On May 1st we had our annual council election. Whilst not terribly important on any global scale political pundits usually see these elections as an indicator of the mood of the country and the potential state of the next general election. Overall there was a general rise towards the Conservative party and away from the present Labour government (For my U.S. friends, that's a bit like Republican and Democrat respectively). But that's not what I want to talk about. I want to look at things on a much more local level.
I live in a political area (ward) called Radcliffe West which comprises of roughly 7,000 voters as do the other two wards, Radcliffe North and Radcliffe East (odd names, considering I live right at the Southern tip of the town!)
Only about a third of the population actually bothered to get off their arses and vote, and here's a rough breakdown of the results:
Labour 44% (a fall of 6% compared to last year)
Conservative 27% (a rise of 5%)
BNP 18% (about the same)
Liberal Democrat 7% (about the same)
UK Independence Party 3% (no candidate last year)
A Worrying Pattern Emerges
The fact that Labour hold almost half of the votes (they actually had 50% last year) comes as no surprise, nor does the fact that the Tories are second with roughly half of Labour's votes. After all, this is an area of low education, poor health, low life-expectancy and all the other things that make up a typically "working class" town.
What bothers me is number three - the BNP.
For those who don't know, BNP stands for British National Party. Some years ago, before re-branding, they were called the National Front and were rightly known as vicious, racist nazis. They still are, but nowadays they have a respectable, clean-shaven face and a nice suit (instead of being a bunch of skinhead football hooligans).
We've only had a BNP candidate for the last two years but they seem to have been remarkably successful. Look again at the figures - the Liberal Democrat Party is, nationally, the third party in the country with 63 MP's (as compared to Labour's 351 and Conservative's 192, the BNP don't have one) - but that doesn't seem to be the case round here. The Lib Dems actually got less than half the vote of the BNP. In fact, if you round up the figures a bit, roughly 1 in every 5 voters in Radcliffe West voted for the BNP.
Or, to put it in a really blunt way: where I live, a fifth of the people who care about the government are fascists!
The BNP
I vote even though I instinctively don't trust politicians. I have a strong feeling that anyone who actively seeks out political power is the sort of person who shouldn't have it. Nonetheless I vote because it's one of the very few chances I get to have a say in how my country is run - it's bullshit really, but it's the best we've got so it'll have to do. Use it or lose it!
However, assuming that people vote because they want to express an opinion, it's safe to assume that the BNP voters also care about how their country is run. That's pretty scary. Let's see what they're voting for:
According to http://www.stopthebnp.org.uk/ the BNP are white-only party opposed to any none-white immigration (where do Greeks and Turks stand, I wonder?) who deny the Holocaust, believe that all black people should be repatriated - including the ones who were born here - and would make mixed-race relationships illegal. They're also anti-gay and anti-feminist.
I'm not going to go into them all, but their policies can be found by a simple Wikipaedia search - they are the same, in substance as the policies of the German National Socialist Party in the 1930's.
Why, then, is 1 in 5 of the voters in this area voting for them?
An Answer?
Okay, I don't have one! But then, I'm not a BNP voter so I wouldn't. I do believe, though that it comes down to something I've mentioned in previous posts - the fear of difference!
I would like to state the following as my own opinion of immigration:
Immigration is a good thing!
Immigration does not weaken a country, it enriches it. The reason for it is that the people do not make a country - the country (ie. the LAND itself) makes the people. The landscape, weather and language are what make the British what they are - and to become fully British takes an immigrant family three generations.
This country is made of immigrants. Everyone in Britain is the distant (or not-so-distant) descendant of an immigrant. Everyone. Including the members of and voters for the BNP. Having dark skin is the same result of ancestry as having red hair, but it's easier for simple-minded fascists to pick on.
A final word
Some of the nicest people I've ever met are immigrants. I spent a lovely day a couple of weeks ago talking to a native Pole and a native Norwegian. One of my best mates is an immigrant, again from Norway, who brought other friends - a Swede and an Italian to a party recently.
One of the nicest couples I've ever met are Ugandan Indians - the BNP would have them out like a shot because they've got brown faces! One ex-girlfriend of mine was of Indian descent and one was Ghanaian. My doctor's a Pakistani.
Should the BNP gain power at all, such people would be forced out of the country. Is this really what 1 in 5 people actually want? I do hope not! As a final note I'm adding Stop The BNP as a permanent link on this blog.
Fascists: we don't want them, we don't need them, we're better off without them.
Love,
Seán
SEARCH FROM HERE!
