Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Swan Upping
So, Tiger Woods is not the only one in the news for belying his carefully manicured image among advertisers, the media and those who held him in such high esteem as a family role model! That bastion of dutiful and faithful creatures, the swan, is now a number one target for those who would uphold creatures who symbolise all that is good, right and proper in human social mores. It has long been held as incontrovertible that swans pair up for life. Maybe they have been around humans too long (from Leda on) but the times they are a-changing. Well, our view of their monogamous behaviour certainly is.
Some few years back I remember seeing a nature documentary in which night vision infra-red cameras were trained on swans on a pond. What a shocking set of events unrolled. One or two male swans – cobs -drifted silently away at night and had their bit of tail in watery lay-bys before returning pre-dawn, as if nothing had happened.
Now, on the BBC web site and on tv news programmes, I see a headline which reads ‘Scientists shocked at swans’ ‘divorce’. First, let me say that I don’t know these scientists but the fact that they are shocked is a bit of a disappointment. I always imagined scientists to be a dispassionate lot whose constant appeal to reason would make them immune to moral outrage. Actually, thinking about it a little more seriously, all the scientists I have met and whose work I have read, display what Derrida calls a leakage of subjectivity. They can’t keep their emotional baggage out of even the most arid pieces of work. Anyway, you can picture the scene in the lab as they are rerunning footage of swans setting up new homes next to their old partners. “NO! I can’t believe this! Check it again, Miriam! My God, what is the world coming to? We can’t show this on prime time tele, I’m afraid."
Given that Emperor Penguins became the totems of monogamous living for the US Christian fundamentalists as a result of the film showing how they survived the arduous ice flows of the far north, by sharing household duties and looking after the kids, it is borne home to me (and you) that we search for animal metaphors in order to shore up social convention. In this regard, it may be no coincidence that the greatest golfer of all time is called Tiger and tigers are actually a bit wayward in their affections, putting it about, as we say.
His Dad might have called him Swan Woods a while back but to no avail.
So, Tiger Woods is not the only one in the news for belying his carefully manicured image among advertisers, the media and those who held him in such high esteem as a family role model! That bastion of dutiful and faithful creatures, the swan, is now a number one target for those who would uphold creatures who symbolise all that is good, right and proper in human social mores. It has long been held as incontrovertible that swans pair up for life. Maybe they have been around humans too long (from Leda on) but the times they are a-changing. Well, our view of their monogamous behaviour certainly is.
Some few years back I remember seeing a nature documentary in which night vision infra-red cameras were trained on swans on a pond. What a shocking set of events unrolled. One or two male swans – cobs -drifted silently away at night and had their bit of tail in watery lay-bys before returning pre-dawn, as if nothing had happened.
Now, on the BBC web site and on tv news programmes, I see a headline which reads ‘Scientists shocked at swans’ ‘divorce’. First, let me say that I don’t know these scientists but the fact that they are shocked is a bit of a disappointment. I always imagined scientists to be a dispassionate lot whose constant appeal to reason would make them immune to moral outrage. Actually, thinking about it a little more seriously, all the scientists I have met and whose work I have read, display what Derrida calls a leakage of subjectivity. They can’t keep their emotional baggage out of even the most arid pieces of work. Anyway, you can picture the scene in the lab as they are rerunning footage of swans setting up new homes next to their old partners. “NO! I can’t believe this! Check it again, Miriam! My God, what is the world coming to? We can’t show this on prime time tele, I’m afraid."
Given that Emperor Penguins became the totems of monogamous living for the US Christian fundamentalists as a result of the film showing how they survived the arduous ice flows of the far north, by sharing household duties and looking after the kids, it is borne home to me (and you) that we search for animal metaphors in order to shore up social convention. In this regard, it may be no coincidence that the greatest golfer of all time is called Tiger and tigers are actually a bit wayward in their affections, putting it about, as we say.
His Dad might have called him Swan Woods a while back but to no avail.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Addicted to love...
Addictions appear to be on the increase. Note that I am using the plural here. So what I am talking about is not an increase in the population of addiction but the range of possible addictions available to us all! In the 18th/19th Century, at a time of imperialism and empire building, medicine underwent a similar process of enlarging the territory of the brain and claiming the territory with new names, theories and treatments. No doubt you have seen film reconstructions of the rich and famous watching cranial work in an operating theatre from the safety of the gallery. Foucault’s work on the history of madness amplifies this, richly. The process, started then, continues today, particularly as we apparently discover more about the very essence of mental functioning. The debate about whether a particular psychological condition is a result of some organic feature of the brain or whether it is a mental condition, inorganic and treatable by therapies, also continues.
