The Quiet Road

My favourite headline of the past few days, though I was rather disappointed that the actual content of the story wasn’t what I’d hoped for, is: Prince quits as head of Citigroup (Update: like so many news sites these days, the FT appears to revise published stories rather than publish a separate update, making illustrative links rather hit & miss. In this case, the headline has changed, but remains funny).

The former head of Citigroup chooses his successor

Sadly it appears that it’s not a story about The Artist Once Again Known as Prince stepping down from his position as chairman of one of the world’s largest financial conglomerates in order to spend more time touring.

€38,000 – a token amount of money

Meanwhile here in Ireland, recently re-elected Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has accepted a €38,000 pay rise. This represents an increase to his salary greater than the average working wage and brings his total income to €310,000 per annum. He defended this by pointing out that the body that sets his salary “is an independent organisation and its recommendations will be implemented by the Government”. One wonders just how independent the review board would remain had they recommended a significant pay cut for Bertie and his cronies, and whether or not the government would be so keen to implement that recommendation.

To add insult to injury, however, Bertie dismissed the furore that inevitably followed the announcement of his 14% pay hike. Apparently it would be “pure tokenism” for him to refuse the increase. Maybe it’s just me, but when the leader of the nation can describe the average national wage as “a token amount of money” then he’s clearly lost touch with reality. It’s also worth bearing in mind the fact that Bertie’s team recently dug their heels in, and watched the nurses vote for industrial action over their “unrealistic” demands for a 10% pay rise.

Still, in his defence, there are those who would argue that the Taoiseach’s pay-hike should be even bigger. After all, 38 thousand is the sort of paltry sum that Bertie simply wouldn’t remember ever having received.

It’s no sacrifice

Meanwhile we hear that despite massive increases in fuel prices, Ryanair’s profits are soaring on a 20% increase in passenger numbers. At the same time Thomson Travel Agents have started up a new low-cost flight service between the UK and Israel. All the while, pretty much every relevant agency and government that expresses an opinion tells us that the battle against climate change is “too little and too slow“. And whenever the public are polled they insist that stringent measures need to be taken and sacrifices need to be made.

My own view (which I’ve expressed on numerous occasions here) is that catastrophic climate change is an inevitability and that in tandem with resource depletion we will see the collapse of industrialised civilisation (and a consequent large loss of life) within the next couple of decades. The process has, I believe, already begun.

So while I don’t believe that being an active consumer of low-cost flights will make a practical difference at this point, I do believe that it’s an offensively tasteless activity to be involved in. Just like the ex-soldier who urinated on a dying woman in the street, his actions had no discernible effect on whether the woman lived or died, but he’s still a nasty scumbag and should be vilified as such (link via PDF).

As my regular readers will be aware, I’m currently studying for a Masters degree in Psychoanalytic Studies.

But what does that mean exactly? It’s probably fair to say that the popular view of psychoanalysis; both its’ theories and practices; isn’t entirely accurate. This hardly makes it unique amongst academic disciplines of course, and given the anti-intellectualism that currently dominates our culture I doubt there’s a huge amount that can be done about that. We live in a society where academics and intellectuals are often viewed with suspicion and even denigrated for “not doing a real job”. Yet that same society fêtes Z-list celebrities and the participants of vacuous reality* television programmes, while lauding the accomplishments of entrepreneurs whose primary skill is an ability to coax a gullible public into hedonistic acts of meaningless consumerism (often using tools supplied to them by the psychoanalytic community, but that’s another blog post).

[Aside: Speaking of “Reality TV”, a recent episode of “America’s Next Top Model” dedicated itself to producing a series of images that consciously eroticise extreme violence towards women. One hardly needs a psychoanalyst to explain what that says about contemporary western culture.] (link via Smokewriting)

So, in the unlikely event that this piece will be read by someone other than my four regular (and already supremely knowledgeable) readers, allow me to provide a short explanation of psychoanalysis and the aims it pursues.

Therapy?

OK, the first thing that needs to be clarified is that psychoanalysis is not the same as psychotherapy. Which is not to say that psychoanalysis has no therapeutic value. Indeed long-term psychoanalysis can, in fact, be considered a form of psychotherapy. Nonetheless, the term “psychotherapy” is a far broader and more expansive one than “psychoanalysis” and encompasses a whole range of so-called “talking cures”. At the same time, psychoanalysis is not merely a therapy, but is also an attempt to generate a body of knowledge about mental processes, how they work and what function they play.

I should also make it clear from the outset that even within the field itself, psychoanalysis can have both a broad and a narrow definition. Narrowly (arguably “accurately”) psychoanalysis is the specific set of theories and techniques developed by Sigmund Freud to scientifically study the mind — in particular the unconscious mind — and to explain and treat neuroses.

Latterly however, it has been expanded to include a huge subsequent body of work by a whole range of individuals who have built upon — or altered — Freud’s theories and techniques. So the work of Carl Jung, for example, is not psychoanalysis under the strict definition as it bears significant differences to Freud. Jungians are instead known as “analytic psychologists”. Nonetheless, it is not unusual for Jung to be studied under the heading of psychoanalysis. Similarly, Adlerians describe themselves as “individual psychologists”, and there are numerous other subdivisions of the field.

