Spectrums, Assumptions and The Political Compass

The left-right distinction is a well-worn feature of our political lexicon: a schema that finds its roots in revolutionary France and has since been abstracted out of context to typify politics tout-court.

A modern reader might reasonably wonder whether such a spectrum holds up considering the shades of left and right available to us. In our post-Reagan/Thatcher era the Right is torn between its roots in classical conservatism and the modern libertarianism that has attempted to replace it. The Left, similarly, is as fragmented in theory as it has been in practise. Consulting the conventional left-right dichotomy, we find anarchists and marxists in the same camp as liberals. While one might try to defend such a grouping on the grounds that a sliding scale could be plotted between communism and liberalism, this falls in to the trap of typifying socialism as "welfarism on steroids" while still failing to explain how anarchists tessellate with the left.

In response to such difficulties, alternative spectrums have been produced. In the late 60's David Nolan introduced a spectrum which simultaneously charted the  dimensions of economic and personal freedom: the most prolific iteration of which is "The Political Compass".

Pictured: The Political Compass (below left) and Nolan's chart (below right).

While this twin-variable approach does help clear up the difference between libertarianism and conservativism, the underlying meta-theory is still lacking. Nolan's divide between economic and personal freedom reflects his own libertarian tendency to understand freedom from and freedom to as distinct categories - with the former taking moral primacy. Here freedom is reified and frustrated independently of one's economic means: your liberty can be obstructed by a tyrannical government but not by economic deprivation - this is only one way of understanding freedom.

Concurrently there is a problem as both The Political Compass' and Nolan assume that competing ideologies maintain converging ideas of what freedom and equality etc entail. Consider, for example, The Political Compass' analysis of anarchism:  

"The usual understanding of anarchism as a left wing ideology does not take into account the neo-liberal "anarchism" championed by the likes of Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman and America's Libertarian Party, which couples social Darwinian right-wing economics with liberal positions on most social issues."  - The Political Compass.

This places orthodox anarchism in the bottom left and "neo-liberal anarchism" in the bottom right. Such an approach misunderstands the disagreement between minarchists and anarchists as one over whether or not people should "share their stuff" and misses the fact that the two groups have very different ideas about what it means to be free. Libertarian leftists disagree with libertarian rightists because they do not consider the ideas of the libertarian right to be fit for promoting a fully "free" society - their economic differences inform their disagreements over the nature of libertarianism.

The problem facing any political spectrum then is the necessary assumption that political differences are mostly quantitative; which is troublesome considering that political questions are more often also about what a virtue is as well as how much of it we should have. Such spectrums, at best, chart the possibilities of pragmatic political alliance between various groupings but pedagogically do little to inform test-takers about how their beliefs relate to others.

Reconciliations: An Apology to Poetry

Just over a year ago I published a piece venting my frustration with the medium of poetry. I would like to announce a change of heart. After spending the last 12 months reading and writing poetry, in an effort to force myself to understand it, I have come to accept it as a necessary, even if sometimes dull, artform.

The aforementioned blog post is no longer available but its core contention can be distilled down to "poetry is too obtuse to be of any real value and we would lose little by jettisoning it from our culture". In hindsight it was foolish of me to even suggest that poetry could be done away with. It's musicality and rhythm come naturally to the human ear and the directness of vers libre would demand inventing, if it weren't already in existence. Indeed, although I was blind to it at the time, it was the giants of vers libre with which I took umbrage.

 Free verse is most notably what people refer to when they say they hate poetry; after-all few, my former self included, would begrudge the charm of conventional rhyme. And the vox-pop criticisms of free-verse are pretty close to the criticisms I wielded against it a year ago. Even Stephen Fry, a private poetry aficionado, shares my worries:

I think that much of poetry written today suffers from anaemia. There is no iron in its blood, no energy, no drive. It flow gently, sometimes persuasively, but often in a lifeless trickle of the inwardly personal and the rhetorically listless. This lack of anima does not strike me as anything like the achieved and fruitful lassitude of true decadence; it is much more as if the volume had been turned down., as if poets are frightened of boldness. - Fry, The Ode Less Travelled p.g. 325.

