The Legacy of Empire

A very interesting result from last week's poll- bearing in mind most of those who voted, were presumably bloggers themselves.

The overwhelming majority of you think this medium is completely pointless.



I'm actually going to go out on a limb here and say I completely disagree.
Communication is the most important thing we do.

It is what life is all about.
As Electro-Kevin says, the purpose of life is to pass on DNA.
DNA is a method of passing on coded information.
Life itself, survives better and evolves faster, by it's ability to receive and transmit information.

The stars communicate their presence to us.

Human existence and human progress are all about communication.
Most of the problems of the world, can be blamed on poor communication between people.
The greatest advances in human history have been those which found better ways to store and disseminate information.

This is what makes us different. We know so much, we DO so much, because we are able to pool all the good ideas any human ever had and build on them. Our knowledge and our thoughts are the product of those of the many many great thinkers who walked this road before us.
We start our lives further along it than they did.

This is a medium which democratises the spread of ideas and information. It allows YOU the ability to disseminate YOUR thoughts.

Great men alone don't change the world, millions of little people can too, simply by talking.
Have faith in what you are doing and the role you play in people's lives.
I don't think this IS pointless.

Or it needn't be.

Tonight's post (and poll) is in some ways a continuation of last nights.
Crashie actually seems to have had a foreboding of it, because her comment on the last post, is related to this one.

One thing we really don't like to talk about in the UK is the Empire. We acknowledge it existed, but we don't like to debate it, or understand how it happened- or what it really left behind.
I think we need to.

Because unless we understand it, we can never really understand the world we live in.
And I really do mean, the WHOLE world.

We are too busy either exagarating our decline, or feeling guilty about the less pleasant bits to be completely objective.
Our ancestors weren't objective either, but their subjectivty at least acheived something.
Whether in the final judgement, they acheived something truly amazing, or simply exploitative, is open to debate.



To find the roots of Empire, we need to go back to the seventeenth century.
The seventeenth century was a hard time across Europe.
It was a battle betwen superstition and reason, betwen Protestant and Catholic, Kings and People.

And in a small island on the edge of Europe, the people made the final choice. They had learned something from their century of struggle.
They had learned from the experience of being ruled by Cromwell.
The basic lessons they learned were simple.

1. Never hero worship your leaders.
2. Retain the right to sack your government.
3. Permit all views to be freely aired. The more people discuss, the sooner truth is reached. Suppressing ideas, leads them to go underground. Truth will out, as they say.
4. Allow people as much freedom as you possibly can- that way you give free rein to their creativity, and the people themselves make their country great.

It took most of the rest of Europe a pretty long time to come to these conclusions- in some ways, being honest, I'm not sure they really are QUITE ingrained in continental culture yet.
Throughout the twenties and thirties, many European peoples were easily duped into the idea that their problems could be solved by scrapping democratic systems and raising up leaders who could not be sacked and demanded hero worship.

Hitler is the most obvious example- every voter who voted for him knew that he wasn't a big believer in democratic decisions- but their fredom from absolutism was young, and they didn't yet believe in it.

The French almost got the idea in 1789- before they clamoured to make Napoleon a new God-Emperor of Reason.
And their hero-worship of De Gaulle was a little alarming- it is hard to see him as a real democratic ruler.

In Europe, freedom is granted from above, in the Anglosphere, power is granted by the people.

The Eighteenth century was the century when the peoples of the British Isles felt the benefits of their new system- completely different then to the way any other people in Europe thought.
Freed from oppressive government, the people flourished, created, invented, travelled- and rose quickly from a second rate power, to the first of the Superpowers.



And they carried their message with them.
To be sure, the traders who sent their ships- and their mercenaries- took with them the profit motive.
But they also took with them a pretty amazing set of values, by the standards of the time.
They didn't just come to pillage, as other empires had done, doing for the conquered territories the bare minimum to provide expedient rule.

