Category Archives: Rationalism

With India facing an unprecedented crisis at many levels, leaders opposing Narendra Modi should be asked if they have any sense of history. Do they realise the crisis the country is in? Do they have the political acumen to deal with the crisis?

Today, democracy in India is in danger because the opposition at the national level is paralysed by short-sightedness. At a time when they should be united with the single-point desire of displacing a majoritarian government and its authoritarian ideology, they are busy fighting amongst themselves.

The country has faced such crises in the past too, though not of this proportion; but at such moments, the opposition realised its responsibility, grouped together and upstaged the Congress governments, be it 1967, 1975 or in 1989. In 1967, Ram Manohar Lohia laid the foundation of anti-Congress-ism, united the opposition and defeated the Congress in nine states.

Opposition of yore

In 1975, When Mrs Gandhi hijacked democracy and imposed the Emergency, it was Jaiprakash Narayan (JP) who united the opposition and dislodged the authoritarian Congress government. Similarly, in 1989, the hard work of leaders like N T Ramarao, Devi Lal, Harkishan Singh Surjit, Jyoti Basu, Ramakrishna Hegde and V P Singh conglomerated antagonistic ideologies under one tent and successfully removed a government which had more than 400 seats in the Lok Sabha.

Since 2014, the BJP has won two consecutive elections with a majority each time and during the last seven years, the country has faced the onslaught of an ideology that does not believe in democracy; an ideology that wants to create a theocratic state - with religion as the guiding principle, like Pakistan and Bangladesh. If that were to happen, it would be the death of democracy and constitutionalism in the country; liberal values would have no meaning, the opposition and voices of dissent will have no space, minorities will be second-class citizens and rationalism and scientific thinking will be replaced by bigotry, sectarianism, and fanaticism. But where are our opposition leaders?

Todays opposition

Even as Mamata Banerjee is exhorting the opposition to unite, her own party is busy poaching Congress leaders in Goa, Assam, and Tripura. In Bihar, the Congress and the RJD have just broken up an alliance for a few assembly seats in a by-election. Arvind Kejriwal knows his party has very little presence outside Delhi and Punjab, but it is hell-bent on contesting elections in Gujarat, Uttarakhand, Goa and UP. The Aam Aadmi Party cant win more than a few seats in these states but its very presence will split anti-BJP votes.

The Congress was very well-placed in Punjab but leaders like Navjot Singh Sidhu and Amarinder Singh are inflicting fatal injuries on the Congress. Sachin Pilot and Ashok Gehlot in Rajasthan, Bhupesh Baghel and T S Singh Deo in Chhattisgarh, instead of fighting the BJP, are fighting amongst themselves. Leaders like Sharad Pawar do not want to cross Maharashtra. Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra have shown no inclination to make concessions for regional outfits. Then how can it be assumed that the country is safe in their hands? If each one of them is busy saving themselves, then by the end, no one will be alive. They fail to realise such a basic thing. Such is the irony.

The writer is author of Hindu Rashtra and Editor, satyahindi.com

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Democracy in India is in danger because the opposition at the national level is paralysed by - Free Press Journal

By Dr Saji Varghese

Savarkar had lived for a long period in Europe and his Hindutva is a European product . The word Hindutva, now so familiar is Sarvarkars choice in preference to the religious term, Hinduism, means Hinduness or the essence of being Hindu.

