‘Bullying’ – BBC Political Editor’s Bizarre Term For The Public Resisting The Establishment

‘Bullying’ – BBC Political Editor’s Bizarre Term For The Public Resisting The Establishment

The BBC's Nick Robinson has made a career out of telling the public what leading politicians say and do; sometimes even what they 'think'. This stenography plays a key role in 'the mainstream media', given that a vital part of statecraft is to keep the public suitably cowed and fearful of threats from which governments must protect us. The 'free press' requires compliant journalists willing to disseminate elite-friendly messages about global 'peace', 'security' and 'prosperity', uphold Western ideology that 'we are the good guys', and not question power deeply, if at all.

But when a senior journalist complains of 'intimidation and bullying' by the public, making comparison's to 'Vladimir Putin's Russia', the mind really boggles at the distortion of reality. Those were claims made by Robinson, the BBC's outgoing political editor, using an appearance at the Edinburgh international book festival to settle a few scores.

READ FULL ARTICLE

HERE

________________________

Scotland’s Propaganda War: The Media and the 2014 Independence Referendum

Scotland’s Propaganda War: 

The Media and the 2014 

Independence Referendum

How biased were the Scottish and UK Media?

Why they were biased?

Why did it matter in 2014?

Why will it matter less next time?

Professor John Robertson, of University of the West of Scotland, provides a detailed account of the role the Scottish and UK media played in the Scottish Referendum Campaign. The book is based on his own research, which triggered a heated dispute with BBC Scotland, a summons to the Scottish Parliament and a storm of debate in social media. It also presents research by other academics and gives explanations for the findings from prominent theorists such as Noam Chomsky.

Originally contracted to Welsh Academic Press in September 2014, the book is now released into the public domain after several infuriating delays and barriers of an inexplicable nature.

This account of media bias in the coverage of the Scottish Referendum campaign goes beyond more journalistic impressions, from practitioners within the industry, to explain why it was so. It does this by revealing the true nature of influences on our media which are the result of unequal access to education and the interlocking of the resultant elites in finance, in ownership, in commercial directorships, in media directorships, in senior post-holders in journalism, in university leadership including professors, and, uniquely in Scotland, in the elites leading the Scottish and UK Labour parties.

With love for Scotland and all its people and places 
- John Robertson, 24th August 2015.

___________________________

Contents:

• Introduction: The Scottish Independence Referendum and the Media 5
• Evidence of Bias in the Scottish and UK Broadcast Coverage 15
• Evidence of Bias in the Scottish and UK Press Coverage 69
• Social Media in Scotland and the Yes/No Campaigns 80
• Covering the Scottish Referendum: ‘What the Public Wanted’ or Propaganda? 93
• Media Effects: How Much Were the Voters Influenced? 131
• Scottish Politics and Media after September 2014, Creating a more Democratic Scotland? 149

______________________

FREE 170-PAGE PDF DOWNLOAD OF ENTIRE BOOK 

HERE

______________________

L’enfant, propriété de l’État républicain (Vimeo)

Réal Gaudreault:
No4 : L’enfant, propriété de l’État républicain :
La Bible Parle 
_________________________________

_________________________________

Some Robo-Metafizix Revisited...

1.

Below is a comment posted to the online article:

Robocop Takes on Philosophy of Mind by Matthew E. Johnson (June 03, 2014)

Your analysis of Robocop is of great interest. I would suggest Dooyeweed's thought has a bearing in at least three main ways. The first two are, I imagine, fairly safe and self-evident. The last may find less consensus.

Firstly, movies such as Robocop, Space Odyssey 2001, Bladerunner, Terminator, Matrix etc surely confirm Dooyeweerd's insight regarding a humanistic dichotomy between mechanistic law and personal freedom. In this light, can we perhaps see the Robocop remake as a modest attempt to find a point of equilibrium between these polarities and so heal the rift?

Secondly, in response to questions of artificial intelligence, do Christians perhaps not too readily identify "rationality" with "soul", inadvertantly espousing the Scholastic "nature/ grace" split in an attempt to resolve the humanistic "nature/ freedom" split? Dooyeweerd of course views "rationality" as no less temporal than "body".

Thirdly, if we subscribe to Dooyeweerd's summary of the Biblical ground-motive as "Creation, Fall, Redemption through Jesus Christ in Communion with the Holy Spirit", are we not thus identifying humanity as corporately fallen in Adam and corporately redeemed in Christ as "True Man" and as "New Root"? And are we not thereby recognizing that as "image of God" we are (in Christ) stewards of the very cosmos ("For all things are yours, the world, life, death..."), and also tacitly acknowledging that as "image of God" we are in our deepest selfhood (in our "heart", to use Dooyeweerd's rich but much misunderstood term) above time here and now. Thus even the most sophisticated "artificial intelligence" would remain but "an image of an image", a temporal reflection of the true human who, as supratemporal, is a reflection of God.

