I had to attend Church or Sermons of that kind, at school and sometimes in the school holidays. Perhaps what I did not realize at the time was that attending meant I was effectively a "captive audience". Given an alternative I'd decide that if I'd attended once or twice I'd attend all the times.
Sometimes you'd get a speaker with something interesting to say. Mostly, there would be various "sermons" from the bible about all sorts of things that I honestly had no clue as to their actual relevance but just seemed like oft-repeated phrases for their familiarity effect than anything very insightful. I did well in school at Religious Education, usually coming top in the class or year group, so it was not a question of not understanding it. But I found it so boring. I suppose looking back now, the essence of the practice was that "Whatever was the core idea" was there to "keep us safe" or "look after us" if we "behaved in the right way" eg prayers, good thoughts and actions and so on. This seems to be a role the present govern sermonizes to us about today, I would make the tentative comparision?
I always felt so sleepy in these sessions too. The essence of what was said, I never had a problem with. I think what made it boring was that it was beyond denial or beyond demonstration or example; it was like talking about something so very long ago and not very relevant to today. I actually really like churches and love seeing these old buildings all over the UK, and some of the materials in the Christian tradition as well as some works overall have a good balance of aiming for positive ethos and value system which I think are central to education, too. But that's when and after you strip out a helluva lot of "fluff" or "filler" or "packaging" that's complete garbage.
So this is all meandering preamble to the topic at hand in this blog: Security. I noticed in the previous blog that the Government was targeting families for the "Risk" factor that will hit hardest with them. Then we looked at the narrative shaping, "Good vs Bad (Obama vs Putin) and this leads to the other side: "Security" to go with "Risk". I just watched the complete garbage on offer on BBC Newsnight:- Would the UK Be Safer In Or Out of the EU?
"Newsnight
focuses on security and asks whether the UK would be safer in or out of
the EU. Would the UK's standing in the world change if the UK votes to
leave?"
If there's one thing I'm going to take away from this absurd politics today, that's bubbling away and beginning to boil over, due to the "fright" that Direct Democracy is giving the politicians, it's the complete crassness and propaganda of the politics that's taken for something serious or useful; it seems fit only for widely-read and familiar fiction or even good science-fiction:-
Quoting "General Jackson" or "Jens Stoltenberg" is absolutely absurd.
I think parading talk of security on the airwaves is a bit like being stuck in a church sermon: You have no actual choice on it but it IS for your own good! This was made very visible during the anti-war marches and protests against Iraq War during Tony Blair's Prime Ministership. Such matters as "Security" are too important for voters to get in the way of, it seems. Yet the results of these decisions don't actually in my opinion back up such an "elitist view" of this subject as Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine all appear to point out: UK or EU, both.
"Having
lost the ability to legislate over huge tranches of activity that were
once the exclusive provenance of Parliament – mainly because the EU has
been handed the power – our Government has acquired the singularly
unhealthy habit of asking Parliament to impose binding legislation on
itself.
First it was the Climate Change Act, committing us to pay £1.3 trillion,
so I suppose we should be relieved that, this time, Parliament is only being asked to commit us to spending 0.7 percent of national income.
The deal, of course, is overseas aid – labelled in less PC times as
foreign aid. But just to make us feel a little happier about it a bunch
of Conservative MPs, led by Tory MPs Philip Davies and Jacob Rees-Mogg,
gathered together in a forlorn attempt to kill off the Bill.
However, it was indeed a forlorn hope, as MPs voted by 146 to six to
allow the Bill to proceed, and the legislation has now completed its
stages through the Commons.
As it stands, we are committed to donating £12 billion a year
"voluntarily", although this may have to go up by another billion over
the next two years as the new system for assessing GNI cuts in – the
same that has added £1.7bn to out EU contributions. This is a far larger
sum than is disbursed by any other EU state and, among the world's big
nations, only the US spends more.
The Financial Times
thinks it is "hugely to the credit" of David Cameron's government, and
his Labour predecessors, that Britain maintains a noble aspiration to
assist the world's poor. But at a time of immense pressure on public
finances, is says, it is reasonable to question the rigidity of the UK's
commitment to international development spending.
The figure, we are reminded, goes back to the 1960s when the World
Council of Churches declared that governments of the developed world
should devote 0.7 percent of their gross national income to
international aid. It was then adopted as a target by Mr Cameron's
coalition, helping to soften the Tories' "nasty party" image."
