WINOL - (www.winol.co.uk) has only been getting better and better this semester, our Alexa rank has has completely skyrocketed, at the time of writing this (21/ 5/13) our Alexa ranking for winol.co.uk is 88,939 in the UK and 550,042 worldwide. Our rivals, East London Lines, currently stand at 48,225 in the UK and 682,835 worldwide. We seem to have had a lull in our ranking as we have only produced one bulletin since we all got back from Easter break, which was on the 7th of May 2013, over April the site would've been ignored as we were all off at home with hardly anything new being added save a few features perhaps.
However, earlier in the year we were thrashing East London Lines, our site was being updated every day with new stories being put up as soon as we heard of them, it was a phenomenal turn around for student Journalist and our weekly bulletins were raking in the views, gaining around 200 - 300 views for each of our bulletins.
We brought further success by conducting a live show dedicated to the Eastleigh by-Election, this ran all night and had the results announced live as they came through from our team sent to the counting. This was a massive political feat for students to accomplish - we had political guests in the studio, a fantastic team of presenters who overcame the obstacles of presenting live and phenomenal reporters out there getting the information.
My role for WINOL from January to May has been the Community Correspondent, for a couple of weeks a political reporter and I got to put my grammatical and English language skills to the test by being on the website side of things for a change as I was acting as a dedicated sub for the website which means I was checking the language and format of articles being submitted to the site with Sam Ashton.
As Community Correspondent I was in a very similar position as I was last year as the Entertainments Reporter but I found that this role was far more diverse, which I found very appealing. This year I got my first stab at real news stories - my main news story was about Hampshire Council petitioning to ban wind farms on Council owned lands. I did this story as an update, two reporters had done it previously - Felicity Houston and Ellen Millard, their work allowed for me to cover this story which I am very grateful for.
Being very confident in my English language and writing skills I happily put myself forward to aid in the act of being a 'website sub' this meant that when reporters would get their stories every week they would write it up and submit it to the site through a very wonderful system which checks the facts and potency of the story - it is all done through WordPress and is a very nice touch.
This submission process was a great addition - what we do as subs for the website is read through the information that the reporters have filled out in the provided boxes; ranging from the source of the story (so we can see if people are lifting stories or not) to a ranking of how good of a quote the reporter has received from the story. From there we read what they have written and then we must thoroughly check the story they've written for any fatal errors, format problems and to make sure they are using the correct grammar, we make any necessary changes and then put them up on the website.
I myself have subbed many stories for the website and have done so with complete confidence they are correct I wouldn't have been able to do this without the work put in by Sam Ashton - he created a how-to guide for the website; it included format, font, tags and just the overall style of the website so it is consistent, for example how we enter numbers - the number or the spelling of the number - and where the reporters name goes; at the top or the bottom of the story. It is an invaluable asset of information and I'm confident it will help the website for a very long time.
This semester I found that again I was filling the 'and finally' spot of the bulletin - a highly sought after place in the bulletin. However, the first story this semester was a proper news story, but it fell through entirely. The story was that there were plans for a new school, a super school. I had 2 fixed interviews cancel on me thanks to the adverse weather and I was not allowed access to any pictures of the plans. This was a horrendous start to the semester and it put me back on my heels a bit.
The week after I my story was about the wind farm ban on Council owned lands in a place called Bullington Cross. This story would not have been possible if it wasn't for Faith Thomas being able to drive me to the location as it was a good 20 miles outside of Winchester and I had no way of reaching it. This goes to show that WINOL is very much a team effort, we all depend on each other to an extent and we all can work as one hell of a great team when put together. I receive good feedback from my peers with this story, I started with a piece to camera which is usually not necessary but it was praised, said to do it's job very well. My interviews had balance - I spoke to two environmental groups; one the Friends of the Earth spokesman and the other, a spokesman from Keep Hampshire Green.
Previously, my voice was dreadful, I had so many problems with sound and projecting my voice, maybe it was due to being somewhat shy at the time but I definitely have flourished this year in terms of my confidence and it has shown through in my contributions. Some other criticisms I've had were with filming, however, over this semester I took my time to learn all the camera functions and just kept practicing with it and my affinity with the JVC cameras has reached great heights.
Hampshire was hit by a storm, a storm in the shape of Chris Huhne and the massive scandal surrounding him. This was phenomenal for us as a news outlet - the subsequent by-election brought the biggest political names to Eastleigh. I conducted a poll, the WINOL 100, around the University of Winchester to find out who, if students could, they would vote for. I did this poll two weeks in a row and both times asked 100 people the same thing. In previous elections people had gone for the Liberal Democrats, but my poll found the vote for Labour revived and a huge collapse of faith in the Liberal Democrats.
Chris Ship, our Guest Editor on Feb 3rd 2013 and Political Editor for ITV advised me to match my words with the pictures. To begin with I was talking about the Labour vote in my poll when the Conservative data was showing and so on. So I re-tried until it was perfect to which he praised greatly - it had good tempo and it was bang on with the timing.
The story I'm most proud of covering was of Derek, a teddy bear sent into space.