Custom Search
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Saturday, 10 May 2008
Sunday, 24 February 2008
Disability Issues
I thought about this recently when I went to a meeting about the coming day of action in April. The meeting was held upstairs in a rather nice old pub, but one of our number couldn't come because she couldn't manage the stairs. She is classed as a disabled person, although I didn't know that until quite recently - I just thought she was a small person with wonky hips.
This led me to wondering what a "disabled person" actually is.
Tai Chi
A couple of years ago I used to teach a beginners' class in Tai Chi. One of my students was also a student activist on disability issues and asked me if I could teach a disabled person to do Tai Chi.
I couldn't answer her.
The reason is that she wanted a simple yes/no answer and there wasn't one I could give. From the point of view involved in teaching Tai Chi there's no such thing as a "disabled person", there's just a person. That person may or may not be able to do certain things, and the teaching would therefore take that into account on an individual basis.
To explain a little more clearly: If a person can't touch their toes, is stone deaf, has only one arm or has balance problems from cerebral palsy then I can probably teach them Tai Chi. If a person is blind or confined to a wheelchair then I probably can't - although I'd give it a good old try first!
Car Parking
I understand the usefulness, from a governmental perspective of considering certain people with certain difficulties as "disabled". It's useful for someone who can't walk very well to have some kind of guaranteed car parking near to where they want to go. It's also useful for a governmental agency to be able to classify people by their ability to earn a living, or need for state benefit. This sort of thing is, though, surely as far as the classification needs to go.
Pigeonholes
Regular readers of my rants will probably have guessed what I'm getting at by now: Pigeonholing! The necessities stated above notwithstanding, I've noticed a tendency amongst people to consider "disabled" as a category of person. This is what my, supposedly politically enlightened, Tai Chi student was doing.
It's probably a linguistic thing - we tend to categorise things into simplistic types so that we don't have to think about them properly. Reactionaries and activists rely on this tendency a lot - it dehumanises the enemy and makes them easier to throw things at. Most people do it. I've heard men talk about women and women talk about men as if they're all the same. I've heard whites talk about blacks, pakistanis talk about jews, and cleaners talk about caretakers - all using that same unthinking group categorisation.
A "Disabled Person"
Is it possible to say, then, that people with a blue parking pass for their car are all the same? My friend who didn't like the thought of the stairs probably would say not, and I think she'd be right.
To think in terms of a "disabled person" (and I'm as guilty as anyone else) as opposed to a person who can't perform a particular activity, or has a bit missing, belittles the person. It puts them into a little box labelled "disabled" - one might as well put them in a box labelled "broken" and have done with it.
I'm thinking about the many, many people I've met over the years and a lot of them have been considered disabled, officially that is. My mother is disabled, as is an ex-lover and my friend mentioned above. I know a deaf artist and a one-handed artist. A good friend has schizophrenia. I've known drug and alcohol addicts and a woman who lost a leg in a motorbike accident.
That's just a select few. The question is what, apart from governmental categorisation, have they all got in common? The answer is, frankly, sod all - except one thing.
They're all people.
Let's keep pigeonholes for pigeons.
Love,
Seán
This led me to wondering what a "disabled person" actually is.
Tai Chi
A couple of years ago I used to teach a beginners' class in Tai Chi. One of my students was also a student activist on disability issues and asked me if I could teach a disabled person to do Tai Chi.
I couldn't answer her.
The reason is that she wanted a simple yes/no answer and there wasn't one I could give. From the point of view involved in teaching Tai Chi there's no such thing as a "disabled person", there's just a person. That person may or may not be able to do certain things, and the teaching would therefore take that into account on an individual basis.
To explain a little more clearly: If a person can't touch their toes, is stone deaf, has only one arm or has balance problems from cerebral palsy then I can probably teach them Tai Chi. If a person is blind or confined to a wheelchair then I probably can't - although I'd give it a good old try first!
Car Parking
I understand the usefulness, from a governmental perspective of considering certain people with certain difficulties as "disabled". It's useful for someone who can't walk very well to have some kind of guaranteed car parking near to where they want to go. It's also useful for a governmental agency to be able to classify people by their ability to earn a living, or need for state benefit. This sort of thing is, though, surely as far as the classification needs to go.
Pigeonholes
Regular readers of my rants will probably have guessed what I'm getting at by now: Pigeonholing! The necessities stated above notwithstanding, I've noticed a tendency amongst people to consider "disabled" as a category of person. This is what my, supposedly politically enlightened, Tai Chi student was doing.
