Legacy

The triumph of Napoleon Bonarparte, L'empereur des Francaise. Child and Father of Revolutions.

As we walked through the City of Lights we were enthralled by the glitz of the streets and all the everyday humdrum of the metropolis. It never fully struck me until much later that, as with so many Cities of Old Europe, this was The Place where so much had happened.

Then again, I am not Edward Gibbon, who was convinced, by the mere sound of the footsteps and the vespers of monks amidst the ruins of grandeur, to write the history of an empire.

Star Trek and Starship Design

Saw Star Trek the other day and was suitably impressed, perhaps because I'm not a diehard Trekkie who can converse fluently in Klingon. Then again, the ability to speak Klingon is probably the basic qualifying feature of a normal Star Trek fan- to be given the appellation 'diehard Trekkie' one probably has to be able to deliver an informed discourse about the shared anthropological origins of the Romulan and Vulcan races.

But that's beside the point. The point is that it was enjoyable and accessible, a good all-round Sci-Fi movie that, while not epic or Oscar-winning, had a sufficiently balanced blend of action, emotion, melodrama, geek-speak, humour, and quantum physics mindf**k. Not the best of the best, but still time and money well spent.

On the other hand, my ultra-conservative senior, the Venerable Kelvin, preemptorily dismissed anything with the label 'Star Trek' as being a 'liberal douche-bag'.

Now as my political orientation is centrist/moderate, I won't be so quick to blast everything emanating from the Left- after all, these guys gave us some very good things, like the abolition of racism and the introduction of constitutional democracy, and are now trying to conserve the environment. (Though of course they tend to be woolly-headed day-dreamers who wax eternal lyrical about their various blissful social utopias, hypocritically frothing at the mouth about the bloodshed of religious wars while ignoring avowedly atheistic mass-murderers like Pol Pot and Chairmen Mao and Stalin, thinking that all men are good and loving and kind at heart, and hence automatically deserving of goodness and love and kindess, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.)

The point is, however, that I agree with Venerable Kelvin, not that to be a liberal is to be a douche-bag, but that Star Trek is a truly liberal enterprise (pun half-intended, sorry, sorry). I'm not going to praise or condemn liberalism. I'm just saying it comes out very strongly in Star Trek.

But that's blindingly obvious, one might say. Everything about Star Trek screams 'liberal'. The dialogue, the ideology of peaceful exploration, of tolerance of diversity, etc etc.

What is new about my argument is that I am approaching this from a technical perspective, more precisely, that of starship design. The starships of Sci-Fi universes tend to reflect the ideological values on which those universes were premised. The central thesis is that liberal Sci-Fi universes tend to be less realistic when designing ships of war, whilst relatively conservative ones have starships that are more likely to emerge intact from a major battle. And likewise for ships of peaceful civilised exchange- liberal universes have more stylised and aesthetically pleasing ships of peace, while truly conservative universes don't seem to have any ships for peaceful purposes, period. Anyway, because I'm a warship enthusiast (but not a real Conservative), I'll be focussing on warship design here.

Take the design of the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701), a Constitution-class Heavy Cruiser of the Federation Starfleet. It's mission statement involves first-contact with alien species, and exploratory, diplomatic and scientific undertakings, but also includes military engagement. (Especially if that said first contact with alien species goes horribly wrong.) And in this last, and perhaps most critical, mission role it is woefully misdesigned. A simple look at the starship itself suffices to demonstrate this.

The saucer-shape gives an extremely wide target profile, affording an enemy, say a Klingon Bird-of-Prey, maximum surface area to target with photon torpedoes. Exposed reactor core on the underside of the superstructure, much like an over-pronounced pair of testes just asking to be whacked by the afore-mentioned Klingon torpedoes. And most deplorable of all- the all crucial, all important engines are reduced to a pair of slim and thin nacelles connected to the main ship structure by a pair of slim and thin struts, and both are as woefully exposed to hostile fire as the reactor core. Brilliant.

