I am sleepy and sick.
Friday.
Word.
Grimey, filthy D'n'B will keep me awake.
Friday, 23 October 2009
Thursday, 22 October 2009
Welcome to the Zapatista la realidad
So I'm barre feeling 'Diaries of an Afro Warrior'
This book
My Prison, my home - Halah Esfandiari, if women in the Mid East interests you try 'Not without my daughter' by Betty Mahmoody, 'Princess' by Jean Sasson and well actually there's loads of these books, there's one about a girl married off in Yemen with her sister, and another one I've read but can't remember. Hmmm.
AND finally, the best essay I've read in a long time.
(If you have any questions about Neo-Liberalism, look up 'Structural Adjustment Packages'. Interesting shit).
Btw, I'm faintly obsessed with these guys. When I write a dissertation it'll either be Political Philosophy or it'll be on these fuckers:
This book
My Prison, my home - Halah Esfandiari, if women in the Mid East interests you try 'Not without my daughter' by Betty Mahmoody, 'Princess' by Jean Sasson and well actually there's loads of these books, there's one about a girl married off in Yemen with her sister, and another one I've read but can't remember. Hmmm.
AND finally, the best essay I've read in a long time.
(If you have any questions about Neo-Liberalism, look up 'Structural Adjustment Packages'. Interesting shit).
Btw, I'm faintly obsessed with these guys. When I write a dissertation it'll either be Political Philosophy or it'll be on these fuckers:
Tomorrow Begins Today:
invitation to an insurrection
by Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos
What you hear is the voice of the EZLN
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos is the Zapatista’s masked spokesperson
invitation to an insurrection
by Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos
What you hear is the voice of the EZLN
"Welcome to the Zapatista reality. Welcome to this territory in struggle for humanity. Welcome to this territory in rebellion against neoliberalism.
When this dream that awakens today in La Realidad began to be dreamed by us, we thought it would be a failure. We thought that, maybe, we could gather here a few dozen people from a handful of continents. We were wrong. As always, we were wrong. It wasn’t a few dozen, but thousands of human beings, those who came from the five continents to find themselves in the reality at the close of the twentieth century. The word born within these mountains, these Zapatista mountains, found the ears of those who could listen, care for and launch it anew, so that it might travel far away and circle the world. The sheer lunacy of calling to the five continents to reflect clearly on our past, our present, and our future, found that it wasn’t alone in its delirium. Soon lunacies from the whole planet began to work on bringing the dream to rest in La Realidad.
Who are they who dare to let their dreams meet with all the dreams of the world? What is happening in the mountains of the Mexican southeast that finds an echo and a mirror in the streets of Europe, the suburbs of Asia, the countryside of America, the townships of Africa, and the houses of Oceania? What is it that is happening with the peoples of these five continents who, so we are all told, only encounter each other to compete or make war? Wasn’t this turn of the century synonymous with despair, bitterness, and cynicism? From where and how did all these dreams come to La Realidad?
May Europe speak and recount the long bridge of its gaze, crossing the Atlantic and history in order to rediscover itself in La Realidad. May Asia speak and explain the gigantic leap of its heart to arrive and beat in La Realidad. May Africa speak and describe the long sailing of its restless image to come to reflect upon itself in La Realidad. May Oceania speak and tell of the multiple flight of its thought to come to rest in La Realidad. May America speak and remember its
swelling hope to come to renew itself in La Realidad. May the five continents speak and everyone listen.
May humanity suspend for a moment its silence of shame
and anguish.
May humanity speak. May humanity listen.... Each
country, each city, each countryside, each house, each
person, each is a large or small battleground.
On the one side is neoliberalism with all its repressive
power and all its machinery of death; on the other side is
the human being.
In any place in the world, anytime, any man or woman rebels to the point of tearing off the clothes that resignation has woven for them and cynicism has dyed grey. Any man or
woman, of whatever colour, in whatever tongue, speaks and says to himself, to herself: “Enough is enough! – ¡Ya basta!” For struggling for a better world all of us are fenced in, threatened with death. The fence is reproduced globally. In every continent, every city, every countryside, every house.
Power’s fence of war closes in on the rebels, for whom
humanity is always grateful. But fences are broken. In every house, in every countryside, in every city, in every state, in every country, on every continent,the rebels, whom history repeatedly has given the length of its long trajectory, struggle and the fence
is broken. The rebels search each other out. They walk toward one another. They find each other and together break other fences.