This particular 'and finally' may well be my crowning achievement. I was so happy to cover this, the key thing to this story was the access I was given by the team that organised it. They allowed me to use the footage of the journey that was captured which made the story but I still put in the work to receive it. People in the news room we're genuinely interested to see this and I had people crowding my desk to watch. This story gained 148 views, which is my highest viewed packaged that I've produced for WINOL.
I thoroughly enjoyed this story, I went full throttle with it because it was just so amazing, it had reference to 2001 Space Odyssey in the intro, the Moon landing and it was riddled with puns - really everything an 'and finally' should be.
Derek was a tough act to follow for the spot of 'and finally' but I'm confident I pulled the rabbit out of the hat on this one... almost literally. My story was about Heidi, a Continental Giant rabbit that has arthritis and so has been encouraged to take up swimming to help ease pressure on her joints.
This proved a challenge to get to though as the story was all the way in Milford, quite a distance away from Winchester - I would have never been able to get there if it wasn't for Matt Spencer being able to drive me there and I would not have been able to film it if I didn't get in touch with the owner as early as I did - my organisation for this story set the precedent for me really, all of my stories should be this well planned ahead and I will now continue to do this.
I am brimming with pride on this 'and finally' it just delivered on all fronts, it was adorable, it was funny and it pulled the heart strings. It was a wonderful thing to witness as well, I enjoyed myself so much. I was especially proud of the puns I worked into the scripting of the voice over and I've been credited by my peers as to being great at scripting.
Along with everything else I've done this year, we all had a week each to be the News Editor for WINOL. My time as the News Editor was exceedingly rewarding to me. I got one hell of an experience from it. The week I was the Editor we had lined up for the bulletin the power houses of political figures - we had Miliband, Prime Minister Cameron and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. If that wasn't enough to make a phenomenal bulletin we had rumors circulating our people that the Mayor of London, the one and only Boris Johnson was going to make an appearance in Eastleigh.
Naturally, I wanted him to get into the bulletin at any cost. It was cut so close in the end, I had a team of reporters - Matt Spencer, Faith Thomas and Luke Garratt on standby to race to Eastleigh when they caught wind of Boris. There came a time nearing our deadline that things were looking dire, there was no sign of Boris and our reporters were being fed false information. It was cut so close that I was ready to forget putting him in the bulletin, but just as I was going to tell them to come back, to forget it, they called me up and they had been successful.
The features section of WINOL is astounding. The features team have progressed in leaps and bounds - ranging from the amazing fashion magazine Absolute:ly to the highly in depth New Winchester Review. The fashion magazine instantly draws you in, the images are striking and the huge banner at the top of the page is an eye catching way to intrigue readers.
The New Winchester Review just oozes culture - it is an amazing addition to WINOL which shows a very profound and romantic way of writing - it contains the likes of Theater and Opera reviews, something that you will most likely never find in a student lead operation. The font, the logo and the layout are all very striking - they will be remembered and they will be looked at. It's as they say: people come for the news and stay for the features.
I have had a phenomenal time on WINOL this semester and I'm extremely proud to be part of the News team here, I cannot wait to see this wonderful site grow and flourish as it no doubt will over the years.
Tuesday 21 May 2013
Monday 13 May 2013
The New Journalism
American Journalism, late 20th Century: This saw the inception of the 'Penny Papers' in America and in turn American Journalism - though at the time this was ran b politicians and or merchants who were pretty subjective and bias. This did mean that the public people could write news and mid 19th century objectivity became a factor in journalism because of the creation of wire service. The associated press believed news should be objective and neutral - to please the highest number of people.
Developed along this line was the Yellow Press and this had the idea of shaking up the papers, adding sensationalism* and pictures - going for the shock and awe approach - to reel people in. This sparked a circulation war between two rival papers - the first owned by William Randolph Hearst and the second by Joseph Pulitzer. Hearst focused on drama, romance, crimes which is really the inception of tabloids.
*Sensationalism - huge, emotive headlines =, massive, striking images. This was the Yellow Press and the first wave of real journalism. Yellow journalism focused on sin, sex and violence but there was also good journalism; investigative for example tried to route out all corruption.
Journalism is very formulaic, insofar as we are constricted to the facts, a story must have so many paragraphs, the top line must be 20 words and so on. New Journalism was an attempt to record events by mirroring the language and style of the way the events happened - this was referred to as 'letting it bleed into the copy'.
Political and cultural scene: America in the 1960's and 70's was a highly bad time There was a great deal of social and political upheaval because this was the time of the highly unpopular Vietnam War and President JFK was assassinated. He was a man who embodied the American dream and was outstandingly popular with everyone - to quote Forrest Gump: "Then one day, for no particular reason, somebody shot that nice young man"
The Vietnam war happened by proxy pretty much - America had beef with Russia and they were allied and this meant that people were being conscripted into the army without any choice. Also during this time period there was a huge change to the demographic of America - the baby bomb. So many children were being born and this in turn created a youth culture that had access to political powers and the state had to keep in check - young people of this time were the voice of radical political change - free love, hippies and so on; this created an age clash like you wouldn't believe, it was very much young against the uptight old and this did not sit well.
