Occasional Tales

“Well, just eat the chips.” This whole debate boring me somewhat, I’ll finish it off today. Plutarch returns in Dilemma 66 with an emotive appeal about blood and gore. More ancient superstition rather than reality. And if the superstition of the classical world isn’t enough, St Paul turns up assuring everyone that it’s all right to eat meat ’cos the god of the Christians says it’s all right. The Bible is its usual inconsistent self and even seems to be advocating eating things alive (Genesis 1:29). Also, it’s easy to forget that plants are living things, which means that almost nothing natural we eat isn’t already dead. Chrysostom turns up to irritate everyone with his Christian asceticism, which pretty much makes all good things bad. Pope Pius XII isn’t impressed, although his view appears to be that animals don’t have (emotional) feelings, quite ignoring that they still have a nervous system. I remain on the side of nature. Humans as omnivorous creatures have a choice, although the a...

Here come the Nazis. The star of today’s dilemma is Oswald Spengler who was, apparently, some Nazi philosopher following in the footsteps of Friedrich Nietzsche. Anyway, unlike Plutarch, he thinks that humans are predators, his ideas appearing to stem from Nietzsche’s idea of the Übermensch. Like Plutarch, this clown boy is only seeing half the picture. Like vegetarians faced with a famine, Spengler’s predator would graze on grass and leaves when faced with a shortage of prey. Or perhaps, taking Spengler’s notions to their logical extreme, cannibalism then becomes acceptable. “Let’s go vegetarian,” said Göring looking hungrily at Hitler. Interestingly, the book says that the amount of resources required to produce meat in the States is so phenomenal that the bulk of agricultural produce goes towards feeding the animals which the Americans then eat. And that bulk could, allegedly, feed the human population of the planet five times over. (Presumably one adequate, nourishing, hunger-assua...

How chewy and delicious. Someone, Plutarch apparently, observed that humans are not the usual design for predators having none of the sharp claws and teeth for hunting. He noted that we then cook the (dead) meat and season it in various ways. So should meat-eaters be allowed into philosophy heaven? I’ll remind you of the chimpanzees which hunted down some other monkey and tore it apart for food. Chimpanzees, being similar in configuration to humans, are obviously hunters by nature, but like humans, omnivorous. (Strictly speaking, common chimpanzees are omnivorous; bonobos frugivorous; if I’m going to talk about chimpanzees, I’ll mean the common sort.) In other words, Plutarch is noting physical differences without considering behavioural ones. As a species we both hunt and gather; we eat both meat and vegetables. It gives us options which other species lack especially when food might be scarce. I’d defy a starving human (perhaps apart from a few extreme religious nutjobs) to remain veg...

The regret of old age. Our tale of Democratia comes full circle today. The government database proves to be very costly, which resulted in businesses being roped in, being allowed access to the information for the benefit of the consumer. Really. The press started using the information to reveal the peccadillos of celebs and even the peccadillos of the idiot in the street. Reality TV never had it so good. But one or two ministers recalling youthful follies began to wonder whether individuals might need privacy after all. I notice that the politicians only talk about privacy when the issue affects them. I’d guess that Kant would take a fairly low view of their decision, which, though it benefits the public, is really being done on their own behalf. Of course, privacy seems to depend on the society itself. In China, a lot of life is conducted in public and may end up being everyone’s business. For the Chinese, a lot of life is street theatre which members of the public perform for the en...

Thinking of how we can control them. Now for our third story about the noble, data-obsessed nation of Democratia and back to an issue I’ve mentioned before. The government manages to reduce the crime rate, but then decides that prevention is better than cure by banging up recidivists before they can get up to any mischief. And then recidivists came to include anyone who might complain a little and school children, who were an easy target. The choice was between the good of the many and the inconveniencing of a few. But did the government really have to think of the children? We seem to be back in the world of utilitarianism again. Indeed, this would just about be HMG’s ideal world in which the sheep-like populace thinking that it enjoys greater freedom than all those wretched foreign Johnnies fails to observe that its lot isn’t as good as it thought. In fact, all too many of the sheep-like populace would probably applaud. The scenario is not unlike Brave New World with its manufacture...

And the government isn’t snooping at all. The government of Democratia passes the Data Protection Act which allows people to see what info the government has on them provided it’s not an official secret and the police don’t mind. And like any good government, it decides to collate lots and lots of information about the people in a database; and not just some girlie database – a super database. And it’s all so the government can help people. Really. (Yeah, I feel the belief coursing through my veins.) But then people start demanding access to all sorts of information, including information about politicians in local government and ministerial holidays. But should people be checking up on all this? Should the inspector be inspected? Well, yes. HMG likes to bleat about accountability, but they think that only applies to them when there’s an election. In this sort of scenario, all the activities of and information about the government would probably be labelled state secrets, sorry, a mat...

Somebody’s watching me! Ah, the noble nation of Democratia. All cameras and hi-tech surveillance, but for the public good, of course, because everyone needs to be watched in case one of the country’s twenty-five criminals commits a crime. The question is whether the government has ridden rough shod over the right to privacy or whether all this intrusion is necessary. Like China, the UK is an endemic surveillance state. Like China, one government isn’t really that different from its predecessors in its paranoia about what its citizens are doing. It’s no good saying that if you’ve done nothing wrong, you don’t have anything to worry about. The implicit assumption is that the government doesn’t trust you regardless of what you’re doing. The implication is that you have no right to privacy where the government is concerned. I tend to think that such situations don’t instil feelings of safety in society and confidence in the government, but rather they produce suspicion and paranoia. Just l...