If I might add a pertinent quotation from the 'New Critique' -

'The inner restlessness of meaning, as the mode of being of created reality, reveals itself in the whole temporal world. To seek a fixed point in the latter is to seek it in a "fata morgana", a mirage, a supposed thing-reality, lacking meaning as the mode of being which ever points beyond and above itself. There is indeed nothing in temporal reality in which our heart can rest, because this reality does not rest in itself...The question: "Who is man?" is unanswerable from the immanence-standpoint. But at the same time it is a problem which will again and again urge itself on apostate thought with relentless insistence, as a symptom of the internal unrest of an uprooted existence which no longer understands itself.' (Vol III: 109, 784)

_____________________________________

2.

Leughar shìos freagairt dhan aiste air loidhne:

Fèin-aithne, daonnachd no cumhachd? le Tim Armstrong
(An t-Samhain 14, 2014)

A-thaobh ceist bun-chuspair “Bhladerunner”, tha thu ag ràdh gur annsa leatsa an cuideam a chur air “cumhachd” seach “fèin-aithne” (no: “dè tha e a’ ciallachadh a bhith daonna?”). Ach saoil nach ann caran coltach ri snaidhm Ceilteach a tha seo uile – air cho lìonmhor na lùban tha gach nì co-cheangailte gu bunaiteach, agus tillidh thu air a’ cheann thall dhan aon àite? :)

Ged a shònraicheas tu “cumhachd” (is e sin, gu bhith “fo smachd cuideigin eile”) mar chnag na cùise, siod thu sa bhad ag ainmeachadh contrarrachd an t-seòrsa “cumhachd” a tha seo, is e sin “saorsa”. Oir canaidh tu: “Chithear nach do rinn aon duine taghadh saor anns a’ fiolm”. Agus: “a bheil duine againn ga-rìribh saor anns an an t-saoghal nuadh?” Mar sin, nach eil e soilleir gum biodh e a’ cheart cho fìor a ràdh gur e do bheachdsa gur e prìomh chuspair “Bhladerunner” an spàirn (no daicòtoimi) eadar “cumhachd gar tràilleachadh” agus “saorsa”?

Aig 7:50 sa bhideo tha Nerdwriter cuideachd a-mach air bun-sgoltadh: “Is ann dà-thaobhach a tha beatha an là ‘n diugh”. Bruidhnidh e an-uairsin mu iomsgaradh a chìthear sa fiolm eadar “taobh ìochdarach dorch” a’ Bhaile Mhòir, agus (rud nas sona na bheachdsa) “sòisealtas cho neo-chrìochnach ri ailtireachd aibheiseach a’ bhaile seo”. Saoil a bheil sgaradh seo Nerdwriter (eadar geato dorch sòisealta agus fàire urbanach fhosgailte) na mhìneachadh eile air “tràilleachd” agus “saorsa”?

Co-dhiù no co-dheth, tha thu fhèin a’ faighneachd: “dè a’ bhuaidh aig teicneòlas air a’ chùis?”. Agus (mar snaidhm Ceilteach) tha e coltach gum bi buaidh a-choireigin aig freagairt na ceiste seo air a’ chiad cheist ud: “dè tha e a’ ciallachadh a bhith daonna?”.

Agus càit as mò a bhios ceist buaidh teicneòlais a’ togail ceann ach nuair a bhios robotan/ androidean/ reipliceantan an làthair? Nach e tha inntinneach na h-uibhir de fhiolmaichean sài-fài a bhios a’ meòrachadh air seo, mar eisimpleir: Space Odyssey 2001, Matrix, Terminator, I Robot, Robocop, Battlestar Galactica – agus gun a bhith diochuimhneachadh Metropolis fhèin.

San dol seachad, rinn mi oidhirp (o chionn bhliadhnachan) òraid bheag Rutger Hauer eadar-theangachadh. Tha mi air an teacsa a chall a-nis (nì cuideigin eile nas fheàrr co-dhiù!), ach na blòighean a leanas:

“Chunnaic mi nithean… nithean nach creideadh troichean mar sib’ fhèin… Longan-ionnsaigh fànais nan teine bhàrr gualainn an t-Sealgair Mhòir… Cho deàrrsach ri maignèisiam…”

PS: Mo nàire! Luaidh mi a’ chiad phàirt dhen t-seantans bhunaiteach seo agad ri leanas, ach rinn mi dearmad mì-chùramach air an leth mu dheireadh (bho “ach” air adhart) a tha fìor chudromach dhan bheachdachadh: “Chithear nach do rinn aon duine taghadh saor anns a’ fiolm, ach an Replicant, Roy Batty, aig an deireadh nuair nach do mhuirt e am Bladerunner, Rick Deckard.”