It is important to note that elsewhere in "The Ode Less Travelled", Fry expresses his love of T.S. Eliot: the grand-daddy of modern poetic crypticism. Fry doesn't fail to "get" modern poetry but he does worry for the effect of obscurantism on poetry's ability to say what is important.

Yet free-verse seems unusually predisposed to the introverted meanderings that Fry criticises. Such introspection is a by-product of free verses' directness which facilitates unmediated outpouring. This intense need to take what is inside and place it on paper is what makes the work of Plathe, or even the later plays of Sarah Kane, incomprehensible to someone with little biographical knowledge of the author. Such authors use free-verse techniques to encapsulate intensely intimate sentiments which most modern readers will struggle to unpack without the aid of contextualising references.

This particular style of free verse reflects the artist qua artist, which is why it is worth defending. It represents the legacy of conceptualism: art as a mode of expression and experimentation rather than as commodity or product of patronage. There are those who bemoan entitled art students who refuse to master their field and instead churn out conceptualist guff;  but perhaps it is the other way round. Perhaps the real entitlement lies with the on-looker who cries fraud when encountering art which doesn't speak to his interests or function within a familiar frame of reference. Defending this particular exercise in solipsistic free-verse by emphasising its artistic purity is to admit that while this kind of poetry has its place, it is far away from the limelight. But what of the more accessible, pleasing or otherwise extroverted poetry of Whitman, Shelley or Byron? Why are these forms of poetry not flourishing?

While I wish to avoid being dragged into the "Is poetry dead?" debate I think it's worth acknowledging how little poetry sales account for in the book trade. With this context in mind, poetry is often talked up as a much needed yet maligned hero fighting against a quick-fix culture. This seems somewhat rash. The contemporary era of the twitterati is one which is dominated by the succinctly written word. The memorableness, poignancy and sheer stick-ability of poetry should make it the perfect candidate to under-go a digital renaissance and yet it still remains a cultural outsider.

Perhaps the poetry industry has yet to recognise the potential of social media. Alternatively, the snobs might have a point. It may be that one of the joys of poetry is chewing over stanzas until they fall into place and its decline is due to a lack of slow-thinking engagement among modern readers. I hope for the sake of humanity that that is not the case and, whether poetry makes it to the centre stage or not, I wish it all the best.

First Quarterly Review of 2016

Time to reflect on the succeses and concessions of my fight against sloth and gluttony: welcome to Cut-throat and Clueless' Quarterly Review.

The Resolutions

1. Writing, Running, Reading.

Incorporating this augmented trio into an - almost - daily routine has been surprisingly easy. Writing wise I've produced a couple of radio plays and short stories that I'm very happy with - alongside some amateur ballads and free-verse poems of varying quality. Promisingly, exercise no longer reduces me to a pile of helpless splutters and has occasionally proved itself to be fun. However, on a less triumphant note, my reading has been slow this month due to a burn-out from all the heavy reading I did in January/February.

In the following weeks I'll adopt more body-weight orientated training and maybe start practising Judo or MMA again; in the meantime I'll continue writing and patiently wait for my reading appetite to recover.

2. Get Techie.

Nothing but stagnation on this front; once I clear some mental space I'll get right on to it... I promise.

3. Get Foodie.

Currently consolidating my efforts to hone some of my favourites meals; alcohol wise I have been sipping my way through variants of the Daiquri and found that Cachaça is an excellent full-bodied alternative to rum.

I used to do some great batch cooking - sauces, chutneys etc - and I'd like to return to it in order to perfect the method. There is something wonderfuly satisfying about handing a friend "a thing that you have made " which they can enjoy at their own leisure.

The Hit List

1. Video Games

This resolution has been an abject failure: I'm  playing Minecraft as I type this. Who'd have thought that an abstinence policy would backfire? 

2. Video Editing

A successful resolution in so far as I have not attempted to make any videos, however...

3. Misc

While I haven't picked up any new hobbies, I have continued trying to produce a little amateur humanities audio podcast. Time consuming, perhaps... but I think you'll find it's perfectly in line with this year's ethos: https://soundcloud.com/user-85578048