In general, however, I shall use a broader definition of the term on this blog unless otherwise specified. I beg the forgiveness of outraged Jungians, Adlerians and existential psychotherapists everywhere but while unacceptable in an academic thesis, a certain looseness of language is probably appropriate for a weblog that aims to explain the field to those outside it. So when I use the term psychoanalysis, I will be using it to mean…

… 1) the investigation of mental processes which are almost inaccessible in any other way, especially inner experiences such as thoughts, feelings, emotions, fantasies and dreams;

2) a method (based upon that investigation) for the treatment of neurotic disorders;

3) a systematic accumulation of a body of knowledge about the mind, obtained along these lines, which is gradually turning into a new scientific discipline.

Encyclopedia Britannica

Rumblings beneath the surface

The above definitions of psychoanalysis contain at least two words that themselves require further explanation; the first of these I’ll tackle is “neuroses”. What are neuroses?

Popular culture has absorbed numerous words, phrases and concepts from psychoanalysis. Yet despite their prevalence within our common lexicon, if pressed, many — perhaps most — of us would admit to only a vague understanding of them. So if a person were to describe a friend as “a good bloke, but a bit neurotic”, we’d know roughly what they meant, but in all likelihood would be unable to nail down a precise meaning. Similarly, we know what we mean when we reproach someone with the phrase “stop being so anal”, yet paradoxically would probably admit to having only a vague understanding, strictly speaking, of what “anal retentiveness” actually means.

The word “neurosis” has an interesting history; starting out meaning one thing and later being redefined to mean almost the opposite. It began life in the 18th century when Scottish physician, William Cullen, used the phrase “neurotic illness” to mean “a disease of the nerves”. A little later it was refined to mean “a functional disorder of the nervous system whose organic component cannot be identified”. But it was Sigmund Freud who provided us with the modern definition. As a medical student (studying under Ernst Brücke in Vienna) Freud began research into the condition known as “hysteria” and soon came to the conclusion that it was a personality disorder rather than a nervous one. Since then, the word “neurosis” has come to mean…

There are a number of different types of neurosis — traumatic neurosis, infantile neurosis, anxiety neurosis and so on. Complicating matters, however, is the notion of “psychosis”. Sometimes psychosis is considered an entirely separate phenomenon to neurosis, and sometimes it is considered a form of neurosis (known as “narcissistic neurosis”). Given that certain psychoses — unlike neuroses — can have an organic component (i.e. are created by identifiable organic damage due to disease or physical trauma), and given that psychosis — again unlike neurosis — often involves a demonstrable loss of contact with reality which can render the sufferer mentally incompetent (legally insane) I tend towards considering them entirely separate classifications of disorders. However, this isn’t entirely straight-forward and recent research into “borderline personality disorder” (BPD) would seem to suggest a certain blurred edge between the definitions. But more about BPD in another post.

The important thing to bear in mind regarding the distinction is that, by and large, psychoanalysis can only be used to treat a neurosis and not a psychosis (though some have tried and claim a certain level of success, and while I’m not discounting their work, it is pretty controversial and exists right on the fringes of the discipline). And so we come finally to the definition of neurosis which I’ll be employing. A neurosis is a non-transitory mental disorder which causes suffering and is recognised as problematic by the sufferer, but which involves neither an organic component nor a loss of contact with reality.

The “non-transitory” part of the definition is important. As Freud discusses in one of his most important papers (“Mourning and Melancholia”), it would not be accurate to describe mourning as a neurosis, despite it sharing most of the symptoms and almost all of the behavioural characteristics** of melancholia (more commonly known today as “depression”) which is a neurosis. Indeed he points out that mourning is clearly a natural and healthy reaction to significant loss, and should not be interfered with; an interruption of the mourning process can be damaging in the long term.

It is also well worth notice that, although mourning involves grave departures from the normal attitude to life, it never occurs to us to regard it as a pathological condition and to refer it to medical treatment. We rely on it being overcome after a certain lapse of time, and we look upon any interference with it as useless or even harmful.

Sigmund Freud | Mourning and Melancholia

Sigmund Freud was arguably the first person in history to approach the subject of mental illness in the same systematic fashion that physical illness had been treated for centuries previously. Difficult though it may be for us to imagine today, this was extremely controversial at the time and it is one of his (several) great contributions to the sphere of human knowledge that he persisted in this work despite the hostility with which he was greeted (hostility compounded in no small part by the anti-semitism he faced).

The Ocean of the Unsayable

In my view, Freud’s greatest contribution of all, however, was his investigation of the unconscious mind. He wasn’t, of course, the first to propose that the mind had both a conscious and an unconscious component. Socrates suggested as much (via Plato) and he was himself elaborating on those who had come before. So it’s an idea that has been around since almost the beginning of history. But Freud is by far the most significant figure in the history of the field, and we have him to thank for liberating the unconscious from the realms of art and philosophy, and bringing it into the mainstream of human knowledge.