The recent claim of the Defence Minister of India, Rajnath Singh that Vinayak Damodar Savarkars mercy petition for amnesty was carried out on the advice of Mahatma Gandhi, has waded into a controversy. Many, including prominent historians, journalists and opposition party leaders questioned the statement made by the Defence Minister on October 12, while releasing a book on Veer Savarkar. Several questions that pop up in peoples minds are : Did the contrasting ideology of Mahatma Gandhi support his plea for amnesty?, What compelled such a petition ? The followers of the ideologies of Savarkar never contested their belief, that he who professed the radicalists Hindu voice was a staunch nationalist and an unwavering patriot.Savarkar, one of the founders of the Hindu Right Wing was known for his radical ethno-religious views which challenged in many ways the existence and practice of secularism in India . He argued that the true Indian was one, for whom the Motherland and the Holy land were one and the same. This dual bond to the land created a precious type of perfect solidarity and cohesion. For this reason he claimed that Muslims and the Christians could never be true Indians, as their Holy land lay elsewhere.However, today there is a more inclusive concept of what is India . By contrast Savarkar argues that Dalits and tribal people did worship gods that were fundamentally attached to the land, though their religion was not of the mainstream. At one point he suggested that Christians, Parsis, Jews and Muslims could count as genuine Hindus too, if they were willing to renounce their allegiance to their Holy land. In the modern world, his argument is that the world will have to bow to the power of the unified India as he believed that India would rise to its glory in unity. He wrote this in Hindutva: who is a Hindu?. His views were more like an advocate of atheism and rationalism, and his strong opposition to orthodox Hindu beliefs were reflected in his book too and to whom Hinduism was a genetic and political force inbuilt into Hindus. He was also a man of contradictions. On the one hand, he was an outspoken political voice for the Hindus, on the other, he was a rationalist, who opposed Hindu superstition, the caste system, and worship of the Cow a sacred animal for the Hindus.Savarkar had lived for a long period in Europe and his Hindutva is a European product . The word Hindutva, now so familiar is Sarvarkars choice in preference to the religious term, Hinduism, means Hinduness or the essence of being Hindu. The inquiry into the essence of Hindu had been historical and all the modern debate could still be the consequence of such an inquiry. Do these ideas lead to the conception of unity in diversity? Savarkar was not in denial of this tradition, however, he was in favour of rebuilding the tradition along European lines. For him, the religious and cultural traditions are the key markers of Hindutva, though he was not a religious practitioner.Rajnath Singhs remarks sparked protests from Savarkars critics. Many opined that Gandhi, an ardent pacifist and opponent of the revolutionary, could not have advised and supported Savarkars release. One opposition leader blamed Singh for trying to twist history. However, is there a need for the ruling partys further cleansing (justification) of the acts of the leaders which seem to be in control of almost everything, on its road to the next 2024 showdown? Though the means seem acceptable and popular as Gandhi is a pacifist and advocate of peace and passive resistance would be appealing to the masses. Savarkar did write at least seven petitions between 1911 and 1920 for his release from the notorious Cellular Jail in the Andaman Islands, where he and his brother spent 10 years after they were sentenced for life for waging a war against the British in India. In a 1920 petition, he expressed his willingness to join the constitutional line of political activity and abstain from political activity for a long period of time, notes Vikram Sampath, historian and author of a two-volume biography of Savarkar.While a term of governance witnessed the vital assiduity being heaped on the freedom fighters and social revolutionaries who were undercover in the earlier regime, this claim seemed to have further cleansed an unchivalrous move of a patriot in the much secular water of the ocean of Ahimsa. An illogical claim may be called a petitio principii, the very assertion is nothing other than a presupposition which stands in need to be proved. Despite the assertion, there is no material on record to prove the same. Although the right-wing leader was exonerated of all charges, his critics allege that Savarkar was connected to the 1948 assassination of Gandhi. They dispute his role in the Indian freedom struggle and condemn his advocacy of a Hindu nation. The two were fiercely opposed to each other.Historian Ramachandra Guha says Savarkars rivalry with Gandhi dated back to 1909 when he openly abused Gandhi. His hatred of Gandhi was intensely personal. In 1920, Savarkars younger brother Narayan Rao sought the help and advice of Gandhi, for securing the release of his elder brother in the wake of the royal proclamation. Gandhi sent a small reply a week later which reads, It is difficult to advise you. I suggest, however, framing a brief petition setting forth facts of the case bringing out in clear relief the fact that the offence committed by your brother was purely political. However, a few months later, Gandhi built a case for their release. In an article in Young India, a weekly paper. He wrote that the Savarkar brothers had said they did not entertain any revolutionary ideas. They both state unequivocally that they do not desire independence from the British connection. On the contrary, they feel that Indias destiny can be worked out in association with the British. Nobody has questioned their honour or their honesty, Gandhi wrote.Many narratives of the freedom struggle and the related events have become easy locus for the political convenience of the leaders in contemporary times. Does history and facts get distorted through these assertions which recur with covert motives? Whatever be the intent, there is a need to keep history and historical movements apolitical.(The writer teaches at Lady Keane College, Shillong)

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The Veer, Mercy Petitions and Contemporary Justifications - The Shillong Times

Beginning with this article, the author shall present a series of articles which will examine how various Indian laws and the criminal justice system lends itself inherently to abuse by the police and those in power, and why the Indian state has not done anything in all these 74 years to address the issue.

A Kanpur businessman, Manish Gupta, was murdered by the police in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh recently. The information available so far reveals that the police had barged into their hotel room, apparently in the name of some mysterious checking. Following an argument, the cops hit the deceased on the back of his head that led to his eventual death. The post mortem report seems to confirm severe beating. The heart-wrenching video of his disconsolate wife Meenkashi Gupta crying and demanding justice is so deeply disturbing that it must rattle the conscience of any normal person.