______________________________________

3.

The following Andrew Basden Youtube is also of related interest:

_________________________

Interview with Herman Dooyeweerd 1973 (video)

If English subtitles don't appear, please hover over base of video frame and click on the letters 'CC'. Alternatively,  please go to following Youtube page and, if necessary, click on 'CC':
https://youtu.be/pV2NseGmi6o
_________________________

Herman Dooyweerd: The Life and Work of a Christian Philosopher

Newly published (2015) English translation 

of original Dutch (1989) esteemed intellectual biography 

by Marcel E. Verburg

£10 Hardback

_________________________________

Brief intro to Dooyeweerd: Aspects & Ground-motives

Dear P_,

Dooyeweerd all the time champions actuality over theory. Actuality is anchored in Christ. That is because Christ is not theoretically the Creator and Sustainer and Redeemer of reality but is actually the Creator and Sustainer and Redeemer of reality. All meaning in existence therefore depends on Christ. All things are upheld by His word of power. There is NO neutrality. The single paramount antithesis in human life is between an acknowledgement of the Lordship of Christ, and the lack of such acknowledgement. Dooyeweerd stresses that this antithesis is present in each and every heart, including Christians.

Every human heart seeks anchorage in the ultimate. If Christ is not acknowledged, then something else is necessarily accorded ultimacy. But there IS nothing else which is ultimate, because Christ is indeed Lord of All. So the apostate heart has no alternative but to make an ultimate of that which is in reality only relative - that which has in actuality no intrinsic "brute" meaning, and then to attempt to integrate all of existence around this gilded delusion. 

So the non-Christian (and often the Christian) intellectual will typically make an idol of Logic itself, and so try to reduce all of reality to "Logic". But "Logic" is an abstraction. Dooyeweerd suggests that Logic is only one of FIFTEEN aspects of reality, irreducible to each other ("sphere-sovereignty"), yet each reflected in all the others and unable to truly function without the others ("sphere universality"). In theoretical (ie abstract) thought, a single aspect is isolated and pondered, but this theorizing happens within a mental suspension of time ("epochē"). Something like considering a single colour of the spectrum refracted through a prism. Full-orbed functioning only takes place in time-embedded reality (ie in everyday holistic life) involving all aspects together (imagine reversing through the prism from the theoretically separated panoply of colours to the combined "white" or "clear" natural light of day). 

Biblical ground-motive
Dooyeweerd calls Christ-anchored reality the "Biblical ground-motive", which he elaborates as: "Creation, Fall, Redemption through Jesus Christ, in Communion with the Holy Spirit". Dooyeweerd's great insight into Western Thought is that insofar as the Biblical ground-motive does not prevail over our personal and communal thinking and action we are invariably succumbing to an apostate ground-motive. There is no alternative. 

Dichotomies
Apostate ground-motives, unlike the Biblical one, are internally dichotomous. They are dichotomous because when an attempt is made to reduce reality to an idol (ie to an absolutisation of that which is only relative) a counter-idol is automatically summoned up, as reality itself resists its own distortion and calls the human heart back to equilibrium (cf Augustine's "Our heart is restless till it finds its rest in Thee"). Some of humanity will coalesce around (become spellbound by) one absolutisation, Others will be captivated by the counter-absolutisation. Thus we have major political, social, and artistic divisions such as Neo-Classicism and Romanticism. The former championing eternal, geometric, rational, absolute, abstract laws. The latter championing transient, irrational, lawless, corporeal, emotive particulars. The former emphasises communal responsibility and solidarity. The latter emphasises individualistic heroism and genius.

Form/Matter
According to Dooyeweerd the main early ground-motive apparent in Western culture is the Hellenistic one involving the "Form/ Matter" dichotomy. His historic analysis of this is what you are currently reading in the early part of "Roots of Western Thought". Essentially Dooyeweerd says that the earliest Greek belief-system absolutised its perception of nature as being an endless flux of matter. He calls this the "Anangkē", ie "inescapability" (we cannot avoid being eventually pulled back into the formless flux from whence we arose). On the other hand, the Olympian religion of immortal, invisible form, measure, and rationality was a subsequent development which became the public cult of the Greek city-state (polis). Domestically, however, ordinary folk apparently continued to worship the older nameless and formless gods of nature (the time-cyclical backstory offering some consolation regarding death). Dooyeweerd shows why these two belief-systems (also occasionally characterised as "Apollus" versus "Dionysus") were ultimately incompatible, though mutually dependent.

