Chalk and cheese

Photo source 

"Our Italian colleagues from University of Rome Tor Vergata and University of Parma proposed 
an idea that [as far as] public feelings of security and trust in the judicial system, southern and northern Italy should be treated as two separate countries. 

In their view, they are as different as chalk and cheese: in the northern part,
the sense of necessity in terms of obeying the rules and moral condemnation of corruptive conduct in authoritative organs is much higher than in the South."  

(E.U. Ethics Standardization Team member)

How many 'nations' can a nation contain?  Depends on whom one asks.  Inhabitants of the former Yugoslavia, the former Sudan, the former Rhodesia could perhaps enlighten us.  Or those living in the current Kashmir, or Caucusus, or Flanders.

Richard Griggs and Peter Hocknell have pegged the number of actual nations existing on planet earth at between 6000 and 9000.  Europe alone, they say, is home to over one hundred.  Lines drawn on maps by generals and statesmen tell us lies and half-truths.  One nation, different beliefs, different values, different characters: What can a map really tell us?

Here, for example, is the nation known as the Italian Republic:

 

Photo source 

Ethnic Co-existence, Yesterday

People of our age have adopted the curious habit of considering ourselves more advanced, better informed, more wise, than the people of any generation who came before us.

This is new.

Peoples past always looked backwards toward a "golden age" of prosperity and wisdom whose great men were giants of philosophy, of whom we today are but a pale reflection.  Why this change of heart among moderns?

Our technical innovation?  Cuisinarts and contact lenses and polystyrene beer cozies are the proof that we have transcended our forebears in sagacity?

It would appear so, as even the opinions of our most prominent ancestors from two or three centuries past are today often held up to ridicule.  This is particularly so when it comes to that most delicate of modern questions, ethnic co-habitation.  The zeitgeist of our age, here in the West at the start of the 21st century, holds that each neighborhood should be an even blend of many ethnic groups:  salt and pepper and cinammon and cumin put into the same shaker, thoroughly mixed, and sprinkled liberally.

Our forebears, even the most illustrious, would find such a thought curious indeed.

King of night vision, king of insight?

[Desperately battling a looming academic deadline but having been soothed by repeated listenings of these two formidable women's tribute to Galileo, I shall bow to necessity and take this opportunity to (re-)share my own:]   

HERESY

What is it?

The Times, May 23, 2010

 Nicolaus Copernicus, the “heretical” 16th-century astronomer who was buried in an unmarked grave nearly 500 years ago, was rehabilitated by the Roman Catholic Church this weekend as his remains were reburied in the Polish cathedral where he had once been a canon.

The ceremonial reburial of Copernicus in a tomb in the medieval cathedral at Frombork on Poland’s Baltic coast is seen as a final sign of the Church’s repentance for its treatment of the scientist over his theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun, declared heretical by the Vatican in 1616.

"Heretical?"  Copernicus wasn't a "heretical" astronomer; he was a heretical astronomer.  The Pope being the Infinite's mouthpiece, presumably when he declares something a heresy he means it.  Whatever god is speaking to the current Pope doesn't get to play "backsies" with the one who spoke to Paul V.

The Times doesn't note the year the Vatican finally proclaimed heliocentrism the truth: 1992. 

376 years later.

But no matter.

Hand-wringing over religious heresy (in Christendom anyway) has gone the way of the dodo.  Why dredge up this dreadful word?

Wha'ever it is...

It was madness, it was good fun . . . showing the rich people we can do what we want . . . it’s the governmen’s fault. The Conserva’ives, Yeah, wha’ever it is . . . who it is. I dunno.

Derek Turner at Alternative Right has kindly posted the above tale, recounted by, as he puts it, one of 'two girl geniuses interviewed by BBC Radio 4, sitting in the street at 9.30am drinking stolen rosé to refresh their maidenly parts after a hectic night of after-hours shopping.'

The destruction of the above-pictured historic Carpetright Building (survivor of the Blitz), as well as countless other homes, businesses, cars, livelihoods, and lives these last five days in England seems to have taken most observers completely by surprise. 

Not here.

The riots' origins in an Afro-Caribbean immigrant neighborhood, of course, surprised few.  Europe's slow colonization  by its erstwhile colonized these last forty years has birthed so much urban violence that it's nearly benumbed us.  Just another part of the landscape at this point: 'Welcome to Europe, don't miss our charming Biergartens, our incomparable croissants, our car-torching immigrants...'

