Charles Darwin gets shoddily treated, in my view, by the whole ‘Social Darwinism’ idea. As a pal of mine likes to point out, it’s really Social Spencerism, anyway: ‘it was Spencer, not Darwin, who gave us the phrase “survival of the fittest,” though Darwin would later use it in his writing.’ And it was Spencer, not Darwin, who used these ideas to support his conservative economic ideology. That said, Herbert Spencer derived the term and his ideas from his reading of Darwin. Suffice to say then, that these are, perhaps, somewhat muddy waters?
But I guess my beef here is twofold. I don’t know that much about Herbert Spencer. I’ve read a lot more by and about Charles Darwin, and what I know of him suggests a subtler and more humane mind; the kind of mind the quote in the picture at the top of this post reflects, aware of and sensitive to moral socio-political issues. Not the ‘spiritual father’ of the ‘perverted science’, as Churchill so memorably and astutely put it, that informs such ideologies as fascism, and the current ‘free-market’ right, as embodied by Trump, Bojo, and now the appalling cypher that is Liz Truss.
Darwin knew the answer to the rhetorical question he posed. And I think it’s long past overdue time to stop attributing fascist ideologies to him.
PS – The Darwin image is a tea-towel, from The Radical Tea Towel Co!
At the time I first drafted this review, I was only about a quarter of the way through this book, having just finished Part 1, This Thing Called Sleep.
I was initially a tad underwhelmed. But as I read more, Walker’s enthusiasm for and deep knowledge about sleep won me round. And I really like his very readable unpretentious writing style. The understated eloquence might be part of why this is proving to be a grower.
I myself have had very varied patterns of sleep over the years. And what Walker is saying is both enlightening and salutory. And, rather sadly – a situation Walker frequently laments – our society seems very much out of kilter with our deeply ingrained needs, and evolutionarily embedded behaviours.
This doesn’t surprise me in the least. We can just add sleep to an ever-growing list of things modern life misprizes, mishandles, and indeed downright abuses. And a failure of understanding, of basic comprehension even, is fundamental to this self- or socio-inflicted harm.
Anyway, I’m now returning to and finishing this review having finished the book nigh on two weeks ago. All told it’s a superb book. And I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. It has so much to tell us that we all really ought to know.
And, right at the end, it has a list of ways to improve your own sleep habits. The first and, so Walker says, the most important, is to have a regular routine: go to bed and get up at the same time everyday, even the weekends. Get eight hours sleep every night.
For those of us who suffer difficulties sleeping – my wife is the exact opposite, a champion sleeper! – Walker’s frequent recitations of the damage sleep loss causes is pretty scary. Ironically the kind of anxiety inducing stuff that might well cause further sleepless nights. And our ideas of catching up on sleep are ill-founded. More part of the problem, not the solution.
Walker has some almost evangelical aspirations, regarding how sleep and knowledge of its benefits can improve both individual lives, societies at large, and pretty much the whole world! Sometimes at these moments he comes across, to me at least, as a little out of touch with the harsh realities of modern human life. As a top flight academic, fêted by almost everyone, including academia, big corporations and sporting organisations, he sometimes seems to me to be fooled into thinking out current hyper-capitalist culture is sustainable.
Whilst I love his positivity and enthusiasm, my cynical side says we’re more likely to self-destruct than choose a wiser path, as a species. I don’t believe our current socio-cultural m.o. is sustainable. And Walker’s own mountains of evidence, regarding the global ‘pandemic’ of sleep deprivation, are part of the compelling evidence for this.
Anyway, putting my pessimism aside momentarily, if this book, or at least the information it contains, were to become part of a core-curriculum in education, perhaps modern humanity might stand something a tad better than a snowflake’s chance in hell (the term snowflake here chimes with other albeit different zeitgeist concerns!) of recognising the value of sleep, and restoring it to its rightful place in our lives?