The came to develop the lands they conquered. They knew they were able to acheive so much, because their system and their values were the best in the world (at the time). They were right to have faith in that.
They were imposing it, and imposing it by force, but a part of them surely felt, that if the British way of life had done such wonders for them, they were good values to proselytise.

The British invested in their territories in an extraordinary way, they allowed free settlement in an extraordinary way.

The only empire that truly compares to it in impact, is that of Rome.

The Romans left roads, aqueducts, laws, etc.
They left behind countries far more advanced than they found them. Whatever we may think of the worst of their rulers, their decadent ways, their culture of slavery, they changed the world for the better.

Likewise, the British Empire left behind a complex infrastructure and a system of values it not only left to the peoples it subjected, but values which have gradually won over the world.



Whatever was done along the way, the true legacy of the Empire, it's bequest to the world really was a better way of doing things.

And its legacy lives yet.

The Second World War was a real struggle of ideas- a struggle between tyranny and freedom.
But ultimately it was the battle where the Empire and it's children- most notably the United States- put their money where their mouth was.

It is no coincidence that Westminster democracy is still considered the paradigm, and British Justice, for all faults, still in principle the model that is held up to the world.
The realities may be tarnished, the principles are good.

The world sees that, and it is a powerful dynamic in the world today.

For the world's policeman, is the Empire's child. It is trusted by many across the globe because it is the most powerful champion of those amazing values that any thinking person can se, must never be allowed to die.

And the Special Relationship, or Transatlantic Alliance?
It is fundamentally important to the US.
Not just because of what the UK is today, but because of what we were.

Every value the US holds dear, every value it trumpets, reached it's shores from the mother country.
When it acts in the name of those values, without the support of it's aged parent, those values seem hollow.
The world is not convinced.

But when the two act together, history is invoked.
The champions of the free world, the peoples who invented freedom, fought two world wars for it, and defended the free world against the Soviet Union.

It's a powerful legend, and like so many legends, has more than a grain of truth in it.
There is a tendancy for the world to trust the Star and Stripes and the Union Jack flying side by side.



The British Empire carved a world largely in its own image, globalisation has been more anglicisation than we care to admit.

In my opinion, future generations will be fascinated by it.

It simply remains for me to quote the words on the statue of Boudicca on the Thames embankment;
'Regions Caesar never knew, Thy posterity shall sway.'

Maybe it wasn't all bad.

Have your say!

Britain's Hired Killers

This post has partly been inspired by a discussion that took place over the weekend regarding someone who was a part of our group many years ago, but has now burned his bridges with many people.

Fact is, he's changed. And not in a nice way.
He has lost all ability to use people skills.
He is now a compulsive reactor- in a violent way.

The oddity is, he is one of the few people I know who is EXACTLY where they planned to be in this stage of their lives.
He is a Major in the Royal Marines.

I liked the guy I knew many years ago. Nowadays I would respectfully decline an offer to go for a drink with him.
Not because I dislike him, but because he is no a longer a person I could feel comfortable with.
The fact is, I've never killed anybody. Nor has anybody I know. I don't know how many people this guy has killed in his life, but bearing in mind he served in Afghanistan and Iraq, I suspect it's quite a tally. He has an exemplory service record, which means he is very good at his job.
But let's not escape from the fact, that his job is as a career killer.
Soldier, Mercenary, Hitman- all paid to kill.

I understand that we need the services of such people, but just because it's done in our name doesn't mean I want to be around them.
I have never yet come across anyone who left the army capable of readapting to life outside.

That's understandable. When you have spent twenty years in the company of others who regarded killing people as part of a days work, it's got to change you.
It cuts you off from ordinary emotional understanding of the rest of humanity.

Sometimes, we are not particularly honest with ourselves about the British Armed Forces.
It's true that the British Army is very good at what armies are supposed to do- win battles, and ultimately, wars.
It's record of victory is almost unparallelled.
As an example of how a fighting machine should work, it's highly impressive.



