Munguins Republic, on a high, publishing, RSS, websites, writing, www.BestOfTheRest.org  2 Responses »
Aug 242011
 

Tris has kindly posted an article of mine, with fearsome photo included, over at Munguin’s Republic tonight.  This post is in relation to a call for editors, content curators and non-mainstream authors for the project BestOfTheRest.org.  If you have any online comments on the subject, I’d be grateful if in the first instance you might make them over at the Republic itself.  Below, you can find an even longer version (as is my unfortunate wont!) of these proposals, with further background to the ideas which are driving it.

____________________
Introduction

Tris has kindly offered me the opportunity to post a piece here at Munguin’s Republic on an editorial project called BestOfTheRest.org, which I’m working on at the moment.

Most of you will have never heard of me, so if you want to find out more you can go to 21stCenturyFix.org, which is where I blog.  In particular, this post which tris kindly and productively engaged with, and which relates to this initial post on the subject of BestOfTheRest.org itself.
In short, I’ve been a language teacher in Spain, a volunteer for a while on an open source site, a discreet blogger for longer than I care to remember – as well as, lately, working in a back-office operation in a bank, a job from which I now find myself redundant.  I’m also a trained editor, having studied publishing in Spain whilst I lived there.
Proposal

The editorial project I’ve mentioned is looking to use simple web technologies and Kindle/KindleApp/tablet and other devices in general in order to generate interest in the sharpest non-mainstream media writing which is currently produced in England, Scotland, Wales and, if possible, the two Irelands.  In order to do so, I am looking for people in each geographical area to take on the responsibility of curating the writing in their area, and producing short (maximum 300 to 900-word) engaging and quirky daily overviews which pull together, link to and quote from non-mainstream authors.  This content would then be distributed via an open website with comments facility as well as a single RSS feed, to Kindle and KindleApps to begin with, but hopefully other pay-for-subscription systems in the future.

Any income so generated would be split between the editor/curators.  Meanwhile, the project is open to the idea of micro-payments to authors who are linked to and quoted from, and who in any case would benefit from increased visibility and be supported with an author-specific intranet/website containing editorial guidance and input.  This intranet would also contain information on how to monetise content using parallel channels, for those authors interested in such options.

It’s a new untested market, so it’s probably quite a tall order – but, even so, the start-up costs are pretty small, so “all” we would be spending (often not negligible, mind) is our own free time.

As an example, and in order to test the technologies, I’m currently trialling distributing my own blog via Kindle here and here.  If you have a Kindle, you can subscribe to a 14-day trial subscription to see how it works.  After the 14 days, if you decide to continue it costs £1.99 a month for blogs which post multiple times a day.
Ideology

Now every decent editorial project should have an ideology behind it.  In my opinion, the ideology of this project will depend in part on who finally participates – but, initially, into the mix, the two axes I would be looking to focus on are:
  1. traditional party political formations
  2. the identities which make up England, Scotland, Wales and the two Irelands
It’s having at least two axes that really interests me, precisely because you end up adding the most value to thought by crossing frontiers on a regular basis (a very short post of mine and its related comments from tris highlight this advantage in its very absence here).
My only personal contact with nationalisms of any kind, in the absence of a positive example of English nationalism, is with what happened in Croatia at the time of its independence.  This was a desperate situation which may have required desperate measures, and some of the things done in the name of Croatia were as unhappy as very many done in the name of the ex-Yugoslavia.  So I understand the reticence many people have to nationalisms and nationalist parties.  What they neglect, of course, here in the UK, to notice is that the established political parties in the UK, one of which I am a paid-up member, also form part of a clearly identifiable appeal to the “greater nationalist” sentiments of Great Britain.  
We should not forget that New Labour’s slogan was “New Labour, New Britain”.
So if I am inclined to prescribe the ideology of BestOfTheRest.org – apart from serving to make visible new writing and ideas – then it would be something along the lines of the following: “Cultural dissonance, that frontier between identities and ways of doing, where channelled constructively, is where all progress lies.  If we want to progress in remaking our politics for the benefit of all identities, we need to be clear of the importance of understanding that all political DNA is connected; ideas which may attract or repulse have a historical set of links which tie them together.  That is what we must remember – and act accordingly.”
The Spanish have a saying pertinent to the argument: “Hablando se entiende la gente” (“By speaking we understand people”).  From my little contact with Munguin’s Republic and its team of editors/writers and commenters, it’s easy to see that the blog demonstrates the value of such positions, as well as such editorial approaches.
BestOfTheRest.org can only hope to be equally editorially coherent.