The analysis of the Hellenistic Form/Matter ground-motive may seem a heavyish read at times as Dooyeweerd establishes his case, but I would encourage you to push on through it as its relevance will become apparent. I am of the view, for example, that the Form/Matter ground-motive is currently staring us in the face in Zombie and Superhero movies. The zombies are surely a manifestation of the "anangkē", arising out of the formless subterranean realm and dragging stricken humanity inexorably back down into material disintegration. In turn, Superman, Batman, Ironman, Spiderman etc are gods of an American-style Olympus, (more-or-less) immortal, ideally-formed, shining saviours from on high (with relational complications, of course). Dooyeweerd calls the dwellers of the Greek Olympus "deified cultural forces". That seems a fruitful way of making sense of the American counterparts too.

Nature/Grace
The Form/Matter ground-motive is relevant also because of the development of subsequent Western ground-motives, as identified by Dooyeweerd. The medieval world was dominated by the "Nature/Grace" (or "Nature/Supernature") ground-motive. This was essentially a synthesis (formulated by Thomas Aquinus) of the Hellenistic and Biblical ground-motives. The dichotomy here is between the "sacred" and the "profane". But also there arises a "body/soul" dichotomy, the soul being understood in Aristotelean terms of immortal rationality (escaping like a bird, at the time of physical death, from its corrupting material cage). Dooyeweerd sees the soul/heart very differently, as the deepest self, the integration point of all aspects of life and reality, the source of all of our acts, transcending time (or relating to the "fullness of time") in the here and now. Not just some kind of escape-pod of rationality-survival jettisoned at physical death. 

Although the Thomistic Nature/Grace ground-motive is more formally related to the Roman Catholic Church (though there is also an Augustinian heritage), it also remains highly conspicuous in much evangelical and so-called "reformed" Christianity, manifesting itself in a world-denying pietism and in the evangelical tendency to reduce political involvement to sporadic upsurges of moralistic petition-signing before returning to the bunker. Dooyeweerd reminds us that Christ is not just Lord of morality (only one aspect of fifteen), but of politics as such, of law as such, of street-plumbing and bridge-engineering as such.

Nature/Freedom
The prevailing modern Western ground-motive is the "Nature/ Freedom" (or for more clarity we might call it the "Mechanistic Natural Law versus Free Human Personality") dichotomy of humanism, which incorporated and secularised the previous three ground-motives. Humankind declares its absolute autonomy and undertakes the project of constructing reality anew from brute (ie un-God-referenced) scientific laws of cause and effect. But humankind gradually finds itself boxed-in (indeed turned into box-wood) because, from the point of view of this materialist reductionism, humans themselves can be no other than a random result of the exhaustively determinist laws of physics. In other words the personal freedom which humanity initially asserted is annihilated. So humanism must periodically (and irrationally) make a fresh assertion of absolute lawless personal freedom (hence Existentialism, Postmodernism etc). Thus the dichotomy is evident. To quote Dooyeweerd from his "New Critique":

"The deepest root of its dialectical character lies in the ambiguity of the Humanistic freedom-motive. The latter is the central driving force of the modern religion of human personality. And from its own depths it calls forth the motive to dominate nature, and thus leads to a religion of autonomous objective science in which there is no room for the free personality." (Herman Dooyeweerd, New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1969, p 190)

This paradigmatic "Natural Law v Personal Freedom" ground-motive is highly visible in contemporary popular movie-culture. We glimpse it in Star Trek, for example, in those perennial "rationalist versus emotionalist" exchanges between Mr Spock and Captain Kirk. More panoramically we see it in the cyberpunk genre - in Bladerunner, the Terminator and Matrix films etc, where heroic humans struggle to survive dehumanising mechanisation. The polarisation is also evident in the objectivist Mechanical Law "meta-narrative" ("Big Story") we call "Darwinism" (in Attenborough documentaries, for example) versus the subjectivist interrogation of meta-narrative (in Tarantino, and in films such as Inception, Source Code etc). 

Normativity
The X-Men movies show humanism wrestling with the vexed conundrum of "normativity" in a universe within which the only real norm is random mutation. Regarding moral normativity, consider the following from Richard Dawkins in an interview with Justin Brierley on Premier Christian Radio (8 Nov 2008):

JB: When you make a value judgement don't you immediately step yourself outside of this evolutionary process and say that the reason this is good is that it's good. And you don't have any way to stand on that statement. 

RD: My value judgement itself could come from my evolutionary past.  

JB: So therefore it's just as random in a sense as any product of evolution. 

RD: You could say that, it doesn't in any case, nothing about it makes it more probable that there is anything supernatural. 

JB: Ultimately, your belief that rape is wrong is as arbitrary as the fact that we've evolved five fingers rather than six. 

