Christmas Wonderland

Blickling Hall Sphinxes maintain their guard at the Temple Avenue entrance

Here are some seasonal photos of Blickling Hall grounds.

Creswell Crags

Creswell crags is a small limestone gorge not far from the Derbyshire peak district. Amidst the soft rolling landscape of a modern arable setting it cuts an anomalous and peculiar scar on the landscape (ignoring the far bigger scar created by the nearby opencast mining operation). But what makes the gorge stand out most is that it is a time capsule from an era far older than anything else I have yet dealt with on this blog.

During a recent visit to the Crags I was impressed by the depth of time this small Limestone gorge and its collection of caves represent. Quite apart from the geology of the crags (which presumably started with the formation of a layer of limestone strata in carboniferous times) the impressive human interest value of the site goes back many thousands of generations, right back, in fact, to over 40,000 years  ago when Neanderthals occupied the gorge. According to Creswell Crags’ wiki page its caves not only hosted Neanderthals but also saw phases of human occupation around 30,000 years ago and then again around 14 to 13 thousand years ago. The latter were seasonal hunter gatherers who arrived from the continent and used the caves during the cold British summer of a glacial interstadial. It was this latter group who left the recently discovered (2003) sensational cave art – sensational because it is the only known cave art in Britain.

The Paleolithic human prehistory of Creswell Crags makes the other ancient sites I have mentioned in this blog look more like memories of yesterday; even the Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age structures of Britain are recent by comparison. From our perspective  a time of 13000 years ago might feel as though the benefits of the end of the ice age were just round the corner, but no; the end of the ice age was still 3000 years off and that equated to hundreds of generations of these nomads' short and hard lives; life as they knew it was going to continue for them just as it had for many generations before that. For these people each year was just another year in what to all and intents and purposes was an endless cycle. I doubt they had much sense of history. A sense of history requires, like a landscape, features to act as landmarks in order to give it character, identity, distinctiveness and a sense of time passing by. The concept of an historical progression may never have occurred to them

Given that today we are familiar with the idea of some kind of origin from which history unfolds and changes, it raises the question of just how a people trapped in a seemingly endless cycle viewed the world. What were their beliefs about the origins, nature and purpose of their world? Did they even have such beliefs? Whatever they believed, it would, of course, have been mediated from one generation to the next by an oral tradition that was propagated down the centuries and millennia. I tried to put myself in the position of one of these wandering cave dwellers: In the dark caves at night as sleep stole over them, did they have questions in their minds about their lot? Did they wonder if life had always have been like this and for how long? Did they wonder what life would be like thousands of years hence? Could they even conceive such questions? Or perhaps they were assured that their oral traditions provided all they needed to know and thought no more of the matter. When one draws back and imagines these people contemplating such questions, there seems to be as much chance of an ant crawling around on the face of a mountain grasping his full context. Or alternatively if our ant is the ant equivalent of a Young Earth Creationist he can postulate that the mountain is no bigger than a cosy ant hill and thus feel less lost in his surroundings.

Do the artworks at Creswell Crags give us any clues about the beliefs of these hunter-gatherers? Trouble is, the very meaning of the cave art is itself an enigma. All we can do is use our imagination and knowledge of similar cultures in an attempt to connect with these ancient peoples. The archeo-anthropologists are probably best qualified to speak on this issue: The cave art may have been a teaching aid for trainee hunters, helping them to identify their quarry, perhaps via some form of ritualized initiation. There appears, however, to be no cosmological questions addressed by their art: Only what was needed to survive in a harsh environment was upper most in the minds of these people.

The humble cave dwellings of the Creswell Crags nomads differs markedly from the other two places we visited on the same trip – the impressive Elizabethan Wollerton Hall in Nottingham and Castle Acre priory – both very modern constructions by the standard of this post. After the deep time signified by Creswell Crags, these places, which in comparison go back to times we know so much about, seem prosaic and commonplace. As a living space Wollerton Hall, in particular, is as far removed from the setting of Creswell Crags as could possibly be:

…and yet on turning a corner in this now museum I came across a sight that for obvious reasons reminded me sharply of Creswell Crags:

....yes, a row of trophies bagged by that now politically incorrect animal the trophy hunter. What was once common place necessity 15000 years ago, in later times became the privileged pass time of the rich in an agriculturally based economy. The trophy hunter displays his trophies because his respect for his quarry reflects some glory and dignity upon him. So perhaps this vestigial hunter instinct throws some light on the enigmatic cave art of Creswell Crags.

Symbol, Legend and Destiny at Sutton Hoo

Whilst holidaying in the Colchester area for a few days the wife and I visited the Saxon Ship burial site at Sutton Hoo. The 7th century site is the nearest thing we have to archaeological evidence of the first king of England, possibly the Anglo-Saxon king, Raedwald.

