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Archive for April, 2025

Should we try democracy?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on April 30, 2025| Leave a Comment »

I”m currently reading this astonishing book by Josephine Quinn challenging the whole idea of “civilisational thinking”. She makes an extremely well researched and detailed case for how we got to where we are now, through hundreds of years of trade, travel, migration, and the rise and fall of power bases in cities and lands across Asia, Africa and what we now call Europe. It’s an astonishing read.

In her chapter about Athenian democracy, which is often held up as the standard “the West” claims to pay due to, she shows just how different democracy was there from the versions of it countries say they have now.

It feels as if our current versions of democracy are in crisis. They are distorted by populism, which seems to generate space for new waves of autocracy and fascism. And they are corrupted by money. It’s becoming clearer than ever that wealth buys the governments that the wealthy want. There is soaring inequality, and a decades long grinding down of working people and standards of living as neoliberalism shovels money up from the bottom to the top, privatises the Commons, and pushes “deregulation” to escape any chance of being held to account for the actions of corporations and billionaires. Meanwhile the Public looks at the system and can’t see a political party which will address the real problems we face.

In the Athenian version of democracy, Josephine Quinn highlights three features which protected it from both populism and corruption (accepting it didn’t do that 100%) –

1) Lawmakers were chosen by lot, not by anyone voting for them. What, no voting?! Yep, the method was probably pretty similar to the way a jury is chosen. Jurors are selected by lot. Nobody votes for them.

2) Secondly, those chosen were paid to do the job for a year, so it remained (technically) open to everyone, not just the rich.

3) And, thirdly, they had to step down after a year, and be subject to an open public audit, to look at how they had acted during their term of service. In other words, every one of them was held to account.

    These three basic features were designed to protect democracy from the rich and the corrupt, and to engage the greatest number possible of citizens in the law making of the land.

    Of course, Athens was a pretty small town by current standards, and present day countries couldn’t manage assemblies of the entire population to gather and make decisions (although with modern online technologies, perhaps the geographical limits have been lifted)

    This is an entirely different vision of democracy. If we chose our “representatives” the same we choose jurors, if we paid them for their work, limited them to a single term in office, and held them to open public audit when they stood down, it would make it harder for the wealthy to buy elections and for lobbyists to corrupt politicians (who couldn’t be career politicians any more) – Can you imagine it?

    There are lots of other good ideas around the world which might improve democracy, from citizens assemblies and referendums creating a more participative democracy, to trials of different kinds of proportional representation, but none of these ideas are as radical as those we saw in place back when democracy was born.

    I mean it’s pretty thought provoking, isn’t it?

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    Can we stop killing now? Please

    Posted in Uncategorized on April 26, 2025| 1 Comment »

    On a recent visit to Saint Rémy de Provence I popped into the Musée de Morlaix where they were exhibiting the work of André Marchand. I’d never heard of him before, but he was one of a number of artists who made Provence their home. This particular painting really caught my eye. It’s entitled “La Guerre” (War) and he painted it in 1945. I mean this could have been painted yesterday. Maybe it’s not on the same scale as Picasso’s “Guernica” but, for me, it has a similar impact. André Marchand was so traumatised by what he witnessed in the Second World War, that, from that point on he decided he would include no men in his work. He kept that promise. Thereafter he painted women and scenes from Nature. He produced some truly beautiful work. I recommend researching him and checking out his paintings.

    But, this painting…..it immediately made me think of Gaza and Ukraine, yet those are only two of the areas of the world where military violence is being inflicted on women and children. How is that ever right, or justified? What kind of people are we to accept that it’s ok to send missiles, bombs and drones into houses, hospitals, refugee camps? To starve whole communities of food, medicines and fuel? To destroy whole neighbourhoods?

    I know the justification is that the “good guys” are trying to kill the “bad guys” but, seriously, we haven’t evolved beyond that kind of thinking? These terrible acts aren’t new. Was there ever time where warriors only fought other warriors, where soldiers only fought other soldiers? Not as far as I’m aware. Whole populations have always been slaughtered, beaten, and raped when fighters move in. It happened in ancient times. It certainly began to happen on a more industrial scale during the two World Wars, as cities were carpet bombed, and two Japanese cities were incinerated in seconds with the two nuclear bombs. It certainly continued through the destruction of whole communities, cities, forests, and farm land, in South East Asia, in Africa, and in the Middle East.