"It is all very well having these ex post facto confessionals, but the
point is – as we have argued here again and again - it was obvious at
the time that the campaign was failing and was doomed to failure. So
obvious was it that, in July 2008, we wrote a 12-part analysis called "Winning the War", setting out why we thought things were going wrong.
Now for these highly-paid incompetents to be admitting that they got
things wrong, when they were paid to get it right – and amply rewarded
with rank, baubles and privileges for so doing – is simply not good
enough. But the worst of it is that nothing will change. It has only taken the
Army five years as a corporate body to convince itself that it scored a
stunning victory in Iraq, despite the evidence I record in Ministry of Defeat. By the time the whitewash machine has completed its work, the Army will emerge unblemished from Afghanistan as well.
And nor do I buy the Oborne line
that this was a case of "Lions led by donkeys". For sure, amongst the
very small fraction of troops in theatre who actually saw combat, there
were some amazingly brave people. But there were crass, ill-informed
decisions made at all levels, and by all arms.
In terms of the bigger picture, in every theatre in recent times, the
Army has been badly led, badly generalled and has under-performed. One
warms to the idea of slashing the Armed Forces to the bare minimum. At
least then our politicians will no longer be tempted to deploy them. We
simply cannot afford any more of these corporate "victories" that the
Army insists on delivering."
This is all sounds and seems so familiar... roll on Referendum and then roll on Eurozone Treaty...
"The pigs had an even harder struggle to counteract the lies put about by
Moses, the tame raven. Moses, who was Mr. Jones's especial pet, was a
spy and a tale-bearer, but he was also a clever talker. He claimed to
know of the existence of a mysterious country called Sugarcandy
Mountain, to which all animals went when they died. It was situated
somewhere up in the sky, a little distance beyond the clouds, Moses
said. In Sugarcandy Mountain it was Sunday seven days a week, clover was
in season all the year round, and lump sugar and linseed cake grew on
the hedges. The animals hated Moses because he told tales and did no
work, but some of them believed in Sugarcandy Mountain, and the pigs had
to argue very hard to persuade them that there was no such place."
"Anything
as complex and challenging as leaving the European Union will present
significant problems. Therefore, you do not need a focus group to tell
you that, when confronting the prospect of an EU referendum, voters will
need to be reassured that a choice to leave is not a leap in the dark.
That much has been obvious to anyone who has even begun to look at the
issue. More specifically, I have long argued that we would need to
produce a credible exit plan. Without that – as I was writing in May 2008, over seven years ago – our opposition would rely on the status quo
to support their case and, in particular, the assertion that there is
no alternative (TINA) to our membership of the European Union.
It actually took five years, until June 2013, for the IEA to trigger the process of producing an exit plan, with its Brexit Prize.
But so badly managed was the competition – and then ultimately rigged –
that the winning entries added nothing to the debate and have
disappeared into the obscurity they rightly deserve."
Sugarcandy Mountain!
There is no such thing as "Sugarcandy Mountain" but there is such as thing as people who make a good living for themselves selling it:-
"In Mr
Hannan's world, however, time has stood still. The idea of a staged exit
is rigorously excluded while he rehearses the same issues he was
writing about ten years ago,
in terms that have scarcely changed. Laboriously, he goes on a hunt for
the ideal "model", with a tedious and somewhat flawed review of the
Norway-EEA and Swiss arrangements.
This leads him then to conclude that Norway "gets a better deal than
Britain currently does", and – quite wrongly – that Switzerland gets "a
better deal than Norway". And upon this flawed assumption, he then drops
into an exposition of the better deal fallacy
as he assert that "a post-EU Britain, with 65 million people to
Switzerland's eight million and Norway's five, should expect something
better yet"."
"One of the converts to this idea is Ruth Lea. She was formerly an advocate of the so-called "Swiss option"
(page 27), so she now stands – without explanation - completely at odds
with her earlier position. But we have also seen an intervention from Global Britain."
There is a telling difference between us lesser mortals and men such as John Redwood. We believe that we need the 419 pages of Flexcit,
and something like three years of study, to define how we leave the EU.
Redwood believes he can do it in a mere 417 words, contradicting the
bulk of what we have to say in the process.
Both
writers take exception to Mr Redwood's many assertions, including the
most egregious of them which have him declaring that "the Leave campaign
does not want the UK to seek a Norway style deal", that in order to
leave "the UK could simply amend the 1972 European Communities Act" and
that, after leaving, we could "simply rely on World Trade Organisation
membership to stop tariffs and other barriers being imposed"."
