Variations on a theme

This is the time of the year when some of us like to “take stock” – so I have been looking at the 180-odd blogposts of 2014, trying to identify patterns, high-points and…. deficiencies.

There were many more thematic postings than in previous years – this time last year, for example, I began a series of ten posts on Romanian culture which occupied the early weeks of 2014 and became the basis for my first E-book. The blog  then moved on to a series of reflections about political and professional power, drawing particularly on the writings of such diverse individuals as Anthony Jay, Peter Mair, Christopher Lasch and Dennis Healey which, coincidentally but symbolically, presaged the death in March of one of Britain’s most iconic politicians, Tony Benn. The forty subsequent posts on the Scottish referendum debate (collected in an E-book – The Independence Argument) were, in a sense, “variations on a theme”.   

After some musings about the absence of “European writing, I had moved back by June to knaw on my “change the world” bone – which made me think that it is perhaps time now to make a new E-book from the draft Guide for the Perplexed paper with which I have been playing around for more than a decade. This might help properly launch the new Mapping the common ground website which has been lying dormant after I explored its possible name and purpose in several posts in the summer.

Clearly I seem to have reached an impasse with that paper - first drafted in 2001 – and I’m beginning to suspect that one reason is the tension between the “rationality” model - with which I was imbued by my education - and the richness of other prisms which have been attracting me in my effort to make sense of the world. It is not an accident that the sub-title of that new website refers to multiple perspectives!

Chris Pollitt’s small book, “State of the State” (2000), had first brought me up against Mary Douglas’ “Grid-group” theory (reminding me of Amatsai Etzioni’s scintillating dissection of our approach to Social Problems into three basic schools). But it was Mike Hulme’s book – Why We Disagree about Climate Change – understanding controversy, inaction and opportunity - which really opened my eyes in July to the full potential of the sort of post-modernist “discourse analysis” which I had held until then  in such disdain……..

Most radicals take a “mechanical” view of the world (Gareth Morgan’s Images of Organisation is still the best read on the metaphors we use) – they assume, that is, that societies and systems can and should be diagnosed and “fixed”. Political parties have operated on this pre(o)mise for most of the past century. For more than a couple of decades, however, a lot of serious thinkers have been questioning the simplistic nature of social interventions driven by this principle – pointing to the lessons from chaos science and systems theory….. Picking up on this theme, one of July’s posts featured an energetic old activist called Grace Lee Boggs who argued that protests these days need a new model -

I think it’s really important that we get rid of the idea that protest will create change. The idea of protest organizing, as summarized by [community organizer] Saul Alinsky, is that if we put enough pressure on the government, it will do things to help people.

We don’t realize that that kind of organizing worked only when the government was very strong, when the West ruled the world, relatively speaking.

But with globalization and the weakening of the nation-state, that kind of organizing doesn’t work.

We need to do what I call visionary organizing. Recognize that in every crisis, people do not respond like a school of fish. Some people become immobilized. Some people become very angry, some commit suicide, and other people begin to find solutions.

And visionary organizers look at those people, recognize them and encourage them, and they become leaders of the future.

This took me back to one of the seminal books for me - Robert Quinn’s Change the World, produced in 1996 and an excellent antidote for those who are still fixated on the expert model of change imagining it can be achieved by “telling”, “forcing” or by participation. Quinn (a neglected thinker) exposes the last for what it normally is - a form of manipulation – and effectively encourages us, through examples, to have more faith in people.

Normal blog service was resumed after the Scottish referendum result in late September with a long post - Some Notes on a crisis – on a reading list which, with a couple of exceptions, shows the extent to which the mechanistic model still dominates the debate about the crisis.

An apocalyptic note entered the blog in October with a couple of posts – Are we going to Hell? and Have the Kleptomaniacs and Liars really won? the last of which itemised 13 vicious social trends.

The year ended, however, on a fairy-tale note – with the incredible victory of modest Klaus Iohannis in the Romanian Presidential elections.

But one important conclusion from this initial overview of the year’s posts seems to be that I can and should continue with the thematic approach to posts – using this year’s posts on “changing the world” as a basis rather than the essay on guiding the perplexed. But with a strong dash of the post-modern material on “frame analysis” etc a list of which can be found in the post on Stories We Tell.

I haven't been offering as many paintings on my posts - for which my apologies. I will try harder.....
This is one of my favourite Bulgarian aquarellists - Grigor Naidenov - and I have just discovered it in a small cache of stuff bundled with some old calendars of Bulgarian art which I brought down from the crowded Bucharest flat.......

Attentiveness

Good resolutions seem to have gone out of fashion – and end-of-year reflections seem to have been surrendered, vicariously, to journalists who remind us, instead, of the world’s key events and do a round up, for example, of “best books of the year”.

