Failed nations all around

Scott Peterson's excellent Me Against My Brother is one of the very few first hand accounts that I have come across about the bloody and tragic events in Somalia in the early 1990's - a place and time that have for a long time interested me. Not a very comfortable view of humanity emerges: when order collapses we seem to turn invariably into beasts, and into prey. And certainly not a very comfortable view of the developed countries - as much as the responsibility (as far as there is such a thing) lies in deep seated local cultural conflicts: a nomad society encountering modernity, and modern weaponry. But if there is one thing certain, it is that we are no innocent bystanders in this tragedy. There is no question that the Western audiences are frivolous and decadent, and kept frivolous and decadent by solely profit seeking, ad and subscription centred corporate media financed by the ever increasing capital.

Peterson's style of journalism is probably a dying art, and even if not, very few will care. There is a Burkean defence for this state of affairs: we don't have the capability to do the right thing, a mere attempt would end in tragedy and blood path. But that defence is wearing rather thin. We can't do what we should do - but we can be more intelligent, more responsible, more aware. That is not too much to ask. Should the civilization progress (at the moment a somewhat daring proposition) the posterity will surely only see failed nations in this era of opulence, starvation and blood.

Turing and humanity

Oddly I chose for morning work trip reading Andrew Hodges’ description of the chemical castration of Alan Turing. Once the bile had receded I was once again struck how beautiful and how serious Hodges’ writing is. It is not as odd a pair as one might think: so often, it seems to me, ethics and esthetics do cohere. In good writing it is most obvious. And the text, the seriousness of it, did get me thinking about the sordid, the brutal affair (or perhaps actually my private reaction to it),  in a larger context. I suppose we should always also beware these so selfevident dualities: the cruelty and the innocence, the aggression and the openness. We none of us are completely innocent, and our monstrous society only reflects (and encourages in turn) the monsters inside us all. This is obvious, of course: there is a danger in righteous rage, of whitewashing and denial. But to accept totally is surely the greater crime than to rage partially hypocritically. The society is the arena where we can most easily progress and through that progress start an inner healing process. That can be the only realistic way forward for us.

Liberalism and Nietzsche

I’m sure this only makes sense to my own idiosyncratic sense of liberalism but essentially I have come to place it as the boundary that permanently separates Nietzsche from acceptablity. To phrase it overly glibly... For me the essence of liberalism lies in its permanent uncertainty as to what degree do meanings rise out of the objective, commonly observable state of affairs and what  and how large then is the role of individual experience and will in shaping and creating these meanings. The foundation is the trust in and the certainty of doubt – that there is no human way in these circumstances to achieve a meaningful basis for any kind of certainty on this fundamental dilemma. This quite naturally leads to ad hoc, pragmatic and provisional, moderate settlements – to a permanent acceptance of pluralism in human affairs.

The audacity of good writing

I have been fascinated and much impressed by Obama’s Dreams from My Father – I roughly knew about his eccentric background and expected an interesting and much better than average aspiring politician’s memoir. But I certainly didn’t expect this: genuinely good writing – which in this form requires high, disinterested intelligence, honesty and a robust, unsentimental moral vision of life. All factors surely more or less grave hindrances in an aspiring politician. This is not to say that the text wouldn’t hide things and wouldn’t paper over some serious counter-points. But the reader has the feeling of engaging in a serious and open intellectual argument. With a mainstream politician, of all people, quite a surreal experience I have to say. What on earth is this man doing presiding over a corrupt and decadent, decaying political system? The beginning has certainly not been very good – surely an FDR would have radically seized these opportunities? Instead we have had overly cautious, overly modest half-hearted approaches. And FDR was a deceitful, devious, egocentred person, not interested in abstract thought or robust moral views of life. An intelligent and honest person might not be the best choice for that position. Well, with these poisonous and hateful forces rampant in the USA, it might not be the era for an FDR at all, probably a Father Coughlin would have rather better chances. Perhaps overly dramatic, but I could not avoid some dark forebodings reading this excellent, perceptive book - he is made for a perfect hate figure for these atavistic, hysterical reactionary forces.

Richer dust

There can be such a thing as too much information: I am reading an excellent modern biography of Rupert Brooke and warts do predominate. A fascinating character though - I have been vaguely aware that his life was much more interesting than both the legend or the poetry (though the latter has flashes of excellence and in some photos he truly does look angelic, no wonder the contemporaries lost their barings as regards him, and no great wonder that he himself did). Such a range though: in his correspondence and verse he makes absolutely unsentimental, sharp and fresh observations only to sunk into self-centred, self-regarding hysteria, primitive misogeny and anti-semitism. At times a profound writer, at times a spoiled immature adolescent. So far then from Sorley whose famous assessment of Brooke's war sonnets is devastatingly accurate. There might have been something there had he survived - but probably anything after would have been a long, sad anticlimax. Again so different from Sorley who surely was a bitter loss to literature, and to his age.