So what is “the unconscious”? And why is it so important?

Simply put, “unconscious” refers to those mental processes of which a person is unaware. This is a straight-forward enough idea and is no longer very controversial. And while there is still some resistance to the idea of unconscious mental processes in certain quarters, I am personally satisfied that there is ample evidence that this resistance is unreasonable. Gregory Bateson in his seminal essay “Style, Grace and Information in Primitive Art” has this to say on the subject:

Quantitative Limits of Consciousness

A very brief consideration of the problem shows that it is not conceivably possible for any system to be totally conscious. Suppose that on the screen of consciousness there are reports from many parts of the total mind, and consider the addition to consciousness of those reports necessary to cover what is, at a given stage of evolution, not already covered. This addition will involve a very great increase in the circuit structure of the brain but still will not achieve total coverage. The next step will be to cover the processes and events occurring in the circuit structure we have just added. And so on.

Clearly, the problem is insoluble, and every next step in the approach to total consciousness will involve a great increase in the circuitry required.

It follows that all organisms must be content with rather little consciousness, and that if consciousness has any useful functions whatever (which has never been demonstrated but is probably true), then economy in consciousness will be of the first importance. No organism can afford to be conscious of matters with which it could deal at unconscious levels.

This is the economy achieved by habit formation.

Gregory Bateson | Style, Grace and Information in Primitive Art

[The next section of the essay is entitled Qualitative Limits of Consciousness and provides further demonstration of the necessity of unconscious mental processes.]

The kind of unconscious processes being described by Bateson in this essay are what we’d call “descriptively unconscious” (also known as “pre-conscious”). It’s the ability to catch a thrown ball despite being consciously unable to carry out the complex trigonometric calculations required to ascertain where the ball will be at any given moment. It’s the vast store of memories carried around by all of us and which can be called to the conscious mind at will, but which clearly do not reside there permanently. Remember your first kiss? That memory wasn’t part of your consciousness a couple of seconds ago. Now it is. Descriptively unconscious processes are those which can be made conscious with ease.

The other kind of unconscious process, and the one that psychoanalysis is most interested in, is what’s known as a “dynamically unconscious” process. These are processes (memories, phantasies***, wishes) which have become the object of repression and which cannot be easily rendered conscious. One of the primary goals of psychoanalysis is to remove the resistance that the patient has to rendering these processes conscious and thereby freeing them of the repression which is keeping them unconscious.

“I have done that”, says my memory. “I cannot have done that”, says my pride, and remains adamant. At last — memory yields.

Friederich Nietzsche | Beyond Good and Evil (section 68)

The reason psychoanalysis attempts to do this illustrates one of the foundations of Freud’s theory of the unconscious; namely that merely because something is unconscious does not mean it has no influence over us. Indeed, it is Freud’s view that those memories, wishes and phantasies that comprise the dynamic unconscious exert a massive influence over us; far greater in fact than even the influence exerted by our conscious mind. Therefore, until we have removed the resistance which keeps these processes repressed, and cast them onto the screen of consciousness, we will remain forever ignorant of the true motivations behind our own behaviour.

The essential nature of psychoanalysis therefore is twofold. First it seeks a greater (and — as far as possible — a scientific) understanding of mental processes, in particular those of the dynamic unconscious. Second it seeks to use that knowledge, and the techniques with which it was gathered, to treat those who are suffering due to a negative influence being cast on their lives by the contents of their personal dynamic unconscious.

With the obvious exception of elected politicians, a significant majority of the people who smoke cannabis will enjoy it. It’s a biochemical thing. Dopamine and what have you. It’s like eating chocolate… for most of us it’s an actively pleasurable experience. But you’ll meet people during your life who simply don’t like the taste of chocolate all that much. Which is fair enough… maybe it’s blue cheese that floats their boat. Whatever.

Of the majority who do enjoy a toke or a toblerone, almost all will do so in moderation — or at the very least know their limits. Very few will become chronic pot heads and/or morbidly obese due to yorkies. If you doubt this (with regards to pot anyways) then I suggest you read Tim Worstall’s fine examination of the statistics. Despite the large number of recent newspaper headlines warning of the sinister harm wrought by cannabis, it turns out that a tiny percentage of regular users experience that harm… somewhere between 0.01% and 0.2%. Now, I don’t know what percentage of regular chocolate consumers suffer serious ill-health because of chronic usage. Whether it be diabetes or high cholesterol or the myriad other problems we’re told are associated with bad diet. But I do know that nobody, quite rightly, is suggesting that possession of a bar of dairy-milk should be considered a criminal offence. Imagine sending someone to share a cell with a rapist because they were caught eating chocolate.

