Six Pints of Philosophy
Last night I was taken on a pub crawl around Hoxton. My companion had worked in the area some time ago when the area was still a Scene, full of second hand suits and crap hats.
The crap hats are still to be found but the atmosphere seems bullish rather than trendy. The area, to the east of Old Street station, has slowly been invaded by All Bar One wannabes... once the scene was established the money came sniffing around and chased many of the artists out further east towards Bethnal Green. But the transformation is not total and many echoes remain from before...the Bricklayers Arms is still a meeting place for the crap hats, and the shuffling old men who trawl the pubs for spare change are still on patrol.
As the warm evening turned increasingly cloudy we stood outside a pub just down the road from the Bricklayers and watched as one of the shuffling men, frustrated by a miserable haul from the crowds, tumbled out onto the street straight in front of a bus. The bus screamed to a halt so that it was pressed right up against him. Alas, the stupid bastard got lucky this time... Unhurt, and without acknowledging how close he had come to flying through the air like a drop-kicked rugby ball, he meandered onwards across the road into the shadows. He was shortly followed by Germaine Greer, who strode past looking Dynamic and Important, something that was explained by the camera crew capturing her for some unnecessary linking portion of whatever show she was doing.
I speculated that she was providing the visual backdrop for a piece of narration for Grumpy Old Women in which she dismissed Hoxton as a place full of second hand suits and crap hats. (I’m the one in the red T-shirt.) But what the hell. When the Greer is on form she can out-argue the world and is damned entertaining as she does so...she has pursued some startling paths at times, including a documentary not too long ago in which she went gooey over the classical beauty of the teenage boy. To illustrate her point she only chose the best looking models...clear-skinned boys bereft of hoods, smiling politely and with their middle fingers conveniently retracted. I believe there was a book to sell.
Soon we moved on, passing a row of unassuming shops and cafes...but then my companion bore left and I followed through a barely noticeable entrance that led down a staircase into a tiny bar. He explained that it was a Polish bar. I looked around in appreciation; many vodkas lay in wait behind the bar staff, the walls appeared to be plastered with faded communist propaganda, and going to the toilet was a strange and beautiful experience...like pissing in a Russian wine cellar on the fag end of a LSD trip. The place was normally quiet and atmospheric, a well-kept secret even on weekends. But tonight was busy; in the corner a birthday party was consuming champagne and bellowing uselessly, which is a kick in the head for everybody else in such a small place.
In the midst of a DJ’s sequence of records that lurched around the musical pallette like a pissed Picasso, the conversation turned to the BBC. We made much noise about the license fee and concluded that our resentfulness in not having a choice in the matter was outweighed by the programming, blah blah blah. It is not an interesting debate but, since the licence fee is paid separately from generic taxation, it sticks out like a sore thumb and everybody, as a consequence, has an opinion on it.
These kinds of debate are all over the BBC news site like stink on a monkey in the form of the “have your say” sections bolted onto the end of many stories. These things are wonderfully pointless and the ball is kicked from end to end with no goal ever scored...but they do provide insight into the politics of low level debate. In the rush to react in a horrified manner, for instance, the average poster will ignore every other post no matter how comprehensively their point has already been disproved. And somebody always comes in half way through and makes a well-informed point to trump everybody else, only for this to be lost in the wake of people repeating what other people have said.
Most people are comfortable only with a small subset of all possible debates. These debates are the tabloid-friendly ones in which there are two diametrically opposed and easily grasped points of view that cannot be reconciled, even in the impossible event that all parties understood all the facts and background of the debate. Frequently the two opposing groups fit into one of several classic models; politically, say, you have your left versus your right. But they can be boiled down further to fundamental splits in human thought. The foundations of many arguments, once everything else has been boiled away, are ethics, and we will never reconcile the ethics of the ends justifying the means versus the deontological theory espoused by Kant that states: "Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." Such pronouncements are not provable under science and will remain mere theories until the earth burns up...but what the hell, eh? If we somehow “proved” one of these things we would only ever argue through ignorance. Well...even more than usual.
I don’t know where we go from here and I have been side-tracked into reading up on Kant now. But balls to it anyway; I am told I have a meeting to attend...another member of staff is being sacked and I must write it all down...see how much encoded filth I can slip into the minutes this time.