Sometimes we in this country are blind to the fact that though the Empire has gone, this is still a very powerful country- the only European nation to be in both the top five Economic powers AND the top five Military powers.

Put bluntly, we have one of the highest shares of wealth in the world, and spend one of the highest figures on armamaments. It doesn't cost that high a percentage of GNP, because contrary to what we like to think, we have a lot of money to spend, period.

Most countries have armies to protect their borders, hardly ever used, unlikely to see real combat and ineffective against a serious attack.
Only a tiny handful of countries possess armies capable of invading countries in far off regions of the globe.

Ours is one of them.

British Troops are pretty much always involved in conflict situations somewhere.
Whereas the soldiers of many countries can serve a whole career without killing anyone, the majority of British soldiers will.

In one sense, while armies exist anywhere at all, I'm glad ours is still one of the best.
In the same way, while nuclear weapons exist, I'm glad we have one of the larger stashes in the world.

I think both are thoroughly dangerous to world security- and potentially to our species in the world we live in now.
World War Three will not last six years- possibly not much more than six hours.



But there is a social side too, one we ignore.
There are two countries in the Western world which stand out as markedly more violent cultures than all the rest.
The United States and the UK.

The UK doesn't have the gun crime problem the US has, but only because we try to disarm everybody here. This is a sad sign really- we can't trust anybody with guns, although our constitutional theorists all agreed that the people should have the right to bear arms if their government did.
If the forces of the state have all the guns, it is a threat to liberty.

But in our society that needs to be sacrificed because it is just too dangerous to allow too many weapons out there.
In spite of this, you have more chance of being shot here than anywhere else in Europe.

As regards fighting, people are much more quick to turn to blows here than in most countries, we have a murder rate, high robbery rate, high burglary rate, in fact we have a high rate of most violent crimes.



There is a reason for this, in my opinion.
British culture- like US culture- has to be ambivalent towards violence, to a degree other countries don't have to be.

We need to ensure that a certain proportion of our young, usually those with sad upbringings who yearn to go off and be a hero, will buy the dream of soldiering, will join the army to become trained killers.
Because don't forget, unlike soldiers in other armies who only need to learn about about defensive tactics, British troops need to learn a lot more. They are unlikely to ever need to defend their homeland from attack- most will go elsewhere to fight.

We need an army of people, who didn't join to defend their home, but actually really want the chance to go abroad and kill people for the Crown.
We glorify it.

We classify our films much more stringently than our fellow Europeans when it comes to Sex, but much more relaxedly when it comes to violence.

And the Army is a fairly aggressive recruiter. It is impossible to watch the TV for long without an Armed Forces recruitment advert popping up.
It goes into High Schools to promote the option of serving the Crown.

It allows boys of seventeen to enlist, even though the state doesn't trust them to buy a drink or vote.
It trusts them, however, to really think about what they are signing up for.

We see them as heroes, but most of them end up human tragedies, spat out with a pension and no real life skills to serve them in the community at large.
But they retain their conditioning and mentality- rabid wolves let loose.

Few leave the British Armed Forces unscathed.

That's the reality.

If we had any sense, the permanent members of the UN security council, four of whom also happen to be amongst the leading military powers would announce a definite commitment to Total Universal Disarmament, certainly removing Standing Armies and Nuclear Weapons.
I'm not saying it would be easy to acheive, it would take a long time, but we need to at least commit to it.

We cannot any longer retain War as an ultimate resort in International Relations.
It is too dangerous for all of us, and the cost to society is too high.

Postscript; Just noticed, this is the two hundredth post here!

Have a Lovely Weekend

Well, I expect to back to be normal again next week, let's just say I have been under a lot of pressure lately, but Grandma Crushed didn't raise a quitter.

I'm going to the Chimney Sweep's stag do tomorrow- which, for those of you who know the story, will be an occasion of sorrow as well as joy for me.

