The Long Acre . . .

I have known quite a few asylum seekers down the years—'political refugees’ they used be called then—from Biafra (during the Nigerian Civil War of the 1960s) and Eastern Europe and Chile etc.  The one thing they all had in common was the compelling desire to be back in their own countries, circumstances allowing.

Today’s asylum seekers seem different in that they are generally less running away from something than towards something.  They may well spin similar stories, but the last thing they want to do is return home.  They are instead coming for the duration.

Now the current wave of asylum seekers—defined as ‘spontaneous asylum seekers’—are those who arrive of their own volition and immediately claim asylum, under the terms of the various human rights and international charters, and who, unless stopped and refused entry at customs/immigration boundaries, must be admitted to the asylum processes of the country in question, irrespective of the reasonableness or otherwise of their claims for refugee status.

As for those who arrive in the backs of lorries etc. and via people smugglers, the reason for this roundabout method is obviously that they believe they would be sent directly back if they came via the normal routes, otherwise they would take the cheaper option of booking a flight and taking their chance in the normal asylum lottery.  On top of which is the possibility of disappearing into the illegal population of the larger European countries if things don’t go their way.

The fact of coming by such a backdoor route might also suggest that such people are not poor, otherwise they could not afford the fees the smugglers reportedly charge.  And the further they have travelled, the more likely is this to be the case: the various refuges agencies themselves recognise that the bulk of real and poor refugees are clustered in camps on the boundaries of the countries they’ve left, unable to afford to go any farther.

The argument might be made that because many people take out loans to travel, it would signify that they are not relatively well off at all.  Yet the fact is that loans, especially for such unpredictable purposes, are unlikely to be delivered without collateral.  The moneylenders of the Far and Middle East and Africa are more than likely to be intimately familiar with the circumstances of would-be borrowers.

Now why would they do it?  Why would families put themselves into debt in order to send a member on a problematic journey of some thousands of miles?  It can’t be extreme need, because, as I say, they must of necessity be already relatively well off.  In the case of the Vietnamese migrants found dead recently in Britain, they seem, most of them, to have been already well equipped with mobile phones and ways of keeping in contact with home.

It would seem to me that it really should be viewed as a deliberate investment.  And being an investment—something that has the potential to fail as to succeed—it is not likely to be embarked upon to the extent of ruining a family’s fortunes.  It is probably a calculated risk; one that if it fails is not likely to sink the ship.

But again the question is why would they embark on such a gamble, even if they could afford it?  After all, propaganda and hysteria aside, Europe is far from being a land of milk and honey—something of which those with access to digital technology should already be well aware.

And the answer, to me, at any rate, is that they are acting in response to a recognition of opportunity, and those who are being sent are being sent by way of staking a claim.

What is drawing the elements of the middle-classes of the world by hook or crook to Europe is a recognition of the weakness of Europe, demonstrated in the crazy faux-humanitarianism of its political elites, and its refusal in any meaningful way to defend its borders.

I say ‘faux-humanitarianism’ because I really do believe that it is motivated less by concern for refugees than by a desire to destroy the last vestiges of national identity and national culture; refugees being merely a convenient battering ram to that particular end.

I reckon, too, that it is a process the elites thought to control, by turning the tap on and off, according as it was needed.  But I think they overestimated themselves and their abilities—believed too much in their own propaganda.

I append also a perhaps more nuanced view from quite a while back, which may in ways be closer to the truth, much as I dislike the idea.

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The Long Acre

The whole world is going to become one.

The vessel of the foreign is bursting at the seams

and can’t be caulked

and is going to run through us

like a dose of salts.

And we won’t like it—nobody likes it—yet it is inevitable.

The illusions we’ve built up within ourselves

about our uniqueness and our future

will be blown asunder

under the pressure of events.

Real history is not a pretty picture,

it is a conflict of races

and cultures,

and cannot be resolved within an hour

to everybody’s satisfaction

as in an original episode of Star Trek.

History will grind down the bones of those that resist her

(and how many additional innocents along the way?)

and no matter how the atavistic urges

rise in us to passion,

the result will still be much the same:

after the turmoil, a new equilibrium, an altered world,

a continuation of the human race.

And those that live on from that moment,

if they are sensible,

will trace their ancestry

to the chaos of the 21^st century

and not beyond.