In the countrysides and cities, in the states, in the nations, on the continents, the rebels begin to recognize each other, to know themselves as equals and different. They continue on their fatiguing walk, walking as it is now necessary to walk, that is to say, struggling....
A reality spoke to them then. Rebels from the five continents heard it and set off walking.
Some of the best rebels from the five continents arrived in the mountains of the Mexican Southeast. All of them brought their ideas, their hearts, their worlds. They came to
La Realidad to find themselves in others’ ideas, in others’ reasons, in others’ worlds.
A world made of many worlds found itself these days in the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.
A world made of many worlds opened a space and established its right to exist, raised the banner of being necessary, stuck itself in the middle of earth’s reality to announce a better future. But what next? A new number in the useless enumeration of the numerous international orders?
A new scheme that calms and alleviates the anguish of having no solution?
A global program for world revolution? A utopian theory so that it can maintain a prudent
distance from the reality that anguishes us? A scheme that assures each of us a position, a task, a
title, and no work? The echo goes, a reflected image of the possible and forgotten: the possibility and necessity of speaking and listening; not an echo that fades away, or a force that
decreases after reaching its apogee. Let it be an echo that breaks barriers and re-echoes.
Let it be an echo of our own smallness, of the local and particular, which reverberates in an echo of our own greatness, the intercontinental and galactic. An echo that recognizes the existence of the other and does not overpower or attempt to silence it.
An echo of this rebel voice transforming itself and renewing itself in other voices. An echo that turns itself into many voices, into a
network of voices that, before Power’s deafness, opts to speak to itself, knowing itself to be one and many. Let it be a network of voices that resist the war that the
Power wages on them. A network of voices that not only speak, but also struggle
and resist for humanity and against neoliberalism. The world, with the many worlds that the world needs, continues. Humanity, recognizing itself to be plural, different, inclusive, tolerant of itself, full of hope, continues.
The human and rebel voice, consulted on the five continents in order to become a network of voices and of resistances continues.
We declare: That we will make a collective network of all our particular struggles and resistances. An intercontinental network of resistance against neoliberalism, an
intercontinental network of resistance for humanity. This intercontinental network of resistance, recognizing differences and acknowledging similarities, will search to
find itself with other resistances around the world. This intercontinental network of resistance is not an
organizing structure; it doesn’t have a central head or decision maker; it has no central command or hierarchies.
We are the network, all of us who resist. "
When this dream that awakens today in La Realidad began to be dreamed by us, we thought it would be a failure. We thought that, maybe, we could gather here a few dozen people from a handful of continents. We were wrong. As always, we were wrong. It wasn’t a few dozen, but thousands of human beings, those who came from the five continents to find themselves in the reality at the close of the twentieth century. The word born within these mountains, these Zapatista mountains, found the ears of those who could listen, care for and launch it anew, so that it might travel far away and circle the world. The sheer lunacy of calling to the five continents to reflect clearly on our past, our present, and our future, found that it wasn’t alone in its delirium. Soon lunacies from the whole planet began to work on bringing the dream to rest in La Realidad.
Who are they who dare to let their dreams meet with all the dreams of the world? What is happening in the mountains of the Mexican southeast that finds an echo and a mirror in the streets of Europe, the suburbs of Asia, the countryside of America, the townships of Africa, and the houses of Oceania? What is it that is happening with the peoples of these five continents who, so we are all told, only encounter each other to compete or make war? Wasn’t this turn of the century synonymous with despair, bitterness, and cynicism? From where and how did all these dreams come to La Realidad?
May Europe speak and recount the long bridge of its gaze, crossing the Atlantic and history in order to rediscover itself in La Realidad. May Asia speak and explain the gigantic leap of its heart to arrive and beat in La Realidad. May Africa speak and describe the long sailing of its restless image to come to reflect upon itself in La Realidad. May Oceania speak and tell of the multiple flight of its thought to come to rest in La Realidad. May America speak and remember its
swelling hope to come to renew itself in La Realidad. May the five continents speak and everyone listen.
May humanity suspend for a moment its silence of shame
and anguish.
May humanity speak. May humanity listen.... Each
country, each city, each countryside, each house, each
person, each is a large or small battleground.
On the one side is neoliberalism with all its repressive
power and all its machinery of death; on the other side is
the human being.
