In Kaleidoscope

REFLECTIONS BY, AND OF DOM KELLEHER, HALCYON FOUNDER.

MY AGE AND MY TIME, THE BLOOD, FIRE, WINE AND RHYME.  

COME INSIDE, SEE MY MIND...IN KALEIDOSCOPE. 

On Singing the Body Electric

 

 

I guess I've been aware of Walt Whitman as an American national icon since I was at university, and I have long admired the title of what I suppose to be his most famous poem, I Sing the Body Electric. 

However, somehow, I had never got around to reading the poem and now that I finally have, I can see - or perhaps better, feel - its appeal immediately.  It's probably all been said many times before, much more profoundly, and studied and dissected, but the words do indeed crackle with electricity, with vitality, with what Robert Pirsig called in Lila, "Dynamic Quality".

This is simply a celebration of connecting, of being alive.

"Examine these limbs, red, black, or white—they are so cunning in tendon and nerve;
They shall be stript, that you may see them.
Exquisite senses, life-lit eyes, pluck, volition,
Flakes of breast-muscle, pliant back-bone and neck, flesh not flabby, good-sized arms and legs,	105
And wonders within there yet.
Within there runs blood,
The same old blood!
The same red-running blood!
There swells and jets a heart - there all passions, desires, reachings, aspirations..."

On Humans

 

The most typical person in the world is a 28-year-old Han Chinese man, with an estimated nine million people sharing those characteristics, an analysis by National Geographic found.  The magazine is studying demographic issues as the world’s population approaches seven billion - a mark it is expected to cross this year.

7 Billion: Are You Typical? — National Geographic Magazine @ Yahoo! Video

Interesting, but, regardless of how people look, their age, beliefs, culture etc, we have a greater opportunity than ever before - as individuals - to join together and address our shared challenges.

On Cultural Creatives

 

 

Cultural Creatives is a term coined by sociologist Paul H. Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson to describe a large segment in Western society that has recently developed beyond the standard paradigm of modernists or progressives versus traditionalists or conservatives.  The concept was presented in their book The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World (2000).

Though we shun labels, Halcyon ticks many of the boxes identified as qualities of a Cultural Creative:

• love of nature and deep caring about its preservation, and its natural balance
• strong awareness of the planet-wide issues (i.e. climate change, poverty, overpopulation, etc.) and a desire to see more action on them
• being active themselves as well (e.g. cradle2cradle principle)
• willingness to pay higher taxes or spend more money for goods if that money went to improving the environment
• heavy emphasis on the importance of developing and maintaining relationships
• heavy emphasis on the importance of helping others and developing their unique gifts
• volunteer with one or more good causes
• intense interest in spiritual and psychological development
• see spirituality as an important aspect of life, but worry about religious fundamentalism
• desire equity for women/men in business, life and politics
• concern and support of the wellbeing (oa. freedom) of all women and children
• want politics and government to spend more money on education, community programmes and the support of a more ecologically sustainable future
• are unhappy with the left and right in politics
• optimism towards the future
• want to be involved in creating a new and better way of life
• are concerned with big business and the means they use to generate profits, including destroying the environment and exploiting poorer countries
• unlikely to overspend or be in heavy debt
• dislike the emphasis of modern cultures on "making it" and "success", on consuming and making money
• like people, places and things that are different or exotic.

However, there are one or two of these characteristics (e.g. spending more public money) that move beyond the personal into the societal realm, and there we might be more sceptical, except where we can see transparent, sustainable measures of the effectiveness of such investment. 

Furthermore, even one or two of the personal characteristics remained more aspirational than actual as of early 2011.

On Qualia

 

 

Picture source: rationallyspeaking

If we're dominated and therefore de facto separated by our qualia - i.e. the the subjective quality of conscious experience - can we ever reasonably hope to reach a consensus on what should be our shared values?

On French mysteries

 

The mysterious, rather troubling side of southern France in general, and of parts of Languedoc in particular, have long intrigued me, even if I take most of the stories and rumours to be well-spun tales rather than documented truth following the historical method.

