Piority

The I'm of an age where a lot of my friends have small children. Some of them are learning to share right now, which is an odd thought: that we need to learn to share. Although I suppose it's not that odd. When a child is born it knows only that it is awake, hungry or uncomfortable. The solution to each of these states is provided by the child's carer (usually a parent) quite often at the expense of the carer (monetary or otherwise). A baby has no concept that its need for comfort or sustenance in the middle of the night has a detrimental impact on the health of its parent, it simply knows that it is hungry or uncomfortable. It is utterly selfish, but we forgive it because it is also ignorant to the impacts of its selfishness. By and large as a child gradually becomes aware of the world around it, then of itself and finally of others, it learns of the consequences of its actions. As its needs are augmented by a plethora of wants, it discovers that there is a finite limit to the provision of those wants. It may not understand the logic or rationale behind that limit, but it eventually comes to understand that there is a limit (even if that understanding comes after many tantrums). The understanding of the logic and rationale behind those limits is pretty much the whole of the process of growing up, from learning to understand the impact of sharing, to understanding the ways in which all our wants and needs are satisfied, to understanding the complex consequences of attempting to satisfy all those wants and needs. The latter, of course, taking up basically a lifetime, assuming we ever get out of the first stage. Some people never really get to understanding sharing, seeing it as something they simply had to do as a child, and they certainly never get to attempting to understand the consequences of satisfying their needs and wants. They effectively remain in a state of arrested development, but because they are full size, we assume that they are adults. We often give credence to their demands because people have given credence to them in the past and they have been successful in accumulating credibility for their demands. Do we ever question whether demanding people understand their high expectations, their requirements and consequences, or are just massive babies in suits*? 

*with no tie because they demanded that too 

Polar

The social media have been full of witticisms concerning the pace of news of late. Starting with a seemingly unusually high number of celebrity deaths at the beginning of the year, we do appear to have crammed an awful lot of (mainly bad) news into 2016 so far, culminating in the few weeks that followed the referendum on whether the UK should leave Europe. The odd thing about the major news items in that period was, that although they seem wildly different, they all point to a world moving in the same direction: away from each other. 

The attempted coup in Turkey was perhaps the most extreme example, but it is really no different than the leave vote or the popular support for Donald Trump. President Erdogan has massive popular support in Turkey, with over 50% of the vote in the last presidential election. However, given Turkey has locked up more journalists than any other country in the world, you might expect that the odds have been stacked slightly in Erdogan's favour. When the only voices you hear are affirming a single viewpoint, why would you consider any other? Unfortunately it would appear that the coup attempt demonstrates that not everyone in Turkey believes what they're told in the news. Worse than that, it shows that some people felt so divorced form the message they were presented, so detached from Erdogan's status quo that they felt the need to take violent action to overturn it. I am not saying that a military coup against an ostensibly democratic government is right, I am just saying that you need pretty good motivation to want to stage one in the first place, especially if you're not even top brass; this was effectively a mutiny. Anyway, it failed, and rather than see it as a worrying indicator of the deep divisions within his country, Erdogan has taken it as an excuse to get rid of everyone in public life who might disagree with him. Going on the numbers so far dismissed or detained, this is quite a lot of people, which is as it should be in a healthy democracy. Unfortunately despite what he says, Erdogan isn't massively interested in democracy, but rather appears to be on the verge of going full Pinochet, which is something neither his country or nor either of the continents it straddles needs right now. 

Of course Erdogan creates his echo chamber of opinion by removing opportunities for contradiction in the mass media, but with no conventional means for expressing their opinions, his opponents must have found other outlets. Such outlets most likely coalesced around social media which as we all know (theoretically) assist in creating their own echo chambers. Many of the mutineers must have been surprised to find that many of the Turkish people did not exactly welcome them with open arms. They probably had months of convincing each other that theirs was the only reasonable cause of action and that its justification was as plain as day to any idiot, only to find out that most of the idiots still bought the line fed to them every day by a cowed media. In the aftermath of the attempted coup Erdogan and his supporters are even more convinced of the rectitude of their cause and course: the enemies of democracy have shown themselves, so more can be done to rid the world of them. Anyone questioning the actions of Erdogan can be shown to be wrong, because such people have been shown to be enemies of democracy, willing to kill civilians. It is an absolutist outlook that gives one a simple way to discredit all dissent. 