And the one may feed the other. So I smoke cigarettes because I hear they have a calming effect. They calm. In time I have a craving and addiction for tobacco. Similarly it is thought that eating junk food or drinking coffee can result in obsessive desire to have more. People can be addicted to power, to murder, to solitude etc etc.
A few blogs ago I wrote about Tiger Woods and how this ‘shamed’ sportsman (that is how Sky News described him yesterday) was being dropped by advertisers because of his sexual encounters with white, blonde women. Now, apparently, he has gone into rehab for sexual addiction. I wonder who determined this condition and on what evidence? Was he eating, sleeping, dreaming of the next blonde he would bed? Was this put down to a black man’s sense of inadequacy because of racial belittling of the colour of his skin so that these acts were proof of his equality with powerful white folks?
Does it mitigate his behaviour, if it actually needs mitigating, for him to be able to announce that it was an addiction and that he has now been cured? “I am not responsible, it was my condition!"
I quite like the heavy metal number that is also the title to this piece. The reason why? Well, most of us have experienced what is meant by it and, rather than go into a high-fee clinic, we would rather be out there, experiencing it in all its obsessive glory!
Addictions appear to be on the increase. Note that I am using the plural here. So what I am talking about is not an increase in the population of addiction but the range of possible addictions available to us all! In the 18th/19th Century, at a time of imperialism and empire building, medicine underwent a similar process of enlarging the territory of the brain and claiming the territory with new names, theories and treatments. No doubt you have seen film reconstructions of the rich and famous watching cranial work in an operating theatre from the safety of the gallery. Foucault’s work on the history of madness amplifies this, richly. The process, started then, continues today, particularly as we apparently discover more about the very essence of mental functioning. The debate about whether a particular psychological condition is a result of some organic feature of the brain or whether it is a mental condition, inorganic and treatable by therapies, also continues.
And the one may feed the other. So I smoke cigarettes because I hear they have a calming effect. They calm. In time I have a craving and addiction for tobacco. Similarly it is thought that eating junk food or drinking coffee can result in obsessive desire to have more. People can be addicted to power, to murder, to solitude etc etc.
A few blogs ago I wrote about Tiger Woods and how this ‘shamed’ sportsman (that is how Sky News described him yesterday) was being dropped by advertisers because of his sexual encounters with white, blonde women. Now, apparently, he has gone into rehab for sexual addiction. I wonder who determined this condition and on what evidence? Was he eating, sleeping, dreaming of the next blonde he would bed? Was this put down to a black man’s sense of inadequacy because of racial belittling of the colour of his skin so that these acts were proof of his equality with powerful white folks?
Does it mitigate his behaviour, if it actually needs mitigating, for him to be able to announce that it was an addiction and that he has now been cured? “I am not responsible, it was my condition!"
I quite like the heavy metal number that is also the title to this piece. The reason why? Well, most of us have experienced what is meant by it and, rather than go into a high-fee clinic, we would rather be out there, experiencing it in all its obsessive glory!
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Ghana and the 'opiate of people...'
Intellectuals, who are also religious, have always fascinated me. Since whatever religion one might favour is, at its heart, based on belief rather than fact, I want to know how, contrary to human logic, these usually evidence-based individuals end up constructing a personal cosmology with a god at its centre.
There is a story about Ludvig Wittgenstein, the language philosopher and noted atheist. Lying on his death bed, reviewing his life, he had a blinding revelation. The logic he had assiduously developed, which proved to him that there was no god, could be turned on its head to prove entirely the contrary! He promptly summoned a priest for his last rites!
Here in Ghana, it is rare to come across intellectuals prepared to talk openly about their lack of belief. Indeed, to prosper in Ghana requires lip service to a god, preferably the Christian version. Somehow, the various Christian groups have so infiltrated social life that prayers, entreaties, blessings and greetings, infuse formal and informal gatherings, business meetings, emails and conferences. Every politician sprinkles godly phrases in his or her public utterances. Church, on Sunday, is so all-pervasive that the roads, normally nearly gridlocked, are clear. Driving to the ungodly supermarket past these places of worship gives one a sudden immersion in hymn singing, clapping, praying and glossolalia. The churches in Africa appear to have little time for intellectual and other freedoms (witness the discussion in Uganda, driven by three US evangelists, regarding intoducing the death penalty for homosexuality). As far as Christianity in Africa is concerned, reading and writing are necessary only to enable adherents to get fulfilment from bible classes. Bible readings, pulpit pontifications, quasi exorcisms, healing, prayers for consumer items and the conspicuous consumerism of priests tie the evangelical to worldly possessions and career success. Foundational reading and writing actually enables the process of indoctrination. Too much and the fires of intellectual questioning begin to grow. Religion in Ghana is the opium of the people, as Marx actually stated it. Until an intellectual cadre of individuals have a critical voice here, Ghana will not achieve much desired parity with developed countries. The opiate quality of religion hangs like a fog permeating Ghanaian manners. To be critical of people and institutions are examples of bad grace or, if severe, might lead to reprisal. To have forums where endemic bribery among politicians, church ministers and the civil service are publicly denounced, are rare.