The sole recompense of such a lunatic warship design is that the saucer hull allows the phaser batteries near-omnidirectional targetting and vast fields of fire, enabling most of the ship's weapons to be brought to bear on a target in almost any direction, or alternatively enabling a widely-dispersed enemy group to be fully engaged with ease. But still.

In stark contrast, here is an Imperial II-class Star Destroyer from the Star Wars universe. Given the Fascist (i.e. inhumane and bloodthirsty) nature of the Galactic Empire, it emerges as obvious that the Empire's ships were designed for conquest and destruction, and little else.

In this depiction, the sheer size of the Star Destroyer belies the inherent nature of the target profile it presents to the enemy- not much at all. Its dagger-like superstructure ensures that the enemy can target only a sleek and narrow wedge, not a full-blown saucer with sausages sticking out all over, like the USS Enterprise. The wedge shape also allows maximum firepower to be brought to bear on frontal engagements, whilst retaining formidable broadside cannonade capabilities as well. Only the rear is unprotected, and that's what the full wing of 72 TIE fighters and the squadrons of assault shuttles carried aboard are for. Its relatively compact design means that the engines and reactors are not overly exposed.

While one might point out that the bridge tower resembles the expose that is the USS Enterprise's engines, it must also be remembered that the bridge sits right in between the two spherical force-field generators, thereby enjoying maximum shield protection while allowing its commanders a clear view of the battle and hence good situational awareness. Fascists are good at war, and the Victory, Imperial, and Executor classes of Star Destroyers are reflections of this.

Finally we come to a Behemoth-class Battlecruiser of the Terran Confederacy in Starcraft.

The main engine drive is safe and secure in the main superstructure, while the auxilliary engines, while more exposed, are still connected to the hull by sturdy linkages, not puny little struts. The hammerhead shape of the forward section allows a wide frontal arc of laser battery fire whilst not over-exposing the ship to enemy fire. The bridge does not portrude awkwardly and is instead nestled on the hull, but then again that's perhaps because shield generators have not been discovered by the Terrans in this universe. The Confederacy is a centrist type of polity, not really interested in total war as the Galactic Empire of Star Wars is, but definitely not a liberal government either- witness its nuclear annihilation of the upstart planet of Korhal. This political standpoint is reflected in the balanced design of its premier capital ship, the Behemoth class.

Infinitum

One of the more esoteric, and hence interesting, aspects of studying history is the study of historiography.

The Oxford degree curriculum essentially presents historiography as the history of history (or histories), and that was my initial impression of the term. But in retrospect I think that a better description of historiography is the philosophy of history.

Because in dealing with the way history is written we ultimately base our analyses on the metaphysics of recording and systematizing the past into coherence.

Because ultimately one comes back to that all-consuming question: What is History?

And there are so many answers to this question, so many different theories attempting to define 'history'.

Take for example the crisis of Historismus, the German school of history. It was originally conceived by the Germans that all history should consist entirely and exclusively of the entirety of objective facts of reality, of events as they actually happened, as opposed to how they were perceived to happen by biased and prejudiced human actors.

The problem with this was threefold and rapidly became manifestly obvious.

First, if history is composed of all the facts of time, then we end up with an infinity of datum. A datum which is impossible to fully compile. Real history therefore cannot exclude any, not even one, record of fact, from the history of the first molecules to the history of the first caveman and the history of the first fishing rod and how it was actually used. As long as an historical account has neglected to include even the history of the smallest dust-mite, it is not truly history. According to the definition laid down by the German school, therefore, there has never been nor ever will be a true history as it is simply not possible to accrue all the infinite facts of reality under one record. There is thus no point in writing history that matches the standards of the German school. One would be better off trying to numerate all the hydrogen atoms in the universe.

