I left a message on my facebook page this morning saying that the main reason I was pro-choice was because I knew plenty of people who it would have been better for the world had they been aborted at birth. As usual like everything I write on facebook or twitter it went totally ignored — I don’t even know why I bother — but this nasty little quip had its basis in the very real anger I felt as a result of contemplating the actions of the happily now-departed former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and from thinking about sociopaths in general. If you’ve ever dealt with a sociopath in real life you know just how psychically draining they can be and how personally debilitating it can be to deal with them day after day.

Throughout human history however there have been certain roles or professions or whole societies in which only those of a geniunely sociopathic disposition have been able to prosper — or at least those who, if not quite “innately” sociopathic, were at least able to expunge all traces of humanity or compassion from their souls; something it’s much easier to do if you hadn’t had any in the first place. Maybe in Macchiavelli’s time, say, you might have been able to make a good case that being somewhat of a sociopath gave you an strong edge and enabled you to be a more effective leader: that it gave you a strong personal foundation from which to navigate the chaotic and unpredictable nature of those times.

What gets me is that nowadays, in today’s modern and “enlightened” society, the sociopaths have started once again to become almost like role models: indeed, rather than being shunned and stigmatised, more and more of these bona fide sociopaths are achieving numerous successes and at the highest levels. I’ve noticed that as people are starting to get just that little bit more desperate with the inevitable unravelling of this global financial crisis, and have consequently began to face much greater levels of uncertainty about the future, they’ve also started gravitate towards or cultivate the acquaintance of the sociopaths and the pathologically selfish, whether it’s in the work place or in personal relationships. Somehow those who are purely guided by self-interest and have complete disregard for all others are seen as far better placed to survive the coming catastrophe. Maybe they are.

Thatcher

I along with a great number of other British people, and probably the vast majority of Scots, have been celebrating the timely death — although to be honest it could have come a lot sooner — of that vile satanic hag Margaret Thatcher. Having been born in 1981 I lived out the first decade or so of my life under the shadow of her government’s utterly destructive policies, in Glasgow a place where she was always particularly despised, so that personally speaking today has been quite a memorable and happy one. It’s hard to over emphasise the extent to which Thatcher “the milk snatcher” represented English Tory viciousness and intransigence, the extne to which she became a figure of hate north of the border.

For me, as for so many others, she encapsulated so much of what went wrong with modern Britain, by laying the foundations for what would become Blairism, the triumph of Casino Capitalism and Zombie Banker — and giving us David Cameron and Gideon Osborne, both of whom are eagerly helping to compete the work of desolation she so successfully initiated.

Thatcher stood for greed and the sort of individualism that consistently put immediate selfish interests ahead of long or even medium term planning and investment. With her it was always about the triumph of the quick buck. She was against society — indeed, she famously said that there was no such thing — she was against the rights of the worker, and in fact anything that stood in the way of corporate profit . Thatcher wreaked terrible havoc over vast stretches of Britain: all over Scotland and the North of England: she might be dead but the catastrophic after effects of her policies will live on for generations.

There are some who reckon her a great female role model, in that she achieved so much in spite of all the many obstacles that stood in her way as a woman. Thatcher did indeed show great skill and fortitude in making it all the way to the top and in many ways she was a pioneer, not least in the fact that she was Britain’s first female Premier. But she was also absolutely ruthless and her whole political career was based on exploiting the worst aspects of human nature — and this should never be forgotten.

A Nice series of renaissance architectural diagrams.

Ever thought about becoming Chinese? Think again…

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/mark-kitto-youll-never-be-chinese-leaving-china/

…With the Benefit of Hindsight

‘How the street swarms with curious figures !
I stand aside in the opening of a side lane, and
there goes past me a man carrying in one hand a
pail of steaming water, while on his other arm he
has a flat basket, containing the sliced feelers of an
octopus, and a tray of rusks. At the low price
of a soldo you may choose your own portion of
the hideous dainty, warm it in the water and devour
it on the spot. Close upon his heels, bawling out
his contribution to the deafening noises of the
streets, comes the ” pizzajuolo,” purveyor of a dainty
which for centuries has been unknown elsewhere.
” Pizza ” may be seen in every street in Naples.
It is a kind of biscuit, crisp and flavoured with
cheese, recognisable at a glance by the little fish,
like whitebait, which are embedded in its brown
surface, dusted over with green chopped herbs.
I cannot recommend the dainty from personal
knowledge, but Neapolitan tradition is strongly in
its favour.’
– Arthur Norway, Naples Past and Present

Strangely enough those strange “dainties” turned out to be quite popular after all.