    A whole culture of “find the bad guys and destroy them” irrespective of “collateral damage” (what a horrendous expression!) caused by bombing residential areas, medical facilities, schools and camps. It’s a whole culture of extrajudicial killing. Identify who you believe to be guilty and kill them. No laws involved. No “due process”. No justice.

    There was a scene in the Yellowstone series which I saw recently where an indigenous American said –

    The United States has broken every rule it has ever made. From its first treaty with France to every treaty with us, to their last treaty with Iran. They only hold others to their rules. They make war when they want, where they want, they take what they want, then make rules that keep you from taking it back. They make rules for the slave and they make rules for the masters.

    I know it’s a work of fiction, but sometimes we need to turn to fiction to learn the real truths. It’s not only The United States which is acting this way. We see Israel doing it. We see Hamas doing it. We see it in far too many places around the globe. Are there any countries with clean hands?

    Can we just stop now?

    Can we evolve? Do better? And just stop killing.

    Do you think we could ever make international agreements to not act as judge, jury and executioner, but to adhere to some agreed rules if we really, really can’t resist the temptation to slaughter people?

    Could we make the world a better place? Or will we continue with the despicable tradition that victors in every conflict are those who inflict the greatest amount of suffering on others?

    We can be better than that. It’s not hard to find daily acts of kindness, of compassion and care. It’s not hard to find people helping each other out when crises or calamities occur. It’s not hard to find people prepared to make agreements, to form mutually beneficial relationships and to work together to make their lives better.

    What kind of human beings do we want to be?

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    Left or Right?

    Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 25, 2025| Leave a Comment »

    I saw this post on Instagram recently, posted by a French philosophy site. I’ll translate it for you.

    “To be on the Left, is to, first of all, think about the world, then your country, then those close to you, and then yourself. To be on the Right, it’s the inverse”

    Deleuze is one of my favourite, and most fascinating French philosophers. He seemed to have the ability to get you to see something in a completely new light. This is one of his more political sayings, and, it strikes me, it’s as true today as it was when he said it. In fact, it’s even more true.

    Every populist Right wing autocrat we’ve witnessed in the world appears to put themselves first, then their close contacts, then their country, and, finally, if at all, the world. Whether we’re thinking of Trump, of Boris Johnston, of Orban, Putin, Farage, or Milei, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that they speak and act in their own interests first, some of them to the point of pathological narcissism.

    And yet, everywhere, the Left seems to have lost its way. We’re going through a phase where “Left” has become a pejorative term (frequently paired with “hard” or “extreme”) and we see one Right wing populist group after another achieving power, with little effective opposition.

    Can we turn this around and embrace Deleuze’s priorities instead? Think first of the world, the planet we are desecrating, polluting and over-heating? Can we think of ourselves as a species, with ALL human beings our fellow citizens? Can we put that before thinking of countries, and seek to build, not destroy alliances and truly “integrative” , genuinely mutually beneficial relationships between countries? Can we then campaign for societies which serve the interests and needs of neighbours, our friends, colleagues and families, over the interests of billionaires and corporations? Can we then think how each of us can contribute to making this a better world for us all to live in?

    Does that sound radical to you?

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    A sense of purpose

    Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 20, 2025| Leave a Comment »

    I came across this chart the other day. Isn’t it fascinating? It charts the percentage of college “freshmen” saying that either “”Developing a meaningful life philosophy” or “Being well off Financially” was considered by them to be either an “essential” or “very important” objective.

    Basically it shows an almost complete reversal of positions of these two objectives between 1965 and 2020. Now, less than half give “developing a meaningful life philosophy” compared to over 80% of them saying “being well off financially” is essential or very important. Back in the 60s, these figures were almost exactly reversed and the crossover point in the chart seems to be in the latter half of the 70s.

    I’ve long held the belief that Thatcher and Reagan, as the main drivers of neoliberal economics, were at the turning point in our societies. I guess I’m part of what is called the “baby boomer” generation, and it seems to many of us that life has got harder and more precarious for most people in our communities over our lifetimes. It seems that Public Services have gone into steep decline, that wages have stagnated, house prices have soared, and jobs have become less secure.

    What went wrong?

