Dropped into Elephant on my way home from town today and got me a 1st edition, 'The Soft Machine' William Burroughs, nice one. Talking to a friend in there I mentioned I'm reading 'Bury My heart at Wounded Knee' Dee Brown, which is a Native American version of America's history and pretty horrific as it turns out. He recommended a book about the spice trade as another disgraceful chapter in our history.

I tried to remember what my high school history lessons had actually contained, certainly nothing as grimly interesting as the various subjects being discussed here. Walking home it occurred to me however, that despite formal education and a narrow viewed media, we were still having that conversation. The stories are there, you just have to find them.

While the criticisms levelled at societies various institutions and traditions may be justified, namely that they've become dominated by a single, intolerant worldview, we have to take some responsibility. If you're reading this you've got internet access, you could go to a search engine right now and discover something amazing. Just going to check your emails and turn it off? Me too.

The thing is that knowledge really does change things. You don't even necessarily have to do anything with it, maybe pass it about a bit. Politics ride's the tides of public opinion, if you read something interesting and mention it in conversation it can get around, suddenly it becomes that elusive, 'word on the street' that politicians are apparently struggling to 'connect' with.

Another thing of course, is that knowledge is not necessarily fun. The world outside TV and the papers is not prepared for our consumption in the same way and some of it can leave an unpleasant taste. It comes down to a choice really. No single person can possibly know everything so we're all ignorant, it's just a question of by how much.

So, will London get the 2012 Olympics? Do you care? I'm no great fan of actually sitting down an watching athletics but it's part of something perhaps more important than it first appears. Sport may well be, in fact, the secret of world peace.

My support for the London bid is grudging however, since Manchester were told that the UK bid would only ever be a London bid, despite doing a fine job of hosting the Commonwealth Games. Now don't get me wrong, I have as much distaste for the west side of the Pennines as any other self respecting Yorkshireman, but at least their Northern. Anyway, why should a thoroughly lazy person such as myself be writing about the deeply valuable elements of sport? Well let’s start by talking about AIDS.

Catching the end of ‘Living With AIDS’ (1) I saw a christian preacher counselling African schoolchildren against using condoms. The late pope was described as a great peacemaker and leader of men, but the fact is that this policy, which he enforced, is costing millions of lives. Now this is an issue that deserves posts of its own, but the element relevant is here the specific reason why a policy of abstinence cannot halt the spread of an STD.

People have sex, especially bored young people. Nothing and nobody has ever managed to stop this happening en mass, it is, after all, what we are made to do. Even if you believe that such desires are animal and should be restrained, surely no-one can realistically think that the instinct to procreate can ever be entirely overridden by anything else.

The fact is that while our animal instincts, fucking and fighting basically, are certainly not all that we are, but they are quite definitely part of us and cannot be denied. Now some christians may dream of a world where people only have sex in order to bare children into a stable marriage, but unmarried people are not going to stop having sex. Ensuring that they do so in a safe way has to be the main priority because it stops people dying.

Now some people may dream of a world where nobody uses violence thanks to a truly stable society, but people are not going to stop fighting. Violence is also a fundamental part of us and so because warfare is clearly unacceptable for humanity because so many people die, another, safer role must be found for violence.

War, quite obviously, is the shittiest of all things and yet that is not to say that it contains no positive qualities, rather that it‘s negative qualities cast a shadow altogether too long and black. It is true that standing armies are killing machines, that’s what they do. Anyone who is part of that machine is helping to kill people.

This said however, the professional discipline, physical fitness, technical skill and dedicated bravery of those in the armed forces cannot be denied.(2) A world without war could be a beautiful place, but would the lose of these high standards of ability obtained through war be too high a price to pay?

Sport, it turns out, contains most the positive elements of war but, handily, comes without the death toll. While it fosters similar strengths in the sportsmen themselves, sport also supplies much wider needs. Besides, or perhaps because of, our instincts, tribal identity and pride are also unavoidably important to us. By following teams and players, the public can find a sense of belonging that is always necessary but never more so than in our current social climate of isolated consumption and deadened spirits.

So it might be a bit much effort, and it make take up lots of time on TV, like fucking Wimbledon currently, but sport may in fact be a way for us to stop killing one another. Of course a football and a shuttlecock are not going bring about world peace overnight, but the fewer excuses for allowing war to be in the world the better.

Underlying this rambling, and seemingly impractical observation, is something maybe a little more useful: There’s an idea that if we pretend the world is a certain way, act like it is, then it will be, that if we hold people to ideals they’ll become ideal people. Fact is that the world isn’t perfect, and neither it nor its people ever will be, fighting this brings only suffering. Accepting people as people is the only way to be able to respond to their needs and thereby get the best out of them.

footnotes

(1) Another great documentary from that guy, his refugee piece was amazing too.

(2) Two things carve up responsibility to leave the armed forces with a smaller share for warfare than political leaders:
they only act under orders that come from a government (supposedly) representative of the people,
they risk their lives because they believe it’s the right thing to do, have to respect that,

It's been over a year now since I left my job to become a full time bum, sorry, writer and, recently anyway, this blog is all I seem to be able to write. Sitting about me are the first third of a novel, a tenth of a philosophy collection, several articles and short stories along with various collections of notes describing potential future projects. Lots to be done and yet the words refuse to come.