I wanted to watch a WWII naval film, having just finished a book about the Arctic convoys of WWII that supplied Russia with war materiel. But I couldn’t find any on that rather specific theatre of the war. And amongst the WWII naval movies I did find, there weren’t any I fancied that I hadn’t already seen.
So instead I chose The Post, thinking we hadn’t watched it. But we have! Teresa pointed this out very early on. And at that point I was adamant we hadn’t. But as the movie progressed, I realised she was right. It’s a bit worrying for me that I can forget a film so completely!
Directed by Steven Spielberg, The Post stars Meryl Streep as Katherine Graham, owner of the Washington Post, and Tom Hanks as Ben Bradlee, the Post’s executive editor. The film winds together several very interesting sociopolitical threads, one being Graham’s struggles as a woman in what was then a pretty exclusively male world, the other being freedom of the press (and, in the US, the ‘1st Amendment’), vs the power and interests of the State/government.
Beautifully filmed, expertly directed, with a very strong cast and extremely timely subject matter – the film came out during Trump’s presidency – it’s a very worthy film. And it received the plaudits it deserves. But it’s not problem free.
I don’t know enough about the details, but some criticise the movie for factual inaccuracy. One thing’s for certain, in true Hollywood style, Spielberg, an expert in cinematic drama, ‘plays’ the story on many levels, from simple atmosphere (the high drama of the news room) to emotional heart-wringing (the conflicted loyalties of powerful press folk and their politician friends).
One suspects – well, no, one knows – that fly on the wall documentation of these things (such dirty doings as Nixon was busy with, in the stuff that lead to Watergate), whilst sinister and immoral, is also most often a lot more humdrum. But, whilst these are real issues, ultimately I think the film succeeds, both as a movie, and as wagging finger in the moral political debate.
That said, despite starting with a brief ‘in the field’ Viet Nam segment, it’s very much what one would call a ‘procedural’ drama, with Spielberg doing his best to make numerous board meetings and suchlike visually and emotionally dramatic. And, witness my forgetfulness, as worthy as it is, it’s not the most exciting or memorable of films.
In fact, in a rare instance of advertising not totally misrepresenting the product, the poster at the top of this post accurately captures the drab monotone vibes of the ‘corridors of power’, the corporate culture in which the movie occurs.
It’s a very mixed bag, in the end. And whilst very worthy, in certain respects, it’s own compromised artifice undermines any gravitas it ought to have. Ultimately I found it rather disappointing.
I find it continually astonishing and very depressing that, despite all these years of Tory misrule, right wing idealogues still hold the reigns of power. And they continue to accelerate us backwards in time politically and economically, all the while lowering our standing in the global community.
And what’s perhaps as depressing as the damage they continue to inflict on the body politic is their snake oil patter, by which means they attempt to dress up their depredations in a favourable light, such that a gullible public fails, year after year, decade after decade, to attribute the mess the (barely) United Kingdom is in to these piratical free-market freebooters, who somehow keep either being elected, or succeeding to power.
The only thing Brexit was ever about, for the Tory robber-barons, was escaping those meddling EU restrictions on unfettered rapine capitalism. They now have the brass monkeys to suggest that ‘unleashing’ capitalism will bring about the much touted ‘levelling up’ that it delivers nowhere on earth. Only with strict government supervision and intervention can capitalism be prevented from its most ‘natural ’ outcome, which is to increase wealth disparity, concentrating wealth in the hands of the few at the expense of the many.
That’s what this latest budget unashamedly does. And not only that, they dress up the flogging off of more public assets, and the stripping of safety measures and environmental protection as some kind of ‘liberation’. It ought to be astonishing beyond belief. But such Orwellian double-speak is the stock in trade of modern Toryism, and has been ever since Thatcherism.
Wow! I have to admit I thoroughly enjoyed this Australian ‘Nam movie. They say ‘war is Hell’, and it sure is in this particular story.