Second, such true history is also impossible to achieve because no truly objective record of the past has ever or can ever be written*. The writing of history is itself inevitably subjected to the perceptions of those who write history. No historian can ever claim to have the complete objectivity demanded by the German school when writing history. No human being exists in vacuo, each and every one is informed and influenced by his or her experiences, emotions, languages, religious/moral creed and millions of other existential variables. Yet as long as there is the slighest iota of subjective judgement in a historical account, that account has to be rejected on the grounds that it is un-historical, even anti-historical. Again, the impossibility. Much as the cult of objectivity has gained an incredible level of credence in today's modern, 'professionalised' style of historical writing, it remains a sad truth that such eunuch-like objectivity** will never be attained, no matter how hard historians try. Total objectivity, whatever its considerable merits, is totally impossible to achieve. Again, there can be no writing of history, according to the standards of the German school.

Finally, such 'total history' in this sense lacks any meaning. The mere compilation of cold, hard, real facts means that all these facts are treated with equal importance. The only determinant of historical value is therefore physical veracity. And so the fact that caveman Ungaa-wangaa scratched his arse on the 11th of September is of the same historical significance as the fact that terrorists attacked New York city exactly 5,000 years later. There is thus no relative significance at all in true history; it is deprived of importance in its equal treatment of all the facts. There is thus neither order nor system, nor rhyme, nor rhythm, in this vast collection of facts. In attempting to curb the worst excesses of normative valuations, the German school repudiated positive value systems as well, and thence any sense of proportion or meaning. It essentially threw the baby out along with the bath-water.




Fascinating. Now that is historiography. That multitude of answers to that question, 'What is History?'

Although the account of Historismus presented here is of course not entirely accurate and suffers from those flaws necessitated by time and space constraints, I should think it provides enough to chew on mentally for quite some time. As indeed I myself am doing now instead of writing that essay on Cardinal Richelieu.







------------------------------------

*Sure, you can write 'simple' chronologies which just note what happened. E.g.: 'King X decreed that the tax should be raised to 10%'. Simple, clean, and easy as breakfast.

But some- in fact, most- events cannot be written in a way totally free of judgement.

Going back to the given example- why 'King X decreed that the tax should be raised to 10%'? Why not 'King X dictated that the tax should be raised to 10%'? Why not 'King X demanded that the tax...'? (It becomes obvious that each of these words carries widely divergent meanings- the King who decrees is associated with legitimacy, the King who dictates is probably a tyrant, the King who demands bears a hint of desperation if not exasperation about him.)

There are always choices in using words, and there is always subjectivity in making choices. In history, the choice of words is unavoidable, and thus, so too is subjectivity. There is no complete objectivity in history, even in the 'simplest' of chronologies.



**A delightful and delightfully German phrase used by the historian Johann Gustav Droysen, in reaction to the ideological austerity and selflessness implied by Leopold von Ranke's emphasis on critical rigour in the use of historical source material.

Another Crushing Defeat

Hard on the heels of Wenger's post-match inane, insane gibbering came another blow from another quarter.

The collections have been returned. In shreds.



Damn it, Broers! Have all my efforts this past term been in vain? Was the sacrifice of my favoured paper, International Relations, for naught?

Indeed, what can I learn from you, you who cannot even teach himself to write legibly?



But no, that is not the way. You marked fairly, and I must use the pain to strengthen myself.

Crushing Defeat

The final reduction of the once-supreme Arsenal was effected on the 5th of May 2009.

The delusion and blindness of Arsene Wenger had long descended into senility and insanity, his once-admirable faith in the promise of youth turned into an unholy obsession which perhaps bordered on paedophilic obscenity.

The rot became an infection, the infection a cancer, until the whole team on the eve of the Champions League game at Ashburton Grove was little more than a tottering sham, a pathetic excuse for an aspiring title-holder, the merest of shadows of its former self.

Thus passes the once-Invincible Arsenal into darkness, that team of footballing titans and heroes, who could call upon the legendary names of THIERRY HENRY, PATRICK VIERA, ROBERT PIRES, DENNIS BERGKAMP, TONY ADAMS, SOL CAMPBELL, FREDRIK LJUNBERG, MARC OVERMARS, EMMANUEL PETIT, MARTIN KEOWN, NWANKWO KANU, SYLVAIN WILTORD and RAY PARLOUR to strike fear deep into the black hearts of the cursed Mancunians.