"Amazingly,
the Eurosceptic "aristocracy" simply can't get their soggy little
brains round the idea that it would be extremely unwise to attempt a
"big bang" separation from the EU. They also have difficulty with the
idea that the two year period allowed for the initial Article 50 exit
negotiations isn't long enough to broker a bespoke free trade agreement –
which can take 5-15 years to conclude."
"Sugarcandy Mountain, that happy country where we poor animals shall rest
for ever from our labours!"
"My answer on what the alternative plan should be called is "WTO Plus".
All other benefits - democratic control, border control, economic
control - flow from it. It is a simple and genuine alternative plan. So,
you may ask, what on earth is it?
My plan for the UK outside of the EU combines a guaranteed basic
trade deal based on current World Trade Organisation arrangements with a
better free trade deal on top.
The basic deal is guaranteed
whatever happens, as the UK and EU are both World Trade Organisation
members in their own right and must follow its rules or be hauled into
an international court.
This worst case scenario would mean
tariffs on some goods. But I think we can do better than that. There are
already indications that German car manufacturers would ensure their
government does not impose tariffs on UK cars – why penalise BMW-owned
Minis and Rolls Royces? There would be such demand from all sides for a
better deal"
"In the middle of the summer Moses the raven suddenly reappeared on the
farm, after an absence of several years. He was quite unchanged, still
did no work, and talked in the same strain as ever about Sugarcandy
Mountain. He would perch on a stump, flap his black wings, and talk by
the hour to anyone who would listen. "Up there, comrades," he would say
solemnly, pointing to the sky with his large beak– "up there, just on
the other side of that dark cloud that you can see– there it lies,
Sugarcandy Mountain, that happy country where we poor animals shall rest
for ever from our labours!" He even claimed to have been there on one
of his higher flights, and to have seen the everlasting fields of clover
and the linseed cake and lump sugar growing on the hedges. Many of the
animals believed him. Their lives now, they reasoned, were hungry and
laborious; was it not right and just that a better world should exist
somewhere else? A thing that was difficult to determine was the attitude
of the pigs towards Moses. They all declared contemptuously that his
stories about Sugarcandy Mountain were lies, and yet they allowed him to
remain on the farm, not working, with an allowance of a gill of beer a
day."
So you see it's quite useful having a clever talker persuading people that Paradise is just around the corner if they continue "working harder for a better Britain!" supporting their betters on such matters...
It seems to me Brexit should be as clear and enjoyable as this!
Happy New Year!
There's a been a lot of water/flooding in the UK over the Christmas and New Year holiday period; which has been commented on expertly over at EUReferendum.com in Dr. RAE North's EU Referendum: a directive too far. Some of my blogging "New Year resolutions" will be:-
Beginning active personal campaigning to recruit and educate people I meet and know and have contact details for.
Blogging in a more academic style when needed as well as my current idiosyncratic presentation style.
Attempting some original blogs of my own research (a mighty undertaking!).
Attempting to capture different types of resources that can be of use to readers for example useful links selections and organization of; some quantified data and search tools.
That's going to be a huge amount of work on top of normal life, but I aspire to such visions of Brexit being as clear and enjoyable as swiming in crystal clear tropical waters for voters as opposed to the "muddy, polluted and abused rivers of politicians".
However this blog will have to cover old, completely sodden, ground and start with another blog I found interesting from The Brexit Door: Economic Consideration who points out an article in The Guardian from a certain Ulrich Speck who effectively performs the propaganda exercise given a platform in The Guardian of one Squealer in Animal Farm:-
The early apples were now ripening, and the grass of the orchard
was littered with windfalls. The animals had assumed as a matter of
course that these would be shared out equally; one day, however, the
order went forth that all the windfalls were to be collected and brought
to the harness-room for the use of the pigs. At this some of the other
animals murmured, but it was no use. All the pigs were in full agreement
on this point, even Snowball and Napoleon. Squealer was sent to make
the necessary explanations to the others.
"Comrades!" he cried. "You do not imagine, I hope, that we pigs
are doing this in a spirit of selfishness and privilege? Many of us
actually dislike milk and apples. I dislike them myself. Our sole object
in taking these things is to preserve our health. Milk and apples (this
has been proved by Science, comrades) contain substances absolutely
necessary to the well-being of a pig. We pigs are brainworkers. The
whole management and organisation of this farm depend on us. Day and
night we are watching over your welfare. It is for YOUR sake that we
drink that milk and eat those apples. Do you know what would happen if
we pigs failed in our duty? Jones would come back! Yes, Jones would come
back! Surely, comrades," cried Squealer almost pleadingly, skipping
from side to side and whisking his tail, "surely there is no one among
you who wants to see Jones come back?"