Sexual revolution: This was all about sexual freedom - in the mid 1960's women had the access to, and the choice to use, birth control and regulation. This is exceedingly important to existentialists as I have mentioned previously - choice to them is everything, no matter what you do you must choose, you must have the freedom to do so. For example, you could choose to have a sexual partner who you didn't end up marrying; this is what Reichman was talking about with free love - you must constantly satisfy the ID - said that Freud had it wrong, we should always express ourselves and not bottle it up, bottling it up made things so much worse - we need to let it all hang loose. This was our way to happiness, by having great sexual experiences.
The student movement: This movement was highly militant and radical. University's became the center of radical politics, so much so that the police conducted raids on schools and tried to quell these ideas by bashing some skulls in. This movement saw women and black people marching vehemently for political rights - groups like the Black Panthers or Malcolm X. This is when LSD was created by the CIA and distributed around in an attempt to try and control the minds of young people and radicals - getting a bit 1984 on us there, guys. All these attempts at control and the general upheaval created underground sub-cultures such as hippies and so on, the general feeling was that all sub-cultures were deviant.
Music played a vital role in counter-cultures and according to Sartre music like Jazz was highly authentic and if you choose to listen to it you are not living in bad faith. The music of the time was an outright attack on the establishment, for example iconic bands such as The Doors - their music was all about being against the state and Bob Dylan was massively influential and popular for his anti-establishment songs. This type of music was fuel for the movement, it fed the people and was political.
Influence of Existentialism: Heidegger's authenticity, Sartre's bad faith and the key ideas that came with them - freedom and choice. Fanon held the view that in order to walk a path to freedom and happiness was attained through choice - our choices create our life. Think of an existentialist x-ray machine, you go through the machine and the data that will come up will be every single choice you have made in your life. Fanon believed that the act of violence is essentially the extreme expression of choice - this being choice that had a real and immediate impact, put simply violence always gets us to the point faster. Gotta love violence.
New Journalism: The anti-establishment feeling came into journalism and this was the feeling that "there is a police officer inside your head and he must be destroyed". Journalists question whether writing stories that had come from press releases, official statements and conferences was objective or not. This paved a way for new forms of journalism to emerge.
Journalists, being formulaic, always looked towards the setting, plot, feelings. quotes and images and had to take into account all the facts and the truth. Writers like Truman Capote, a favorite of mine, were new breads of journalists. Capote's phenomenal book In Cold Blood is still on of my favorite books of all time - I love the way it's written, presenting the facts and telling a story in the form of fiction, the personal accounts, and the overall journey. But most importantly, to me at least, the sympathy that Capote demonstrates throughout the book is both terrifying and enthralling.
New Journalism's 'objectivity' is pretty much trashed in subjunctive experience, for example Tom Wolfe wrote an article about a bunch of big time fat cats inviting members of the Black Panthers to a fancy shindig and simply observing the situation. Wolfe admired the writer Emile Zola - he thought that the way he wrote was the correct way to write - you observe people and describe how they act, Dickens also used this style. Zola was exceedingly descriptive, like a Sherlock Holmes level of perception, spending many many pages explaining every individual part of a person - the way they walk, the watch they wear, the shoes and so on.
Wolfe describes Zola: "Zola crowned himself as a first scientific novelist, a naturalist to use his term, studying the human form"
Dialog became increasingly popular and people started to use this - Dickens and Zola's technique of writing and description seeped it's way into feature writing. For example there was a feature which depicted a boxer, well past his prime, and he has just stepped off a plane to meet his wife - then conversations ensue and this is the dialog - the key is to attempt to reciprocate exactly what they said and how they say it onto a page, every single detail. This is a very time costly process and can take days, weeks even years to accomplish. There are four stages according to Wolfe about how features should be. He claims that features should be done:
1) Scene by scene, you need to be there and you need to make the reader feel like they're there.
2) They must reflect the realistic dialog - this allows us to read into the people but capturing the dialog perfectly is wicked difficult
3) You must get into their minds, learn everything you can about them - their thoughts and emotions and more importantly the reader should be able to as well.
4) Attention to the fine details - their whole world, their characteristics - how they walk and so on. You gain insight through attention to the detail.
Developed along this line was the Yellow Press and this had the idea of shaking up the papers, adding sensationalism* and pictures - going for the shock and awe approach - to reel people in. This sparked a circulation war between two rival papers - the first owned by William Randolph Hearst and the second by Joseph Pulitzer. Hearst focused on drama, romance, crimes which is really the inception of tabloids.
*Sensationalism - huge, emotive headlines =, massive, striking images. This was the Yellow Press and the first wave of real journalism. Yellow journalism focused on sin, sex and violence but there was also good journalism; investigative for example tried to route out all corruption.
Journalism is very formulaic, insofar as we are constricted to the facts, a story must have so many paragraphs, the top line must be 20 words and so on. New Journalism was an attempt to record events by mirroring the language and style of the way the events happened - this was referred to as 'letting it bleed into the copy'.
Political and cultural scene: America in the 1960's and 70's was a highly bad time There was a great deal of social and political upheaval because this was the time of the highly unpopular Vietnam War and President JFK was assassinated. He was a man who embodied the American dream and was outstandingly popular with everyone - to quote Forrest Gump: "Then one day, for no particular reason, somebody shot that nice young man"
The Vietnam war happened by proxy pretty much - America had beef with Russia and they were allied and this meant that people were being conscripted into the army without any choice. Also during this time period there was a huge change to the demographic of America - the baby bomb. So many children were being born and this in turn created a youth culture that had access to political powers and the state had to keep in check - young people of this time were the voice of radical political change - free love, hippies and so on; this created an age clash like you wouldn't believe, it was very much young against the uptight old and this did not sit well.