The break will do me good as well.

This is Never Let Me Down, by Depeche Mode. It's meaning is a little ambiguous maybe, but the extreme powwer of friendship is a good interpretation.

The post below is one of my better ones in my opinion, so I really would value any comments anyone has.

Thanks all of you for being so supportive. It really does mean a lot to me.
Enjoy your own weekends!

xx

The Meaning of Life

On the basis of a very interesting post over at Electro-Kevin's I've finally decided to post on my M theory, or theory of everything.
For those of you who don't know some of my pet amateur interests are Evolutionary History and the Physics of the Universe.

Mainly because I really do want to know how everything works. That really is my life goal, if I have one.
After, all it's how we tick.
And WHY we tick.

I think it's actually quite obvious, but phyicists and theologians alike ignore the obvious synthesis in their thoughts.

Back to Basics.

I think I've said before, but Genesis really should begin with;

'In the begining there was the Energy quanta.
It appeared at a point.
It became subject to the Laws of Thermodynamics.'

That's it.
That's your Big Bang.



And the rest is history.
Just thermodynamics running the universe down.
Till Heat Death.
It's all just one reaction.

Insert Energy.
It wears itself out.

Now here's where it gets interesting.

Firstly, let me just state that the Laws of thermodynamics are ruthless.
You CANNOT break them.
All other laws are subject to them.

What this means is that the most efficient of all mechanisms is the determination of energy to waste itself.
To bring the reaction to a close.
The energy NEEDS to be expounded.

The universe CANNOT be any more efficient than it is.
In terms of what it does, waste energy, it IS perfect.

In other words, if we have evolved consciousness, it follows, the universe must have. If we who use it's laws are conscious, if computers which use its laws are conscious, the universe MUST be. For it NOT to be, would be it NOT utilising one of its own properties- the ability to transmit electronic information to direct results.

Of course it does.
That's how things happen.
That is how it was initially able to set the necessary constants to acheive total dissipation in the shortest time.
Don't worry, if the life of the universe is a year, we haven't passed the first second.
This is significant.
It should give you hope.

The most efficient way to use up energy is by finding chain reactions. Stars are an example of this.
Nuclear reactions are chain reactions, overall they accelerate over time, actually using up more energy faster and faster, and being capable of setting up an increasing number of such reactions.

All of which brings Doomsday closer.

And what of life?



This to me, is the best description of life;
'Any series of chemical reactions, which, once intiated, are capable of setting up identical reactions from scratch, so that over time, there is an increased number of such reactions, such growth being permanently exponential.'

Another chain reaction.
Passed on by DNA.

And the longer it goes on, the quicker it speeds up.

Complexity creates complexity, it leads faster and faster to more efficient ways to use energy.

Life is one of the Universe's better ideas.

So it does create us for purely selfish reasons.
But have hope.

The universe, as I said above, is perfect it what it does. It created us to serve it, but see how!
To serve it's purposes, we need to succeed.
We need to spread and get more advanced, build spaceships, invent amazing ways to use energy, breed, colonise other worlds, get busy using up the energy.
So it makes us feel good when we do it's bidding.

As I say, it's perfect. It made sure that we would only feel REALLY happy, when what we did was what it wanted.



It's not a chaos.
Progress IS real.
Love IS real.

The Universe does have a truly amazing history written for Man, in the billions of millenia that will pass before Doomsday.

E-K, THAT'S God.

God Exists- By a Majority of 34

Though there was a very interesting surge over the weekend, from an early lead for the Atheists.



Ah, well.
Nothing exciting to vote on this week really.
Fact is, I'm pretty tired, exhausted and fed up with blogging.
Don't really want to go into it.
Some of you probably read between the lines.

I do enjoy this medium, but sometimes...

Not sure I really want to say any more.
It may pass.

Fact is there is a lot positive you can say about it. I don't really need to go into the good aspects of it, I've done so here, and most of you know them anyway.