Now if there was one thing that the animals were completely
certain of, it was that they did not want Jones back. When it was put to
them in this light, they had no more to say. The importance of keeping
the pigs in good health was all too obvious. So it was agreed without
further argument that the milk and the windfall apples (and also the
main crop of apples when they ripened) should be reserved for the pigs
alone.
One of the central points I've attempted to promulgate in this blog is my own viewpoint that Brexit is a democratic movement: Movement is a dynamic force that requires activation energy thresholds over a certain accumulation by many contributing people to construct higher quality arguments that gain traction, than is permissible/actionable via our present deleterious "Political Food Web Of Prestige".
The product of this is the type of propaganda George Orwell so marvellously and skillfully exposing in the use of the Animal Allegory of Animal Farm (above). To replace this product, we have to employ Critical Thinking in the arguments to reject these results given free berth in The Legacy News-Media as per The Guardian so willingly accedes to publishing.
The real
point, therefore, about the EU is that it is unnecessary. It simply adds
another layer of government and adds to the confusion and lack of
accountability in areas where clarity and certainty are required.
That, more than anything, is why we are best off leaving the EU.
One of the very notable observations about the cluster of bloggers represented and supported here, is that due to the monopoly of channels of mass communication, often the blogs are critical and sceptic pieces about what is published in the public domain or purported to be positive politics when it is not such as so well evidenced in the growing collection of fascinating blogs from Restore Britain's Fish which will with increasing number of them be a subject for a future blog:-
In general: Original deception, then execution post-hoc of real intention, then stalling and promising then delaying then ignoring and dropping of the argument and actively sabotaging it's engagment in politics and public as recorded so far by John Ashworth.
And this comes back to The Brexit Door's blog post above:-
"He does however, make one useful point, and it is in his first line: that the debate has been dominated by considerations of an economic variety."
"This has been the fault of the two largest and best publicised (and earliest launched) Leave campaigns – Leave.EU and Vote Leave Ltd." [...]
"That’s why we look separately at the political and economic elements of the EU and the Single Market –and accept that for a time remaining in the single market via the EEA agreement is the best path forward."
It's been said enough times, the ground is sodden with the reasoning. But often the "opposing argument" acts as a greater instrument of persuasion than the supporting argument to the target audience and hence an example of this needs to be used:-
The first thing to be aware of is that these arguments keeps on appearing like the Hydra with many heads: Lopping one off for yet more to rise in it's place by either the same or some new figurehead; in this case Dennis Novy (above). This is demonstrable because the "Floor" for debate is controlled/is not impartially adjudicated for example:-
Etc. There's a very important to make here: We argue honestly and we are shoved aside in the so-called freedom of speech and strength of argument that underpin so-called democracy.
Then our resort is to appeal to fairness if our truth is rejected. And here is where the Leave Campaigns or other "eurosceptic" supporters fail to keep the waters of argument clear: We must not lie ourselves or be led astray in making false claims for tempting political gains. If the process rejects us because it's simply corrupt then we revert our arguments to that effect:-
Brexit becomes as much about removing the false and falty process of our own democracy as it does about resolving practical policy politics.
This is why I notice time and time again the appeals to "Unity" amongst eurosceptics or we should call them Pro-Brexit Supporters aka "Brexiteers" is a false cry for "solidarity". It's inept thinking, from lack of understanding of our own predicament in a corrupt system and how to appropriately respond.
By sticking to the "high ground" no matter that it's a "hard sell" initially when the argument moves to the lack of democracy if we stick to intellectual honesty and build unity around that principle as opposed to individuals own credos or nostrums of "Should be united to win", then the Leave Campaigns can only grow in political power over time as people sense an unease and dare I say it an "evil feeling" with our own elected deceptive leaders in SW1/Westminster.
Pete North has had to contend with this (lack of) understanding in Brexiteers in both his former blog How To Be A Complete Bastard and his present one of which a few examples:-
There's a couple of example "in action" why this is very necessary to realize:-
On twitter you'll find eurosceptics demanding "unity" and failing to appreciate that change starts with "change within oneself" before that flows outwards to other people. That requires knowledge of the arguments which is available via The Great Deception and FLEXCIT.
False Friends/False Flag actors will do immense damage masquerading as Leavers and resorting to racism, extremism: It's almost so easy it's comically funny if it were not so seriously damaging and indeed inviting genuine bigots under such banners is no-one's interests on either side of the argument.
