h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

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PS Thomas

Further to my last- and your comment about me and England:

Obviously the adoption by the English as that Anatolian Saint to be their inspiration ( as opposed to a "one of us" saint like Saints Andrew, Patrick and David) is to my mind typical of the outwork looking nature of the English, possibly more willing to explore and make contact with the wider world because of the greater security of their island home than perhaps more vulnerable continental populations.

But it was the logic of having chosen the burden of trying to understand the historical forces behind current affairs that made me chose to go to the Front Line in Inner London where the 's* would hit the fan' to teach towards a better Future in 1967. Over the last couple of years of crisis, in spite of, and perhaps because of, the riots last year and the solid reaction of Londoners about them, I have been increasingly confident about what London has achieved since the Sixties, and also of what the London Games was going to show the world in the summer of 2012.. I watched most of the Olympics in France- and the French commentators and athletes were bowled over by the potential Face of the Future that London showed to the world. I do not know how they went down in Germany... But it was sad to see French commentators in the aftermath feeling defeatist and pessimistic. The closing ceremony had just underlined why Paris had not got the bid. The emphasis had been too much on the greatness of old Paris,said one,not having to refer to the Paris where the immigrant tower-block ghettos are treated like war zones, almost as in the film "Precinct Nine". In this time of recession and Austerity it would be a waste of time and money putting in a Paris bid for the next available slot, 1924 the centenary of the last Paris Olympics..

It was sad. I think that at times the French are held back by a feeling that it is not enough just "to do your best", you really should be aiming to do "the best". Anything less and you may find any deficiency ruthlessly exposed. Perhaps there was something like this behind the first remark of my mother-in-law to her eldest and perhaps most-loved grandson recently, when they had not seen each other for several years. "Good-day. Still no children then? And I suppose you are reconciled to that now."

Yes. He is a worry to us all. But he was treated like a Golden Child for so long, and then his best friend died as a result of a car-accident when they were 18, and our son spent almost a week by the bedside willing him to recover- only to fail. Such things impact on your self-belief and your faith in the world as it is.

But at 90 years of age my parents-in-law have lived through such times too- Eric Hobsbawm's "Age of Catastrophe", which he ended in 1945. But the world simce 1945 has been "catastrophised"- as we can see from the historical impact of 9/11.

Cass

Hi Thomas

Regarding sound-

Our son organised the purchase of a Yamaha recording studio for me in 2004, to replace the inadequate facilities for Home Recording that were burgled in 2000. So I have in my study this equipment on which I can lay down 30 separate tracks and mix down to produce my own CDs that I can upload to the Internet. Our son is a semi-professional studio technician and musician with his own website where he was uploaded some of his music. So really it is all a matter of putting it all together..But I have not really done anything with the studio yet in six years. I got involved with being Casseroleon instead.

But when I used to perform in public it was mostly other 'artists' who most appreciated and understood my work, the audiences really were happier with just cover versions of familiar things that really they could just slip in to..The industrial age has created a popular culture of nice and easy quick-fixes to which people get addicted, like the recordings that they listen to over and over again.

So the writing and the songs are in some ways one and the same. But serious thinking has often been most effectively expressed to the wider audience in poetic language, and poetry is most accessible when the music places it in a 'mood landscape"..

I was looking yesterday again at Eric Heller's "Disinherited Mind" written just after the 2ww, that treated German thought from Goethe and the death of a Poetic Age, which gave way to the Prosaic Age. And Prosaic Literature in its ultimate form is only really accessible to small numbers of people.

But your point about "good" and "evil", comes back to the fundamental weakness of "Western Civilization" as compared with Eastern Civilization.

Europe and the West has inherited the concept of the fight between good and evil, with an aspiration that ultimately good will triumph over evil and there will be Heaven on Earth. This seems to be common ground between the two great Holy War religions- Islam and Christianity.

The Eastern concept is best captured and expressed in the Chinese concepts of Yin and Yang, the positive and the negative, and all the other polarities of existence that need to be kept in harmony with Humankind blessed with special powers to ensure that Harmony is preserved.

