Principle, Ideology and Reality

This is a quote from a comment on a story on the BBC website, regarding the election of Mr. Corbyn as the new Labour Party leader, presumably from someone who views the appointment with a degree of disapprobation:

“Well, they got what they wanted, the Marxists, the Trots and all the other fantasy economics fans. Principle and ideology have finally trumped reality.”

I have stated before my intention that this not become a political blog, and I’m sticking to that principle.  I don’t wish to discuss Mr. Corbyn, or the merits or otherwise of his various beliefs and policies.  Instead, I want to examine what seems to me the startling assertion of the commenter that principle and ideology shouldn’t trump reality.

On the surface, there is a certain hard-nosed pragmatic sense to saying “You have to accept reality”, “That’s the way things are”, and “You have to take the world as you find it”.  Since I am rarely pragmatic or sensible, and since my nose is fairly soft, it’s a view that I reject utterly.  If we allow ourselves to accept that the world is this way, and that’s how it’s always going to be, then we are gradually drawn to the conclusion that this is how it is supposed to be, even how it ought to be.

Principles and ideologies, both religious and political, vary widely and often conflict bitterly, but at the heart of all of them is a sense that the world is not as it should be; that things need changing.  This can be formalised as a conception of sin, that we are not the creatures that we were created to be and that God wishes us to become, or it can be a looser idea that we ought to strive to be better than we are, and that the world ought to be better than it is, whatever we conceive ‘better’ to be.  Our differences in opinion as to what ‘better’ is can sometimes be vast and vicious.  We can look at others’ efforts and think that they will actually make the world worse if they succeed, but ultimately we must recognise that they think that they are trying to improve things.  We may not agree, we can even work to oppose them, but we must respect that they think they are trying to help.  They have recognised that the world is not as it should be, and are working to change it, just as we are, and that is extremely important.

A woman in a church I used to attend once said to me (I forget what I had said to spark the comment), “But there are always going to be poor people!”  It’s so easy to shrug and say, “Well, that’s just how things are.  There are always going to be homeless people.  There are always going to be wars.  There is always going to be injustice.  There is always going to be inequality and cruelty and starvation and hatred and bitterness and selfishness, misery, pain and unscrupulous individuals.”  If we pause and ask, “But why?” the response is the shrug and “That’s just how things are.”

How things are?  Yes.  Sadly and to our shame, that is indeed how things are.  But that is a long, long way from saying that this is the way things ought to be.  If we accept that the world is as it ought to be, then we can be led to assume that we are also as we ought to be, and perhaps this is what has happened.  Most people nowadays find the concept of sin as understood by most Christians to be not only laughably archaic but also slightly distasteful.  Nobody likes being told that they are doing wrong, that they are not as good as they should be, but pragmatic realism offers them an escape.  “This is how things are.  This is how I am.  Anything else in unrealistic, idealistic nonsense.”

This is not a plea for naïve idealism.  We have to be aware of how things are (without necessarily ‘accepting’ how they are) in order to function in the world, and in order to try and change it.  We should "be in the world, but not of the world", and to me that partly means being aware of the reality without accepting it as inevitable.  Counter to what the commenter thinks, I believe that reality should never trump principle and ideology.  I’m not even sure that the principles and ideologies should have to be ‘realistic’.  Aiming at impossible goals and failing can result in more than aiming at realistic goals and succeeding.  As CS Lewis put it, “Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.”

Our reality is not so good that I think that it can’t be improved, and I shall dream of a better world, filled with better people, and if people accuse me of being unrealistic, then I shall take it as a compliment.  I’ve used this quote from ‘The Adventures of Baron Munchausen’ in this blog before, but I think that it bears re-use here: “Your reality, sir, is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever.”

Narrative, Storytelling and the Art of Terrible Puns

Warning:  Mild to moderate amounts of writerly pretension below.  May contain nuts.  To avoid suffocation, keep away from small children.

One of my hobbies is fencing, scientifically proven to be the Best Sport.  Once a week I attend Milton Keynes Fencing Club, where I get to repeatedly stab other people with a sword and call it exercise.  As the saying goes, ‘it’s all fun and games once somebody loses an eye’.

However, I have, for reasons not wholly clear to myself, acquired a reputation within the club as a teller of incredibly bad jokes.  I’m not sure that these accusations can be sustained in the face of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.  I mean, yes, alright, I have told them The Prawn Joke, The Butcher Dance Joke, The Assistant Zookeeper Joke, even The Landlord’s Dog joke.  And yes, I stretch them out, embellishing and extending them to squeeze every last iota of enjoyment out of them.  The Prawn Joke lasted a full fifteen minutes.

However, the fact remains that I do not launch into these tales unsolicited.  My victi- uh, audience have reached the point where they actually ask for them, and I am always happy to oblige, having delivered a cautionary disclaimer regarding the satisfactory nature of the end result.  An entire psychological thesis on humour-based Stockholm Syndrome is here for the taking! 