The Sutton Hoo area is the stuff of legends and those legends have given it a reputation for mystery, the sinister and even the preternatural. The circumstances surrounding the discovery of the Sutton Hoo treasure were initiated by the visions of a psychic on the eve of the second world war, circumstances which helped recall the legend that King Arthur would return from his grave in his country's hour of need. Arthur may actually have been a Celt battling against the invading Saxon’s but the language of myth and legend does not make fine distinctions; rather it is the vague associative and symbolic language of dreams. Perhaps because a pagan ambiance still haunted the mounds of Sutton Hoo it seems to have become an execution & burial ground for miscreants during the mediaeval 9th and 10th centuries. Much later in the 20th century the general area had a military presence with all the associated inscrutability of the armed forces. The wider environs played host to the famous Rendlesham forest UFO incident of Christmas 1980.

Truth, legend and myth form an inseparable union at Sutton Hoo. When the Romans left Britain in AD 410, the commentary of history was interrupted for a while and an information black-out descended. When history did eventually re-emerge in Bede’s writings we find Anglo-Saxons inhabiting these Islands. The Anglo-Saxons connect Britain to Iron Age prehistory via their link with migrations from the continent. Effectively then, the “dark ages” represent a time when prehistory almost reasserted itself in England.

When I look at the mounds at Sutton Hoo, which have been deliberately constructed high above the Deben Estuary to be visible*, I wonder if their connection with prehistory might throw light on the beliefs of the much more distant and mysterious pre-roman cultures who pockmarked Southern England with many earthworks. Ultimately, however, Anglo-Saxon “prehistory”, cheated the black-out of the dark ages and emerged via the back door: When the Anglo-Saxons became Christianized and learnt to write, their oral traditions were caught in the net of history by a new generation of Anglo-Saxon scribes such as Bede. A few words of history (or even of legend) is worth a thousand archeological artifacts.

The oral traditions of the Saxons, which would have been told and retold in the heady fireside atmosphere of their thatched halls, may not be the most reliable of sources. Moreover, Bede glorified this history by depicting it as the out working of destiny rather than serendipity. But to be fair to Bede when history is observed retrospectively it does look like destiny; we can see the precursors and antecedents that the chaotic vicissitudes of time uses as the seeds of great things. It is very tempting to feel you are part of a people destined for greatness as the story of Israel indicates. Small beginnings are thus glorified. To Raedwald's subjects his glory would be easy to interpret as part of a Divine plan, although in the context of his times he is seen  to be a small time king. But in the wider perspective of world history he is not insignificant: In Raedwald prehistory was emerging into history and paganism into Christianity; these were the seeds of the world to come. That the minor language Raedwald spoke was in due course to become a world language propagated by a seafaring nation is fittingly portended in Sutton Hoo’s burial ship. Thus the events in this corner of the England 1300 years ago stand in the main stream of English history, even world history. As the National Trust guide to Sutton Hoo says:

...they formed the nation which fought under Harold II at Hastings in 1066, were ruled by Norman Lords, and were gradually awarded rights by royal charted and won them in Parliament. Gathering with other ancient peoples, they made Britain a world power.

The Anglo-Saxon governmental ethos eventually merged with that of the Normans to give us the institutions of a country that lead the world out of rural arcadia into the modern industrial age. It is thus very easy to impute mystique to the site at Sutton Hoo and see the portents of destiny. This in turn helps fuel the legends which surround it; from the ghostly psychic visions to those close encounters of the second kind.

Gulls wheel over the mounds at Sutton Hoo during our visit

* "Hoo" comes from "haugh", which translates as "high"

Modern Norwich

I used to think that modern Norwich would one day look like this.

Ostentatious Norwich , quaint Norwich , now modern Norwich. All the buildings in this latest Album have been constructed in my life time, from the late fifties onwards. I remember being excited as a child seeing these smooth and clean lined modern buildings going up. I easily and enthusiastically connected with modernism; in fact if I had had my way old Norwich would have been flattened and something looking like a city from the old Dan Dare adventures thrown up in its place. Modernism, to my mind, was all about a potent and formidable functionality. Why was there any need to indulge a taste for quaint and finicky filigree when the best art were these structural conquests demonstrating a mastery of science and technology. A towering wall of steel, glass and concrete was not only the best symbol of that conquest but it was also the best form of art. The elegant repeated sequences set up by many floors and windows spoke of the elementalism, order and precision of mathematics. Fourier was right: From this simple periodic pattern all functions could be constructed. An elemental mathematical periodicity was the key to the universe.

One of the first modern buildings in Norwich

Norwich by modern standards is not a big city and neither are its buildings very large, but in the 1960s the common 17th 18th , 19th century vernacular buildings of Norwich were being dwarfed by constructions that in comparison seemed huge especially to a child. There is a line in H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine" that expresses it well for me: The Time Traveler is on his machine as it plunged into the future and he describes what he saw:

… so with a kind of madness growing upon me, I flung myself into futurity. ..presently a fresh series of impressions grew up in my mind – a certain curiosity and therewith a certain dread – until at last they took complete possession of me. What strange developments of humanity, what wonderful advances upon our rudimentary civilization, I thought might appear when I came to look nearly into the dim elusive world that raced and fluctuated before my eyes! I saw great and splendid architecture rising about me, more massive than any buildings of our own time…..