You can not watch much about modern China without hearing someone claiming not that something is evil or wrong but merely that it militates against Harmony, even the recent criticisms over corruption in high places in the Communist Party. Disharmony creates instability like an Earthquake that can bring things crashing down. It seems to be a factor closely related to the continuity of Chinese History and the discontinuity of European History.

Cass

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Hi Thomas

So many points.. As I wrote to an old university friend a few weeks ago in our first exchanges for 40+ years, my point of view really comes from my native Oxford, one of the “thought-adventure” cities of the Europe of Medieval Christendom which became a world city, much as London became a world city through other kinds of adventures. Our daughter’s best friend from her Physics course at Oxford has now finished his major academic project of mapping the universe. It is perhaps arrogant of people connected with Oxford to thus assume to “think big” and to weigh “the big issues” that impact on the whole of humanity more than the more personal issues of those who can not “move on” from old hatreds and animosities. “English Peace” and the need to accept it and observe it, was the making of England, and to an Englishman, the hope of the World.. It gave Prussia and thus Germany the constitutional model that English Peace made possible, and which makes you more comfortable with modern India, the world’s largest democracy, than with China, a country like Prussia and later Germany in certain periods, more familiar with absolutism and dictatorship.

As for the Olympics perhaps sport and Oxford go together as well.. But not just the Diamond Jubilee but the Royal Wedding last year was really something of a watershed moment in terms of suggesting that London, as the Capital of the UK, had finally really begun to “get its act together”.. My neighbours over the road, British born Afro-Caribbeans spoke to me as they came home that evening after just spend time on that extra Holiday just driving around the streets of South London drinking in the atmosphere.. “Why can’t it always be like this?” they asked. Well you have to make a start somewhere, and what I have written this year argues that our Statist approach to Economics (and larger Statist units like the EU) has served to drain the strength and vitality away from cities that have played a Capital or leading role throughout history. I argue that Cities in particular draw in two kinds of people (a) those with ambition, drive, talent and ability, and (b) those who have been failed by the wider world and who come to the city because at least there they can make a life. Over recent times there has been a tendency (going back to at least Frederick the Great who withdrew to ’Sans Soucis’) for the first category to give up city living, commuting in and out when absolutely necessary and leaving too large a concentration of the second.

I too was pleased to see Obama re-elected, and, as for Scotland, it really goes back to whether they want peace or old conflicts in new forms. What I have argued in my thing about cities is that in the present state of the world and its economy we need to go back to the adventurousness that can be achieved by the City-State, and in fact M. Heseltine has just produced a report that more or less makes the same point. The logical thing for Scotland would be regional authorities based for example on the two leading cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow.. Of course, as I understand it, the Federal nature of Germany with its various ’lander’ already provides a much clearer focus based presumably on the very real histories of all the German principalities that were so much a part of German and British History before German Unification- just to mention the Hanoverians and the Saxe-Coburgs.

As for (a) my view of my time as Casseroleon, I would like to think that some people have enjoyed some of my posts. Tas was at least one. But from a thought adventure point of view, it was also a learning experience, not just from other posters but it gave me cause to dig into my books. So it was basic part of my own journey. (b) my time in teaching- I see as very positive because I run into old pupils from time to time and see how they have turned out, and what contribution I have made to their lives. But on a larger scale I meet their contemporaries that I did not teach, and see that the whole school system has served its melting pot function quite well. Arriving back in London on Thursday I relished, as usual, my trip to the supermarket the next day. It is home to me and to “Englishmen and women” from all over the world who are just getting what they need from the shelves that reflect all the many and varied cultures and languages that are now part of this great world city. That is what those who watched the Olympics could see, and our neighbours in Burgundy, both professional musicians, told me that they had visited London for the first time this year and they loved its energy and its sense of peaceful and positive dynamism..

So I am very optimistic for London and Humanity.. We have paved the way and shown that English Peace can continue to embrace all mankind as England has done over the centuries to those who wished to be part of its peace project. Sadly that has not usually included all Protestants or Roman Catholics in the island of Ireland.

Cass

Hi Peanut

Hope your week has begun well.. It has just come home to me that we were in France for bonfire night.. Do you have a good one down there?

And how does your cat react? You have not mentioned it for some time. I hope it has still got all of its 9 lives intact.