We in the west can comfort ourselves that we are not so blinkered as all that; we understand democracy, we are measured and reasonable, yet we are as polarised as we have been at any time since the Second World War. After the war, there was an understanding that  extremes had led to destruction and death on a scale that severely traumatised those it did not kill. The response was a kind of truce, an agreement, not to agree, but to respect each other's point of view; this may have been easier with the USSR as a constant reminder of the alternative. However, after failure of the radical movements of the 60s, the world gradually began to drift away from this compromise: the right wing elites, paranoid about what popular support for any left wing ideology could do for their wealth and power base, started the campaign to label anything vaguely progressive as dangerously revolutionary and therefore just dangerous. This worked well for them whilst they had broad control of the popular press and therefore public opinion, and whilst the dismantling of the state had some demonstrable financial benefit for those who bought shares or council houses. However, the advent of the social media complicated matters: the temporary rage that the popular press whips up to push a particular agenda (or just to sell more newspapers can get caught in little social media eddies that turn into whirlpools of discontent. Currently, the perception is that this can be to the advantage of these press organisations, especially as they no longer have to rely on anything approaching factual journalism, but can allow entirely made up headlines create a furore (and click-through) based on nothing more than their own momentum. The danger for the popular press is that the credulous who form these waves of wrath find some other source for their outrage - social justice for example - so in order to retain their interest, ever more sources for 'moral' outrage must be sought, or the same groups of 'culprits' must be targeted repeatedly, reinforcing dangerous stereotypes. 

I saw a tweet in response to some new Trump nonsense that was simply this: "DONT BELIVE THE MEDIA LIES, REAL AMERICANS SUPPORT TRUMP." What struck me most about this was not the fact that its writer felt the media (presumably all of them) lie, but the idea that somehow those who don't vote for Trump are not true Americans. This in itself is not a new concept, Americans love to call each other names and claim that only they and not their opponents understand the true nature of what it is to be American, but the fact that it was shouted made it feel like it was a conviction rather than a belief. 

Jeremy Corbin is very much presented as a conviction politician, a man who sticks by his dogma in the face of the grubby compromise of modern politics. This is presented as very noble, and I'm sure it is, it's just not very practical. I agree with many of Corbyn's principles, but I am beginning to understand that he has no idea how to enact them. Principles and beliefs can be good, but they are not the same thing as policies. Where principles have the advantage is that they are easier to articulate and delineate. It is easier to define a person by their principles than by their actions; easier to label them. This labelling works well for creating binaries: this is what/who I am for and this is what/who not. Hence why so many of Corbyn's supporters see enemies everywhere and every criticism as a personal attack on their principles. Like everyone else, their beliefs in these matters are simply amplified by the agreement of everyone around them; everyone in their social echo chamber sees the world as they do, that is how they first came to be connected, so it is no surprise that these people reinforce the view that the dogma is right, indeed unquestionable. Perhaps more worryingly though, they reinforce the idea that anyone else is universally wrong. 

Donald Trump has no obvious ideology, but he does offer principles. The fact that these principles are based in the reality of neither his life, nor America, nor the world is immaterial; he offers principles unsullied by the dirty compromise of politics. There is no argument against this because all alternatives are establishment lies, created by a shady elite who serve only their own interests. The truth can only lie in the hands of Trump and his supporters. 

It is not surprising that this concept of a monopoly of truth works so well for Trump, Corbyn and Erdogan alike: in a society where we use hashtagged words or phases to define whole concepts, it is not hard to define all others as #wrong, especially when the algorithms associated with those hashtags will tend to seek out only those who agree with us or the most deranged of those who don't. In each case, there is a kernel of truth to the messages presented: the Turkish coup was essentially anti-democratic; Erdogan is essentially anti-democratic; the right wing media and establishment do have it in for anyone who runs the Labour Party; the vested interests of a moneyed elite do damage American democracy. Unfortunately in each of these cases, the observers of these facts have taken them and made them the tennent of an anti-ideology that only their principles can overcome. By reinforcing and amplifying the messages from their personal echo chambers, each moves the world a bit further away from the messy compromise it needs in order not to slip into chaos. Unyielding ideologies cannot coexist and yet they seem increasingly to be the only thing we are wiling to consider. 