Indeed...the fun never ends.
The crap hats are still to be found but the atmosphere seems bullish rather than trendy. The area, to the east of Old Street station, has slowly been invaded by All Bar One wannabes... once the scene was established the money came sniffing around and chased many of the artists out further east towards Bethnal Green. But the transformation is not total and many echoes remain from before...the Bricklayers Arms is still a meeting place for the crap hats, and the shuffling old men who trawl the pubs for spare change are still on patrol.
As the warm evening turned increasingly cloudy we stood outside a pub just down the road from the Bricklayers and watched as one of the shuffling men, frustrated by a miserable haul from the crowds, tumbled out onto the street straight in front of a bus. The bus screamed to a halt so that it was pressed right up against him. Alas, the stupid bastard got lucky this time... Unhurt, and without acknowledging how close he had come to flying through the air like a drop-kicked rugby ball, he meandered onwards across the road into the shadows. He was shortly followed by Germaine Greer, who strode past looking Dynamic and Important, something that was explained by the camera crew capturing her for some unnecessary linking portion of whatever show she was doing.
I speculated that she was providing the visual backdrop for a piece of narration for Grumpy Old Women in which she dismissed Hoxton as a place full of second hand suits and crap hats. (I’m the one in the red T-shirt.) But what the hell. When the Greer is on form she can out-argue the world and is damned entertaining as she does so...she has pursued some startling paths at times, including a documentary not too long ago in which she went gooey over the classical beauty of the teenage boy. To illustrate her point she only chose the best looking models...clear-skinned boys bereft of hoods, smiling politely and with their middle fingers conveniently retracted. I believe there was a book to sell.
Soon we moved on, passing a row of unassuming shops and cafes...but then my companion bore left and I followed through a barely noticeable entrance that led down a staircase into a tiny bar. He explained that it was a Polish bar. I looked around in appreciation; many vodkas lay in wait behind the bar staff, the walls appeared to be plastered with faded communist propaganda, and going to the toilet was a strange and beautiful experience...like pissing in a Russian wine cellar on the fag end of a LSD trip. The place was normally quiet and atmospheric, a well-kept secret even on weekends. But tonight was busy; in the corner a birthday party was consuming champagne and bellowing uselessly, which is a kick in the head for everybody else in such a small place.
In the midst of a DJ’s sequence of records that lurched around the musical pallette like a pissed Picasso, the conversation turned to the BBC. We made much noise about the license fee and concluded that our resentfulness in not having a choice in the matter was outweighed by the programming, blah blah blah. It is not an interesting debate but, since the licence fee is paid separately from generic taxation, it sticks out like a sore thumb and everybody, as a consequence, has an opinion on it.
These kinds of debate are all over the BBC news site like stink on a monkey in the form of the “have your say” sections bolted onto the end of many stories. These things are wonderfully pointless and the ball is kicked from end to end with no goal ever scored...but they do provide insight into the politics of low level debate. In the rush to react in a horrified manner, for instance, the average poster will ignore every other post no matter how comprehensively their point has already been disproved. And somebody always comes in half way through and makes a well-informed point to trump everybody else, only for this to be lost in the wake of people repeating what other people have said.
Most people are comfortable only with a small subset of all possible debates. These debates are the tabloid-friendly ones in which there are two diametrically opposed and easily grasped points of view that cannot be reconciled, even in the impossible event that all parties understood all the facts and background of the debate. Frequently the two opposing groups fit into one of several classic models; politically, say, you have your left versus your right. But they can be boiled down further to fundamental splits in human thought. The foundations of many arguments, once everything else has been boiled away, are ethics, and we will never reconcile the ethics of the ends justifying the means versus the deontological theory espoused by Kant that states: "Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." Such pronouncements are not provable under science and will remain mere theories until the earth burns up...but what the hell, eh? If we somehow “proved” one of these things we would only ever argue through ignorance. Well...even more than usual.
I don’t know where we go from here and I have been side-tracked into reading up on Kant now. But balls to it anyway; I am told I have a meeting to attend...another member of staff is being sacked and I must write it all down...see how much encoded filth I can slip into the minutes this time.
Indeed...the fun never ends.
posted by Jamie at 3:43 PM
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