Those of us,

Irish individuals with foreign names,

and also quite a few of us with Irish names—

how many of us would be here now

but for the Normans

and the English

and the head-on effects of their collision

with the recalcitrant Gaelic septs?

15/2/2002

The New Priesthood . . .

Other than in the simplest things the crowd is usually wrong.  If you wanted to go to a Celtic game and were totally unfamiliar with Glasgow, the failsafe method would be to follow those with green and white scarves as they grew in numbers towards Parkhead.  But for anything more subtle than that the crowd is a poor leader.

Colin Renfrew in his 1973 book Before Civilisation detailed at length the fierce eleven-year resistance put up by the archaeological establishment to the acceptance of radio-carbon dating, whose conclusions threatened to upturn the apple cart of all their previously accepted theories and render their scholarship obsolete.  For the ordinary archaeologists, one imagines, the work went on much as before, simply unearthing the fragmentary evidence about which the theorists could wind their abstractions.

I remember being in London in 1994 and coming across the most marvellous book on the geology of Europe in an Oxfam bookshop: coffee-table size, scientifically-written, marvellously illustrated with charts and maps, altogether one of the finest presentations of a subject that I had ever come across in my life—and heavy, too.  At that stage I had a son who was a working geologist with the British Geological Society and I bought it for him and carted it home only to have him dismiss it with barely a glance.  ‘That’s all old hat now!’

Now the book had been published within the previous twenty or so years—officially published, if I remember correctly, with a European scientific imprimatur—and written by guy with a barrowful of academic qualifications and honorary titles behind his name.  I wanted my son to take it anyway, because it would have looked well on his shelves, but he dismissed it completely.

Now I am sure that the groundwork within it—the maps and charts and unformatted information—must still have been first class, except that it had been all bundled up in support of a theory that by this stage was out of fashion.

Still, I used to marvel at it—the work that went into writing it, the quality of the paper and the print, the detail of the illustrations, the binding—for, as I say, it was an absolutely beautiful production—yet all in the service of barking up the wrong tree.

The ‘bandwagon effect’ is the name given to the human tendency to believe things purely to the extent that they can be persuaded that other people believe them too.  Basically, it is another version of following the crowd.  And the great stampede at the moment is in the direction of an absolute belief in the truth of climate change.  A belief, so far as the crowd is concerned, backed up by nothing more than what they are told on television.  Time and again, when pressed to justify their belief, the cry goes up ‘but the scientists say it’s so!’

Now scientists aren’t God.  They are ordinary human beings with the same egos and needs and desire to get on as anybody else.  Nor are the primary concerns of academics necessarily to do with truth—as the long war over carbon-dating tends to show.  The vast bulk of scientists and academics are purely production line workers, packaging up what they receive and passing it on, often with little by way of added value.  Original thinkers are comparatively few.  Original thinkers who value truth above all personal considerations are even fewer.

Now archaeology, even with carbon-dating, is not really a science; or not certainly an applied science, which involves the possibility of plotting alternative futures and not just the past.  The technique used in the applied sciences is mainly modelling, which is to do with creating ‘what-if’ computer simulations of potential future outcomes, depending on the different variables you key in.

Now the fact is that modelling, properly done, is a hugely complex undertaking, full of, in Donald Rumsfeld’s words, ‘known knowns’ and ‘known unknowns’ and ‘unknown unknowns’.  The most seemingly innocuous omissions or changes in data having the potential to change the whole simulation.  Not to mention the possibility of conscious or unconscious bias on the part of an emotionally involved researchers—for as someone said to me recently, ‘no one ever embarked on research without knowing in advance what they wanted to find’

Now as regards the present theory of climate change, I am, as I have said previously, not qualified to judge it. There are certain facts that seem immune to being challenged, such as the ongoing measurements of global warming and the increases in CO2.  The only theory in town at the moment is the one we are all familiar with—there may well be alternative theories, but if there are they are not being publicised.  So in the interim, whether we like it or not, we are stuck with what we have.