Based on real events, of 18 August, 1966, during which an Australian force comes under heavy attack from a much North Vietnamese contingent. Rather like certain British military events, such as Dunkirk and The Charge of the Light Brigade, and albeit on a smaller scale, it seeks to wring victory and heroism from botched or incompetent actions (so it’s also akin, in that respect, to We Were Soldiers).
American films about ‘the ‘Nam’ are both very plentiful and very familiar to us, here in the UK. Australian films on the same war? Much much less so. To the degree that this might be the only one that I’m aware of (Attack Force Z, what was that all about?*).
11 Platoon, pinned down in the woods.
It being Australian, I didn’t recognise many of the cast. I think a couple of faces were recognisable from Hacksaw Ridge? But even the ‘big name star’, Travis Fimmel, was not familiar to me. That’s actually kind of refreshing. One isn’t sidetracked by the ‘star factor’.
But, truth be told, that this is an Aussie take on the Viet Nam war was just about the only surprising thing about it. In most other respects it ticked a lot of the genre boxes:
The commander, Brigadier David Jackson (Richard Roxburgh), at the top of the chain, struggles to assert his authority, and is a bit disconnected from his grunts on the ground. Major Harry Smith (Fimmel) is a hard-ass, who eventually earns his men’s love and respect. There are slo-mo explosions and blood splatters aplenty, and last minute relief arrives just as the seemingly never ending tides of the enemy are about to engulf ‘our heroes’.
Fimmel as Major Harry Smith.
And there are lots more clichés from the Big Book of How To Shoot Viet Nam War Movies, 101. But I don’t mind that in the least. I found it engaging enough, and believable enough. Despite it belonging, ultimately, to a lineage that goes back to the ol’ Cowboys vs Injuns formulae of Hollywood.
After the barrage of Royal Funeral TV propaganda we were subjected to today, a chest-thumping, grim and bloody war movie was exactly what I needed!
FOOTNOTE
Whilst looking for images from the film I found this rather interesting piece by an ANZAC veteran who says he fought and was wounded in Viet Nam. He rates the movie highly, for depicting the ANZAC role in Viet Nam at all, but laments what he views as historical inaccuracies.
Director Kriv Stenders, Fimmel, and crew, on set during filming.
NB – The above photo comes from a series taken by veteran photographer Tim Page, who covered the actual conflict, and shot some very compelling black and white images of the film production on the very same 1965 Leica M2 he used to photograph the real war!
* I checked, Z is a WWII movie. But, what with links to Hacksaw Ridge, We Were Soldiers and, even if mistakenly, Attack Force Z, Mel Gibson’s shadow hangs over this post!
An interaction with family today has made me reflect on the incredible depths of penetration that politics really has. And how the establishment so totally owns and runs and controls the ‘status quo’.
The dominant narrative in the UK right now is that we’re all united in grief over the death of Queen Elizabeth II. And any dissent from this position is automatically negative and therefore despicable. This position silences debate, playing very powerfully into the interests of retrograde Conservatism.
And the ‘shut up and don’t complain’ card is very powerful. So I’m very happy to see and respectful of those few brave souls taking a principled stand against the ongoing propaganda and lies that swaddle our monarchy.
From Labour MP Clive Lewis to barrister Paul Powlesland, and the guy caught on film pointing out to Charles the costs to ordinary people of the monarchy, it’s refreshing to find that some people are not being hypnotised by all the pageantry.
Paul Powlesland.
Powlesland said “One of the many things that makes me proud to be British is our freedom of speech. It’s one of our most precious and sacred rights and it’s far more precious to me than the royal family is.” Amen to that! And, as he experienced, when making a very mild protest in London, these freedoms are being systematically attacked by our current Tory (mis)government.
And in the UK today amongst some of the most powerful groups serving and enabling Tory repression are those very large swathes of people who are doing alright. The ‘I’m alright Jack, don’t rock the boat, with your carping negativity’ crowd are helping silence dissent, or alternative views/possibilities.
