Apologies (really, I’m saying sorry? For what?!) for not posting much recently. It’s not that I’ve had nothing to say…just not much to say in public right now. Lots of writing getting done, so watch this space (if you like watching space.)

Anyways, something I’ve been pondering the last couple of days: the importance of transgression in ‘salvation’ narratives. By these, I mean stories that have a basic arc of saving something or some group from some evil or monster.

For various reasons I’ve been spending a fair bit of time thinking through the Harry Potter books recently – a series which I’ll defend against anyone in terms of their thematic seriousness and literary merit – and what is interesting is that this pattern is very much on show here. As I expressed in a recent tweet:

One thing we can be sure of: if there is a ‘forbidden forest,’ our hero will be bidden to enter it.

If you know the stories at all (yes, I know the films are crap) you’ll know that in every book Harry ends up breaking either school rules or ‘Wizarding Law’  - but does so not as a rebel, but as a ‘saviour.’ He is ‘the orthodox heretic.’

As the series continues we see that ‘the law’ turns more and more heavily against him and, by labelling him a serial transgressor, the community ostracise him to a pretty horrific extent. He is cast out of the school, a price is put on his head, and is turned into a figure of hatred by those in charge.

We can see how this turns out: our hero’s transgressions turn out to be the very thing that redeems the law and those who make it. Sometimes the law needs to be broken, in order that it may be remade properly.

The parallels with Christian theology should be fairly easily worked through; my current interest is more with how this plays out with the work on historic piracy that I’m writing, and how this impacts the current ‘Occupy’ movements.

I picked up an old copy of a 1970 ‘Ladybird’ book on piracy recently, which has this brilliant introduction:

In those days a man might legally be seized in the street by a ‘press-gang’ and compelled to serve for years as a sailor in a ship of the King’s Navy, often without his wife or family knowing what had happened to him. Sailors were badly fed and brutally punished, and sometimes they mutinied, murdered their hated officers and became pirates in well-armed ships. Pirates […] were mainly scoundrels and a menace to all honest folk.

This is the classic tension: the law has been broken, so these people must be branded a menace, and yet we can see why the law needs breaking and reforming.

The problem comes with the line at which orthodox heresy becomes violent transgression. Were the murders of their brutal Captains by pirates excusable? How much leeway should we give them for their historical context?

These are all questions I’ll be working through in the book… and looking at how this arc of redemptive transgression works out… Hope you’re still looking forward to it.

Listening to the radio this morning I was struck by the odd similarity between three of the major news items.

Firstly, ubiquitously, there’s the economic crisis – which more and more seems to boil down to the fact that people – that’s you, me and them – got greedy. With the boss of Barclays now earning nearly 120 times the wage of the average employee (when 30 years ago it was about 13 time) it seems people are finally waking up and demanding equality, and movement towards a financial system in which people, not just profits, matter.

Secondly, there’s the Leveson inquiry into the behaviour of the press, and in particular the mess over phone hacking. Behind all of the lurid details of whose messages were listened to and which celebrities were outed for doing what, we have to remember that the driving force behind all of this was simple: selling more papers. We simply cannot express disgust at what went on if we too were titillated into reading the stuff. It seems now that finally people are waking up and demanding a media in which people, not just puerile stories for profits, matter.

Thirdly, a shocking report into the state of the care system, which has left countless elderly and vulnerable people abused and maltreated.

‘Findings included carers neglecting tasks because councils paid for too little of their time.’

As the reporter highlighted on a piece on the radio this morning, people are finally waking up to the fact that a genuine sense of empathy needs to be restored to a care system that has been run by council accountants and bean-counters for too long.

With all of these disperate stories, the over-arching sense I get is that there appears to be an awakening to the terrible poverty at the heart of capitalism. The market has failed, not because it hasn’t always turned a profit, but because the market has let people down. Capitalism has proved profitable for some, but has impoverished the spirits of so so many more.

Over the weekend I went to the Bank of Ideas building that the Occupy London protesters are now squatting in Sun Street. And though yes, there are unrealistic idealists, what I found was a network of concerned and genuinely caring people.

Perhaps in the midst of what is a pretty depressing news cycle at the moment we can find hope in this resurgence of empathy, of a wider realisation that people, ordinary people, do matter, and our laws and systems do need to reflect that first and foremost.

It’s been interesting watching the argument over whether the England football team should be allowed to wear poppies for their international matches this weekend. The international governing body of the sport, FIFA, ruled that they could not have poppies on their shirts as this contravened their guidelines.