Yet the Invincibles live Immortal in history. Their degenerate successors shall be forgotten for eternity.

Addendum

Obviously I was in a particularly carthartic mood when I made that entry.

The point was to put dreams and ideals in perspective- they have to be anchored in reality, or else they are worth squat.

That said, what is reality without dreams, hope, and glory? Life without the yearning for a better tomorrow? It would be hell. And there is nothing Divine in hell.

What a fine line we tread.

Visions of Fantasy

"And there stood before my eyes a god-like warrior clad in burnished bronzed armour trimmed in red. All manner of mysterious machinery hung from his power-armour's back, and yellow and black stripes ran down his vambraces. He carried a mighty war-hammer in his grip, and the face of the hammer's massive head bore the insignia of a silver mask. Azure lightning crackled and danced along the length of the weapon.

And there were his eyes. They betrayed a melancholy that seemed out of place- melancholy befitting an old man, perhaps, or a philosopher, or one who has suffered a deep pyschological wound, but not this demi-god of war, one of the mightiest champions of his own race. There was untold genius in his intellect as well- his mind was like a razor, sharp and brilliant, keen and quick to grasp whatever there was to be learned. It voraciously devoured every tiniest scrap of available knowledge and rendered that knowledge down to its constituent parts, not in the eloquent, philosophising manner of his more erudite fellows, but rather according to a strikingly clinical, efficient logic. His was a mind far in advance of any of his peers. So much so that they shunned him as a freak, as something unnatural, abnormal.

But dazzling as his intellect was, it remained merely the setting that threw into sharp relief the stark effects that melancholy had upon his character. Coldness and suspicion, qualities he did not already suffer from want of, were focussed and transformed into twisted bitterness. "

It is perhaps the most fascinating aspect of pulp-Goth fantasy that its epic-romance lies not in the romantic glorification of ages of triumph and victory, but instead in the telling of fall and tragedy, and it is this which creates so powerful a sense of empathy on the part of the reader, if that reader is in any sense human.

For this is the story of humanity, one of temporary glory and transient triumph, and then of eternal nothingness and anonymity, while history moves inexorably onward with scant regard to all but a select few, and even these few are not immune to the fate of Ozymandias.

Hope and Glory cannot be truly found in humanity, and all who insist on doing so are fools of the finest calibre.

This is not to say that we should shun the celebration of our race's achievements. Rather we should not let these achievements, considerable and prodigious though they may be, delude ourselves into thinking that to be human is to be assured of permanent and imperishable Hope and Glory, of inevitable and constant progress. (See "For King, Not Country" http://nobilitas.blogspot.com/2006_04_01_archive.html)

That is why I am not a Humanist, and that is why I continue to seek the Almighty, though the path is a painful and lonely one.

Thus it is that it is fantasy that points towards reality, and visions that give rise to sight.

Addendum

The original by Neil Young was and still is the best, but Annie Lennox's version is pretty damn cool too, and in some contexts more fitting. Must be the addition of a refreshing dash of feminine melody, a substance that I find myself increasingly addicted to.

Don't Let It Bring You Down

Don't Let It Bring You Down
by Neil Young
(Album: After The Gold Rush)


Old man lying by the side of the road
With the lorries rolling by,
Blue moon sinking from the weight of the load
And the building scrape the sky,
Cold wind ripping down the alley at dawn
And the morning paper flies,
Dead man lying by the side of the road
With the daylight in his eyes.

Don't let it bring you down
It's only castles burning,
Find someone who's turning
And you will come around.

Blind man running through the light of the night
With an answer in his hand,
Come on down to the river of sight
And you can really understand,
Red lights flashing through the window in the rain,
Can you hear the sirens moan?
White cane lying in a gutter in the lane,
If you're walking home alone.