As said the arguments must be argued with truth so that when the system itself rejects them we can move the arguments onto the next phase: Fairness or it's absence. From those ashes...
And this is the real hope: There really is a positive vision (again look to Leave HQ) on globalization our place within the wide world.
That change can only occur by observing the stronger arguments in action through the above process. If there is to be a Leave Campaign that is fit for purpose to which it accuses via scepticism and critical thinking that the Remain Campaign clearly is not, then it must abide by those conditions, by those precepts: Not merely talk about them but genuinely act by them.
In George Orwell's 1984, the character Winston Smith comes to the conclusion that in his totalitarian society, the freedom to say the above mathematical truth without negative political repercussion is the genesis for all subsequent political change. It's a statement that is independent of personal subjectivity; an objective truth of the world around us and indeed the exercise of realizing this allows us to realize that we exist in a world separate than ourselves and this is also true for other people. The other type of relationships which also form another equally important environment as well as this physical "reality" is our Social environment or relationships with each other.
Objective Reality: Pythagoras' Theorem: The Square of the Hypoteneuse
Various "Group Cohesion" rituals (submission to the dominance of the group) are based on suppressing the tendency in individuals to promote the ego's agenda, our survival instinct as per our "will to survive" and our desire to benefit ourselves and also our kin. A major feature of this system is Social Status in dictating the TYPE of interaction between individuals which is conducive to avoiding the clash of individuals' egos leading to physical violence with one another. Such interactions invariably can be boiled down to Dominance-Submission in Social Status Interactions and attempts at interchanges between these social roles.
Ricky Gervais: The Office - A comedy of social status & real world role-playing of dominance interchanges
Perhaps Ricky Gervais' The Office is an instrumental example of the comedy involved in this pervasive form of human interaction? I often found the office environment especially dull in the type of predictable communication that takes place between different people role-playing and attempting to continually out-rank each other. Looking at this from a research point of view Uniforms: A Certificate of Legitimacy, we can see that people "comply" very strongly to the symbols of authority:-
University of Warwick Study: Compliance to Roles of Authority
Reading recently King Arthur: The True Story, it reminded me of J.R.R Tolkien's theory about some stories that act like an allegorical "Soup" from Leaf And Tree. There is a basic stock to the story from which different people at different times throughout history add their ingredients or "lumps" into the soup that becomes the story we know of today. Such narratives for example ancestor worship which beget some of the "stock foundations of modern religions" which invariably across the world all add this to other parts of the "stock" such as Creation Myth Stories. For example the stories of Abraham are full of geneological tracings back to "direct relationships" with God ("Good").
In the story of King Arthur, one of the later lumps thrown into the story adding to the base stock was it seems an attempt by the Norman nobility to propaganda the story with their direct links to this historic and mythic King of Britain so as to encourage greater links to legitimacy of their right to rule the Ango-Saxons via bypassing them to a Celtic/Roman prior claim to such a title! Of course much of this also carries on the back of persuading the people of a common shared system of values often assumed in the doctrine of Divine Right of Kings, but no less a major component of Legitimacy:-
"Legitimacy is a ‘…a psychological property of an authority, institution,
or social arrangement that leads those connected to it to believe that
it is appropriate, proper, and just’. Thus viewed,
legitimacy is the belief that the law and agents of the law are rightful
holders of authority; that they have the right to dictate appropriate
behaviour and are entitled to be obeyed; and that laws should be obeyed
simply because that is the right thing to do."
(Although the legend/myth/history of King Arthur points to an deeper level of legitimacy than merely the literal imposition of "divine right"). A more historic though equally dramatized story by William Shakespeare is Richard III.
Fact or fiction: the Machiavellian rise to power& short reign of Richard III
Interestingly Richard III is particularly depicted with villainous attributes by William Shakeaspeare, and as last of the Plantagenets before the Tudor succession of "Royal legitimacy" began, perhaps William Shakespeare was currying favour with the powers of the day in order to successfully hold his plays and be well received publicly and politically via such propaganda easing the thorny issues of legitimacy? Such seems likely when a fuller more historic picture is produced such as from The Richard III Society - A Brief Biography and Introduction to Richard's Reputation it seems a significant misattrubution of Richard III's character has been achieved by Shakeaspeare directly related to the issue of legitimacy and the new authority of the new King.
This theme of the interchange between Authority and Legitimacy appears to arise in another form in Dr. RAE North's The Many And The Few book. What appears to have been necessary propaganda during World War II's The Blitz and Battle Of Britain by the RAF to encourage people (bombing reporting changed, emphasis on the bravery of the RAF) what subsequently has been discounted is the efforts of so MANY people.
