Giving rioting a bad name

‘If you’re not careful the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.’ - Malcolm X

First of all: you can hold disparate opinions about the riots if you want to. I can say that the causes of the riots are rampant consumerism, vast and rapidly increasing inequality, and thousands of lives without hope. And I can say that the looting perpetrated by the rioters was an amateurish affair compared to the industrial scale looting perpetrated year after year by bankers. Yet at the same time I can also say I should take it a deep personal failure if any grandchild of mine was mixed up in most of what I've seen on the screen and read about. I can say that some of the rioters were the scum of the earth. I can also pose the question: how did they come to be this way? All those things I can think simultaneously.

Yes. What happened in London and elsewhere in England has given rioting a bad name. The very word riot implies some sort of political consciousness which was notably absent. Not wholly so though. I did see one looter say to a reporter who challenged him ”these big shops can afford it”. But that doesn’t excuse indiscriminate (indiscriminate is the operative word here) looting, arson and violence.

The Spirit Level

If you haven't read The Spirit Level you should. It produces a wealth of evidence that inequality (not merely absolute poverty) causes shorter, unhealthier and unhappier lives, whilst functioning as a driver of consumption and depleting the planet's resources.

The full title is The Spirit Level - Why equality is better for everyone, 2009, by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett.

Cameron can declare war on gangs but he needs to lose his attitude first. If gangs didn’t serve a purpose they wouldn't exist. He needs to work out what their purpose is. And why that purpose is served by gangs and not by more socially useful organisations such as work, trade unions, political parties, churches, youth clubs and the like.

Who were the rioters?

A few extracts from the newspapers.

From The Guardian Wednesday 10 August. “Who are the rioters? Young men from poor areas; but that's not the full story”. Paul Lewis and James Harkin reported that the crowds involved in violence and looting are drawn from a complex mix of social and racial backgrounds. As Lewis and Harkin followed a group of looters who had just finished ransacking a pawnbroker's, and had started cleaning out a local fashion boutique, they witnessed an angry young black woman berating one of the looters.

" ‘You're taking the piss, man. That woman hand-stitches everything, she's built that shop up from nothing. It's like stealing from your mum.’ A girl holding a looted wedding dress smiled sheepishly, stuck for anything to say. ”

The context suggests the angry young black woman was herself a looter, though the story doesn’t say.

Terry Prone had a piece in the Irish Examiner 15th August “No easy answers as to why ordinary people were stirred into looting”. She mentions two cases that came to court. The youngest of the looters captured was an 11-year-old who had stolen a trash can. It might have been a wheelie bin. Or it might have been a static garbage container. The details didn’t come out in court. All that came out in evidence was that he had stolen this trash can. Outside the court, his mother turned to him and asked him the lethal simple question, to which she got no answer: “Why?”

The other case Terry Prone mentions was an aspirant social worker. Natasha Reid, aged 24, didn’t wait for the police to identify her from CCTV footage. She had nicked a TV set from one of the shops broken into during the rioting, and turned herself in, having, according to her mother, spent a couple of days in her bedroom, doing nothing but crying. This young graduate knew she was guilty, and was ashamed of what she had done.

Her mother, baffled by the three days which had put her daughter on the front pages of newspapers worldwide and put paid to any chance of getting a job as a social worker, told reporters: ’She didn’t want a TV. She doesn’t even know why she took it. She doesn’t need a telly.’ "

Looting in the London Blitz

A couple of pieces from the papers in 2010, the 70th anniversary of the Blitz. Duncan Campbell revealed how black marketeers, thieves and looters took advantage of the misfortunes of war, in The Observer 29 August 2010.

And then there's the Café de Paris incident, a nightclub hit on 8 March, 1941. Two bombs hurtled down a ventilation shaft from the roof and exploded in the basement nightclub right in front of the band. The carnage caused by the explosion in that confined space was dreadful. The Daily Mail online 9th April 2010 reports :

“The worst of human nature was in evidence that night too – amid the rubble and the chaos, unscrupulous looters were seen cutting off the fingers of the dead to steal their rings.”

