There's so much we still have to learn about the human brain.
The answer is a Clockwork Orange type treatment to give the sink estate folks the motivation to go get jobs cleaning toilets.
There's so much we still have to learn about the human brain.
The answer is a Clockwork Orange type treatment to give the sink estate folks the motivation to go get jobs cleaning toilets.
No, not from your quote, which I hadn't cited. From Hastings' haphazard rant pegging everything from feral children urinating outside pubs to mothers pressuring their daughters into prostitution on the existence of a welfare state. Which doesn't exactly invite a searching, thoughtful critique. Although to be fair to him, he only uses the phrase once ("those at the bottom of society behave no better than their forebears, but the welfare state has relieved them from hunger and real want") and I don't think it's necessarily clear that he intended welfare checks to be the focus of his scorn, as opposed to more recent debates about the scope of parental responsibility and classroom discipline. Like I said in my response to oscar, welfare reform is a whole different debate from the accusation that the welfare state 'created' the underclass.How do get there from here?
Eh...I dunno about that. I'm not in a position to generalize about the outlook of the urban 'underclass' (and granted, 'underclass' is an imprecisely defined term), however the corner of the South I grew up in is often dubbed 'America's largest rural ghetto' by sociologists, and I'd feel fairly comfortable characterizing the outlook of its longterm-poor/un(der)employed population as resigned, defeatist, and insular. Most seldom vote or otherwise participate in civic engagement. Obviously, different from inner-city poverty in all kinds of ways--not as much violent crime (though it's far from bucolic), less anonymity (so, I guess, less 'alienation'...though the redneck contingent in particular always seemed pretty damn alienated to me), etc.--but I really doubt level of investment in the American Dream is one of them.Somehow, that American "one day I'll be that guy" Dream seems to keep that all in check. The belief in that, the aspiration, seems to somehow manage that situation. The good 'underclass' of the US haven't figured out that it's bullshit. You'll never be that guy, you don't stand a fucking chance, the system is absolutely built against you. The 'underclass' in the UK have no such illusions.
Good article. And they've just given a kid six months for £3.50 worth of stolen water. That's just silly.
The moral decay of our society is as bad at the top as the bottom – Telegraph Blogs
And heads up to purpleoscar and Indy - this is from a decent conservative columnist in a decent conservative leaning paper. Go to the Telegraph (unfortunately the Times is behind a paywall) for smart/sensible conservative views on all this, not the Daily Mail.
And Russell Brand runs on a similar theme (last couple of paragraphs are a bit crap though): UK riots: Big Brother isn't watching you | UK news | The Guardian
I like this linking of the crimes of the bottom end with the crimes of the top end, and I think there are far more interesting questions or realisations or events coming in that regard, not just here, but everywhere. I do think there is something far larger that links everything from the Arab Spring to the Tea Party to WikiLeaks and Anonymous type stuff to the Murdoch take down to the banker anger to the wonky 'hung' elections in both the UK and Australia (and the very strong 'change' election in the US, with, no doubt, the most heated and fractious election season in a generation about to kick off) and general, complete loss of faith in politics through to the growing realisation in some cases that political systems are perhaps irreparably broken in more ways than one, to anti-corporate anger, to a rising anti-commercial/commodity feeling, to street riots of varying degree and varying legitimacy all over the place. For another thread or whatever, but I think what we were calling an Information Revolution at the turn of this century is actually only just beginning to live up to it's name.
And heads up to purpleoscar and Indy - this is from a decent conservative columnist in a decent conservative leaning paper. Go to the Telegraph (unfortunately the Times is behind a paywall) for smart/sensible conservative views on all this, not the Daily Mail.
No, not from your quote, which I hadn't cited. From Hastings' haphazard rant pegging everything from feral children urinating outside pubs to mothers pressuring their daughters into prostitution on the existence of a welfare state. Which doesn't exactly invite a searching, thoughtful critique. Although to be fair to him, he only uses the phrase once ("those at the bottom of society behave no better than their forebears, but the welfare state has relieved them from hunger and real want") and I don't think it's necessarily clear that he intended welfare checks to be the focus of his scorn, as opposed to more recent debates about the scope of parental responsibility and classroom discipline. Like I said in my response to oscar, welfare reform is a whole different debate from the accusation that the welfare state 'created' the underclass.
The conditions of poorhouses are appalling and inhumane to present sensibilities, but the institution can't just be waved away as the stupid and cruel excesses of a less enlightened time--much of modern thought on how economic inequality develops and might be countered in industrialized societies emerged from centuries of legislative debate over their aims, funding and structure. Obviously, I was joking about bringing them back, but the point certainly wasn't that that's what Hastings/you/oscar secretly want to do.