In any place in the world, anytime, any man or woman rebels to the point of tearing off the clothes that resignation has woven for them and cynicism has dyed grey. Any man or
woman, of whatever colour, in whatever tongue, speaks and says to himself, to herself: “Enough is enough! – ¡Ya basta!” For struggling for a better world all of us are fenced in, threatened with death. The fence is reproduced globally. In every continent, every city, every countryside, every house.
Power’s fence of war closes in on the rebels, for whom
humanity is always grateful. But fences are broken. In every house, in every countryside, in every city, in every state, in every country, on every continent,the rebels, whom history repeatedly has given the length of its long trajectory, struggle and the fence
is broken. The rebels search each other out. They walk toward one another. They find each other and together break other fences.
In the countrysides and cities, in the states, in the nations, on the continents, the rebels begin to recognize each other, to know themselves as equals and different. They continue on their fatiguing walk, walking as it is now necessary to walk, that is to say, struggling....
A reality spoke to them then. Rebels from the five continents heard it and set off walking.
Some of the best rebels from the five continents arrived in the mountains of the Mexican Southeast. All of them brought their ideas, their hearts, their worlds. They came to
La Realidad to find themselves in others’ ideas, in others’ reasons, in others’ worlds.
A world made of many worlds found itself these days in the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.
A world made of many worlds opened a space and established its right to exist, raised the banner of being necessary, stuck itself in the middle of earth’s reality to announce a better future. But what next? A new number in the useless enumeration of the numerous international orders?
A new scheme that calms and alleviates the anguish of having no solution?
A global program for world revolution? A utopian theory so that it can maintain a prudent
distance from the reality that anguishes us? A scheme that assures each of us a position, a task, a
title, and no work? The echo goes, a reflected image of the possible and forgotten: the possibility and necessity of speaking and listening; not an echo that fades away, or a force that
decreases after reaching its apogee. Let it be an echo that breaks barriers and re-echoes.
Let it be an echo of our own smallness, of the local and particular, which reverberates in an echo of our own greatness, the intercontinental and galactic. An echo that recognizes the existence of the other and does not overpower or attempt to silence it.
An echo of this rebel voice transforming itself and renewing itself in other voices. An echo that turns itself into many voices, into a
network of voices that, before Power’s deafness, opts to speak to itself, knowing itself to be one and many. Let it be a network of voices that resist the war that the
Power wages on them. A network of voices that not only speak, but also struggle
and resist for humanity and against neoliberalism. The world, with the many worlds that the world needs, continues. Humanity, recognizing itself to be plural, different, inclusive, tolerant of itself, full of hope, continues.
The human and rebel voice, consulted on the five continents in order to become a network of voices and of resistances continues.
We declare: That we will make a collective network of all our particular struggles and resistances. An intercontinental network of resistance against neoliberalism, an
intercontinental network of resistance for humanity. This intercontinental network of resistance, recognizing differences and acknowledging similarities, will search to
find itself with other resistances around the world. This intercontinental network of resistance is not an
organizing structure; it doesn’t have a central head or decision maker; it has no central command or hierarchies.
We are the network, all of us who resist. "
Sunday, 18 October 2009
Thursday, 8 October 2009
String
You probably wouldn't think it if you knew me, but I used to be an Orchestra junkie. I loved orchestra, it was like the most amazing thing ever, such an amazing buzz.
I never missed one, I'd come in hung over, sick... every monday morning at 8am I had a lesson, and every Friday at 8am I had orchestra. Yeah, I used to drag my ass out of bed for this. I was a music geek, 'lolol I wish I was a fermata so I could hold you'.
So lame. I was the chubby kid (this is before and after the skinny kid) with the Viola (should have been a Violin dammit! ¬_¬), and it was cool cause I could tell you the difference between legato and pizzicato and read the Alto clef.
I never persued it though, mostly because I didn't think I was good enough. I still don't - I have no natural aptitude for music, it took an immense amount of work for me to play how I play now, and in all honestly, even now I'm pretty poor.
Whatever. I went from a rubbishy school orchestra (5 violins, 2 flutes if lucky, maybe a clarinet, 1 cellist and me, all averaging grade 2) to London Youth Orc, to QM college orc to QM Sinfonia - a proper orchestra with auditions and... a professional conductor!