RD: You could say that, yeah. 

http://www.bethinking.org/atheism/the-john-lennox-richard-dawkins-debate

Are "human rights" thus based on an arbitrary (therefore inherently provisional) consensus among beings who are themselves no more than an amalgam of random mutations in a purposeless universe? Is the only fixed law that there IS no fixed law (particularly in a multiverse)? Dooyeweerd helps us critique these issues with his view regarding the "positivization" of norms. If we take, for example, the aesthetic aspect, Dooyeweerd suggests that its "kernel" is "harmony", but this harmony can be and obviously has been positivized in different eras and cultures in a plethora of ways. There are always going to be some kind of limitations, however. This is more immediately obvious in the physical aspect -  we can decide to have plastic surgery, but can't just decide we are going to breathe under water (without additional apparatus). 

As regards the question of norms, Dooyeweerd's insight into "historicism" is particularly helpful. Absolute norms clearly cannot survive an absolutisation of the "historical" (ie "cultural formational") aspect, since such absolutisation dissolves everything in an acid of perpetual change. Heraclitus. All is flux. Postmodernism falls into this camp.

Fascism
It is noteworthy that in "Roots of Western Thought" Dooyeweerd sees fascism as a product of "historicism". Lacking any absolute norms above itself (other than a spurious conviction regarding its own historical "destiny"), the fascist State arbitrarily assumes to itself a monopoly over "normativity", refusing international arbitration. However, a germane question would be "How far and on what basis does any international court itself have a monopoly over normativity, and how does it avoid a fascism of its own?" 

Closing
Much more could be said, but this is already looking more like an essay than an email. You mentioned favourite symphonies. One which has profoundly impacted on me is Beethoven's 9th. Its structure seems to me cyclical and spiral, with Beethoven introducing motifs in the early stages which are returned to, elevated and expanded on later. It might be helpful to read Dooyeweerd with something like that in mind. What might seem piecemeal does hold together in the end. And leads us towards a glimpse (at the very least) of transcendence!

Best wishes,
Fearghas.

Cogadh Z agus na Sàr-laoich
(Cf Herman Dooyeweerd mun sgaradh “cruth is stuth” Heilleanach)

Teichibh! Tha na zombaidhean a’ tighinn!
Tha Sràid Bhothchanan a’ cur thairis leotha!
Chan ann slaodach bacach a tha iad nas motha
ach air chuthach ann an ionnsaigh-catha!

Nas cuthachaile buileach na Blàr Chùil Lodair.
No Bragàd Aotrom Gleann a’ Bhàis.
No clàbar ifrinneach Somme is Ypres.
Siod zombaidhean a’ lìonadh Ceàrn Sheòrais an-dràst!

Tha fradharc aca ged a bhios iad dall! 
Tha fadachd orra gus an ith iad ar feòil!
Às a’ Ghreug a thàinig iad o chionn linn nan con, 
slighe Ameireaga chugainn, tha am fathann a’ dol.

Ach fuirichibh mionaid! Dè tha sin os ar cionn! 
Siod Spiderman a’ leum bho stìopall an Tron!
Agus Batman agus Ironman agus Superman fhèin!
Diathan-Olumpais Ameireaga gus ar sàbhaladh bho chron!

An e corra-shùgain air balla a th’ anns ar cuid smuaine,
nar suidhe, a rèir Phleuto, cuibhrichte nar n-uaimh?
Ar cùlaibh ris an doras, fo gheasaibh ar mùbhaidh,
am bidh solais àrda gar dùsgadh aig deireadh na cùise?

le Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh (2015)

________________________

"Rip in reality: Franco seeps through"?

The following is a collated response to the online article:

"Franco's Face" by Andrew Giles, published on Bella Caledonia 

Just how close to the surface Francoism remains in Spain is clearly a matter of grave concern. However, one wonders if Real Jaén’s “La camesita de Nuno” video is more than a tasteless attempt to turn controversy into cash. It doesn’t recycle the Franco image as such, but opportunistically tries to make a marketable one-liner joke out of Nuno’s faux pas.

The moral questions raised do bring to mind somewhat the controversial adverts of Italian photographer Oliviero Toscani, most famously those for United Colours of Benetton, which depicted, for example, Death Row inmates. Toscani shrugged off the flak, saying “All I’ve done is put a news photo in the ad pages”. But it is fairly evident that he was hitching a ride on volatile social issues in order to sell jerseys. He obviously did hold strong taboo-flouting views himself, but nonetheless the knack was to identify and surf the wave of prevailing opinion. Maybe the Real Jaén marketing people were (sub)consciously influenced by Toscani’s approach? Toscani worked for a while with Andy Warhol, whose own “Car Crash” photograph/ screenprint series also provide a morally queezy antecedent.