It's a good article (I don't like tax dodgers either) but I definitely don't get much of a solution to the problem in this. What I feel is the problem is that people are trying to say that two wrongs make a right. If rioters loot then it's okay since there are rich tax dodgers. If the taxes weren't so high there would be less tax dodging and maybe if we punished criminals (including white collar criminals) there would be more morality displayed. Yet to do that we would have to go more conservative than David Cameron by a mile.
Don't forget that these riots were started because of austerity measures to control the deficit, not becuase rich guys like tax cheating. It sounds too much like a scapegoat distraction to cover up the cause and effect of what happened. If David Cameron wants to control the deficit then he's already better than the Labour party.
Good article. And they've just given a kid six months for £3.50 worth of stolen water. That's just silly.
The moral decay of our society is as bad at the top as the bottom – Telegraph Blogs
And heads up to purpleoscar and Indy - this is from a decent conservative columnist in a decent conservative leaning paper. Go to the Telegraph (unfortunately the Times is behind a paywall) for smart/sensible conservative views on all this, not the Daily Mail.
It's a good article (I don't like tax dodgers either) but I definitely don't get much of a solution to the problem in this. What I feel is the problem is that people are trying to say that two wrongs make a right. If rioters loot then it's okay since there are rich tax dodgers. If the taxes weren't so high there would be less tax dodging and maybe if we punished criminals (including white collar criminals) there would be more morality displayed. Yet to do that we would have to go more conservative than David Cameron by a mile.
Don't forget that these riots were started because of austerity measures to control the deficit, not becuase rich guys like tax cheating. It sounds too much like a scapegoat distraction to cover up the cause and effect of what happened. If David Cameron wants to control the deficit then he's already better than the Labour party.
Chumbawamba | Music | guardian.co.ukBoff Whalley: 'In defence of anarchy'
It's the catch-all term that's being used to describe this week's riots. But is this really anarchy? Not even close, says Chumbawumba's Boff Whalley, a self-professed anarchist
ANARCHY SPREADS!" So ran the front-page headlines of The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail this week. Add in the Daily Star's "ANARCHY IN THE UK" and The Sun's "ANARCHY" and you have the print media's current (and ongoing) favourite catch-all word: anarchy. Just the ticket for a spot of lazy demonising.
I became an anarchist, gradually, after seeing the Sex Pistols on our black-and-white TV in Burnley in 1976. Thirty-five years later, I still label myself an anarchist, albeit with various philosophical explanations and political definitions. For most of those 35 years I've played in a band – Chumbawamba – whose crowning moment (according to the demonising press) was chucking a bucket of water over the deputy prime minister John Prescott at an awards ceremony.
Chumbawamba began life in 1982 as an anarchist collective; it remains so to this day. Our working principle, inspired less by theoretical posturing than by the practicalities of working together as a group, was (and is) "equal pay, equal say".
Unlike most pop groups – which appear to wallow in the bad-vibes hierarchy of songwriter-as-boss, drummer-as-slave – we choose to put equal value on our separate roles in the band. And not just in the band – lead singers have to wash the dishes and drive the van, too.
Anarchy – or, to be more precise, anarchism – gives me, and gives the band, a framework for working respectfully and equally with each other. We manage ourselves, we don't vote on decisions (in an eight-piece group, that might mean three disgruntled people bent to the will of the other five). Instead, we discuss, compromise and eventually reach an agreement we're all relatively happy with. Yes, it sometimes takes a long time.
Anarchy. It comes from the Greek anarchos: "an" meaning without, "archos" meaning leaders or rulers. Without leaders. It could be that simple; instead, this is where it gets complicated.
The political and philosophical idea that is "anarchism" has become, headline by headline, dislocated from the current use of the word "anarchy". Anarchy used to mean the state to which anarchism aspires. Now, of course, it has come to mean disorder – the kind of disorder that comes with photographs of boys throwing bricks at riot police and kicking their way into electrical-goods shops. Anarchy is modern shorthand for the law of the jungle. How did this change come about? Where was the semantic leap from "without rulers" to "disorder"? That change came from above. There are several ways that words can change their meaning over time; popular culture especially loves to shake up the Scrabble letters and create new meanings from old words. But there's also a tradition of words being redefined to suit the needs of those in power: from "Luddite" to "friendly fire" to "hoodie".