Sexual revolution: This was all about sexual freedom - in the mid 1960's women had the access to, and the choice to use, birth control and regulation. This is exceedingly important to existentialists as I have mentioned previously - choice to them is everything, no matter what you do you must choose, you must have the freedom to do so. For example, you could choose to have a sexual partner who you didn't end up marrying; this is what Reichman was talking about with free love - you must constantly satisfy the ID - said that Freud had it wrong, we should always express ourselves and not bottle it up, bottling it up made things so much worse - we need to let it all hang loose. This was our way to happiness, by having great sexual experiences.
The student movement: This movement was highly militant and radical. University's became the center of radical politics, so much so that the police conducted raids on schools and tried to quell these ideas by bashing some skulls in. This movement saw women and black people marching vehemently for political rights - groups like the Black Panthers or Malcolm X. This is when LSD was created by the CIA and distributed around in an attempt to try and control the minds of young people and radicals - getting a bit 1984 on us there, guys. All these attempts at control and the general upheaval created underground sub-cultures such as hippies and so on, the general feeling was that all sub-cultures were deviant.
Music played a vital role in counter-cultures and according to Sartre music like Jazz was highly authentic and if you choose to listen to it you are not living in bad faith. The music of the time was an outright attack on the establishment, for example iconic bands such as The Doors - their music was all about being against the state and Bob Dylan was massively influential and popular for his anti-establishment songs. This type of music was fuel for the movement, it fed the people and was political.
Influence of Existentialism: Heidegger's authenticity, Sartre's bad faith and the key ideas that came with them - freedom and choice. Fanon held the view that in order to walk a path to freedom and happiness was attained through choice - our choices create our life. Think of an existentialist x-ray machine, you go through the machine and the data that will come up will be every single choice you have made in your life. Fanon believed that the act of violence is essentially the extreme expression of choice - this being choice that had a real and immediate impact, put simply violence always gets us to the point faster. Gotta love violence.
New Journalism: The anti-establishment feeling came into journalism and this was the feeling that "there is a police officer inside your head and he must be destroyed". Journalists question whether writing stories that had come from press releases, official statements and conferences was objective or not. This paved a way for new forms of journalism to emerge.
Journalists, being formulaic, always looked towards the setting, plot, feelings. quotes and images and had to take into account all the facts and the truth. Writers like Truman Capote, a favorite of mine, were new breads of journalists. Capote's phenomenal book In Cold Blood is still on of my favorite books of all time - I love the way it's written, presenting the facts and telling a story in the form of fiction, the personal accounts, and the overall journey. But most importantly, to me at least, the sympathy that Capote demonstrates throughout the book is both terrifying and enthralling.
New Journalism's 'objectivity' is pretty much trashed in subjunctive experience, for example Tom Wolfe wrote an article about a bunch of big time fat cats inviting members of the Black Panthers to a fancy shindig and simply observing the situation. Wolfe admired the writer Emile Zola - he thought that the way he wrote was the correct way to write - you observe people and describe how they act, Dickens also used this style. Zola was exceedingly descriptive, like a Sherlock Holmes level of perception, spending many many pages explaining every individual part of a person - the way they walk, the watch they wear, the shoes and so on.
Wolfe describes Zola: "Zola crowned himself as a first scientific novelist, a naturalist to use his term, studying the human form"
Dialog became increasingly popular and people started to use this - Dickens and Zola's technique of writing and description seeped it's way into feature writing. For example there was a feature which depicted a boxer, well past his prime, and he has just stepped off a plane to meet his wife - then conversations ensue and this is the dialog - the key is to attempt to reciprocate exactly what they said and how they say it onto a page, every single detail. This is a very time costly process and can take days, weeks even years to accomplish. There are four stages according to Wolfe about how features should be. He claims that features should be done:
1) Scene by scene, you need to be there and you need to make the reader feel like they're there.
2) They must reflect the realistic dialog - this allows us to read into the people but capturing the dialog perfectly is wicked difficult
3) You must get into their minds, learn everything you can about them - their thoughts and emotions and more importantly the reader should be able to as well.
4) Attention to the fine details - their whole world, their characteristics - how they walk and so on. You gain insight through attention to the detail.
Totalitarianism
Origins of Totalitarianism: It is important to understand how such regimes can come to fruition - for example the control of language (Orwell and propaganda) can make a huge difference as well as restraints such as prohibition. I personally believe that humans are inherently and unavoidably evil, all things we do are for some sort of person gain.
It is widely believed that we all have a personal responsibility to speak out again dictatorships and strike away from following forced orders - but then again look at some people, they would not make a choice (and from an existentialist point of view would therefore be living in bad faith, a false life) and just go along with the regime because they don't want to die or risk anything happening to them.
People would probably say that they would not conform to such things, to refuse an oppressive authority and actively say what's happening is full on wrong but to me this is exceptionally idealistic - if your own life is on the line you will do whatever you can to preserve it, in this case it would be following any order given.
