In Search of a Global Britain

January, 2017. The Tory Prime Minister stands in Lancaster House behind a podium bearing the words ‘A Global Britain’, and announced plans for the UK to leave the European Single market. She spoke of an outward looking nation that will not tolerate free movement of people. Watching the speech, it is hard not to be reminded of Orwell…the Ministry of Peace that starts wars…the ‘Global Britain’ that closes it’s doors to its 28 closest neighbours. This has all been pretty dismaying for the younger generations,who are more global than their predecessors by nature (there’s a great YouGov poll which backs this up- click here). It’s easy to feel pessimistic about Britain’s, and our own, future.

But don’t despair too much. Yes, the older generations (and a minority of young voters) have shafted 48% of us into rolling in the drawbridge, but the castle is still ours to inherit.The old king may be sitting smugly in his throne and waxing lyrical about regaining control, but he will pop his nostalgic clogs soon. And the heirs of this kingdom are indeed outward thinking, hungry for global business, and tech savvy enough to make it happen. Let’s have a look at some of the Generation Y businesses that are surpassing borders and achieving things that the lumbering giants of old industry cannot.

Why? Because Millenials are working differently to the generations before them, and therefore have different priorities. As Andrea Durkin writes “Millennials are ambitious, but they define success differently from older generations, who tend to value security and vertical growth in an organization. They are socially connected but don’t want to be tethered to large companies.” Studies support this, the generation that watched their parents lose jobs in the recession are more likely to start their own business.

Business owners, by nature, benefit from free trade agreements with other nations. The revolution of the internet gives startups a global reach. They also benefit from skilled immigrant workers. Therefore these entrepreneurial youths are  indeed outward looking, and not hindered by the fear of European power that draws in nationalists in droves. Public attitudes often appear to swing on a pendulum. One decade is austere, the next liberal. President Obama gets elected, President Trump follows. It is to be expected. Therefore, I predict that post Brexit disaster Britain will see the rise of internationalism as Generation Y take power and those pesky Daily Mail reading middle ages descend into geriatric irrelevance. Just give it a decade.

‘A Global Britain’, May said today when outlining her Hard Brexit approach. No doubt, the next few years will see frustratingly unnecessary loss of British access to the single market, cuts of EU funding, a drain of skilled workers away from the UK, economic turbulence and inevitable emigration of businesses and jobs away from Britain. The younger, ‘start up’ generation will certainly feel the effects. It is the final act of violence from the miserly old king clinging on to power. And it will give our generation exactly the fuel we need to take the crown, and create a new definition of what Britain is, and it’s place in the world.

Collateral Damage

‘Click to read more’ has been a much more frequent sight on the Facebook posts of my friends, mostly students and artists. The past few weeks have seen ideologies rise in sectors long dormant. Pacifism is back, but only, it seems, on social media. I am talking, of course, about the Syria debate, which feels uncomfortably raw. I certainly don’t remember many other occasions in which the question ‘To bomb or not to bomb’ has been so bluntly laid out to the public. It is a question our generation is not comfortable with. A surprising amount of people have swung towards vehement pacifism, at least on my News Feed. Others (most commonly those with limited intellect) think that we should obliterate the entire country, just to be on the safe side. (Sadly that is not an exaggeration, but an actual quote…ignorance is violence, it seems.)

But before we go on, I’d like to clarify that this is a post on the UK’s response to Syria, particularly with regards to the younger, pacifist-ish generation. I am not arguing particularly one way or the other re. the bombings, and it would be to miss the point to read the article in that way.