The latter is now used to denote those opportunist consumers who are, according to The Sun, "anarchists", despite not having the slightest idea of who Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was. He was the first self-declared anarchist, who in 1840, in What Is Property, defined anarchy as "the absence of a master, of a sovereign". Later, in The General Idea Of The Revolution (1851), he urged a "society without authority". See, no mention of disorder or chaos. Whatever we might think of our latter-day looters, they're not anarchists. But this current crop of masked lads is not the one bandying the word "anarchy" around, after all. All they want is to do some free shopping and have a laugh. Perhaps it would be a good thing if these disenfranchised, disengaged kids did learn a bit about the brush they're being tarred with – anarchist? Wot, me? Then again, they're growing up under a government that seems to actively dissuade poor families from pursuing higher education.
The headlines following the rioting that broke out at the London anti-cuts demonstration in March and at last November's student protest noticeably avoided the word "anarchy". Student hooligans, thuggish, disgraceful – but not quite anarchy. The inference is that those riots weren't the dreaded hoodies, and that and smashing Topshop and McDonald's has a political explanation. The current rioting does bring to mind a very specific form of anarchist politics, that of Situationism. Guy Debord, Parisian anarchist and Situationist philosopher, first described the so-called Society of the Spectacle in 1964. This classic anarchist text described a world where consumerism would run rampant and the acquisition of "things" would become the dominant force in society. The representation of that world – as a spectacle – would supersede reality. Debord knew about reality TV and the Nintendo Wii decades before they were invented.
Again, reading Debord, there's no mention of disorder, of mob rule, or of victimisation, bullying or mugging. But his critique of the alienating effects of capitalism – and the spiritual vacuum of modern life – chimes with this week's TV images of youths roaming the city. When I first discovered anarchism as a teenager, I was relieved to discover a political idea that looked like fun – unlike the earnest, po-faced championing of wage-slavery or the careerist élitism of the major political parties. Anarchism seemed relevant and contemporary. It changed according to the way the world was changing – unlike the old dogmatic socialist stuff, it was able to accommodate new ideas like feminism and environmentalism. There wasn't a party line but yes, there were parameters, albeit loose ones. These encompassed respect, equality and mutual aid and were never broad enough to allow whatever definition The Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail or The Sun have put on the word this past week.
Proudhon, in his essay "What Is Property?" (1840), explicitly rejected the conjoining of anarchism with destruction and disorder: "I am not an agent of discord. Man's government of his fellow man, no matter the name under which it lurks, is oppression: society's highest perfection lies in the marriage of order and anarchy." Similarly, Mikhail Bakunin answered the criticism that getting rid of leaders would result in the law of the jungle: "Do you want to make it impossible for anyone to oppress his fellow man? Then make sure that no one shall possess power."
As a teenager I turned from the gang mentality of hanging out on street corners into an idealistic and hopeful anarchist, more concerned with scrawling peace signs on my schoolbooks than setting fire to things. There was still cynicism; but there was also hope. Noam Chomsky depicts anarchism as "based on the hope that core elements of human nature include sentiments of solidarity, mutual support, sympathy and concern for others". To me, it's still that way.
Some self-proclaimed anarchists you may have heard of: George Melly, John Cage, Noam Chomsky, Emma Goldman, Germaine Greer, Henry Miller, Joseph Proudhon, Malcolm McLaren, Mike Harding. If you can picture any of them amongst the mugshots on the front of this week's Sun you could grab yourself a reward. Do you think any of the people I've mentioned would use the description "anarchist" as meaning "one who loves disorder"?
When the Spanish anarchists in 1936 declared war against General Franco's fascist coup, thousands of British people (including George Orwell) went to help them. The British government stood by and watched as the fascist Italian and German forces came to Franco's aid and installed a Nationalist government. Three years later, strengthened by the victory in Spain, Nazi Germany and its Italian allies declared war on the rest of Europe. I like to think that this was a time (during and after the Spanish Revolution) when all right-thinking people reflected on an opportunity lost. A three-year span when, along with fighting a war on several fronts, the Spanish anarchists were collectivising land and property and organising according to libertarian principles.
Over the years, as a musician and as a writer, I've watched how traditional hierarchies in the workplace create divisions and arguments. I don't think I'm alone in not wanting to have a boss tell me what to do. I refuse to have a boss tell me what to do. The bargaining tool that's unspoken in that statement is that I will happily relinquish the power to tell other people what to do. That, for me, is anarchism. I won't order you about, if you don't order me about. And together we'll make it work.
It sounds so naïve. But I'd rather have that sense of possibilities, of something better, than the all-too-obvious battle being waged between dislocated youth and millionaire politicians. As the Prime Minister ups the rhetoric – egging on the police to stick the boot in harder – it's easy to see the similarities between the two scrapping factions.