The problem is that it is not anymore simply a matter of climate—all sorts of other forces are supporting the current model to the extent that it scratches their own particular itches.  Rather like the disparate elements offering to back Jeremy Corbyn for prime minister so long as he supports a second referendum on Scottish Independence or Brexit or whatever, ancillary supporters of the present climate position include the vegans and the animal rights crowd and the greens, together with those perennial ‘Ministers for Hardship’, the soft and hard Left and their cousins, the modern secular liberals, whose shared underlying drive is a desire to micromanage everyone else’s life down to the very nitty-gritty.

There is also the question as to what extent the cure, as presently outlined, is perhaps worse than the disease.

More later . . .

Just another filler  . . .

[This was written about 2013 or 2014 and not published at the time.  I post it now simply as a means of giving myself some respite, so as to allow for the doing of other things.]

                                                                -----------------

On the news this morning was the information that the strong majority of people who are in trouble with their mortgages are between 41 and 65.  This would make you suspect that they were people who in the main took out second mortgages etc. in order to invest speculatively in other property.  And fair play to them for taking the chance.

Yet the fact is that if you look at it in the most stripped down terms, it was basically a selfish venture, as all such ventures usually are.  They were doing it for ‘me’.  It was a purely individualistic effort.  They weren’t thinking in terms of the general population.  They were doing it ultimately to make money for themselves.

Yet now that the gamble has failed—for those for whom it has failed—the message has become somewhat different.  ‘We have bailed out the banks, so why can we not be bailed out too?’  We have left the ‘me’ behind and are now talking in terms of ‘we’—and if not the Royal ‘we’ then certainly the Republican ‘we’; the ‘we’ of ‘We’re all in this together!’

Societies are not homogeneous.  They are split along various lines, depending on how you look at it.  And the one major split that developed during the so-called Celtic Tiger was the split between those who went mad and those who didn’t.

The fact is that we are all in this together—to the extent that the bill for the fuck-up is being presented to everyone, wise-head or fool.  But the fact is that the banks have no money of their own, they are ultimately dependent on the commonality of tax-payers and citizens.  In such a situation, the demand for a bail-out for the indebted, and especially the foolishly indebted, amounts to a demand for a transfer of assets from the cautious to the foolhardy in order to help compensate them for their gambling splurge.

Possibly a lot of the victims of the property boom didn’t see it at the time as being a gamble.  They thought—and were led to think—that they were on to a certainty.  As an analogy, one might speak of someone going off to Las Vegas confident that he had a sure system for winning at roulette.  But when he comes back broke, you would expect that he would have enough sense not to go looking for sympathy.  And even if he was to do it, he might expect short shrift.

Even the guy who goes into the bookies expects, or at least hopes, to win.  But he has also factored in the possibility of losing, which is why he is not up kicking the counter and looking for his money back when his horse finishes last.

Of course, there are hard cases out there.  No doubt, hundreds of them.  But I am speaking here specifically about people who got themselves into debt in order to take a punt on the broader property market.  And even for the hard cases, it is hard to envisage any amelioration scheme that could corral them off separately from the reckless.

In general, people in trouble are right to be angry about it.  They were in many cases suckered in by bank propaganda to ‘release the equity in your home’ and kept in there by promises of ‘soft landings’ etc. But it was not just the banks, the whole debacle was facilitated by total political bankruptcy and incompetence—and not just of the governing parties at the time.

Years ago, when the storm first broke, and people were protesting with placards demanding haircuts for the banks, I set about mentally devising one of my own, which would have read ‘Not haircuts—but guillotines!’  Five years on and nobody’s head has rolled yet, other than electorally.  And even more than the debts, I think, that’s what makes people mad.  Until we get guillotines, potentially less real than metaphorical, and on a swingeing scale, too, and not just for a few handpicked scapegoats, then there can be no possibility of a unified shoulder to the wheel, which is after all what everybody seems to agree is necessary to get us out of the mess we’re in.

Heated Discussions . . .

The Mayor of Venice blames global warming for the current floods, the second highest in over fifty years.  But then what was responsible for the record tide in 1966?

Now I do share some of the concerns that people have over climate and agree with some of the solutions proposed, too.  I am in favour of extensive re-afforestation and curbs on air travel—this latter on the basis of curbing the cultural suicide of mass tourism—and the protection of species and dealing with the plastic scourge.

But beyond that I am somewhat sceptical.  Because really I know nothing about climate change other than what I am being told.  Nor do I have the skills set necessary to reach any true conclusion on the matter for myself.  No more, I suspect, than do most people.

