October « 2008 « The Unforgiving Minute

October, 2008

Escaping scrutiny

When reading about government proposals to peer ever more deeply into the lives of their citizens, I suggest that you apply a variation of Rawls‘ original position to decide whether any given measure will be for the better, or for the worse. The question is this:

If you did not know whether the government proposing this measure was a benign liberal democracy or a malign totalitarian dictatorship, then would you want this measure to be implemented?

All is well when cuddly-wuddly New New Labour proposes these measures, and people nod and hum and let it slide. If it was the Burmese military regime, I wouldn’t be so bloody sanguine about it, would you?¹ The question to ask is not whether your government is benign or malign, but whether this is the sort of information that you think the government should have in the first place.

Perhaps you would. [↩]

Sought My Company Voluntarily, Now Regretful — No Comments
26
Oct 08

Gorilla gorilla gorilla gorilla

The alarm was raised with greater frequency than any one of us cared to note. “Look at Rhodes’ face! What’s he doing?” Cue satire, cue maudlin moralizing, cue dramatic pauses, cue unrequested musical interludes – all of these and more were his coin, and believe me when I tell you that he spent that coin freely.

After the war, Rhodes disappeared. Shaken by his experiences, he shunned human intimacy and thai food, roaming through the forests, appearing only at waystations to discombobulate traders (both the innocent and not-so-innocent) with erratic video footage. Further downriver, we could all hear the alarm that greeted each visitation – “Look at Rhodes’ face! What’s he doing?”

Word came to us that he had finally emerged after nearly 30 years of self-imposed tossing, turning and tufting, perfecting his craft on the farthest shores of what might be considered the great sea of acceptability. Now he brings us footage of those he previously considered friends (and sometimes more than friends). Can any good come of this? we ask ourselves, Can any good come of this?

Yes. Look at Rhodes’ face, and you can easily tell what he’s doing.

Look at Rhodes' face! What's he doing?

macedonia / music — 3 Comments
23
Oct 08

I, Radio

Just back from Skopje, where I was mainly attending the Skopje Jazz Festival, but also visiting friends and going to see Animal Collective in concert. Yes, I’m prepared to drive for an entire day just to get to some decent music, and no, driving through Montenegro and Kosova is never a pleasant experience, and yes, I will be posting reviews of the concerts.

While I was in Skopje, Ivana invited me to guest on her radio show on Channel 103. We talked about the hidden links between Skopje and Croydon (seriously), the music scene in Macedonia and how all music is pop music now. Also, I played some tunes to illustrate that last point:

Sleepy Head – Passion Pit
Lovesick – Friendly Fires
I’m Good, I’m Gone – Lykke Li
Butterfingers (ft Fujiya and Miyagi) – Bomb the Bass
Carolina – Seu Jorge
Killers About – Benga

At some point I’m going to try and stream these tunes. Although now that Muxtape is dead, and I don’t have a broadband connection, I’m not sure how that’s going to happen.

My 15 minutes of fame was supposed to be 60 minutes, but I managed to get completely lost in the RadioTelevision Macedonia building. Next time, I plan to make incendiary comments about the political situation in Macedonia and see if I can get myself PNG‘ed. Meanwhile, here’s a picture of the MRT building:

economy / montenegro — No Comments
19
Oct 08

Finally, a financial crisis for Montenegro

Although Serbia has just declared that it is in no way a financial basketcase, Montenegro has ambled along as usual, the inhabitants seemingly unfazed by the structural collapse of international finance. The Montenegrin economy doesn’t on the face of it seem to have much exposure, and the individual Montenegrin even less than that. There are two choices for most people about where they keep their money: in a bank or under the mattress.

In the last week or so, the mattress has been the clear winner. I went to my bank on three occasions to find the lobby packed and stacked with people withdrawing large chunks of their money. The ATM was running out of money as fast as they could fill it, and the bank manager had declared a cap on the amount of money that could be withdrawn daily (which kind of screwed me, to be honest – the workers need beer money, financial crisis or no).

One reason for this is that many adult Montenegrins remember a time when they really did lose all their money as the economy collapsed. After sanctions were imposed by the UN in 1992, accompanied by the collapse of Yugoslavia as an economic entity, the economy basically went to the floor, including some heavy heavy hyper-inflation (4667% in mid-1993 – more details roughly here). When Djukanovic took Montenegro away from the Serbian economy by switching to the Mark in 2000-2001, Montenegrins suffered again, this time from internal sanctions imposed by Serbia.

So, unlike us pampered westerners (with a banking system that actually worked, up until a few weeks ago), their mistrust is well-placed and their response entirely rational. Of course that response is also one reason that banks collapse, as everybody rushes to withdraw their money and the banks fail to shoulder that burden – so the response is also irrational in the sense that it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Which brings me around to Stumbling and Mumbling’s post on recent rationality.

While I agree that Nicholas Nassim Taleb’s writing is trivially true¹², I don’t think that Stumbly (as a fully paid-up member of the economists’ conspiracy) really gets it:

It looks like we were wrong and Taleb right. But this isn’t because Taleb had any great insights into the nature of risk. It‘s because he thought banks‘ risk managers were idiots, whilst economists didn’t think so – not even me. In doing this, however, we were just following economists’ standard procedure – of assuming that agents were if not rational then at least not wholly stupid. For me, all this is very troubling. It suggests that what we economists have to learn from Taleb has nothing to do with the nature of risk – we‘ve all known that – but about others’ rationality. We should ditch the assumption – which in a sense is mere courtesy – not only that others are rational but even the weaker assumption that they are nearly so. Perhaps we should indeed regard them merely as “empty suits.