I'd had the basic idea ages ago but it wasn't until I found a particular book in my favourite second hand bookshop, ELEPHANT BOOKS, LEEDS, (GO THERE! BUY STUFF!) that the whole thing fell together. I would REALLY appreciate any comments or criticisms people have:

Unfortunately I've had to remove this story from the site for copyright reasons, basically someone wants to publish it so I have to give them exclusivity. Hope those who read it for free liked it, the rest of you can catch it in paperback

Saturday's Guardian ran a piece about the leader of a radical animal rights group, in particular about how he stood by past comments calling other activists to use arson as a protest. Now I must admit that in the various reported confrontations between protestors and biolabs, my gut reaction is usually to side with scruffs over suits. This said however, I really can't get on board with any kind of violent protest.

Of course it's very easy, and equally dull, to talk about some higher path of righteousness achieved through pacifism but a far more compelling argument can be found by considering the practicalities. The fact is that we do live in a form of democracy and if you want to affect any major change to society, you need the people behind you, even if it's just for a while.

Without popular support a cause is neutered to become forever a minority special interest group. The progression to violent forms of protest may seem justified, even necessary to those who care deeply about an issue, but it is invariably self defeating. Acting dangerously in the name of an idea serves only to make the public see the idea itself as dangerous, cf. Islam post 09/11/01.

Those who say, 'no! the public are complicit, we few who truly understand must make the change ourselves!' are doomed to disappointment and are ultimately excusing themselves from the far more difficult struggle of actually changing things by connecting with people. Violence alienates the very support they need to achieve their goals.

Animal rights must surely fall under broadly under the wider banner of environmentalism, a cause which has also inspired violent protest in its time. Although the great efforts of some in this field, (much as I love puns that wasn't one,) have brought about significant positive changes across the globe, the lack of sufficiently broad, passionate support suffered by animal rights groups is a symptom suffered by environmentalism as a whole.

There has been, it seems, a fundamental flaw in the environmentalism movements' approach though it is one for which they cannot really be blamed. The problem lies in how we all view our relationship with the natural world around us and though it is not religious in of itself, it appears to stem originally from organised religions.

Environmentalists have tended to present the earth, or the animals upon it, as victims and asked people to come to their aid. Contrary to our earliest religions, we now have the idea that we are somehow separate from nature, masters of all we survey. We pretend that the planet and its animals are at our mercy, that we are the invulnerable overlords who may or may not deign to intervene.

My dad told me a joke the other day about god, it was something like this:

Mankind finally discovers how to create life from the earth, just as god produced Adam.
The scientist calls up to the heavens, 'you see god, we don't need you anymore, we can create life from the earth just as you did.'
God replies, 'show me.'
The scientist grins and reaches down to scoop up a handful of soil.
God interrupts, 'no, no, no, you make your own dirt!'

Replacing God with his cultural predecessor, mother nature, demonstrates the arrogance or naivety of the environmental approach described above. You are part of the planet's ecosystem, no matter how many shampoo ads tell you you're worth it, you're still just a cog in the big leafy machine. Saving the planet is not a noble act of charity but desperate act of self preservation.

Of course the temptation here is to scaremonger with predictions of impending disaster, but this falls down in just the same way as violence. Despite various cultural indications to the contrary, the general public is not stupid. Most people agree that the planet's important, that we need it, and in the UK we donate more money to donkey sanctuaries than children's charities(1) so we certainly like our animals.

There is a vein of good feeling waiting to be tapped into but it can only be reached in the right way. People respond to wit, irony and most of all humour. If the Father's for Justice lot had just climbed big stuff in their ordinary clothes they would have received far less tolerance or press attention.

Community protest groups fight passionately against wind farms or asylum seeker detention centres because they see them as a cosmetic and physical threats respectively. If the image of animal rights could be redrawn so that testing centres were seen as a threat to our system of values then far more could be achieved with far less effort and no need for violence. In order to do this though, our place in the world must be thoroughly redefined. If we are to see ourselves as sharing the planet as opposed to ruling it, then we have to recognise that its necessary for us to take as well as give.

On one hand there's my cat. When she catches something and tortures it she has no conception of the pain she is inflicting, it's just a thing to her. If I were to kick her though, I would have a full understanding of what I was inflicting upon her. This means that there is absolutely no way to justify inflicting pain on an animal, it's entirely unnecessary.

On the other there's a cow. Now we're part of the ecosystem, part of the food chain and our teeth show that we're built to be omnivores, with teeth for cutting meat and grinding veg. Recognising our place in the leafy machine means eating that cow. I had a burger for breakfast today as it happen and I enjoyed it. There's no reason for the cow to lead anything but a happy, comfortable life, and there's no need for it to feel any pain when it dies, but there's nothing wrong with me eating it either.