Conclusion

In the meantime, the request for help and support is now out there.  From around England, Scotland, Wales and the two Irelands, we need the sharpest writing, sharpest writers and sharpest editors from non-mainstream media to want to collaborate in this proposal and shape its future.  
Finally, apologies for the extension of this piece – all I can say in my favour is that I did run it past tris prior to its appearing on the web.  Any comments online are most welcome, whatever their nature.  And any comments you’d like to send me offline, please do me the favour of emailing to mil@bestoftherest.org, and if possible CC-ing tris into the conversation.

But I need multiculturalism because I am multicultural

 cultural DNA, cultural orientation, cultural rub, in a hole, multiculturalism, on a high, sexual orientation, Stumbling and Mumbling  No Responses »
Feb 072011
 

Over at Frank Owen’s Paintbrush – which came my way via Stumbling and Mumbling today – the following argument was made:

Labour should uphold policies aimed at reducing cultural divisions rather than exacerbate them through crude state-sponsored multiculturalism – seen in policies such as propagating faith schools and trying to protect religious beliefs from criticism (yes, conveniently enough for this secularist my solution demands consistency through widespread secularisation!).

I’m afraid, whilst my upbringing leads me to find it possible to empathise with this point of view – dyed-in-the-wool Eastern European Catholic mother on the one hand, atheist and scientifically trained father on the other (conflict enough sometimes for one to positively desire the peace of bland similarity) – as an answer to the challenge of whether multiculturalism is worth defending or not, it really isn’t good enough.

For there are existences out there which demand of us all a supportively multicultural approach to making society.  And so I would respectfully argue that a melting-pot of differences, as proposed by the author of the above post, is, in any case, the perfect way to lose out on the creative virtues which the gentle dissonance of cultural rub (achieved through true tolerance and respect) should be able to bring to modern nation states.  Eliminating cultural DNA through, for example, a creeping process of secularisation is, I might be inclined to suggest, a process akin to burning down Amazonian forests.  The landscape becomes very similar and very familiar – safe perhaps and much easier to navigate – but we simply are not in a position to assess exactly what we are rejecting.

Take my case for example.  Born, as I was, in a quintessentially English town, a tiny part Spanish Jew (interestingly enough, a piece of information often mentioned in family reunions), although mainly Anglo-Croatian lapsed Catholic, I find myself married to a realistically Catholic Spanish woman with whom I have taken the very deliberate decision to assign our children Spanish nationality.  Whilst we are grateful for the opportunity to live, work and study in Britain, and whilst I indeed am also British, at no time have we wished our children to lose their sense of that other national or cultural pride, lose their sense of that other perception of being.  They do, in fact, have a first Spanish name, a second Croatian name, and two separate (not double-barrelled) surnames – as befits their Spanish heritage: one from their father, the other from their mother.

Then again, I myself often feel perhaps overly proud of my Croatian legacy in a world where such behaviours and attitudes are sometimes considered, maybe quite rightly (in the light of the recent history of that part of the world), to be dangerous.  So I can understand the fears that multiculturalism generates – even as I feel that it would be more useful to see multiculturalism as a description of an undeniable reality than as a crude tool to an unintentionally but inevitably divisive end.

Frank Owen’s Paintbrush concludes with the following:

Demands for women’s rights, gay rights, secular laws, religious freedoms. These are all marks of human progress and all have originated from the left.

We must not surrender this language to the bigots of the EDL. We must not let our Conservative opponents pretend to do a better job of standing up for these demands. We must not compromise our values for fear of upsetting reactionary Muslim religionists.

Whilst over at Stumbling and Mumbling we get this:

Cameron’s “practical” proposals here – “making sure that immigrants speak the language of their new home and ensuring that people are educated in the elements of a common culture and curriculum” – don’t seem good enough. As Mehdi Hasan says, high-profile terrorists have been fluent English speakers. And some research suggests that Muslims who are well integrated – educated, economically successful and living in mixed areas – are more likely to strongly identify with their religion than less educated ones.

So we can see that underlying all of this criticism of the supposed failures of multiculturalism there is circulating an unspoken agreement that religion is going to be a necessarily bad thing and its absence is going to be necessarily good.  And then I suppose, by extension, all the other forms of differentness which we can identify: flags, political identity, emotional connections with cultural legacies of all kinds, linguistic traits … well, the list is as endless as we care to make it.

All I can say, in answer to such criticism, is what I said earlier – multiculturalism serves both as a description of a state in which people like myself find ourselves, a state which simply is and cannot be denied however much some of us might wish to, as well as that means which Stumbling and Mumbling argues David Cameron simply hasn’t managed to get a handle on.

Meanwhile, all I can underline and draw your attention to is that I need multiculturalism because I am multicultural.

And listen up: if you are not multicultural – or don’t care to be so – don’t deny my right to be. 

You wouldn’t accuse a gay or lesbian of choosing their sexual orientation.  Why then do you wish to accuse me of choosing my cultural orientation?  Why do you wish to make me change my being?  Why are you beginning to convince me I can eliminate everything that makes up my cultural DNA?