My chocolate analogy also has another aspect to it… there are those (the UK Conservative Party for instance) who still trot out the “gateway theory” as a rationale for criminalising cannabis. The theory being that those who use cannabis will be more likely to use harder drugs due to some undefined biochemical conditioning that occurs in the brain. This is simply absurd and — when taken to a logical conclusion — rests upon the assumption that our neurochemistry is aware of which drugs are legally proscribed and which can be legally prescribed.

Seriously… think about it…

– “Cannabis leads to heroin!”
Wow, really? So does alcohol lead to heroin?
– “Of course not!”
Well, does tobacco lead to cannabis maybe?
– “Not a bit of it! Cannabis leads to heroin which leads to speed, ecstasy and cocaine.”
Er… do any of them lead to prozac?

In reality the “cannabis gateway effect” (which does exist in many places) has been demonstrated to be sociological rather than biological. It is the prohibition of cannabis which places it into the same supply-system as the harder drugs. Those who smoke cannabis are more likely to have regular encounters with those who sell hard drugs than those who do not. It’s all quite easy to understand when you actually think about it rationally for a second.

But yeah, the chocolate thing. You see, there’s a very coherent and convincing argument to suggest that some kind of “psychological / biological gateway” theory may have merit, though not in the sense the tories would have you believe. Essentially our very early experiences with drugs will shape — not only psychologically, but also neurochemically — our relationship with drugs throughout our lives. And, so far as western culture is concerned, the first substance most of us encounter that can truly be considered a recreational drug… is chocolate. If you’re interested in this, I recommend Andrew Weil’s From Chocolate To Morphine which is very informative, though he does descend into polemic from time to time.

So much stronger

Another theme in the recent race to see which media outlet can publish the most one-sided drug-policy story, is the claim that today’s pot is vastly more potent than ever before. This claim is false and is a simple result of journalists failing to do any research and instead reprinting “the official line” as fact. Usually the claim rests upon data produced by the University of Mississippi’s Marijuana Potency Monitoring Project. However, as this project is funded by, and falls under the jurisdiction of, the US National Institute on Drug Abuse which is itself part of the government’s Drug Policy Office, it’s difficult to conclude that it constitutes “independent” research (the organisation funding it has a clear and overt bias after all).

I too have a clear and overt bias (I’m strongly in favour of significant reform of our drug laws and the controlled legalisation of all currently prohibited drugs) but I hope that the following discussion of cannabis potency will be transparent enough to make my claims relatively uncontroversial.

Firstly let’s establish what is meant by cannabis potency. The composition of any plant is extremely complex with many hundreds, if not thousands, of identifiable constituent chemicals. In the case of cannabis, there’s only one we’re interested in — Tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC. This is the primary active component; the chemical that gets you high; and the potency of a given sample of cannabis is expressed via the percentage of THC found in that sample.

Now, according to the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA):

Marijuana is much stronger now than it was decades ago. According to data from the Potency Monitoring Project at the University of Mississippi, the tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) content of commercial-grade marijuana rose from an average of 3.71 percent in 1985 to an average of 5.57 percent in 1998. The average THC content of U.S. produced sinsemilla increased from 3.2 percent in 1977 to 12.8 percent in 1997.

US DEA | Exposing the Myth of Smoked Medical Marijuana

Let’s take these figures at face value though, as Brian C. Bennett writes, the methodology used is extremely dubious (I urge you to read the first three paragraphs on that page). Not only that, the DEA have been very selective indeed in the figures used. The comparison of 1977 (3.2%) and 1997 (12.8%) seems extremely dramatic. But if we were to take the figures for 1978 and 1993 (i.e. much of the same period) there’s a clear decline in average potency (from 6.28% to 5.77%). What are we to make of that?

Anyways, taking the figures at face value as I promised to do, the first thing that needs to be pointed out is that they have restricted the study to “U.S. produced sinsemilla”. This is despite the fact that (according to the New York Times magazine, reprinted here):

Fewer than 20 years ago (article published in 1995 – Jim), virtually all the marijuana consumed in America was imported. “Home grown” was a term of opprobrium, “something you only smoked in an emergency,” as one grower old enough to remember put it.

Michael Pollan | Marijuana: America’s #1 Cash Crop

So while modern US-grown cannabis is probably as strong as that grown anywhere else in the world (with perhaps the exception of Thailand), thirty years ago it wasn’t. However, cannabis grown elsewhere and then imported into the USA during the 1970s (or Ireland or the UK) was sometimes just as strong (or almost so) as these supposed new super-skunks* that everyone’s getting into a lather about these days. According to a United Nations survey, for instance, the average potency of Thai cannabis seized in the U.K. in 1976 was 9.3%. And in 1980 the average for both Thai and Indian cannabis (again, seized in the U.K.) was 11%. (source) Neither of these are far from the “new high strength” numbers trotted out by the DEA and subsequently parroted in the media, and as they are average values we can safely assume that some individual samples were even more potent.