I have sympathies with the hooded kids on the streets of our cities, if only because they're among the most neglected, ridiculed and dismissed people in Britain. I don't sympathise when they're breaking into my house. I don't sympathise when they're setting fire to local shops, when they're mugging and intimidating.
But when I see the TV shots of them in Manchester city centre, breaking into the Arndale Centre – a truly Debordian Palace of Consumerism – stealing shoes and tracksuits, I find it hard to be overly critical. These are kids brought up in an age of buy and sell. Labels, logos, status, advertising. This is the world we've given them; a world they're throwing back at us.
Andrew Maxwell, an Irish comedian, put it best: "Create a society that values material things above all else. Strip it of industry. Raise taxes for the poor and reduce them for the rich and for corporations. Prop up failed financial institutions with public money. Ask for more tax, while vastly reducing public services. Put adverts everywhere, regardless of people's ability to afford the things they advertise. Allow the cost of food and housing to eclipse people's ability to pay for them. Light blue touch paper."
Anarchy is not disorder. Anarchy is a state that is arrived at through the philosophy of anarchism. Mutual aid. Without rulers. Living together. Working things out together. David Cameron returned from his holiday in Italy this week and stood outside Downing Street, declaring to the media that the rioting was "criminality, pure and simple". More lazy semantics, more meaningless shorthand. "Criminal" isn't an explanation, it's a word that begs an explanation. Yes, they committed a crime. What was the crime? What was the reason for the crime?
These kids who are being labelled with pure and simple definitions are becoming little more than cartoon baddies playing out roles for the front pages. Why ask questions (Where are they from? How did they get to this point? What can they learn? Can they begin to understand what they're doing?) when you can just call it anarchy? And anarchy, unlike questions, sells.
The politicians and the press are able to bandy words around without depth or explanation because they last for one day. Instant hit. Tomorrow, there will be a whole new set of semantics to frown about, to criticise. But by the time you've written a 2,000-word diatribe, it's time for the next day's edition.
I love words. I always loved words. When we started Chumbawamba in 1982 we decided that our raison d'etre would be topicality. Change. Keep up! Over the past 29 years we've tried to keep faith with that simple ethos and along the way we've realised that words are flexible, adaptable, up for grabs. That's a lovely challenge for any writer, songwriter or poet. Some words you want to let go of, get rid of, kick out. Some words you want to keep close and protect. Right now, subsequent to the newspaper headlines, I'm almost prepared to let the word "anarchy" (as opposed to "anarchism") go. But you know what, I can't do it, not to The Sun and the Daily Mail. It's like letting the burglar look after your house.
Anarchism, anarchy, they're only words; but they're my words, they're our words. No manner of headlines will take them away from us. As Johnny Rotten once said: "I am an anarchist."
Andrew Maxwell, an Irish comedian, put it best: "Create a society that values material things above all else. Strip it of industry. Raise taxes for the poor and reduce them for the rich and for corporations. Prop up failed financial institutions with public money. Ask for more tax, while vastly reducing public services. Put adverts everywhere, regardless of people's ability to afford the things they advertise. Allow the cost of food and housing to eclipse people's ability to pay for them. Light blue touch paper."
The lowdown on this from a REAL Expert - A London Cabbie
London Riots an explanation not an excuse - YouTube
The right wing government responses to the rioters are already, morally worse, than anything the rioters actually did. They are arresting teenagers because of posts they made on Twitter, for christ's sakes.
The whole thing is silly and is being blown out of proportion - in terms of rioting, worse, much worse, happened in the 1970s and early 1980s.
Here is a suggested alternative to right wing solutions, a different way to organise society:
Chumbawamba | Music | guardian.co.uk
Andrew Maxwell, an Irish comedian, put it best: "Create a society that values material things above all else. Strip it of industry. Raise taxes for the poor and reduce them for the rich and for corporations. Prop up failed financial institutions with public money. Ask for more tax, while vastly reducing public services. Put adverts everywhere, regardless of people's ability to afford the things they advertise. Allow the cost of food and housing to eclipse people's ability to pay for them. Light blue touch paper."
Anyways I'm done with this intellectual dead-end.
Anarchists are hypocritical socialists.
I agree
human beings want more than they have
even when they already have quite a bit
that's why we need leaders, elect leaders and get the leaders we desserve
the "moral decay of our society is as bad at the top as the bottom" article also didn't do much for me
it's not as if the top behaved morally correct 1 decade, 2 decades or 3 decades ago either + everyone knew this back then too
still, you didn't get 15 year old looting and plundering in groups back then
there is a moral issue and it wouldn't surprise me the decrease in moral coincides with the decline of church attendence (while I freely admit religion has caused more than a fair bit of harm)