We are told that scientists say it is so, so it must be so.  But then the world is full of scientists—anyone with a BSc Pass being likely to qualify—and they are all active in an exponentially increasing multitude of scientific subdivisions.  Few of them would be purely climate scientists—to the extent that there are such things as pure climate scientists, and not just simply an amalgam the various core disciplines of the earth sciences—and few such climate scientists would, in turn, be in a position to take an ex cathedra overview of all the research, which, as I say, is complicated and fragmented across any number of fields and sub-fields.

But, then, of course, that still doesn’t mean that it is not true.

The thing that gives me pause for thought, however, is the extent to which virtually overnight popular certainty in the matter has turned into a stampede.  There is hardly anyone now that hasn’t got an opinion on man-made global warming, and it is generally one of absolute and unqualified belief.

Over roughly the past forty or so years, a new political strategy has developed on behalf of what might be broadly described as left-liberalism, involving what are generally called ‘social movements’ or ‘social cure movements’.  The purpose of these movements is to change the way people think by ancillary means—means other than political argument or rational debate etc.

Behind such movements lies the realisation that human beings are broadly conformist and are generally uncomfortable in being out of step with perceived majority opinion.  The strategy involves creating the illusion of a mass movement, David Copperfield-style, often with smoke and mirrors.  Most of these movements start out as small handfuls of middle-class intellectuals, students and academics, who by means of clever marketing create the idea that they are at the forefront of much larger popular movements, which in turn are driving them on.

Now this is not to say that some of these movements didn’t in their time do useful work.  But the fact is that down the years the process became fashioned into a ubiquitous weapon—a sort of one-tool-fits-all-type—capable of being adapted to all sorts of purposes, to the extent that there are any number of organisations around the world peddling a claimed expertise in such things as regime change and various lesser matters of liberal concern.

A core element of these programs involves the ‘weaponising’ of schoolchildren and college students and bringing them on the street as activists.  In general, argument or debate plays no part in this process, instead it seeks to exploit the youthful desire to be ‘cool’ and ‘alternative’—all as a means of adding an appearance of specific-weight to the overall movement, which in turn it is hoped will infect the broader population, and cause the whole thing to go viral.

Now, as I say, I am not in a position to make any statement on the validity or otherwise of the overall climate change position.  Instinctively, I would be to a degree sympathetic to it.  But I’m certainly not prepared to empty the cup in one go.  I remain to be persuaded.

But what I am clear about is the fact that the climate movement is at risk of being turned into a political vehicle by the usual suspects, who having time and again failed to implement their programme by other means, are now intent on hanging it on the horns of the self-proclaimed climate emergency.

Yesterday we had the schoolkids giving their advice on dealing with climate change in a Youth Assembly—a sort of junior version of the equally dubious Citizens’ Assemblies.  What is the point of all this, other than to encourage them by bestowing on them a sort of cut-price legitimacy?  What do they know about the matter more than anybody else?  And such being the case, why the fuck should anyone bother listening to them?

[It has been at the back of my mind for a while to write—though in more depth—about the various ‘social-cure movements’ afoot in the world.  It is just the speed with which things seem to be at this moment developing that has caused me to do so now.  For anyone who doubts the underlying validity of what I am saying, there are various books—mostly pro-social movement—out there in the marketplace.  Nor is the social-cure phenomenon the only strategy being pursued by those whose other strategies down the years have inevitably failed.  At some stage, and to the extent that I keep writing, I may deal with them, too.]

Separation Anxiety (3)

In an unpublished document written in December 2017, I wrote as follows:

‘Sheikh Khalid bin Mafouz, who died in 1989, a brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden, was apparently a naturalised Irish citizen.  He purchased Irish passports and citizenship for himself and eleven other members of his family in 1990 via Charlie Haughey.  Now this doesn’t particularly irritate me—I have neutral feelings on it.  But the question keeps nagging at me: Is possession of an Irish passport actually sufficient to make someone Irish, other than in some purely legalistic sense?

If you were asked to think of a typical Irishman, would a picture of Khalid bin Mafouz, or someone like Khalid bin Mafouz, spring immediately to mind?  Or would the imagination be more likely to produce an image along the lines of, say, some notional big red-faced farmer with a hurley in his hand down in Tipperary?

