Sunday, September 23, 2018

Brexit: the best way out for Britain now


The received wisdom at present is that a Brexit ‘deal’ will be scrambled together between Britain and the EU at the last moment because that is how it has always worked in the past.

I still believe that myself - just - on the basis that such a ‘deal’, in reality another face-saving fudge, can be carried over into the transition period to buy time for the desperately placed British prime minister following the rejection of her Chequers plan in Salzburg.

But, after Salzburg, there is an alternative. 
 
If Theresa May goes now or soon, and if Jeremy Corbyn narrowly won an ensuing election, a radical left Labour programme mistrusted by many voters would struggle to remain the priority. The new government would be as bogged down in Brexit as the hopelessly divided Tories. More likely worse.

However, Brexit on the failed Tory lines, and on any of the currently disputed options, would be buried or wide open to review. The new Labour government or, failing that, an ad hoc coalition of some kind, would have to go back to the drawing board.

A fresh start. Not another futile referendum, but a new realism, with 'the will of the people', the mantra that sanctified the 2016 referendum despite its obvious shortcomings, silenced as past its time and unrealisable.

Is it a possibility? Is the leadership there for it?

Back to time-honoured representative government, the bubble of populism popped?

Thursday, August 9, 2018

THE LAND ISSUE IN SOUTH AFRICA - SO FAR


Perhaps it is superfluous to point this out, but all the articles, commentaries and inflammatory issues they raise are part of the 'national debate' that was long promised about 'land' in South Africa. How far this national debate is proving useful rather than divisive is debatable, but the fact is a crucial debate is now on.
So far several things should at least be clearer if not completely clear:
1] Mr Cyril Ramaphosa spoke on tv on July 31 as president of the African National Congress, not state president, hence the ANC flags behind him; 2] a number of statements have come from the ANC as a party, not formally from parliament or the SA government;
3] these various statements and resolutions are different, even contradictory, reflecting serious differences of approach in the governing party and efforts to accommodate them; 4] more broadly across political parties and society, there is general agreement that Expropriation Without Compensation - the shorthand for the current debate - would be disastrous for SA's economy;

5] the Economic Freedom Fighters have a 'policy' to nationalise all land and the ANC do not; 6] no land is presently being expropriated, excepting illegal occupations that may be politically organised;

7] any final legislation on EWC faces very complex and on-going constitutional and legislative obstacles.
It is reasonable to argue that the way the land question is finally settled will also settle the kind of dispensation the Republic of South Africa is: a democracy or something else. But what is happening so far is what happens in a democracy, not in an authoritarian state.


 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 

 

 
 
 
 


 

Thursday, June 14, 2018

A beautiful evening at Macbeth?

 
You cannot describe an evening at Macbeth as entertaining, as lovely; rather I must say I have never found the play so absorbing an evening as at the National Theatre last night, with Rory Kinnear in the nightmarish title role.
 
In this world of unrelieved horror, what can be the appeal? We know it is about vaulting ambition, Macbeth's and his wife's, about the destruction it wreaks, the cruelty and murder it can drive human beings to, the dire consequences of underestimating our imagination and conscience. Why sit through that darkness when you could simply stay away?
 
It is because the dark too, I decided as I listened, takes on an incandescent beauty: not some sick beauty of horror and death: not, for once, because of Shakespeare's profound insights into character and motivation: but from the matchless use of words, the sublime language that elevates and absolves all action.

Whether for Oberon scheming about a bank where the wild thyme blows, for the exiled Duke serenely accepting the uses of adversity in As You Like It, for the monstrous Macbeth shrieking at his terrors, Shakespeare makes empyrean music.

He gives the lie to the tale told signifying nothing, heard even in Hell the harmony of the spheres.

 
 
 

Wednesday, June 6, 2018

"It is raining, but I don't believe it"

 
Moore's Paradox, in the headline, is an effort to remind us how 'the truth' is not simple.
 
Pontius Pilate long ago asked, What is truth? and washed his hands of the whole thing. Professor G E Moore, early last century, proposed his Paradox to get people thinking.
 
First, the Paradox shows there are facts [It is raining ..] and there are opinions [but I don't believe it ..].
 
It shows that facts and opinions exist together. And, crucially, that they can contradict each other. A very important reminder for us, considering how often we find them doing so these days.
 
But it gets more complicated. The sentence, 'It is raining, but I don't believe it', is not nonsense or madness. Not like saying, 'It is raining, but I don't believe it because there is no big tap in the sky.' That would be only silly or insane.
 
Nor is it illogical or untrue. Opinions are routinely in disagreement, not only with other opinions but also with what we call 'the facts'. The Flat Earth Society argues their case on 'the facts', I understand.
 
Because the sentence is not illogical, you cannot falsify it with our normal logic. That is an even more important discovery. There is a contradiction in the sentence, but it is not illogical and not untrue. How to explain that?
 