Pre-WW1 and 2 we had 100 years of relative 'peace' these being the years following the Napoleonic war. Humanity had sorted all the majority of crap that was hindering progressions and became more sophisticated, in a manner of speaking. For example, Germany had some damn fine intellectual minds they were bounding forward in terms of culture, science and so on, sometimes colloquially referred to the German century.
Hannah Arendt and Totalitarianism: Totalitarianism literally means controlling every single aspect of life: Hobbes touched upon a near totalitarian state explained in his writings - life is nasty, brutish and short - people are bad and will always try to have more, regardless of who they have to hurt to get it. This meant that the state had to have some control over how much freedom people had, but this was a social contract and would never encroach on their freedom totally, so there would never be absolute control.
Hannah Arendt claims that totalitarians regimes are a complete and utter break away from all of our traditions, she then goes on to say that dictatorships and oppressive regimes can happen because of imperialism in the 19th century and this created grounds for it to happen - imperialism was established by race.
However people such as Mussolini believed that outside of the state there can be no individuals or groups of people - the state is everything and if you live in the state you are part of it - it should be everywhere, in your house and fully encompass all of your life. You must always think in a way that is consistent in the state anything else is a rebellion against the state.
The emphasis on race and not merit is a recurring theme in dictatorships - once this has been established it became very easy for dictatorships to take it up and make it their own and from this is just gets worse, always seeing one particular race as better than the other, where is the line in the sand drawn? If at all.
Following this train of thought of building on what was already there and making it your own - The Boer War and General Kitchener; this brought about the inception of concentration camps and the Nazi regime took this idea and adapted it. For a dictatorship to succeed there must be no individual. Us being individual makes it very hard to be controlled - so that we can be part of the state, not away from it, and from this the state tells us what we need to think.
Hannah Arendt says that destroying the individual will cause a state of terror. The aim is not to kill people but to break them down like dogs - the terror is not just murdering vast numbers of people it is the act of isolating people, making them feel like they have no say, right or ability to question the government. George Orwell demonstrates this in his novel 1984 - big brother, you are always being watched, the thought police will catch you at any sight of rebellion - this feeling of always being under observation, a police state, creates mass paranoia.
This creates an ideology - people start to believe that this is the way, why not speak out against this? well because this is how things are, this is the natural order. This is drilled into the heads of people under a dictatorship and goes hand in hand with the terror and removes the capacity for individual thought and experience among the executioners themselves - this provides somewhat of a defense for these people, for example well it's not my fault I was just following orders, they would've killed me otherwise, a highly weak attempt at absolution - personally I think if you make the choice then stick to your guns, don't be such a coward.
This leads to a breakdown of the stable human world and means a loss of the institutional and psychological barriers that we would not normally cross - an example is becoming numb to seeing utter devastation and strife which was frequent among concentration camp workers; one man arrived and broke down into tears at the sight and later would see it as normal and just became numb to it.
There is a certain frailty within civilisation which I agree with. It is shocking how quickly people will turn on each other if they are threatened, people go into a survival mode and will do anything they can to make sure they survive - my example would be from the TV show It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (though satirically done) it provides a decent setting - two people in a small rubber dingy lost out at sea with one source of food, a leg of meat soaked in rum. The food gets thrown overboard and they start to become paranoid of the other one eating the other in order to survive, going so far as to try and kill the other in order to eat him.
Control Language - George Orwell: Mind control is highly possible if you have control over language - what words people can and can't use, which words are prohibited and so on. Language is exceedingly important because the language you use daily is what defines you really, the words you choose and so on.
The Eichmann Trial: This was a highly important trial which concerned a German bureaucrat Eichmann whose job it was, during the Nazi regime, to make sure that the trains carrying hosts of Jewish prisoners ran efficiently and made sure they were on time. This trial served three key purposes:
1) to try him for his crimes
2) educate the population with what happened
3) to legitimise the Jewish state
Hannah Arendt was shocked by Eichmann because he was just a regular Joe, nothing exceptional or odd about him, who was following orders for the sake of self preservation. She concluded that it was not necessary to possess some sort of great wickedness to commit great crimes, simple put; if you are in danger you will do what you will to make sure you live, regardless of what this is - this is the *Banality of Evil.
Arendt takes an existentialist stance with this and says that Eichmann's biggest crime was not thinking. Thoughts and choice is crucial to existentialists because no matter what you do you have to make a choice - otherwise Sartre will accuse you of living in bad faith. In Eichmann's case he was mindlessly following and used the defense that he was abiding the law (whilst breaking the law at the same time) claiming it was his duty. When really he should have made a decision for himself
*Banality = Ordinary, can happen to literally anyone
It is widely believed that we all have a personal responsibility to speak out again dictatorships and strike away from following forced orders - but then again look at some people, they would not make a choice (and from an existentialist point of view would therefore be living in bad faith, a false life) and just go along with the regime because they don't want to die or risk anything happening to them.
People would probably say that they would not conform to such things, to refuse an oppressive authority and actively say what's happening is full on wrong but to me this is exceptionally idealistic - if your own life is on the line you will do whatever you can to preserve it, in this case it would be following any order given.