Necessary propaganda for it's time, but now national narrative that undermines The Many?
And this is directly relevant to today: We are governed by a few over the many. Fitting this into a general schema:-
Governance Type 1: One-Many: Divine / Metaphysical Legitimacy and hence Authority (Islamic Civilization)
Governance Type 2: Few-Many: The "Capable" Few Legitimacy and hence Authority (Western Civilization)
Governance Type 3: Many-Many: Real Democracy Many Legitimacy and hence Authority (Globalization)
I think one of the dangers to progression of the above, is mixing the problems of one civilization to another in the role of governance and hence legitimacy and authority as per Roger Scruton in The Road To The European Union. For many people the recent tragedy and terrorism in Paris will be to ask questions about Islamists/extremists. I think if you look at the above schema you see that Governance Type 1 as per Richard III for another example leads to a more violent world however that manifests, the rise in violence is the result. The statistics as per Samuel Huntington in The Clash Of Civilizations tends to back this up if you re-classify via the above schema where the One may be a legal or national government and the many may be multiple tribal communities/factions all under one nominal rule for example divine rule but practically fractious: Authority cannot be derived from tenuous legitimacy alone, and hence violence and los of political freedom invariably arises from Dominance via power and conflict.
Legitimacy Theory: Cognitive, Moral and EXTERNAL Pragmatic underpinnings
In the Western Civilization, by contrast, the notion of divine rule has passed, it is too subjective a relationship: The basis of nations has shifted emphasis of power from family or tribal units towards individuals (citizens) and the state/nation. The overhead of group cohesion of tribal units is less and hence the secularization of politics from religion and perhaps the trend of less violence in the world that Stephen Pinker describes in The Better Angels of Our Nature correlates positively with as per Democratic Peace Theory or as per Amartya Sen:-
''No famine has ever taken place in the history of the world in a functioning democracy,'' [This, he explained, is because democratic governments] ''have to win
elections and face public criticism, and have strong incentive to
undertake measures to avert famines and other catastrophes.''
National symbols and democratic electoral voting systems now provide legitimacy of rule of law and authority of government in the exectutive and legislative functions of governance of the people. I remember reading a report from one of the Global Bodies such as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP):-
Development Index Map from 2010
You can see above a general pattern: Type 2 Governance appears to lead to higher measures on the multiple indexes of development of societies across multiple data sets. If we look at the tragedy of Paris this week, we can at least take solace and comfort in perceiving these two very broad and very general patterns between the two types and KNOW we are progressive and such actors of terror are regressive and they are merely pawns of greater trends of violence due to out-moded and pragmatically poor results of governance.
However, there's a cautionary tale: We don't appear to as yet hold a vision of current trend that is possible towards Type 3 Governance (Many-Many) which it seems is "container" tag or description of use connecting the process of Globalization and interconnectivity between nations and the effect of this on our Type 2 Governance such as the UK's "Representative Democracy".
An example of the politician projecting dominance and hence not listening
"UPDATE: I challenged Bannerman
on these points. His response was repeated obfuscation with totally
irrelevant points, followed by blocking me. I suspect he just doesn't
understand the point at all. These people are not up to the job of
running the leave campaign."
This may not be the best example, as twitter is notoriously shallow for communication, but I tend to see the dominance behaviour in many such as DCB, Daniel Hannan, Ruth Lea, Dominic Cummings and of course in David Cameron. Apparently Arron Banks also does this: Most people do: But do they also allow themselves to listen? Our government has had 43 years to use their capacity to understand and educate this understanding to people in the UK: They have not listened and have concerned themselves with the apearance of legitimacy only as per previous blogs: Argumentum Ad Infinitum or Pattern Recognition or Our Government: No ifs, buts or maybes.
What our government has done is effectively take 43 years worth of membership and cram all of that, all the undemocratic major Treaties (x7) into the voting public making a single day's choice x1 on the upcoming EU Referendum day.
That is the most damning illegitimacy of our government: The Few-Many Relationship In Action.
One of the problems of the Type 2 Governance that does not seem to appeal to Type 1 is the loss of "Moral Authority" as per the concept diagram above. Equally what WE must concentrate on is the quality of the "Cognitive Legitimacy" of our Government in this system and it's relationship to Pragmatic Legitimacy of execution of policy. Our politicians appear to hold very very low Moral Legitimacy, they are characters similar to the schemers we enjoy watching on our televisions such as Game Of Thrones: Chaos is a Ladder. In previous blog posts the lies over the EU by David Cameron remove all or any moral authority he ever purported to hold. Eating a hot-dog or drinking a beer with another world leader are all "mummer's farce" designed to make him appear to be "one of the people by the people for the people": He excuses his privileged position of Eton and Oxford and mentoring for Number 10 Downing Street but is yet another Prime Minister from such an "aristocratic" background.
