Category: Social Science

The truth about Ghosts

In The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia , Samuel Johnson has the philosopher Imlac say: ‘That the dead are seen no more I will not undertake to maintain against the concurrent and unvaried testimony of all ages and of all nations. There is no people, rude or learned, among whom apparitions of the dead are not related and believed’. Johnson suggests universal experience alone has made belief in ghosts credible, and for every hoax there may be cited an instance not so easily dismissed.

The occult, the supernatural and the paranormal are as prevalent as ever, with people from all walks of life prepared to pay to consult with mediums, seers, astrologers, psychics, spiritualists and other self-proclaimed visionaries. Literally millions of pounds are also spent on magazines, films, books, tarot cards and other paraphernalia that deal with subjects that range “from astrology to witchcraft.” Millions of readers regularly consult newspaper horoscopes, with wide interest shown in conventions, lectures and fairs that deal with psychic matters. Why such interest in the supernatural? Among the reasons given are: “Fear of death, personal experience with premonitions and widespread treatment of the topic in books and films.” Many people are also drawn in by the “entertainment value” of the occult, often from childhood, or are “sincere people for whom the paranormal amounts to a religion or a body of knowledge that to them is or will prove to be scientifically valid.”

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Coping with and Resistance to Change

People have to learn to live with change, changes that take place slowly, like growing older, but sometimes changes that take place suddenly, such as the death of a family member, a serious accident, or the sudden loss of a job. Let’s look at this subject with cutbacks, economic uncertainties and debt control in mind.

Psychologists  suggest that individuals differ in the degree they enthuse about change: there are innovators, who will be proactive during the change process, and adopters, who readily accept change, but the majority, who need some persuasion, are ‘laggards’ who remain skeptical of change, and ‘rejecters’ who openly oppose change.

'I'm allright Jack' starring Peter Sellers

The decline in British manufacturing has been seen as an example of this type of thinking. In the workplace, it is up to supervisors, as ‘change agents’ to ensure influence from laggards and rejecters is diffused. Change agents of course, can be managers, union representatives, teachers, nurses or politicians..

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Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010)

Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps [DVD]

Rating: ★★★★★

Twenty three years have passed since the original Wall Street introduced Gordon Gekko, the insider trader who insisted ‘Greed is good’ and ‘Lunch is for wimps’, and eventually receives a jail sentence. The film stood up on its own, almost defining a whole ‘Yuppie’ generation, so why bring out a sequel now? 

My suspicions are that a sequel will do no harm to the careers of Michael Douglas (Gordon Gekko) or director Oliver Stone, and despite the long shadow of the parent film, ‘Money never sleeps’ is a worthy enough sequel to likewise stand alone.

Less obvious perhaps, but a serious message is also illustrated here. The current global financial crisis represents a perfect opportunity to explore the human element behind what is happening. Oliver Stone is saying that not only did we fail to learn the lessons of the stock market crash following October 19th 1987, but with an avalanche of toxic debt, economic stagnation, and the prospect of long term recession, the worst could be yet to come.. Continue reading Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010)

Copyright(s) & Wrongs

The issue of copyright is a minefield for the average person. Copyright has to strike a delicate balance between protecting the creators of music, words or photographs and the presentation of such material to a wider public.

On the one hand, it is only fair that the creators get paid for what they create. On the other, if copyright protection is too tight, then distribution of material becomes too restricted.

If Shakespeare was still in copyright less of his work would be seen. The same principle may help explain the appeal of the ‘classics’ in all artistic fields with producers. Could this weigh against new artists?

The concept of intellectual property was based around the distinction between mechanical invention, and literary or cultural creation.

That idea is now less appropriate to the ways in which creativity is carried out – software development, biotechnology and gene science all blur the boundaries between the mechanical and the intellectual. The advent of the internet has changed the way copyright works.

Going into a shop and stealing a CD is theft, and yet using new technology, down-loading tracks from the internet seems quite different.

Proposals to disconnect so-called peer to peer file-sharers have caused concern among internet campaigners. This is when people who know nothing of each other beyond a username, share music or films even though only one of them has bought the original. One thing is clear, and that is that a short-term fix on these copyright issues is not helpful or appropriate.