We can point out the person would know it is raining because s/he would sense it: see it, hear it or get wet. But the question then is, are our senses the only way we know things? What about when our reason shows us they aren't? Like we know there's no oasis in the desert, no puddles up ahead on the road in front of the car on a boiling hot day?
 
What if the person learned it was raining by report? If s/he was told it is raining and said s/he did not believe it, does that alter everything?
 
Also, if s/he was told it was raining yesterday, but did not believe it, is that a different case again? A bit like History: 'There was a Second World War, but I don't believe it.'
 
Look at all these problems with the truth. And a professional philosopher would tell me I have hardly started on the subject.

Saturday, June 2, 2018

Why on earth should we teach History?


Except for asking how wide the universe is and what we are doing here, there is no more difficult question than why and how to teach History. Presumably there is a purpose to it. What could that be? You can see why you teach language, or adding up, or geography. But why History?
Well, first 1] to educate the individual in it, just like any other subject, which may be seen as an end in itself. But is it 2] also to build a sense of citizenship, of belonging to a particular nation?
2] is the hard part because it affects what you do whether you decide the purpose is to build citizens or definitely not to build citizens - if citizens are people who will collectively accept the status quo, that the way things are done is 'right'.
Inevitably a politician will see 2] as essential, if not the priority. It is the nature of the job. Isn't the idea of a Minister of Education itself suspect? Won't the Minister just have History taught the way s/he sees the world and wants it to be seen? But then you can't teach revolution. That's indoctrination too. Not to say unwise.
A good way round the question is to consult Historians, ask them why they write History. The explanation I tend to prefer is the one that simply says it is to understand why people did what they did in the past. But can you keep it even that honest without bias seeping in? Was King Shaka or Henry VIII or Herod the Great not so much great as a bit of a rotter actually?
Problems, problems. It's make your mind up time again, I'm afraid.
 

Wednesday, May 16, 2018

WHO ARE WE?


Consciousness is itself explaining itself.
There is no answer.
It is the piece of string asking how long it is, our questioning what came before the Big Bang.
The dog chasing its own tail.
Forever.

Addition, November 25 2020: "The discovery of the self can never be complete, because the 'I' who asks 'Who am I?' is both the seeker and the sought. The only way this .. can be managed is by the hermeneutical approach [which] makes us see that as embodied beings whose selfhood cannot be grasped by a Cartesian act of introspection, we have to recognize ourselves as linguistic, social and bodily unities." - The History of Philosophy, A.C. Grayling 

Tuesday, May 1, 2018

Explaining my approach to politics to a critic

 
You and I agree that race is a divisive issue in South Africa; I assume you would agree that is not surprising in view of the country's history. I also assume we would agree that some, maybe most, of the 'racial conflict' today is false, to be laid at the door of politicians who stir it up for their own purposes.
 
I would never join a political party of any colour; I am not able to believe the things politicians say or their promises to carry out certain policies and I could not conform to party discipline and whips.
 
That does not make me 'objective'; no one is objective. But it enables me to look at, say, President Zuma, or Cyril Ramaphosa, or Helen Zille, unburdened by loyalties. As you and I have discussed before, I believe Jacob Zuma was an appalling president; I believe Cyril Ramaphosa is saying - and doing - good things, but has a long way to go to prove himself; I believe that Helen Zille, a highly professional politician, who has fought the good fight for liberal values and her party, is now past her sell-by date.
 
I am neither pleased nor saddened by that. Politicians have a privileged life while on stage and make their own choices in public.

Wednesday, March 21, 2018

Thoughts on a lifetime love of opera


21 March 2018 at 12:20:30 AM
Life is full of surprises and I have just had such a lovely one: seeing L'elisir d'amore for the first time in my life from The Met with Pretty Yende, South Africa's own.
 
It is such a happy, funny story, an absolute delight, and I enjoyed myself so much at an opera I would never have thought of going to see, but for this chance, in two or three lifetimes. It is because of Una Furtiva Lagrima, one of two arias I cannot stand, the other being E Lucevan Le Stelle. A purely personal thing - or two things, I suppose, strictly speaking.
 
The Met Live in HD is on again and it is La Boheme on Saturday; I saw Tosca a week or so back with Sonya Yoncheva and she is singing Mimi. It seems to me that Act I of Tosca is Puccini composing at his peak, with Act III being really seriously deficient - out of inspiration. Boheme, though, is such a perfect masterpiece from start to finish, flawless. I can't wait to see it again.

Silly now how in our teens we would argue these things. One group of my friends were terrible Germanics - Bach, Beethoven and Brahms were the Gods and silly old Puccini was not worthy of discussion. I had to sit there sometimes quiet, feeling totally wrong-footed, if not just wrong, because I loved Tosca and Boheme and Butterfly. Now I see it was rather their loss in youth.

Yet I find it harder than ever to keep control of myself in these operas nowadays. They are so saturated in memories of times and friends and places and joy. The wonderful gift Puccini has for melody, one after another pouring effortlessly out of him, lays hold of me and wrings my eyes and heart.