And, lest we forget, we wouldn’t have things like weekends, holidays, sick pay, the eight hour day or 40 hour week, etc, if it wasn’t for the dissenting voices. Or even the NHS, which is really and fundamentally a response to the massive blood sacrifices made by the working masses in two world wars. If we’re required to make such sacrifices for the state/nation, shouldn’t that state/nation look after us? Damn right it should!
I like history, including the colourful Napoleonic wars, with the ridiculous peacock finery of uniforms that were often destined to be torn into bloody pieces, along with the ‘soft machines’ wearing them, by shot and shell. I love cathedrals, but I loathe religion. I can see the appeal of the pageantry. But I also see the oppressive institutionalisation of inequality such mummery represents.
Tory propaganda nowadays looks different, but is essentially the same.*
It’d all be fine if nothing meant anything – a position that appears to have escaped the genie’s bottle of left-wing ‘postmodern’ academia and infected the entire organism of modern culture with a very pernicious form of relativism – but alas, stuff does mean something. And in this case it means ‘shut up, know your place, and march in step with us, backwards towards a fantasy feudal past’.
No thanks!
I’m inevitably going to see some of today’s tomfoolery. Teresa likes that sort of thing. I can hear she’s watching it now. So I’ll get sucked in as well. Hey ho!
Gillray’s prodigious talent was very effectively deployed by the Tories.
As I’m typing this the soporific harmonies of High Anglican service waft up the stairs. It seems as if, thinking back to the ECW – what Royalist history calls ‘The Interregnum’ – with the Stuart Restoration, and then later the Glorious Revolution, England, or what became the UK, awoke momentarily from the stupefied slumber of monarchy, only to lapse back into a deep sleep. A sad state of affairs that continues to this day. Wake up!
* Gillray was a brilliant satirical political cartoonist. But his fabulous talents were deployed by the oppressor, to maintain a conservative status quo. Nowadays Gillray’s job is accomplished via the predominantly right wing media, be it print, TV, or online. At least Gillray left us something we can still admire and enjoy! The tawdry disposable ephemera of our own times barely exists beyond the few minutes or hours it’s required to do it’s job.
ADDENDUM
Ever since hearing the news of the Queen’s passing, I’ve been thinking, who else died that day? How many took their own lives, amidst poverty and despair? How many of those who died, anonymous unlamented (relative to the Queen that is), might have lived longer and better lives – richer lives, even if not in the fiscal sense – if our society was less wealth and power crazed, venal and uncaring?
Teresa picked another Hammer movie from her boxed set. And she served up home made pear and currant crumble, with lashings of custard, for pud’. Made with home-grown pears. Lovely!
The movie, Quatermass and The Pit, is an old Hammer film (1967). Based on a character created by Nigel Kneale, professor Bernard Quatermass, who became a BBC TV success (which also lead to spin off books!), it’s kind of sci-fi horror. Perfect Hammer schlock!
This photo really doesn’t do Teresa’s delish’ pud any justice!
Not long ago we watched Brian DonLevy as Quatermass, in the 1957 movie Quatermass II. That was fun! Donlevy’s Quatermass has more charisma than Andrew Keir, who is somewhat eclipsed by some of his co-stars, James Donald and Julian Glover in particular.
As an aside, Kneale also did some very interesting sounding TV plays, including 1968’s Year Of The Sex Olympics, which anticipates the rise of lowest common-denominator TV and reality shows (and the ‘bating* culture also imagined/lampooned in the film Idiocracy). But – so far at any rate – Quatermass And The Pit isn’t that sort of social satire. Instead it’s that fun but rather pulpy style of sci-fi horror that’s conjured by all those paperbacks with garish covers from yesteryear…
* When masturbation has become a mainstream addiction/pastime.
We’re in this kind of territory!
Well, some time later… that was a bit slow to get going. And not, truth be told, terrific. But after a while, towards the end, things go properly mental! I don’t know that I like the film, to be honest. But it’s worth seeing, even if only for the last part, with… well, see the pics below:
Our alien bugs our creators?What is this Satanic sky demon apparition?