Something has changed, however, and that’s the relative availability of stronger cannabis. It’s easier to track down super-skunk today than it was to get your hands on thai-stick in 1977. Thanks to prohibition however, it’s impossible for someone to be aware of the strength of the cannabis they are purchasing. So a person who tends to smoke low-strength ditchweed may get a far stronger batch than they’re used to without being aware of it. As a result their first smoke from it may well be extremely stressful (imagine drinking a pint of beer only to discover afterwards that it had the same alcohol content as wine). Subsequently, however, the smoker will be aware of the higher strength and will simply smoke less of it in a session. Just as a wine drinker consumes less (in fluid ounces) than a beer drinker but still gets the same buzz.

In fact, because a smoker will consume more weak cannabis to get the same buzz as they would from a stronger strain, it’s likely that the weak stuff will have a greater negative impact on their health (through inhalation of more particulates) than the strong stuff. It’s simply misleading to suggest that a person will get higher from smoking stronger pot. The tendency of almost every pot-smoker is to smoke just enough to get them to the comfortable high that they enjoy, and in order to reach that they’ll smoke more or less depending on the potency.

And finally

Unlike many commentators I am completely unsurprised by the news that the UK’s reclassifaction of cannabis from Class B to Class C has been followed by a very significant fall in the number of people using the drug; particularly young people. Nor am I surprised by the news that the government is planning to reverse that policy.

After all, just as elected politicians appear to have a specific brain-chemistry that prevents them enjoying pot, they are also well known to be unable to distinguish between sensible and nonsensical drug policies.

Aye, it’s been a fine few weeks and no mistake. The M.Phil is going very well, I’m happy to report. Lots of very interesting reading and discussion. And the people all seem pretty groovy. Actually, the seminars are currently a bit “exposition by tutor with brief comments by the rest of us” as opposed to genuine discussion… but that’ll change as the weeks go on (as indeed it has already begun to). The topics for the first semester are Existentialism & Psychoanalysis, Jung, The Interpretation of Dreams, Klein, and Metapsychology. Initially, if I’m honest, I expected all of them to interest me with the exception of the Klein stuff (though I was still eager to study her work as part of an overall view of the subject). But as I’ve started to learn a bit more about Melanie Klein, I’m beginning to feel my initial fears were unjustified. Whatever one may think about her theories and methods (Klein, for those who are unaware, focussed her psychoanalysis on children and infants), the last word I’d use to describe her is “uninteresting”. Controversial, fascinating, discomforting and puzzling. Those would be better ones.

However having, thus far, only read a solitary paper by Klein (Psychological Principles of Infant Analysis), I’ll hold off on saying much more about her for now. Except that if even half her theory is correct, it’s nigh miraculous that any of us make it through childhood.

One thing that’s struck me most about the course in general is the attitude towards Freud. Or rather, I’ve been struck by how slanted my own attitude is. Though I’m pleased to say I’m overcoming my preconceptions. Merely recognising your own biases is not enough to negate them, but it’s a good first step.

You see, my view of Freud was formed in a rather specific academic environment. Back in the early 90s in the University of North London the philosophy degree was probably amongst the best anywhere. It’s never been recognised as such, of course, but having now gained enough distance to be semi-objective about it, I honestly believe that to be true (and I’ve been known to go on at some length about why that’s the case so I’ll try not to get started on that subject). However, if it had a flaw, it was the radical feminist slant that seeped into certain subjects. Which, as slants go, isn’t as bad as most others incidentally but, it’s probably fair to say that the radical feminist reading of Freud is somewhat less flattering than most.

Over the years I’ve had people tell me that perhaps I wasn’t being altogether fair (most notably Gyrus who convinced me that I probably didn’t have the most balanced view of Freud), but it’s only now that I’ve really gotten round to reading his work (rather than that of commentators) in any depth and I’ve discovered that — just as I’d been told — he’s not the faintly preposterous dogmatist that I’d been led to believe. Far from it.

Rarely, for instance, will you ever read anything like the equivocation expressed in the opening paragraph of Mourning and Melancholia (the text of which I’d like to link to, but can’t*). The second sentence of the text reads “… we must begin by making an admission, as a warning against any over-estimation of the value of our conclusions.” And a little later he informs the reader, “We shall, therefore, from the outset drop all claim to general validity for our conclusions, and we shall console ourselves by reflecting that, with the means of investigation at our disposal today, we could hardly discover anything that was not typical, if not of a whole class of disorders, at least of a small group of them.”

Of course, it’s been pointed out that this equivocation was almost certainly as much an attempt to seduce and disarm the critical reader as it was an attempt to downplay the significance of the work. Freud, after all, is nothing if not a fine writer and has more than enough skill to induce a sympathetic attitude in his readers. Nonetheless, he does seem to have been aware that he was a pioneer in a new and exciting field, and that — as such — some, if not much, of his work would eventually be superseded. After all, Freud was a scientist and was attempting to work in a scientific fashion. So he was obviously aware that from an historical perspective scientific theories constantly evolve and eventually get incorporated into more complete theories (or replaced entirely).

No fairer destiny could be alloted to any […] theory, than that it should of itself point out the way to the introduction of a more comprehensive theory, in which it lives on as a limiting case.