If Adolph Hitler had been able to escape to Ireland at the end of the war and get a passport would that have made him Irish?

Is the nature of being Irish dependent on nothing more than the random possession of a piece of paper?  Are we to be defined purely by our passports?

The fact is that the quality of being Irish or German or Yoruba or Ibo comes from the possession of a shared culture.  Tribes and nations have individual and unique cultures, different from other cultures, without necessarily being in any way inferior or superior.  A culture is what you are steeped in from the moment of birth, as were your parents and generality of your forebears before you.  It is something that you unconsciously assimilate in much the same way as you come by language.

A culture is impossible to define—as most attempts to do otherwise so amply show.  A culture is a living and rather sedately evolving organism.  It is like a giant tapestry to which each of us individually may contribute our few stitches without at all affecting the overall meaning.  It is our shared ground of reference.  It is, in our case, what makes us Irish . . .’

I quote this now in the context of the ongoing discussion of the psychological effects of the loss of kinship-based social systems.  Whilst Irish society may no longer be a strictly kinship-based society, it is nonetheless something analogous to it, in a way that, say, American society certainly isn’t.

More anon . . .

Separation Anxiety (2)

The psychological damage, the demoralisation, visited upon great sections of the Greek population by the destruction of the old kinship-based tribal system, dealt with in the first part of this article last week, was a consequence of a deliberate decision of the Greek leadership of the time.  It involved forcing people out of social arrangements they had for generations grown up in and which were second nature to them.

But there were and are different ways of achieving the same ends.  One way would be through the massive dilution of the native population through mass immigration.  Indeed it was this that primarily led—though it is seldom admitted—to the Brexit referendum being carried in Britain in 2016.  Ordinary people of a certain age had over a period of time began to feel themselves increasingly strangers in what used to be their local surroundings.

Like people sheltering from a flood, they looked out across a drowned landscape where the everyday symbols of community were gradually being swallowed by change.  Rather than those they shared a familiar culture with, they found themselves living increasingly side by side with people with whom they had little in common, other than in the abstract sense of being human beings.

Which is not to say, of course, of course that nations or cultures need be exclusive.  Nations have rubbed along side by side for thousands of years, exchanging molecules. Rather like the guard in Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman who muses philosophically on the notion that he may be turning into his bike and his bike turning into him as a result of ongoing friction between him and the saddle.

But what seems to be going on nowadays is on a totally different scale.  Without any explicit by your leave, and not as a result of armed invasion or conquest, the world would now seem to be free range for anybody who wants to travel, especially to the extent that they can concoct a sympathetic backstory.  And not alone to travel, but to be fed, clothed and housed as a matter of right.

The obvious effect of such a policy is not to balance development or living standards internationally, but rather to fuel a cavalry charge from the impoverished world (not to mention the flood of opportunists passing as poor) to the relatively advanced world, which, like connecting the positive and negative terminals of a battery, can only have the effect of reducing every place to a similar common level of poverty.

The UN Human Rights Commission has published, in its Handbook for Parliamentarians No. 24, a schedule of reasons it sees as driving migration, which just as easily might be seen as a tick-off list for would-be migrants to follow.

‘Migration today is motivated by a range of economic, political and social factors.  Migrants may leave their country of origin because of conflict, widespread violations of human rights and other reasons threatening life and safety.  Many are compelled by the absence of decent work to seek employment elsewhere.  They may also migrate to join family members already established abroad . . . As globalization expands the global circulation of capital, goods, services and technology, migration responds to growing demand for skills and labour in destination countries.  These factors along with aging populations and declining workforces in high-income countries increase international migration, including mobility of labour and skills.’

The one thing that you do not find in any of this—or if it exists it is certainly not easy to find— is a schedule of the rights of indigenous populations in the face of serious migration.  The philosophy would seem primarily to be one of just roll over and play dead.  No preliminary negotiation or consultation.  No worry about consequences.  Nothing.

What we have here is the result of ivory-tower thinking by ivory-tower elites, used to deliberating in purely globalist terms, who are never themselves likely to come face-to-face with the knock-on damage arising from their actions, such as having to scuffle around in a saturated rental market to try and find somewhere to live.

Not to mention the ongoing psychological damage rising from the ruthless internal reconfiguration of societies going on to make them fit to accommodate our ‘welcome diversity’.