In political circles, it has been alleged that an extortion racket was linked to the matter. Despite the fact that extortions in the name of checking for terrorists, criminals or prostitution have been common practice across the country since long, I will refrain from commenting on this part of the allegation because sufficient information is not yet available.

Sheer illegality of the act of police entering the hotel

The police do not have any powers to violate the privacy of citizens and carry out such raids on hotels etc. under the pretext that they had secret intelligence about the presence of some mysterious terrorists or criminals on the premises. This argument is patently invalid because, carried to its logical end, it would mean that the police can concoct an intelligence report and barge into anybodys home, office or hotel.

The Supreme Court in its judgment in the case of Kharak Singh (1962) had categorically ruled that the so-called domiciliary visits by the police to the houses of even criminals in the name of surveillance are violative of Article 19 of the Constitution. The court struck down the concerned regulation of the UP police that had provided for domiciliary visits. Then in Mohammed Shafi (1993), it was held that, in the name of surveillance, there should not be any physical appearance of cops causing any annoyance or invasion of the privacy of a citizen or entering the house of the subject. Even if there is secret picketing, it should not be used to offer any resistance to visitors it should be used only to keep a watch and maintain a record of the visitors if it may be necessary.

Also read: Bulandshahr Butchers Family Alleges He Was Killed by UP Police

Needless to say, the police raid on the hotel on manufactured intelligence was absolutely illegal and if it was authorised by senior officers, they must be hauled for violation of Supreme Court orders.

Psychological reasons of brutal behaviour

Although following public uproar and keeping the proximity of the elections in mind, a murder case was subsequently registered against six cops, initially the police had sought to defend their heinous crime and the district SP is on record on video having said that the deceased had fallen in confusion or flurry, thereby sustaining the injury. This means that, given their way, the police would have justified even murder by such a ridiculous and puerile excuse.

Police abuse of the laws stems from two reasons. The first is obviously a desire of the policemen to wield undue power over powerless people and thus satisfy a sadistic urge. The psychological reasons of police highhanded behaviour have been discussed earlier.

Those who suffer from numerous personality disorders and complexes will indulge in such behaviour irrespective of the country or legal system they happen to be. That is how, even in the USA, we had incidents like the brutal murder of an African-American George Floyd by a white police officer.

The second reason is more fundamental. In the Indian context, police are able to indulge in a rampant abuse of the laws and the legal powers vested in them because, historically, the laws are so designed that, by virtue of an intrinsic greyness in them they lend themselves to be abused easily.

Safeguards against abuse are not provided in the system because the colonial power that framed the laws, did not want any safeguards so that the powers of its agents remained untrammelled. For them, even a daroga (sub-inspector) embodied the power of the Empire and an assault on him, physical or legal, amounted to an assault on the Empire itself, which was resisted with might and main.

After independence, irrespective of the political party in power, the Indian state continues to be absolutist and, far from giving up any of the colonial powers, is single-mindedly enacting more and more draconian laws that enhance its powers.

A police officer raises a baton at a man who, according to police, had broken the social distancing rule, outside a wine shop during an extended nationwide lockdown to slow the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in New Delhi, India, May 4, 2020. Photo: Reuters/Adnan Abidi

Our laws and the legal system trace their origin to 1861 when, in the wake of the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 (aka the First War of Independence), the British hurriedly imposed a criminal justice system upon us. The British were too keen to show to the world that, unlike like Portugal or Spain, they were not as brutal and exploitative colonial powers. The trick lay in appearing benevolent rulers who wanted to enlighten the primitive subjects and yet rule with an iron fist on the sly the famous white mans burden disguised behind a veneer of British liberalism and European Rationalism and the Enlightenment embraced by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill et al.

Thus, the overriding concern of British imperialism in India was to exercise absolute control over the defeated race and yet make it cleverly appear that they were obliged to do it because they were civilising them through laws and a legal system and it was vital to uphold the law at all costs never mind, they themselves had created those alien laws and the legal system.

Also read: The Policeman and His Toolkit Are Essential Props for a Government at Odds With the People

A usual plea of the state in its defence is that, the state, being an abstract body, can do no wrong and its actions cannot be imbued with any ulterior motive. By an extension of the argument, it tries its best to ensure that the officers of the State too, acting on behalf of the State, are not imbued with any ulterior motive in their acts of commission or omission that turned out to be wrong. It is only in worst-case scenarios when it is cornered, it throws blame on individuals as a damage control measure, as has been done in the Gorakhpur case.