Pre-WW1 and 2 we had 100 years of relative 'peace' these being the years following the Napoleonic war. Humanity had sorted all the majority of crap that was hindering progressions and became more sophisticated, in a manner of speaking. For example, Germany had some damn fine intellectual minds they were bounding forward in terms of culture, science and so on, sometimes colloquially referred to the German century.
Hannah Arendt and Totalitarianism: Totalitarianism literally means controlling every single aspect of life: Hobbes touched upon a near totalitarian state explained in his writings - life is nasty, brutish and short - people are bad and will always try to have more, regardless of who they have to hurt to get it. This meant that the state had to have some control over how much freedom people had, but this was a social contract and would never encroach on their freedom totally, so there would never be absolute control.
Hannah Arendt claims that totalitarians regimes are a complete and utter break away from all of our traditions, she then goes on to say that dictatorships and oppressive regimes can happen because of imperialism in the 19th century and this created grounds for it to happen - imperialism was established by race.
However people such as Mussolini believed that outside of the state there can be no individuals or groups of people - the state is everything and if you live in the state you are part of it - it should be everywhere, in your house and fully encompass all of your life. You must always think in a way that is consistent in the state anything else is a rebellion against the state.
The emphasis on race and not merit is a recurring theme in dictatorships - once this has been established it became very easy for dictatorships to take it up and make it their own and from this is just gets worse, always seeing one particular race as better than the other, where is the line in the sand drawn? If at all.
Following this train of thought of building on what was already there and making it your own - The Boer War and General Kitchener; this brought about the inception of concentration camps and the Nazi regime took this idea and adapted it. For a dictatorship to succeed there must be no individual. Us being individual makes it very hard to be controlled - so that we can be part of the state, not away from it, and from this the state tells us what we need to think.
Hannah Arendt says that destroying the individual will cause a state of terror. The aim is not to kill people but to break them down like dogs - the terror is not just murdering vast numbers of people it is the act of isolating people, making them feel like they have no say, right or ability to question the government. George Orwell demonstrates this in his novel 1984 - big brother, you are always being watched, the thought police will catch you at any sight of rebellion - this feeling of always being under observation, a police state, creates mass paranoia.
This creates an ideology - people start to believe that this is the way, why not speak out against this? well because this is how things are, this is the natural order. This is drilled into the heads of people under a dictatorship and goes hand in hand with the terror and removes the capacity for individual thought and experience among the executioners themselves - this provides somewhat of a defense for these people, for example well it's not my fault I was just following orders, they would've killed me otherwise, a highly weak attempt at absolution - personally I think if you make the choice then stick to your guns, don't be such a coward.
This leads to a breakdown of the stable human world and means a loss of the institutional and psychological barriers that we would not normally cross - an example is becoming numb to seeing utter devastation and strife which was frequent among concentration camp workers; one man arrived and broke down into tears at the sight and later would see it as normal and just became numb to it.
There is a certain frailty within civilisation which I agree with. It is shocking how quickly people will turn on each other if they are threatened, people go into a survival mode and will do anything they can to make sure they survive - my example would be from the TV show It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (though satirically done) it provides a decent setting - two people in a small rubber dingy lost out at sea with one source of food, a leg of meat soaked in rum. The food gets thrown overboard and they start to become paranoid of the other one eating the other in order to survive, going so far as to try and kill the other in order to eat him.
Control Language - George Orwell: Mind control is highly possible if you have control over language - what words people can and can't use, which words are prohibited and so on. Language is exceedingly important because the language you use daily is what defines you really, the words you choose and so on.
The Eichmann Trial: This was a highly important trial which concerned a German bureaucrat Eichmann whose job it was, during the Nazi regime, to make sure that the trains carrying hosts of Jewish prisoners ran efficiently and made sure they were on time. This trial served three key purposes:
1) to try him for his crimes
2) educate the population with what happened
3) to legitimise the Jewish state
Hannah Arendt was shocked by Eichmann because he was just a regular Joe, nothing exceptional or odd about him, who was following orders for the sake of self preservation. She concluded that it was not necessary to possess some sort of great wickedness to commit great crimes, simple put; if you are in danger you will do what you will to make sure you live, regardless of what this is - this is the *Banality of Evil.
Arendt takes an existentialist stance with this and says that Eichmann's biggest crime was not thinking. Thoughts and choice is crucial to existentialists because no matter what you do you have to make a choice - otherwise Sartre will accuse you of living in bad faith. In Eichmann's case he was mindlessly following and used the defense that he was abiding the law (whilst breaking the law at the same time) claiming it was his duty. When really he should have made a decision for himself
*Banality = Ordinary, can happen to literally anyone
The New Industrial State - 1960's America and Economics
Galbraith explored the economics of production in the 1960's looking in detail to how companies could exert their power and influence over the state - this was called The New Industrial State.
The United States of America in the 1960's: In the USA this meant that everything was to be made available pretty much on demand whenever needed. This meant that people would be encountering problems every day and be able to easily solve them with little to no hassle, which lead to a sort of routine falling into place - this is our first world society. We have all come to take things for granted; flowing water, instant access to the internet, education and the list goes on and on.