The Fear Method

A lot of people just feel like we can’t  ignore Daesh anymore, surely it is time for action. The Paris Massacre is largely responsible for this. Before Paris, ISIS (or whatever they are called this week) was a concerning bubble, but easily written off as just another middle eastern turmoil. It’s funny what happens to people’s sense of empathy when the fight is in their back garden. The Government and Media have jumped on this recent attack in ways that they have not done previously, the Scare-Mongering Machine in overdrive. Now don’t get me wrong- ISIS are scary. Mass murders in town centres are scary. But it is concerning to me the way the government has manipulated this fear into a war thirsty state, with David Cameron giving speeches not unlike the ‘2 minutes hate’ in Orwell’s 1984. Basically, population control, performed by reducing logical, civilised humans to blood thirsty animals.The tool to complete this operation? Fear. A good article on this was written by a Robert Higgs for http://www.independent.org, entitled ‘Fear: The Foundation of Government’s Power’. In his article, Higgs makes the point that without fear, no government would last 24 hours, let alone 4 years.Think about it, and really a lot of human motivation is down to fear. Don’t abolish Trident, we will all die. Don’t even vote Left in fact, or our money will do the disappear-y thing again that obviously was everything to do with Labour and nothing to do with American Sub Prime Mortgage bonds entirely out of the control of the British Voter (If the topic happens to interest you, check out this post). No, Freedom is a luxury for those who don’t live in fear, and as Politicians and the Press love to remind us, these are dangerous times.

The Pacifists and The Country At War

So now the Fear weapon has been deployed on the public. Only, for some reason, only half of them are convinced that bombing is the answer. Surely that’s the whole point of the hate frenzy, just like in Orwell’s book. It stops people stopping and asking “But will this actually help?”. But this is exactly what many people are asking. And to me, it feels like the potential beginnings of something. Something like, a new way of solving problems. Whatever it is, somewhere, in our lives of Western comfort, of imagined morals, we have lost our appetite for war. ‘Give £3 for Syrian refugees this Christmas’ reads a sign on the tube. Meanwhile the newspaper reports of bombs heading straight for Syria. People are confused and in the blur something very important is happening. People are asking whether bombing a country solves problems or creates them. And that is a brilliant question to ask (and one to be expected for a generation that grew up under Bush/Blair).

So Who’s The Baddie?

People are very simple. It seems that most people are happy with the idea of killing ISIS militants, the villains and terrorists that they remember killed people at a gig in Paris. From there it gets more complicated. Some people (again, remember what I said about limited intelligence here) are happy to kill foreigners or muslims or whoever looks a bit different and doesn’t support West Ham, and therefore have no problem with the possibility of civilian casualties in Syria. But a lot of people do have a problem with that. A big one. A lot of people are struggling to stand behind a government authorising bombings when there is that uncertainty.And this group is what interests me.

The Uncomfortable Question

With the question ‘To bomb or not to bomb?’ came a responsibility, even if it was our government, not us, who voted. As soon as this debate became public, responsibility became public. I am curious to what extent the pacifists will stand by their peace time ideals. Whether they will push back against the war bringers even further.ISIS are brutes, we know that. The public are comfortable with that knowledge. But the new generation, the ones that have been denouncing the Iraq War for years, don’t see themselves as the type to start bombing somewhere. Even if it’s the right thing to do, not that I’m saying it is.

The National Loss

Ultimately, whether the bombing campaign is successful in depleting Daesh, whether there are civilian casualties, whether the bombs radicalise more moderates, it is our generation, the ones who don’t quite agree, that will have to live with that. To sit and watch it. And in that, we have our great collateral damage. The loss of a generation’s belief that it could do no harm.

“Since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.”
—Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, 1513

On Autumn, and Growing Older

Growing older is an unquestionably sad enterprise. Like the leaf on the tree, we admire our blossoming beauty as we mature. We marvel at the artistry as we see ourselves, and our peers grow yellow, brown, and red. How spectacular, how perfectly inevitable it is when the leaves are blown off in a winter wind. For conscious creatures such as ourselves, with our rich and seemingly eternal inner lives, this cycle can be difficult to weather.

Each of us burst through the unlikely soils of this Earth, sprung leaves of optimistic green and shot for sunlight. Those taller than us, those whose dark leaves shaded our own, remarked at our ability to thrive. To grow. We ourselves were not sure what kind of tree, or plant, or flower we would even be. We just grew, exceeding all expectations with every passing day.