I often wonder if even the most radical of animal rights protestors would be prepared to tell a sickly child who's only alive thanks to animal experimentation, face to face, on TV, that they shouldn't be alive. I hope they wouldn't, not least because if they did they would kill the entire animal rights movement stone dead. Distinguishing between animal experiments for sick kids' medicine and rich old ladies' perfume is part of this give & take balance that, if recognised, could draw the more public support.

A curious cultural divide has appeared around these issues across which the very idea of technology and progress is seen as being anti-environment, that a natural life involves sacrificing science and convenience. By rediscovering the symbiotic relationship our ancestors had with the planet we find that there is no dichotomy at all. If we just learn how to use nature in the right way it'll give us all we want for as long as we want.

'All you want, for as long as you want,' ? Kicks the shit out of those shampoo ads any day of the week!

Let me tell you about my cousin. Having got herself an English degree she went to Africa for a year to teach English and fell in love with the place. A year stretched into a decade as she worked for MSF, the 'doctors without borders' aid agency who are usually first in and last out of the most dire situations.

She was in Rwanda when that kicked off then spent some time in Bosnia when that got nasty. In the end she was the country manager for Sierra Leone before eventually being forced to flee, under gunfire, to a helicopter. Having devoted more than ten years of her life to helping some of the world's most vulnerable people she left MSF and married a great guy, also an MSF worker.

He speaks English, German, French, Dutch, Greek and a smattering of African languages, but kept apologising to me when I met him, because his English vocab wasn't all he thought it should be. Guilty monoglot that I am, I managed to overcome my awe of the guy and tell him it was quite alright.

Now, a few years on, they’re bored of everyday life and planning to get back into the aid work all over again. I can’t begin to express how proud I am of my cousin and her husband, not least because most of what they have come to love to do scares the living shit out of me.

The fact that there are people like this in the world gives us hope and leads inevitably to the idea that, if only there were more of them, if only we could dare to become them, the worlds ills really could be solved. Unfortunately, despite my awe for my cousin, people like her are not going to save the world. I don’t think they’d even claim to be trying.

While we like to think of charities and aid organisations, such as all those involved in the Make Poverty History campaign, as being those struggling to save the world they actually serve quite a different purpose: they turn potential annihilation into decimation. They’re there to save as many lives as they can, in the short and the long term, but they’re not there to save everyone, because they can’t.

We can.

After Geldof’s Glastonbury address the other day the BBC interviewed a few people from the vast, vast audience. One girl expressed just how important she felt it was for us to try to improve the lives of others so that maybe, one day, everyone could live like we do. And this is the problem.

There are not enough resources in the entire planet for the whole human race to live as we do in the west. Even if everyone could be as rich as we are, there’d be no more cheap labour or materials. It’s a blindingly obvious and indisputable fact, if they get richer, we get poorer.

Now there does appear to be quite a groundswell in public support for efforts to relieve poverty and suffering. The Tsunami, and our response to it, put a lot of people in that frame of mind and the moral arguments that say we cannot leave our fellow humans to starve are sounding strong.

Most people are prepared to give money, a few are even prepared to give the time and risk their lives, but how many people would be prepared to fundamentally change their way of life? To say goodbye to many of the luxurious comforts we have come to consider as basic standards?

Can we?

It’s understandable that no-one wants to voice this, it’s not a message that’s going to gather popular support because, although we may like to think otherwise, our charitable instinct has limits. The arguments as to why we simply cannot allow people to continue to die of need in a world of surpluses are still there, they’re still true, but suddenly the cost, to us, of doing something about it, really doing something about it, is high enough for us to find ourselves considering how much we actually care.

Allocating blame is a distraction from action. The fact is that, however this system came to be, we need their need to sustain our way of life. When you see pictures of kids starving or people being tortured and slaughtered try thinking to yourself, that’s the price, that’s what it costs for me to live like this.

You could feel guilty but that’s just another self indulgent waste of time. Where you will find yourself is at a crossroads, faced with a choice. You can recognise what’s actually happening in your world or you can wrap yourself back up in the words of comfort we surround ourselves with. The blue pill or the red if you like.

Traditionally we like to think that facing up to the truth is the right thing to do and so we will be ultimately rewarded for doing it, the choice is therefore straight forward. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your point of view, life is not the movies. Doing the right thing usually sucks and often hurts, so those who choose ignorance cannot really be blamed for doing so.

Making Poverty History is absolutely possible but it will come at a high price. The only way to convince enough people to pay that price is to make it easier for them to choose the truth. How do we do this? Hell, I don’t have all the answers, I am but a lowly hippy, but there must be people out there who do, there are six billion of us after all!

Maybe we’ll get there, maybe we won’t, but it’s worth remembering that every bubble bursts eventually. The imbalance inherent to our society today will be countered one day but whether that comes about through the problem being solved or from violent uprisings is yet to be seen. Eventually, we’ll either take to the streets and shoot our mouths off or be taken to the streets and have our heads blown off. See you out there.

Feeling a bit rough today, too many beery nights recently, so this is going to be a short one so that I can go sit on the couch in my pants, toking and watching the news until I feel better. Just had a fairly hot debate with my dad about intellectual property rights, so instead of writing something new I'm going to recount that, then maybe I'll puke.