As I read that passage as a teenager I no longer wanted to be Dan Dare, but Wells’ Time Traveler instead. Just like the Time Traveler I was seeing the future fast developing around me. But as I read further into the book I was in for the shock that Wells had carefully prepared for his readers. The Time Traveler eventually emerged into a world that cut across his expectations and which he struggled to understand; yes, technical advances had been put into place but paradoxically and ironically they had brought about a humanity that had “devolved” into two competing species; the whimsical Eloi and the practical Morlocks. Both species were a shadow of their distant ancestors. The Time Traveler called it the “Sunset of Mankind”. Just like the Time Traveler I too found a strange place waiting for me in maturity; the Eloi vs. the Morlocks was a fine metaphor for the heart of man vs. the head of man, a dichotomy everywhere to be found.

Norwich Today: Is that Dan Dare's Rocket I can see?

The Haywain

The Haywain by John Constable

I was brought up with a copy of John’s Constable’s Haywain (see above) hanging in my parents’ lounge. As a child I was puzzled why a wagon and its horses should be driving down the course of a small river; or was it stationary? Other than that I gave the painting little thought, although I did unconsciously imbibe the mood of peace, tranquility and beauty that the mind, unbidden, attaches to it. I have a modicum of artistic skill but art has not been my area of study, so unsurprisingly it is only in the last few days I have discovered the solution to the riddle of Constable’s evocative work.

Recently I happened to be in Ipswich, helping to escort my wife’s Spanish students. We visited Christchurch mansion where there is a display of Constable’s paintings. At the end of my visit I purchased a small book on Constable’s work by Ian St. John (entitled Flatford, Constable Country). According to St. John the Haywain is fording the river Stour from the near bank (where wheel ruts can be seen entering the river) with the purpose of collecting sun dried hay from the meadows over the river. Corn reapers can, in fact, be seen working in the distance. St John also points out those easily ignored disconnected incidentals which richly and randomly embroider real life: A fishermen can be seen coming through the undergrowth on the far bank to his moored boat and a kitchen maid is on the landing stage of Willy Lot’s house collecting water.

Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich, houses the largest collection of Constables outside London.

As far as I’m concerned, however, there remain riddles in composition of the The Haywain: The wagon and its team of horses doesn’t seem to be taking the most rational course to the other bank; according to St. John they are heading for the right hand fork of the river and thence up onto the bank. To my eye there is an awkward discontinuity in the trajectory of the Haywain and I suspect this is because elegance of composition was the overriding factor in Constable’s mind; for example he laterally compressed Willy’s Lot's cottage to bring in to the painting a more varied roof line thus improving composition.

Constable’s painting is a snap shot of arcadian life in the early 19th century. The stasis and silence of paintings whatever the content, dresses the subject with a peaceful ambiance and even more so if the painting depicts a rural setting. However, in spite of the idyllic content of the painting and the apparent aimless deportment of the Haywain itself the subject matter is, in fact, very dynamic: Constable’s rural contexts depict the countryside as a place of work. In the early 19th century that work was in many cases hard and long and I suspect its workers hit their beds at the end of the day very ready for sleep. I’m reminded of Darwin’s statement to the effect that the seeming tranquility of country hedgerows hides an unseen struggle for survival.

But the inhabitants of Flatford where the Haywain was painted were, I suspect, more placid than we are today: Although there were justifiable rebellions in the face of poverty (e.g. the Swing riots of 1830) their society had only just started on the road to industrialization and they did not know that plenty, like poverty, can also cause vexation: Contemporary media and advertising allow comparisons to be made between peer groups, raising expectation and the desire for status & one-up-man-ship; there always seems to be something better to attain or gain, especially as the apparent social mobility of modern society suggests that the opportunity for extraordinary levels of betterment are in principle open to all. Restlessness leading into outright discontentment is inflamed when expectations are dashed. One might own a 50 foot luxury yacht, but a nagging angst can set in if most of one’s peer group own 100 foot yachts. And when one does achieve one's goals of wealth and status there is a strong desire to hold on to them, at all costs. (Phil 3:7-12) *

But the composure of the arcadian idyll didn’t equate to a lack of self-awareness. Constable stood back and took stock of his conditions of existence through his art. Naturally enough for an artist like Constable his appraisal was intuitive and instinctual rather than analytical. Remarking on his painting called “The Lock” Constable wrote:

..its light cannot be put out, because it is the light of nature – the Mother of all that is valuable in poetry, painting or anything else – where an appeal to the soul is required. The language of the heart is the only one that is universal.

Constable’s paintings attach a sense of beauty, grace and dignity to the workplace that was Flatford and  glorifies it. These very human qualities are less an intrinsic property of the situation-in-itself than they are an extrinsic property arising from the atmosphere our minds impute to that situation. Mood is, as Constable suggests, the language of the heart and mood is more easily conveyed by art rather than by science. In the case of The Haywain, the enigmatic and seemingly purposeless orientation of its wagon and horses adds to the ambiance of composure and serenity.

Willy Lot's Cottage and the Haywain ford today.

