The Book Blog – Page 17

The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power

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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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The Socinians in Poland

The Socinians

Faustus Socinus (or Fausto Sozzini), an Italian influenced by Servetus’ writings, was moved by his brutal execution at the hands of Calvin, to examine the Trinity doctrine. He concluded that it had no basis in the Bible. Faustus decided to leave his comfortable life as a courtier and share the truths he had learned from the Bible. (Reason and Religion in the English Revolution: The Challenge of Socinianism)

Hounded by the Catholic Inquisition, Socinus travelled to Poland, where, by 1574, he found a small group of Anabaptists who called themselves “The brethren.. who have rejected the Trinity.” To Socinus, this religion was clearly the closest to the truth of the Bible. So he settled in Kraków and began to write in defense of their cause.

These Socinians, as they later came to be called, wanted most of all to restore the pure Christianity taught in the Bible. They felt that the Protestant Reformation had merely skimmed off some of the corruption of the Catholic Church while leaving its unbiblical teachings intact.

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John Hales 1584- 1656

John Hales was a principled English protestant divine born at Bath in 1584. After an education at Oxford, he was elected fellow of Eton College, the capacity for which he is best known. By 1636, his liberal theological views had brought him into conflict with the masterful,autocratic William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, who however, was so charmed by his learning and conversation, that he appointed him as a canon of Windsor.

Hales was a man of learning, well read in many branches of literature, a man of sound common sense, well balanced and moderate in his views, disliked extremism, with a reputation as a peacemaker among his contemporaries. He taught a passion for unity, the value of study, a questioning of religious dogma, but also the necessity of faith. He greatly admired the teachings of Faustus Socinus (see Post: The Socinians in Poland ), and Clarendon said of Hales, ‘he would often say that he would renounce the Church of England tomorrow if it obliged him to believe that any other Christians should be damned, and that nobody would conclude a man to be damned who did not wish him so.’

Hales was one of the earliest admirers of Shakespeare, Dryden saying of him, ‘there was no subject of which any poet ever writ, but that he would produce it much better done in Shakespeare’. Like many scholars, Hales wrote little, and reluctantly. His miscellaneous writings were collected and published in 1659, under the title ‘Golden Remains of the Ever Memorable Mr. John Hales’

In 1649, Hales was turned out of his Eton fellowship, having refused to take the oath of ‘engagement’ to the Cromwellian regime. This oath took the form: “I do declare and promise, that I will be true and faithful to the Commonwealth of England, as it is now established, without a King or House of Lords.” He refused on the basis of neutrality. He spent the rest of his life in great want, which was relieved to some extent by the sale of his valuable collection of books. He died on 19 May 1656.

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The Power of Words

The making of a good Dictionary
is a contribution of the highest order to the welfare of a language.
It clarifies and stabilises the pronunciation, orthography and meaning of its words;
garners and stores the varied wealth of its vocabulary.
To the farmer, his barn; to the manufacturer, his warehouse;
to all who use and value their native tongue, a dictionary.
— David Lloyd George

Without arguing with David Lloyd George, who after all, was trying to make a valid case for dictionaries everywhere, things change over the course of a hundred years. Not in itself a problem, as it provides a reason to keep selling new dictionaries.

‘We all know words don’t mean what they meant sixty, or six hundred years ago. And yet..words do contain within themselves echoes of their previous lives. We hear in them not only the way we use them now, but also the way our parents used them, and their parents before them. Words are like living things, as they move around, they grow, they change. A word is nothing but information. English spelling and pronunciation, simply tell us where the word came from, how it relates to other words, and what it likely meant… (Frantic Semantics: Snapshots of Our Changing Language).

We learn a word’s connotations, the associations it carries beyond the current dictionary meaning, by hearing it in context, from childhood, or when we first heard the word. This may explain why we don’t like certain words. In the ‘caring professions’ at present (a term I also personally dislike), we have ‘Service user’. No one likes it because of the tendency to abbreviate everything, and who wants to be a ‘user’? On the other hand, one of the terms it replaced, along with ‘patient’, or ‘inmate’, was ‘client’. Such is the dilemma. What about ‘customer’? Why is it also unpopular? Apparently, in the time of Shakespeare, it too, was linked to the brothel. This is a much wider problem than it first appears, many otherwise respectable words end up with sexual overtones. As if you needed more examples, here are some.

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Hugh Miller, The Cromarty Stonemason 1802- 1856

Hugh Miller: Stonemason, Geologist, Writer

Cromarty today is a quiet little town on the Black Isle, North-east Scotland. At the dawn of the nineteenth century, however, it was an important fishing centre, and an important trade supplying the needs of visiting shipping sheltering in the firth nearby, brought relative prosperity.

Born on 10 October 1802, as a boy, Hugh loved the rocky shores and wooded hills of the Black Isle, which he explored, sometimes alone or with friends, sometimes with his uncles, who taught him to appreciate the teeming wildlife of sea, shore and countryside. At nightfall, by the glow of a cottage fire, he was entranced by the tales the old folk could tell, as they passed the long winter evenings.

