There's a war on

I'm struck by how little discussion, in academic life and in the media, there is of the role and actions of the UK armed forces. We are, after all, at war in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and British troops, 'insurgents' and local civilians are losing their lives in ever-increasing numbers. During the Cold War there was a lot of discussion of how the armed forces should be organised and deployed, what their role and composition should be, and who our enemies really were. Now, with both main political parties largely agreed on 'defence' policy, and with no serious military threat to face, there is little comment or academic analysis, particularly in the social sciences.
This is strange: the role of the military in the Cold War was far more prescribed and delineated by treaty agreements, parliamentary committees and external scrutiny of the MoD. The possibility that the government could send the armed forces into conflict without securing support from parliament and the country was unthinkable; whatever one may have thought of the Falkland's conflict it must be admitted that Thatcher had a fair amount public opinion on her side. But now the government deploys troops in Afghanistan without any public debate or discussion. Why Afghanistan? There are, of course, many reasons, although the ostensible one provided by HMG is implausible. Similarly with Iraq. And the impending conflict with Iran. How did we get to this state of affairs? It may be, for all that I find it a depressing conclusion, that the support of much of the population for our government's military forays abroad is actually there, in the sense that many people don't care anymore, and aren't much interested: silence is assent.
I would like to think that UK academics will take more notice of war and conflict: ignoring it as a topic for debate in universities is part of the problem. But whether or not that will make much difference remains to be seen.

Lichtenberg: 'A handful of soldiers is always better than a mouthful of arguments.' Notebook E 1775-6

Keep practising

I would like to be a proper football fan, but I’ve never really got the hang of it. My partner asked me today, as we watched some of the World Cup, what the offside rule is. I have a rather vague idea about this – I know it is to do with where people are on the pitch – but that’s about it, and I confessed my ignorance. I never ‘learned football’ properly, but have managed for years to ‘get by’ with a little knowledge and a lot of luck. But even if I had had the rules of the game drilled into me at school it would have done little good for understanding today’s game: rules change and conventions shift with time. That means you need to keep up your ‘game’. To be able to talk football you need to spend at least some portion of your time practising your lines, and practising your delivery of those lines.
There is some irony in this: it is so ‘un-English’ to practice. Flanders and Swann’s ‘A Song of Patriotic Prejudice’, about why the English are superior to all other nations, summed this up nicely:
“And all the world over, each nation's the same.
They've simply no notion of playing the game.
They argue with umpires, they cheer when they've won
And they practice beforehand which ruins the fun!”

Lichtenberg loved England, living there in 1770 and again from 1774 to 1775 but had a sharp eye for the local scene:
“If countries were named after words you first hear when you go there, England would have to be called Damn It.” Notebook F: 1776 – 1779

Flag waving

I'm sure that the last World Cup that England participated in didn't precipitate this amount of flag waving. Everywhere you look there are English (St George's cross) flags - cars, houses, my canteen at work, schools. Is it that the English are now more nationalistic, more concerned and insecure about their national identity? Perhaps it is a reaction to England's lack of international success; as if the owning of, and waving of, a flag will have some kind of collective effect on the team's performance? My, perhaps overly cynical, impression is that this is a phenomenon emerging from an availability of cheaply produced flags and an increased number of competing media outlets vying for the attention of an audience that is of a fixed size. Making one's media product more 'patriotic' might make it more popular and increase its circulation.
At a certain point, and probably quite soon, I'll run out of Lichtenberg aphorisms to include in this blog, but not yet. G C has something useful to say about patriotic publications:
"From the love of fatherland they write stuff that gets our dear fatherland laughed at." (Notebook E: 1775 - 1776)
Although perhaps it isn't quite so funny these days.

Newton and Lichtenberg

I went to the London and South East Region (LASER - we all love acronyms) Newton user group meeting last Friday. I know next to nothing about programming, hardware, or software engineering, but I do know a good design when I see it; that's why I still use an Apple Newton. However, I am very impressed with what people can do with an old, and rather obscure, operating system: the range of tweaks and mods, not to mention the production of new software for the Newton is amazing. I was particularly surprised to see the Newton interface running on a new Apple laptop - quite spooky, like seeing a ghost from the past.
Lichtenberg, being a pre-eminent Enlightenment intellectual, knew Newton's work and was impressed by it. However, unlike Alexander Pope (who wrote this epitaph for Newton: "Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night; God said 'Let Newton be' and all was light."), Lichtenberg places Newton in a wider social and cultural context, and sees Newton's genius as a product of his surroundings as well as being an individual achievement. Here's what he says:
"Let us take Sir Isaac Newton. All discoveries are due to chance, whether towards the end or the beginning of the process, for otherwise reasonable people could sit down and make discoveries as one sits down and writes a letter. The imagination spots a similarity and reason tests it and finds it true: that is discovery. That is how Sir Isaac Newton was. I have not the slightest reason to doubt that there existed before him and after him, in England and without, and that there exists now minds superior to his in ability, just as I have no reason to doubt that the peasant who gazes in admiration at the preacher would preach better than he if he had studied and acquired the knack. Opportunity and occasion are the discoverer and ambition the improver, confidence in one's own strength is strength, in marriage and in the world of learning." From Notebook F: 1776 - 1779

What are waste books?

Waste books - an idea taken from Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799). Lichtenberg was a very early blogger, writing down his thoughts, plans, reflections and ruminations on all matters in his waste books, which he kept from 1765 until his death. He also borrowed the name from the contemporary English practice of businesses writing down their daily takings in 'waste books' prior to being entered in neatly written, permanent ledgers. Lichtenberg gave each of these books a letter from the alphabet; at the time of his death he was filling up book L.
Amongst his very many achievements Lichtenberg was responsible for significant discoveries in the physics of electricity (most notably the Lichtenberg Figure which records electrical discharge patterns), and the invention of the standard European paper size (e.g. A4, based on the ratio of 1: square root of two).
However, it is his waste books, and the aphorisms these contain, that he is best known for. Indeed, Sigmund Freud and Ludwig Wittgenstein both considered Lichtenberg to be a significant influence on their work.
I can't hope to provide material as good as Lichtenberg's in this blog, but hopefully there will be some things of interest to some people. Of course, the only way to finish this first post is with something from Lichtenberg:
"The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted." From Notebook H, 1784-88