The FA, the British body, cried foul and argued that it would be offensive to the memory of those who fought in the wars if the poppies were banned.

As it turned out, a proposal by a Tory MP that they should be allowed to wear them as an emblem stitched onto a black armband.

What’s interesting is that there’s some kind of altercation over poppy-wearing every year. A figure appears on TV not wearing one. A newsreader says they won’t be forced to and calls it ‘poppy fascism.’

Thinking it about it today, it struck me that in some ways these transgressions are actually required for the act of remembrance to be performed properly.

Poppy-wearing has become meaningful only in its disruption. It is only in arguments about the violence of its absence that its meaning is renewed. If everyone wore a poppy, and nobody forgot to, no one would remember why they were really being worn in the first place. What this means is that the day we remember the end of the two great wars requires a person or body to be demonised. The energy from this opposition is then channelled into the revitalisation of the memory of the event.

We can think about this in relation to other symbols too. There have been a number of cases about the rights of employees to wear crucifixes, for example. What we can see from this is that these battles are, in fact, welcome to those who put great meaning by the symbol, because it’s only in the context over a fight about its absence that its presence is re-invigorated. Without the battle, the symbol dissolves into easy familiarity.

Ironically then, those who really want poppy-wearing to be remembered are actively looking for, and excited to find, people each year who forget. They need these transgressors as a sort of sacrifice in order to breathe life back into the memory of the event.

The question this poses then is whether symbols of remembrance are to be encouraged at all. If it’s only by transgression and the demonisation of a transgressor that they work to draw the act of remembrance back to life we need to ask if that is appropriate.

What we tend to find is the media going not for ‘poppy fascism’ but ‘offence addiction.’ They talk up how offended people will be if poppies are not worn. But again, I wonder if this it is more offensive for to the memory of those who died if they felt that people were only wearing them so as not to be caught out and cause the stir.

It is very possible to remember properly without physical symbols of remembrance. So while I think remembering is hugely important, let’s stop haranguing people who choose not to show they may be doing so with an external symbol.

Seems to be an annual posting I know (see 2010‘s and 2009‘s!) but I’m really passionate about reclaiming Guy Fawkes night. Why? Partly because it’s very very English. This is not imported, it’s not some pagan festival that the Christians co-opted, and it’s not something that can be easily marketed and commodified by Supermarkets – unlike the nonsense of Halloween.

If you haven’t seen or read V for Vendetta, I highly recommend it. Every time I look at it it seems to be more prescient and more appropriate for the extraordinary times we find ourselves in. It’s legacy is, of course, the fabulous mask – a terrifically stirring and potent image of protest.

That was set in a time of fascist control in Britain, and one man’s attempt to stir up revolution. As we light fires and set off fireworks over this weekend, we need to consider our revolutionary intent.

What is wonderful about the 5th of November is that it is a story with so many layers. Originally, bonfires were lit in celebration of the fact that the Catholic assassination plot against James 1 had been foiled, and parliament had been spared. However, it’s pretty clear that Fawkes was stitched up, and that the whole thing was a double plot to stir up anti-catholic sentiment.

The Occupy London movement has been cleverly deflected by the powerful and hidden regime of the Corporation of London into a story about St Paul’s Cathedral… But thankfully it looks like that is over, and it seems appropriate as we come to 5th of November that St Paul’s is looking steady and supportive, and that the firestorm is hitting where it always should have been.

Latterly, the fires and fireworks came to signify protests at class inequality – especially in places such as Lewes, and I hope that something of that can be imbued into the celebrations we have now: a night of burning and bombing, a reminder to those who abuse power that they will not get away with it. That’s why I think this image of St Paul’s surviving the blitz is so right for now…

I think it’s time to get round the City on Saturday night, get some masks and occupy Parliament Square…Let’s put some rockets up some asses!

One of the key questions that has been often asked about the ‘Occupy’ protests is ‘what are your proposed alternatives?’ This, I think, is often asked with a background attitude of ‘I really don’t think you have any alternatives, do you?’ The implication being, before you moan about how bad things are, make sure you have a fully worked solution to how you can undertake improvements.

One comment on a previous posted ended with this:

What alternative ways of living are the occupiers proposing? and what alternative are you proposing? If you’re really suggesting the occupiers mutiny, as opposed to just complain, then surely that entails appropriating St Paul’s as rebel territory and mugging any banker that comes within range? If that’s not the plan, what are the new ways of living that will transform our society?

Couple of points on this.