Albert Einstein | Relativity (Chapter XXII, Inferences)

I’ve been told that there’s a great deal of wry humour in the original German, much of which fails to come across in the English translation. Nonetheless, I can only applaud the translators who have rendered what I assume is Freud’s beautifully written German into beautifully written English.

[Aside: while reading Freud I was struck again by something that I’ve noticed in the past. Of the writers I’d say I’ve read fairly extensively, two of them originally wrote in German; Nietzsche and Einstein; and I’ve always perceived a strange similarity in their writing styles which — knowing how radically different in disposition they were — I attributed to some peculiarity in the way German translates into English. Freud goes a little further in confirming this hypothesis.]

Next: What exactly IS psychoanalysis?

For reasons I’m at a loss to explain, I absolutely love the fact that this exists.

This one is from a while ago, but I think the headline is a classic… Rich ‘can pay poor to cut carbon’. Because it’s the poor doing all the emitting, right? Like most soundbites though, it actually provides an inaccurate characterisation of what Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) had to say. On the surface it sounds like he’s implying that “wealthy nations” can buy their way out of their responsibility to cut their own emissions. But that’s not what he’s saying at all, though you only get a hint of that fact from the BBC article when they quote the vital line:

… So it actually becomes economically quite attractive for a company, for example in the UK, that has a target, to achieve this goal by reducing emissions in China.

Yvo de Boer | BBC News article

Note the important word… “company”. This proposal isn’t in the context of a national carbon trading scheme, but as part of a direct carbon tax on corporations. And this is a man who clearly understands the reality of the global manufacturing industry. He knows that the products being bought by American and European consumers come from factories in China and India and Mexico. So don’t force Nike to spend money cutting emissions in the United States when all their carbon emissions are happening in Vietnam. Especially… and here’s the killer point… since a dollar spent reducing the emissions at an American factory won’t go half as far in cutting emissions as that same dollar spent on a factory in a nation with laxer environmental regulations. And it’s all about cutting the global total; it matters little whether the carbon dioxide is released into US or Mexican skies.

It’s not Americans and Europeans paying the poorer nations to clean up their factories. It’s Americans and Europeans paying the poorer nations to clean up our factories. And so long as the proposal is within the context of a corporate levy rather than a trading scheme, then I say let’s just do the damn thing right now. A simple, blunt law introduced immediately and applying to the current financial year. It will do as a stop-gap while the politicians faff about for a wee bit longer, and can be replaced by whatever they eventually decide on (once the IPCC have judged it to be at least as effective in cutting total emissions in the short, medium and long term).

Proposal: Every company that wishes to continue trading in Europe in any capacity must spend 25% of all profits made in Europe directly on carbon reduction measures within their own organisation. If cleaning up their Indonesian manufacturing plants would get the best “carbon value for money” then that’s what they should do. But they will be audited, and failures to comply will result in crippling fines.

Do I hear a second?

25% is probably a tad low, but you’ve got to pick a realistic starting point, right? I mean if this genuinely is the most important problem facing our generation, then let’s get serious about it. 25% off the net profit. I’m not talking about plunging companies into losses here. Only readjusting things a bit. It just means that shareholders will get a bit less money and yes, R&D will slow down a bit, as will the economy. But that’s a small price to pay, right? Or are we too cheap for even that? To safeguard a future for our children and all of theirs? Holy crap, we are, aren’t we?

Note: companies and projects working in areas that directly contribute to a reduction in carbon emissions (renewable energy projects, for instance) would probably be exempt from the 25% corporate-carbon levy; both to allow them to maximise inward investment and R&D spend, but also to make them more attractive to investors.

Just a thought.

And on the subject of climate change, it appears that here in Ireland our climate is “hotting up twice as fast as anywhere else in the world. It’s official.” Hard to know which is worse; the news or the copywriting.

In other news: I am dismayed. Though utterly unsurprised.

And although I know how cruel it is, for some reason I find myself grinning at the images conjured by this story here.

Oh, and lest you think climate change is the only thing you should be depressed about; read this and weep.

I’m not a sports fan.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m as impressed as anyone by people doing incredibly skilful or difficult things. I will sit, wide-eyed and uttering little “oohs” and “aahs”, as an archive reel of the best goals ever scored in football gets shown on TV. I will “whoaaa!” along with the rest of them as a basketball player launches himself from halfway down the court and slam dunks. I’ll applaud like a trained seal as a hurling player catches the sliotar, rounds two defenders faster than you can blink and rifles it into the top corner of the goal. And I’ll shake my head in disbelief as Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe perform apparently superhuman feats of acrobatics as they cover every inch of the tennis court in a spectacular rally.

So I do get the idea of spectator sports. But let’s be brutally honest here… 99% of a sports fans time is spent anticipating those magical moments… waiting for them. The only exception to this (in my rarely humble opinion) is – bizarrely – golf. But more about that another time.

