Normative Vocabularies of Everyday: Reflections

10:32am, 14/05

It's raining outside, and I'm sitting at a desk by a window on the third floor of the UL, part learning references for my Human paper, part staring out the window at passers by. Pathetic fallacy? An allegory for the daily slog that is repetitive revision? A metaphorical musing to set the scene for this post? Or perhaps, it's simply raining outside, and I'm sitting at a desk inside the UL revising and occasionally being distracted by the happenings and myriad of daily lives outside.

I can't remember the last time I wrote a post (and published it); I've had so many ideas over the past two and a bit terms of university, and have been challenged in innumerable ways, but I've just never sat down to type them. They've been written in many places - odd scraps of paper; letters; notes on my phone; scribbles in my Moleskine; far too many post-it-notes - but are yet to take on coherent form. But does that mean that they haven't existed? Because they don't have coherent form? Is their lack of public form constitutive of their non-existence?

11:38am, 30/05

Since starting this post I've written both of my 3-hour-long, hand-stiffening, essay-full exams and (unofficially) finished my first year of university. I'm one of the first to finish both my exams and work, so the daily slog of revision continues for most people whilst I wander through the city enjoying it for the first time without the ever-present nudge of supervisions, essays, lectures, reading and what else have you in the back of my mind, waiting for my first elusive May Week. After three days I was ready to return to work (not revising, but learning)... then I thought: "Ha! You started writing nearly two summers ago to prepare for the thinking that would be thrown at you in university and you've not, since starting university, written anything on there! If you miss writing and learning, then write and learn." Your probable thought line concerning my weirdness - Isn't she on holiday? Hasn't she just finished three terms at university of intense, non-stop work? - is definitely qualified.

Anyway. Normative vocabularies of the everyday: reflections.

United in Diversity?

Adopted in 2000, the motto of the European Union, United in Diversity, was structured in reflection of 'how Europeans have come together, in the form of the EU, to work for peace and prosperity, while at the same time being enriched by the continent's many different cultures, traditions and languages' (europa.eu). Certainly, since the tumult of the early 20th Century, the European Union appears to have stood with such strength, continuing to grow with the addition of 13 new member states since the turn of the century, two, Romania and Bulgaria, joining as recently as 2007. Growing national tensions around whether, as Nigel Farage enthusiastically espouses, the UK should leave the EU cloud the benefits being a member state can bring: ease of living abroad (migration), strong workers' rights and non-discrimination (see equal pay treaty of 1957), paid leave (the EU Working Time Directive entitles everyone to a statutory minimum of 4 weeks paid leave a year), foreign study (exchanges under the EU's Erasmus programme), consumer protection, food labelling, commitments to clean environments etc. (BBC, eruopa.eu). Oh, and who could forget - under the Schengen agreement, freedom of movement.

The United Nations has recently warned that the exodus of 8,000 refugees to Europe, daily, looks set to continue. Germany expects to have at least 800,000 asylum seekers this year (BBC News). Around 500,000 migrants are thought to have arrived this year. Hungary had received 96,350 asylum applications by the end of July, second only to Germany's 222,000 by the end of August (BBC News). Around 115,000 applications (January - August 2015) are from Syria, stemming from the ongoing political conflict, 60,000 from Kosova, motivated by the widespread poverty, just under 60,000 from Afghanistan, where violence continues to pervade everyday life, and 40,000 from Albania; Iraq, Pakistan, Eritrea, Serbia, Ukraine and Nigeria each herald up to 36,000 applications themselves. An emergency meeting in Brussels convened to vote by the majority upon the relocation of 120,000 refugees across the EU. Earlier this month, following suit after Angela Merkel's reimposition of border controls along Austria, Austria, Slovakia, the Netherlands and other EU member states have begun to set up strict border controls to manage the 'crisis' (The Economist).

"But there's a big, enduring question which hangs over all of this: what kind of country do we want to be, what is our role in this globalised world of ours? Open or closed? Leading in our own European backyard or isolated from our nearest neighbours?" (Nick Clegg)

"We will manage!" (Angela Merkel)

Huxley's Dystopia

"We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.

But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think. 

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared that we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumble puppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny 'failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions'. In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us."

-Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves To Death

Hedonism: the pursuit of pleasure. It's an age-old concept, initiated by Adam and Eve in their greed of the seductive wisdom held in the forbidden fruit, and fictionalised a multitude of times in Dr Jekyll's duplicity, the effervescent Lord Henry and his idolised project, Dorian Gray, and the less contemporary population of the Capitol in Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games, amongst other examples. Adam and Eve resulted in the fall of man, Jekyll sells his soul to the Devil, Dorian Gray stabs himself in an egoistic demise, and the Capitol fall victim to their own blindness. In no case is it what the protagonists hate that ruins them but, as Huxley implies, what they love: Adam and Eve were seduced by the love of power and equality, Jekyll by the freedom of magic and power, Dorian by his own beauty and pleasure-filled sensual lifestyle, and the Capitol by its sheer egoistic culture. In all instances, it's power, egoism, hedonism, which develop the tragic climax of the narrative arc.

The I in Sustainability: Interstellar

Do not go gentle into that good night.
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

You can taste the exsiccation of the dust whispering in the background. The futuristic notes of Hans Zimmer marry the nostalgic organ-like sound of the score in an oxymoronic palimpsest of present. "My dad was a farmer. Like everybody else back then. Of course, he didn't start that way."   

The Objectivity of Subjectivity

Blurry iPhone picture exhibit A ft. free National Geographic world map.