In August 2009, on the way to visit Peyrepertuse, we skirted around the imposing mountain at Bugarach, itself now an increasing focus of mysterious rumours.

 

 

We then went back to Rennes-le-Chateau later than afternoon, having first visited in 1996, 10 years after I had first read The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.  Outwardly, the village seemed little changed.  However...

On Genetic vs. Character Identities

 

Learning and sharing your genetic secrets are at the heart of a controversial service - a saliva test that estimates your predisposition for more than 90 traits and conditions ranging from baldness to blindness.  The 600,000 genetic markers that the service identifies and interprets for each customer are "the digital manifestation of you," the service's creator claimed at the time, adding that "it's information beyond what you can see in the mirror".

In a subsequent development, bidding kicked off in an eBay auction whose prize included personal genome sequencing, analysis, and interpretation services.  The auction was intended to promote whole genome sequencing via a global competition that would award $10 million to the first person or team that could sequence 100 human genomes within 10 days.

It's interesting to contrast this DNA-led approach to identity with efforts that Halcyon is starting to support that help us look behind each other's masks, learn what is common, or different, or surprising about other people and thereby - if we're so inclined - make new connections and even perhaps find new soulmates.

On Economic Depression

 

Of Mice and Men - redux?

 

Chastening and often stunning images of the impact that global recession can have in our day and age.  The Great Depression of the 1930s revisited?  The clothes and the cars and the laptops visible in 2009 and renewed economic growth in 2010 in many parts of the world would seem to suggest "no", but with fast-rising global food, fuel and commodity prices in 2011, who knows?

Still, the blooming sunflower in the last shot, while carrying a serious message, suggests too perhaps that hope springs eternal or, as Roy Harper put it, "through all destruction flies new dawn".

On Anonymity

 

 

Is our great contemporary fear anonymity?

If the property that grounded the self in Romanticism was sincerity, and in modernism was authenticity, then in postmodernism is it visibility?  So asked the writer of a thought-provoking article on our obsession with connectivity.

Is this what our contemporary selves really want?  To be recognised, to be connected, to be visible, if not to the millions via, say, the X Factor, then at least to the hundreds, via Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn?

And in the process, perhaps we are losing the ability to know ourselves in quietness, in isolation, to dip into what Thoreau called fishing "in the Walden Pond of our own natures".

This is food for thought indeed: uncomfortable and provocative, because it's quite possibly spot-on in its diagnosis.

On Bigger, or Better Society

 

 

Without succumbing to politically-motivated "Big Society" mantras, we can nevertheless realise that there is a huge untapped potential in civil society and the individuals within it.  

If we listened more to the surviving members of the "make do and mend" generation that got through the 1930s, WWII and its bleak aftermath, might we learn again not just self-sufficiency, but also a way of pulling together towards a common purpose?

But what should that common purpose be anyway?  The fat years (for some) of recent times seemed to lead to increasing isolation from one another, as we retreated inside both our traditional brick and our new digital fortresses, so who is now going to articulate a non-utopian shared vision of what "getting better" should mean for society as a whole?

On Outrospection

 

 

Can we escape from the prison of our own feelings and desires, and embrace the lives of others, discovering ourselves by learning about other people, and finding out how they live, think and look at the world?

On Music as a Universal

 

 

Do you speak music?  Yes, we all do...

Indigenous peoples who have never even listened to the radio can nonetheless pick up on happy, sad, and fearful emotions in Western music. 

I ead somwhere that the expression of emotions is a basic feature of Western music, whereas in other musical traditions, music has traditionally more often been appreciated for other qualities, such as group coordination in rituals.

Maybe such music should always be played at the start of international meetings, in diplomatic circles etc?  Then, we might just remember more often that we're all cousins, all part of the same family. 

And what if, in addition to the often turgid national anthems that proclaim our difference, we also play a piece of music with a unifying, universal appeal at the start of international sporting and cultural events?

On Missing Others

 

 

At least until the transhumanist dream becomes a reality, which according to one leading modern philosopher may be never, we will cling on to whatever we can that reminds us of our loved ones.