Not the other way around, of course.

More later . . .

Joker

Through matters beyond my control the second part of the article on the psychological effects of imposed social change has been briefly delayed.

In the interim, I wish to sing the praises of the brilliant dystopian film Joker, which is currently in the cinemas.  Dystopian with a capital D in that, despite being set against a comic book background, it convincingly portrays a world psychologically very close to our own; indeed, just one step beyond our own; where violence, neglect, paranoia and greed have combined to form some great heavy beast, it’s belly dragging along the city streets, like the keel of a ship grinding nervously across a submerged ice-floe.

So brilliantly done, that it manages to convey in one scene of a couple of seconds the way in which the gangster element took advantage of the ideological flim-flam of the 1960s to reinvent how it presented itself.  And this did happen.  I saw it happen.  And I saw people die as a consequence of its happening. But such was the naivety of the revolutionary left at the time, mainly middle-class and anxious to view everything through the make-believe of red-rose-tinted glasses, that it was wide open to such penetration.

Wise guys who would otherwise have been doing it for themselves as a form of private enterprise were now doing it for a ‘cause’—or so they thought to persuade the world, often convincingly

That is not to say that there were not genuine people involved, too, save that they left themselves vulnerable through a simpleminded intellectualism, as so often happens, to those with a harder, more-stripped down, more closely focused and more ruthlessly accurate view of the world.

Sometimes you hear arguments about which political forces or parties are likely to come out on top in the event of social collapse.  Make no doubt about it, the ones who will inevitably rule will be the gangsters.  Untrammelled by any drag of ideology or principle, they tend to be brutally effective at what they do.  While the ideologues are debating, the tough who get going when the going gets tough will be running rings round them.

Nor take any consolation from the various state institutions that are supposed to prevent this, they are just as bound up in red-tape and bullshit and careerism as the rest.

When the Roman Empire collapsed, one stage of that collapse—or of the recovery from that collapse—was the fragmentation and localisation of power, so that control descended to those ruthless and strong enough to grab it.  From being a vast and unified enterprise, the map of Europe—purely notional, because by that stage society had degenerated to the borders of ignorance and illiteracy—turned into a patchwork quilt of tiny, independent and unmappable  fiefdoms.

There is no reason why this time it should be any different –save that there is always the suspicion that beyond the present chaos there may exist the hand of some hidden controlling agency—perhaps the intertangled intelligence services—shadowy as sharks when viewed from above.

But that is all just speculation.

What is true, however, is that Joker is a brilliant film, with one of the most outstanding lead performances—if not the most outstanding—for quite a long while.

Don’t miss it.

[This is a section something I wrote in December 2017, in the aftermath of mass migration of refugees etc., overland into Europe.  I have edited it slightly in the interim.  The rest of it will be addressed via further posts.]

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Separation Anxiety . . .

A society is a combinations of classes existing in a more or less stable form.

Around the seventh century BC Athenian society began to come under pressure due to the growth of a wealthy merchant class that threatened the status of the aristocracy.  The response of the aristocracy was to rack-rent the tenant farmers as a way of keeping up appearances.  The consequence was widespread class struggle, sufficiently bitter to threaten the very survival of the society.

In 594 BC an aristocrat called Solon, who was respected by all sides, was chosen as an honest broker.  His solution included the abolition of all outstanding debts and the abolition of the practice of selling debtors into slavery.  As well, he gave the poorest sections access to a citizen’s assembly, but without the right to speak in it.  He also codified and published a system of laws.

In practice, he abolished the unique right of the aristocracy to rule—explaining to its members that it was in their long-term interests to do so.  The new basis for ruling in Athens was wealth, no matter how it was earned.

‘Everything must change so that everything can stay the same’ is the leitmotif of the main character in The Leopard, by Giuseppe de Lampedusa, a novel (and also a film) set in Sicily in a time of great political and social upheaval.  The meaning of the phrase basically is that it is sometimes necessary to give some ground, in order to protect a greater interest.  In The Leopard this meant allowing the ambitious middle class a share of power in order to stave off the complete collapse of society.

The same description applies to Solon’s settlement in sixth-century BC Athens.  It involved a partial sacrifice by the powerful so that the bulk of their power might remain intact; and even be strengthened by the addition of the wealthier middle-class elements.