Democracy is thought as a meritocracy - everything is morally the same and we are based on our merit only; the military industrial complex was based on this specific structure - there was a leadership model and people were not judged on their political affiliation. This system is technically aimless, it becomes essentially nihilistic and Heidegger predicted and named the 'pragmatic technological bureaucratic' meaning that the corporations and people involved in this new industrial state are ran by an 'elite' or 'expert' if you will.
Keynes: Based on the principles of supply and demand The New Industrial State would have been welcomed by Keynes - it is a controlled economy, but one that is meaningless; he makes of it what he wants. To Keynes, war is the best thing that can happen to an economy - during the depression, capitalism nearly came to an end because there was just no money circulating, the war got things moving, created a base need for everyone.
Contra: The managed society that Keynes suggested was opposed by Hayek, who predicted that it would ultimately fail - it would lead to high levels of corruption that everyone would be some sort of bureaucrat with their only goal being to vehemently strive for promotion, selfish gain and, of course, more power.
Galbraith and The New Industrial State: Galbraith illustrates in his book “The New Industrial State” that the base structure of American economics shifted to being controlled entirely by the state. Galbraith outlines other important power shifts over the years stating that the second shift in power has been building and swelling over the years and it is still in the making. Galbraith talks of the “techno-structure” of the New Industrial State. This outlines abandoning individualism and beginning to depend on 'experts' or other corporations, leading to a change in bureaucratic hierarchy - it is now about focusing on the group rather than the individual.
The United States of America in the 1960's: In the USA this meant that everything was to be made available pretty much on demand whenever needed. This meant that people would be encountering problems every day and be able to easily solve them with little to no hassle, which lead to a sort of routine falling into place - this is our first world society. We have all come to take things for granted; flowing water, instant access to the internet, education and the list goes on and on.
In Max Weber's version of this, the rise of bureaucracy people would start to be ruled by officials who gain their positions of power and authority by being pretty much amazing - charismatic for example, and then this bureaucracy would continue to rise and grow creating a massive hierarchy. Weber argued that bureaucracy was a highly efficient way of administration, but did not believe that it was necessarily a great thing to have happened - for example there is now little room for personal expression because you start to follow these constricting rules of an organisation - this is bad for existentialists because freedom of choice and expression is everything, otherwise we are essentially being oppressed; no room for any other values.
Keynes: Based on the principles of supply and demand The New Industrial State would have been welcomed by Keynes - it is a controlled economy, but one that is meaningless; he makes of it what he wants. To Keynes, war is the best thing that can happen to an economy - during the depression, capitalism nearly came to an end because there was just no money circulating, the war got things moving, created a base need for everyone.
Contra: The managed society that Keynes suggested was opposed by Hayek, who predicted that it would ultimately fail - it would lead to high levels of corruption that everyone would be some sort of bureaucrat with their only goal being to vehemently strive for promotion, selfish gain and, of course, more power.
Friday 10 May 2013
Existentialism continued - Frege and mathematics
Logic and mathematics: Frege believes there are natural numbers; used to count things, these natural numbers are just concepts, many things, more than one thing etc. Counting creates an abstract category or group - for example with plurals - you can have a pride of lions, a murder of crows, an unkindness of ravens (natural numbers, abstract concepts) This is used to refer to a number of things where you cannot physically count them all out, like trying to count the number of people in a football stadium, you just know there is a hell of a lot of people there.
There are three attitudes to language, most importantly numbers:
1) they are natural and can be empirically observed
2) they are intuitions of a harmonic, platonic other world - you can never find the noumena, the essence of a number
3) they are abstract logical objects constructed purely from syntax*
*Syntax - results of modifying the meaning of one object to another. For example, verbs and adjectives - house can be syntactically altered to blue house.
Numerical naturalism / Evolutionary psychology: Apes and Neanderthal tribes appeared to be able to judge simple empirical plurality, typically for example, the absence of a banana or something else of importance.
Noam Chomsky: People are born with an innate understanding on syntax and language, he argues otherwise how do we know this? Contra John Locke who thought we are born with a blank slate - we have nothing innate.
Pythagorean-ism / Platonism: Numbers have heavily influenced Christianity, for them numbers are like an insight into God (prime numbers) the belief behind this is that 7 essentially cannot be thought up, primes can't be divided. Numbers are believed to have like special powers, people hold them in high regard like choosing numbers for the lottery, you, for some obscure reason, believe picking certain numbers that you believe to be special from the others increases your chances of winning when really it doesn't work like that - pretty much superstitious nonsense.
There is a religious significance regarding the number 3. Three is apparently the magic number - three acts in a play, three movements in a symphony and in a waltz, the big three in religion being the father, the son and the holy ghost. This also creeps into journalism, with terms like rule of thirds.
Primes are held in high regard by Islamic believers, Islam exhibits cults around plural primes four, five and seven. Babylonians exhibit a similar obsession with numbers - the 12 Zodiacs, each representing a month of the year, commonly known as star signs.
Pythagoras regarded plurals as the only real natural numbers, starting numerically at 2 because a number that is 1, not one or nothing are completely different categories. Odyssey telling the tale of Odysseus & the Cyclops; the cyclops asks if there is anyone there to which the reply is there is no-one there. This utterly confuses the cyclops because nothing being there is a fully ineffable concept - the process of there being nothing there is flawed, there cannot be nothing as the nothing is something. Used again in this example which perhaps illustrate the point more - there is nothing on the road, well yes there is because the road is there and also nothing, being something, is present. This does not mean the same thing as the road being empty, or clear of obstructions.