To modern eyes the effects look lamely amusing. They really struggled when depicting global apocalypse, back in those pre-CGI days. That said, there are scenes that look like WWII Blitz style devastation. And such stuff was still a very recent and vivid memory/experience. But the whole ‘sky demon’ bit, right near the end? That’s still quite powerfully weird!
Hobbs End tube station has achieved cult status!Doc Roney (James Donald) takes a crane-ride…
Not, for me at any rate, amongst my favourite Hammer movies. But still worth seeing.
New draught-excluder curtain over the lounge to kitchen door.
Teresa’s been on at me for some time, asking that I put up more curtain poles and supports, mostly for doorway draught exclusion porpoises. Oh, and Teresa is making the curtains. So it’s a joint effort.
And we also have he added economic impetus of looking to rent a room, and needing to get the property as a whole up to snuff for sharing with a rent paying tenant. So we need, amongst a zillion other things, curtains in the bathroom.
I already did a draught-excluding curtain pole thingy in the kitchen some while ago. And I want all the ones I make around our home to share a design, which is based, I guess, at least to some degree, on the classic ‘ogee’ profile. Incidentally, I’m talking about the two pole supporting doodads!
Making these in the workshop is fun. Although that said, my workshop is in such an awful mess it’s not that much fun! There’s another ongoing project; the new shed, finishing the damn thing, and getting stuff moved into it! Using the router to create the profiles ‘caps’ was especially gratifying.
I did want them all to have curved grooves (is that ‘fluting?’) in the ogee profiles, so you’d get that classic, er… classical look, of fluted verticals surmounted by profiled ‘pediment’ (?) tops. The result is, as Teresa put it, a bit pedestal-like.
I like to paint all the house woodwork in oil-based gloss white. I just feel it’s a classic timeless style, and that it works well in Victorian properties like ours. So I’m doing so with these, inc. the poles, which are 22mm hardwood dowels.
The older yet unfinished kitchen/back door one.
Attaching the ornamental pole supports can be tricky , as getting wall-plugs in to walls reliably in old (or is that any?) homes is a challenge. Then there’s the depth of wood to get through in the wider top part. I’ve developed a method I’m happy with. And so far it’s worked well enough.
You can see on these thicker and as yet unplugged and uncapped kitchen ones the holes for the screws. These get filled with dowels, or just some filler. These kitchen ones are ticker than the others. So the ornamental caps will need to be bigger. Not gotten around to making them as yet!
The next sequence of four pictures shows how, despite masking around these fixtures, I tend to get white paint on the walls. And in this instance (in the lounge the original paint colour – Egyptian Cotton – still matches), rather annoyingly, the paint colour, Asian Silk, which is literally from the same paint pot, doesn’t match! Gaaah!
Later the same day…
Not so easy to see, on account of the use of transparent shower curtain (fabric curtain eventually get mouldy and disgusting!), with all the daylight flooding in! At least the blotchiness of the touched up paint is less noticeable.
A double layer of transparency protects our modesty.*
A few days ago, after a largely sleepless night, during which I experienced a very weird ‘teatime of the soul’, so to speak, I wound up thinking long and hard about stopping blogging altogether.
It seems a peculiarly modern, shallow and vapid pursuit, in some respects. And then there’s the issue of sharing too much of yourself with complete strangers, some of whom will be, tragically, evil internet ne’erdowells. Indeed, I’m barraged daily by far more crap from this latter category than I am genuine interest in or interaction with my blogging content.
So from the point of view of energy investments and general safety, online and otherwise, I’m profoundly doubting the worth of blogging. I’m even worried that the only things that genuinely keeps me doing it are habit, and – worse – possible addiction!
Anyway, there is another less gloomy side. And that’s the simple pleasures of what is in effect an online diary. One thing I might well do… no, make that will do… is go over the blog(s), at some point, and tidy them up, from an internet security perspective.