Some intellectuals are appealing in their spirituality and convey it to you without the slightest desire for you to understand existence in the comforting way that they do. They can enhance your own life with their open thought. But imagine being poorly educated, in poverty and with no sense of the future. Then you become ripe pickings for the gods of capital, either purportedly spiritual or otherwise.
Thursday, January 07, 2010
T Pyxidis is not a glam rock band or a disease, it is a death star......
Well, here we are into the new year and still having difficulty writing 2010 instead of 2009. But it won’t be a problem soon if my recent tv watching is anything to go by. There has been a plethora of programmes about Nostradamus and, in particular, a newly found original work consisting of a few illustrations by him which, they say, depict the end of the world as we know it. They showed the illustrations on the programme, of course and to my untutored eye they looked like major arcana from the tarot deck, of which I know a little. The end of the world (I wrote about this earlier in these columns) will take place on December 21st 2012 and this has also been certified by the Mayans, Chinese astrologers, the Book of Revelations and some scientists who are concerned that the earth is moving into alignment with the centre of the galaxy (a black hole) and we will be bombarded by some kind of invisible and incredibly minute matter, a bit like a microwave effect (I made up the simile, here because I have no idea what they mean!).
And Sky News this morning has a text headline that says that scientists have found a supernova primed to go off and the effect could be the extinguishing of all life on Earth. Not such a happy new year, then! The name of this super-beast of the celestial heavens is T Pyxidis. If and when it goes off it will strip everything from the ozone layer down to cockroaches (which are supposed to handle nuclear fall-out, though I have a few upturned ones in the shower at the moment that could not withstand my odourless hand-held mosquito spray!)
What Nostradamus did not prophesy was the multiple deaths of four individuals in the pump room of our pool. The pump went off and we had to bring the electrician in. He found a quartet of electrocuted frogs.
Meanwhile, Zen provides salutary good sense. Since every new moment involves the death of the last moment, we should get used to the ceaseless endings that stretch through our lives. T Pyxidis doesn’t change the human condition at all. Like the four frogs, one minute you’re hopping and the next you are cooked.
Well, here we are into the new year and still having difficulty writing 2010 instead of 2009. But it won’t be a problem soon if my recent tv watching is anything to go by. There has been a plethora of programmes about Nostradamus and, in particular, a newly found original work consisting of a few illustrations by him which, they say, depict the end of the world as we know it. They showed the illustrations on the programme, of course and to my untutored eye they looked like major arcana from the tarot deck, of which I know a little. The end of the world (I wrote about this earlier in these columns) will take place on December 21st 2012 and this has also been certified by the Mayans, Chinese astrologers, the Book of Revelations and some scientists who are concerned that the earth is moving into alignment with the centre of the galaxy (a black hole) and we will be bombarded by some kind of invisible and incredibly minute matter, a bit like a microwave effect (I made up the simile, here because I have no idea what they mean!).
And Sky News this morning has a text headline that says that scientists have found a supernova primed to go off and the effect could be the extinguishing of all life on Earth. Not such a happy new year, then! The name of this super-beast of the celestial heavens is T Pyxidis. If and when it goes off it will strip everything from the ozone layer down to cockroaches (which are supposed to handle nuclear fall-out, though I have a few upturned ones in the shower at the moment that could not withstand my odourless hand-held mosquito spray!)
What Nostradamus did not prophesy was the multiple deaths of four individuals in the pump room of our pool. The pump went off and we had to bring the electrician in. He found a quartet of electrocuted frogs.
Meanwhile, Zen provides salutary good sense. Since every new moment involves the death of the last moment, we should get used to the ceaseless endings that stretch through our lives. T Pyxidis doesn’t change the human condition at all. Like the four frogs, one minute you’re hopping and the next you are cooked.