Whatever happened to the “mindfulness” about which we were being exhorted not so long ago – let alone simple “attentiveness”?

Tim Parks - to whom I referred in the last post – asked recently what might be the most practical way he could lead his students to a greater attentiveness…......to help protect themselves from all those underlying messages that can shift one’s attitude without one’s being aware of it? I began to think about the way I read myself, about the activity of reading, what you put into it rather than what was simply on the page.

 Try this experiment, I eventually told them: from now on always read with a pen in your hands, not beside you on the table, but actually in your hand, ready, armed. And always make three or four comments on every page, at least one critical, even aggressive. Put a question mark by everything you find suspect. Underline anything you really appreciate. Feel free to write “splendid,” but also, “I don’t believe a word of it.” And even “bullshit.”

……it was remarkable how many students improved their performance with this simple stratagem. There is something predatory, cruel even, about a pen suspended over a text. Like a hawk over a field, it is on the lookout for something vulnerable. Then it is a pleasure to swoop and skewer the victim with the nib’s sharp point.

The mere fact of holding the hand poised for action changes our attitude to the text. We are no longer passive consumers of a monologue but active participants in a dialogue. Students would report that their reading slowed down when they had a pen in their hand, but at the same time the text became more dense, more interesting, if only because a certain pleasure could now be taken in their own response to the writing when they didn’t feel it was up to scratch, or worthy only of being scratched.

 Shades of the "slow books" concept I have been trying to arouse interest in.....

Revelations

My blog occasionally refers to the welcome relief my nomadic life of the past 24 years has given from the “noise” of television and newspapers but has not so far attempted to do justice to the wonderful effect which living a solitary life in a foreign country has. You experience and see things in a different and powerfully new way….   

Tim Park, for example, has from his mid 20s made his living in Italy as a translator and teacher of translation and has written a series of short pieces in the New York Review of Books about how this experience has affected his own writing

If you write a lot yourself obviously you become more curious about how certain effects can be achieved or avoided and with application over the years your sensibility is enhanced. In my case translation has been important. I came to Italy when I was twenty-five.

Living in a second language, I became more aware of how language drives and shapes thought. Translating and teaching translation forced me constantly to take texts to pieces in order to put them back together in my own tongue. I became very conscious of elements of style, if only because I felt the tension between the author’s habits and my own. Translating texts together with students, I have also had the benefit of discovering all the things they saw that I didn’t.

My combination of political and academic roles in the 70s and 80s had made me aware of the need to communicate more clearly – whether in words or text. When I moved in 1990 to work in ex-communist countries, the translation process made me even more more aware, for example, of the jargon we use….of how context shapes and alters the meaning we give to things…of the arbitrariness or “slipperiness” of words as TS Eliot put it -

“Words strain, 

Crack and sometimes break,

under the burden, 

Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, 

Decay with imprecision,

will not stay in place, 

Will not stay still.”

Paul Cairney is a Scottish academic (in my field of policy analysis) whose blog is always worth reading. One of his most recent posts is a useful analysis of his thoughts on presenting a paper in Japan through interpreters which he concludes thus -

In short, if we take the idea of translation seriously, it is not just about a technical process in which words are turned into a direct equivalent in another language and you expect the audience to be informed or do the work to become informed. It is about thinking again about what we think we know, and how much of that knowledge we can share with other people.

Musing Away

Today I celebrate the 1000th post of the blog I started 5 years ago. 

It’s been quite a journey - 1,300 pages of text and pictures covering those topics which took my fancy – the hallmark being the exclusion of the noise of current affairs…..and sparked off by the books and articles I was reading (and sometimes writing).

Initially it was called “Carpathian Musings” by virtue of the dramatic location of the old mountain house south of Brasov which I had acquired in 2000 – a decade into my nomadic wanderings in Central Europe and at the start of what was to become 8 years of nomadic work (on capacity development) in Central Asia.

In 2007 I felt it was time to get back to Central Europe and find out how places like Bulgaria and Romania were dealing with the challenge of transition. The Bulgarian work …..which I described in the 2008 paper Learning from Experience had aroused my interest in websites and E-learning and was the incentive to set up first a website for the various papers I had written – Publicadminreform - and then the blog whose title was broadened in 2010 or so….

Earlier this year, I published two small E-books based on the posts I had done on Romania and Scotland in the past year - Mapping Romania and The Independence Argument.

Now I have just brought out a 200 page tribute to Bulgarian painters - Exploring Bulgaria thro its Art – which is a major expansion of the 2010 booklet “Introducing the Bulgarian Realists – getting to know the Bulgarians through their paintings”. Sixty names have been added as have some 140 pages of the blogposts I have written on the subject in the past few years……  Many of these posts were written as I travelled around Bulgaria in 2011/12 visiting the various municipal galleries in the regions (and tasting the wines!) - so readers will get an unusual sense of the country although it does not pretend to be the sort of analysis you can find in Mapping Romania.

