Adam Curtis has a blog

Curtis is IMO the most interesting documentary-maker currently active, by a healthy margin. He spends months or years closeted in the BBC archives, intermittently emerging with documentaries like The Trap or The Power of Nightmares.

Most of his documentaries fit into a coherent project, an intellectual history of the 20th century. What continually fascinates him is the interaction between emotions and politics, how ideas about human nature shape how we see ourselves, and so form the background assumptions which justify political movements. As he told Charlie Brooker:

"What I'm hoping they'll do is pull back like in a helicopter and look at themselves and think about how they're a product of history, and of power, and politics, as much as a product of their own little inner desires. We're all part of a big historical age. That's just what we are. And, sometimes, we forget."

The blog extends these themes, often accompanied by decades-old clips which might otherwise never have found their way online.

Here is a typically fascinating post. Curtis takes Behavioural Economics -- popularised in 'Nudge' and by Dan Ariely, now being politically weaponized by Cameron's Behavioural Insight Unit -- and ties it to Behaviourism. Behaviourism is the psychological apporoach* of treating the mind as a black box, not trying to understand it internally but just tracking how it responds to certain stimuli. Curtis:

Drawing on... behaviourist ideas [Nudge author] Thaler wrote a paper in 1981 with a great title - An Economic Theory of Self-Control.

This is what lies behind the Downing Street unit's plans to find mechanisms to manipulate people so they will do "good" things - like save more for retirement or eat less bad food.

Skinner himself [the leading figure in Behaviourism] was acutely aware that modifying human behaviour in these ways raises serious political questions. Not just about individual freedom, but about who decides what is "good" behaviour, and what happens when others decide it is bad.

These are questions that the Nudge enthusiasts seem to be blithely unaware of.

The whole blog is fascinating, and is at the very least full of arguements to interestingly disagree with. I'm a fan.

* 'approach' because it hovers uneasily between being a methodological practice of conducting experiments and a theory of how the mind works. It's comparable to the 'homo economicus' model of rational self-interest in economics. Both are trivially true, but only if you sideline some of the most important causes of behaviour. Both function very well in narrow circumstances which make for good journal articles, tempting researchers to focus on those circumstances and ignore the rest. Both thus had a similar academic trajectory -- innumerable grad students applying the theories in ways that were clever, internally consistent, and applied to the real world only if you ignored the footnotes. Both were accordingly attacked by outsiders determined to blame the theory for the shortcomings of its application.

I do somewhat try to overlook politicians saying silly things -- most of us are intermittently idiotic, and are just lucky not to be constantly filmed. Still, when the stupid is both extreme and premeditated, we're surely allowed a bit of mockery.

First: Michael Gove takes 'Red Tory' in a bewildering direction, declares himself proud to be a Maoist. Because when you're introducing such an extreme attack onmodernization of the education system, you run out of models to follow. And China has the best example* in living memory* of how to annihilate education (and much else) in only a few years. So of course Gove wants "in education...to implement a cultural revolution just like the one they’ve had in China". [The whole article is a spectacular case of "what was he thinking?"] [via jacinthsong]

Meanwhile in the US, the incoming chair of the House subcommittee on energy and the environment**, apparently believes that the Bible guarantees us no climate change

So I want to start with Genesis 8, verse 21 and 22. "Never again will I curse the ground because of man..." I believe that’s the infallible word of God, and that's the way it’s going to be for His creation.
...
The second verse comes from Matthew 24. "And He will send His angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather His elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other." The earth will end only when God declares its time to be over. Man will not destroy this earth. This earth will not be destroyed by a flood. And I appreciate having panelists here who are men of faith, and we can get into the theological discourse of that position, but I do believe God’s word is infallible, unchanging, perfect.

So, in order to get him taking climate change seriously, we need him to believe we're living in the end-times?

* Or almost; I guess the Khmer Rouge still have the edge. Fortuantely Phnom Penh wasn't on Gove's itinerary.

** I've no idea if this is an important committee, or just a dumping ground for annoying congresscritters. I hope the latter.

Tube strikes make the unions pretty unpopular.