* Footnote: It is reckoned that the hill forts dating from the iron age which pockmark Britain were a response to  growing agricultural abundance. This abundance provided the opportunity for the ambitious to compete with their peers in the control of that abundance. Once control was achieved there then arises the need to hold on and protect one's wealth and status from the grasping hands of one's fellow humans; the hill forts were a means to this end.

Quaint Norwich

Norwich at its Quaintest

My last post linked to my album of photos of “Ostentatious Norwich”. This post links to my Quaint Norwich album. This is what most people think Norwich is all about; the past.

The album shows buildings mostly ranging from Tudor to the 17th century. The 1507 great fire of Norwich ensured that there is little pre-Tudor architecture in Norwich apart from stone ecclesiastical buildings going back nearly a 1000 years and few of the more substantial high status structures of the wealthy from the 14th and 15th centuries. Many old houses in Norwich are rendered timber framed structures with the original wattle and daubing now replaced with brick infills and cladding, and thatching replaced by tiles. Seventeenth century houses are noticeably common in Norwich and are usually distinguished by the large dormer windows that housed weaving and spinning garrets: In the 17th century Norwich was getting rich on the textile industry, but it all fell through when power strapped Norwich could not support the mechanized spinning and weaving of the industrial revolution.

I like to think of the timber framed houses of Norwich as the final sophistication in an evolutionary development going right back to the wattle, daub, wood and thatched structures that were the architectural staple of the Neolithic, Bronze and Iron age periods. The walls of these structures were, as are the timber framed houses of Norwich, not thick and represented the urgent need to at least get a thin barrier between one self and the elements. Throughout these ages the dwelling places of the living used materials largely derived from organic sources – wood, thatch, animal dung and wickerwork, but for the land of the dead stone was used - and that is as true of Norwich's legacy architecture with its mix of timber framed houses and stone churches as it was in the days of Stonehenge.

These eventually became this...

..but it was evolution rather than revolution

In Yer Face Façades

Here are some pictures of Norwich buildings constructed in an era not long out of living memory. They are mostly from the late 19th century and Edwardian era. (Excepting the medieval Castle and the late medieval Guild hall, which I’ve added for comparison) Why did these people build in such a fussy, baroque way? Would we build like this today? What was different then?

Now, you can’t build big in a cramped ex-medieval city like Norwich, a city that as far as its street lines are concerned is effectively a jumped up Saxon village of cart tracks. But you can guild the lily. The ostentation of these buildings suggests the desire to signal high status and wealth. The builders were a confident people who believed in themselves. They were perhaps just a little pretentious: Some of the buildings look really out of place when set against the more cottagey and bucolic buildings of Norwich. The lack of any attempt to blend is perhaps another indication of an almost egotistical confidence

The feeling I get is that that the sleep of these builders was undisturbed by self doubt. The Titanic and the First World War were a few years off.

Best viewed across park land, this grand façade, plonked in a narrow Norwich street, can't be viewed from sufficient distance take it in. Frankly it's a joke; it wouldn't be much more inappropriately positioned if dropped into a bronze age village.

The Heart of Northwic

The King of Hearts, ancient courtyard house

Phil (my son) and Lizzy’s wedding was held at the King of Heart’s music centre in Norwich on Saturday 26th June. The weather was excellent, the bride lovely, and the venue fascinating and unique in many respects. The perfect day, in fact.

The courtyard, last Saturday

The King of Hearts is a courtyard house built in the fifteenth century (pre-Tudor, although inspection reveals that not much of the original fabric now exists. See above for courtyard). This puts the King of Hearts in Norwich’s “Oldest Houses” league. However, the historical significance of the site itself actually goes back even further, perhaps more than a thousand years to the Anglo-Scandinavian days of the ninth century. My remarks which now follow are based on the historical reconstructions suggested by archaeologist Brian Ayers in his book “Norwich” (English Heritage 1994)

It is likely that Norwich developed as a string of Anglo-Saxon settlements along the banks of the Wensum. Those settlements had names like “Coslany”, “Westwic”, and “Conesford”, names now only heard as an echo in contemporary street names. The largest and most important of those settlements was “Northwic”. The latter came to dominate the cluster of settlements and in due time they all subsumed under the name of “Northwic” or “Norwich”. Archeological evidence suggests that Northwic was a fortified settlement with what is now Fye Bridge street and Magdalen street running down the centre of the settlement. The fortified town was protected on three sides by a bank and ditch earth works, the line of which is evidenced by a combination of archeology and modern street lines. Protection on the forth side was provided by the river Wensum. Entrance to the town was via a ford or causeway crossing the Wensum at the point where we now find Fye bridge. Thus, the King of Hearts stands just inside the fortified Anglo-Scandinavian town where the main gateway to Northwic was once found. Opposite the King of Hearts, on the other side of Fye bridge street, stands the church of St. Clements. It is surely significant that St Clement was a popular Saint in Scandinavian countries, the patron saint of sailors. Let Brian Ayers continue the story:

“A characteristic location of churches to St Clement in towns is near the river, often at the main river crossing, as in Bedford or Cambridge and in Norwich (at Fye Bridge, first recorded in the twelfth century but almost certainly in existence in the pre-Conquest period). The location of St Clement, in the heart of the area probably known as Northwic, suggests that the centre of Anglo-Scandinavian activity in Norwich was on the north bank of the river Wensum, the Danes co-occupying that part of the growing city which was apparently most densely occupied by the Anglo-Saxons”