Don't let it bring you down
It's only castles burning,
Just find someone who's turning
And you will come around.

Don't let it bring you down
It's only castles burning,
Just find someone who's turning
And you will come around.



______________

The question is, can I find someone who's turning? Or should I instead strive to rise on my own, on my own terms, by my own strength?

Were I to do so, the freedom would be incredible. But so too the costs.

Dare I rise above my own humanity?

Republicanism and Romanticism on Youtube

Halfway through my essay on German nationalism, I got bored.

As with most times when I get bored, I looked to Youtube for inspiration.

Listened to the old German national anthem, "Deutscheland Uber Alles", and boy was it inspiring!

Unfortunately one thing led to another and I ended up listening to not just the German, but also the French, Japanese. and Chinese national anthems.

There was something to this, though.

The French and Chinese anthems were forceful and dynamic, their lyrics filled with a sense of bold action, their tunes implacably progressive and confident, saturated with the promise of initiative and of adventure, of change and of advancement.

The German and Japanese anthems, in contast, were stately and measured, their lines solid and staunch, their tunes uncompromising and majestic, full of noble dignity and ancient grandeur, of the assurance of history immutable and of traditions aeternal, of constancy and of endurance.

The French and Chinese anthems were bombastic, the German and Japanese ones reserved. The German and Japanese anthems exuded a sense of unfading wisdom, the French and Chinese ones a quality of impetuous exuberance.

I find it extremely interesting that these anthems should reflect the ideologies on which their respective nation-states were built.

French Republicanism and Chinese Communism were ignited by the rationality of the Enlightenment, the view that Reason would sweep aside the old order, abolish the ancien regimes that were founded on superstition and ignorance, and bring a new world based on onward progress, driven by the power of revolution. The world would be made anew by human hands, no longer shackled by the old beliefs of nature and predetermination. One cannot resist the force of change, of transformation and transition.

German Romanticism and Japanese Imperialism were established by the great Romantic belief in the immutable traditions of the past, the undying strengths and weaknesses of peoples as they are, the unchanging fundamentals of human nature, and the cyclical nature of History Itself. People will always be people; their values lie not in abstract artificiality and hollow philosophising but in organic culture, in the traditions which constitute the very cores of their identities. One cannot defy the Spirit Hand of History, of Humanity Itself.

Most fascinating. Most curious. I cannot decide where my sympathies truly lie. But that is because I have found yet another anthem, now my favourite, one which perfectly combines both Republican and Romantic themes into one epic piece of music:

The Unbreakable Union of Socialist Republics, the Anthem of the old Soviet Union!

A Rant on Israel and Palestine

I do not often post a blog entry on expressly political opinion, much less my own political opinion, but I shall do so now.

Even more rarely do I pass comment on the situation in the Middle East, because I lack both knowledge of the facts and empathy with the peoples on all sides of the conflicts there, but I shall do so now.

It seems to me that both the Israelis and the Palestinians have so much blood on their hands that it is no longer worth debating who has spilt the greater blood, who is at fault for the death of innocents, who is the greater violator of human rights.

Thus when the latest conflict broke out I did not rush to join the millions of woolly-headed Palestinian-wannabes in attacking the evil Zionist regime, because they conveniently- wilfully, sickeningly- forgot about the deliberate targeting of civilians by Hamas' suicide bombers. Israel deserves punishment for the excessive use of deadly force, but I find it extremely hard to find an objective group who can criticise Israeli aggression without lauding and legitimising the inhumanity of Hamas.

Nor would I feel any grief for Israel if tomorrow it became the target of a devastating Pan-Arab invasion, or a Hizbullah campaign, because its own crimes against humanity and callous brutality have left it completely and utterly bereft of all moral legitimacy, legitimacy which is the very justification of the existence of any state. (In saying this I do not abandon my Realist persuasion that power is the basis of state existence- moral justification is independent of de facto bases of existence.)