What if the unions instead had a (publicised) day of turning a blind eye to fare-dodgers? That would still cost their employers plenty of money, but would presumably fill the public with enthusiasm rather than hatred.

The main problem would be that while there's plenty of legal protection for strikes, there's much less for employees refusing to perform some part of their job. Doubly so since London Underground undoubtedly already has disciplinary procedures in place for staff who help fare-dodgers. Also I'd imagine many tube employees not being too keen on people who don't pay.

Still, it'd be a nice change from strikes. Have any transport unions tried this kind of thing, elsewhere in the world? What was the result?

"Science fiction is the first human literature"

That's Ken MacLeod attempting the most extreme claim possible in defence of SF. I don't buy his rosy view of SF as humanist, or that "mainstream [literature] is mostly about things we share with other animals - love and hate, war and peace, dominance hierarchies, sex and violence". But I don't have to: he's just turning the contrast right up to clarify the picture.

Also makes me realise how twisted it is that my ideas of 'being human' are all in opposition to being cold-hearted, calculating, machine-like, etc. i.e. to me, 'being human' generally means 'being animal'.

--

I've never read Heinrich Böll, but this interview makes me want to for the first time.

I also guiltily enjoy the grumbling about mainstream American literature. It's an easy bogeyman, and hardly a new one: male, middle-class, academic, urban, dull. The most common hate figure is Jonathan Franzen, or at least his critical canonization. It's striking how many writers whose (online) work I enjoy come out with similar criticism. But I don't read enough novels to judge if it's accurate, and I don't have enough historical perspective to know if it is more than the perpetual siege of the centre by the periphery.

Much the same with indie music. Take Sasha Frere-Jones:

"I’ve spent too many evenings at indie concerts waiting in vain for vigor, for rhythm, for a musical effect that could justify all the preciousness....Where is the impulse to reach out to an audience—to entertain? I can't imagine [James Brown or the Meters] retreating inward and settling for the lassitude and monotony that so many indie acts seem to confuse with authenticity and significance.

That isn't the most interesting version of this critique, just the one I have to hand. IMO the race angle is more a symptom than a cause -- the fundamental problem involves social and economic power, geographical centralization of the chattering classes, critics facing practical incentives to discuss the cultures they know and understand. In short, it's The System. Or it's The Kyriarchy, to use this decade's terminology -- the idea is the same.

ETA: less convinced by both these arguments the more I think about them.

Charles Stross on the utopia shortage:

we badly need more utopian speculation. The consensus future we read about in the media and that we're driving towards is a roiling, turbulent fogbank beset by half-glimpsed demons: climate change, resource depletion, peak oil, mass extinction, collapse of the oceanic food chain, overpopulation, terrorism, foreigners who want to come here and steal our women jobs. It's not a nice place to be; if the past is another country, the consensus view of the future currently looks like a favela with raw sewage running in the streets. Conservativism — standing on the brake pedal — is a natural reaction to this vision; but it's a maladaptive one, because it makes it harder to respond effectively to new and unprecedented problems.

Or in the words of Zizek (who is a reliable source of one-liners, if nothing else): "it is much easier for us to imagine the end of the world than a small change in the political system".

Not that utopias need to be anticapitalist, mind. My own daydreams mostly involve capitalism withering slightly, as some areas currently market-driven are replaced by more satisfying forms of interaction. Same with the other utopia I find most appealing: the amorphous vision implicit in pirate/transparency/open-data circles, slowly coming into focus as those groups become aware of themselves. You can construct non-market versions of those ideals, but they pretty much degrade into communism, anarchism or (rarely, but IMO very plausibly) slavery. Otherwise, you're left with the market/state/kindness for physical goods, sharing for intellectual goods, and probably some kind of permanent fudge in the middle.

Anyway, utopias: let's have more of them, regardless of plausibility. What's yours?

ETA: Although maybe there are a lot of utopian ideas floating around -- just not ones I find remotely appealing. Religious fundamentalism is going strong. Pure no-holds-barred capitalism is a utopian ideal for some, and still a long way from being put into practice.