Now we all reach an age when we are mature, when we are as green as we can be. As big as we will be. As tall as we can grow. At this stage comes a difficult realisation. I am what I am. I am what I have always been becoming, and what I always would be. No longer can I delay the moment of assessment with the excuse that I am still growing up. And what am I? Am I what I wanted to be? When plants grow, they seldom follow a strict path, they just shoot upwards. And don’t all of us? Wander forwards until we reach such a point as to stop, and take a look around?

For me, this moment was the moment it truly resonated with me that we have no control over our lives. And before you argue, think about it. Our decisions are made by our brains, which were made by our parents and then molded by experience. That experience is created by the world around us, which is full of randomly colliding figures all operating on just as formulaic a set of impulses.

Without the blinding effect of youth and optimism, it becomes clear that if our current state is inevitable, the rich maturity  of summer, then inevitable too is the brittle darkness of winter. And at this stage it seems difficult to see a point in the whole swirling dance.

Share your thoughts below.

N

Why Music Is More Than Background Noise

A writer I have great respect for once wrote Music “has two uses..to drown out people eating and drinking noisily”, and “a decent numbing effect on the mood…After all, it is not easy to think properly when you have someone chanting and wailing in your ear.”

Most people I would say, disagree with this outlook on the whole. A lot of people have a favourite band or song that ‘means something’ to them. Sentimentality, you could say, is music’s saving grace. Sentiment, or fanaticism, is what sells T-Shirts, Arena Tours, and ill devised come-back albums. It is this same emotional tie that causes people to have lyrics tattooed on their skin, and posters of people they have never met on their wall. So some people feel music significant to them. It gives them identity, a voice for feelings they could not themselves express. However, this isn’t the sole reason why music is a valuable Art form.

When it comes to emotions and music, the connections are well established and well manipulated. Want to feel upbeat? Four to the floor. Want to wind down? Something featuring an acoustic Guitar. Want to ‘forget about tomorrow’? There are a thousand factory made dance tracks to make you feel that way.

So if a cynical song-writing team can make you feel empowered, or heart-broken, like a cheap novel or a throw-away Rom Com, does music really have any lasting Artistic value? Is it really just ‘background noise’?

I recently attended a casting call, the brief being that they were hoping to find the next Mega-Stars of Pop-Rock. And it got me thinking. If a Record Label put together a band of people who have never met, and give them songs written by a team of people guessing what the general public want them to sing about, and they dress how the label think they should dress, then this defeats the whole point. Allow me to explain what I mean; Art, in my opinion, whether that be literature or sculptures or cave paintings, is a two pronged thing. The one side is the message or emotional content. The other key ingredient is the historical authenticity.

Jane Austen didn’t write about 19^th Century Society because a publisher thought it would be a good idea. She did it because that is the world in which she lived. The same can be said for any truly great Artist. Zora Neale Hurston, a hugely influential writer of the Harlem Renaissance, once said- “I have the nerve to walk my own way, however hard, in my search for reality, rather than climb upon the rattling wagon of wishful illusions.”

The rattling wagon of wishful illusions is a nice way of describing the music industry. If everything currently being played on the radio is what labels think we want to hear, what they have had written and found people with pretty faces to sing, then we are not getting art of true value. I would argue that music is valuable so long as it is created in the spirit of authenticity. That way, it gives us a historical, contextual gem, a glimpse into what someone, somewhere, truly thought and said. Nirvana were not a great band because they were made up of perfect instrumentalists, or because they wore fashionable clothes. They were a great band because at the time, they encapsulated exactly what it meant to be a teenager, to be an outcast, living in a bleak town in America. We can listen to their music today and know in a little bit more detail what life was like for people at that time. The same is true for most musicians, Bob Dylan, Sam Cooke, Billie Holiday, all the way up to bands like Radiohead.