Cass

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Hi Cass

*waves at Thomas*

The cat slept through the fireworks, he is completely unfazed by things like that. He gets a little morose when we go on holiday as he likes company but he is now secure enough to know we are coming back.

I don't think I have ever really celebrated Bonfire night as an adult, we used to wrap up and go for a walk around the estate to watch other people fireworks and when Hiccup was younger she used to like the carnival for an hour or so.

This year we had not long got back from holiday and enjoyed an evening in watching Merlin and CSI eating curry and was enjoying a choice of laps to sit on

How is your allotment and garden?

Peanut

Morning Peanut

Good to read about the cat.. We used to really enjoy Bonfire Night. There were really big ones at our local common just a nice walk away, and I especially was cheered by the way that our multiracial/multicultural South London adopted it as a bit of essentially harmless fun- going back to primitive festivals of light.. Today apparently is Divali.. I suppose I also ran into pupils from time to time.

As for the allotment- I am just about to go and check it out for the first time since coming back. I am scheduled to dig up my carrots- but rain and rugby, amongst other things, has stopped me so far.

And the days are getting shorter.. not to mention that I thought that I would just "finish off" what I was writing in Burgundy,putting the end on the computer before I type up the rest. I see that I have now written 25 pages- and I am getting brain-fag, but also caught up in the stream of thought.. But I forced myself to get up and out this morning for my walk, which was quite quiet- but all the better this morning for that.

Have a good day.

Cass

Morning Thomas

No. "English Peace" actually springs from the grass roots and the willingness of the English people when they became Christians to accept justice and forgiveness, rather than personal revenge or retribution- as long as the Crown was seen to do its work impartially, and to that end the people were prepared to support a strong monarchy that would rule in that spirit of English Peace.

The spirit of revenge and the blood feud, however, continued in the non-English regions of England, where the Danelaw still operated, and even later right up to the present day those parts of England seem to be the most prone to civil disorder, and murder and manslaughter. To that end they have much in common with Scotland and Ireland whose people were famously "warlike" according to Feargus O'Connor, the great leader of working class protest in the 1830s, a potential "King of Ireland", who had a relative who was one of the greatest of Napoleon's marshalls.

As for saying such things in front of Irishmen, in my experience of doing just that, though perhaps- as a teacher more often children than adults- I find that most regard with grim resignation the minority of men and women of violence who have made it so difficult to 'wage peace' on that island. This happened just two days ago quite specifically when I was visiting my neighbours and the whole question came up of the way that history has often been taught in order to pass on the obligation to feud and get revenge rather than pursue peace and prosperity. Jose, who was born and grew up in NI, said immediately that this was exactly his experience there.

But perhaps being of Asian stock it was easier for him not to be recruited by either side. Many years ago a colleague told me how he had gone to act as best man for a friends wedding in NI. He asked one of the groom's family whether they had had any problems with their son marrying a Muslim. None at all, came the reply. But it would have been a very different matter if he had tried to marry across the religious divide.

As for Scotland- We had some exchanges on this board and I was surprised at the reaction of some who could not understand my questionning the assumption that an Independent Scotland would automatically belong to the EU. Surely the EU is very much aware of the costs involved with every additional country that has to be catered for and I am very much aware that our daughter-in-law's Croatia has had to go through the whole procedure and is scheduled to join next year. So I was interested to hear someone from the top of the EU saying when I was in France that surely an independent Scotland would have to be treated like any other independent country. The current economic crisis has highlighted the costs involved in supporting countries that are more the expressions of nationalist separatism than any viable stand-alone capacity that would make a positive contribution to the whole.

As for Ireland, common membership of the EU always seemed to me to undermine the Nationalist case, for people like Ian Paisley sat and worked in the European Parliament with Irish MEPs on European issues. I know that there have been suggestions for a greater and more centralised EU, but in fact things could equally easily go the other way with something more like the Ancient Chinese system with much more power going to regional provinces. The modern world was in fact invented by the Dutch and their United Provinces and perhaps such a solution might solve the Irish issue, with the whole of Ireland joining in a United Province, with one part republican and another still part of a Kingdom. I believe that the Dutch managed to tolerate such diversity.