After finishing my last A2 exam this afternoon, I celebrated as any normal 18 year old does after finishing school: I caught the bus home, poured myself a smoothie, opened the freezer and sighed at my brother's precariously discarded bowl of unfinished ice cream complete with frozen spoon, crossed off the exam paper from my timetable and sat on my bed. Wild! Not knowing what to do with my time having spent the last 6 months preparing for my exams and the 6 months before that preparing for university applications and the 6 months before that preparing for my exams last year, my brain was quite defunct. So I proceeded in my wild celebrations with a movie; Selma. Preamble aside, the movie got me thinking about the objectivity of subjectivity, particularly in light of the connotations of the Time's May cover. 

So let's talk about maps. 

Picture a world map and you're likely to imagine something as hangs on the wall beside my bed: North and South America to the left, Africa in the bottom, Europe in the centre, Asia to the left and Australia to the bottom right. Objective. Standard. Established. Right? But what about the connotations about this structure? 

Overdraft

It takes about 1.5 earths to support our earth.

It takes about 3.3 United Kingdoms to support the UK. 

In eight months, we have used up 100% of the resources the earth can sustainably provide us for this year, with the ability to replenish them for future generations. 

Quite frankly, we are in overdraft. And our debt continues to grow.  

Thursday 13th August: A Level Results Day. This was widely publicised (certainly if you, like me, were one of the nervous sixth formers up at the early hours of the morning anticipating the update from UCAS at 8am), and I'm sure most people, if not everyone, in the UK is aware of the significance of such a day. Why? Because it concerns our not-so-distant futures; our education, or employment, or the paths that we take; our dreams and ambitions. Our future. 

Thursday 13th August: Earth Overshoot Day. This was not so widely publicised, and I myself was only aware that it fell upon this date through a post upon someone's social media. I'm sure most people in the UK are not aware of the significance, or even generally of, this day. Why? Because it concerns not our future, but the future of generations not yet existing, and species other than ourselves. It has nothing to do with our education, or employment, or the paths that we take; our dreams and ambitions; our futures. 

Really? 

Earth Overshoot Day marks the day, annually, by which we have used up all of the earth's resources which can sustainably be replenished for future generations and the environment itself. Since the 1970s, human consumption has accelerated past the natural replenishment of the earth. According to the Global Footprint Network's data, our consumption requires the equivalent of 1.5 earth's to support it - and by the mid-20th century, this is expected to reach 2 earth's. Do the maths: we live on one planet, yet our consumption requires twice that amount. Sustainable? It sounds like something out of a dystopian YA novel. Perhaps the pessimistic projections of Malthus were onto something. 

Our warning notice, clad in bold red letters, pointing out our overdraft is quite evident too - in climate change and the implications of global warming. 

I'm writing because things like this need to be publicised more widely, and acknowledged by a wider audience. It might not be news of the latest fashion item, or political fiasco, or celebrity gossip, but surely things like this deserve, nay require, front-page-bold-lettered-exclamation-marked publication. 

The implicated division between the environment and humanity is something which frustrates me, given the so obvious interdependent reality. There is information out there in this cyber-world we now inhabit, often in ignorance of the one surrounding us, and there are many advocates and organisations dedicated to this relationship; the fact that this day has a name, and is recognised, is evidence enough. 

It's easy for me to sit here on my laptop and write this, blaming the egoism of the world and condemning its superficiality. And for you to read it, think 'ah', and then go about your day as normal. We might acknowledge it, which is better than ignorance, but if we don't act and are not encouraged to act, we might as well be ignorant. 

Simple things, bottom-up approaches, are perhaps the most accessible actions to take, until national and international policies and pledges are changed: walking where we would take the bus, taking the bus where we would drive, turning off the lights and opening the curtains when it's bright outside, reducing our meat consumption, supporting local as well as sustainable methods of farming. I was asked in a university interview last December, how the UK should address global warming. I began by responding that it perhaps would have to be gradual in implementation, only to be reminded of the paradox of my own statement a few minutes earlier - that there's little time left and action needs to be immediate. Laws, fines, pledges, rewards: these can only be implemented from the top. Hearing that from tomorrow those (businesses, enterprises etc.) producing over a certain cap of C02 or something quantifiable would be fined, would perhaps not be met agreeably but quite awkwardly. I know a few years ago the UK government encouraged local authorities to fine households producing more waste for landfill than the average and reward those recycling more, but this was met with widespread disagreement and so not implemented. Clearly, money gets attention. It's certainly an incentive - across Ghana, the government has introduced a 'Polluter Pays' principle by which the person littering and throwing away materials is fined, and the money spent within national waste management schemes. I can't remember the exact figure, but it increased recycling by a sizeable percentage within a few years. It might not be the long term solution, but proven methods like this are perhaps the most effective way right now to simultaneously raise awareness and act upon the matter. 

Are the next 4 months of 2015 stolen or borrowed from the future? 

C  

The Humanity of the Holocaust

'Consider if this is a man

Who works in the mud

Who does not know peace

Who fights for a scrap of bread

Who dies because of a yes or a no.

Consider if this is a woman, 

Without hair and without name

With no more strength to remember, 

Her eyes empty and her womb cold'

- Excerpt from 'If This is a Man' by Primo Levi

A snapshot (literally) of some of my Holocaust related literature.
Pictured: If This Is A Man/The Truce by Primo Levi; The Night Trilogy by Elie Wiesel; Hitler's Forgotten Children by Ingrid Von Oelhafen; Born Survivors by Wendy Holden.  

An alliterative paradox.

The humanity of the Holocaust. What does that even mean? Is that even a thing? I don't know. I've read many books on the Holocaust - survivor's testimonies, analyses, biographies, discussions, essays, historical biographies, news articles - but it's the same thing I keep coming back to: the humanity of it all. What immediately comes to mind is the fact that humanity and the Holocaust are words not to be used in the same sentence; they're the perfect paradox, right? But isn't the Holocaust all about humanity, subversively? Humanity is at the core of the Holocaust, I think, in two ways.