I had an argument with a friend recently* where I accused him of spouting empty rhetoric (because he refused to be drawn on the practicalities of realising his ideals). He retorted that only politicians can spout empty rhetoric, people like him just have opinions. This is fine, we are all entitled to our opinions, as we are entitled to be disappointed when the actions of our politicians don't coincide with those opinions. What we should perhaps be more wary of is when the rhetoric of our politicians simply echoes the opinions of everyone else in our little echo chamber: it is then that we need to take a look outside. 

*we're old fashioned enough to be able to argue about politics and still remain friends

Paradigm

I didn't realise it till I got off the train at London Bridge. I wasn't even meant going to London Bridge, but Southern Trains are so messed up at the moment that the one to London Bridge was the first one going to any part of London that had actually run in an hour and a half. So from a whole day of suburban depression and acquiescence, knowing that I must logically be in a minority (even though no one around me all day would proudly admit having voted leave), I emerged from London Bridge to an unusually large police presence. After a few more seconds, I was aware of the reason for this profusion of law enforcement: there was a rally outside News International: hundreds of people shouting their love for humanity, their compassion for refugees and their passionate desire not to give into the hatred, fear and xenophobia peddled by that organisation and others. It was the first thing that I encountered on the day of the referendum result that made me feel alive or positive about anything in any way. It was invigorating. I am not a joiner in, I am definitely not a protester, but I have been around protests before (I worked round the corner from the G7 protests in the city) and I understand that they have they have a compelling energy just from being, but this felt different. This was unmitigated. 

I am one of those who before and after the referendum decried the fact that such a complex question was put to a referendum at all. We are and have always been a representative democracy, relying on the people we elect to make the best decisions on our behalf. This is their job: they are paid to devote their time to this task because the rest of us are busy doing the other things that need to happen in order to keep capitalism going. In devolving responsibility for the most important decision about our country in the last 40 years, the politicians that we elected failed in their duties to us. I am not joking when I say that each time a government decides to hold a referendum, the costs of that referendum should be met out of their salaries. 

As if to emphasise their lack of effort and their half-arsed attitude to their jobs, most of the major players in the referendum have decided that now the easy part is over (the bit where the public did their jobs for them) they're going to give up being involved at all. Contrary to his pre-referendum promises David Cameron has resigned, making sure he abdicates all responsibility for dealing with the consequences of his thoughtless attempt to avoid the schism within his party. Boris Johnson, the face of Leave whilst he thought it would make him prime minister, has now decided to return to a life of punditry, scoring easy points from his comments as a journalist without having to take any responsibility for them. Indeed in a recent Telegraph article, Johnson had the audacity to call on the prime minister to make the positive case for Brexit, when the rest of us are still waiting for Johnson to do that. I'm talking about a real reasoned case, rather than some empty waffle about taking back control. In many ways only Nigel Farrage cannot be seen to be shirking his duties, he was never more than an single issue protester, with one empty aim and seemingly no care for the consequences of his actions. His record as an MEP was a clear indicator that he had no interest in actually engaging in the business of a serious politician, but rather was happy to take money and votes off anyone foolish enough to give them to him. Like many of the most feckless and useless members of our society, he managed to convince us that others were a drain on our resources whilst personally being a much bigger drain than many of his favoured scapegoats put together. If you really want to make a principled stand, it always looks better if you don't profit greatly from it. 