Returning to the Franco image, a curious coincidence is that it was Oliviero Toscani’s photojournalist father (Fedele Toscani) who took the famous photo (which appeared in Corriere della Sera) of executed Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, hanging by his heels in a Milan square.

Your (Andrew Giles) viscerally evocative: “something like a rip or tear in reality that allows Franco to seep through” of course begs the age-old question: “What is REALITY and how can we know it?”

The pop-art movement of the late 1950s/ 1960s signalled a move of consciousness from “natural” world to “urban” world, from primary to secondary engagement with reality. By the latter, I mean there began an artistic preoccupation with, and celebration of, found illustrative ephemera – ie machine-reproduced imagery from comics, magazines, billboard hoardings, movies, tv etc. The pop artist pragmatically accepted this (often anonymous) commercially-generated material as de facto “everyday reality”, going on to playfully and accessibly re-mediate it to the public.

To pick up on Warhol again, he claimed he wanted to be a machine. Hence, the mechanistic repetitiveness of his screenprints, intentionally imposing equally mindless banality on soup-cans, Marilyn Munro, car crashes, electric chairs etc. Arguably, there was no reality behind the image. There was for him no “real” Marilyn to seep through any “rip or tear” in the mechanistic sequence.

Jumping forward to the ubiquity of computers and the 24-hour multimedia internet world. A generation grows up having substantially processed daily existence from within a lifelong electronic bubble. Almost everything “known” has been pre-edited and pre-filtered via technology by “another”. The question might well be posed: How, for this generation, can “reality” be validated? Indeed I wonder how many would even understand that question in the sense that your article asks it.

Insofar as “reality” is accumulated experience of incoming data, Franco has now BECOME an image. As has Hitler. As has Stalin. As has Marilyn Munro. William Wallace of course looks like Mel Gibson. Abraham Lincoln like Daniel Day-Lewis (or in his “vampire hunter” guise, like Benjamin Walker). The outrageous license taken by Hollywood scriptwriters has BECOME the history, or at least the most widely internalised version of it. How many seek to tear through the glossy imagery in search of another “truer” reality? That project requires four convictions: a) there IS such a “reality”; b) it is discoverable; c) it is worth the effort to find it; d) it makes a blind bit of difference to anything anyway.

We are talking of course of the mugging of traditional “modernist” reality by a more subjectivist “post-modernism”.

I have an interest in the thinking of the late Dutch philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd (1894-1977). In Dooyeweerd’s analysis of the modern Western worldview he detects an internal dichotomy between an assertion of universally valid, cause-and-effect, Mechanistic Law, and an equal assertion of ultimately lawless Free Personality. It seems to me his critique is given a good deal of credence by the “robot versus human” type conflicts of movies such as Terminator, The Matrix, Battlestar Galactica, Ex Machina etc.

Postmodernism could thus be read as a shift away from an espoused “reality” of universal law (the “grand narrative” polarity), and towards an espoused “reality” of transient provisional consensus (“personal freedom” polarity). As has been recently insisted by more than one person on another Bella Caledonia thread, no “ideological” or “religious” descriptions of “reality” are now acceptable. Of course the statement “There is no Big Story” would seem to be a self-refuting universal claim. But maybe it’s just me…

Postmodernism is thus characterised by provisionality, skepticism, eclecticism, self-parody (lest one be accused of “exclusivist” dogma). Postmodernist “reality” can only be a tentative, pick and mix, flux and fusion, culturally inclusive, affair.

In terms of imagery, exploring reality is now consequently rather like “décollage”. Tearing through one poster just reveals another poster, and another. Ultimately, perhaps, though unlikely, it reveals a brick wall. We can see this kind of inconclusive (but certainly entertaining) interrogation of “reality” manifest in films like “Matrix” (again), “Inception”, “Source Code”, “Fight Club” etc.

I heard Will Self on Radio 3 explain that his latest novel did not have a “narrator” or a “beginning, middle, and end” because these features belonged to the now-redundant Christian worldview. It all struck me as wonderfully funny. ("Even Joyce's Ulysses had punctuation...", the interviewer teased.)