Understandably, the ‘Meghan Trainor’ style of music can perceived to have little value other than as a meaningless background noise. However, it is worth remembering that it is the lowest form of it’s art, it is what Fifty Shades is to Literature. But authentic music, music that sums up a way of life, has the power to change the world. Just look at the birth of the teenager with Rock n Roll. The Punk Movement. Protest songs during the Vietnam war. Perhaps, then, I agree with the notion that a lot of music is ‘background noise’, but rather than covering our ears to the whole art form, we should be searching for a sound that has meaning. For those sounds give us a rich cultural history akin to that of the fields of Literature, Fine Art, or Drama, and it would be wrong to under-estimate the importance of that.

The Journey To Atheism: Lucretius, Nietzsche, and the Modern Atheists.

According to studies, the world as it stands today is 2.01% Atheist, and a further 16% Non-Religious. The only places in which the majority of people are non-religious are in East Asia, such as China. In the Western world, we see ourselves as progressive, forward thinking- but an American survey showed that Atheists are the least trusted of any minority. So, in a world that distrusts people who make decisions based on evidence and fact, let’s have a look at the development of Atheism in Europe through the centuries.

As early as 50 B.C Lucretius of Rome was writing philosophical poetry which introduced the Romans to an Epicurean ideology. Although Lucretius does not deny the existence of the Gods, he wrote that “Nature does all things spontaneously, by herself, without the meddling of the gods.” Lucretius believed that fear of divine power over our lives was the root of human misery, and wrote to eliminate the belief that the Gods were omnipotent. I use the example of Lucretius because he was an early voice that delivered a remarkably similar message to that of Richard Dawkins, or Sam Harris. Summed up by Lucretius himself- “O Science, lift aloud your voice that stills The pulse of fear”. This is the message that regardless of personal faith, scientific thought is one unifying advocate of logic and reason.

The next figure in this very selective summary is Nietzsche. I choose the 19th Century German philosopher because, with the Roman Lucretius we established an ideology of reason and science, but did not address the issue of morals. So if humans without interventionist Gods can be free from fear, what happens when it is boldly proclaimed “God is Dead.”? Nietzsche pondered a world after the ‘death’ of God, i.e a world in which fear of Godly repercussions is no longer a moral compass. He described nihilism in ‘Will To Power’, believing that a nihilistic crisis was looming- “What I relate is the history of the next two centuries. I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently: the advent of nihilism. . . . For some time now our whole European culture has been moving as toward a catastrophe, with a tortured tension that is growing from decade to decade: restlessly, violently, headlong, like a river that wants to reach the end.”

So if Nietzsche predicted the fall of widespread faith over a hundred years ago, where does that leave us today? Still religious, if the statistics I sited earlier are to be believed. Let’s narrow that down and focus on the UK. An assimilation of studies taken by bodies such as YouGov suggests that 30-40% of British citizens do not believe in a God. So this is around double the Global figure of 18%. In the UK at least, there is a sense that we have made a gradual shift away from our label as a Christian country, so much so that when David Cameron stated earlier this year that Britain should “be more confident about our status as a Christian country”(The Church Times), 50 authors, broadcasters, comedians and other prominent figures signed their names to a Daily Telegraph article claiming that Britain is in fact a largely “non-religious society”.

Modern Atheists such as Richard Dawkins are treating the existence of a God as they would any scientific hypothesis. The dichotomy of a society educated in the ideas of Darwin that still wears the intellectual shackles of religion is our norm in the Western world, a blind faith no longer enforced but now unthinkingly followed. The New Atheist movement, spearheaded by intellectuals Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and David Dennet, states that “religion should not simply be tolerated but should be countered, criticized, and exposed by rational argument wherever its influence arises”(The Rise of the New Atheists). We have reached a point on the journey away from theism. Comedian Bill Maher uses the term ‘Intellectual Slaveholders’ to define religious leaders, and it is highly appropriate. The journey to Atheism is increasingly focussed on equality, whether it be women’s rights or gay marriage, and an unbiased education for all. Now who can argue with that?