On Metacognition

 

 

The most crucial decision-making skill, some scientists are now saying, is the ability to think about your own thinking, or metacognition.  According to this emerging new vision of decision-making, the best predictor of good judgement isn't intuition or experience or intelligence, but willingness to engage in introspection, to cultivate "the art of self-overhearing".

Not quite the same thing as blogging, I feel.  A fool with a tool is still...well, let's just say that perhaps not all humans demonstrate all of the time the "floodlight intelligence" that's supposed to distinguish us from the "laser-beam" intelligence of other animals. 

On Peak Morality

 

 

There is an emerging concern that the cult of individualism, greed and selfishness has gone so far that families and children need "basic training in love and moral responsibility".

Some eminent ethicists argue the opposite, supporting those who claim that "there has been no bubble in available human energy" and that there is no less human energy available now than before the current financial and moral crises.

On Ancestors

 

What if we could we remember and honour all the dead...yes, the estimated 110 billion or so humans who have ever lived? 

Of course, our most urgent challenge right now is to keep working towards the goal of giving everyone alive right now access to basic needs - to water and food, security, health, education etc - and it's painfully clear that, with e.g. growing numbers of orphans around the world, we still have a huge task still ahead of us.  (And yes, let's unashamedly say "us", rather than fall back on the third person, abstract term "humanity" that somehow suggests it's someone else's problem.)

However, what if at the same time, everyone - all 7 billion of us alive now - were allocated, at random (to encourage diversity and understanding) 20 "ancestors" about whom we would try and find out something - a name, a likely lifespan or job etc. - and for whom we would light a candle, wear a poppy, say a prayer...whatever...how much more might we feel part of the same family, regardless of race, creed or gender?

For this, we'd need to start by joining up all the records, histories and anthropological studies that give us clues about our ancestors.

On Tithes

 

 

After Peter Singer told us, in The Life You Can Save, to donate a fixed proportion of our income to others, a UK "charity ambassador" said that everybody should give some of their time or their money to charity as a routine part of life

On Picnic at Hanging Rock

 

 

While I would happily watch All That Jazz, The Royal Hunt of the Sun, Godfathers 1 and 2, The Spirit of the Beehive, Blazing Saddles and a few others again and again, Picnic at Hanging Rock remains my favourite film. 

Context matters, of course: I saw it first when I was 12 and fell in love with Miranda instantly.

 

Breathless, full of yearning and l'amour de loin; Zamfir's music touches the heavens; and the big questions go unanswered.

All in all, as strange and as minor key a visual work of art as any in my lifetime...

On Symphonic Thinking

 

 

According to Daniel Pink in A Whole New Mind, logical, linear "left-brain" thinking dominated the Industrial Age, but relationship-oriented "right-brain" thinking will shape the "Conceptual Age".

Pink believes that "symphonic thinking" – crossing boundaries and managing diverse inputs – will define successful Conceptual-Age organisations.

In this context, "symphonic" refers to the ability to assemble different elements into a larger whole, perhaps even one as complex and beautiful as a musical symphony.  Think of the multi-level mindset a composer uses to get brass instruments to start the theme for a piece of music, then to have the woodwinds echo it later, and to bring in the strings.

Symphonic thinking is Halcyon's natural approach.

On Self-Help

 

Leading economist and activist Jeffrey Sachs believes that there are eight things we can to make a difference in fixing the world’s woes:

1. Learn – Read journals. Take courses. Educate oneself about climate change, population growth and politics.
2. Travel – Expose oneself to other people and the problems they face. Travel can remind us that everyone’s fate is interconnected.
3. Start or join an organisation – Whether your aim is to stop the spread of malaria, improve public health or pursue any of a number of other worthy goals, get involved through an organisation of like-minded individuals.
4. Inspire others – Spread the word about our causes in a way that gets others to act.
5. Use social networking sites – The Internet can bring people together.
6. Hold politicians accountable – Make certain our elected officials live up to their responsibilities to address these issues..
7. Take the message to work – Become a voice for responsible business practices at our places of employment.
8. Live the values we espouse – Make decisions in our personal life that reflect our commitment to sustainability.