I have now written far too much here. But I do want to try to bring all this to bear briefly on the nature of Fascism itself. In the aftermath of the Nazi occupation of Holland, Dooyeweerd determined to seek out the philosophical taproot of National Socialism. He wrote:

“Today we live under the dominion of an idolatrous view of reality that absolutizes the historical aspect of creation. It calls itself dynamic, believing that all of reality moves and unfolds historically. It directs its polemic against static views that adhere to fixed truths. It considers reality one-sidedly in the light of historical becoming and development, arguing that everything is purely historical in character. This “historicism,” as it is called, knows of no eternal values. All of life is caught up in the stream of historical development […] We will do well to keep the affinity beween National Socialism and the Historical School in mind, for later we shall see that Nazism must in essence be considered a degenerate fruit of the historicism propagated by the Historical School.” (Roots of Western Culture: Pagan, Secular, and Christian Options, Paideia Press 2012, pp 43, 53)

Dooyeweerd saw that Nazism in its totalitarianism recognized no law (eg no international law, no divine law, no moral law) above itself. It followed only the “Destiny of the German People [“Schicksal des deutschen Volkes”]. I have not come across any mention of Franco by Dooyeweerd, but he does distinguish German Fascism from Italian Fascism by saying that the former was Volk-based (“blood-and-soil” [rather than “national” as such]), while the latter was State-based (evoking Eternal Rome).

Perhaps the merciful fact is that even should we have the misfortune to wake up in the Spanish Civil-War past we would discover that the original Franco himself was not ultimate reality, but (as Picasso so graphically caricatured him), a gross flesh-and-blood distortion of “reality”. Or maybe on second thoughts that last sentence is just a ridiculous attempt by me to be clever. A bullet in the head would surely be a sufficient encounter with reality for most of us.


EXPLICO ALGUNAS COSAS
Pablo Neruda

PREGUNTARÉIS: Y dónde están las lilas?
Y la metafísica cubierta de amapolas?
Y la lluvia que a menudo golpeaba
sus palabras llenándolas
de agujeros y pájaros?

Os voy a contar todo lo que me pasa.

Yo vivía en un barrio 
de Madrid, con campanas, 
con relojes, con árboles.

Desde allí se veía 
el rostro seco de Castilla 
como un océano de cuero.
                                      Mi casa era llamada
la casa de las flores, porque por todas partes 
estallaban geranios: era
una bella casa
con perros y chiquillos.
                                                        Raúl, te acuerdas?
Te acuerdas, Rafael?
                               Federico, te acuerdas
debajo de la tierra,
te acuerdas de mi casa con balcones en donde
la luz de junio ahogaba flores en tu boca?
                                                   Hermano, hermano!
Todo
eran grandes voces, sal de mercaderías, 
aglomeraciones de pan palpitante, 
mercados de mi barrio de Argüelles con su estatua 
como un tintero pálido entre las merluzas:
el aceite llegaba a las cucharas,
un profundo latido
de pies y manos llenaba las calles, 
metros, litros, esencia
aguda de la vida,
                        pescados hacinados,
contextura de techos con sol frío en el cual
la flecha se fatiga,
delirante marfil fino de las patatas, 
tomates repetidos hasta el mar.

Y una mañana todo estaba ardiendo
y una mañana las hogueras
salían de la tierra
devorando seres,
y desde entonces fuego,
pólvora desde entonces, 
y desde entonces sangre.
Bandidos con aviones y con moros,
bandidos con sortijas y duquesas, 
bandidos con frailes negros bendiciendo 
venían por el cielo a matar niños,
y por las calles la sangre de los niños 
corría simplemente, como sangre de niños.

Chacales que el chacal rechazaría, 
piedras que el cardo seco mordería escupiendo, 
víboras que las víboras odiaran!

Frente a vosotros he visto la sangre 
de España levantarse
para ahogaros en una sola ola 
de orgullo y de cuchillos!

Generales
traidores:
mirad mi casa muerta, 
mirad España rota:
pero de cada casa muerta sale metal ardiendo 
en vez de flores, 
pero de cada hueco de España 
sale España, 
pero de cada niño muerto sale un fusil con ojos, 
pero de cada crimen nacen balas 
que os hallarán un día el sitio 
del corazón.

Preguntaréis por qué su poesía 
no nos habla del sueño, de las hojas, 
de los grandes volcanes de su país natal?

Venid a ver la sangre por las calles,
venid a ver
la sangre por las calles, 
venid a ver la sangre 
por las calles!