So, people who download music and films without paying for them, you're a bunch of thieving little bastards aren't you? You steal the sweat from another man's brow and in doing so punish the creators of the things you love and jeopardise the prospects of them making anything else in the future. Do you feel guilty?

No, probably not, because although it's technically theft, the record companies and film studios are so obscenely rich that it can't possibly hurt them, right? Wrong. The idea that it's ok to do, or not do something because your actions alone can't make a difference is wilfully short sighted and dangerously negligent.

In another time and place I used to write bad poetry and occasionally sign it in blood. From that dark time a couple lines have stayed with me: 'if every soldier in the world refused to fight, there could be no war, no blinding light'. The actions of individuals add up to form the actions of society and it doesn't matter how small a dent you make in the big companies when you know that there are literally millions of others doing exactly the same, adding up to far greater damage.

This argument is perfectly sound, but incomplete. It's because of this that, while I agree with the argument above, I have no sympathy for the huge companies bitching about morality and the theft of intellectual property. Let's consider our friends at Bechtel and their little Bolivian adventure(1) to see why.

Bechtel bought up the water utility in Bolivia after the government followed the World Bank's advice and 'liberalised' their laws. Bechtel's first order of business was to jack up the water prices in some areas by 300%, quite literally pricing many of the country's poorest people out of the water market. The next step was another change in the law, making the collection of rainwater illegal.

This meant that many people faced a simple choice, obey the law and let your kids die of thirst or be a criminal and give them a drink. Bechtel were eventually driven from the country when they were told that the government could no longer guarantee the safety of their staff and equipment.

Dow I have to admit that the end of that story gives me a warm feeling inside, hope with a slightly evil chuckle is how I like to think of it. Despite this however, I cannot condone the use or threat of physical violence, ever. It is never right that people should have to leave their place of work and abandon the investment of time and money they have made in fear of their lives.

The thing is, what do you expect? It's all very well for companies to claim the moral high ground and quote the sanctity of the rule of law, but if they want people to respect that then those companies have a responsibility not to put people into difficult situations.

How does this apply to music and film? Well the other flaw in the initial argument is the idea that all that money goes straight to the artists and technical staff. The fact is that it's about profit for the shareholders, that's the bottom line, everything else comes second. You can be damn sure that any drop in profits will hit the customer and staff long before it touches the elite at the top. You also be certain that any increase will be distributed in the exact opposite way.

If music and film were sold at justifiable, ie. if they charged only what they needed to pay for people and materials, prices then the companies would be able to take that high ground and would be absolutely right in their criticism. The prices of music and film have gone up way ahead of inflation over the past few years and I don't see a corresponding increases in anything but the money going to the top.

In the US, corporations have been given the same rights as individuals, the right to free speech for example. Conversely, there seems to be nowhere in the world were companies are burdened with the same responsibilities as individuals, take the current mess with corporate manslaughter legislation.

I have long believed that a right can only be exercised with responsibility and without infringing on the rights of others, anything else is not the exercising of a right but an act of oppression. So when someone carps on about the rights of these companies, their responsibilities have to be considered at the same time or else it's all just hot air.

The problem of course is that their responsibilities are not set in the law and so their definition becomes subjective. Everyone is entitled to their own unique opinion on how responsible companies should be and for what so it would impossible to define. Actually, however, I think you'll find that most people independently have pretty similar views on what's cool and what's not.

Personally, I think that all human beings have the right to have access to water and art. Countless systems exist to deliver these rights, capitalism and economics generally being just a few of these. Whatever system you choose though must surely be secondary to these basic, necessary human rights because, at the end of the day there is absolutely nothing that can take priority over life and quality of life, full fucking stop.

footnotes

(1) if you want to check out Bechtel's side of the story visit their website: www.bechtel.com

So what do the Church of England and the Conservative Party have in common? No, no, besides stuck up white people and a fading but persistent stain of prejudice. Well, both the new Archbishop of York and a variety of Conservative wannabe leaders have recently espoused the need for their respective organisations to 'reconnect' with the public. Of course, to be fair, this is a problem faced by all western religions and political parties, not just those under the cross or the blue torch.

You could be forgiven for thinking that I, as someone who persistently decries both religion and politics in their current forms, would relish the recurrent reports of waning influence with regards these power structures. You'd be wrong. I'm afraid I'm just not that easy to please.

The problem is that the decline of the two most powerful systems of social control mankind has ever seen is not the end of such power structures. In fact they are waning under the emergence of a new system, the problem is not going away, it's just changing form.

If organised religions were disappearing because people were coming to their own moral codes and finding their own ways to exercise and explore their spiritual sides then I'd be first in line to dance on that grave. But no, only the social control aspects of religion are being replaced, these other, essential aspects are instead being forgotten altogether.

Again, if our political system was crumbling because people were falling back onto grass roots democracy and taking control of their country then wicked, viva la revolution. It's not happening though is it? Love them or loathe them, the hierarchies around which our societies are based are being undermined by something relatively new. If we're not praying or voting, what are we doing?

Consuming.