How does Halcyon stack up against these in early 2011? 

Well, a quick self-audit suggests that 8 is our driving mission, and that inspired us to do 3.  We're very strong at 1.  We've always done a reasonable amount of 2. and more recently we've also focused on 5.

So where could we improve? In all areas, of course, but particularly in 6. and 7. and above all in 4, which we can achieve to a limited extent through individual conversations, but which we have so far been too timid, lazy or disorganised to tackle on a larger scale.

On Presence

 

Is living in the moment really the only way to find inner peace?  Many believe there is only one "reality"; the moment we are in right "now", and that everything else is pure fantasy.

Others believe in living the hours: in the Christian monastic tradition, every day follows a rhythm of eight "Hours," which mark nuances of morning, noon, night, and between times:

• “Lauds” is the coming of the light, an opportunity to nourish your soul for the coming day.
• “Prime” – when you get to your workplace – allows you to make a deliberate beginning.
• “Terce” is a joyful mid-morning prayer break.
• “Sext” is a lunch-time meditation that renews commitment and fervor.
• “None” comes as shadows lengthen and you need a boost for the last hours of your work day. “
• Vespers” is an evening celebration, and
• “Compline” completes the cycle right before bed.
• Connecting the circle of Hours is “Vigils,” the night watch.

On Metaphor

  
On 25 November 2010, Melvyn Bragg and his In Our Time guests discussed the history of metaphor, famously encapsulated in Shakespeare's As You Like It, where the melancholy Jaques declares: "All the world's a stage/And all the men and women merely players." 

Generally, the use of metaphor gets the thumbs up.  Yet metaphor has its dark side too: e.g. Jonathan Haidt argues that viscera and emotion often drive our decision-making, with conscious cognition mopping up afterward, trying to come up with rationalisations for that gut decision.  Haidt even suggests that part of the emotional contagion of the genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda arose from the fact that when militant Hutu propagandists called for the eradication of the Tutsi, they iconically referred to them as "cockroaches". 

(Will we individually, or as societies, ever to be able to "count to 10" before launching ourselves into such negative spirals?)

See also:

• The School of Life on Metaphor

On Detours

 

"The really happy man is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour." - Anon

Saturday, 3 May 2008, carried echoes of childhood days out.  The clouds were white, occasional and fluffy, just sitting in a blue sky minding their own business; we walked and drove all day along sun-dappled rivers; we skimmed stones and laughed and bought ice creams and got muddy; and though we were inland, every slope in the road seemed to promise that first magical view of the sea beyond the horizon...and most of all, we just travelled, slowly, getting lost and not caring, along the languid Semois and the stately Meuse, and through astonishing and previously unknown landscapes of valleys, cliffs and forests that grace the Belgian-French border around little towns like Revin.

Fast forward to Saturday 5 February, 2011, the same five of us detoured once again - on the way home from a wonderful family outing to the Thermes at Spa - but this time further upstream on the Meuse, from south of Liège, on past our old haunts of Seraing and Jemeppe (still as industrially ugly as ever, but exactly-half-a-lifetime-ago nostalgic nonetheless) and on through the gathering darkness through Huy and Andenne, before pizzas in Wavre.

On Pragmatism

 

 

Is it a wrong approach, as a leading journalist claimed, to start with your favourite quality or value (freedom, equality, justice etc), and then try to imagine what a society would look like if it were arranged to maximise that quality? 

Should we, instead, examine the political and cultural institutions we already have and work from there, as failure to do this might lead to incoherence and fantasy?

I'm not sure...just because most "-isms" are divisive and fail ultimately, should we really give up on all big ideas and hopes of breakthrough change in favour of sheer pragmatism?

On Silbury Hill

 

 

In about 1999 I registered the internet domain name silburyhill.com and paid to maintain it for several years, without ever really doing anything with it. 

I eventually let the registration lapse, but even at the time of first drafting this post, in late October 2010, new developments at Silbury continue to fascinate me in a way that I can't easily put into words.