His father having died at sea when he was five, he developed a certain self-reliance, and so, despite his uncle’s offer to fund a college place, at seventeen he decided to become a stonemason. He knew the trade was hard, but also that the slack winter months would allow him to study natural history and literature, his true vocation. For the next fifteen years, he travelled all over the north of Scotland, quarrying, stone-cutting and building. During this time, as he laboured, he made many of the geological observations familiar in his writings. The Old Red Sandstone, until then little known to fossil collectors or geologists, became his particular interest. Continue reading Hugh Miller, The Cromarty Stonemason 1802- 1856

Conspiracy Theory (Part One)

Part One: Media and Conspiracy Psychology

Conspiracy theories are as old as the human psyche. But fears of an all-embracing political plan to take over the world appear to go back only as far as the French Revolution. In that same country, in the nineteenth century, the Dreyfus affair divided public opinion. Conspiracy theories continued to grow in importance up until the mid-twentieth century, when two arch-conspiracy theorists, Hitler and Stalin, warred against one another (despite a non-aggression pact), causing the worst blood-letting in human history. The world war sobered the Americans, who in subsequent decades dismissed conspiracy theories, and the mainly fringe groups or individuals who promoted such ideas, in their valid quest for some meaning or motive behind the seemingly meaningless, wanton destruction of war and commercial exploitation.

Sometimes those holding such ideas were denigrated for political, commercial, cultural or racial reasons, or for reasons of academic jealousy. Some raise issues current in our culture: these include those who question the assassination of Kennedy, or the death of Princess Diana, “Ufologists,” and perhaps those, such as David Icke, who claims a reptilian race runs the earth and/or alien installations exist under the earth’s surface. Such themes enjoy a certain popularity, but owe little to common sense or carry little real influence. The politically disaffected,the political far right, and other alienated minorities have all been labelled ‘conspiracists’. Their theories imply a political agenda, but lack any significant credibility, or even influential publicity. To run for office with similar ideas in the manifesto would be to experience electoral disaster.

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Cases in Court by Sir Patrick Hastings

Sir Patrick Gardiner Hastings KC (17 March 1880 – 26 February 1952) was a British barrister and politician noted for his long and highly successful career. His skill in cross-examination was legendary. As a young man he served in the South African War, and also worked as a drama critic before studying law. He entered Parliament in 1922, was appointed Attorney-General in the first Labour Government. In 1948, Hastings published his autobiography, simply titled The Autobiography Of Sir Patrick Hastings, and in 1949 published Cases In Court, a book giving his views on 21 of his most noted cases. The same year he published Famous and Infamous cases ,a book on noted trials through history, such as those at Nuremberg. In 1948, he suffered a small stroke which forced him to retire. Hastings stayed in Kenya for two years, but spent the last two years of his life living in a flat in London, before dying on 26 February 1952 of cerebral thrombosis. The following excerpts from Cases In Court ,serve as a tribute and give a sense of his direct style.

“The position of the advocate causes much misunderstanding. The question addressed here is the often asked: “How can a self-respecting counsel honestly defend a person whom he knows or believes to be guilty? How can he in honesty represent a client whom he believes to be a liar?” Such questions show woeful ignorance of the duties and obligations of the English legal system. Inasmuch as a barrister is the only person who has the right of audience in a Superior Court, that right casts upon him the absolute duty to represent to the best of his ability any client who requires his services and is prepared properly to instruct him”…

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Is the Fish a Christian symbol?

The outstanding unity of early Christian thought began to fade after the death of the apostles. From the second century, Greek philosophy and other pagan practices were mixing into accepted doctrine. From the Council of Nicaea, A.D. 325, Emperor Constantine’s fusion of the pagan religion of Rome with apostate Christianity moved ahead at a rapid pace.

In 378 A.D, Emperor Gratian granted Damasus, bishop of Rome, the right to bear the old religious title ‘Pontifex Maximus’. During his rule, much was done to embellish the catacombs beneath the city, the tombs of the martyrs. The former healthy Christian respect for the example of faith set by those who were martyred was now contaminated with the corrupt hero worship of Rome and turned into the saint worship of the following century..

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One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest -1975 DVD

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One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest [1975] [DVD]

This 1975 classic portrayal of how the routine of an American psychiatric asylum turns upside down by one man, a disruptive, rebellious prisoner feigning madness, Randall P McMurphy, who was unforgettably portrayed by Jack Nicholson. It is a deceptively simple story, set within a stiflingly small world, the ward ruled by Nurse Ratched.

With the potential to fail miserably, considering the bleak setting, it is at turns dramatic, frightening, funny, moving and uplifting. It is based on the 1962 novel of the same name by Ken Kesey, a psychiatric nurse with a serious point well made, the lack of humanity in such institutions of the time. We may well feel we are on familiar ground here, since so many films, novels and TV series have similarly explored the dehumanising aspects of large institutions, for example, hospitals, prisons, schools and military establishments, all having received attention. Needless to say, if not the first, ‘One flew over the cuckoo’s nest’ is a definite front runner. One could draw a comparison with ‘Hamlet‘, set within the confined court of Elsinore, and the central question, “Is he mad or isn’t he”?

The novel ( One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest ) is told through the eye of the narrator, a mute Native American, Chief Bromden. It can take a while to follow him, as he explores the idea that the patients were the only sane, truly human people within a closed society forced into compliance by a powerful, machine-like, autocracy, using drugs and electro-convulsive treatment on the patients, and more subtle means on the lesser staff. The film opted for a more objective, conventional narrative, which reportedly infuriated Ken Kesey. The rumour is that he would never watch the film.

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