Problem of zero and nothing: Zero came from India, later via Islam. Whole Arabic numerical systems were introduced in the middle ages after the fall of Rome. Zero is an intrinsically difficult concept, as expressed earlier; zero = nothing but nothing = something.
Contra to Aristotle's law of contradiction solved by Leibniz's monads - an object can contain it's own negation. Modern philosophers of mathematics assert that zero is a natural number. This is because if you have: zero + one = one, making something out of nothing.
Common sense view of numbers: There are logical objects according to Frege, his book the Grundlagen is a philosophy of the logic of numbers. For Frege, maths is just a language and all the same analytically.
- Languages have three things:
1) vocabulary of objects (words and numbers)
2) syntax - modify the meaning comb-grammar
3) grammar
Frege's work was adapted - Bertrand & Whitehead - Principia Mathematica - going to assume this is the principle of mathematics
Frege's Method: Axiom - all things identical are equal to themselves, this is asserted apriori; deductive, true by definition. Follows all things which are pairs are identical to all other pairs (regardless of what they are pairs of) they are still pairs nonetheless. The class of all things which are pairs - logically can call it two, it does not matter. Large numbers can be built as logical constructs as along the lines of 'the class of all things which are pairs of pairs' - we can attach any symbol we like, for example four. Furthermore, one is the class of all things that are not in a pair, eg, lost sock = not a pair, just a single sock.
There are three attitudes to language, most importantly numbers:
1) they are natural and can be empirically observed
2) they are intuitions of a harmonic, platonic other world - you can never find the noumena, the essence of a number
3) they are abstract logical objects constructed purely from syntax*
*Syntax - results of modifying the meaning of one object to another. For example, verbs and adjectives - house can be syntactically altered to blue house.
Numerical naturalism / Evolutionary psychology: Apes and Neanderthal tribes appeared to be able to judge simple empirical plurality, typically for example, the absence of a banana or something else of importance.
Noam Chomsky: People are born with an innate understanding on syntax and language, he argues otherwise how do we know this? Contra John Locke who thought we are born with a blank slate - we have nothing innate.
Pythagorean-ism / Platonism: Numbers have heavily influenced Christianity, for them numbers are like an insight into God (prime numbers) the belief behind this is that 7 essentially cannot be thought up, primes can't be divided. Numbers are believed to have like special powers, people hold them in high regard like choosing numbers for the lottery, you, for some obscure reason, believe picking certain numbers that you believe to be special from the others increases your chances of winning when really it doesn't work like that - pretty much superstitious nonsense.
There is a religious significance regarding the number 3. Three is apparently the magic number - three acts in a play, three movements in a symphony and in a waltz, the big three in religion being the father, the son and the holy ghost. This also creeps into journalism, with terms like rule of thirds.
Primes are held in high regard by Islamic believers, Islam exhibits cults around plural primes four, five and seven. Babylonians exhibit a similar obsession with numbers - the 12 Zodiacs, each representing a month of the year, commonly known as star signs.
Pythagoras regarded plurals as the only real natural numbers, starting numerically at 2 because a number that is 1, not one or nothing are completely different categories. Odyssey telling the tale of Odysseus & the Cyclops; the cyclops asks if there is anyone there to which the reply is there is no-one there. This utterly confuses the cyclops because nothing being there is a fully ineffable concept - the process of there being nothing there is flawed, there cannot be nothing as the nothing is something. Used again in this example which perhaps illustrate the point more - there is nothing on the road, well yes there is because the road is there and also nothing, being something, is present. This does not mean the same thing as the road being empty, or clear of obstructions.
Problem of zero and nothing: Zero came from India, later via Islam. Whole Arabic numerical systems were introduced in the middle ages after the fall of Rome. Zero is an intrinsically difficult concept, as expressed earlier; zero = nothing but nothing = something.
Contra to Aristotle's law of contradiction solved by Leibniz's monads - an object can contain it's own negation. Modern philosophers of mathematics assert that zero is a natural number. This is because if you have: zero + one = one, making something out of nothing.
Common sense view of numbers: There are logical objects according to Frege, his book the Grundlagen is a philosophy of the logic of numbers. For Frege, maths is just a language and all the same analytically.
- Languages have three things:
1) vocabulary of objects (words and numbers)
2) syntax - modify the meaning comb-grammar
3) grammar
Frege's work was adapted - Bertrand & Whitehead - Principia Mathematica - going to assume this is the principle of mathematics
Frege's Method: Axiom - all things identical are equal to themselves, this is asserted apriori; deductive, true by definition. Follows all things which are pairs are identical to all other pairs (regardless of what they are pairs of) they are still pairs nonetheless. The class of all things which are pairs - logically can call it two, it does not matter. Large numbers can be built as logical constructs as along the lines of 'the class of all things which are pairs of pairs' - we can attach any symbol we like, for example four. Furthermore, one is the class of all things that are not in a pair, eg, lost sock = not a pair, just a single sock.
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