Not only this, but I'm 1/4th of the QM String quartet - 2 violins, a cellist and me. We play Palladio so many times we think our hands are going to fall off, but we sound good (here's the tune http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sluHJGcxek ).
I guess I'm no longer a terrible Violist? I don't know, but the Viola is the one thing in my life I've seen through properly.
I just absolutely love playing in an Orchestra. I go a few months without doing so and I get withdrawal symptops and start shaking like a crack addict. I listen to big Orchestra pieces and feel like I'm missing out. Whenever I watch a movie, I pay the most attention to the score, I pick out chords and instruments and seperate them from the film. And whenever I used to hear songs, I never wanted to be the singer, nah I wanted to be the guitarist/cellist/violinist in the back.
My biggest regret I think (bigger than screwing up my A levels and not studying, which is really saying something) is that I didn't learn the Piano. And if that's my biggest regret in life thus far, I think I'm doing pretty alright!
Wednesday, 7 October 2009
Tipsy little fingers...
...shouldn't dance across this keyboard. Whoops.
So much for 'no more alcohol'. Kk, last night was a bit... fail. Plus my feet are cut, scratched and abused. As well as my cuticles.
Yay.
Lecture at 12...oh how my heart sours. I feel a bit sick actually, don't think my liver has recovered from last week.
Hate freshers. House party tonight, noooo, don't make me go - can't do it!!
Plus, 4 months in central and now I'm getting really depressed at the thought of having to go to Mile End again.
I went to SOAS the other day to meet my friend, ended up outside UCL... cry.
I found a grey hair the other day too - I know I'm almost 20, but this is ridiculous!
Monday, 5 October 2009
Pollytix
oh God.
Missed a lecture already. Uni is hard.
I'm already getting lazy. Pathetic.
No. I need to work hard this year. And I will. I'm not naturally intelligent, I have to work hard to get even decent grades.
I need to study. God, it's just so hard getting out of bed in the morning.
I haven't done anything study-wise today; not. good. enough.
Okay, gonna go read about Marxism and World Politics.
I feel so incredibly untelligent right now.. :\
I hardly know anything about the EU, too. Should probably look that up.
GOD.
I have this really stressy sick feeling in my stomach. Like it's all too much and I can't do it. Plus my room is an absolute abomination, and I'm sick of it being a mess.
Fuck me, I'm so sick of sharing a room. No room to even breathe. My GOD.
And why won't they bloody call me and tell me if I got the job? :S My friend got the letter on Friday, if I don't find out by tomorow, gah.
Webct is down so I can't access my unis internet. And I need to find out why I haven't been paid my wages, also late.
FFS. Why can't people pay on time?
My bed is a mess.
I'm so stressed, I don't even know why. I have too much to do. Feel like I'm going to be sick. I can't cope well under pressure.
I don't even have any pressure though. Fml, my room is making me nervous. I can't sleep in here.
It's nearly 4am; I have to go shopping tomorow, go to uni and renew a book, meet my dad, pick up my sister, do a load of reading, buy stationary, go to Ministry, paint my nails.
Effort.
I am rejected.
On a lesser note, the shadow health sec (Lansley) has promised to cut £1.5 billion from the NHS. Awesome - let's stop providing for the people who need it the most!
Sunday, 4 October 2009
I'm really funny
Did you hear about the farmer who won a nobel prize?
He was outstanding in his field.
I'M FUNNY LIKE DAT.
So you know that even if the manner of your death is arbitrary, your mortality is inescapable?
Depressing? Maybe the interahamwe will get you, maybe you'll die in the next civil war with the EZLN, maybe you'll be hit by a car, maybe you'll get cancer, maybe you'll be executed in China or Texas.
Maybe you'll have cardiac arrest, your brain will get a tumour, your feet will fail, your lungs will stop and your heart will end. Perhaps Hamas will kill you, perhaps Hezbollah. Maybe you'll linger like Gilad Shalit, maybe you won't. Your parents will die, your lover, your sister, brother, friend, the girl across the street, your dog, the insignificant ants we step on... everything. We're tied to all organisms because inspite of it all, we all have the same fate.
It's black - your future is black. What is there beyond death but infinite nothingness. Do you believe in a soul? In an omniscient God? An all knowing, loving, compassionate, caring, protective God? An Abrahamic God? A Hindu God? Your own God?