But that is the way of the world. Fear spawns conflict, stupidity extends it, and power determines its outcome. And now all the world is polarised, in support of one of the two moral abominations in the Holy Land.

So many have become fanatically pro-Palestinian, pseudo-peaceniks who are blind to the fact of Hamas suicide bombers and dead Israeli infants; so many have become Nazified Zionists, seeing in Israel the righteous reincarnation of righteous Nazi Germany, with its righteous destiny of lebensraum in Palestine and the righteous genocide of the filthy Palestinians.

Wherefore be the rational ones who can see evil where it really is- everywhere? What few of us remain, and our numbers grow ever fewer, our voices ever softer, till we speak silence into a world of cacophonic death and madness.

Meanwhile, in the Real World...

Recent collections were funny. Funny, strange, bizarre, wierd, abnormal.

Previous collections were, panic aside, relatively straightforward affairs. I went it, laid a torrent of resplendent verbiage down on the paper, and handed it in. The stuff I wrote was uniformly ambiguous, a layer of impenetrable yet fragrant smoke intended to obscure the flagrant gaps of knowledge that I never quite managed to seal despite days of intensive study. So it was that, for instance, my history essay on the foreign policy of Britain in the eighteenth century had a grand total of 2 dates, 4 names, and about 10 000 euphemisms of various shapes and sizes, while my politics paper on the Supreme Court of the United States was composed solely of fantastically-phrased facts without figures.

The point was, though, that the cloying musk of the written smokescreen and the bombasticity of the language employed was in fact able to completely compensate for shameless ignorance, even though they could not merit a first-class. Thus the resulting grades were as devoid of variance as the essays themselves were deprived of detail and clear of clarity. 2.1, 2.1, 2.1, 2.1, 2.1, 2.1, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. And I would be satisfied with that, content to lose the battle in preparation to win the war, happy to trade immediate gain for ultimate glory.

But these latest collections were not in keeping with the plan. Whilst the history paper on Victorian Britain was a sterling compendium of numbers and nuances, so much so that the customary smokescreen was not even necessary, my political theory paper was so lacking in even basic sentence construction that I shuddered to write my own name at the top of the paper when the test ended. It will be interesting to see the results of this round. Nonetheless I still think it a passable situation overall, and give thanks to God for that.



It is testament to the singular focus of study that has consumed my life that my thinking is now almost uni-dimensional. Academia has inundated my being, permeating my every pore and perception.

Thankfully I have managed to retain some vague awareness of what is happening in The World Beyond Oxford. The latest Israeli war. The latest Russian energy crisis. The biggest tattoo exhibition back home. The continuing decline and fall of the failing Arsenal. The conclusion of the pseudo-epic Red Cliff. The scandal of Zhang Ziyi. All very interesting, but all too distant for my attention. Awareness, yes, but not attention.

The chaps in college are organising a trip to Oslo in two months' time, and my buddy in the Soc has planned a trip to Berlin the week after that. I look forward to these- and hope that the bloody climate will change for the better soon.

On a random note, I found failblog.org videos on Youtube. Some were lame, some were inhumane, but there were those that were worth watching.

Exclusive Nightclub Fail, Reporter Fail, Beach Invasion Fail, Animal Identification Fail, Masculinity Fail.

Good stuff, but watch too much and the Funny turns rancid. At least I now know why TK keeps going "Dates Fail!" whenever I give him the wrong answer to questions such as when was the Union with Scotland enacted or when did George III die.

Back to the meat grinder. Freaking presentation partners have read all 5 books already. I am feeling distinctly uncomfortable. And how do political theorists and historians manage to reduce the Uber-cool Force that is Nationalism to a series of technicalities? The fools have destroyed the romance and passion of the Power! The Power of Dreams! The Dreams of Glory, of Empire and of Destiny!

Before I launch into another rendition of Deustchland Uber Alles or The Unbreakable Union, I must get going.



Coldplay never fails. NEVER.