Subarctic summer thoughts

I spent much of the night reading (Andrew Birkin's remarkable, eerie J.M. Barrie and the Lost Boys) and was suddenly struck by the thought of how lovely the Finnish climate really is. Now this is an attitude not to be expected - I would recommend trying the pitch dark, wet and cold November with the silent, grim, huddled people to anyone lightly exclaiming the very same sentiment. Or the biting December winds bringing sleet from the Baltic with the day lasting all of five hours in the south and none in Lapland. But now the day lasts almost 20 hours (and 24 in the north) and the air is warm and sweet and the nature suddenly burst to life (to be extinguished again in a matter of mere months). It is this violent contrast that makes the experience so strong and memorable. Further towards the tundra and the summer will be too faint to register and the winter too dominating and to the south the light and dark will be more mixed, less violently opposed, and the summer warmth longer and more reliable (last summer we had almost no hot days at all). This is an exhausting mixture (for these few mad, energy bursting weeks we have in exchange long dark months of fall and winter), but exhilarating also: a crazy, manic-depressive year, violently alternating between extremes of light and dark, of cold and warmth...

No harsh patronage

Last week the new member of the family finally arrived - it had been a long and at times a very difficult wait. It is a curious activity, caring for the young, no more worthwhile thing easily found in this world. Not very Nietzschean I guess to be in service, and that's what it is, serving; and what is truly harsh is the way we measure that service: there is no way of perfection, and partially the unconditional trust is always failed. But this is how we are weighed, in deeds, not thoughts, in love, not intellect - and even if there is no perfection, there is protection and warmth, or the awful, unforgivable lack of them. So, in that sense there is no harsh patronage, even if there is such a hostage to fortune as to lack words to describe, in this unpredictable, uncaring world. With love comes dread, but without love there is nothing here. That is the way of our human world.

We were seventy-six for seven

I suppose my two most eccentric poetic predilections are vastly preferring the early Wallace Stevens to the later production and, even more bizarrely, seeing early Betjeman as a giant of poetry of his era. Later the sentimentality and a certain clumsiness of metre creep through, but the early poems are angelic. This, though naturally on hugely more humble scale, is a kind of equivalent of Eliot's famous confession of being a classicist in literature and a royalist in politics. It belongs to the classical tradition, surely, to appreciate Betjeman's glittering surfaces and rhythmical skill. It has seemed to countless critics (these days I guess no-one is any longer much interested) that this is all there is: a silly pose and a very oldfashioned, passé view of the form and function of poetry. I don't know - it seems such a selfevidently facile view of both young Betjeman and art. He does point to deeper things, indirectly, through the skill, through the offbeat, offcentre handling of the subject matter. You don't have to spell out things, you don't have to shout from the rooftops that this is great, weighty and serious poetry - neither do you have to be deliberately obscure and leave an enticing trail of riddles for dusty academics to uncover (and here we come to early Wallace Stevens as well).

Mõtlen et homme ongi see päev

It is probably far too rarely that I ever pause and reflect on how amazingly successful I have been on the terms that I once so uncompromizingly put to myself. Now to have such hostages to fortune, to have such a unified voice, such a coherent way of being in the world was once beyond my wildest dreams. This is of course a very exalted way of putting it - in more mundane words I have simply placed myself open to the random ice cold ways of this uncaring world, as I think we are all obligated to do. And even though for some people this surely would be pitifully little, something always taken for granted, it is not so for me - and that is the only meaningful measure we can have here.

So, after all these qualifications, this late arrival represents a true measure of success. I should never forget this - that I did after all manage to fashion a self capable of love, of being loved, that this did happen to me no matter how impossible it once seemed.

Dover Beach

We have pitifully little time to achieve full moral maturity here. I wonder if anyone ever has, Shakespeare, maybe? In any case I would think that any such maturity would involve a full realization of our permanent disjointedness. A clever, grasping, amoral animal will forever remain a central part of us ( I can easily recognize that in my own being, the deep, dark impulse). While another part is attempting a strange pilgrimage towards a better home – and sometimes the landscape, the experience feels exhilarating, the cold and the beauty taking the breath away. But mostly not, mostly we muddle, don’t connect, don’t cohere - there will be no escape from that. This we must accept and go on living with the awareness that we would not choose to live so, given liberty to make the choice. Only in this world there won’t ever be such liberty.

Sometimes when I watch our carefree little boy I’m filled with huge dread: he could so easily be taken away from us – it’s a cruel, random world. The Christians believe that the universe is not so. There will never be no knowing, but all reason tells us otherwise. I wonder if anyone will ever truly be content with that understanding, with no self-deception or wishful thinking involved.

Oh Ontario, oh Jennifer Jason Leigh

For me music almost never compares with literature. But when it does, it does it with force - at its best it really can compete with poetry. Which is much said from me. So, I do have a small selection of musical favourites, basically centering on pop (classical music, dance and heavy rock among others suffer from the non-centrality of words in them), just certain individual songs, not whole ouvres. And very few contemporary bands, and only one whose lyrics I really respect as pure poetry: The Weakerthans' lyrics have an amazing reach and depth, amazing quirky freshness. And not just as part of the totality of a song and performance, but they also work as they are, as just language. This almost never happens. Well, perhaps there is a certain connection anyway between gloomy Winnipeg and gloomy South of Finland, a certain sympathy but in any case John K Samson is one of the few contemporary poets whose work I follow.