You're going to die, I'm going to die, we're all going to die. Our descendants won't remember us (what's your paternal great, great grandmothers name?)
And what then? People say death is the next step, but they're wrong. Death is the end - your body will rot, the eyes that read this will end, the hands that type this will fail, one day I'll be old. My body will end, hands, feet, liver, kidney, lungs... all decrepid. All finite.
All we have to remind you of ourselves is the tangible things we leave you.
Shakespeare had it:
Or I shall live your epitaph to make, Or you survive when I in earth am rotten; From hence your memory death cannot take, Although in me each part will be forgotten. Your name from hence immortal life shall have, Though I, once gone, to all the world must die: The earth can yield me but a common grave, When you entombed in men's eyes shall lie. Your monument shall be my gentle verse, Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read, And tongues to be your being shall rehearse When all the breathers of this world are dead; You still shall live--such virtue hath my pen-- Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.
Saturday, 3 October 2009
Nationalism
Kk, so I'm reading some long ting book on Nationalism for a long ting module on 'Nation in the global age' for uni.
Along with gems such as:
and
it's actually pretty interesting.
This guy Anderson argues that Nationalism is ridiculous; the nation does not exist. Communities are imagined; they're not real, insofar as you can never know everyone in your community.
I'm lazy so I'm going to quote a man called Gellner: "Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-conciousness: it invents nations where they do not exist".
Moreover, "l'essence d'une nation est que tout les individuls aient beaucoup de choses en commun, et aussi que tous aient oublie bien des choses." Effectively - the perceived essence of the nation is that all have some shit in common.
Along with gems such as:
"The fact that the Soviet Union shares with the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland the rare distinction of refusing nationality in its naming suggests it is as much a legatee of the prenational dynastic states of the ninteenth century as the precursor of a twenty-first century internationalist order"
"Marxist and liberalist theory have become etiolated in a late Ptolemaic effort to 'save the phenomena'; and that a reorientation of perspective in, as it were, a Copernican spirit, is urgently required."
and other inane passages (no, I don't know what they mean either)
This guy Anderson argues that Nationalism is ridiculous; the nation does not exist. Communities are imagined; they're not real, insofar as you can never know everyone in your community.
I'm lazy so I'm going to quote a man called Gellner: "Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-conciousness: it invents nations where they do not exist".
Although Anderson critiques this himself by stating: "Gellner is so anxious to show that nationalism masquerades under false pretenses that he assimilates 'invention' to 'fabrication' and 'falsity', rather than to 'imagining' and 'creation'. In this way he implies that 'true' communities exist ehich can be advantageously juxtaposed to nations. In fact, all communities larger than villages of face-to-face contact (and perhaps even these) are imagined".
Did you read that? There's no such thing as a community?
Moreover, "l'essence d'une nation est que tout les individuls aient beaucoup de choses en commun, et aussi que tous aient oublie bien des choses." Effectively - the perceived essence of the nation is that all have some shit in common.
Effectively - there is no nation. It's all imagined; you're never gonna meet the vast, vast, vast majority of people - only in the most primordal villages of 50 or so people, can a 'community' exist. It is all perceived - it's not real. Nationalism is a joke.
Anderson points to something lots of countries have in common; the tomb of the unknown soldier. He says that unlike other isms (Anarchism, Liberalism...), Nationalism is different. It's much more potent, so far so that people are willing to die for it. Can you imagine a tomb for the unknown Anarchist? It's laudable tbh.
He goes on to state the origins of Nationalism (and I suppose jingoistic tendencies?) as the dawning of Nationalism arose with the Enlightenment, something commonly known to have destroyed Christendom in Western Europe. With the rise of the Enlightenment (rationalist secularism), religion fell; you know this, it's an old tale. We all got smarter and less religious, moving it on a bit I guess you could quote Nietszche; Gott ist tot ('God is dead'). Effectively; God/religion/life as we know it is over. No more religion. Boom.
Kk, so religion helps us answer shitty problems; why am I blind? Why is my friend paralysed, etc... it pacifies us, calms us, helps us, that's why it lasted so long. However, the enlightenment took away the comfort of God, but not the miseries of life.
SO WHAT DO WE DO?
We invent nationalism. Bare with me (or with Anderson, this is not my argument). With the loss of religion, we (we being W. Europeans) needed "a secular transformation of fatality into continuity, contingency into meaning...few things are better suited to this end than an idea of nation... If nations are widely conceded to be 'new' and 'historical', the nations to which they give political expression always loom out of an immemorial past, and, still more important, glide into a limitless future".
