Here are a couple of things that have caught my interest today.

Here are a few of the things that have interested me today, and a little about what I think of them:

This, it's nice to see, is a reasoned discussion about extremism in both Western and Islamic cultures. It has comments from prominent Islamic academics and is an interesting discussion that concludes that the best way to combat extremism on all sides is to be louder than the extremists. As one academic quotes (from a 13th century poet, he claims), 'a drum bangs so loud because inside it is hollow'.
In their opinions, #muslimrage and the mocking of religiously offensive material is the best way to deal with such things. They also suggest that the resulting violence in the Middle East (I hate that term) was incited by the rulers of those countries involved, for their own agenda.
This is an AJStream program filmed, I assume, in the US.

This video would be wise watching for the government today, and for many people who demand that cuts do not happen in their own area. It is a highly relevant speech; I wish I were hearing its like by David Cameron or Nick Clegg.
I would like to clear this up, in light of recent statements by the Liberal Democrat party. Just to clarify:

• 'national debt' - the money that the government owes to the World Bank, and to other countries, in the same basic sense as a personal loan. This is currently £1.05 TRILLION upon which the country is also paying interest.
• 'budget deficit' - the amount of money that the government spends every year that it does not have. The basic formula is that the income that the government receives is less, by a long way, than the money that it spends. This happens every year. In essence, the government is borrowing from other countries in order to pay for the daily running of the country. The deficit is, currently, 8.9% of GDP. 
• GDP - the total value of everything that this country produces in a year.

For more details, see this website.

The offending liberal democrat statement is here. 

Everything you put on the Internet can be found. Those of you with your whole lives on facebook, you are the Internet's property now. Remember in Serenity, Mr Universe states 'you can't stop the signal'? It's true.

David Starkey's Monarchy, 'The Glorious Revolution'. It seems that, as does everyone, he has a theory about when 'modernity' came into being. It's nice to post something that contradicts my assertions. I feel like it makes me seem more open-minded. Youtube will not let me embed these, sadly.

 Emirates' idea of a staff-training video. I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Finally, a video of an exceptionally talented young boy. Only 9 years old, he's a piano prodigy. He plays, he says, because it makes people, and himself, happy. 

On 'modern' times...

I realise that this is cheating just slightly, but I had a yearning to share somewhat of my thoughts on the material that I've been studying today on my new module, Literature and Culture in Britain 1885-1930. 

Today, I began classes for my final year of University studying English Literature and I was quite taken by some of the arguments presented in the extracts provided by our tutor as an introduction to fin de siecle literature. Our first text of serious note is Ibsen's Ghosts, but our initial lecture included some astute (and still relevant) observations by various nineteenth century thinkers. 

For collating the following extracts from the 19th century, I give full credit to my tutor, Professor William Greenslade, lecturer at The University of the West of England. 

The gender and class issues aside, this presents a startlingly accurate depiction of people divorced from the worth of what they do, and uninspired by the work that they spend most of their life undertaking: 

It is not that men are ill fed, but that they have no pleasure in the work by which they make their bread, and therefore look to wealth as the only means of pleasure. It is not that men are pained by the scorn of the upper classes, but they cannot endure their own; for they feel that the kind of labour to which they are condemned is verily a degrading one, and makes them less than men. (John Ruskin, ‘The Nature of Gothic’ (1853))

The point expressed here is entirely pertinent to the divisions that exist in Britain at the moment. It is an eloquent description of the situation of many people in this country face every day: the inability to be invested in their job, or to take life satisfaction from it. I am not writing an essay here; I will therefore indulge myself in a touch of anecdote. From my experience, those who earn little money doing a job they enjoy, see the worth of, and believe in, are happier people. There are some professions which are often entered into for love of the work itself: veterinarians; environmental lobbyists; charity workers. Do we see those groups striking, or going to their unions in order to campaign for greater financial rewards for the work that they do? I certainly do not remember anything of the kind happening recently. The material point here being that, when a person gains satisfaction of another kind from their work (or, as many of the thinkers of Ruskin's time would have it, 'spiritual satisfaction') they less readily pursue financial rewards. 

At the moment, people see that they have less money than they did in the early 2000's. They also see that there are jobs lost. Although unemployment has barely (in real terms) risen since the 'credit crunch', GDP has fallen, which suggests to statisticians that people are in work but working fewer hours, or working in less well-paid jobs. Thus, they demand more pay. This, when taken in the light of the above extract, could simply be a sign of a fall in job satisfaction. I am not presenting a true interpretation, I am sure; I am not an economist. To me however, problems that happen to us now are never new. Often, it is the wisdom of the past that can show us where the fault in our system of living is.

This brings me neatly on to the reason that I decided, on a whim, to begin to write this blog. I feel that the critical study of our society, our history and our culture is undervalued today. Studying English Literature, my education has coincided with the effective announcement by the government that my subject area is of less value to the community, and to the country as a whole, than that of mathematicians, engineers and scientists. Part of the reason for this problem could easily be explained. The study of English Literature is defined as a study of a kind of art. Art, nowadays, is often seen by industrial sectors (or as Matthew Arnold would have put it, 'practical thinkers') as a waste of time: a thing created simply for entertainment and therefore of no intrinsic value. Indeed, to my horror, Peter Stothard, chair of this year's Booker Prize panel of judges is quoted in the Guardian as having asserted that literary criticism needs 'to identify the good and the lasting, and to explain why it's good'. This may indeed be part of what literary criticism does, but to say that it needs to do this is completely missing the point of the entire discipline. This quality in criticism is merely a side-effect, and an unimportant one at that. As Arnold writes, criticism and critical thought exist to enable a 'practical man' (i.e a businessman, an industrialist, a worker),

...to see that a thing which he has always been used to look at from one side only, which he greatly values, and which, looked at from that side, more than deserves, perhaps, all the prizing and admiring which he bestows upon it, that this thing, looked at from another side, may appear much less beneficent and beautiful, and yet retain all its claims to our practical allegiance. (Arnold, ‘The Function of Criticism at the Present Time’ (1865))

 In other words, the point of criticism is to criticise. The point of critical thought is to practice critical thought. As Professor Greenslade put it today, to paraphrase, 'modernity begins when a society begins to question itself'. Arnold says that

...the practical man is not apt for fine distinctions, and yet in these distinctions truth and the highest culture greatly find their account. But it is not easy to lead a practical man – unless you reassure him as to your practical intentions, you have no chance of leading him'. (citation as above)

The value of literary criticism and the study of the arts is not in the end product, nor in a new skill nor in a car built or a house designed; it is purely and simply the ability to question, to critique, to think independently. 

It is, quite simply, the very essence of modernity itself.