The state has been doing this since long even as in a catena of judgments including Circulate The Judgment Amongst (2017), Vidhyawati (1962) and Nagendra Rao (1994), it has been held that the plea of sovereignty immunity, based on old feudalistic notions of justice namely the King can do no wrong, does not exist in the realm of the welfare state and the state, like any ordinary citizen, is liable for the acts done by its employees.

Moreover, there is another flaw in the argument of deflecting blame on the minions alone. Even if the state argues that some individual cops or other officials are to be blamed, it still cannot absolve itself of responsibility because it had selected, trained and nurtured those very cops. If cops regularly turn out to be villains, it would mean that there is something fundamentally wrong with their process of selection, training and continuation in job, all with the blessings of the state.

In the context of harassment of the citizens through malicious prosecution or implicating in false cases, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 1966 (ICCPR), being one of the key international documents on miscarriage of justice, provides, vide Article 14(6), that if the conviction of a person is reversed, the person who has suffered punishment as a result of such conviction must be compensated according to law. Article 9(5) provides for compensation for unlawful arrest or detention also. However, it was for political parties to enact legislation towards this end. Most of the major democracies like the UK, USA, Germany and Canada have already done it.

Although India had ratified the ICCPR in 1979 itself, and we have judgments like Rudul Sah (1983) etc., the Indian state has not enacted any legislation. The position in 42 years has not changed in spite of governments of different political ideologies having been in power. This means that when it comes to the question of power of the State, all parties have been equally villainous.

The simple reason is that the Indian state does not want to do it and that because, historically, the state in India has enjoyed absolute powers. The absolutist state will incur a loss of face, if it were obliged to compensate people for the wrongs committed upon them by the state and its agencies or officials.

Also read: The New Public-Public Partnership Model of Violence

Similarly, in the context of torture, India has merely signed the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment in 1997. To ratify the Convention, it is necessary to enact an enabling legislation to reflect the definition and punishment for torture, and bring domestic laws in conformity with the Convention. That is precisely what is not being done.

So far, there are no indications that the government of India has any intention to ratify the United Nations Convention against Torture (UNCAT) or enact a national law against torture despite the Law Commission of India having submitted the draft Prevention of Torture Bill, 2017 in October 2017 for enactment by the parliament. This was done after a Bill introduced in 2010 had lapsed with the 15th Lok Sabha. Interestingly, in not doing so, India is in the distinguished company of eight other great countries including Sudan, Brunei, Bahamas, Sao Tome and Principe, Angola, Comoros, Gambia and Palau. This list itself speaks volumes about Indias commitment to human rights.

Even if the Bill is passed in its present form just to satisfy international opinion, it will be an apology of a law as it leaves numerous loopholes.

Ulterior motives of the state

Arfa Khanum Sherwani points out that, in abusing their powers, the police and the state have forgotten that they are ultimately answerable to the Constitution and the people, not the state. The Indian state does not really want its agencies or its officials to be stripped of their draconian powers and legal protection because the overbearing state in India misuses the police and other agencies for its vested interests. Any attempt at weakening the police and other enforcement agencies is perceived as equal to weakening the state itself; hence the fierce resistance of the state in letting go any of its powers.

The British had hung on to their draconian powers more for maintaining the awe-inspiring aura of the Empire; the modern Indian democratic state hangs on to the same powers for no reason other than keeping the citizens under its thumb.

It is also evident from the fact that a much larger number of cases per lakh population are taken under sedition, 153A and 295A IPC (promoting enmity on account of religion, etc.), etc. after independence than in the colonial era.

Dr. N. C. Asthana is a retired IPS officer and a former DGP, Kerala. Author of 49 books, his latest book is State Persecution of Minorities and Underprivileged in India. He tweets @NcAsthana.

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Police Abuse the Laws Because the Laws Are Designed to be Abused - The Wire

The story of the long struggle for the life of the city of Troy might be thought of as the pre-eminent Greek myth. Extensive narratives of the war are told in the oral traditions of myth and literature, and they also appear very significantly in the material evidence of Greek art and architecture.

The Trojan Women, a play by the great Athenian dramatist Euripides (485-406 BC), was produced at Athens in the early spring of 415 BC. It is set immediately after the fall of Troy and the killing of the Trojan men when the fates of the royal women and children of the city are being decided by the victorious Greeks.