So I come to the end of my month long writing challenge, and as I’ve stated previously I now plan to update my blog far more regularly: perhaps four times a week or thereabouts.

It’s Friday afternoon and I can’t be bothered writing too much, instead I will leave you with some of my favourite youtube music videos.

My first encounter with the work of Herman Hesse was through reading his final novel the Glass Bead Game around a decade ago. I bought the paperback version put out by Vintage Classics from the University branch of Blackwells in Manchester. It had a nice, brightly coloured cover with an attractive geometric design, an extremely intruiging blurb, and a pleasant but not too intimidating bulkiness, coming in as it did at close to 550 pages. The book worked incredibly well as an artefact and was very pleasing to look at as it lay on my desk waiting to be read. After all that promise however the actual content left me a little disappointed; to be honest I found it a little dull.  Hesse’s obsessions in the Glass Bead Game weren’t really my obsessions, at least not at the time, and it felt like his intense need to pursue his many gripes against modern society got in the way of creating a truly satisfying piece of art. I had been originally turned onto the Glass Bead Game through Erik Davis’s book Techgnosis, but in the end I didn’t find it anywhere near as clever or compelling as he seemed to.

I went on to read Siddhartha a year or so later, purchasing a poorly printed, precariously bound paperback copy in a book market in Rawalpindi (it seems to have attained some kind of cult status in Pakistan, I saw it around a lot.) I enjoyed it more than I had the Glass Bead Game, but it still didn’t make that much of an impact on me.

Fast forward a few more years to when I finally got round to reading Steppenwolf which I picked up in a old paperback version, yellowing and musty with age. I hadn’t really been expecting all that much but instead I ended up being deeply impressed with it.

Steppenwolf details the often fantastic journey of middle-aged, misanthropic, loser Harry Haller from out of the depths of his dark, suicidal misery, via revelatory encounters with beautiful young women, jazz playing saxophonists and strong hallucinogenic drugs, to a total renaissance of the soul (you can see why Hesse hit the height of his popularity during the hippy era).

The Steppenwolf, as Haller likes to refer to himsef, is fixated by the idea that source of all his misery and discontent lies in the perpetual strife between the desires, wants and desperations of the two chief aspects of his split self: one of which he pictures as a human soul, and the other as a lone wolf’s soul. At the same time Haller is absolutely convinced of the futility of seeking redemption within a superficial modern society  so completely at odds with his own deepest aesthetic/moral convictions.

At his lowest ebb, however, and finding himself completely overwhelmed by the hopelessness of his state, unable to see any alternative to the razor blade — but realising that he is still terrified to actually go through with it — he  meets a young woman in a tavern in whose attentions and considerations he is able to completely lose himself. How much of what follows is fantasy and how much reality, the book is written in first person, the reader is never quite sure. Hesse leaves many clues which could fit either interpretation.

In the end though we’re still puzzled as to the extent to which Haller actively contrives to weave an elaborate myth around his initial and subsequent encounters with this young woman, Hermine, and her peers, in order to utilize the power of these mythic symbols to affect a process of self-healing: it all starts to get very Jungian.

The fact is that through Hermine and her friends the Steppenwolf is able to regain touch with the sensual aspects of his being, as well as all those other facets of the self willfully neglected during decades of bloody minded pursuit of high and lofty aesthetic ideals.

In an important episode of the latter part of the book, Haller undergoes a momentous inner psychic transformation by partaking in a weird transformative hallucination induced by an exotic green concotion and some yellow cigarettes and the focus of which hallucination is the murder of his beloved Hermine. At the culmination of this episode he is able to attain to a wholeness of self which we understand is only a starting point for an ongoing journey towards those Saintly ‘immortal figures who embody his artistic and moral ideals. In particular it is essential that Haller must let go of not just his fear, but of a multitude of deeply rooted regrets, regrets of which he was scarcely aware, before he is able to enter onto the next stage of his journey. The book reaches a very satisfying conclusion.

Just a note about the translation which was magnificient and alive. In fact it was so good it was hard to believe I was reading a translation and not an original work in English.