It is also widely reported on the internet (but always in precisely the same phraseology which means it may be false) that on the same night "even the wounded in the Café de Paris were robbed of their jewellery amid the confusion and carnage".

Echo here of that prize scum of the earth incident, the Youtube clip of the bad samaritans, two youths pretending to assist a hurt Malaysian student whilst robbing him.

Links

Red Pepper blog

Zoe Williams in The Guardian, Tuesday 9 August: The psychology of looting - she says the shocking acts of looting may not be political, but they nevertheless say something about the beaten-down lives of the rioters.

More Malcolm X quotes

How Midas and his ass’s ears spread around the world

A couple of months ago I was puzzling over two stories about a king with animal ears and a barber who couldn't keep a secret. They were the ancient Greek tale of Midas with his ass’s ears, and the Irish tale of Lowry Lynch with his horse’s ears. I was musing on their similarity. Each king hid his shame with long hair, and each was betrayed by a magical plant, to which his barber had unburdened himself. In the ancient Greek version we have talking reeds. In the Irish version, the barber tells a tree, the tree is made into a harp, and the harp sings out the secret.

In this bronze wall fountain, from a 16th Century original,
the artist has imagined King Midas's hair too short to cover his asses ears.

So. Is the Irish story an adaptation of the Greek one, or do they both derive from a common source, I asked myself?

Well I've been to the Boole library at University College Cork to find the answer, but first let me digress to reveal that both stories are folktales of type 782.

Yes, type 782 no less.

Uther's Types of International Folktales

It’s all in a 3-volume book called The Types of International Folktales: A Classification and Bibliography by Hans-Jörg Uther, 2004. Hereinafter known as the yellow book. There's a broad category of folktale known as The Truth Comes To Light, and within that category, type 782 consists of tales about humans with animal ears or horns.

Cinderella, to anticipate your next question, comes in the category Tales of Magic, and is type 510A.

It seems this classification system is known as the Aarne-Thompson-Uther classification, and folklorists will say that the ATU number of tales about humans with animal ears is 782, and the ATU number of Cinderella tales is 510A.

Professor D. L. Ashliman seems to be big in the world of folklore and fairy tales. He lists on his website six instances of the tale about a king with animal ears and a barber. Starting with Midas, he includes Lowry Lynch, as well as stories from Wales, Serbia, India and the Philippines.

In the Welsh tale, the barber tells his story to the reeds, the reeds are made into a musical pipe, and the pipe sings out about the king’s ears. So that overlaps with Lowry Lynch (a plant is made into a musical instrument) and with Midas (talking reeds). In the Serbian version an elder tree is made into a flute. In the Philippine tale we have talking bamboo, and no musical instrument.

In three versions, the barber digs a hole in the ground and tells his story to the hole. Later a tree or reeds grow up on the spot. That’s how the reeds appear in the Midas story as told by the Roman poet Ovid; though in my telling of the story I have the barber telling the reeds just where they grow along the river bank, because that’s the way I remember it from school.

A hole occurs also in the Serbian version and the Philippine version. Which by the way, according to a note on Professor Ashliman’s website, is an adaptation of the classical story of Midas brought there by the Spaniards. (Disappointed? Read on it gets worse.)

The Indian tale is the only one of the six which doesn’t involve a plant; the Indian barber blurts his secret out to another person.

How are the stories related?

It turns out there are many more variants besides these. The yellow book lists 46 of them, from disparate languages, cultures and regions.

So back to the original question. Which now, with 46 variants, has become an even bigger question. How are all these stories related? How do we account for their worldwide distribution? I had rather hoped to discover that the tale had emerged spontaneously and independently in all these places, evidence for the existence of a Jungian archetype buried deep within the human psyche, involving shameful ears, a barber, and magic talking reeds. Failing that, I had hoped to find evidence of an oral tradition and a common human culture that was widespread long before the emergence of writing.

But no. The yellow book, having listed all the 46 variants, tersely informs us under remarks: “Classical origin, Ovid Metamorphoses (XI, 174-193)”. Ovid's version is very spare, as you can see from this translation.

So that’s that.