...even if, after 4000 years, the reasons why it was constructed finally become clear.  Why did I feel compelled - no other word will do - to acquire silburyhill.com as myfirst personal URL (and more prosaically, why did I pay a not inconsiderable sum to hold onto the URL for a few years, despite being far from ready to launch my own website back then?)

On Transactions

 
 

Historian Niall Ferguson has suggested that much of what went wrong with the global financial system in recent years stemmed from the triumph of tranactions over relationships, the triumph of "Planet Finance", with its derivatives valued at around USD700 trillion, over "Planet Earth" with its annual global GDP of only USD50 trillion.

Is this just the largest scale example yet of the growing global imbalance between value and values - i.e. between how much people are worth outwardly, in terms of financial value, and what they're really worth inwardly?

On Becoming

 

 

Thought-provoking discussion about Kierkegaard on BBC Radio 4's In Our Time.  Like his great hero Socrates, Kierkegaard appeared to have rejected the idea of all-encompassing systems (including, I'm guessing, all -isms, even the existentialism named after his own work); hence his antipathy towards Hegel.

Rather, he seems to have favoured the idea of continuous "becoming", seeing us as imperfect creatures involved in a continuous process of striving to do our best, but dismissing all holistic world views as arrogant and delusional. 

Sounds about right..."ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering, there is a crack is everything, that's how the light gets in".

Coincidentally (or maybe not - truth can wear many faces), a recent business book argued that the "world improver impulse always fails", because human illogic, driven by "squishy emotions", will always trump reason in the final analysis.

On Paranoia

 

Are we living in an age of paranoia?

On Fascism

 

 

Calling for a re-evaluation of what we label fascism, a recent book argued that, by using the word as a synonym for anything that is undesirable, we are blinded to the examples around us of real fascism from both Left and Right wing governments. 

During a recent, highly-reputable radio discussion about the book, the old "Hitler was a vegetarian", "Hitler was a fascist", "so aren't vegetarians fascists if they try to stop others eating meat?" non sequitur briefly reared its ugly head. 

A rather different view on this point was expressed with terrible clarity by Isaac Bashevis Singer, a Noble Laureate in literature: "In relation to them (animals), all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka."

Due to my own complacency and, let's be honest, due too, I guess, to my then underdeveloped compassion muscles, it took me another 10 years to react fully, but I felt something similar when we ("we" being just a cross-section of outraged local citizens, many of whom had never before protested in public) blocked the streets during the "battle of Brightlingsea" to try and stop the export of live sheep and veal calves through the little port.  

Looking at the faces of the animals through the lorries' barred sides recalled painful images from 60 years ago, and we all know who the fascists were then.

See also:

• On Meat

On Gratitude

 

Many advise that, religious or not, we should start and finish each day with a "prayer", e.g.

"Thank you for today" and "allow me to put all my heart, all my mind, all my soul and all my strength in the service of others, in my thoughts, in my prayers, in my conversations, in my writings and works." - Robert Muller 

Gratitude.org says that no matter what age we are, we can find many ways to feel grateful:

• Ages 4-12 www.gratefulness.org/t/links_for_kids.htm
• Teenagers www.gratefulness.org/t/teen_links.htm
• Parents and teachers www.gratefulness.org/t/caring_for_youth_links.htm
• Elders www.gratefulness.org/t/elder_links.htm

On Nudging

 

 

"Humans have many more options before them than they currently believe...but what to do with too much information is a great riddle of our time", according to Theodore Zeldin.

Nudge has been in vogue in recent years, with its ideas about "choice architectures" and driving people towards pro-social behaviours (including, as I've witnessed myself at Brussels Airport, painting a fly on urinals to help us poor males pay better attention to where we point Percy!)

(Persuasive technology and captology seem to cover much the same ground.)

Can we be confident, however, that nudging is really that far up the food chain from subliminal advertising? 

At very least, we need to be open about which behaviours we wish to encourage and surely the best way to start would be by engaging more people about what those behaviours and related shared values might be?