Anyways, given that people clearly don’t watch sports simply for the few transcendant moments, there’s obviously something else at work. Psychological identification and emotional transference mostly. Hardly a secret. The sports fan invests part of themself in the team or individual they are rooting for.

Why a particular team is chosen is often down to geography. A team of eleven men wearing the colours of your nation becomes “us”. We are playing Germany. Everyone in Chicago wants The Bulls to win. In Chicago, The Bulls are “us”.

Here in Ireland, when it comes to hurling or gaelic football, it’s completely unheard-of to support any county other than the one you were born in. But other times it’s more abstract… what percentage of Bjorn Borg fans were Swedish I wonder? And Manchester United apparently have millions of fans in China.

Football (soccer)

The world’s sport. Everyone loves football. Well, except the Americans. They hate it so much they invented a bastardised form of rugby which involves next to no ball-foot contact and called that football. I think they hoped it would mess with everyone’s heads, but everyone just ignored them and went on playing proper football. Actually, it’s wrong to say “the Americans”. Most Americans are fanatical about football as it happens, just not the United Statians (though I hear a certain Mr. Posh Spice is changing all that). I spent a while in Brazil. None more fanatical, let me tell you. The president of Bolivia recently had his nose broken playing football. And remember that South American goalkeeper who was shot dead upon his return from the world cup? Now that’s taking your sports seriously.

The trouble with football though is it’s just not very interesting to watch. A three-minute highlight reel from a 90-minute game is generally the best you’re going to get. As a neutral observer of last year’s world cup (Ireland failed to qualify) I tried to watch a few of the games. Two billion people can’t be wrong, right? Wrong. Waves of existential nausea crashed over me as I sat there, terrifyingly conscious of 2 billion souls enjoying what was – to me – a spectacle devoid of any value whatsoever. Rarely have I felt so alone.

I admit I only managed to sit through one full game and rarely even made it to half time in the others. So perhaps I coincidentally missed all the good bits. But those precious minutes of my life spent watching 11 overpaid French primadonnas faffing around with 11 overpaid Italian primadonnas can never be recovered. That hour and a half have gone forever. And out there, somewhere, was some paint I could have been watching dry.

Cricket

Popular in England and a few ex-colonies, this peculiar activity is not so much a sport as it is a bout of abstract gittery. It’s only worthwhile function is to provide ambience for villages in Sussex. Y’know… it’s a warm summer day, you’re lying by the river and enjoying the stillness. There’s a wonderful insect hum in the air that seems to focus the silence rather than disturb it. And off in the far distance the sound of cricket bat on ball and a smattering of applause punctuates that silence every few minutes.

But aside from playing a small part in an English summer soundscape, cricket is otherwise devoid of any real value and is actually extremely irritating if one is accidentally exposed to it. In that sense it’s the sports equivalent of a cloud of midges.

Carrying bluetongue.

Basketball

I lived in Chicago for a while, right when Michael Jordan was leading The Bulls to their nine thousandth consecutive national title. The entire city would come to a stand-still when the Bulls were playing and even a disinterested foreigner like myself couldn’t help but be impressed by the fervour with which the locals followed their team.

Then I watched a game on TV. What a waste of time! Each team is expected to score during an attack. Your team takes the ball, passes and dribbles it to the opposition end, puts it through the hoop and then rushes back to defend. The opposition team then passes and dribbles the ball to your team’s end whereupon they put it through the hoop. Repeat for 48 minutes. So the excitement isn’t focussed on your team scoring points, but on the opposition missing them. The winner is the team that doesn’t screw up as often. How underwhelming is that?

Rugby

Ireland have just been knocked out of the World Cup by Argentina. According to the media prior to the competition, this Irish squad is the best the country has ever had. They were genuine contenders to win a first World Cup for our small island. They would go all the way and carry the entire nation with them. Turns out they weren’t so great after all. Turns out they struggled against the weak teams in their group and were comprehensively outplayed by the strong ones.

Anyways, I don’t have much to say about rugby as I don’t know much about it. Except that Ireland aren’t as good as they thought. Argentina are better than the Irish thought. And there’s not a single product available to the Irish consumer that can’t be sold with a rugby-world-cup-themed advert. There’s an official soft-drink of the Irish World Cup Squad of course. But there’s also an official snack food, an official beer, an official water, an official airline, and official bank… all we were short of was “Anusol: The official hemorrhoid treatment of the Irish World Cup Squad”. Spectator sports are becoming little more than marketing opportunities.

Football (American)

Ha. A-ha ha ha ha. As Giles once remarked… “I think it’s rather odd that a nation that prides itself on its virility should feel compelled to strap on forty pounds of protective gear just in order to play rugby.” Wise words indeed.

Tune in to Part 2 where I will discuss football (Gaelic), motorsports, cycling and golf among others.

The Irish Green Party have lost any shred of whatever credibility they once had. It’s possible they could still emerge with a political future if they pulled out of the coalition right now and admitted they’d made a huge mistake for which they would work ceaselessly in opposition to atone for. The longer they remain as part of this government, the less likely is that political future.