Among their other achievements, the Prussian military apparently invented wargames. That's wargames in the tabletop sense: turns, figurines, battles decided by dice, landscapes marked in squares, pen and paper and immensely convoluted rules. Warhammer without the orcs, basically. All this in 1812.



The "Tactical War-game" (Taktisches Kriegsspiel) was the work of a Prussian military advisor by the name of George Leopold von Reiswitz. He constructed the rules, and presented the king with an elaborate cabinet containing the (many) pieces needed to play. It went down well:

the King would usually command one side and Prince von Mecklenburg would command the other...In later life the King claimed that the games played at Potsdam often gave him ideas for the army manoeuvres which took place there.

The King’s interest in the game became well known, and it was as a direct result that the Grand Duke Nicholas of Russia made visits in 1816 and 1817 and became a devotee himself. This lead to a visit to Moscow by Wilhelm in October 1817 during which time they improvised a game on a large scale by chalking out terrain on a number of green topped card tables which were put together.

After a few years the army got really serious about it, issuing a game set to each regiment. Makes sense, given that the alternative to gaming was to march real soldiers around in the mud by their thousands. It was replicated in a few places, and inspired H.G. Wells in the wargame he created a century later. But mostly it fell out of fashion, and seems to have been repeatedly reinvented (rather than copied) over the following 200 years.

More:

• Detailed history


• The rules have been published in English


• Philipp von Hilgers is The Expert, currently finishing a book on the subject(?). Here's an article (in german.)


• Article in Der Spiegel

Liz Phair writes an impressive review of Keith Richards' autobiography.

A rant from Rhian:

I was born in the 1980s. I grew up to get away from them. The only good thing about getting older was, I fondly deluded myself, that at least it wouldn’t be the fucking, fucking 1980s anymore.

And now what have we got? A Tory Prime Minister, unemployment through the roof, pointless wars abroad, strikes, bankers still raking it in and now a fucking, fucking, fucking Royal Wedding that we’re all expected to take a blind bit of notice of because it’ll take our minds off how SHIT everything is. And we will, of course.

Sofie Buckland has apparently restarted blogging. Many years ago she wrote an excellent blog under the name of Volsunga -- then removed it, and I'm possibly the only person left fondly remembering it, and hoping for a comeback. Maybe this time?

There's a commission in the US, investigating the BP oil spill. Last week, the chief counsel said:

To date, we have not found a single instance where human beings made a conscious decision to favor dollars over safety,

I find this utterly bizarre. However angelic BP might be (?), surely it's impossible to run an engineering project on this scale without trade-offs between cost and safety? Won't there always be another layer of expensive and marginally-useful checks that you could add?

I began a new Russian course a fortnight ago, which gives me a good excuse to spend more time reading Russian-language Livejournals.

The importance of LJ in the Russian-speaking world probably isn't obvious from the English-speaking side. Pick any Russian journalist, writer or (non-corporate) public figure under 35, and there's a decent chance they'll have at least a nominal presence here*. LJ is home to independent journalism, to political discussion and organizing across the spectrum, to essays on art and culture, and generally to a large chunk of the Russian-speaking public sphere. That and the cat pictures, of course.

So it's nice to read that LJ has just been unblocked in Kazakhstan. The block was imposed in 2008, apparently because the president's estranged son-in-law rakhataliev, had been using it to criticize him. [LJ helpfully disabled the account in question, but apparently without any effect]

Now it's been unblocked, apparently as a result of lobbying by the glitterati. Or so says e_grishkovets, Russian writer/actor/director Yevgeni Grishkovetz. He put on a play in the Kazakh capital last month. The president saw it, so the following day the political elite duly turned up en masse, all wanting to talk to him. Grishkovets knew what to do:

"I said that...I regret that many of my acquaintances, as well as Kazakh citizens I don't know, are unable to take part in the life of LJ; that it is nonetheless a significant resource, whose users include not just me, but many other important and famous people, communication with whom is important for many people in Kazakhstan"

A month later, the Kazakh government has unblocked Livejournal. Quite possibly coincidence, of course, but in any case a Good Thing.

* Other Russian sites are comparable in volume of users, but IMO less politically important. Or maybe that's just my pro-LJ bias speaking.