This attitude, that if it is available to download from the web then it is free, is even more pronounced with photographic images. When pictures were printed on paper it was easy to control, but new technology makes those old laws out-dated or at least difficult to enforce.

Stuart Franklin took the famous picture of the protester standing in front of the tank at Tiananmen Square – an image that has appeared on countless T-shirts around the world.

“We licensed my photographs to go on posters and T-shirts through business associates, the photograph itself is almost in the public domain, but if people want to use it to make a profit, such as a magazine or newspaper, then they have to pay, we have no problem at all with dissemination and actively encourage students and young people to engage with the photography. What we don’t encourage is pilfering for profit of our work,” he said..

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Tyranny- A Study in the Abuse of Power

Rating: ★★★★★

Tyranny: A Study in the Abuse of Power by Maurice Latey (1969)

”Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny; they have only shifted it to another shoulder” (George Bernard Shaw, 1903)

This is a very useful 310 page study by political commentator Maurice Latey for those interested in the factors that breed tyranny. He is particularly concerned with the psychological factors, what motivates these men to behave in the way they do. Although of necessity taking a broad historical approach, he concentrates on the twentieth century after World War One, arguably an ‘age of tyranny’, with Lenin, Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin and Mao Tse Tung foremost amongst others.

In ancient Greece, a tyrant was a ruler who seized power unconstitutionally or inherited such power. In the 10th and 9th centuries BC, monarchy had been the usual form of government in the Greek states; the aristocratic regimes that had replaced monarchy were by the 7th century BC themselves unpopular. Thus the opportunity arose for ambitious men to seize power in the name of the oppressed. Tyrants eventually came to be considered oppressive. Latey’s more refined definition of a tyrant is ‘a ruler who exercises arbitrary power beyond the scope permitted by the laws, customs and standards of his time and society, and who does so with a view to maintaining or increasing that power’.

He examines the tyrants of Greece and Rome, and the authors of that era. Aristotle said that tyranny aims at three things- firstly to keep the subjects in humility, secondly to have them distrust each other, and thirdly to render them powerless for opposition. These principle features of a tyrant can be discerned in the many historical examples, but also, underscoring their validity, in the leadership struggles of today, in settings as diverse as party politics, the church, the office and the company boardroom..

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The Grand Design

The Grand Design published on September 9th 2010, these are some pre-launch comments.

Tap ‘Grand Design’ into Amazon currently, and it will show you books and DVD’s associated with the TV series. Tell any of the architects or designers that feature on that programme that their efforts in renovating or creating new buildings were a product of chance, or ‘self- creation’ and they might rightly feel insulted. They might also feel their intelligence had been insulted too. My point is the same as that of the apostle Paul, ‘Of course, every house is constructed by someone, but he that constructed all things is God’ (Heb.3:4). The Athenians of the time held diverse views, only one of which was that the Creator was unknown, or unknowable (Acts 17: 23).

Professor Stephen Hawking has claimed that no divine force was needed to explain why the Universe was formed. In A Brief History of Time , he differentiated between partial theories that help explain aspects of what we observe about the Universe, and the ‘holy grail’ of science, a single theory that explains all phenomena, or if you like, a ‘Theory of Everything’.  He appears as far from this goal as ever.

The sub-title, ‘New answers to the ultimate questions of life’,  inevitably reminded me of the scene in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, when the central characters meet Slartibartfast, a planetary coastline designer who was responsible for the fjords of Norway. He relates the story of how a super-race built a computer named Deep Thought in order to calculate ‘The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything’. When the answer was revealed to be 42, Deep Thought predicted that another computer, more powerful than itself, would be necessary in order to calculate the question for the answer.

In his latest book,The Grand Design, an extract of which was published in Eureka magazine in The Times , Professor Hawking said: “Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist.” He added: “It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going.” He concludes: ‘The Big Bang was the result of the inevitable laws of physics and did not need God to spark the creation of the Universe’..

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Dangerous Dogs?

Section 1 of the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 prohibits four types of dog: the Pit Bull Terrier, the Japanese tosa, the Dogo Argentino, the Fila Brasileiro

A Dog attacking a family child, or a stranger, is a story all too common on the news. The pattern always seems to be the same:  a family pet, which just happened to be a pit bull, for example, never injured anyone in its life, and had never been ill-treated, out of the blue attacked a child, another dog, or its owner.