But the photos don't lie.  This orgy of mindless destruction and theft may have been launched by Afros, but their ranks were fast swelled by an army of pure-souche, homegrown, sons-of-the-soil Englishmen, many of whom managed to rival and even surpass their Afro counterparts in pure, blind, destructive fury.


The surprise at this is what surprises us.


How such a great number of indigenous English, the sons and daughters of the old salt-of-the-earth working class of yesteryear, could have reverted into a Hobbesian state of near-total savagery is in fact an easy question to answer.  All that's required is a quick mental trip.  Extend us your hand, dear reader, for this jaunt we can go anywhere you like really, but just for fun, let's go far.


Let's go to China.

'Jasmine Revolution'

Tahir Square, Cairo, 29 July 2011 

 'Instead of "Peaceful, peaceful," which demonstrators have chanted during confrontations with security forces, they repeated "Islamic, Islamic"... '

[In light of current bumps on the road to English-style liberal democracy in the newly 'free' Arab world, we here re-visit  '"Democracy promotion and the 'Jasmine Revolution'" (6-11-11).]


The 'Arab Spring' seems to have taken the Middle East, and everyone else, a bit by surprise.  While the Pentagon sweats at the thought of a North Africa full of little Irans, the State Department clicks its heels and throws on its apron, anxious to get in the kitchen and start cookin' up some democracy:

In the wake of the democratic revolutions sweeping the region, the State Department is rapidly trying to reevaluate its approach to Middle East democracy promotion. But without a budget for fiscal 2011, and with no idea of what awaits their budget in fiscal 2012, State is being forced to move money around to speed funds to the Arab countries that are trying to make the difficult transition to democracy.

'Democracy' is what they have now.  'Some other kind of democracy' is what the author maybe meant, but perhaps he had a word limit.

In any case fear not, brave tax-payer, you'll do your bit to help the Arabs get 'some other kind of democracy.'  In fact, you already are:

Don't Fall on Me

Max Weber argued in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism that adherence to this rebellious doctrine was largely the cause of Northern Europe's roaring economic success from the 17th century on.

Perhaps.  But where did this rebel belief come from?  Who thought it up?  Why did it gain such large favor in some places, just a bit in others, and still elsewhere none at all?  And why did it take on so many different faces?

Furthermore, what of the Catholicism that birthed it?  Who thought of that?  And the religion it sprang from?  And the one before that?

One theory is that our religions just fall on us out of the sky, like so many droppings from extraterrestrial spaceships.  We take no part in creating them, or shaping them, or rejecting or accepting them.  They arrive by conquest at sword-point, or else they just drift in like pollen on the breeze, floating into our ears and infecting our souls.  No choice at all, conscious or not.

Were someone to take up the contrary position--that we humans have a very great deal to do with what sky-friends we ascribe to--he might want to start his evidence hunting by looking at some maps.

Let's help him out.

Colonialism, Today II

A small country, a relatively happy country, a country who's been producing wealth at more or less the same level for years... 

 [photo: Peter G., Souvlaki for the Soul]

...Who one day decides to abandon control over its own monetary policy.  To take that sovereign control, stuff it in an envelope, stick on a stamp, and mail it to a country far, far away.

A boxing club made up of only heavy-weights and middle-weights has the magnanimity to invite in a few feather-weights.  How kind.  How inclusive. How optimistic.


What could possibly go wrong.


This, apparently:

Colonialism, Today

Image source

For those unable to take care of themselves, life will always be a a vale of tears.

Unless someone else steps in.

Peoples, like water, should be allowed to find their natural level.  An adult can guide the hand of a four-year-old to create the Mona Lisa.  It's lovely, but when you let go of his hand, he may go back to drawing simple forms.  It's no use getting distressed that he can't do what you did for him.  Pretending otherwise is a recipe for frustration. 


Let him draw what he is capable of drawing.  He may want to reproduce your Mona Lisa.  When he can't, he may cry and ask that you give him better crayons, or more paper, or a better table or chair.  Give him all these things if you'd like; nothing you can give him will allow him to do what you did.  Nothing but picking up his hand and drawing it for him again.


Much as it pains you, let him draw his simple forms. Perhaps one day he'll advance to a point where he, too, can draw a Mona Lisa.  But if he can't--not ever--you must accept it. You and he both must steel yourselves and be content with whatever he can produce.  This can be frustrating.

But it is the price of true freedom.