On An Intimate History of Humanity

 

 

Theodore Zeldin's magnum opus teems with original and humane ideas, many having a direct influence upon the evolution of Halcyon.

Zeldin says that "enough is known, enough has been written, about what divides people; my purpose is to investigate what they have in common".

This is work worthy of a lifetime, perhaps of many lifetimes, as we strive to "turn our malady of separateness around".

On Fear of Flying

 

 

Is fear the best way of teaching us how to choose the seatmates, the soulmates, the mates we want alongside us throughout our lives.  Personally, fear of flying arrived one day in 1989, stuck around for many years and then receded into a background anxiety.

On Roy Harper

 

I saw Roy most recently in Brussels on my 47th birthday, 14 May 2010.

 

Roy remains wonderfully pastoral, as this December 2010 photo, taken 50 yards from hs house in Ireland, testifies...

 

See also:

• On McGoohan's Blues
• Roy serves up hors d'oeuvres

On Meat

 

 

Our current meat-heavy system of food production seems unsustainable, a waste of resources and a source of pollution in the form of pesticides and hormones as well as methane gas from livestock manure.

Indeed, a 2011 report suggested raising meat for human consumption is one of the biggest anthropological reasons for global warming.

On McGoohan

 

Sometimes I think in terms of BMB and AMB, i.e. before and after I first heard Roy Harper's McGoohan's Blues.  

It is interesting too to latterly read others' interpretations of the song - e.g. here - though since this is almost 30 years after I first heard it, my own impressions are pretty ingrained.

I was too young for The Prisoner on TV, but lines like "The Prisoner is taking his shoes off to walk in the rain..." immediately stirred some "universal memory"...

 

See also:

• On Roy Harper
   

On the Sun

 

The weird idea that Earth could be getting a second sun, at least temporarily, if Betelgeuse, one of the night sky's brightest stars, goes supernova, recalls a dream, many years ago, in which I climbed a ridge in the desert and saw a dawn uncannily like this photo...

 

Something tells me I'm not the only one to have dreamt this, so are we in the realm of memes, of collective unconscious, or, as it often feels to me, is this some hazy, shared memory from sometime, somewhere, of which we're all dimly aware but which we suppress in our daily living?

"When I was a child
I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown,
The dream is gone.
I have become comfortably numb."

On Marx

 

 

Eric Hobsawn, interviewed here in early 2011, argued convincingly on Start the Week on 17 January 2011 that Marx is as relevant today as ever.  How to Change the World: Tales of Marx and Marxism, 93-year old Hobsbawn's new book [hope there!], investigates Marx's influence and analyses the spectacular reversal of Marxism’s fortunes over the past thirty years.

Time to reconsider Marx perhaps?

An afterthought: will "Halcyonism" be known and spoken of one day?  Do I care?  Not really, but to have an organising principle bringing all my ideas together might be nice - immodesty aside - and potentially useful to at least a few others.  We'll see...

On Purpose

 

"A wise lady once told me that when you find your ideal job, you will do it for less than they pay you and when you find your calling you will do it for free. This is my ideal job. I hope you find yours." - Martin Tichenor, Volunteer Director for a medium security prison in Missouri

Finding and fulfiling what you consider to be your purpose must rank among the greatest of all assets.

On Human Nature

 

 

"There are two great forces of human nature......self-interest and caring for others" , according to Bill Gates.

If true, then:

(1) What is the approximate balance between the two today - in individuals, organisations and societies?  How much time do we really spend thinking about and then acting on other people's needs?

(2) How can we start an open and ongoing debate about what the balance should be - next year, in 2015, in 2030 etc?  If we don't do this, then how can individuals really know how to lead a "good" life, can organisations know what their wider responsibilities really are and can societies really know how to develop fair policies for all?

(3) How can we then best collaborate with one other, sharing our good practices and our ideas and reaching out for a consensus on the most effective actions, projects and policies to get us ever closer to that optimum balance between self-interest and active compassion?

What will be the best fora and media for involving as many people as possible in both the debate and the sharing?  Halcyon intends to play a key role in starting to answer such questions.