Firstly, it is part of the corruption of power to insist that any protest or critique against the dominant system comes fully formed. When you’re being beaten down, it is entirely valid to simply scream in frustration, without any idea what changes need to be made.

Secondly, that said, I do want to reflect on the sorts of changes that I think we need to see. Importantly, they do not involve mugging bankers. In fact, in some ways it would be inappropriate to blame the bankers at all. Why? Because bankers are not ‘bad guys in an essentially good system.’ They simply lucky guys in an essentially unfair and unjust system.

Zizek makes this point in his typical style in the video above, when he comments that Hitler was never violent enough. Why? Because, however radical, he worked only to make the system work for him. Counter this, Gandhi was far more violent – why? Because he wanted to dismantle the system entirely. He wanted the whole thing to stop and change.

So the point is not to mug the bankers as some attempt to redistribute the wealth that they have pooled into their possession. The only ethic behind this is jealousy – you’ve got more than me, so give me some. The fundamental point is that we need a different system – or, more poignantly, a different ethic.

In other words, the changes that need to be made need first to come at the inner, personal level. We need to deal with our own desires to be rich and wealthy, to use more than our fair share of resources. Without that, all we are wanting is to swap places with those who have done better than ourselves out of the current system.

Interestingly, the debabcle at St Pauls fits nicely into this. Why? Because at the centre of the debate is the ethical question of what constitutes ‘Christian’ economics. What Would Jesus Do? is the right question here, but, it seems, the Anglican church has come a very long way from that original radical ethic. Compare this:

All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.

(Acts 4, 32 – 35)

to this:

The Riches and Goods of Christians are not common, as touching the right, title, and possession of the same as certain Anabaptists do falsely boast.

(38th Article of the Church of England)

There are nuances and interpretations, I’m well aware. But the grandeur and opulence of St Pauls does seem to sit rather too comfortably in the Corporation of London…and does seem a very very long way away from the spirit of radical equality that the gospels and new testament talk so much about.

Interesting video here showing Slavoj Zizek at the Occupy Wall Street demonstration in New York. His speech can be read in full here, but what I love about the video is that, for some technological reason no doubt, he cannot himself speak. The crowd around him who can hear directly have to shout out what he’s saying so that others further away can hear. In a strangely symbolic way, his message is internalised, and is only heard when the crowd themselves amplify it.

I like that, partly because Zizek has been in danger for a while of becoming a caricature of himself – and thus able to be ridiculed and dismissed without his message being heard. And his message is good.

In particular I like these lines, which I think fit well with my post on the protests:

Carnivals come cheap. What matters is the day after when we will have to return to normal life. Will there be any changes then? I don’t want you to remember these days, you know, like, ‘Oh, we were young, it was beautiful…’ Remember that our basic message is, ‘We are allowed to think about alternatives.’ A taboo is broken. We do not live in the best possible world. But there is a long road ahead. There are truly difficult questions that confront us. We know what we do not want, but what do we want? What social organization can replace capitalism? What type of new leaders do we want? Remember: The problem is not corruption or greed; the problem is the system which pushes you to be corrupt.

He goes on to ask what exactly Christianity is… and outlines briefly that this is Christianity: people gathered in empathy, in solidarity with the poor, concerned to get a grip on a corrupt system and change it together. That’s not happening in church on Sundays people. Just admit it.

The media coverage in the UK has been limited, but I think the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protest is interesting, and I hope it turns out to be significant.

There was comment on BBC radio the other morning suggesting variously that it was the Democratic equivalent of the Republican ‘Tea Party’ movement  - though I’m not sure if this was a compliment or not – and that without the scandal of police brutality (or inevitability, one might say) it would have already died down and disappeared.

Either way, it’s happening: people are occupying Wall Street, and demanding… well, just some basic justice. Teachers and nurses and factory workers didn’t run up toxic debts – gambles, effectively – that have cost the world economy trillions of dollars and meant spending on services for those less well off has had to be cut. No, that was those in the banking sector. And their reward? Government bail out money, and Christmas bonuses. Privatised profits and nationalised losses. Pretty damned perfect.

If you’ve visited here at all in the past couple of months you’ll know that I’m working on a book on piracy, and why we continue to be fascinated with these maritime thieves. Well, it’s proving to be utterly absorbing, and I’m genuinely excited about how it’s turning out. Don’t get me wrong – it’s a niche area and I don’t expect it to sell hugely – but I do believe that for those out there undertaking activism like Occupy Wall Street, it may contain some very useful stuff.