Now it's important to stay clam at this point. It's all too easy to lose all perspective and dive into a rant about conspiracy theories and fat, money grabbing pigs in suits. The idea of 'evil intent' being behind the actions of the vast companies now emerging as the world leaders of the 21st century, is unrealistic and unhelpful.

It is obvious that no-one is out specifically to cause suffering, they're out to make money. What is also obvious, however is that spending time debating such motivations serves only to distract from the detail of the accusations. This detail is all around you, so without any of that trademark left wing whining, let's just consider some down to earth practicalities.

Walmart, (aka ASDA & Wilko's in the UK,) often receive a great deal of criticism from two camps. Firstly from those against global corporatisation for being too big(1) and uncaring towards staff, society and the environment. Secondly from more the conservative, middle classes who see Walmart driving small local businesses into ruin.

Walmart’s success however, is no accident. Vast numbers of people shop in their stores and fund their global expansion. The trick is that the bulk Walmart’s global demographic are people who, even if they do care about the arguments mentioned above, can’t afford to shop anywhere else.

Harvey Nicks opened a store in Leeds a few years ago, a wise move on their part. Over those years Leeds has exploded with high class, (read high price,) entertainment, employment and residential opportunities. The young professional without families but with huge disposable incomes, are exactly the people Harvey Nicks wish to entice past their top hat wearing doormen and into their store. These are the people who see an enormous price tag as an asset in of itself.

The point being laboriously made here is that, unlike our religions and political parties, these companies are both thoroughly connected to the people they wish to reach. They know exactly what their target audience want and deliver if effectively. It can be argued that they know what customers want because they tell customers what they want, the power of advertising etc(2), but this is besides the point. Regardless of how they’ve managed it, companies like this represent certain sections of society far more accurately than anyone or anything else ever has.

There are those who would claim that shopping is a new religion but, as mentioned above, it seems clear that the spiritual aspects of religion are being left out to die rather than reinterpreted. With regards the practical functions of politics though, are these companies really wielding enough power to compete?

Let’s consider the implications of a large ASDA for example, opening on the edge of a small town:

they can have an immediate impact on the cost of living for people in that town, (depending on their prices)

using ‘loss leaders’(3), they can undercut and so destroy most highstreet stores, independents first but chains soon after,

if they then gain the monopoly on food sales then their choice of stock and price range will determine the quality of local’s diets and so impact on local levels of health,

the jobs they create, and those they destroy, coupled with the wages they choose to pay, will impact on levels employment,

if the highstreet is left empty, the weakening of community and crime usually follow,

The point right here is not to decide whether such companies are a good or bad thing, but simply to recognise the sheer impact they have. No local holyman or politician can ever hope to match the influence over quality of life, rates of crime and unemployment that one supermarket has.

So who cares? Why should this be a problem? Well there’s a compelling argument, one which I certainly adhere to, that says the problem lies in accountability. Power being in the hands of the few is nothing new, it’s our ability to influence those few that is usually called into question when considering this issue. This argument can be found throughout the literature of those opposed to global corporatisation in various forms.

What I would consider more important is to question why we need such hierarchies at all. First there was religion, then politics, now big business. It’s all very well to defend the positive aspects of any of these systems, but the one thing they all share is that they make us their bitches. If you like being someone’s bitch then fair enough, enjoy your world, but personally, I don’t like it at all.

Now there’ll be those who’d dismiss all this as communism, but that’s really missing the point. The point is that communism, fascism, religion and big business are all exactly the same, they’re all about elites. The idea behind these twisting and impassioned words is a simple one:

people=people

The vanguard of the revolution is just a thinner version of the board of directors, all just people who think they know what’s best and so have the right to change people’s lives. These sour little bastards have been ordering us around in one form or another for millennia and mainly because we’ve let them. How much longer will we let them? Well that’s up to us but I’m not holding my breath.

footnotes

(1) Walmart have more people in uniform than the entire US army.

(2) I once read that in the 1950’s US companies found that everything people ‘needed’ was accounted for on the market and that since then companies have had to sell us things we don’t need to survive. In order to get us buy what we don’t need they have to convince us we want it. (I can’t remember where I saw this so if anyone else saw it too could you let me know where as I’d love a solid reference with which to back this up, cheers.)

(3) Being so huge supermarket chains can buy in vast quantities meaning that the unit price per item is far lower. On top of this however, supermarkets sell their top few hundred best selling items at a loss, (ie. they sell them for less than the paid for them,) but make their money back buy overcharging for everything else.
Just as subsidised European farmers dominate markets, killing off their third world competitors, it is impossible for independent high street stores to compete with supermarkets and so they get killed off too. Supermarkets are not cheap, they just seem like they are. In the long run local businesses and markets give higher quality for lower cost.

Watching the weekly phone in on a US political show, (C-SPAN, BBC Parliament, Sundays,) I heard a WWII vet lambasting naive liberals for their simplistic 'no war' stance. His platoon, he said, was one of the first to meet up with the Russians. He saw Hitler's handiwork first hand and, in it, the absolute necessity of going to war.