    When we hear the present generation of politicians in the UK, and even more so in the USA, put forward policies which are every bit as neoliberal as Thatcher and Reagan, is it any surprise that this steep decline has been experienced everywhere. Inequality is higher now than it has been for decades. The whole economy has been “financialised” where we’ve been led to believe that the finance sector, and the rich, are the wealth creators, while, actually, their wealth is being created out of wealth, not out of productivity. The goods and services produced now seem cheaper and nastier than they were. The heroes of contemporary society are those who have grabbed the most for themselves over the shortest period of time and the huge numbers of billionaires and millionaires can’t find anything left to spend their money on except ridiculously expensive houses, yachts and private jets, so they’ve turned to buying political influence instead.

    When the goals of society are to promote the wealth of the wealthiest and to deny, as Thatcher did, that “society” even exists, has, surprise, surprise, led to exponentially increasing amounts of mental and chronic physical illness.

    Maybe Iain McGilchrist would point to likelihood that giving predominance to the left cerebral hemisphere over the right will have been, at least in part, at the root of this problem. But it’s a profound economic problem too. We are still trapped by the delusions of neoliberalism with its so called “free markets” which aren’t free at all, and “trickle down economics” which never trickle down.

    We need something better. We need to break free of the neoliberals and the populist far right.

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    Who are we?

    Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 17, 2025| Leave a Comment »

    I’m reading “How the World made the West” by Josephine Quinn, a fascinating and mind expanding history of how the concept of “The West” arose. This paragraph really got me thinking –

    “The study of antiquity gives the lie to the idea that everyone is born with a natural, fixed ethnic identity, tied to specific other people by ancestry or ancestral territory. The concept is fundamentally incoherent anyway: at some level all humans share the same ancestry and territory, and decisions about where to draw lines across that shared heritage in time and space can only ever be arbitrary. But ethnic identification is also for the most part a relatively modern phenomenon, associated with modern levels of literacy, communication and mobility. Without these, communal identities tend to form on smaller scales. And despite their physical proximity to one another, links between the ‘Phoenician’ ports were relatively weak.”

    This reminds me of my experience working as a GP in the Irvine Valley back in the early 1980s. There were three small towns in the valley, Galston, Newmilns and Darvel. Although they seemed pretty similar in size, and even appearance, to the locals, especially the elderly locals they each had distinct characteristics. For example, one elderly woman told me a traditional saying was “Darvel for swanks, Newmilns for banks, Galston for guts” and another told me she was born in Galston but when she married she moved to Newmilns (two miles away), “But I couldnae staun it and had to come hame” – she couldn’t stand living in Newmilns and had to move back to Galston. Yet another, this time from Newmilns, told me the old piece of marriage advice she remembered was “If you can’t get a man, go to Galston and get a miner”. As Josephine Quinn writes, “communal identities tend to form on smaller scales”. 

    By the time I was working there, each of the towns had changed considerably, with mining and textile industries disappearing, and an increasing number of people moving to the valley and commuting for work. However, when I left in 1986 to take up a post in Edinburgh, a twenty something year old female patient asked me what Edinburgh was like. She had never been. I asked her if she usually went to Glasgow (there’s actually still quite a cultural divide between Scotland’s two largest cities), but she said no, she’d never been there either. I asked where she had been, and she told me she’d visited Ayr once. She definitely identified with place, not an ethnic group. 

    Anyone who has done even a small amount of genealogical research into their own family, pretty quickly finds that their ancestors come from a wide range of towns, or even countries, and those who use on the DNA testing genealogy services, find that they have percentages of their DNA which can be traced to several countries around the world. 

    Josephine Quinn makes the point that DNA discoveries have undermined the concept of separate, distinct, or “pure” races, and that her research in ancient history (her book focuses on the period from 1500 BC to 1500 AD) undermines the concept of competing “civilisations”. As she describes each period, time and time again, she shows that trade and migration play a key role in the spread of ideas, technologies and innovations, whilst strengthening local cultures of belief and tradition. 

    Nothing we are familiar with today would be possible without a long, long history of migration, communication and trade.

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    Nostalgia for good vibrations from America

    Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 13, 2025| 1 Comment »

    Yesterday I heard The Beach Boys song, Good Vibrations, on the radio and it took me right back to my youth. It came out in 1966….that’ll be 60 years next year! I’d only be 12 when I bought the single. I’ve always loved it. It was innovative and it’s aged especially well. I enjoy it now as much as I ever did.