So, in short the King of Hearts is a location rich in historical associations. It harks back to the beginnings of a nation with a strong tradition of proactive maritime venturing and whose up and coming post-mediaeval merchant class had started building comfortable homes for themselves, like the King of Hearts, in England’s second city, a city that at that time covered an area greater than Southwark and London combined. Of course they had no clue what conclusion the history they were creating was driving toward but this go-getting middle class were to prove fertile ground for the reformation message of individualism. They were eventually to threaten the power of both monarchs and religious authorities. In due course they lead the world into the industrial revolution that made the modern world. Norwich was a parliamentarian city with a healthy scepticism for the mystique of authoritarian traditions. It’s not often that a wedding takes place at such a significant and meaningful venue, a venue that in a metaphorical sense was one of the gateways to the modern world.

Maids then...

Maids now...

Time Traveler or Time Waster?

Isn't that just archetypical. See here for some more time wasters

Heritage Custodians Behaving Badly

National Trust’s Heritage Custodians have some quite off the wall ideas about bringing history to life.

According to Wikipedia: The term Custodian may refer to:

• Janitor,  a person who cleans, maintains, provides security and initiates repairs or makes minor repairs to buildings;


Under Wikipedia’s reference for “Custodian” the above is as near it gets to a definition of the National Trust’s job. It’s not surprising then that the National Trust may feel they have an image problem and are looking to reinvent themselves as a creative, edgy, risk taking breed. I have to confess that some of the comments I have made on this blog about the role of the NT heritage custodians may not have been helpful in this respect: I have hinted that NT properties have a fossilized feel about them when compared to owner occupied mansions. I have likened the NT to Canute figures engaged in the impossible task of trying to halt the eroding seas of time.

In the light of these remarks I was fascinated to read the January edition of the NT’s “Arts Buildings and Collections Bulletin” (or “ABC” for short. See here ). The lead article of this edition is entitled “The Curator: No-Sayer, Custodian, Interpreter, Impresario or Host?” In the article the current chairman of the NT converses with a district curator and they discuss the role of the Trust. The chairman affirms that their “baseline” is preservation of heritage, but goes on to say that the NT’s PR calls for creative and dynamic thinking. To this end the two interlocutors bandy radical ideas about the work of the NT, and we hear talk of it as an interpreter of history, a creative story teller of history, the presenter of historical theatre, and the “Jim’ll fixit” for visitors wanting to play at being invited guests at prestigious historical venues. In order to get away from that fossilized feel of NT sites they even moot the idea of giving some of their houses the cluttered homely look of a truly lived in mansion. Here are a few comments I have extracted from the article:

You’ve described various aspects of curatorship. You’re suggesting that the curator has a mediating role, and even that the curator is almost an impresario…… I see the curator of the future as having a more creative task, to unlock the spirit of a place, to tell its story, to hold a microphone up to it and let it speak….The genius of the curatorial profession is not to impose the dead hand, but the opposite: to find what is unique in a property and bring it to the fore. …. Only the curator can release their stories. I suppose my concern—and again this is controversial —is whether the peculiar skills that the Trust curator brings to this task are sufficiently broad ……It seems, then, that a curator should take risks and stick his or her neck out; a curator should say: ‘This is my creation, it’s my doing, and I take responsibility for it’.

This is curatorship with attitude – preferably a dynamic creative attitude. The ideas being submitted here promote the notion of a proactive NT – and don’t we all want to look proactive. Today’s NT doesn’t want to just bring history to a halt in the resin blocks and cabinets of the museum, but also sees itself as bringing history to life, even a maker of history and not merely a passive preserver of it. To this end the article tells of some idiosyncratic redecoration and interpretation that took place in a property during the 60s that is now part of the history of that particular property. One curator’s creative work of interpretation is another’s object of iconoclasm and so history ever moves on in incremental steps, even under NT “conservation”.

Particularly intriguing, I thought, was the acknowledgment that managed decay may be one of the stories the NT would like to tell and reference was made to the ephemeral nature of some fragile artifacts and buildings owned by the NT that are now crumbling to dust. Thus, the NT invites the visitor to see the irreversible processes of decay at work, processes that ultimately entail the loss beyond recovery of both buildings and artifacts, providing all the more reason to value them.

Under the current chairman, the NT is an organization that, whilst it has no chance of rivaling Disneyland, would nevertheless like to move away from the stuffy tranquility associated with the work of the heritage custodian. However, like the organic bleached specimens one finds in preservation jars one has to say that there is an inevitable air of unreality about a preserved heritage site: The fact is such sites have no chance of looking as they did in their halcyon days when they probably looked at once both newer and yet older than they do under the auspices of a heritage custodian: Newer because time was yet to have its way with them and older because clutter, grime and damage were more likely to accumulate in a real work-a-day environment. The heritage custodian is thus caught between the preservation jar and the creation of a bogus show of clutter, grime and damage. It seems that authenticity at heritage sites is an in principle impossibility. In the final analysis we must accept them for what they are - museum pieces.