Of course, if any of these people genuinely cared about the state of our democracy or indeed our country, they may have thought about the other consequences of their abdication of responsibility. The feeling that led to that protest, the feeling that many of the 17 million people who voted to remain in the EU probably felt in some form or another, the feeling that 'leave' voters would have felt if the result had gone the other way, that feeling was different to how one feels about any other kind of defeat. It was personal, we knew that 18 million of our countrymen had changed the future of our country in a way that we fundamentally disagree with. They did it to us; it was personal. Almost anyone we encountered could have been partially responsible and could be blamed. If the politicians had taken us out of Europe without implicating the rest of us in their decision, we could have blamed them. That would be fine, it is their job to be blamed for stuff; we elect them to take decisions on our behalf and take responsibility for those decisions. Nigel Farage never wanted this, he never wanted to take responsibility for anything, he just wanted to be popular, so he offered an easy answer with no concern for the consequences. He didn't need to care about the consequences, he could just blame them on the elites that he detests so much (presumably because they invite him to so many lunches). Of course the most hopelessly vain of our politicians saw what popularity Farage got from the easy answer and wanted some of it for themselves, so they let us take responsibility for the consequences of the easy answer and now we resent each other for it. 

I've been fascinated by the Spanish civil war for a number of years, fascinated by a society that can become so utterly entrenched in an ideological schism that it sees no solution but war. Of course, it also required a hard line element in the military, and a lot more mediaterran passion than the Brits could muster, but I couldn't help but think I sensed its echo in the protest I encountered the evening after the referendum. I hear it when everyone I speak to says they can't help speculating on whether each person they encounter voted leave or remain and judging them accordingly. I see it in the vitriolic tweets of the hardened Brexiteers laughing at the losers, stopping short of calling them gay, but only because the implications of modern language paint a broad spectrum of society with the same weak/fey/degenerate bully-fodder inference*. They feel validated by the democratic process - some even seeing the result of what became a vote against immigrants as an endorsement of racial hatred. The other half (or 48% to be precise) feel entirely cheated by the democratic process, cheated not only by the politicians who forced the most important decision about our country's future on lies, but cheated by our fellow citizens. The faintly patronising liberal mantra since the referendum that people voted leave because of a lack of education attempts to hide the fact that plenty of perfectly well educated people voted leave. Indeed I heard a senior colleague with a good degree declare that he would vote leave because he wanted to give his sons a better chance of getting a job. People voted based on the same shortsighted misguided selfishness that governs most of the rest of their lives. That is the reality of modern Britain that this vote has only served to emphasise: we are no longer the reasonable moderate types we like to present ourselves as to the rest of the world. David Cameron gambled on the reasonable nature of the British people and lost, this was the final confirmation of the passing of the 'traditional' British character of moderation. We are left with a country divided by an unspoken antagonism that will fester and genuinely has the potential to spill over. More so when many of those who voted leave realise that their protest vote solved none of their problems and addressed none of their concerns. We may not have the Mediterranean passion (or hopefully the overtly politicised military) that catalysed the Spanish civil war, but we no longer have the moderating force of, well, moderation. 

The recent Tory leadership coronation aims to paper over the cracks and carry on as if it's business as usual, but it isn't. Our country will probably never be the same again, not because it it will no longer physically be a United Kingdom (which it may well also not be) but because we have realised we think as two different countries, and that is an attitude that it is hard to change. 

* perhaps a small victory for equal rights: a broader spectrum of people are now discriminated against. 

Poultry

At the battle of Hastings in 1066 Harold Godwinson's troops had a commanding position over the battlefield. From the top of the hill that they occupied, they could repel the attacking Norman army to great effect. Indeed it looked for a time like in the space of two weeks Harold Godwinson would have repelled two invasions at the opposite ends of his country with a 500 mile march in between. 

Then the Normans retreated; this was not a rout, but a ruse, a tactical move by William of Normandy to draw the Saxons off the hill. Harold's tired troops, believing the battle to be won, ignored the orders of their commanders and pursued the retreating Normans; their ranks were broken and they were slaughtered by a counterattack. This is one of the only times in history that retreat has been a good idea, and even then it was a sneaky French good idea. The victors of that battle went on to form the rump of the elite that still govern our country today, many of whom have decided that once again retreat is a good idea. Of course for them it is: they have seen their power eroded and dissipated across the continent of Europe by a partially elected political body over which they can have limited influence. Obviously, they don't like that very much, so they have designed a process to take back control: convince the people of Great Britain that they would be better off giving power back to the English elite. Of course it's an easy message to sell: finding and highlighting inefficiencies in an imperfect political institution, or simply making up stories about the current situation and how that could change if only we would walk away. When you own much of the popular press, it is easier to spread an unquestioned version of your made up stories. I have spoken before about how much we are willing to accept made-up realities when they are repeated to us by the media and our superiors over and over again. Just to be clear, these people do consider themselves our superiors and they do think they can fool us into doing their bidding because, despite what they are trying to tell you, they have utter contempt for the people and for democracy. So next time someone tries to justify their proposed retreat from Europe by talking about "taking back control", think about who is going to get that control and why they are so keen to get it. Please don't be deluded enough to think it will be you. 