Here’s the thesis: pirates emerge whenever what has been traditionally in ‘the commons’ becomes enclosed for private benefit. Those who turn pirate are not the powerful, nor the influential. They are the oppressed, those who have simply had enough and have no more to lose. Having been stripped of everything by an unjust system, they decide that they might as well live a ‘short but merry life’ for a while, because they’re dead either way.

This ambivalent affinity with death is important. Pirates sailed under ‘the jolly roger’ – a flag that did not signify so much that they were bearers of death to others, but that they represented the dead, the discarded, the rejected themselves. Because they were already ‘dead’ they had nothing to lose. Now here’s the thing: we tend to think of pirates as thieves, but after the reading I’ve done, I think it’s more accurate to say that their thievery was simply them getting on with what they’d always done, but for their own good, rather than that of the system. Moreover, they did so in a way that was more equitable (their code demanded that profits were shared equally) and more inclusive (they were multicultural, multiethnic and multifaith.)

This is what ended up scaring the sh*t out of the emerging capitalist empires of Spain and England: here were a strata of people who simply didn’t care. They were living ‘off the map’ and outside of the ethical code that reinforced class structures and kept the money flowing to the wealthy princes and merchants, even though the ships – the engines of this new global economy – were run entirely by brutalised sailors.

So here’s my tuppence-worth for those out in Wall Street, or Greece, or wherever:

1. Ask yourselves this: how much do you still have to lose?
2. Pirating the bankers will not necessarily mean thieving from them. It will certainly mean carrying on what you do best, but in an economic loop that is more equitable, and better connected to ‘the commons.’ The transition towns movement has a lot of good to say on this.
3. Appreciate that your occupation is a TAZ. It will meet resistance, and it will be broken, but while it holds you should use the liberated space to create and build social and physical networks that will survive and thrive and regroup once the inevitable enforced clearance comes.
4. History is with you. But it says this: you won’t win this round, and you’ll be portrayed as losers. It will take time, but good things will come – not at first from above, but among one another.

Not had much time to post – flat out at work preparing for a school inspection, and reading and writing when I can too. All of which ironically brings me to post about the very idea of work… It starts with rather a good story, which I hope you’ll bear with before I try to make my point…

I’m reading The Many-Headed Hydra – Sailors, Slaves, Commoners and the Life of the Revolutionary Atlantic – which opens with the fascinating story of the Sea Venture, which left England for Virginia in 1609.

The ship was commissioned by the Virginia Company to restock (and effectively save) the fledgling settlement in the Americas. It was part of a fleet of three ships carrying supplies, criminals being sent to work on the plantation, skilled labourers and Virginia Company money-men. The Admiral of the Company was even himself on board. It was thus a micro-society, containing men and women of every class. And it was a new boat whose timbers had not yet sealed.

After 6 weeks at sea the fleet hit a storm, and the Sea Venture was separated from the others. They battled for three days in a hurricane, and the boat was taking on water so badly that every man, woman and child – regardless of status or position was tasked to bail out constantly to save the ship. Exhausted, they eventually considered themselves lost and, thinking themselves so close to death, cracked open the supplies of rum, deciding that now they had worked together with no regard for class, if they were going to die they might as well die together in the same way in a merry feast.

As they drank, the helmsman spied land and wrecked the ship on Bermuda, whereupon all were saved. Expecting a hostile, haunted isle, they were surprised to find it a virtual utopia. Food was plentiful, the environment beautiful… they could all survive with very little effort.

A long way from home or rescue, most of them set about making a new life for themselves – a life far better than they had ever known. They needed do little work, and once shelters were made they enjoyed themselves and considered themselves new Adams and Eves.

But a small number of them – those who had positions of power within the Virginia Company – were very unhappy about this. They demanded that everyone work to make new ships, and that they should aim to make it on to Jamestown. Of course, the rest disagreed, knowing that as soon as they reached there they would be worked literally to death as slave labourers.

Considering it their divine duty, the Virginia Company officials set about re-establishing class divisions and a culture of hard work, and did so with the establishment of capital punishment: killing those who refused to tow the line.

Thus, eventually, the vast majority ended up back on ships and heading for Jamestown, which they found starving and ravaged. Most died there.

The story is a famous one, and even at the time created quite a stir. Shakespeare almost certainly based The Tempest on it, and many philosophers were troubled by the problems it created: viz, are human beings created for work or leisure?