Categories of tales

A comment about the yellow book and how folk tales are arranged in it. The top-level categories are these: Animal Tales, Tales of Magic, Religious Tales, Realistic Tales (Novelle) and Tales of the Stupid Ogre (or Giant or Devil).

Every tale ever told fits, it seems, in one of the categories on that list. Equally surprising, Midas comes under Religious Tales; the sub-categories of which are God Rewards and Punishes, The Truth Comes to Light, Heaven, The Devil, and Other Religious Tales.

Stith Thompson's Motif-Index of Folk-Literature

Midas comes in the sub-category The Truth Comes to Light. Other tales in this sub-category include The Singing Bone, where a brother (or sister) kills their sister (or brother) and buries the body. From the bones a shepherd makes a musical instrument of some sort which brings the secret to light. Or the murder is revealed by a speaking tree growing from the grave.

Note that here we encounter a motif we have seen before. A secret being given away by a musical instrument or by a tree.

These motifs have themselves been listed, in another book, twice the size of the yellow one. It’s called Motif-Index of Folk-Literature by Stith Thompson, 1956. It comes in 6 volumes, and is dull green. (I've since found an on-line version, and a search engine for it, but it's worth the bus fare to Cork just to handle the real thing.)

A speaking musical instrument is motif D1610.34. A speaking tree is motif D1610.2. (They both come under Magic.) Motif F511.2.2 is a person with ass’s or horse’s ears (that's listed under Marvels). Motif N465 is a secret physical peculiarity discovered by a barber (under Chance & Fate).

Any given tale can be built up around one, or several, of the thousands of motifs listed in this tome.

So now we know how folklorists occupy their time.

A romanticised view of oral tradition

A final point. Until I read the yellow book I had a romantic notion that oral traditions had existed unchanged for centuries, and are somehow more to be valued than literary sources. It seems that folktale scholars generally held this view up until the 1960's, but have now abandoned it. According to the introduction, literary texts by such as the 14th century story-tellers Giovanni Boccaccio and Geoffrey Chaucer, are a major source of folk tales. So it seems that tales can weave in and out of oral tradition. We now know that many so-called oral narratives can be traced back to works of literature, indeed have a rich literary history. The Midas story would appear to be an instance of this. Written down by Ovid (who, let us assume, received it as oral tradition) and then spread around the world in a variety of forms, some oral, some written.

Morality is what you do when you think no-one is looking

Even, if this Youtube moment is to be believed, in Bern, Switzerland

Chou En Lai on the French Revolution : Did he say it's too soon to tell?

Nixon with Chou en Lai in February 1972 - taken for all I know in the
walled garden (Encylopedia Britannica)

It is said that Chou En Lai, asked to assess the impact of the French Revolution, replied:

"It's too soon to tell."

Not according to Nixon’s interpreter, the American diplomat Chas Freeman, who has recently spoken about this. But before we see what Freeman had to say, let’s have a look at the story as it’s usually told.

Legend has it that, while preparing Richard Nixon for his historic visit to China in 1972, Henry Kissinger mentioned that Chinese Prime Minister Chou En-Lai was an avid student of French history. During his trip, Nixon met with Chou in the walled garden of the Forbidden City. As they walked slowly around the lily ponds, Nixon remembered Kissinger's comment. To break the ice, he asked Chou what he thought had been the impact of the French revolution on western civilization. Chou En-Lai considered the question for a few moments. Finally, he turned to Nixon and replied, "The impact of the French revolution on western civilization - too early to tell."

It seems this shows up in a few different versions. Sometimes it's said to Kissinger, sometimes, as related above, to Nixon, and sometimes a full twenty years earlier to someone else. So it looks, or looked, like a good guess that Chou En Lai did actually say this, though precisely when, or to whom, isn't clear.

Chou’s answer has become a frequently deployed cliché, used as evidence of Chinese leaders' sage, patient, and far-sighted ways, in contrast to impatient westerners.

But now up pipes Chas Freeman and kills off this cosy anecdote. Here's what he says happened.

Chou and Nixon did indeed converse about events in France. But whilst Nixon’s question referred to the Revolution of 1789, Chou’s reply referred to les évenéments of 1968 – the Paris student riots and sit-ins just three years before.