***
I’M EXPLAINING A FEW THINGS
by Pablo Neruda
(English translation by Nathaniel Tarn)

You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs?
and the poppy-petalled metaphysics?
and the rain repeatedly spattering
its words and drilling them full
of apertures and birds?
I’ll tell you all the news.
I lived in a suburb,
a suburb of Madrid, with bells,
and clocks, and trees.
From there you could look out
over Castille’s dry face:
a leather ocean.
My house was called
the house of flowers, because in every cranny
geraniums burst: it was
a good-looking house
with its dogs and children.
Remember, Raul?
Eh, Rafel?
Federico, do you remember
from under the ground
my balconies on which
the light of June drowned flowers in your mouth?
Brother, my brother!
Everything
loud with big voices, the salt of merchandises,
pile-ups of palpitating bread,
the stalls of my suburb of Arguelles with its statue
like a drained inkwell in a swirl of hake:
oil flowed into spoons,
a deep baying
of feet and hands swelled in the streets,
metres, litres, the sharp
measure of life,
stacked-up fish,
the texture of roofs with a cold sun in which
the weather vane falters,
the fine, frenzied ivory of potatoes,
wave on wave of tomatoes rolling down the sea.
And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings —
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children’s blood.
Jackals that the jackals would despise,
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate!
Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives!
Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain:
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers,
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes,
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull’s eye of your hearts.
And you’ll ask: why doesn’t his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land?
Come and see the blood in the streets,
come and see
the blood in the streets,
come and see the blood
in the streets!
[English translation by Nathaniel Tarn (American poet, essayist, translator, and editor) in Selected Poems: A Bilingual Edition, by Pablo Neruda. London, Cape, 1970.]

****

MÌNICHIDH MI RUD NO DHÀ

Le Pablo Neruda

(Eadar-theangaichte le F. MacFhionnlaigh)

Bidh a' cheist agaibh: Càite bheil na liathchòrcran?

Agus a' mheatafiosaig loma-làn de chrom-lusan?

Agus an t-uisge a spairteas fhaclan

gan tur-lìonadh le tuill agus le eòin?

Innsidh mi dhuibh gach uile nì a thachair.

Bha mi còmhnaidh ann an iomall baile Mhadrid 

còmhla ri gleocaichean is cluig is craobhan.

Bhon siod chìteadh 

aodann tioram Chastilla

mar mhuir leathair.     

                  Is e taigh nam blàth

a chanadh iad rim thaigh-sa, oir às gach cùil

spreadh geiréiniaman: is e

taigh snog a bh'ann

le coin is cloinn,

                                                        A Raùil, eil cuimhnead?

Cuimhnead, a Rafaeil?

                               A Fhederico, a bheil cuimhn' agadsa

is tu fon talamh,

cuimhne air mo thaigh le for-uinneagan far

am bàthadh solas an Ògmhios blàthan nad bheul?

                               A bhràthair, a bhràthair!

Cha robh ann

ach guthan àrda, salann marsantachd,

cruachan measgte de dh'aran plosgartach,

margaidhean m' iomall de Arguelles le ìomhaigh

mar sheas-dubh glas-neulach fo smùid na mara:

an ola cur thairis air a chuid spàinean ladarna,

frith-bhualadh domhainn

chasan is làmhan a' lìonadh nan sràid,

meatairean is liotairean, brìgh

gheur na beatha,

                         èisg laghach air an càrnadh,

co-inneach mhullaichean fo ghrèin fhuair anns am bi

an gath-sìde a' fàs sgìth,

màrmor grinn air mhire a' bhuntàta,

a lìon tomàto is tomàto chun na mara.

Agus madainn a bha seo cha robh ann ach lasraichean

agus madainn a bha seo siod tùrlaichean

a' leum às an talamh

gus daoine a shlugadh,

agus bho sin a-mach teine

a' bhuidealaich bho sin a-mach,

agus bho sin a-mach fuil.

Slaightearan le itealain is eich,

slaightearan le fàinnean is bana-diùcan,

slaightearan le sagartan dubha beannachadh

thàinig iad tro na speuran a chur às do chloinn,

agus tro na sràidean siod fuil na cloinne

a' ruith gu sìmplidh, mar fhuil chloinne.

Seacalan air an dèanadh seacal tàir,

clachan nach teumadh cluaran gun smugaid,

viopairean a chuireadh gràin air viopairean!

Fa ur comhair chì mi fuil

na Spàinne càrnadh an-àirde

gus ur bàthadh le aon tonn a-mhàin

de dh'àrdan is sginean!

A sheanailearan

cealgacha:

seallaibh air mo thaigh marbh,

seallaibh air an Spàinn mhillte:

ach às gach taigh marbh thig meatailt loisgeach

an àite fhlùraichean,

ach às gach leanabh marbh thig isneach le sùilean,

ach às gach eucoir beirear peilearan

a lorgas là air choireigin 

cuspair ur cridhe.

Theid fhaighneachd carson nach ann a-mach air

aislingean agus duilleagan a tha a chuid bàrdachd,

agus air beanntan-teine tìr a bhreithe?

Thigibh is faicibh an fhuil anns na sràidean,

thigibh is faicibh 

an fhuil anns na sràidean,

thigibh is faicibh an fhuil 

anns na sràidean!

(Eadar-theangaichte dhan Ghàidhlig le Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh 2015)

***

***