As I’m so under the cosh at the moment with my own work, it’s something I’m thinking a lot about. Why am I working so hard? Certainly not all of it is for personal satisfaction, and far too much is about paying the bills. It’s a vicious circle of needing to work to make enough money to sustain the lifestyle I’m told I need if only I’d work a bit harder…

And all the while there are those who do so little, and make so much. Step up Carlos Tevez…

The nagging question is this: to what extent are we still suffering this Protestant Capitalist work ethic? The movement of people off the land and into the factories was certainly driven in part by hard-core protestantism…

Early settlers in the Americas were shocked by how little the Native Americans did – and yet how well fed they remained. We just seem so tied into this crazy system of labour, and it’s killing us all, and the planet, and I don’t really see much being modelled elsewhere. Most of the church seems to preach a gospel of labour. ‘They chose their preachers like they chose their horses,’ as RS Thomas wrote, ‘for their hard work.‘

We may have patched up their homes a bit, but we still demand so much from the working classes. And still punish hard those who step out of line and demand an alternative life…

I’ve been reflecting a bit on the conversation about the ‘Year of Opposition’, and the comments in particular that dealt with gender imbalance.

What has really struck me about the above conversation is that all the voices are male. And I wonder whether the language of “thrashing things out” and the imagery of the boxing ring might have something to do with this? I had originally written that “the contributors can’t be held responsible for the lack of female participation” but on reflection, if the debate becomes couched in the language of aggression – which is often evident above – then they can. In my experience, a lot of women will simply walk away from that.

And:

As per the ‘year of opposition thread’ though, this is again pretty culturally blokeish. What I’m not sure about is whether that’s something it’s okay to indulge — perhaps only so if we critiqued the idea as we went. The way many blokes have come to be made has made them want to express their Christianity differently to women, who are a vast majority in churches. If those churches didn’t have a (continuing) history of sexism, we’d be allowed to be open about that. I can’t decide if it’s right to ignore it.

So here’s the question – which I mean very sincerely – if ‘blokes’ are ‘blokeish’ is it wrong to write posts that are ‘blokeish’? If I was a woman writing a blog, would she be expected to reduce her feminimity to make her site a place where men felt more comfortable to comment?

I think the point above (made by Simon Jones of Third Way) about the long history of sexism and patriarchy may be key: in order to bring balance we do need some affirmative action the other way. But… sometimes it just feels ‘wrong’ to be a man. Mark Driscoll I’m not, and I’m not about to go into the woods and bang a drum while wrestling a wart hog, but neither do I want to be ashamed of masculinity.

The question I’m not sure about is why women don’t post much on blogs, or submit so many applications to speak at events, or offer to write articles so much. Is this still part of a history of being oppressed, or is it something else? It seems to matter, because if it’s the latter, then perhaps men and organizations/publications need to feel less guilty about gender imbalance. On the other hand, balance is possible – and very refreshing when it happens. For a long time In Our Time have had extraordinarily balanced panels, and not gone about it at all. It’s subtle, but powerful.

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the 10 year anniversary of 9/11, and in the last few days how it might relate to the discussion of whether ‘newness’ is possible.

This isn’t meant as an holistic critique or discussion of the events all those years ago, instead I’ve been drawn to thinking about the extraordinarily physical nature of them.

It’s extraordinary to think that 9/11 was a pre- Web2.0 event. I’m not sure how this plays out exactly, but my sense is that we have become delaminated from the physical world in the past 10 years as we have become increasingly connected via social media and digital mediation. So much of our ‘news’ now seems caught up in this: scandals that deal not in physical realities so much as feelings people have and comments they may have made.

In contrast, 9/11 presents itself in my memory has a highly physical event. One watched things unfold on TV, with no Facebook posts or Tweets or comment-minutiae. Here was something that wasn’t about the emotional pain of financial or material loss, but people in very genuine pain.

I hope that makes sense and doesn’t come across as insensitive to the disasters that have come since then. What we had with 9/11 was something actually happening. Something very very real. In our recycled, retweeted, repeated, cropped and shortened world, here was an event that exploded into reality. It was, perhaps, a very real outbreak of something ‘new’. Horrible and monstrous, but a cut was made there, a global incisison that left the old world behind.

I have little sympathy for President Bush, but some empathy now with him sitting, utterly lost in a class of children, having heard what was unfolding. Financial crashes, wars, natural disasters… all would have some frame of reference. But here were people taking very human tools: planes and skyscrapers, and turning them into weapons.

I don’t mean it as a glib turn to think in parallel about the conversation that’s emerged over the past two posts, but I do think that one of the small lessons of 9/11 is that real things can still rupture, even in our post-modern world which lacks meta-narrative. And though there is a place for discussion and conversation, there also comes a time when action, real action, is required, when paths need to be chosen.