Understandably perhaps, most people feel if a dog attacks someone it should immediately be put down. Since there are simple ways to reduce the risk of a horrific accident, all dog owners should be confident of being the one in charge at all times. My purpose in writing this is simply to make this point. I am not personally anti-dog, we have a Jack Russell (type) ourselves, known to friends and family by the macho name ‘Horlicks’, and I am very aware of how beneficial it can be for a family to own a dog. As a society, we owe a debt to dogs, for assisting the blind, the Police, rescuing people, landmine clearance, and a thousand tasks we never give a thought to. The annual awards ( http://www.pdsa.org.uk/animal bravery awards) given to outstanding dogs that saved peoples lives are very moving..

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The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger

Rating: ★★★★★

The Perfect Storm [2000] [DVD]

For those who have seen the film, you need to read the book. It represents all that is best about non-fiction. Judging from the hundreds of individual comments on Amazon and elsewhere, this is one book that makes a big impact on its readers. Some are unhappy about the technical detail, well just skim over it! Ultimately, the book celebrates the finest qualities in man, the selflessness of the coast guard and other emergency services who go beyond any reasonable job description in order to save lives, and sometimes paying with their own, the qualities of the fishermen themselves, and why they fish. This is why I searched for a comment from someone ‘in the know’, and I give his comments below. I cannot give a name, perhaps which is appropriate in that the thousands of men working against the elements do so largely unrecognized. In a small way, maybe, but this is my ‘thank you’…

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Income Tax or VAT- Which is preferable? (A Historical Perspective)

The following overview is based on an article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 7th edition, 1830, written by J R McCulloch (1789-1864). One could argue that little has changed. Two things remain certain though, whatever the size of the government spending deficit; death and taxes.

Several famous authors have uttered lines to this effect. The first was Daniel Defoe, in The Political History of the Devil, 1726:    “Things as certain as death and taxes, can be more firmly believed.” Benjamin Franklin (1706-90) used the form we are currently more familiar with: “‘In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Another thought on the theme of death and taxes is Margaret Mitchell’s line from her book Gone With the Wind, 1936:  “Death, taxes and childbirth! There’s never any convenient time for any of them.”

Taxation of Income Impracticable

The difficulties in the way of assessing income are of two sorts: Firstly, the difficulty of ascertaining the amount of the annual revenue of different individuals; and, secondly, supposing that amount to be known, the difficulty of laying an equal tax on incomes derived from different sources [1].

It would be useless to dwell at any considerable length on the first. Incomes arising from the rent of land and houses, mortgages, funded property, and such like sources, may be learned with tolerable precision; but it neither has been, and we are bold to say, never will be, possible to determine the incomes of farmers, manufacturers, dealers of all sorts, and professional men, with anything like even the rudest approximation to accuracy [2].

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The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power

Rating: ★★★★★

For those who hold to the view of the world comprising Politics, Religion and Commerce, this subject needs no introduction. For those concerned about current news items such as the Gulf of Mexico oil spill (see footnote) this work is also illuminating. For those who think a change in political administration will solve the problem, think again.

Joel Bakan, Canadian professor of law and author of  The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power examines  corporate misdeeds that have gone largely unpunished, and the consequences, some of which are simply shocking. Take the “externalisation” of costs, well-illustrated by the example of a corporation using cheap labour in a country where people are desperate, near starvation, but moving on elsewhere when the people are no longer so poor, or better equipped to defend themselves. Come to think of it, is this why work once done in Britain is now done in India or Eastern Europe?  As the west faces competition from the emerging Asian economies, it is clear that even social costs are being externalised in the pursuit of profit and greed. (Externalization is the effects on third parties who ordinarily play no role in the initial transaction. I would draw a parallel to military-speak for civilian deaths during conflict: ‘collateral damage’ ) The pattern may also be seen by the Japanese economy now, say, compared with thirty years ago.

This book and the film ( The Corporation [DVD] [2006])  sounds a valid warning, an accessible introduction to the problematic nature of large corporations who seemingly have symptoms of psychopathy, compared, for example, with a callous disregard for the feelings of other people, the incapacity to maintain human relationships, a reckless disregard for the safety of others, deceitfulness (continual lying to protect profits), the incapacity to experience remorse or guilt, and the failure to conform to social norms and respect for the law.

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