We have detailed The Great Deception of our Government and David Cameron over the EU as well as the failures of our Government to promote prosperity, namely they lack Pragmatic Legitimacy too which must be down to a lack of Cognitive Legitimacy. Peter Hitchens makes the point that democratic legitimacy, the system itself is a set-up for such people:
Peter Hitchens: Does our government have any right to rule us?
Dominance-Submissive Interaction In-Built into our politics = No Communication because there is no listening pressure; only dominance projection
"Direct election
would correct a manifest unfairness in our current arrangements, exemplified by
Prime Minister David Cameron who gained office by virtue of 33,973 votes in the
2010 general election. All those votes were cast in the constituency of Witney,
which boasted 78,220 electors. The rest of the nation was not allowed to vote
for the man. He may have been elected as an MP, but he was not elected as prime
minister through a general franchise.
Furthermore, when
Mr Cameron holds office on the back of 10,703,654 Conservative votes, from an
electorate of 45,844,691, his franchise represents only 36 percent of the votes
cast and less than a quarter (23
percent) of the overall electorate. In any election, the PM hardly ever reflects the choice of leader for the nation."
In George Orwell's 1984 quote:-
Type 1: "True": 2 + 2 = 4 ; 2 + 2 = 5
Type 2: True: 2 + 0 = 2 (Spin)=> True: 2 - 2 = 0
Type 3: True: 2 + 2 = 4 (Apparently only if governments are made up of the governed themselves... and hence listen to themselves)
In Type 1 Governance, there's a deep issue with even the political freedoms of the first assertion. In Type 2 Governance we assume that our Government at least may have some legitimacy but their lying and their ineffective Governance is merely "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.' ~ Churchill. However what's actually true, is that the Cognitive Legitimacy is related to the Pragmatic Legitimacy (eg ERM via Lawson/Howe, eg 2008 Financial Crisis via Brown as per Lakshmi: Goddess of Prosperity (2) ).
Looking at that above index, nations that score highly appear to be well ordered, organized and in general employ greater democracy such as Norway (strong grass-roots movements) and Switzerland (direct democracy). If we start with 2 + 2 = 4 a basic truth in our communication, and we avoid the dominance of politics by "The Few" aka The Establishment, then we may find that comunication is opened up and stronger Cognitive application to our national decision making is effected... this cannot be done in the EU by the way: Our dispute with the EU cannot be resolved
The British Model = Cameron = Our National Politics low quality = Not Listening
But first we have to understand Legitimacy and it's relationship to Dominance before our "leaders" start listening to "We The People". We have a plan FLEXCIT, and there are many other Brexit plans all inferior cognitively, but if your leaders are not listening then we have the illegitimate liar David Cameron and his warmongering, recession-inducing "leaders" leading us into a series of future unfortunate events: Strategy week: the politics of expectation
Listening & Legitimacy:I don't think either Leave.EU/Vote_Leave or BSE listen given they're made of the same people as Cameron and Osborne.
In my opinion the stronger triangulation for any voter to think about is this: Which "triangle" holds Greater Cognitive Legitimacy and consequently can also exhibit Morally Greater Legitimacy (attempting to work honestly and present results as they are)? Can we suppose that those two combined will yield Greater Pragmatic Legitimacy, too?
The above cartoon probably means different things to different people; but most of those being in some way funny: How do you become a "eurosceptic"? If you were cynical you might suppose that the "devils" are our politicians and the "worker" is us. But that's far too fine a fit to be intentional! Actually I would strongly support the very reverse "intentions": Our politicians have given up trying to "reach us".
Previously, I've Been Expecting You... it was noted how the News-Media aka The Legacy Media channels in particular present arguments using structures which ill-fit the scale and complexity of politics actually operating; their over-reliance on story tropes, on what we also call "the lowest-common denominator" or "dumbing down" according to commercial competition in a market of consumers who can be more efficiently exploited (aka "monetized") via techniques to create an emotional reaction. This in turn transforms a mere "event" into an "experience" to use further technical language from an altogether different subject domain. Information and Education are presented mixed with Entertainment and the portmaneau expression "Infotainment" is achieved.