    But, here’s the thing. This time it evoked a certain sadness in me. Something it hasn’t done before. It wasn’t the sadness of getting old. Sure I can feel sad that my mortality is more obvious to me than it was when I was young, but surely that’s just normal, and it’s not something that colours my everyday. Maybe it was a bit of nostalgia – for the years, on the brink of becoming a teenager, enjoying my life with my large group of friends who all shared an enthusiasm for music. There are so many songs from that decade which delight me still….and I read a study recently which suggested the most powerful music for us (neurologically) is the music we listened to between the ages of 15 and 25. Well, those figures are not fixed, for sure, and I’ve read many other studies about the power of music to increase quality of life and slow down cognitive decline, especially the music of our teens and twenties.

    But, no, this wasn’t a nostalgia for my teenage years with my friends. It was a nostalgia for America.

    OK, I know that every Age is a complex mix of experiences and events, but I grew up through the years where music like the Beach Boys, Simon and Garfunkel, Joni Mitchell, Crosby, Stills and Nash, and so on, created very positive, delightful, moods for me. To be honest, I started with the Beatles, moving on to bands like The Kinks, The Who, Genesis, Yes, Jethro Tull, and so on. I used to listen to the pirate radio station, Radio Caroline, and the constantly fading out and in signal of Luxembourg, 208. My vinyl collection (yes, I still have those records I bought, mainly through those years), is heavily British, but there are a significant number of American artists in there.

    I suppose the kind of feeling I had for America was coloured by that music, by Woodstock, and Peace and Love. And, frankly, those feel like kinder days.

    Those feel like lost days.

    In 2025, the stories from America are about hatred. Hatred of “immigrants”, and “others”. Stories of turning allies into enemies. Stories of suppression, of arrests and deportations. The UK and several EU countries have changed their travel advice to citizens seeking to go to America – and the message is, even a visa won’t guarantee you entry. I don’t know anyone who is thinking of traveling to America this year. It feels a place of hostility and fear.

    So, the sadness I felt when I listened to Good Vibrations, came, I think, from feeling that the vibrations from America now are anything but good.

    I’m sure you’ll have a different experience from me. We all have our own experiences. But I thought I’d just take a few moments to share what happened to me. And to hope…..to hope that, one day, maybe in my lifetime, I’ll associate America with Good Vibrations again.

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    Empathy….too much, or too little?

    Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 5, 2025| Leave a Comment »

    I came across a term recently, “suicidal empathy”. Musk talked about it in an interview with Joe Rogan, and it seems to have originated from a man called Gaad Saad. As best I can tell he suggests that a big problem in society these days is an excess of empathy. In fact, in some pieces this concept is put forward as a big “threat to Western civilisation”.

    I was pretty shocked when I read this, and explored a bit further to try and understand exactly what they were claiming. They seem to be saying that if we have “too much” empathy for certain people then we risk damaging the lives and values of the great majority. Who are these certain people? The usual suspects I’m afraid, immigrants, minority ethnic groups, trans people and, well, it seems to me, pretty much anyone they don’t actually like.

    I don’t buy this. Not at all. Empathy doesn’t determine your actions. But it can, and, I believe, should, influence them. My point is that empathy does not lead inevitably to any particular strategies or policies at a societal level, and whatever an excess of it is, do we seriously believe that having empathy for a minority group actually harms the lives of the majority?

    We only have individuals in life. We only have individuals in relationships. There is no “the people”, or “the majority” which has a single view of anything. The claim that there is such a thing is the path to despotism or populist fascism.

    I spent an entire career over four decades where the core of my everyday was a sequence of one to one relationships with individual patients. I had empathy for every single one of them. I believe that was the only way to understand them, to really get to know them, and, so to help them. I believe that without empathy for every single person I worked with, I wouldn’t have been as good at my job as a doctor. Can you imagine a doctor who reserves their empathy for select groups of individuals? Well, actually we can imagine that, but it’s not something I’d like to support.

    No, it’s not an excess of empathy, or a “misdirected” empathy, which is the biggest threat to our way of life. It’s a deficiency. We don’t care enough.

    When immigrants are vilified, treated as less than human, when children are bombed, blown to pieces and killed in pursuit of “terrorists” or in an attempt by one country to grab some of the land occupied by others, then we have an empathy deficiency.

    Back when 9/11 happened, the novelist, Iain McEwan, said the greatest failing of the terrorists was a lack of empathy….or did he say a lack of imagination? I’m not sure at the moment, I’ll look it up. Ah, it was both…..

    If the hijackers had been able to imagine themselves into the thoughts and feelings of the passengers, they would have been unable to proceed. It is hard to be cruel once you permit yourself to enter the mind of your victim. Imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion, and it is the beginning of morality.

    We need MORE empathy. Not less.

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