In fact part of what I was writing recently about the "failure" of France in the modern era- was to point out that France flourished when Paris was embedded in a growing Northern economic system as Marseilles was in the Mediterranean, and the big fact of the last 200 years has been both the growth in the North and the dramatic decline in the South. With the Arab Spring, events in Syria etc- there is a reall need to solve the North-South divide across the Mediterranean, for it is the countries linked to that old economic system that are in causing the most concern- Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland.


Cass

Hi Peanut

Back from the allotment.. Found myself saying "This is the life".. I had forgotten things quietly growing their thing like leeks and spinach/chard.. And one courgette/marrow had withstood the recent frost- I am just cooking some of it for lunch. A few autumn raspberries- and I had forgotten that I had planted some new canes for more next year.. Some carrots. I feared for the worst... But enough for a session of washing off the clay later today.. And evidence that we have had a delivery of stable sweepings, confirmed by one of the more elderly friends, who lives right next door, and whose husband has probably just turned 96! It is always a comfort to see his plot being worked and she confirmed that they are both well.

So a nice end to the morning. Quick coffee while lunch is in preparation with just the veg to do..

Mid-morning we had a call from some Jehovah's Witnesses who were rather taken aback (I think) by my cheery welcome.. As I said I have no objections to people practicising their religion and accept that witnessing their beliefs to total strangers is one of the ways that they are obliged to manifest their faith, in spite of hostile and indifferent responses. I usually find that they find my intellectual footwork a bit daunting. I always tried (and try) not to confuse teaching with preaching.

Reminds me of the old adage "Teaching is the process of casting imitation pearls before real swine".

Cass

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Thomas

Thanks for the reply.. I did not comment on some of your other points about the Scots referendum that I tend to agree with. Sorry if I keep bringing up my bits of German history, but during those difficult times of the last World Chaos for the economy the equal citizenship given to German Jews under the Weimar Constitution, with that clause that allowed any quite small group to call for a referendum was obviously something that some Germans resented, especially given what was considered a disproportionate Jewish element in important and powerful posts like the Professions and the Mass Media. And then there was the whole question of those Germans who were not included with the Weimar Republic, some of whom felt disenfranchised as alien minorities themselves,most obviously the Sudetenland Germans. I find it quite sad that politicians have already begun to retreat into the whole idea of redefining just what makes someone belong to a Nation. Actually the litmus test is what people do, and the fundamental problem- I believe- is the absence of any obvious collective and communal project, though I believe that for various historical reasons Germans have been able to state with conviction since at least the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars that the first priority is to be economically strong, everything else would seem to spring from that.

But I do not think that you should expect the British Government to let go of or abandon NI except on the same terms of self-determination that has been granted to the British people of the Falkland Islands.

Actually I don't know whether you have seen reports from a few weeks ago that the commercial exploitation of the first oil field off of the Irish coast is about to start. North Sea Oil and Gas were such an important matter for the SNP, once Britain had developed them. It will be interesting to see just how easily the Irish manage to raise the finance necessary to develop their own fields. Of course a small and relatively weak country will have lots of offers- But on what terms? Especially if economic logic argues for the use of existing facilities like Milford Haven in West Wales. Shades of the Dalmien Scheme of the early eighteenth century that still rankles with some Scots people, when the English withdrew their finanicial support after the Scots had carried out an act of war against the English.

But the interesting Irish TV series- All the Pope's Children- related the Irish economic crisis to the fact that German financial institutions were awash with all the savings made by hardworking Germans who were content with where they were and had no ambitious plans and projects, so very cheap loans were made available to the Irish that fuelled their building investment bubble.

We all need work projects in life, and, as I tell my son, "work" is not just a question of keeping yourself busy, but actually producing something of real value that someone would be prepared to buy from you.. which comes back to self-publishing...