Perhaps the answer to religions resiliance lies in man’s fear of their own impermanence. In other words, people want to believe in the afterlife. I’ll leave you with a segment of Lucretius’ On The Nature Of Things, which sums it up beautifully-

   Moreover, within the hollows of the earth,
When from one quarter the wind builds up, lunges,
Muscles the deep caves with its headstrong power,
The earth leans hard where the force of wind has pressed it;
Then above ground, the higher the house is built,
The nearer it rises to the sky, the worse
Will it lean that way and jut out perilously,
The beams wrenched loose and hanging ready to fall.
And to think, men can’t believe that for this world
Some time of death and ruin lies in wait,
Yet they see so great a mass of earth collapse!

You can join the debate in the comments section below.

On the Ramifications of Conventional Wisdom, UKIP, and Mark Twain.

For the past few years, I have felt increasingly distant from that vacillating mass that politicians and journalists call ‘the general public’. Public opinion (another intangible yet firm notion in news reports-where do they get their statistics?), has been swaying slowly but surely into more right wing territory ever since the Labour government* plonked us firmly in the worst financial pothole since World War II. If history is to be observed, then it is not surprising that in times of economic downturn politics becomes much more polarised, from Roosevelts far reaching democratic policies in the US after Wall Street to the rise of the Nazi Party following the German depression of the 1920s. Extreme politics are what people want to hear when they feel helpless, and poor, and unemployed. This however, is a dangerous tonic.

Let’s return to the UK. We see ourselves as a moderate country, a welfare state with a confident control in foreign affairs. And most Britons were happy with this. Until it appeared to ‘stop working’, and the news was filled with nightly graphs depicting how poor we all were. Now we all know that this is because the profligate Labour government were practically giving benefits away*, and they left the nation with a crippling deficit.*

Then there were the Conservatives, whose austerity measures have been successful, but who want to get rid of the NHS.* Meanwhile UKIP have skyrocketed in support because UK pays £55 Million pounds a day to the EU* and in return all we get are leagues of unregulated immigrants stealing British jobs*.

Notice anything? *This is all conventional wisdom. These are the viewpoints presented daily in the media, which the average British citizen absorbs, they are facts in our national consciousness. We are all barraged with sensationalist newspaper headlines that we may never research or look into enough to discover the truth. So when I ask someone why they think Scotland gaining independence would have been a good idea, they will confidently babble about Westminster’s death grip on Scotland, because that is ‘public opinion’. They are much less garrulous when it is pointed out that Scotland elects it’s own MPs for Westminster and that numerous British Prime Ministers have been Scottish. How’s that for English supremacy?

So let’s right some wrongs. Here goes the demystifying…

1) Only 70 pence of every £100 given out as benefits is fraudulent.

2) The Labour government of Blair/Brown actually kept spending at a record low, 14/15 in the EU at the time. As for the deficit, until the global crash in 2007, “national debt levels were lower than when Labour took office”

3) The Privatisation of the NHS! Horror! Or is it? In fact privatisation has been shown to economise, meaning that things get done more efficiently and therefore spending is reduced. It could also be argued that it is in the spirit of Capitalism as it gives independent companies contracts rather than clinging on to a large centralised system. Meanwhile, the poor are still given free healthcare, unlike the the myth that we will adopt a USA style healthcare system.

4) The EU. While UKIP claimed £55 million a day was our ‘membership fee’, in fact when all is counted (rebates etc) the figure for 2013 was £24 million a day. That’s half the widely publicised figure and just goes to show how quickly misleading statistics become ‘fact’.

5) Immigration is a subject 77% Britons will say is a negative thing for our economy. However, government reports show “little evidence in the literature of a statistically significant impact from EU migration on native employment outcomes”- ie, they don’t take British jobs. A CEBR study suggests that tighter controls on EU immigration could cost the UK £60bn by 2050. Including illegal immigrants, figures on costs vary so dramatically that differing camps suggest we may either lose £3.8bn a year or gain £5.6bn per year if all immigration were halted.

So there you have it. I don’t claim to be an expert, but I do actually research before voicing my opinion (notice how think comes before speak in the blog title). I think we all need to acknowledge how much conventional wisdom we have adopted without ever researching the topic fully. A person who does not read has no advantage over someone who can’t read, to paraphrase Mark Twain. Reading, researching, and being sceptical means that come election time you will not be swayed by fear-mongering political rhetoric. Until next time folks, keep reading.