It seems this all came out at a seminar in Washington (in early June, I surmise) to mark the publication of Kissinger’s book, On China. Chas Freeman is reported to have said “I distinctly remember the exchange. There was a misunderstanding that was too delicious to invite correction”; also that Chou’s misconstrued comment was “one of those convenient misunderstandings that never gets corrected”. Moreover that this probably occurred over lunch or dinner, during a discussion about revolutions that had succeeded and failed; not in the walled garden.

He said Chou had been confused when asked about the French Revolution and the Paris Commune, since “these were exactly the kinds of terms used by the students to describe what they were up to in 1968 and that is how Chou understood them.”

Just a 300-year interlude

I'm partly sorry this story has been debunked. That the Chinese take a long view of history may be both a cliché and actually true, even if the Nixon/Chou story can no longer be cited as an instance of it.

As an example of short- and long-term historical perspectives, let's note that in the West, China’s emerging economic dominance is surprising and disturbing. To the Chinese on the other hand, it’s wholly unsurprising. Through most of recorded history their country has been the world’s foremost economic power; there’s been a 300-year interlude, that’s all.

As to the effect of the French Revolution, this event brought about the rise of the nation state and was the precursor of the Russian revolution, and the Chinese revolution, and arguably of the First World War (and thereby also the Second World War). Who can say what the long term consequences of all that is? Chou’s answer, the answer we now have to believe he never gave, was quite apposite.

China’s long predominance in world history prompts the question, why did modern science and technology develop in Europe, when China seemed so much better placed to achieve it? It’s known as the Needham Question … but here I'll stop ... more another day.

Source:
Media myth alert - blog by W Joseph Campbell

Subsequent link:
my thoughts on the Needham Question

Cameron’s Britain – is it come to this?

You get what you pay for I suppose. In Syria we see people withstand tanks and snipers in the name of freedom with unbelievable dignity and bravery whilst in London a brutish mob loots jeans and televisions. And if I accosted one of them and said lets discuss what you're protesting against, Karl Marx had something to say about it, my recompose, I fear, would be a bop on the nose.

Milliband eschews 20/20 hindsight

Snellen eye chart

This morning on BBC TV news Ed Milliband, declining to criticise the ineffective police response to the London riots, told the interviewer “I'm not going to engage in 20/20 hindsight”. What did he mean?

From the context in which it's normally used I've always assumed 20/20 vision meant perfect vision or maybe, as Milliband appears to think, all-round vision; but actually no, it signifies normal vision, for which the technical term appears to be normal visual acuity (VA).

To an optometrist, 20/20 vision means that when you stand 20 feet away from a wallchart, you can see what someone with normal vision can see at that distance.

If you have 20/40 vision, your visual acuity is rather poor. It means at 20 feet, you see what a person with normal vision can see at 40 feet. 20/10 vision means your visual acuity is good; at 20 feet you can see what a person with normal vision would need to step up to 10 feet to see.

20/100 vision means that at 20 feet you can read no more of the wallchart than a person with normal vision could at 100 feet. And 20/200 is the cut-off for legal blindness in the United States.

The information comes from the American Optometric Association. For all I know 20/20 vision may be a specifically American expression, and perhaps something different is used in Europe. It certainly seems to have entered the language as an instance of American business speak. Annoying at the best of times. Doubly so when it's misunderstood even by those who use it.

In metric terms 20/20 becomes 6/6. So if Milliband wanted to be right up to date with his jargon, perhaps he ought to have said “I'm not going to engage in 6/6 hindsight”. Lacks a certain rhythm, but would it have been more happening and abreast of the modern thing?

Why purgatory is no laughing matter

With Eileen to a Catholic memorial mass marking the anniversary of the death of a neighbour in these parts, whom I'll call John. At the start of the service the canon announced that we were here to pray for the repose of John’s soul. Later, he remarked on the size of the congregation, how many friends John had, and how pleased John would be to see us all here tonight. He was sure John was smiling down on us all from heaven. A comforting image for anyone which can bring themselves to believe in such things.

