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War, Peace, And That Other Thing.

November 30, 2023

War, Peace, And That Other Thing.

Understanding political violence.

I was thinking of writing something about Gaza this week, but frankly I don’t have the detailed knowledge of the region, nor for that matter experience of fighting in tunnels, to add to what’s already been said elsewhere. But reading some of this coverage made me realise, again, how little our society really understands and is prepared to acknowledge about the roots and purposes of political violence, and so I thought it might be interesting to discuss that subject, looping back to the current situation in Gaza at the end.

Let’s start with the obvious point that western Liberal society likes clear distinctions and opposites in all areas of life. We are a profoundly Aristotelian society: everything is either A or B, there is nothing in the middle. Because real life itself is messy, this produces endless complex and ultimately pointless arguments about precisely where to draw a dividing line, and whether this or that act or event or pronouncement is ultimately acceptable, or whether it should be rejected and cast into outer darkness. Thus, everything to do with the use of force in politics is presented in stark, opposed terms: war vs. peace, violence vs negotiations, conflict vs cooperation, and of course good vs. bad. And then we wonder why we cannot understand the world, and why the behaviour of many of its actors surprises us so often.

Most civilisations before the modern western era have not seen things this way, and quite a few still don’t. According to taste, we can follow the theories of Ian McGilchrist, arguing that we live in an epoch of dangerous left-brain domination, which sees everything in terms of binary opposites and infinitely detailed differences…

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The Performance is Over

August 17, 2023

The Performance is Over

Even if the artists don’t realise it.

Note: Last week’s comments got sidetracked into bad-tempered exchanges on climate change, which was not what the essay was about. I had several requests to delete comments that some people found offensive. I let them pass on that occasion, but as from now I will start deleting abusive comments. Discussion here has always been very civilised. Let’s keep it that way.

A reminder that Spanish versions of my essays are now available here. and some Italian versions of my essays are available here. Many thanks to the translators. Now on to the main feature.

Last week, I argued that the kind of crises that we can expect over the next few years will be beyond the ability of our enfeebled governments to tackle, and that in any case their room for manoeuvre to tackle them will be very limited. (If you think climate change is not a problem, fine, you can substitute any other of a long list of potentially ruinous events.) This week, I want to take the next logical step, of trying to begin to imagine what a society in which government could no longer deal with major problems would be like, and what the implications would be.

I want to discuss it via a consideration of the nature of Power. Now in English, “power” has generally-negative connotations, not helped by its incessant use by IdiotPol pundits, who are obsessed with it and see it everywhere. But “power” is derived from the medieval Anglo-French pouair , with its roots in the Vulgar Latin potere, meaning “to be able to do something.” This is essentially the principal meaning of pouvoir in modern French: a good translation would be ‘capability.” (Foucault, who wrote about pouvoir a lot, was essentially interested in how things got done.)…

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Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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