He’s basically a Gladwell. [↩]
A Gladwell being a writer who has a gift for taking other people’s insights and, while not claiming those insights for themselves, makes it appear as if they’ve developed an entirely new hypothesis. [↩]

life — 3 Comments
16
Oct 08

Unbearably Alone in Moscow

The New Statesman presents findings from the Fear in the Mega-Cities survey (so far, so Dredd), which I’m afraid simply aren’t very interesting, and only one thing stood out for me. In Paris, Rome, London, New York, Cairo and Sao Paolo, “Losing loved ones” features in the top five fears, but not so in Moscow, where “Remaining alone” takes its place. That shift in emphasis – from future loss to present lack – tells of a thousand lonely lights in a thousand crumbling apartment blocks, and also makes me less likely to move to Moscow in the near future.

religion / wordsperminute — 4 Comments
16
Oct 08

Words per minute #10: Mill on Mortality

The mere cessation of existence is no evil to any one: the idea is only formidable through the illusion of imagination which makes one conceive oneself as if one were alive and feeling oneself dead. What is odious in death is not death itself, but the act of dying, and its lugubrious accompaniments: all of which must be equally undergone by the believer in immortality. Nor can I perceive that the skeptic loses by his skepticism any real and valuable consolation except one; the hope of reunion with those dear to him who have ended their earthly life before him. That loss, indeed, is neither to be denied nor extenuated.

- J.S. Mill, The Utility of Religion

(HT: Adam Gopnik)

Also worth your time: You’re A Good Man, John Stuart Mill.

art / comics — 1 Comment
12
Oct 08

Home is run. No. More.

One definition of genius is somebody who pursues a singular artistic or scientific vision that is recognisably and uniquely their own, a vision that remains broadly the same throughout their creative lifetime and around which all their work is wrapped. Their work continually plays and replays variations on that vision, the themes it unlocks, always finding new ways to unfold them in different patterns.

Okay, I admit it, that’s a very personal definition of genius. But it works for me.

By my lights, Grant Morrison is a genius. Unfortunately he’s also writes comics, which means that his work doesn’t reach the large audience it merits. From his earliest work on Zoids through Animal Man and Doom Patrol (which were like a crash course in postmodernism to my young mind) to the philosophical gangbang of The Invisibles all the way through to the fever dream that was Seven Soldiers. Morrison has chased that vision. If you want to know what that vision is, then you’ll just have to read the books.

So where does We3 fit into this scheme? It was one of three series that Morrison wrote at around the same time – the other two being the radio rental SeaGuy and the not-quite-as-insane Vimanarama – presumably as a way of excising some of the toxic byproducts generated by working on mainstream comics. Pop comics, each series three issues long, packed with hook moments and throwaway ideas woven together with some fantastic art – and none more so than We3, where the man Frank Quitely handles the picturing. And if you know Frank Quitely, expect some serious handling.

The short version: We3 is Plague Dogs with heavy weapons. Yet while the action sequences are some of the most visually stunning work I’ve ever seen, the scene that made the most impact on me manages to sum up the entire series in a single line. After unsuccessfully trying to save a man – and despite having earlier killed several – Weapon 1 (the friendly dog) takes the initiative to bring all 3 of the weapons to safety.

“Home is run. No. More.” makes me well up inside. That’s right, you insensitive jerks, even a mountain man such as myself can cry at a comic. For anybody who’s ever been in trouble of the deep and enduring kind, this is the definition of home – the place where you can stop running, the sanctuary that will sustain you. At the same time, that home doesn’t really exist – and that trouble that you found? It’ll always find you, even if it has to follow you home.

So we watch the weapons trying to find a place where they can stop running, even though we know they’ll never find it. The tragedy is that while they’re smart, they’re not smart enough to realise that; the twist of the knife is that we recognise ourselves in them. The tragedy at the heart of We3 is not something amenable to persuasion.

In fact I am wrong, as I frequently am. It turns out that We3 (or at least two of them) will find a place where they will run no more. The last issue of the 3-part series scales up the action with a battle sequence with the monstrous Weapon 4, but bottles out right at the end. Morrison is strong on closure – think of The Filth, with it’s last line of “We have love” – but he isn’t usually afraid to make that closure painful for the reader. We3 gives us a Hollywood ending – perhaps designed for the inevitable bidding war over movie rights – but as a result my disappointment was palpable.

I’ve got no fundamental objection to Hollywood endings, but if you’re going to flirt with tragedy, eventually you have to consumate the relationship. Otherwise you’re selling everybody short: readers, characters, yourself. We all need to know that the flaws in our personalities hold, that we don’t live happily ever after, that the battle is more important than the victory (because the outcome of the battle is a foregone conclusion).

So We3 makes me cry twice – once for the truth of Run No More, and once for the lie that the ending tells us, a lie that lessens the truth.

The Unforgiving MinutePaul Currion struggles to explain himself.