It is a compelling argument and proves especially biting for liberals as it is based on principals that they consider their own. Sometimes war the suffering of war is necessary to prevent even greater suffering, to simply oppose violence outright is both short-sighted and dangerous. This argument has been used to justify our wars against the people of Iraq and Afghanistan and the US's latest 'noun war'(1), the war on terrorism.

Sickeningly enough, left wing public voices are blatantly incapable of countering this argument, instead they fall back on highlighting the tragedies of warfare and corruption of the warmongers. Their failure to present a solid rebuff to the right wing point serves only to play into the stereotype of the left as thinkers and the right as doers and lends strength to the idea of war as an unfortunately necessary evil.

Thankfully for us all, the right are wrong. War is never necessary and, in fact, can only lead to further violence. In order to justify this, let's consider the most oft quoted example of necessary war, WWII. If we hadn't got up and fought Hitler, he would have rolled right across Europe, we'd all be speaking German and the holocaust would only have been the beginning. How can anyone possibly argue that we had any choice?

What the current ideological situation demonstrates is a fundamental misconception of pacifism by both sides, namely that it only comes into play in response to violence. The fact is that we did have a choice, we could have stopped Hitler without firing a shot and we missed our chance. That chance came at the end of WWI.

Having agreed to stop fighting due more to an eventual recognition of the insanely high cost of the war, rather than any real victory, the allies demanded recompense from Germany. We stripped them of their military, obscene amounts of cash and their national pride. In short, we transformed Germany into the perfect breeding ground for a fascist regime.

The fact is that people, all people regardless of colour or nationality, have a basic human need for certain things: food, water & shelter, employment, safety & self respect. Across time and the globe people denied these basics seek them out wherever they can.

Hitler and his National Socialist Party were democratically elected by the German people not on a platform of genocide and world domination, but by promising jobs and making it acceptable to be German again. Had we simply been good losers, shown some degree of sportsmanship, Hitler would have died a house painter with delusions of grandeur.

The rise in popularity of far right parties, such as the British National Party in the UK, has been a cause for concern for many people. Lots of educated and informed commentators have stressed the danger of such a fascist rebirth and many impassioned activists have suggested that such parties be outlawed or persecuted out of existence. What no-one seems to be considering is the why it's happening.

Just like the German people of the thirties, the people of towns like Halifax did not simply wake up one day and decide to be fascists. The towns were these parties do well are usually places were the death of primary and secondary industries, (such as coal mining and car production,) have left unemployment, poverty and depression. The defining feature of the right, surely, is pragmatism. Can we really blame people without hope for wanting to believe in the easy answers and scapegoats offered by these bigots?

The fact is that groups bent on dominating the world with their state and/or ideology, such as the Nazis, extremist so-called Islamic groups and of course the Project for a New American Century(2), are the tiniest minority fringe nutters. Without popular support they are reduced to the level of sleeping in foil helmets to stop the CIA stealing their thoughts, and the only way they get that support is by exploiting social shortfalls.

The most stomach turning of truths is that we possess both the resources and the technology to establish a minimum quality of life for every human being on the planet, but we choose not to. The immediate consequences of this choice, starvation, poverty, etc, are relatively tame when compared to the knock on effect of warfare described above. If we were to change our minds so that people could feed their children and not live in fear, most of the anger that fuels conflict would evaporate away.

The real nature of pacifism is not simply to oppose violence when it appears, it is to understand the nature and cause of violence so as to make it unnecessary. Every single conflict in the world today has come about due to politicians failing to make the quality of life of populations their main priority.

The claim that war is the only option should be seen for what it is, an admission that our leaders have failed and through their negligence created an impossible situation that will cost countless lives. Whether their failure has come from incompetence or greed, whether it was intentional or not, doesn’t really matter to the innocent civilians and honourably motivated troops who lie dead, or to their grieving families.

footnotes

(1) Exactly how do you wage war on a noun?

(2) Check out who is involved with this and what their aims are, it is the scariest of shit: www.newamericancentury.org

stimulation

In April 1998, Lee Dorian, Cathedral vocalist and founder of Rise Above Records, described the music scene he was a fundamental part of: 'It's just as much about messing up people's conceptions of fashion or accessibility as it's about creating soul searching journeys within the immediate and the beyond.'

While this ties in neatly with the previous posts' consideration of the role and mechanisms of art, there is still one last aspect to consider. In the same piece, Dorian also said: 'It's about millions of things primarily enjoyment and expression, but essential it just fucking rocks!' This is the final key to the nature of art.

In order for art to be able to communicate and inspire, people have to want to experience it, it has to provide some kind of stimulation to both attract and hold interest. As used here, the word stimulation covers a fair range of motives for experiencing art.

Of course the most obvious of these is enjoyment, the desire to be entertained. While I find great spiritual strength and philosophical inspiration in the music I choose to listen to, it's the bitching riffs and super cool fuzz that make me want to listen. Ideas alone are not enough.

Entertainment is not the be all and end all however. Indeed art that is branded outrageous or offensive often receives more attention than that which is enjoyed by all. Art has been referred to here as being experienced, rather seen or heard. This word has been used as a general term simply because art is produced via so many mediums.