In the 'debate' around the referendum both sides have evoked the Second World War, and I can't help thinking of that war's most famous retreat - the evacuation from the beaches of Dunkirk - when I think of our current situation. That event marked the symbolic low point in the war for Britain, but it defined us as a people, we got the Dunkirk spirit and muddled through, we regrouped with our allies and went back to the continent. In Europe's darkest hour we planned a way to free it from the spectre of extreme nationalism. We increasingly find ourselves in a comparable situation: this is not a war, but make no mistake, it is a battle for the soul of Europe. We have retreated as far as we should and it's got us nowhere. It's time to regroup and return to the beaches. We have to fight for the Europe that we want and we can't do that if we walk away. 

Plebiscite

I took a few days off over the second May bank holiday and went to Herefordshire and the Welsh borders. Anyone who knows me, knows that I go there quite a lot, partly because of the availability of free accommodation provided by my in-laws, but also because it's a beautiful part of the world. Our holidays there may seem a bit boring and habitual to many people, but we both like low maintenance holidays and have yet to get bored of any of our habitual activities. I won't list them all, but they mainly revolve around cooking, eating, walking and reading. 

We always go to Hay-on-Wye and buy some books. I always buy old science fiction - way more than I have time to read - and end up stockpiling it in my bedroom there ready for the day when my life has enough spare time to devote to unloved sci-fi. Given the frequency of our visits, it was perhaps surprising that this is the first time we've been during Hay festival. Naturally, we bumped into someone we know from London. "It's crazy," she said, "and so far away!" 

I'm happy for other Londoners to think that, they can all hang out in the Cotswolds and Gloucestershire with David Cameron and Giles Corren. I don't really want to share Herefordshire with others. Several times over that sun-drenched weekend I sat in the garden or outside a country pub drinking in the sheer beauty of the British countryside and feeling glad I didn't have to share it with many people. I don't even actually live there and I want to keep it from 'incomers', so I can only imagine how the locals feel when a bunch of London dickheads like me turn up. To be honest, I doubt I strike fear into the hearts of the people of Herefordshire: they know I'll go away again, having spent lots of money on old books and 'authentic' local produce. Londoners are part of the problem though, they might not 'come over here and take our jobs', but they do buy holiday homes and retire to the countryside reducing the stock of affordable housing, or pushing up house prices in general. Unable to afford to live in the countryside, the young migrate to the cities and the countryside becomes a haven for retirees and holiday makers. Of course in working countryside, someone still has to do the labour, so immigrant labour is brought in because only immigrants will suffer the living conditions that the associated wage will allow. Of course the countryside's affluent new residents - just like me - don't want to share it with incomers and the most obvious incomers are those who don't speak the same language, so they become the focus of fear and loathing. Certain politicians look to exploit that natural fear of others, stating that it's the cause of our problems rather than a symptom of some of them. Perhaps not surprisingly I saw a reasonable number of very large 'Leave' posters as I drove around the countryside (note: that is very different from a large number of reasonable ones). I understand the desire to preserve our green and pleasant land, I feel it keenly, but I cannot legislate to keep Londoners out of Herefordshire, I can only rely on their natural laziness. Besides which, as I have already intimated, outsiders bring a much needed chunk of the wealth and labour into the county. 