(I have commented on some of the above issues in previous postings – see here, here and here)

The Riddle of the Sphinx

King Canute has been misinterpreted. The true story is, I believe, that Canute was a wise king whose apparently quixotic act was intended as an acted parable demonstrating that no matter how powerful a man may be there are things over which he has no control. Likewise, there is no human way to stop history and we are all destined to be ephemeral players who are very much trapped inside it, whoever we are. The Canutian message may be an important lesson the heritage custodian can teach us. The players inside history may be tempted to believe that history has ended with them. That history creeps forward slowly and imperceptibly like the hands of clock, even in a museum. Moreover, people of the pre-industrial era lived in times far more technologically stable than our own; decades, even hundreds of years could pass with little change and yet history eventually passed them by: One must always be mindful of the nonlinear processes of chaos.

Museums, old halls, and gardens cluttered with decaying stone ornamentation will forever be associated in my mind with H.G. Wells’ book “The Time Machine”. In that book Wells’ Time Traveler happens upon a museum of the future. The museum’s custodians have long since departed and now the museum, along with its surrounding disheveled garden setting, are slowly starting to suffer the ravages of time; their short day of quasi-stasis has ended. When the Time Traveler comes across the fossil bones of a megatherium eroding under the leaky roof of the museum we are reminded of the depths of time and repeated cycles of deposition and erosion this fossil has already witnessed and which are now slowly restarting. Accordingly, our attention is drawn to the outermost frame of human history:

Wells' time traveler .. has to learn to accept his limitations as a human being and to become perceptive to the cosmic perspective, the view of human reality that an impartial external judge might have. (Benison, “The Time Machine”, Cideb Reading classics, 1994 Page XXXVIII).

There is a sense in which we all find ourselves in a position similar to Wells’ time traveler in as much as we inevitably inhabit somebody’s future, surrounded by their defunct and decaying artifacts. Moreover, in the absence of a specialist’s acquaintance with history, we, like the Time Traveler see these artifacts uninitiated by an historian’s knowledge. We therefore experience the full force of their mystery and enigma. They were not put there to pique our curiosity or to provide intelligible clues as to their story. Therefore like Wells’ Time Traveler we must find within ourselves the curiosity and native wit needed to unlock their history, and above all their meaning. As so often is the case when we happen across the legacies of the past there is, as there was for Wells’ Time Traveler, no kindly NT interpreter waiting to explain it all to us; instead we are thrown on our own resources and thus have to make our best guess as to the story, meaning and purpose of what we see. In "The Time Machine" the mystery of story and meaning is symbolised by a stone sphinx set in the garden world of the future.

The Riddle of The Sphinx: Answer the riddle and the sphinx will let you pass.

The adventure in which we find ourselves is no less exciting than that of H.G. Wells’ Time Traveler who was faced with almost impenetrable riddles of history and meaning. A mood of deep mystery pervades all historical sites. For the insatiably curious problem solver whose daily bread is enigma, it is great comfort to know that the supply of mystery is all but inexhaustible.

Stuff the sphinx, I had better get back to my job.

Help, My Irony Meter has Exploded

In my last post I alluded to the terrorist/guerrilla threat faced by the West as “a war with a hidden and inscrutable foe difficult to understand and cope with; a foe over which advanced military technology has little effect.” I have just finished watching Adam Curtis’ documentary “The Power of Nightmares” on DVD (an Xmas present). If Curtis is anything to go by then it seems that that foe is even more difficult to understand and cope with than I thought.

According to Curtis there never was a formal Islamic terrorist network. That network, he claims, has been talked up by those who, through a combination of paranoia and occupational raison detre, have a profound interest in believing it to be true; chiefly, it seems the American neoconservatives. The neoconservatives, who in the main came to the fore on the back of rumours about the Soviet global threat (which was in fact a decrepit empire in decline) have their origins in the theories of Leo Strauss. Strauss was a political philosopher who advocated the cynical propagation of socially unifying myths (or “noble lies”) which he believed give meaning and purpose to societies, thereby stiffening their moral fiber and civic ethos. Unlike Strauss, however, it seems that the neoconservatives themselves weren’t and aren’t cynical, but really believed the “noble lies” they were telling.

If Curtis is right what are we left with? We are left with something even more untouchable and invisible than an underground conspiracy: Namely, an idea or myth of war that serves two classes of warring protagonists; firstly the neoconservatives for whom a rumour of war is a socially unifying myth; secondly the Islamic extremists for whom it acts as a rallying cry galvanizing them into belligerent action and in the process picking up many who are disaffected, alienated and looking for meaning, value and purpose. According to Curtis there isn’t a physical terrorist network to destroy, but instead something that floats around in the conceptual ether; a conceptual virus akin to one of those indestructible conspiracy theories. This fanciful perspective brings out the hero element on both sides of the conflict in that by joining the fight they can become part of something significant and important, a player in a cosmic drama of good vs. evil.

At this point the ironies come in thick and fast.