But that’s not what concerns me. The moment they gave their tacit support to the destruction of the Tara valley (a scheme they’d previously described as “an act of cultural and historic vandalism“) in clear defiance of their pre-election promises, was the moment they ceased being worthy of the electorate’s trust. It’s unlikely this Green Party will ever get my vote again (back to spoilt papers for me it appears), and frankly I hope they fade into bitter memory… as I hope does every politician who trades their principles and promises for a brief stint at the top table.

No, what worries me is that they will tarnish the entire environmental movement. By sending out the clear message that they’re just another bunch of career politicians willing to do almost anything for power, so they send out the message that the environment is just another political issue. It’s not life and death. It’s not something we urgently need to get right or we’ll end up damning future generations. It’s just another issue. Which means it’s negotiable. If there are more votes in addressing the crime problem, or building more schools, then that’s what will be done.

Which isn’t to say that we don’t need more and better schools. And it’s not to say that crime should be ignored. Simply that the environment is a different category of problem. If we don’t safeguard the environment, then zero crime and wonderful schools for every child are irrelevant. “Little Timmy got such a great education before he was killed in the water riots. Thank heavens for the Greens, eh?”

But it’s not just Tara. I gave the Greens my vote this time round because I read their manifesto and it was filled with positions that I felt desperately needed representation in The Dáil. But I was lied to. And those positions have no representation. When I voted for them, it was partly because they promised “When in government, the Green Party will introduce legislation to end blood sports” (paragraph 7.1). I mean, there’s very little room for interpretation on that one, right?

Wrong. As Minister for the Environment, Green Party leader John Gormley is responsible for issuing hunting licences. And he has gone ahead and issued a number of hare-coursing licences for this year. I can’t be the only person who sees this as a clear betrayal. Not only is a man who pledged to end blood-sports in Ireland issuing licences to those who organise blood-sports rather than taking a stand on an unambiguous manifesto promise, but by doing so he — and the other Greens — are ensuring that the anti-blood-sports position simply isn’t represented in The Dáil. No other party, or independent, made the same pledge. So a large number of people will have voted for the Greens on that issue.

They — like those who felt that the preservation of the Tara valley needed a voice in The Dáil — have been royally screwed over. When I vote, I vote for the policies and not the person. I vote because I want those policies represented at the highest possible level, even if that means the opposition benches. Paul Gogarty, my local Green TD, is supposed to be representing me. I voted for him based upon the beliefs he claimed to subscribe to in the manifesto. Abandoning those beliefs in exchange for a government job is sticking two fingers up to me and everyone else who gave him their voice. When the history of this age is told, I hope Paul Gogarty’s name — along with the other five Green TDs — is forever linked to that act of “cultural and historic vandalism” he is now party to.

Climate Change

The excuse. According to some in the media who claim to know about these things, John Gormley — as leader of the Greens — made a decision when Bertie approached him to be part of the coalition. Every Green policy was up for negotiation, for abandonment even, in return for a chance to shape policy on Climate Change.

Now, when I first heard that rumour it gave me pause for thought. Climate change may well be the most important single issue facing the planet, and it clearly requires urgent action. So perhaps there’s method to the Green madness. Perhaps all of these compromises can be justified. Perhaps Gormley’s decision to focus all of his party’s effort and expend all of their political capital on this single, vital issue, is a shrewd political move.

Except it isn’t.

Per capita, Ireland’s carbon emissions are extremely high. We’re up there at number 17 in the world and in Europe’s top five. And there’s no question that needs to be addressed.

But when it comes to overall total carbon emissions, we’re way down the list. We’re number 56. Between Serbia & Montenegro and Libya. That’s not to say that Ireland’s carbon emissions are irrelevant. That’s not the point I’m making. I’m just highlighting the cold, hard fact that no Irish Environment Minister can make a significant impact on solving this global problem, when the very best he or she could do would be to eliminate less than one fifth of one percent of global emissions.

That would be a great thing, don’t get me wrong, and we in Ireland should indeed be working towards that goal. But even if we succeed, we just don’t produce enough of the problematic carbon dioxide to make a significant impact on a global scale.

And that’s the reason Gormley’s decision isn’t a shrewd one. The Irish Green Party — even in opposition — have a degree of control over whether or not the Tara valley is vandalised in the name of the private car (looks like Peak Oil is going to be a half-decade too late for Ireland’s most important heritage site). They have a degree of control over blood-sports policy in Ireland. They have a degree of control over a number of significant issues… whether we expand Dublin airport, whether we invest more in public transport or road-building, how much we tax waste, how much we tax flights, and plenty more.

But the Greens have relinquished their control over these issues (not a single voice in Dáil Éireann opposed the granting of the hare-coursing licences) in return for a chance to shape policy on an issue they — realistically speaking — have no control over. Still, if nothing else, we can expect to see Ireland slide down those nationmaster lists. This year we are 17th in per capita carbon emissions and 56th overall. Let’s see how we stand next year, and the year after. I hope the Tara valley was worth it.