Geddit? We need the nation to feel like a part of something; with no God then there's no point to life. With a nation, there is. You're working for the bigger picture; you are a part of your country. You are the past, present and future. I guess it's almost atavistic?
To summise; Nationalism is a by-product of the enlightenment, a lack of religion meant we needed something else to be a part of, so we turned insular, to our nation.
Oh and also, the denigration of Latin, for the vernacular languages (so English, German, French [zut allors!]...) helped compound the issue of being insular, rather than a part of a community.
OKAY MY TURN.
Obvs I can't argue with the roots of Nationalism; I'm not really in a position to do so. I'm an undergrad student, this guy is a bloody professor. I can't contest facts, but I can opinions.
He says that no communities exist, because we will never meet everyone, they simply live 'in communion' in our minds.
That's ridiculous imo. We will never meet everyone, or even the majority of people in our community, but we all have many things in common. We all inhabit the same stretch of land, we all speak the same language, okay that's arbitrary, I'll expand.
We are all governed by the same government, we are all subject to the laws of Parliament. This can not be said of everyone; I share nothing in common with a Chinese fisherman, but I have much in common with a farmer in Norfolk. We have the same government, laws... we all fight in wars against the same enemy, we all live on the same island (British isles BABAY!), we're bound toogether by our country. We may not be exactly the same - but Anderson seems to make everyone atomic. As though we're all completely apart from each other. This is not the case, esp. not in a Socialist country like here. We rely on each other; I pay taxes to educate your kid, you pay taxes so I can have an operation on the NHS, fact is we're all interconnected. You will never meet me, but we're all bound on this island. Ties bind.
It may not be tangible - you can not touch 'community', there is no rope around us, we are not bound physically. If I saw you on the street I wouldn't say hello, but we have so much in common. We are a community; we rely on each other, we're bound.
On a purely economic basis, what would we do without a primary industry? What would we do without a seconary industry? What would we do without a tertiary and quartertiary industry? We all need each other; if no one paid taxes then there'd be no health service, if there was no tertiary industy this country would be broke. Without you I am nothing; I could not survive in the way that I do. Without people working like me, you couldn't survive. Everything has an origin, even the richest people have money which trickles from somewhere, somewhere with most probably a humble beginning.
We most definitely are a community - it doesn't matter that I'll never see you, we all read the same newspapers anyway. And even if we don't, we're all bound by a common fate to this country. Our country.
It just seems bizarre to me to state that the community does not, can not, never has and never will exist. I live 'in communion' in your head, but I still live, I still live in your country, use your taxes, fund your education etc etc.
Let's ask Adam Smith! He wrote The Wealth of Nations, where he argued that wealth was not money in itself, but wealth was derived from the added value in manufactured items produced by both invested capital and labour. See? We need each other.
It's just bizarre.
Anyway, Anderson's argument seems really hollow - we're not a community because we never meet each other. Okay.. is that it? There is no reason that his supposition that community does not exist should be worth more than my supposition that we're part of a large community. I think there's a tendency for undergrads to not dare and question - like we see a hugely complex book written by someone with clearly a lot more experience than us, and we take it at face value. This guy's a professor - I'm not even 20. My political knowledge is a 2:2 from a first yr undergrad course, I'm not exactly well learned. But the fact is, I just think he's wrong, and there's no reason why my opinion is any less valid. This subject is not scientific; it's not based on facts and dates and figures, it can not be quantified. It's intangible and subjective, so meh.
Anyway, his constant reiterance that nationalism merely superceded religion (and the rise of vernacular languages/denigration of Latin use) also seems simplistic. Admittedly I know little, but as far as I recall nationalism is nationalism insofar as it's shared by the whole nation - it is a shared notion. The majority of the population have always supported the nation, I remember reading once (many years ago!) about the mass suport for the Crimean war 1853-56 (charge of the light brigade anyone? >_<), admittedly this is a bit after the enlightenment, but I think nationalism has always existed. Maybe not to the extent is does now, but it's always been there. And when it wasn't, it wasn't religion which replaced it, but more poverty - people don't think about a war when it's a constant battle to feed and clothe their children. It was not religion then, which stopped any nationalism previously, but poverty. Perhaps it could instead be argued that rather than the loss of religion, it was the industrial rev (for Britain), or general increases in social welfare, which increased nationalism - if you don't have to spend all your energy on the very basics, you can expand - right? If you can expand, you can think about your nation.