Under the Bonnet: Notes on A Cultural Conundrum.

This post is the first of many to begin questioning our culture. This blog will certainly get to other cultures along the way, but let’s start with ours.

I was topping up the engine coolant in my car yesterday. This is a task, as any sensible driver will know, which must be undertaken fairly regularly along with the other maintenance. Most drivers have to have a look under the bonnet once a month at least. So why, in the middle of southern English suburbia, supposedly one of the best educated regions on the planet, did a man call out to me these two words- “I’m impressed.”?

It is worth noting here that I am a woman. The man in question was middle aged and white, and drove an estate car that looked a bit like a hearse. “I get that a lot.” I replied, because, sadly, I really do. In fact I am yet to complete the simple task of topping up my levels under the bonnet without a middle aged white man having this conversation with me (interestingly they do always fit that description). This man is always comfortably middle class, with a family and a semi in a classy suburban neighbourhood. He looks like he might have an office job, and he walks with an understated swagger that says- “If a fuse goes in my house, I will fix that while the women flutter helplessly.”

At this point this man surpassed all of my previous estimates of his intelligence levels and said, “It’s not often you see a woman with her head under the bonnet.” It was at this point that I realised we are living with a cultural conundrum, one that has been politely patted on the back and asked to sit back down one too many times. Theorist Cheris Kramarae once said “Feminism is the radical notion that women are human beings”, and she made a very good point. If we live in a society in which an educated, well to do Family man believes it “impressive” for a woman to pour some engine coolant into her bonnet, then we do not yet live in an equal society.

It was at this point that I reminded this man, “We do have brains you know.” Interestingly, he looked mortified and walked away without another word. Perhaps he was expecting me to giggle and ask him if I was doing it properly, I’m not really sure. Either way this is where the true conundrum lies. We live in a culture which in part, finds it dissonant to see a woman undertake ‘men’s jobs’. But this culture also knows that it cannot be seen as sexist, and does not even view itself that way.

Shortly after my unfortunate conversation with my neighbour, he left the house accompanied by a wife and young daughter. He clearly doted on both, and as they walked down the street they became just another suburban family. I stayed with my car for a few more minutes and pondered what I had seen in my brief excursion behind the net curtains, into the true prejudices of this strangers mind. I wondered if his daughter, when she grows up, will be a mechanic. It didn’t take long. How could she be, with a father so subtly, so inoffensively biased that she may never question it, that she may not even see it, as I don’t believe he did. She may wonder why the idea of being an mechanic never appealed to her, and assume that she was just born disliking cars, while her husband checks her oil levels.

I called this an elephant in the room but it is more worrying that that. This is the problem that cannot be seen for it is behind closed doors. It hides in the back of peoples subconscious, an entity hard to control. It seeps through our culture and into our core. We are living inside this conundrum whilst remaining unmoved by it. Well I’m starting now. Speaking out. Why? Because I want to live in an equal society. Because I want future generations to be free from prejudice and discrimination based on genitalia.

And also, because I want to be able to check under my bonnet without talking to my neighbours.

On Blogs, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Education.

Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn once wrote that “Intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.” This is a notion that has stayed with me since I first stumbled upon that quote a few years ago. It is now one of my core beliefs that education is the answer to a whole host of the world’s problems. Studies consistently state that increased time spent in education reduces the probability that person will commit a crime.

For most adults, however, ‘education’ in a formal sense will not be part of their lives once they remove their mortarboard and buckle down to the 9-5. This is why I am starting this blog. Because I think that thinking, and opening up a discussion about topics is something too many people are lacking. Why is it the cultural norm to vegetate in front of the television, to discuss with vigor the latest drama on ‘TOWIE’, yet debating current affairs is almost a taboo?

This blog will be a soapbox, as it were, a space for thought, ideas, and explorations. Thanks for reading.