You’ll find a statement of intent at the start of each of the 5 volumes of Balkan and Carpathian Musings available in the E-book section of my new website Mapping the Common Ground.

I have not sought so far any publicity for this website – which is a fairly unusual library of material useful for those who are unhappy with the direction modern civilisation has been taking and who believe in the importance of people coming together and exploring how best to change things for the better……Libraries, after all, are places for quiet, calm reflection…….  

Update

Just loved the 15 “ailments” which Pope Francis has apparently identified in the Vatican bureaucracy. He could be speaking about the leading denizens of any large organisation – most of whom need being brought down to earth…….They include these six -

1 Feeling immortal, immune or indispensable. “A Curia that doesn’t criticise itself, that doesn’t update itself, that doesn’t seek to improve itself, is a sick body.”

7) Being rivals or boastful. “When one’s appearance, the colour of one’s vestments or honorific titles become the primary objective of life.”

9) Committing the “terrorism of gossip”. “It’s the sickness of cowardly people who, not having the courage to speak directly, talk behind people’s backs.”

10) Glorifying one’s bosses. “It’s the sickness of those who court their superiors, hoping for their benevolence. They are victims of careerism and opportunism, they honour people who aren’t God.”

13) Wanting more. “When the apostle tries to fill an existential emptiness in his heart by accumulating material goods, not because he needs them but because he’ll feel more secure.”

15) Seeking worldly profit and showing off. “It’s the sickness of those who insatiably try to multiply their powers and to do so are capable of calumny, defamation and discrediting others, even in newspapers and magazines, naturally to show themselves as being more capable than others.”

Expectations

As a politician from my late 20s, I quickly learned how soon public expectations turn to dust – although my first speeches “on the stump” (ie in the open air) did warn people that I could make no promises (I would generally have to stop myself from adding “except blood and toil”!).

I found that such an honest approach paid off – and from 1968 I had an undefeated record of 8 public electoral victories and a further string of 8 consecutive successes in the contests which were held immediately after the elections by the ruling Labour party (of which I was part) to decide the key positions.

It was as such a “seasoned” politician (I love the bon viveur sense this epithet gives – as in “add some seasoning”!) that I was initially elated and then deflated by Obama…..

But I was still moved by yesterday’s Presidential inauguration of Klaus Iohannis here in Bucharest – first his speech to the unrepentant parliamentarian sinners with its declaration that their stable needed cleansing….then the motorcade to the Cotroceni Palace we had passed just last week - to accept the baton from ever loquacious Basescu. 
What a contrast Transylvanian Iohannis makes – with his typically slow delivery! But it was this modesty and circumspection which won him his highly unexpected victory last month and which gives many Romanians the first hope they have had for some time…..        

In 25 years, the Romanians have had only one brief five-year respite from the insidious poison which the plutocrats (regardless of political label) have been injecting into their veins. Iliescu – who led the palace revolution this time 25 years ago - may have been personally incorruptible but all his minions quickly took the silver; and University Professor Constantinescu simply proved unequal to the task of reform. By coincidence, the country’s first post-communist Prime Minister Petr Roman was talking volubly on his mobile (in French) in the English Bookshop at midday – but I failed to identify him. Otherwise I would have approached him to remind him that some 24 years ago, he gave me an hour-long interview…….     

Romanian television has these days been playing images of the uprising 25 years ago and one of the links carried a striking 5 point contrast of life 25 years on – as typified by cars, communications, television channels, churches and….. malls. Petrol, for example, was then rationed (I remember the hassle driving in 1992 the 650 kms from the border down to Bucharest) whereas now the cars block the pavements everywhere.

Nudging the politicians out??

The World Bank used to be a name to conjure with. Its keynote annual “World Development” reports blazed an ideological trail in the 90s – particularly its infamous 1997 neo-liberal attack on the State to which Japan actually issued a specially-commissioned riposte.

The Bank’s 2014 World Development Report - entitled “Mind, Society and Behaviour” – is a showcase for the newer type of behavioural economics which the Bank would have us believe has replaced the discredited system of economics. A lot of people – such as those at Real World Economics – would disagree…..

  

The World Bank (WB) no longer seems to arouse the controversy and anger it once did – presumably because there are now so many more worthy targets such as real bankers and plutocrats. Twenty years ago my bookshelves were stocked with exposes of the ecological, social and economic damage WB lending policies were inflicting on developing countries. Special websites and books with such names as “50 years is enough” were dedicated to the abolition of both the Bank and the International Monetary Fund. 
“The Washington Consensus” was a phrase we angrily splattered our conversations with – denoting the intellectual homogeneity, it not hegemony, the Bank exercised over the economics “discipline”.