I'm totally making this up as I go along btw. But anyway, Anderson also seems to exaggerate the loss of religion experienced in the enlightenment, which seems highly naiive. Many countries in Europe have been in the grip of religion, way after the enlightenment. The Orthodox church in Russia has always flourished, even during the USSR when it was nearly quashed, it always had adherants. In France, Portugal, Spain, Germany... religion has always been massive, as well as Britain. Anderson speaks as though religion simply disappeared and the whole of Europe was enlightened - no. The literati and educated were perhaps 'enlightened', but I doubt the rest were. It's only been since the 50s that church attendance has really started falling.
I think there was a place for both religion and nationalism - Anderson speaks as though they're mutuall exclusive; not at all the case.
WHAT CHU THINK?
And no, I don't know why I'm in on a Saturday night, writing about nationalism. I really, really, really, really, REALLY wanted to go out tonight, but alas, I was bailed. ¬_¬
MY FRIENDS ARE LAME.
Insufficiently pacified
Yeh, I'm posting My Chemical romance. I feel almost embarased, like some 15 year old girl with black shag bands, razor blade scars and GCSE coursework.
Fuck it, I don't care, it's a good tune.
Skipped yesterdays lecture, too much effort to get out of bed, too much energy to get dressed, too much time to fix my face.
Allow it.
Start as you mean to go on. I planned to read but I didn't, I just fucked around all day.
Isn't that fucking smart?
So last night me and my friend, met up with a bi-polar, tee-total breakdancer we met in Stockholm. V. odd.Last night I went with my friend to Madame Jojo's to see a random break dancer we met in Stockholm.
Guy is doing things I did not know could be done.
I'm like Woah. Fuck me, this guy is more flexible than ME.
Friend is like HAHA
Everything is going well. I'm with a really good friend of mine, I'm feeling in love with my city, in love with my friend, in love with my life. I'm in Soho feeling pretty.
Everything is well, all is fine, and suddenly I'm sad. This all encompassing sadness, again. It's on and off, up and down. I said I was sufficiently pacified before, clearly not. This isn't fun anymore, I just want to go home. Urgh, such a kill joy.
I'm pretty sober, and it occurs to me that I'd be far happier with alcohol. Ha! Wtf Holly, bad idea. I don't need alcohol to socialise with people, I'm pretty outgoing, but I SWEAR at this minute, the longer I just stand here, I don't wanna laugh, or dance or talk or anything. I just feel completely flat. Again. Alcohol PLEASE?
It's up and down, on and off, I can be happy for ages, and then out of nowhere it comes. I don't know why, the only thing that seems to cheer me up is alcohol, and that's really not a good thing to start.
Anyway, I just pacified myself by eating some noodles.
I have so little optimism right now, don't even know why. God, this is so fucking boring.
It's like Newton's laws of motion; everything has an equal and opposite effect. If I'm happy I must be sad, so pointless. I think there's something wrong with my head, I'm up and down so much, happy, sad, if you knew me you'd think I was pretty normal.
I have so little optimism right now, don't even know why. God, this is so fucking boring.
It's like Newton's laws of motion; everything has an equal and opposite effect. If I'm happy I must be sad, so pointless. I think there's something wrong with my head, I'm up and down so much, happy, sad, if you knew me you'd think I was pretty normal.
I've felt really skinny and pretty for the last week or so, like it's been really fucking odd. Then last night I remembered I'm really not, at all. And then I just felt all fat and gross, like a panda and urgh wtf man why am I here?
On a different note, I passed outside the LSE union bar, they seemed to be having a pyjama party. Strange; they weren't all spacky Asian freshies. STRANGE TIMES. And Gosh how conceited is LSE; they have mini statues of that bloody elephant everywhere. Wtf man. >__<
Friday, 2 October 2009
Sufficiently pacified
Something which came really fast and lasted ages recently quickly left my head almost as fast as it came on.
Strange. Ah well, shan't complain. Wasn't particularly nice while it lasted.
It's like a sad release.
O well.
Supposed to be in a lecture right now - haven't even left my bed yet. :\
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