Saturday 23 July 2016

The Internet - a new Pandora's Box



One cannot take a very positive view of the future of the world, starting now, and the main reason is the development of electronic technology - the mobile phone and the world wide web, and all the developments in these areas which will continue to accelerate. And everyone everywhere wants to be connected - look how Cubans pressurise to join in, how mobile phones are washing across India......soon everyone will be on net and for practical purposes the global reach is already achieved
Very wonderful as an aid to our personal lives and a tremendous assistance to economic growth and civilised working conditions. But there are two vast and terrible consequences.

First.  Anyone anywhere can now be a terrorist. An individual can be part of a religious movement, or of a group of discontents, or indeed just a loner.

Just such individuals killed in Australia and in Canada, and the question was asked, how such violence could occur in such peaceful countries. The question was inappropriate. The violence resulted from contacts with the world wide web, not from the host countries, and the contacts can now spread into the most remote areas on earth.  And as for the Islamic or other groups, they are enabled to organise electronically in complex ways, ever more violent, and ever more difficult to track down in advance. We are in any case the children of the forest, and evolution has given us a desire to belong, to identify with a group, with a mission.

How fulfilling,  and how difficult to stop more and more deluded people around the world from learning bloody instructions.

Secondly. There are still many poor countries in the world which,  whether because of a low level of economic  activity or because of despotic or foolish regimes, offer no hope to those living there. No education, no provision for health,  no careers. This was true for centuries, but now they know. One young man, warned that he might drown in his attempt to get from North Africa to Italy, replied that it did not matter if he lost his life, as at home it was not worth living. There are  enormous numbers of these potential or indeed actual immigrants and they will continue to pursue a better life, even if those fleeing from direct violence are accommodated in one way or another, which is anyway in practice impossible in view of the numbers involved.

The world wide web has opened a Pandora's box of misery and violence and, as in the original box, only Hope remains.

Tuesday 19 July 2016

Frederic the Great ( II )




Frederic is called the Great as a result of his tremendous skill in warfare.As Napoleon said of Frederic's victory at Leuthen -

"The battle of Leuthen was a masterpiece. This battle alone would be sufficient to make Frederic immortal among the greatest field commanders in history"

[Frederic and his staff before the battle]

And one could add Frederic's extraordinary resolve and persistence,  despite some  battles which were lost  and  even though all the European powers   ( apart from England) were massed against him for seven years. As Macaulay wrote when peace was at last signed -

"Frederic yielded nothing.  The whole Continent in arms had failed to tear
Silesia from his iron grasp.

The war was over. Frederic was safe. His fame was beyond the reach of envy"





    Sans Souci




Yet his greatness lay in other areas of life also. He built Sans Souci - a house of extraordinary genius, where he entertained Voltaire....and where, to my great delight, the principal room in the centre of the line of apartments is the dining room, somewhat lushly portrayed by Adolph von Metzel in the nineteenth century. The rooms for visitors and for musical performances were in the line to the left as one looks at the palace.  The king especially played and composed for the flute, and Mozart commented that his compositions were such as to have serious content.


The King's rooms are in the line to the right, and when I visited Sans Souci I was struck by the fact that the two first rooms on the King's  side were of a different style, and looked as though they had been done over by an expensive but conventional interior decorator. In fact they were redecorated by Frederic's successor, Frederic William II. But the chair in which Frederic died is still there.

"I suppose that you have assisted many men into the next world" he remarked to the doctor

"Yes, but not as many as Your Majesty and with far less glory " was the reply.

As Frederic said, " My people say what they like, and I do what I like."

In the most recent and commendable biography of Frederic Professor Tim Blanning of Cambridge opens for us aspects of Frederic's life previously only guessed at ( though Blanning could have recognised Frederic's military ability to a greater extent). Frederic was gay,and apart from the professor's detailed analysis I take as evidence a poem which was written by the King, ostensibly
to demonstrate the ability of  North Germans to show true passion, which Frederic's Italian friend Count Algarotti had denied.. Ostensibly. But no one reading this poem can doubt Frederic's true sensuality and his erotic attraction to Algoratti . I give some of the verses here, as translated (  from the  original of course in French) by Giles MacDonogh:

From Konigsberg to Monsieur Algoratti, Swan of Padua

La Jouissance

This night,vigorous desire in full measure,
Algoratti wallowed in a sea of pleasure,
A body not even a Praxitiles fashions
Redoubled his senses and imbued his passions
Everything that speaks to eyes and touches hearts
Was found in the fond object that inflamed his parts
Transported by love and trembling with excitement.......


Our fortunate lovers, transported high above
Know only themselves in the fury of love:
Kissing, enjoying, feeling, sighing and dying
Reviving, kissing, then back to pleasure flying.
And in Knindos' grove, breathless and worn out
Was these lovers' happy destiny, without doubt.
But all joy is finite; in the morning ends the bout.



Read that, and look at Algoratti's face 



And the face of the young Frederic