Curtis tells us that the neo-conservatives were partly voted into power by the religious right. And yet there is a contingent of the Western religious right represented, for example, by the deceased New Zealander Barry Smith and Alex Jones, who believe America to be in the hands of the conspiratorial illuminati. Jones, in particular, claims that the 9/11 attack was a false flag operation carried out under the Bush administration in order to unify the nation and put it onto a war footing. Conspiracy theory’s seductive simplifying assumption of a unified and inscrutable adversary pulling the strings in the background is caught in the act of working against itself.

It is ironic that the neoconservatives are largely against the global warming scare. They claim that global warming is a myth being peddled by the liberal community and bound up with that community’s self interests and desire to control. Clearly Leo Strauss would be proud, if only the neoconservatives were quicker off the mark at exploiting this “noble lie”; the neoconservatives lost their opportunity to weigh in early on the right side. Trouble is, it is a “lie” that may be inclined to conflict with a free market ethos and thus not have been to their liking. “Noble lies” feel nobler if they serve one’s own interests first.

I am not aware that Curtis is in any sense a believer in anything, but towards the end of the production he notes that Western societies, a la postmodernism, no longer believe in anything. This, he says, makes them all too vulnerable to the “power of the nightmare”; for they fear those individuals, especially fundamentalists, who do believe in something and are who prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to impose their vision on society.

If as Curtis claims the neoconservatives with their close ties to the religious right have views that trace back to the theories of Leo Strauss, then where does that leave the religious beliefs espoused by so many of their supporters and which those supporters claim to be the seat of their morality and social cohesion? Is that religion to be regarded as a “noble lie”? In fact would they want us to believe that “noble lie theory” is the explanation of religion? That is, does religion have nothing to it other than to serve as a “noble lie”?

James Cameron's Avatar

Beware: Human Pestilence Invades

I recently went to see the film “Avatar” in 3D, a film directed and produced by James Cameron. I don’t think I need heap any more praise on the visual spectacle of the film which, without doubt, was superb. Instead I would like to comment on the story line.


The plot of the film is “Independence Day” in reverse. In “Avatar” we find human beings from Earth playing the role of the evil advanced aliens intent on invading, exploiting and ransacking another planet, a planet called Pandora, home to a technically primitive race. The purposes of these Earthly aliens, against whom resistance is otherwise futile, are ultimately foiled by one of their own genetically engineered undercover agents who falls in love with a female Pandoran and starts to identify with his lover’s race. Interestingly, a pre-film trailer advertised an animated children’s film where once again the plot was built around the premise of invading Earthlings threatening a peaceful alien society. In the shift from the nervous helplessness of the cold war period to proactive Western military initiatives our social milieu seems to be on the move once again.

“Avatar” is popular filming at its best and most typical. In many ways it resembles pantomime; the film employs expected formats and templates known to work at an entertainment level, making it easy and fun watching. It contains scenerios and characters readily recognizable and lacking in ambiguity; we know who are the good guys and who are the bad guys and therefore we know who to cheer and who to boo. The film as a whole is an ensemble of tried and tested cinematic clichés. Many scenes have counter parts in other blockbuster productions and the feeling that “I have seen and/or heard that somewhere before” (and probably many times) pervades the whole production. Like the medieval mystery plays it is secure formatted entertainment that isn’t going to spring any nasty surprises; fulfillment of one’s expectations of the direction of the plot is part of the enjoyment.

Some aspects and themes of the film are timeless; like, for example, a love story complicated because it transcends a cultural or racial divide and a denouement showdown between hero and villain. (I remember writing a story with such an ending when I was twelve!). However other types and themes are specific to contemporary culture, especially the use of character types who today we love to hate: There was the corporate coward; a villain of little physical presence and courage who viewed the world only through corporate interests and profit, thus greatly simplifying his picture of reality; to him the Pandorans were mere “savages”. But the main villain of the piece was the brutal military commander who was looking for the first pretext to use military muscle instead of diplomacy and understanding; to get to those exciting slap-stick drama scenes we were all waiting for you just knew he would eventually get his way. Connecting the interests of the two bad guys was the anonymous and faceless corporation that employed them to clear the way, at any aesthetic cost, for its profit making.

Above all, the film taps into contemporary Western culture’s nagging guilt and anxiety; guilt about what it has done to more “primitive” societies in the past and the conduct of recent wars; anxiety (and guilt) over environmental stress caused by an industrialised free market society. The Pandoran culture is reminiscent of the American Indians, Black Africans and Australian Aborigines - all cultures that have suffered under Western contact. The military hardware used to subdue the Pandorans looks like a more advanced version of that used to brush aside the ramshackle militia of Iraq and Afghanistan. But as with Iraq and Afghanistan so with Pandora; easy victory in a war using conventional hardware merely acted to usher in the real war; a war with a hidden and inscrutable foe difficult to understand and cope with; a foe over which advanced military technology has little effect. In ‘Avatar’ the real foe turned out to be the planet Pandora itself and it was by this device that Cameron developed his environmental theme. Hinting at Lovelock’s concept of Gaia, Cameron depicts a planet enveloped by some kind of mother Goddess. The Pandorans pray to this deity and worship her. They have a mystical connection with her and consequently live in harmonious relationship with their Eden like environment - unlike the attacking Earthlings who have lost both their connection with the divine and their Eden. We therefore know that these fallen invaders will begin to destroy that environment for the sake of gain once they get their hands on it. At the prayer of the plot’s hero Pandora’s Gaia Goddess raises up the wild life of the planet to help defeat the invading aliens, a twist that echoes the Earth virus defeating the Martians in War of the Worlds. Like the Egyptian charioteers who pursued the Israelites across the Red Sea the forces of Earth were overwhelmed.