On Sufficiency

 

 

Once the five basic needs listed below are met, further affluence and accumulation of goods do not necessarily correlate with a higher quality of life.

On Villanelles

 

 

Leonard Cohen adapted and sang an uplifting Villanelle for Our Time.  Perhaps the following quote, while not poetic, might serve as an epiphet for our troubled economic and environmental times?

"People – especially people in positions of power – have invested a tremendous amount of effort and time to get to where they are. They really don't want to hear that we're on the wrong path, that we've got to shift gears and start thinking differently" - David Suzuki

On Recession

  

 

Is there such a thing as a "good" recession?  Even the high quality commentariat was divided on this one, with some believing that no longer will we be judged primarily by what we earn, and that this "will refashion us for the better", or that "as times get worse, we get better". 

At the same time, others argued the opposite - i.e. that recessions "do not make people finer, more spiritual human beings. They destroy lives" and that "affluenza trumps penury" every time.

At times this bickering felt like a classic relativist stand-off; so much really depends on how individuals feel.

On "The Shift"

 

 

Some call it The Shift, others Blessed Unrest, but whatever is going on, even leading politicians now point to a "civilian surge" - the idea that around the world people who have hugely different access to opportunities and wealth nonetheless inhabit an increasingly common universe where mobile phones can tell bloggers in Iran or protestors in Burma or street kids in Nairobi about how life can be - that is creating a different context for international politics.

But is this shift real?  Will people at large become more activist and compassionate in 2021 than in 2011?  Can we really change from our selfish ways and step into the shoes of others for sustained periods?

On Altruism

 
 

Are we fooling ourselves by believing that merely improving others' awareness will be sufficient to overcome the world's problems?  

When we are trying to be "authentic" and "green", for example, is this more about preening our own self-esteem than driven by any real sense of altruism or compassion?

On Synthesis

 

 

Who needs evolution, now that synthetic organisms have arrived?  It seems that it will soon be possible to mix and match genomes to generate organisms that can perform all sorts of molecular functiions, including - possibly - curing diseases.

On Fragments

 

Everything is fragmented, and that's good, many believe.

On The Shift

 

Could the collapse in consumerism caused by our troubled economic times combine with the growing critique of its consequences to create a fundamental shift in human values?

On Hallelujah

 

 

It was weird, but satisfying, to see that Leonard Cohen, having allegedly been shafted financially by his former manager, must have coined it in from royalties from the X-Factor version - the umpteenth - of Hallelujah.  I've admired Lennie's original for more than 20 years, and his performances of the song live in Rotterdam in 2008 and Lille in 2010 brought the house down.

Interesting too that Bryan Appleyard claimed that Hallelujah is really about misery, failure and loneliness, i.e. de facto a song in the minor key (I use "minor key" metaphorically here - Hallelujah is actually written in C major).  As people who know me will testify, tagging people/art/places...whatever...by relative major or minor key dominance is one of my favourite bar-stool psychoanalytical pastimes, and a theme to which I shall return in this blog. 

Yet Appleyard was too sniffy about how Hallelujah was treated on the X-Factor, as Alexandra Burke's rendering was thoughtful and soulful, if not entirely authentic.  To paraphrase another great Cohen song, she was 100 floors above the other contestants in the tower of song.  Rightly, there was no chance of Alexandra leaving that time around.

On Love

 

 

"It must be love, love, love..."... pace Labi Siffre/Madness.  If Google's annual list of popular search terms is anything to go by, the search for love tops the world's preoccupations.

On "Life Skills"

 

 

Initial media reaction to proposed changes in education are not necessarily anything to put store by, but when I heard the Today report a couple of years ago I have to confess to an initial, kneejerk, father-of-school-age children prejudice kicking in when I heard references to traditional subjects being replaced by "life skills" classes etc. 

However, Matthew Taylor of the RSA is right; we'll get nowhere if we don't at least stop and listen to the content of, and rationale for, proposed changes before we rubbish them.  Is it really so bad to want to educate children to be "healthier and happier", as neither virtue seems to be overabundant in society right now...