It's probably a linguistic thing - we tend to categorise things into simplistic types so that we don't have to think about them properly. Reactionaries and activists rely on this tendency a lot - it dehumanises the enemy and makes them easier to throw things at. Most people do it. I've heard men talk about women and women talk about men as if they're all the same. I've heard whites talk about blacks, pakistanis talk about jews, and cleaners talk about caretakers - all using that same unthinking group categorisation.
A "Disabled Person"
Is it possible to say, then, that people with a blue parking pass for their car are all the same? My friend who didn't like the thought of the stairs probably would say not, and I think she'd be right.
To think in terms of a "disabled person" (and I'm as guilty as anyone else) as opposed to a person who can't perform a particular activity, or has a bit missing, belittles the person. It puts them into a little box labelled "disabled" - one might as well put them in a box labelled "broken" and have done with it.
I'm thinking about the many, many people I've met over the years and a lot of them have been considered disabled, officially that is. My mother is disabled, as is an ex-lover and my friend mentioned above. I know a deaf artist and a one-handed artist. A good friend has schizophrenia. I've known drug and alcohol addicts and a woman who lost a leg in a motorbike accident.
That's just a select few. The question is what, apart from governmental categorisation, have they all got in common? The answer is, frankly, sod all - except one thing.
They're all people.
Let's keep pigeonholes for pigeons.
Love,
Seán
Saturday, 9 February 2008
Sunday, 25 November 2007
Spread the Virus.
I recently found out that US and European political philosophies have been based on a concept known as Game Theory. Game Theory was originally exactly what it sounded like, a theory to explain how games work in a mathematical sense - for instance, a game of poker or bridge.
It automatically assumes a certain simplistic and robotic mindset on the part of the players, that being that their aim is simply to win the game. In other words, they are selfish. That's fair enough so far and, since this is a mathematical construct, makes a fair amount of sense. To carry on the example, a poker player looks to their own advantage in a purely selfish way and a pair of bridge players look to their own advantages by using each other for mutual advantage.
I'm sure you get the idea by now. Everyone is out for everything they can get, in a self-centred way, and even mutually advantageous cooperation is used as a method, ultimately, of personal advancement. A good and solid theory for something relatively simple like a game of cards.
The problem comes when game theory is taken out of context. In the 1950's a gentleman by the name of Anthony Downs started to apply game theory to other things, such as the social interactions within a hotel, and since then the meme has spread. Game theory is now applied to all sorts of social and political models to predict how things will work out: economics, voting, social interactions, even family relationships! In each case the basic premise is that the individual is working entirely for their own advantage. It's known as "enlightened self-interest"
This really bothers me.
One thing that concerns me is that I find it hard to believe that people are really that unpleasant. Okay, people as a species have shown themselves to be pretty crap, but individuals are all different. Not only that but different at different ages, in different places and at different times of the day. As proof of that compare yourself as a twelve-year old on a summer holiday, and now first thing in the morning on a working day. To base any form of government on such a simplistic assumption can't be right, and personally I find it insulting.
Further to that there's the problem of enforced pattern creation.
Madame Blavatsky's friend, Col. Olcott discovered that he had the power to heal. He didn't believe it himself, but on a stay in Northern India (I think, please correct me if I'm wrong) people came to him for spiritual healing in the mistaken belief that he could do it. So he pretended, and the more he pretended the better he became. That's pattern creation: if you act a certain way for long enough you create thought and habit patterns, neural circuitry if you like, that make you that way.
Enforced pattern creation does exactly that, but from the outside. If you treat a person a particular way strongly enough for long enough then they will become that way. This is basically how most forms of brainwashing, social control and education work. Consider then that we've been told implicitly but increasingly that selfishness and personal advantage are good and noble things for the last 50 years. "Enlightened self-interest" is now the norm and it's very difficult to think outside that pattern, or even to realise that it's possible to do so. It takes a particularly strong, or obnoxious, individual to stand up to that kind of pressure.
So, what's the way out?
Well, if a mental prison or social control structure is based on the assumption of particular behaviour patterns, then to break the bars of that prison requires new and opposing behaviour.
And what type of behaviour is that?
How about spontaneous and pointless generosity that gives no personal advantage whatsoever?
There's a link on this blog to a thing called the Generosity Game. The Generosity Game is very simple: You go to, say, a shop and buy your stuff. You also buy something extra (it doesn't have to be expensive) which you then give to the shopkeeper and say something like, "Please could you give this as a gift to the next person who comes in". You also leave a card with it which says "Now it's your turn". Then you leave the shop. You don't leave your name.
Insane? Well, if insanity can be defined as non-normal behaviour, then yes!