It is now important, however, to recognise the other meaning of this word. A work of art must be an experience, something that leaves some kind of mark on its audience. Even if something is terrible it can have artistic value, if only to serve as a qualitative benchmark in the future.

If a work of art fails to stimulate, if it fails to induce reaction or comment, then it cannot communicate, is less likely to inspire and so is, practically speaking, equivalent to the footprint in the sand: Its presence communicates nothing but the existence of its maker. Can such a piece then really be considered art?

conclusion

As stated initially, any attempt to definitively set down what is or isn't art is doomed to failure from the start, the line will always be blurred. That said however, an understanding of the importance and potential or art is vital if we are to nurture this fundamental part of ourselves.

So the next time we are presented with a pile of bananas in Trafalgar Square let's just forget the question, 'is it art?' Instead let's think: 'What's this guy's tying to say?', 'What does it make us think of?' and 'How does it make us feel?', because, regardless of professional opinions and salaries, these are the only questions that really matter.

inspiration

Years ago I saw an interview with Nirvana, at the Reading Festival I think. They were asked 'what do your songs mean?' They're answer, 'whatever people want them to mean', inspired me to add a second element to my idea of art.

The fact is that when you experience a work of art the thoughts you have are not guaranteed to be the same as those held by the artist. In fact although some degree of communication will occur, you will probably find yourself using the work as a catalyst to access your own ideas and inspiration tends to lead to art.

It makes some kind of instinctive sense that while the purpose of art is to communicate ideas, it also contains a reproductive mechanism. Though everyone has ideas to express not all of us do, such a system of inspirational perpetuation helps to explain how the apparently inherent artistic impulse has continued to be acted upon and not allowed to lie dormant among all people of the world. Just as with the genetics of life, the information itself is not really important, it's the perpetuation of information that counts.

Again though, let's consider the practicalities of the real world. The ability to be inspired is inherent in mankind and yet, as with art itself, it has been sullied by the image of middle class pretension. It is detrimental to us all that many people consider art appreciation as being an academic pursuit and therefore beyond their own capabilities.

Unless you count GCSE Art, (in which I got a D,) I have had no formal artistic training and the academic qualifications I do have, (a masters in physics & astrophysics) took me, if anything, in the exact opposite direction. Despite this however, I find myself capable of appreciating art and finding inspiration not just there, but everywhere.

And this is the essential facet of art's inspirational quality. Not only does it serve to help produce more art and maybe help us to understand ourselves a little better, but it allows, even encourages us, to practice an absolutely vital skill.

When people viewed the messy bed mentioned in the previous post, they viewed it as a piece of art because it was in an art gallery. The thoughts it inspired in them would not have necessarily occurred to them when seeing their own bed in such a state. This tendency to only engage the creative thought process when told it is appropriate, holds us all back.

Of course there are people who think their opinion is more important than yours as they consider themselves more educated in the field. They'll look down their noses at you in the hope that you'll falter and back away, leaving the endless wonders of art to them and their selected friends.

Well I say, fuck these people. Hold their nasal gaze and look back hard. You've as much right to the arts as you have to the air you breath and your opinion is as valid as theirs, whatever it is. Don't blame art for the art lover.

introduction

A pile of bananas, a messy bed and a shark in a box. Art? Well according to my trusty dictionary, art is defined as, 'the creation of works of beauty or other special significance', simple as. To my mind a pile of bananas in Trafalgar Square is neither beautiful nor specially significant so it's not art, end of.

The problem is of course that, despite appearances to the contrary, my opinion is not definitive. There are about six billion people in the world, so there are bound to be plenty who utterly disagree and consider that big yellow mess to be a work of art. This is the ultimate folly of trying to define this annoying little word, any definition is almost always subjective.

Having said this, we quite happily officially define things as not being art. Porn, for example, is legally defined as something that contains graphic sexual references but has no artistic merit. Graffiti, street art or social menace? Last summer the whole frontage of my favourite second hand bookshop, (ELEPHANT BOOKS, LEEDS. GO THERE! BUY STUFF!) and the record shop next door, was covered in an amazing mural by some local graffiti artists. Now some academic from the Uni Art Dept happens to live nearby and was apparently disgusted by the whole thing. Obviously, in her professional opinion, it wasn't art.

The title of this piece suggests that it's going to consider the nature of art, and yet here's the introduction suggesting that any such study is fundamentally futile, confused? At the end of the day the only people really interested in drawing this particular line in the sand are those wanting to be recognised by certain people as artists. The rest of us(1) can think about art not in terms of a rigid definition, but more in terms of the purpose of art and what it says about us. Art is, after all, a constant throughout the history of human behaviour so it is obviously an important part of us.

Having spent a great deal of time thinking about the subject, (and thanks to a minor lifelong fixation with the number three,) I've come to my own way of considering art. As with all ideas or mindsets it's a work in perpetual progress, but it's also currently developed enough to be inflicted upon an unsuspecting readership, so here we go. Art consists of three basic elements: communication, inspiration and stimulation, explore and discuss...

communication

The most fundamental function of art is communication. Now absolutely anything manmade communicates something, even if it's only the existence of its maker, eg. if you see a footprint in the sand you know someone has walked on that beach before you. This unavoidable and unintentional communication.