The thing is, I really enjoy telling these jokes.  Part of it is the sadistic joy of getting to the punchline, and seeing in their faces the slow realisation that you’ve just taken ten or fifteen minutes of their life, and they’re never getting it back.  However, there is also the pure enjoyment of a story well told, an unfolding narrative that holds the listeners’ attention until the final moment.  I’ve been asked how I remember every single detail, and the fact is that I don’t.  I haven’t memorised these things word for word.  I know the overall plot, and I know the punchline, but all of the details are made up as I go along, each time I tell the joke.  Obviously they are always very similar, but nonetheless, not identical.  People ask why I bother to elaborate and extend them the way I do, when it would be possible to tell the story and deliver the punchline in a far briefer and more utilitarian way.  I daresay I could tell The Prawn Joke in less than a minute, but the punchline wouldn’t have the weight and momentum of the longer narrative behind it; it would be little more than a tap.  Including the details, acting out the dialogue, making stuff up on the fly to enrich the plot all add to both my (and maybe even their) enjoyment of the story, and the height of the drop when the joke finally ends.

For my birthday this year, I received the Baron Munchausen Roleplay Game.  It’s not a true RPG in the usual sense.  Instead, players take on the roles of 18^th century nobles, and take turns to tell extravagant tales in the style of the Baron himself, prompted by the other players.  I’ve only had the opportunity to play it once since I got it, but it allows for the same quick off-the-cuff storytelling as the long jokes, coming up with details on the fly.  In a way, it’s similar to running more conventional RPGs, and having to adapt your story and the actions and reactions of the non-player characters to those of the players, reacting in real time to what can potentially be sudden changes in direction.  It’s one of the things I love best about running games like this.

Not all art is beautiful, but not all art has to be.  Not all jokes are good, but it doesn’t have to mean that they have no merit of their own as exercises in storytelling.

By the way, if you are unfamiliar with any of the jokes mentioned above and want to learn more, when you have a spare hour or so, let me know and I’ll happily remedy this sad lack in your education.  Believe me, you will consider it time well spent!

Real Things

A quote for you, from a book I’m reading at the moment:

“With them (…) was a power mightier than any, the power that in its highest form does indeed make the world go round; the one power in the world that is above fortune, above death, above the creeds, or, shall we say, behind them.  For with them was love in its highest form, the loves that gives and does not ask, and being denied, loves.  In their clear moments men know that this love is the only real thing in the world; and a thousand times more substantial, more existent, than the objects we grasp and see.”

This is not, as you might assume, from Unspoken Sermons, by George Macdonald, which I mentioned in my last post.  It is from The Abbess of Vlaye, by Stanley J. Weyman, a historical swashbuckler set in sixteenth century France.  Stanley Weyman was writing in the 1890s and 1900s, and his works are similar in tone and content to Alexandre Dumas but unlike him, and quite inexplicably, Weyman is now almost completely unknown.  It might be that his heroes and heroines are somewhat nobler and more wholesome than Dumas’ more roisterous protagonists, and thus excite less interest, but although I’m a huge Dumas fan, and would class The Count of Monte Cristo amongst my favourite books (and which includes, at the very end, a wonderful quote about hope), I think on the whole, I prefer Weyman.  Weyman’s A Gentleman of France instantly catapulted itself into my top 10 books list as soon as I read it, and his Under the Red Robe is also excellent.  Because Weyman’s works are now out of copyright, they can be downloaded for free from the wonderful Project Gutenberg, where I’ve acquired all mine, and I highly recommend them if you’re into books full of duels, chases, narrow escapes, true love, giants (Wait, no, that’s The Princess Bride.  There aren’t any giants) and cameos from Persons of Historical Significance.

Anyway, enough literary criticism.  The reason I quoted the above is because it resonates with me in much the same way as the C S Lewis quote which adorns the top of this page.  The idea that the important things, the real things, aren’t the ones that, in Weyman’s words “we can grasp and see”.  It’s a view that some people find hard.  “I only believe what I can see” is a phrase that I’ve heard a great many times.  Presumably these people are agnostic about the backs of their own heads, but there you are.

I am, if not an ardent, then at least a confirmed monarchist, and when discussions on the monarchy occur, they often end up coming down to money.  It commonly ends up in a debate over whether the royal family brings in more in tourism than they use in public money, but to me this misses the point.  The importance of the monarchy isn’t a material one.  Ignoring the excellent work they do in terms of diplomacy and international PR, their value to me is much harder to define, much less straight forward, but all the more important.  It’s about tradition and history, pomp and circumstance, about magnificence and dignity and continuation.  There are a great many bland republics about, but only one British Monarchy.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m no advocate of absolute monarchy, but I definitely feel that with our parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy, we have the best of both worlds.

Likewise my feelings towards religion; towards love, faith, hope, grace, forgiveness, goodness.  We are told that these are all merely evolutionary adaptations that increase social cohesion and group survivability, that love is merely ‘chemical brainwashing’, forcing individuals to stay together against their will, for the sake of raising young, that even the very concepts of goodness and justice are nothing more than nature’s way of tricking us into being nice, with the sole aim of increasing the likelihood of passing on our genes.  That may well be true.  It could well be that the concepts that we hold dear are things that we have invented, things we’ve dreamed, things which we cannot weigh or measure or touch or show when sceptics demand that we give them ‘proof’ or else admit that our beliefs are fantasies and fairy-tales; unconditional, disinterested love, perfect forgiveness, faith in the face of doubt, hope in the absence of any cause to hope, Grace that deserves the capitalisation, not as the result of firing neurons and sloshing hormones, but independent, free, objective and absolute.

If these aren’t real, and I don’t believe for a second that they’re not, then reality seems pretty rubbish really, and we have found a much better one.

I seem to be throwing a lot of quotations around at the moment, but just one more for the materialists, sceptics and ‘realists’, this from the great Baron Munchausen:

“Your reality, sir, is lies and balderdash, and I am delighted to say I have no grasp of it whatsoever!”