Since that weekend, I have tried to listen to the arguments of people who want our country to cecede from the European Union, and the only concrete one I have actually heard beyond some vague notion of 'taking back control' (as if our country is suddenly going to become palpably more democratic) is so that we can control immigration. It's the word 'control' that is key here; I think many people who may vote for it would be wildly disappointed should it come to pass. The talk of Australian-style points systems give the lie to any assertion that Brexit would mean an end to immigration, and those who fear immigration are not going to be comforted by the fact that the people coming in to the country are better qualified to take their jobs. Unfortunately subtleties of the argument such as this are not even hinted at in the idiotic shouting match that will determine the future of our country. I find the level of debate (especially the level to which the old right wing trick of simply dismissing any fact that is inconvenient has been employed) so depressing I tend to turn off. I increasingly look for escape and find myself spending more time reading the one work of old science fiction I did bring back from Herefordshire. It is a book written in 1978, partly about a colony in space (of course), but mainly about a cynical cabal of coporations (one called 'International News' owned by a belligerent old Australian man) who ferment (and fund) a series popular nationalist revolts against a benevolent but slightly ineffective international government so that the weakened national governments that result will be no barrier to the power of the corporations. What fanciful ideas they had in the seventies: who could imagine a cynical elite blaming a political organisation for social problems that they themselves are at least partly responsible? And seeking to gain more power though it? 

Who indeed. 

Parental Responsibility

I got in a Twitter spat. It wasn't really a spat as such, more like a half-arsed argument that happens sporadically and in 140 characters or less. I can see why people get pulled into these things: there's the compulsion of trying to complete a comprehensive argument through a series of short questions. Un/fortunately this particular conversation petered out because I: 

a) had a lot of work to do

b) got a bit bored 

c) discovered, on going back to pick up the thread again, that my conversant was some kind of weird natural law ideologue and left it at that. 

I had started this post before this all happened, but the argument is fundamentally the same, it's just here I have put it in complete sentences and paragraphs (and bothered to finish it), which in my opinion is a much better way to construct an argument. 

On that day a man went to the high court to defend his right to be utterly selfish (and won). At least, as far as I can see, that's his motivation. His interview on the Today programme that morning was one of those events that leaves you wondering whether a person has ever stopped to listen to what they are actually saying. His argument was broadly the usual libertarian rant about the state telling him what to do, but the justifications were amazing. He claimed that those of his children who go to a 'non-selective' fee paying school (surely by dint of the fact that it requires fees, it is selective) have shorter terms and yet the schools have better results than state schools. Of course the key point there (apart from the one about the school actually being selective) is that whilst the terms may be shorter, they are uninterrupted. Also I can't see shortening the terms of state schools being popular with the many other parents who struggle to find childcare for the existing holidays. 

The other part of his argument was that because his children have a good attendance record the rest of the time, they should be allowed to miss two weeks of school. I imagine this is a logic that he would not tolerate elsewhere in society. 

If I never drive under the influence of alcohol, but a few pints down one day, find that my child needs a lift to a friend's house, given that I know I am a good driver, I know the route and I have a good track record with drink driving, should I be able to exempt myself from prosecution? Even if I were to accidentally hit one of this man's children on that journey (maybe one of the ones he doesn't care about enough to send to a fee paying school), that's just an unfortunate consequence of the child being in/near the road and not because I broke the law. Right? This is clearly a preposterous argument; no one would defend their right to drink and drive (although it's not so many years since people would have done), but the principle is the same: if a law exists, who gets to decide that it is unreasonable? The initial answer given by my friend on Twitter was correct: 'we do', unfortunately when qualifying the 'we' bit was when he got all weird and nonsensical. We do agree on what laws are reasonable by two methods: 

1. voting for and lobbying the politicians who make them

2. testing the law in court. 

Clearly our man on the radio had decided on the latter course, and I'm afraid this is the bit that I think is rather selfish of him. I don't object to him taking his child out of school (I think it's stupid, but I'll come to that), but I do object to him attempting to change the law because he didn't want to pay a fine he could easily afford. If he thought the law was unjust, he could have campaigned against it or set up a petition to establish the unpopularity of the law and the desire for it to change. Instead I imagine he decided that as he knows what is best for his children (the monotonous chant of all his apologists), that must mean he also knows what is best for everyone else's children. He took his case to court and won, so now parents much less 'responsible' than him have an excuse to disrupt their childrens' education (and potentially the education of others in the same class) because he wanted to prove a point. Furthermore, the government has already said that it will change the law to make sure that the legal loophole he has opened by this court case will be closed again, so that's a whole bunch of civil servants' time plus the various sittings of parliament that we will all have to pay for, just so this guy could have his 15 minutes. Indeed the likelihood is that by challenging a law that he saw as infringing on his rights as a parent, he'll probably end up with an even more restrictive law. Well done, here's the sound of one hand clapping.