But you know the downsides too.

Has it got a purpose?
Or is it just a waste of time?

I really like to believe it has a purpose. That we are doing something good here.
But I am going through a slight crisis of faith on this.



Oh well, there you go, even I get depressed sometimes.
It shouldn't last long.
I'm off to the pub, hope the rest of you had a good weekend!

let me know what you think, does blogging serve a purpose?

Have your say!

A Perspective That Tells A Real Story

In our current frame of mind regarding Islam, meaningful debate about the status of women in Islam is difficult.
It's a Catch 22 situation- the Reactionary lobby are most confused.
Stand up for Muslim women, when they don't stand up for our own?

But the Islamophobes have no problem with claiming a Feminism they don't at heart believe to serve their own ends.

I was recently sent this piece by Kizzie, showing it from the perspective of a Muslim woman.
Muslim women, after all, know the reality.

Muslim Woman

I'm passive, weak, uneducated

Veiled from head to toe

One of his four wives

Work in the kitchen all day

And spread my legs wide at night

That's what you think, right?

Funny how the devil spreads ignorance amongst a "civilized people"

The Orientalist whispers in so many ears

To him, I'm the mistress of the harem

Black-hair, olive skin, eyes that glow, hips that don't lie



Hold up

Sexual exploitation- there's nothing exotic about that

Or

I'm poor, cracked feet that never touched soft designer shoes

Dirty, hungry, cold, alone

I'm calling out for help, America save me from my fathers, my brothers, my backward culture, America- save me from my myself

Let me tell you something

You don't have to be a woman to hear my stories

But you have to be a woman to understand them

The blood that boils in my veins is the same as yours

My story is a testament of my struggle

My struggle is a testament of my faith

I am a Muslim woman

Muslim woman

I made prophets weak in the knees,

Fought alongside my man in war

Then went home to nurture my baby

Does that surprise you?

You say I need liberation

What do you call it?

Oh yeah…..furthering women's rights in the Middle East

I have one thing to say to you

My liberation won't come from the one who has oppressed me

Brining me democracy

You think you're really gonna send me Condi

To tell me how to be free

But wait, I'm not here to play the blame game

Let's make this more real

Not only do I take this hate from you

But I take it internally from the close-minded bigots of my own society

So my Muslim father tells me how to dress, but so does Gucci

So my Muslim brothers tell me how to act, but so does MTV

Yea…so it's this double bind I face

When I realize that if do what I want.

I won't make anyone happy

Too good to be bad, too bad to be good


But wait, why this dichotomy

Since when did my identity become a zero sum game

Why do you insist on labeling me?

Putting me in boxes simple and easy only for you to understand

Countless books and movies dedicated to uncovering me instead of just

Letting me be

What's in free will when my spiritual will isn't allowed to be free



Just look at France and Turkey

"Unveiling the Muslim woman"

Why don't I unveil your sexist patriarchal ideology?

Remember the golden rule- treat others how you'd like to be treated, if you're

So keen to educate then please be educated,

Enslaving not our bodies now but our minds,

Eating disorders and depression, no love and not much attention

This equality talk is cheap and the price expensive

Using my body to sell everything from cigarettes to automotives,

Confusing my flesh from my spirit

Confusing my humanity as weakness

When I say something in protest

Standing against trafficking, hunger, poverty, violence, you know "women's issues,

They brush it aside to…oh, she's just a Femi-NAZI

So don't confuse my silence as submission

Nor my covering as oppression

Don't confuse my peaceful battle as lack of conviction

When you ask what sustains me

I say: not man, not America, But God, our God

Am I American, Kashmiri, or an American Born Confused Desi,

On applications, I check none of the above, all of the above, some of the above

But ultimately

I am a Muslim woman.



Nothing for me to add to that.

Stripped

Uniquely expressive lyrics, the build up at the begining is amazing, it's just a great track.

From Black Celebration, one of the darker Depeche Mode albums.