Intended and considered acts of communication are the next step up, signals and signs that serve a practical purpose. 'Pass the salt please,' or a green traffic light are both examples of us communicating with each other in order to maintain or improve an acceptable physical situation.

Now the evolution of the word bread has carried with it the biblical phrase, 'man cannot live by bread alone,' into the current age very well. Indeed there is more to life than tasty food and smooth flowing traffic. Emotions and abstract ideas spin and multiply within these grossly swollen brains of ours and, while they may seem to serve no real practical purpose, we still feel compelled to communicate them.

A work of art starts inside the artist's head as thought. This concept or feeling is then translated into a physical form making it accessible to others. When the audience views the work, they experience, to some degree, the original notion behind it. Art is, it seems, an attempt to allow us to see inside each other's heads.

As mentioned above, there are about six billion humans knocking about down here, every single one an individual with an entirely unique mind and therefore a unique way of seeing things. The number of ideas out there to be expressed is certainly beyond our capacity to count, so surely art must be a rich a varied source of original and life changing experiences.

It's not though is it? Ask most people about 'the art scene' and they'll recount to you an image of pretentious and cliquey wankers patting each other on the back while the rest of us get on with real life. This is not, however, a reflection on the communicative nature of art, but rather on the way in which our society deals with it.

Generally artists, or artists successful enough to reach wide audiences, come from very similar starting points and share a great deal of experiences, usually through formal training. This means that the ideas they wish to express, and the ways in which they choose to do so, are subsequently similar. Don’t blame art for the artist.

footnotes

(1) Yes, I would like someone to pay me to write, and I would like lots of people to see my work, but I have no desire to be ‘recognized’. I know that I’m an artist and I don’t need anyone else, professional or otherwise, to confirm it.

Due to technical problems, (namely that my free AOL one month trial has run out,) I won't be able to post for a while as I can't afford to pay for internet access. Hopefully I should be able to sort something out in a few days though so rest assured, I will be back.

So War of the Worlds is to hit our big screens this summer, just another big budget remake of something they should have left alone. If it's not an old film, it's a foreign film, a book or a comic that's being brought to cinema near you.

As with most things, however, it's the degree not the substance that causes the problem. There's nothing wrong with remaking films, or making films of books, in of itself; the problem is when this practice, or any one single practice, starts to dominate the industry.

Of course there's a very good reason why this is happening: financial risk assessment. Obviously films are big business and stupendous amounts of money can be made or lost depending on the success of a title. With Star Wars Episode One for example, Lucas made his money back through merchandising BEFORE THE FILM OPENED. All the box office and post release merchandising was pure profit.

Of course very few titles carry such a guarantee of financial return, so why gamble on an original script when you can make something with an established audience? Even if the film ends up being crap, you're certain to get decent size audiences, at first anyway, consisting of fans of the original version.

Look at your TV listings for tonight. News, documentaries, hobby shows, docu-soaps, reality gameshows, films and repeats. Where's the original fiction? The small screen sees the same shrivelling of creativity as the big, only there they deal with it differently. With so many channels now competing, it's the cost not the return they consider and reality TV is cheap TV. No writers, no actors, no sets, no costumes.

Unfortunately for us, artistic creativity is always trumped by economics and so we end up with the same, financially safe crap over and over again. The same is true of books, with highstreet retailers like Waterstone's being forced to follow the supermarkets and concentrate on a narrower range of mass market bestsellers like the fucking Da Vinci Code.(1) though I must declare a vested and bitter interest in this particular area.

An editor from Penguin considered a project of mine recently. Instead of a standard, formulaic rejection letter, he actually took the time to tell me what he really thought, (believe me that's pretty rare though much appreciated.) He said he enjoyed my work and that he thought it was innovative, unfortunately he didn't think it would sell well enough for them to take it. Various other publishers and agents have said they like what I write, but that it lacks 'commercial viability'.

(remember, artistic integrity = poverty)

So at the end of the day the companies producing popular art face the same problem as our politicians. Just as remaining in power has to override all principles and morals for a politician, (otherwise they can't implement the policies they care about,) the people making films, books and TV shows have to do what pays the best or they won't be able to make anything at all. Yet again, the system itself is the problem.

With TV we currently find ourselves in the bizarre situation where the adverts are probably the most innovative and artistic things on, the Talk Talk links on Big Brother at the moment for example, (the aerial pictures made up of people.)

Speaking of Big Brother, I must admit, to my shame, that I have been vaguely following it. I could try to blame this on my girlfriend, who does follow it, or just the old 'car crash' factor, where you have to look just because it's so bad, but no. I have to take the responsibility myself, even if it does make me feel dirty.

What did occur me seeing it last night, was how the show has subtly changed over the various series. Initially, in order to justify the format, Channel 4 had to be seen to be taking care of the housemates. Big Brother was a supportive, if invisible, shoulder to cry on.

As the show has become established it has changed. The trend has been towards making the house a more unpleasant place to be and this is for two reasons. Firstly the format has been accepted and no longer needs to b