Comforting but false. False in any event by the lights of the Catholic church. For according to Catholic doctrine, [1] John is not in heaven. He is atoning for his sins in purgatory whence he will be elevated to heaven at the last trump.  Which is why we were all supposed be praying for his soul. Why after all pray for John’s soul if he is in heaven already?

As the canon drove off afterwards I tapped on his car window and said I needed to have a theological discussion with him sometime. This is all good fun and he will take it in the spirit in which it’s intended. Next day we went round for dinner at the house of a devout Catholic couple who were also at the service, and I decided to defy Eileen’s ban on me talking religion, and sport with them on this theme of priests glossing over the existence of purgatory.

Needless anxiety

And then, thankfully, the conversation changed, giving me chance to reflect. And I abandoned my plan. Because actually that would be a rather cruel sort of sport, would it not.  If as a faithful Catholic you are comforted by the belief that your departed mother and father are already in heaven, who am I to cause needless anxiety, just for the sake of airing a bit of knowledge.

Dante poised between the mountain
of purgatory and the city of Florence
Domenico di Michelino's
painting, Florence 1465

A N Wilson [2] says most Catholics (even though they may not be aware of it) get their idea of purgatory from the 14th century poet Dante, not from the church. Purgatory had been invented only 50 years before Dante wrote, says Wilson, and Pope Boniface VIII (who Wilson suggests may have been an atheist) raked in the money by declaring 1300 the Holy Year and encouraging the faithful to come to Rome to pay for remission from their time in the newly invented arena of torment.

And when Wilson says rake in, he does mean rake in. Priests with rakes raked the gold coins off the altars.  

It's worth taking a close look at this pop-up of souls in purgatory from a French 15th century manuscript - some souls trapped in water, some in fire, and some rescued by angels. [4]

More painful than anything in this life

St Augustine described the cleansing fires of purgatory as more painful than anything a man can suffer in this life [3].  But this kind of talk is all a bit fruity for modern sensibilities, in recognition whereof Pope Benedict has recently described purgatory as like a purifying fire burning inside a person, a painful experience of regret for one’s sins.  

And in this short video the Pope doesn’t mention fire at all, the soul is purified by the love of God.



But still and all … whichever way you cut it purgatory isn’t for the faint hearted. On the whole I think Catholic priests are well advised to hide its existence from the faithful and confine it to seminaries.  The best way to keep a docile and contented congregation.

Though not all agree. A recent reader’s letter to the Irish Catholic deplored that most Catholics don’t understand purgatory. The writer has met Catholics who thought purgatory had been “done away with”, and others who’ve never heard of it. People praying at the graveside frequently say they are “just remembering their dearly departed.”

That's really all I want to say about purgatory. What follows is by way of a digression.

What of Judgement Day ?

Judgement Day: Christ separates the sheep
from the goats in an early 6th-century
mosaic from Ravenna

Disappointingly something that the Catholic church does seem to have done away with, is Judgement Day. This is the day, or so I thought, that the Son of Man will return in glory to judge the quick and the dead, to separate the sheep from the goats. And when the faithful pray for departed souls, they are praying the souls will numbered amongst the sheep. Or maybe amongst the goats.

But it seems that somewhere along the line there has been an adjustment, and the Church’s current teaching no longer includes a universal day of judgement.  A person undergoes judgement immediately after death.  Saints go straight to heaven.  Out and out sinners go straight to hell.  The rest go to purgatory, from where eventual admission to heaven is guaranteed.  But first the stain of transgressions must be burnt away, and the soul purified.

Which leaves me wondering what exactly it is you're praying for, when you pray for the souls of the departed. Whole books have been written on the subject I'm told. But they will remain unread by me. The time available for pondering the doctrine of purgatory has now well and truly expired.

[1] For Catholic doctrine on purgatory,  see Catholic Encyclopedia  or for a shorter exposition  Reaching Catholics For Christ. For purgatory in other traditions see Wikipedia.

[2] A N Wilson on BBC’s Start the Week (4th July) talking about his book Dante in Love, 2011. 

[3] Search for "Pain and fire" in the Wikipedia article on purgatory.  Note conflict with Wilson’s statement that purgatory was invented in the 12th century

[4] "Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry", a book of hours, c. 1410.