But the problem is that once you begin to give ground, no matter how slightly, the chances are that you are setting in train a movement that you are no longer guaranteed to be able to control.

Within 150 years of Solon’s reforms, and via a series of stages, what has been termed a ‘radical democracy’ had come into existence in Athens.  Involved was equality for all citizens before the law and a transfer of power to the population in general by means of one man, one vote.  Also involved was the introduction of pay for public office, so that the poor would not be handicapped from holding office because of their poverty.

Thus, the development of democracy didn’t occur in one fell swoop, but came about through a series of stages, and one stage in particular, involving a series of reforms by an aristocrat called Cleisthenes, proved vital to the whole process.

Now my reason for bringing all this up is the degree to which it would seem to have a certain relevance to aspects of what is going on in our own modern world.  Not a literal relevance; more an abstract understanding of the possible knock-on effects of imposed social and political change

In a recent mailing, I quoted Cormac Lucey, writing in the Sunday Times, with regard to the tendencies and modi operandi of the EU:

‘Consider recent remarks from Peter Sutherland, a former attorney-general, EU commissioner and chairman of AIB and Goldman Sachs International.  He has stated, regarding the current refugee crisis: “The United States, or Australia and New Zealand, are migrant societies and therefore they accommodate more readily those from other backgrounds than we do ourselves, who still nurse a sense of our homogeneity and difference from others.  And that’s precisely what the European Union, in my view, should be doing its best to undermine.”

‘Sutherland suggests the EU should undermine nationality and any sense of nationality.  No wonder the Brits think about leaving.  The wonder is that more aren’t considering joining them.  And the wonder is that we don’t harbour greater resentments against the EU for its authoritarian rejection of democratic referendum results here—see the treaties of Nice and Lisbon.’

Now there is implied social and political change here.  Not the same sort of change as was occurring in Greece; but change in its broadest brushstrokes, nonetheless.

To continue with the story of Cleisthenes: he was a member of one of the most prominent aristocratic families in Athens.  Such families were engaged in a constant struggle among themselves for control of the state.  More than even the matter of self-aggrandisement, this struggle seems to have been driven by an almost biological desire simply to rule.

[Of course, the reason for this was relatively simple.  If you weren’t prepared to fight your corner, no matter how you might have felt about it, then you were likely to lose everything.  There doesn’t seem to have been any room in Greek aristocratic society for retiring into private life and simply enjoying your privileges.  Indeed, the whole thing seems to have been driven by an almost evolutionary logic, like the clash of buffalo in the rutting season.]

And everything went in these intra-aristocratic struggles—murder, war, the use and backing of foreign powers etc. etc.  In terms of the skulduggery of everyday politics, the Athenians—and the Greeks in general—had nothing to learn from modern times.  They wrote the original handbook.  Nor was there any seeming consideration of the wider interest of the state or population.  It was basically just a hunger to rule.  Indeed, Cleisthenes himself was involved in several attempts at the seizure and re-seizure of power, some involving foreign backers, before finally succeeding.

The weapon that Cleisthenes (in 508/7 BC) forged to bring about eventual victory involved gaining the support of the general populace through the promise of further democratic reforms, and later the implementation of those reforms as a way of ensuring that once onside the plebeians stayed onside.

And this is where the matter of imposed social and political change comes in.  The mechanism devised by Cleisthenes to achieve his ends involved undermining the four traditional kinship-based tribes of Athens and creating in their stead ten new artificial tribes, all territorially based, and involving no element of kinship.

One consequence of this—the one this article is most concerned with—is the psychological consequence.  It may not have been so traumatic for the well-off—and there is evidence to suggest that they put up no great resistance to it—but for the mass of the population it was equivalent to being ejected from the womb.  The very thing that had underpinned their sense of identity and allowed them to differentiate themselves from the world at large and enjoy an insider, or at least the illusion of an insider, relationship with the rich and powerful of their own particular tribe—all this had at a stroke been removed.  Instead they found themselves cast into an outer Hell of mere undifferentiated citizenship.

The sociologist Eli Sagan, writing in the context of the Athenian experience, drew as a general rule the conclusion that ‘Any dissolution of kinship forms of social coherence will provoke an anxiety of separation’ (The Honey and the Hemlock, 1991).

To be continued . . .