On Boundaries: Open Minds & Open Borders

I travelled between Ireland and England in the 80s without needing to use my passport. I remember travelling around Europe and the border controls being light and imagining a future without them, in a new open and more connected world which has failed to come to pass.

Border controls are aptly named. They are all about controlling the population. However lawfully this control is, does not make it moral. Apartheid in South Africa was legal, as were the Jim Crow Laws in the 60's in the US, both designed to restrict the freedom of Black people (Open Borders). These restrictions are not legal now. 

At that time it was discrimination based on race, now it is discrimination based on national origin. Should we have laws that enforce discrimination?

Read more arguments on this subject at: Open Borders

Revolting Boundaries

Thinking of boundaries, from the Berlin wall, to walls and fences round ghettos past and present to lines drawn on maps naming countries' borders, I wonder who owns the land and if they should.

The earth at one time had no boundaries. People did not lay claim to land or wage war to protect it and 21% of the land of the world was not owned by just 15 people (Business Insider). And any one person did not own a sixth of the land of the world. 

In case anyone wonders why Britain politically punches above its weight, it's not just a hangover from the Empire when in 1923 it covered a quarter of the earth (Historical Atlas of British Empire). Today Queen Elizabeth II of England is the 'legal owner of about 6.6 billion acres of land, one-sixth of the earth's land surface' (New Statesman).

The world is 123 billion acres and the worlds land is 37 billion acres according to New Statesman 'a notional four acres available for every man, woman and child in the predicted 2050 world population of nine billion.'

John Steinbeck wrote in Grapes of Wrath, about our lack of learning from history and the eventual and inevitable outcome which held true in his time and which holds true today:

'And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, the great owners with access to history, with eyes to read history and to know the great fact: when property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away. And that companion fact: when a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they need. And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed. The great owners ignored the three cries of history. The land fell into fewer hands, the number of dispossessed increased, and every effort of the great owners was directed at oppression. The money was spent for arms, for gas to protect the great holdings, and spies were sent to catch the murmuring of revolt so that it might be stamped out. The changing economy was ignored, plans for the change ignored; and only means to destroy revolt were considered, while the causes of revolt went on.' (Steinbeck, 1939, Chapter 19, p. 249)

On Capitalism: True or False

Steve Lambert installation at 2 Degrees Festival outside Charity Shop in Tower Hamlets, London

'CAPITALISM Works for me' said the large, lit-up sign with large True and False digital counters on each side. On a podium were the words, 'In my life this is...' and underneath were True and False buttons to be pressed to vote and be counted.

Marx's “callous 'cash payment” of capitalism is why I answered 'False'.

Capitalism, much like democracy does not work for those in a power minority. The power minority are the people, whatever the number they are, who have the least power through political sway, economic leverage or strength of ability. They may be a majority in numbers but a minority when it comes to power.

A great power minority are the children of the world. The first twenty years of life may be the largest percentage in terms of being 35% of the worlds population but when you consider them in terms of strength of ability, economical or political sway, they have little power. The five year old can't vote or run for government. They can't use their spending power as a consumer or run or build business. They do not have the ability or strength to engage in the 'fight or flight' response, both figuratively and developmentally. 

According to Oxfam 'half the global wealth is held by the 1%' (Guardian, 2015). 

Another power minority, despite the great number, are the poor. And the limitations associated may as well be the same as that of a five year old. The may be able to vote but despair breeds apathy. They may be able to run for government but costs and lack of opportunities may be barriers. Lack of spending power and the inability to be able to work towards delayed gratification because the immediate situation is so pressing means little left over for anything other than survival.

And although this is written in the affluent society of one of the major cities of the Western world where we may have a higher standard of living than in other places, we still have poverty.

How can anyone say that Capitalism works when in Britain today, Tower Hamlets, a borough in East London, book-ended by the illustrious Canary Wharf and the City of London, has a child poverty rate of 49% (BBC, 2014).

Does that work for you?

The Forecast is Love

 62% YES Vote for Marriage Equality in Irish Referendum

Guardian Article on Irish Referendum:
Guardian article on Ireland being first country to obtain marriage equality by 'popular vote'.

Irish Marriage Equality Referendum post:
Things That Matter: Equality 

Things That Matter: Equality

'Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.'

 (Martin Luther King, cited by Halligan, May 16th 2015, Irish Times)

Irish Tv journalist and political correspondent, Ursula Halligan ended a 54 year silence with the above quote. With the Irish referendum on marriage equality only days away, Halligan revealed her secret self, which had been hidden away in a diary from when she was 17.  She hopes her story will not only help get a YES vote for marriage equality, but save other 17 year olds like her from the pain of repression, injustice and inequality.

Read Article here: Ursula Halligan: Referendum led me to tell truth about myself

The American Dream, War and The Hobbit

“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world."

(Tolkien, The Hobbit, 1937)

An ungainly, homely creature Bilbo Baggins begins an adventure with the dwarfs in pursuit of the gold of Lonely Mountain in this rural feudal world where we can see the emergence of capitalist pursuits.