This is a big problem on several levels: News-Media is competing with
multitudinous sources of entertainment for people's limited attention
and hence potential further interest and commerce. Namely a successful
exchange of "value". Secondly, politics as above being a complex layered
subject is in danger of becoming a specialist knowledge domain for, to
use George Orwell's Animal Farm expression: "Brain Workers"
Squealer: "Comrades!" he cried. "You do not imagine, I hope, that we pigs are doing this in a spirit of selfishness and privilege? Many of us actually dislike milk and apples. I dislike them myself. Our sole object in taking these things is to preserve our health. Milk and apples (this has been proved by Science, comrades) contain substances absolutely necessary to the well-being of a pig. We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organization of this farm depend on us. Day and night we are watching over your welfare. It is for YOUR sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples."
EU Parliament Building
There is inevitably going to be specialization and stratification of society as it becomes ever more complex and hence a state with which the people (society) form a contract. Therefore through this division of labour according to economies of scale, people who are elected to represent other people through an election and voting process is necessary and functional for modern nations. This is simply obvious and we call such people in the UK "Ministers Of Parliament" who we task professionally to do this important job for us at Westminster Parliament or MP's: Our Politicians representing "We The People".
Houses of Parliament at Westminster
Having accused the News-Media of profiting from a model of communication that leans to heavily on a structure that is a poor fit for our modern politics, to then cite George Orwell's Animal Farm might seem to be hypocritical. Coming back to How about a nice game of chess? It was noted the consequences of "Narrowing down the Debate" to binary responses void of greater context leads to it's own set of "nested problems within nested problems"; a bit like the Russian Doll concept to take some infamous political leaders:-
Again the rise of such people either in the visible "villain" motif we identify so easily or the faceless, nameless government that is equally detached from the people that it serves. Alternatively the striving for greater participation by more people: The Greatest Political Problem of Our Time is an historic example of the opposite of "the possibility" within "Broadening the Debate". Specifically the allusion to the creation of a map within which such a greater context or to hit the nail on the head and quote Dr. RAE North's immensely consequential phrase: "Intellectual Framework" to which our arguments are sensible, are coherent and hence above all can THEN be communicated across differences in understanding.
At present "We The People..." are still travelling along The Road To The European Union along with Hayek, Orwell, Habermas and many other's arguments: Some will be arguing the right arguments but perhaps come to different conclusions; this is at least a start, or "Beginning to begin". Others, most will be arguing the wrong arguments and inevitably leading to the wrong conclusions much like the Russian Doll concept above, concerning the political leaders control over political power to then be able to actually enact policies.
Daniel Hannan (Conservative MEP) enjoys oratory on the subject of the EU and Brexit and is very good at it. He often likes to point out, mischievously, if people are fed up with the above and hence by implication our politicians then, In a democracy, you get the politicians you deserve . It does sound like the "Pigs are now sleeping in the beds", and you could ask Daniel very fairly: Are you also one of those pigs?!
There's dozens of such insights to make, but it becomes necessary to encapsulate the arguments so far and come back to the "Central Point of The Argument":
(3) The Politicians are operating at a level where a "nested set of
problems" as per a Russian Doll has superceded the original problems and
hence arguments are mixed producing effectively mishmash in
communication with people.
(2) The Media are operating at a basic level of communication that indicates low quality arguments in our democracy.
(1) What about the people?
Here's a rare example of when things do go right with our politicians' managing to set out "strong arguments in daylight" only for the media process itself to dilute the value in the communication:-
Evan Davis (who iirc new to the job and against his nature is attempting the combative interview technique, which does not suit his style at all) interviews Owen Paterson on the subject of EU Membership. Here is a rare occassion where a politician attempts to broaden the argument while the Media in Evan Davis attempts to narrow it and we have a situation where "Talking Heads" are merely in disagreement over "which map" is of better quality let alone actually understanding "the map" and hence the people "are left none the wiser": It's been bogged down by the "sound-bite nature of the interview process based on spoken words only".
Coming back to the cartoon at the start: The devils "job satisfaction" is being questioned here: Their job satisfaction relies on "reaching through to their charges" to presumably ensure that in hell they are in eternal state of toiling hardship and hence miserable. Our politicians should seemingly gain "job satisfaction" from correctly representing us, but the problem is that without people clearly being represented and hence expanding the debate through greater representation, we end up with an outcome not dissimilar to the Pigs in Animal Farm: Their job satisfaction becomes "the political arithmetic" arguments not the arguments of the people themselves.