Cass

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Thomas

As I have just been writing reflections based upon a book entitled "The Identity of France"- perhaps I should expand on what I said about defining Nations.. I think that since the Seventeenth Century "scientific" and "rational" thought has tended to focus on what I call "post-mortem" analysis- that is dissecting things that are now dead and trying to understand from that dead matter what is the secret of life. Not surprisingly History played a huge part in that.. My approach to History and to life, however, is to look at those things that really animated and animate the present.. Thus I feel that it is unofortunate that the word "race" became so associated with that "post mortem" analysis. Its use in English right up to the 1860s was associated with an awareness that England was a vital and happening place, and that, since at least before 1066 London, for example, was already a place which would welcome anyone from anywhere who wished to work hard to further its "project" as London sought to catch the tide in the affairs on man etc.. As Shakesepeare could say from the stage of the Globe theatre "All the world is a stage" and one on which Londoners of all nationalities could play.

Thus- to take your observations- it seems pretty clear that Jews settled in many parts of Germany, the kind of Germany that British people were taught to love by Thomas Carlyle and his championing of Schiller and Goethe- a world of learning, literature and classical music- and were able to find many common features with their own very ancient culture as perhaps the original "People of the Book". But D.H.Lawrence, who would be counted among those, since he had a German wife, and suffered for it during the 1ww, wrote a very dark and sad piece about stirrings that he detected around one famous site around 1924.. By the way I noticed on the news yesterday that there are neo-Nazi gangs operating in Athens and persecuting refugees fleeing from Syria across Turkey. Such extremism-of course was not invented in Germany. It was a European and even global phenomenon.

As for your other points- I was not really aware that Germany was very "constititional" under the Kaisers. Bismarck ruled by personal appointment of the King then Emperor, and certainly (I understood) that Liberal Politicians were prepared (even in defeat etc) to seize the opportunity to leap right to the forefront in constitutional government with the most perfect constitution yet. And I see no reason to dismiss totally as Nazi propaganda the fact that Jews, not least because of their culture, but also because of their experience in Europe, had prioritised "intellectual and artistic capital" which would make them useful in predominantly agrarian Europe either Christendom or the Modern Era, in which Feudalism tied most of society and the economy together by oaths sworn on the Bible, which was the basis of most deals. I was reading recently once again Arthur Miller on his childhood home in New York's Jewish Ghetto, and his comments upon the veneration for all books, in contrast, he said to the homes of workers he visited when researching for "The View From The Bridge", in which there was an almost total lack of any reading matter.

As for other Germans, including those in Austria, a basic principle of the Versailles settlement was "national self-determination" and all those of German culture would be defined normally as being part of the German nation. The union of Austria and Germany, and the scattering of German minorities around other states was a deliberate policy to prevent German power re-emerging in future, something which the latest Germany will need to worry about, as the new "strong man" of Europe and perhaps the world. I agree with you that the EU needs the UK, and that invaluable idea of English Peace, which perhaps others found potentially in Goethe's sleepy Weimar and the other small German principalities.

Cass

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Thomas

I think that we have shown a lot of common ground..As for the future as I have mentioned my latest book really goes back to argue in favour of the enduring flexibility strength and ability to produce first class produce that has long been associated with the City-State.. So I was very interested last night with a BBC News item talking about the challenge ahead for China, which highlighted what it called "The City-State of Singapore", with a local economist, from a place with a age-old population of the Chinese diaspora making exactly this point that within a city state the smaller scale and closer interconnection of various human interests make one-party government much more successful.

Cass

Hi Peanut

Have our Hedgehogs gone into Hibernation? Hope all is well with you.. I have been a bit tired recently combination of (a) something has really upset my insides (b) I have probably been writing too much one way or another (c) we drove out on sunday to look at our daughter's new house and attend a concert that she was playing in, but the "drive" was a crawl. It took over 1hr45 minutes to do what could have been done in 30 minutes and I really felt the strain.

Cass

Hi Cass

I am sorry to hear that you have been unwell. I hope you take some time to recuperate, it is a bit difficult to imagine you taking things easy but sounds like you need to

Family wise things are up and down, we have had a couple of social events which have been enjoyable despite my reservations, otherwise we are under a fair bit of strain but we are all doing our best and trying to pull together.

I haven't seen the hedgehogs recently, I am not if they are hibernating as it is still on the whole quite mild. I think that maybe I am missing them as I am quite inclined to hibernate a bit in the evenings myself

Peanut