In many ways this is just the law working as is intended: the courts challenge the detail of the legislation and the legislation is modified to accommodate the weaknesses exposed by the legal process. As part of the social contract implicit in being the citizen of any country, we agree to abide by the laws and to accept the consequences of the laws; if we collectively agree that they are unreasonable, then we change them. Anyone who thinks that we can live together without engaging in such a social contract is either deluded, an anarchist or both. We learn about this at school, not necessarily by negotiating our own social contract, but by abiding by the rules and facing our punishment if we break them. As we grow up we gradually learn how those laws are agreed and how we can negotiate them. It is not a simple relationship and we all navigate it as best we can. There will always be things that we personally think are unjust and we have to find our ways of negotiating these, from our first detention* onwards. However, if someone in authority comes along and says that the rules do not need to apply, that we can just opt out of the ones we don't like, how do we learn to engage properly with them? We grow up thinking that we can always be excused, that we are exceptional, that we don't need to engage with society because we can change the law on a whim to suit our personal preference. We grow up believing in the primacy of selfishness. 

* detentions probably aren't allowed any more because some parent who knows what's best objected to them. 

Personal

In the work I do with computer based systems, I am constantly trying to stop myself from anthropomorphising the systems I am talking about. When explaining how a certain process works, it is all too easy to say "because the system sees x, it decides y". It instantly brings a process into a familiar context, allowing the listener/reader to empathise with the 'decision' the system has to make and therefore rationalise the reasons for the outcome. Unfortunately, this kind of language reinforces in the mind of the listener the concept of the system having understanding of the context in which it makes 'decisions', or at least the capacity to understand it, rather than simply producing a binary reaction (or a complex series of binary reactions) to the data presented to it. People want to believe in the intransigence or irrationality of computers because that is easier than trying to fathom the flaw in the governing logic that has led to an incorrect 'decision'. We seem hell bent on ascribing intelligence to machines that are a long way from genuine intelligence; on a superficial level it aides our understanding of process but at a deeper level it undermines a complete understanding of what is actually happening. It pushes us towards a tendency to excuse systemic problems as quirks or eccentricities. 

One of my least favourite occurrences of anthropomorphisation is in reference to evolution, where the phrase "evolution has given x species y ability" is rife. Evolution gives nothing, ever. Evolution is not some benevolent deity handing down useful physical attributes from on high, it is simply a process by which the organisms least well suited to an environment do not survive, eventually leaving only those best suited to it. The cheetah can run fast because all the slow ones died of starvation; gazelles can fun fast because all the slow ones got eaten; humans can run fast because they invented performance enhancing drugs. The point is that evolution did not waltz along one day and say "oh cheetahs, you look hungry, let me make you faster" because evolution is not a deity. We simply choose to represent it as such because the process is perhaps both too simple and too complex, and seemingly random (and possibly too brutal) to summarise. The obvious inference to draw from the anthropomorphisation of evolution would be that we are simply trying to replace God. However, I don't think this is the case, rather I think our ancestors obsession with gods was simply another manifestation of this same impulse; we have always had the desire to explain the complex by thinking of it as the product of sentience. This says a lot about our relationships with our fellow beings: we believe them to be fundamentally incomprehensible, but in that we believe them to be incredibly complex. Because the unknowability of our fellow beings is tempered by the familiarity of recognition in the commonality of our species, we wish to apply that familiarity to other aspects of our universe in order to compensate for its incomprehensible complexity. The anthropomorphisation of natural (and manmade) systems (in the form of a god or a more informal association) is a way of bringing comfort to the knowledge that we will never know or fully understand our universe. What it should never do is act as an excuse for ignorance.