The Earthling’s military campaign to oust the Pandorans was referred to in the film as “shock and awe”. The destruction of the huge tree house of the Pandorans was very reminiscent of 9/11. Thus it is clear that Cameron consciously incorporated themes of contemporary interest and relevance into his film. But perhaps with less self awareness Cameron alludes to one overriding and recurring theme that I return to time and again in my blogs; that is, Avatar is yet another manifestation of fundamental tensions I have variously expressed as analysis vs. intuition, cognition vs. feeling, left brain vs. right brain, mechanism vs. Aquarius, machinery vs. the life force, science vs. mysticism, reason vs. fideism etc; in short all that is conveniently labeled under the rubric of what Karen Armstrong refers to as Logos verses Mythos. In the film the Earthlings are portrayed as an evil science obsessed and machine wielding race who use their analytical knowledge to conquer for the sake of personal gain, but there is something vital missing from their divide and conquer analysis of situations; namely, a mystical holistic factor that the Pandorans well understand, an understanding they express with the aid of their mythic religious symbolism. However with a nervous glance over his shoulder at the all conquering authority of science in our culture Cameron pays lip service to science: He hints that the Gaia Goddess of planet Pandora is an outcome of the intertwining roots of Pandora’s trees which form some kind of huge planet wide neural network larger than any human brain. In the film this realization never dawns on the one track male minds but instead comes to a sensitive female scientist (another cinematic cliché). The analytical minds of the Earthlings are too focused on the simple and elemental – in this case securing the crystalline mineral riches of Pandora - to see the wood from the trees so to speak.

In spite of Cameron’s ultimate concession to analytical science Pandoran culture is imbued with mystical and archetypical religious motifs; with prophecies, portents, prayers and an incarnate savior destined to bring hope and salvation. It is therefore difficult to take Cameron’s “scientific” rationalization too seriously. Certainly the toy town rationalists are unlikely to be satisfied with Cameron’s scientific gloss because it lends kudos to religious practice and therefore ultimately subverts their purely “logos” outlook: OK so you might have at the back of your mind that the deity you are relating to is actually some kind of planet sized neural network. But this scientific patter merely puts a technical negligee on a ritualistic and mythical mysticism that doesn’t conform to the analytical standards of scientific evidence and thus is no block to religious and superstitious practice - in fact quite the reverse; it adds scientific kudos to religion!

But that scientific negligee so easily falls away. In the final analysis an experienced theism is less about the theoretical ontology of deity than it is about a how one relates to that Deity. A child may have all sorts of erroneous ideas about the ontology of his parent but that doesn’t stop him/her relating to the personality of that parent. Thus it is possible for the self same relationship to migrate to a different conceived ontological object. Likewise, it is very easy to regard any pseudo scientific patter about Gaia as an apology to science, or itself merely a mythico-metaphorical understanding of deity, an understanding that can, if needs be, be discarded all together in favour of a much more grandiose metaphor of God. The Divine Personality is primary and the conceptions of the exact nature of the ontology reifying that personality is secondary. Therefore just how individuals relate to deity is relatively tolerant of idiosyncrasies in those individuals’ beliefs about the ontological nature of deity. And here is an example: Christians relate to the Father via Christ in the power of the Holy Ghost; this is the Holy Trinity. On occasions, however, Christians have attempted to fine tune their conceptions of Trinitarian ontology. The resulting nuanced differences in Trinitarian doctrine have lead to sharp disagreements and even mutual accusations of heresy and blasphemy. But nevertheless in spite of mutual animosity, and even loathing, caused by the theological hair splitting there is little that Christians can do to stop other Christians claiming Christ their own and relating to the Father via Christ in the power of the Holy Ghost.


Today, in some quarters God Ontology has changed beyond recognition and become bound up with pseudo scientific patter about God like aliens. The UFO contactee stories run parallel to our social milieu and like an accompany dream life may contain a Freudian encoding telling us something about our waking world. Does the new “Westerners as alien conquerors” ethos portend a change in these contactee stories? Will we hear of UFO occupants being shot down and enslaved in Area 51? Will abductees bring back stories of alien Grays who are terrified by the influence that human technological and industrial activity is having on the Earth and/or cosmos? There is, it seems an underlying sense of guilt and failure in the face of a vision of human beings as sinfully proactive protagonists who spoil and desecrate. It is surely ironic that there are echoes here, as in Cameron's film, of the timeless stories of Eden, the human fall and a loss of connection with the Divine.

Robot Brains: I bet he can't he see the wood from the trees.