What you've just done is a tiny act of anonymous and beautifying rebellion, the precise opposite of what you've been told all your life; that you're a selfish git. What you also do by leaving the card is to (a) challenge another person to free themselves from the social norm and (b) spread the meme.
Spread the what?
A meme is a trendy word that means an idea, a thought, a neural circuit. The current overriding meme of our present life is "enlightened self-interest". A religion is a kind of super-meme. In playing the Generosity Game or something similar we are spreading a new meme, which works like a virus. Under the right conditions it infects people.
Sadly, personally non-advantageous generosity isn't a strong meme at the moment, but with time and effort it can be. When it becomes an epidemic it may well save the world!
Spread the virus! Let's make "enlightened self-interest" sick as a parrot and then provide the cure.
Love,
Seán
It automatically assumes a certain simplistic and robotic mindset on the part of the players, that being that their aim is simply to win the game. In other words, they are selfish. That's fair enough so far and, since this is a mathematical construct, makes a fair amount of sense. To carry on the example, a poker player looks to their own advantage in a purely selfish way and a pair of bridge players look to their own advantages by using each other for mutual advantage.
I'm sure you get the idea by now. Everyone is out for everything they can get, in a self-centred way, and even mutually advantageous cooperation is used as a method, ultimately, of personal advancement. A good and solid theory for something relatively simple like a game of cards.
The problem comes when game theory is taken out of context. In the 1950's a gentleman by the name of Anthony Downs started to apply game theory to other things, such as the social interactions within a hotel, and since then the meme has spread. Game theory is now applied to all sorts of social and political models to predict how things will work out: economics, voting, social interactions, even family relationships! In each case the basic premise is that the individual is working entirely for their own advantage. It's known as "enlightened self-interest"
This really bothers me.
One thing that concerns me is that I find it hard to believe that people are really that unpleasant. Okay, people as a species have shown themselves to be pretty crap, but individuals are all different. Not only that but different at different ages, in different places and at different times of the day. As proof of that compare yourself as a twelve-year old on a summer holiday, and now first thing in the morning on a working day. To base any form of government on such a simplistic assumption can't be right, and personally I find it insulting.
Further to that there's the problem of enforced pattern creation.
Madame Blavatsky's friend, Col. Olcott discovered that he had the power to heal. He didn't believe it himself, but on a stay in Northern India (I think, please correct me if I'm wrong) people came to him for spiritual healing in the mistaken belief that he could do it. So he pretended, and the more he pretended the better he became. That's pattern creation: if you act a certain way for long enough you create thought and habit patterns, neural circuitry if you like, that make you that way.
Enforced pattern creation does exactly that, but from the outside. If you treat a person a particular way strongly enough for long enough then they will become that way. This is basically how most forms of brainwashing, social control and education work. Consider then that we've been told implicitly but increasingly that selfishness and personal advantage are good and noble things for the last 50 years. "Enlightened self-interest" is now the norm and it's very difficult to think outside that pattern, or even to realise that it's possible to do so. It takes a particularly strong, or obnoxious, individual to stand up to that kind of pressure.
So, what's the way out?
Well, if a mental prison or social control structure is based on the assumption of particular behaviour patterns, then to break the bars of that prison requires new and opposing behaviour.
And what type of behaviour is that?
How about spontaneous and pointless generosity that gives no personal advantage whatsoever?
There's a link on this blog to a thing called the Generosity Game. The Generosity Game is very simple: You go to, say, a shop and buy your stuff. You also buy something extra (it doesn't have to be expensive) which you then give to the shopkeeper and say something like, "Please could you give this as a gift to the next person who comes in". You also leave a card with it which says "Now it's your turn". Then you leave the shop. You don't leave your name.
Insane? Well, if insanity can be defined as non-normal behaviour, then yes!
What you've just done is a tiny act of anonymous and beautifying rebellion, the precise opposite of what you've been told all your life; that you're a selfish git. What you also do by leaving the card is to (a) challenge another person to free themselves from the social norm and (b) spread the meme.
Spread the what?
A meme is a trendy word that means an idea, a thought, a neural circuit. The current overriding meme of our present life is "enlightened self-interest". A religion is a kind of super-meme. In playing the Generosity Game or something similar we are spreading a new meme, which works like a virus. Under the right conditions it infects people.
Sadly, personally non-advantageous generosity isn't a strong meme at the moment, but with time and effort it can be. When it becomes an epidemic it may well save the world!
Spread the virus! Let's make "enlightened self-interest" sick as a parrot and then provide the cure.
Love,
Seán
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