What we can learn from the Hobbit (both book and movie):

• Good people can be corrupted by greed (and this can cause conflict & war).
• Centralisation of wealth rather than fair distribution causes conflict and war.
• The West's constant battle to keep its power and reign over the East causes war.
• Basing judgement on stereotypes or perceived inherited or traditional characteristics of groups blinds people into making uninformed decisions, assumptions and discrimination (and more conflict and war).
• Seeing the world in terms or different 'races' or groups creates conflict.
• Patriotism creates an Us and Them agenda...leading to tension, conflict and war.
• Women have less power in the world and are less present in the ruling elite, and in war!

Is the Tolkien view right-wing or highlighting right wing issues? Is he looking at the Western Democracy of the US and the constitutional monarchy of the UK and finding them lacking in values  or finding them having too much in terms of power and resources?

How do you deal with power? Abolish it with anarchy or give it to a benign dictator or monarch?

As Tolkien told his son:

"My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs)—or to 'unconstitutional' Monarchy." 

(Tolkien, Letters, no. 52, to Christopher Tolkien, 29 November 1943)

And what was Bilbo Baggins? Neither an Anarchist or King but a simple creature with simple tastes who turned out to wield the greatest but least understood power of the story. A simple-living, honourable non-man ended up winning the day. His reward? To live the simple-life he now appreciated.

Why did Tolkien see this through the unlikely character of Bilbo Baggins?

As he said to his son:

"I imagine the fish out of water is the only fish to have an inkling of water."

 (Tolkien, Letters, no. 52, to Christopher Tolkien, 29 November 1943)

Tolkien was a fish out of water for his time and possibly all time, which is why he had such an understanding of it. What you take for granted you don't think about. Bilbo had taken home comforts for granted and didn't realise their value until they were gone.

Perhaps if we all were not so comfortable in our well resourced western waters we might appreciate what we have and what other have not.

Or is the so called 'American Dream' just that, a dream, a lack of consciousness. Is this lack of reasoned thinking why people slavishly chase after material gains like gold? An ever increasing need to have more power, spiralling into the conflict and war between the haves and have-nots? Us and Them?

Every time the treasure of Lonely Mountain, in the west, was sought after, it resulted in conflict, destruction and war, from the tyranny of the dragon raining fire on the town to the wars between Dwarf, Elf and Orc. Gold fever resulted in war.

Is the 'American Dream' war?

Art is Infinite: An Argument for Qualitative Evaluation

"Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs."

(Pablo Picasso, Picasso on Art: A Selection of Views)

Punch (1998) discusses qualitative and quantitative research and their merits or what I would call the 'How of Things' or the 'How Much and How Many of Things'. Picasso gives, what I consider to be, the most brilliant argument for qualitative evaluation over quantitative in the quote above and is a perfect acknowledgement of why some things can't be measured in numeric terms. Trying to measure success or achievement or anything that tells us about an individual in terms of numbers can be a false economy with so many hidden variables. 

Numbers

Numbers can tell us nothing about the person, yet we apply them all the time. 

• We categorise by age, restricting our children's lives to experiences of their peers. 
• We categorise by test, exam and assessment levels, when someone who has done a degree in a subject like youth and community work may very well be an excellent academic but not a good youth and community work practitioner. 
• We categorise by income and class and if it were used to right the balance of equality it would say something but instead it is merely there to fence it off and maintain the capitalist status quo. 
• We categorise by metres, cms, feet and inches whether in terms of height and shape and by numbers...as soon as we are born – everything is counted – from limbs to fingers and toes.

Yes, we may say someone has 2 eyes and two ears. What does that tell us about the person? Not that they can see or hear or are colour blind or like music. Or love to watch romantic movies or that they wear their hair to hide their ears. Or that their eyes change colour like their grandmothers. Or how when they hear the sound of a cuckoo it makes them sad. Or how they love to read under the blanket with a torch. Or how they love camping for the sounds of the night.

A person should not be defined by a number, unless infinity could be a number. We are all infinite. Our possibilities are infinite.

Every individual is so different from the next, with attributes so varied and vast they are far past anything that can be counted or even understood.

Does a song sound better if you know the time signature or number or crochets, quavers or minims or whether the notes are FACE or EGBDF?

My IQ, income, age, height or number of body organs or limbs do not define me. Numbers do not define me. I am infinite.

"Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the songs of a bird? Why does one love the night, flowers, everything around one, without trying to understand them? But in the case of a painting people have to understand. If only they would realize above all that an artist works of necessity, that he himself is only a trifling bit of the world, and that no more importance should be attached to him than to plenty of other things which please us in the world, though we can't explain them."

(PABLO PICASSO, Picasso on Art: A Selection of Views)

Picasso, P. (1988) Picasso on Art: A Selection of Views, ed. Ashton, D., Da Capo

Punch, K. (1998) Introduction to Social Research: Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches, London, Sage