Why this obsession with sameness – and where will it end?

Is it not fair – in such a context – to argue we have heard all this before, in far less salubrious circumstances, and with far more disagreeable consequences?

Think about it carefully before you answer and decide.

Then try and appreciate how significant the continued recognition of difference may be in actually sustaining and protecting our ability to anticipate and channel change – as well as serving to defend us from the future dangers of a cosy familiarity.

On cultural rub: "I’m not taking ownership of that!"

 corporate speak, corporations, cultural rub, taking ownership, unclassifiable  No Responses »
Oct 022010
 

As regular readers of this blog will probably realise, I’m fascinated by crossover and cultural rub.  Where two different ways of seeing encounter each other, a constructive sparking of ideas can result.

If, that is, they remain two different ways of seeing.  But what do we think if one overwhelms the other?  Who loses out?  The former or the latter?

If I had to be frank, I’d say both.

We live in an age where common sense dictates that massive corporate habits are taking over our high streets and our low life  (more here).  Ed Miliband alluded to this in his most populist register at Conference the other day:

We must be on the side of communities who want to save their local post office, not be the people trying to close it.

We must be on the side of people trying to protect their high street from looking like every other high street, not the people who say that’s just the forces of progress.

And we must be on the side of those who are dismayed by the undermining of the local pub with cut-price alcohol from supermarkets.

We must shed old thinking and stand up for those who believe there is more to life than the bottom line.

We stand for these things not because we are social conservatives but because we believe in community, belonging and solidarity.

That is to say, one way of seeing and doing is destroying another way of seeing and doing – instead of productively and symbiotically feeding off each other.

Today I have yet one more example of this.  For a number of years my workplace has been attempting to make the processing environment – which I work in – more stretching and intellectually demanding.  Not the processes themselves, mind.  Here the tendency has been to simplify and protect evermore fiercely the company’s intellectual property, contacts and business in general from those who might be tempted to do more than simply leave when they move on.  In times of rising levels of worker dissatisfaction, such temptations are never too far away.

Thus it is that such processes have been chopped up into smaller and smaller pieces – leading to rising levels of worker boredom as the tasks themselves become easier to carry out and more repetitive.

So in order to deal with this boredom, a whole paraphernalia of evidence collection and regular line manager meetings has grown up around the work that such humble personnel as myself carry out.  This paraphernalia substitutes a truly interesting set of tasks with a meta-process of observation all sides claim to find engaging.  And in such ways we begin to acquire all kinds of meta-vocabularies to describe these almost parasitical ventures in human resources – the kind of corporate speak any of you who work in large companies will be most familiar with:

Business speak, also management speak refers to a particular syntax often used in large organizations. The tone is associated with managers of large corporations, business management consultants, and occasionally government. The term is typically derogatory, implying the use of long, complicated, or obscure words, abbreviations, or acronyms. Some of these words may be new inventions, designed purely to fit the specialized meaning of a situation. Frequently management speak is used to “spin” negative situations as positive situations.

The one that reared its ugly head today, though, and I’m awfully ashamed to say that this was whilst talking to my daughter, was the verbal phrase “to take ownership”.

My daughter loves playing football on a Saturday morning, once she is on the pitch.  But every Saturday morning it’s a battle to get her out of bed, and every Saturday morning she says she doesn’t want to play any more.  To my chagrin, this morning I simply snapped and heard myself say: “If you don’t want to play any more, then you can tell the trainer yourself.  I’m not taking ownership of something like that!”

What’s more, at the age of twelve, she didn’t bat an eyelid.  What really knocked me sideways is that she already knew what the phrase meant. 

As I said at the beginning, I’m all for crossover and cultural rub.  But not when it leads to absorption and takeover.

Which I suspect, in the light of my own social weakness and lack of effective Chinese walls between work and home life, coupled with my daughter’s clearly broad understanding of office buzzwords, is already happening.

Let us be clear – in our politics as well as in our lives more generally – on this particular and singular point: where we can choose a conversational register, we must choose to do so.  Where we can’t – that is to say, where we are obliged to either win or lose – then let us be gracious and inclusive when we win and let us be without rancour when we lose.

And if it is not possible to understand another at any point in time, let us strive not to overwhelm this other in their strangeness – for this strangeness to that other is also ours, and our future ability to survive, our future political DNA, may depend on our being able to perpetuate a true cultural rub.

Corporations aim to take over the world.  That is their mission – and fair enough.  But they should not be allowed to for one very good reason – and those who should most desire to stop them should be their very own shareholders.

In the long run, us all becoming like each other will limit markets not expand them, will reduce opportunities not deepen them, will make us more vulnerable not stronger, will lead us to the past not the future.

And I wonder if anyone will realise in time what we will all end up losing when we finally shrug off so gladly all vestiges of true cultural rub.