Stars in their pockets like grains of sand

There is a great concept in the Finnish language: "yleissivistys". It approximately means the standard of knowledge and understanding that a well educated, well rounded person should have. History, geography, foreign languages, high art and culture etc. etc. are thought to naturally belong to this category, but it is strange how little natural sciences and mathematics figure in it. This is surely quite a universal state of affairs anywhere in the industrial world - you can be thought as a knowledgeable and highly educated person without having the faintest idea of the structure and nature of our physical universe. (That can, btw, only be described as strange beyond anyone's imagination - or I suppose it could be said that our Newtonian common sense experience is the strangely behaving anomaly here.)

Modern physics especially has me standing in pure awe (though I rarely admit to it). One could think that much of this wild and highly abstract theorizing is meaningless unless it were for the fact that time and time again theories have been proven correct after a practical, empiricial experiment has - often long after - become possible. I do claim primacy for our human sciences, but they too operate in the physical world: we should understand the sheer magical strangeness of it. (I would even argue that the humanities would be best positioned to give depth and meaning to these amazing findings, but they seem to lack both interest and capability of even beginning to explore these treasures.)

Not guilty

To continue the theme from the previous post. I think that what most clearly characterizes, defines my brand of robust and self-confident liberalism from its bland and diluted official version (that basically everyone, kind of, supports in one way or the other) is that it is completely unapologetic. I’m quite aware of the awful crimes committed in the name of the liberal civilization (and some of them even genuinely so). Well, our human history is in any case based on awful crimes. If any random tyranny manages to establish a certain stability for a couple of generations, that stability will be based on crime and aggression, it will be maintained by crime and aggression and it will be destroyed by them. That is what history is, what it (most likely) will be and what it has been. The only feeble exception is this unique effort for rational self-control. It is of course gigantic hubris to think that it will amount to anything: in fact it is almost certainly bound to fail. But in that failure it would not be remarkable: without reason and self-control all our efforts will fail. It is the attempt that is unique – the first conscious effort ever to end the slow holocaust of history.

The centre that couldn't hold

The early 20th century was such brutal time for the liberal self-belief in the West: the twin nightmares of the world wars, the collapse of the international system, the world depression followed by sustained, credible and vital totalitarian challenges. And after all that, amidst all the ruins of the mid-century stood - yes, Western liberalism. A curious end to all those horrendous blows. But they did have an effect: postwar liberalism has been a hollow materialist affair, there is no vigour, no self-assuredness left, only a method of increasing production. The masses are apathetic, tired by work, consuming mindless entertainment. The elites are intellectually timid and morally puny, concentrating on their technocratic efficiency. 

This apologetic affair is an alien liberalism for me - this tradition is not, should not be defined by doubt and uncertainty but by a fierce assertion of doubt and uncertainty combined with a firm, self-confident rejection of all those pathetic (and morally and intellectually disastrous) projects to force a pretended certainty on our wild human experience (I suppose currently the strongest version is the primitive fundamentalist religion). But that sort of confidence and affirmation is not what we now have, and as there sooner or later will become an existential crisis in one form or another, I don't believe that these undefended positions will be held, however correct and proper response they are to our experience of being in the world. This simply won't do, not indefinitely.

"One of Freedom's wars"

After finishing Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy it is not possible not to feel that something absolutely profound has been said about the First World War. Not everything there is to say of course, that would be an impossibility, and one can legitimately see flaws and inaccuracies in the text but one cannot avoid a recognition that something deeply meaningful has been posited, a meaningful dialogue opened. That is what fiction is able to do: to bridge two experiences. One would think that the study of history as an academic discipline would aim for the same result only using different methods and being bound by stricter and narrower rules. It doesn't though. Good, profound historical research is exceedingly rare. The discipline is defined in practice in a way to preclude any attempt to profundity, any centering of human experience, the wildness of our human experience.

The study of history is largely an elaborate kabuki play whose relation to actual human experience is tortuous and distant. This comes from aiming to "scientific" respectability. It is an old axiom that history as a discipline is the closest to literature. Well, most historians are deeply ashamed of this claim instead of seeing it as an accolade that it is (and those that are enthusiastic about it are that for all the wrong reasons). There is a difference to human sciences - and this statement comes from someone who largely does accept that history only happens in the physical and material world and that historians should aim for explaining causation. Still there is a difference that comes from our own nature of being aware creators of meanings. Not only do we need to map out the material boundaries but also their meaning to our passionate lives. So, this is where academic history fails: we no doubt have a long queue of angry historians defending the generals against Barker's powerful indictment, defending power and its distortions - or being entangled in the absurd complexities of the radical theory, not seeing the deepness of the tragedy, leaving all profundity to fiction. A strange spectacle.