                

Successive WB Presidents toned down the neo-liberal rhetoric and skilfully co-opted a lot of the critics – particularly the NGOs. So things are quieter now – but be under no illusions. Behind the scenes, the Bank’s largesse toward the academic community ensures that economists continue to act as castrated  lapdogs of prevailing power. And over in Brussels, the Economic Commission exercises the same sort of lobotomy surgery of most academics who stray into its territory….

Indeed the recent fashion for governments to “nudge” their citizens to various forms of desired behaviour makes one wonder why we bother with politics any more. They are, after all, just so much unnecessary grit in the machinery….  .whose simplistic interventions really should be challenged with rather more effective systems of challenge than most parliaments can manage these submissive days.

But don't let me put you off from what seems quite a good read - the RSA link  (the second above) is a serious treatment of the report.......and the Real World Economics collective continues to gives us much-needed and bracing home truths eg this thoughtful piece Challenging the current economics curriculum by the Vice-Chancellor of one of Pakistan’s Institutes of Development Economics

Bucharest's contrasts

The Sala Radio is one of Bucharest’s best-kept secrets – with great acoustics and the recitals broadcast on the radio. Its Radio Chamber Orchestra kept us on our seats last night with first a Romanian composer (Toduţă)’s charming piece - violin Concerto No.1 for String Orchestra. Then JS Bach : Concerto no. 1 in A minor for Violin and Orchestra, BWV 1041 F – with virtuoso soloist CRISTINA ANGHELESCU; and then a rollicking Mendelssohn : Symphony No. IV in A major, op 90 – Italian. 
The young conductor - Mattei POP - cut a gangly but effective figure on the podium

Pensioners can get a 3 month season ticket for 35 euros – that’s about 1 euro a performance! Little wonder they are such afficandos! And one of Bucharest’s ancient trams (number 24) takes you right there (from Piate Viitoreii). 
About time Bucharest’s dreadful butcher mayor took time off from destroying the past and looked at the spanking new trams Sofia is adding to its fleet……
Romania's best classic station - Radio  Muzical - is playing here now

At the opposite end of experience are the Bucharest shopping malls – I thought the Sofia ones were bad but the gargantuan Cotroceni one just across the Gara de Nord area is a really aggressive slap in the face. Typically, it has no information desk or display and is a therefore a nightmare to navigate. 

We had walked then bussed to see Robert Duval in the film The Judge which gives a nice portrait of small-town America and also has great performances from Robert Downey Jr and Bob Thornton. On the way home, in the heaving bodies and dark, we mistook a number 11 tram for a number 1 and had to retrack at the spaghetti junction around the equally offensive and gargantuan Carrefour. At this station, the tracks run at two levels – and, typically, there were no signs to guide us to the upper track….The journey was therefore completed with a combination of foot, bus and foot….Hats off again to Mayor (butcher) Oprescu! 

The drawing is Daumier's Gargantua!

Access to National Galleries

I’ve been a bit sniffy in the past about Sofia’s National Gallery of Art – so let me take my hat off to them for their display of digital facilities. I was a bit annoyed on Thursday to be denied access to an exhibition of Nouveau Art’s Nikola Rainov (for reasons of some private party) but was placated by being given the opportunity to use a smart phone to access some 200 watercolours of the past century which have not so far been available to the public – along with useful information about the painters.

This is part of a wider project of gradual digitization of the entire archive of the museum in 2015.

I managed to see the Rainov exhibition the following day – you don’t often see his work. And it was accompanied by a superb small catalogue – sadly almost entirely monolingual.

Running in a neighbouring room, was another delightful small exhibition of urban life here a hundred years ago – with a charming video of an elderly lady displaying various artefacts from the period.

And my ever-ready camera was able to catch this shot of a very sharply-dressed elderly visitor to the gallery…..

Lack of translation is one of two features which used to distinguish the National Gallery from the municipal one across the road – whose catalogues have been bilingual for quite some years. The second feature is pricing – the national Gallery used to charge 5 euros (now 3 – with pensioners half price). The municipal gallery was free – until last year when a nominal charge was introduced (with pensioners free). 

It reminded me of one of my political colleagues in the 1970s Janey Buchan (who became an MEP in the 1979), She was a tireless advocate in the 60s of the rights of ordinary people (before the days of the Consumer Association) and was particularly strong on the importance of free entry to museums and art galleries, Thatcher put pressure on to introduce charges (although the British Museum held out) but entry was made free again in 2001 – with significant subsequent increases in visitors.

And I was glad to see that the Neil Mc Gregor, the renowned Director of the British Museum had declined an invitation to direct New York’s Metropolitan Museum because it charged an entry fee.   

The attitude of Sofia City Gallery is yet another proof of the superiority of municipal to central government