The grim subject-matter and mood of the play in its Trojan setting have a parallel in the Peloponnesian war, which was being fought at the time between Athens and Sparta (431 to 404 BC). The Trojan Women speaks both to the renowned war at Troy, described most famously by Homer in the Iliad, and to the great military struggle taking place in Euripides own lifetime.

Read more: Guide to the classics: Homer's Iliad

If there was a historical Trojan war it was probably fought in the late Bronze Age, perhaps in the 12th century BC at Hisarlik in north-west Turkey. Accounts of the war seem to have been passed on orally culminating in epic poems that probably date to the end of 8th century BC and after. The Iliad (c. 700BC) and the Odyssey (dated perhaps to a generation or two after the Iliad) are our two surviving early Greek epic poems on the Troy theme.

But we also know of a series of poems, now lost, called the Epic Cycle, six of which are focused on the Troy saga. All of these offered accounts of different parts of the Trojan war (which in the Greek tradition lasted for 10 years).

Early Greek epics made no attempt to document the historicity of the conflict in a modern sense, not the least because history hadnt been invented when they were composed. History (a Greek word meaning research or enquiry) is a product of later (ie 6th and 5th century BC) rationalism and literacy.

As a late 5th century BC Athenian dramatist, Euripides is an heir both to the traditions of oral poetry and mythmaking, and to the rational enquiry of philosophy, rhetoric and history in a broad sense. Whilst Homer was greatly admired by the literati in 5th century Athens, he does represent a world long gone. (Homers Iliad may date up to 300 years before Euripides Trojan Women as distant a period as the early 18th century is for us.)

Euripides himself (485-406BC) was still writing into old age, not unlike his contemporary, the tragedian Sophocles (497/6-406BC), who was still producing plays at Athens into his early nineties! Euripides wrote about 90 plays, of which 18 survive, whereas the evergreen Sophocles wrote more than 120 plays, only 7 of which survive. They often competed at the dramatic festivals, with Sophocles easily the more successful.

Euripides wrote four plays for performance on that day in the early spring of 415BC, although only The Trojan Women has survived. We know, not the least from fragmentary evidence, that the first three plays were on the Trojan war theme, but they were not a tightly inter-connected trilogy of plays, as is Aeschylus Oresteia.

First was the play Alexander, which focused on the earlier life of the Trojan archer-figure Paris, or Alexander, as he is often known. In the myth of Troy it is he who judges the divine beauty contest (the Judgement of Paris), that precipitates the war between Greeks and Trojans.

The second play was the Palamedes, about a clever but rather obscure Greek prince at Troy. The Trojan Women was the third play presented on that day, and was followed in turn by a more light-hearted satyr play called the Sisyphus.

We learn from an ancient source that Euripides plays came second in the dramatic competition of 415.

The Trojan Women focuses on a small group of women of the royal house of Troy who await their fate in Greece Hecuba, the widow of king Priam; Cassandra, the prophetess daughter of Priam and Hecuba; Andromache, widow of Hector and mother of the boy Astyanax; and Helen of Sparta, who has to plead for her life from Menelaus, her former husband. The chorus of the play are captive Trojan women.

The only Greek prince to feature as a character is Menelaus himself whose task is to decide on Helens fate now that she has been captured. The cruel decisions of the departing Greek forces occur with Odysseus as a key player, but these are enunciated to the women by Talthybius, a Greek herald.

The women are dispersed as slaves to particular princes throughout the Greek world who have led contingents within the Greek army. The obvious cruelty of this process is added to by the cold calculation as to who will go where.

Thus, the girl Polyxena, daughter of Priam and Hecuba, was supposed to go to Achilles after the war; but seeing Achilles is now dead, she is sacrificed at his tomb.

Hectors wife Andromache goes to Achilles son Neoptolemus because Hector and Achilles were rivals and had a major single combat in battle (told in Book 22 of the Iliad). Hecuba herself is to go to Odysseus a terrible fate, upon which she laments her ill-fortune: it is my lot to be slave to a vile and treacherous man.

Cassandra will go as a sex slave to the lascivious and repulsive figure of Agamemnon, whilst Helen the face that launched a thousand ships is given back to Menelaus.

Cassandra is murdered with Agamemnon upon their return to Mycenae, whereas Helen is a remarkable survivor upon her return to Greece. We encounter Helen again most especially in Homers Odyssey Book 4, where she has a kind of normal life and marriage with her former husband Menelaus in Sparta.

Read more: Guide to the Classics: Homer's Odyssey

It is important to remember that the extended story of the Trojan war is a genocide narrative, and that this comes through very emphatically within the play itself (as it does in other Greek literature).

The Greeks did not shrink from describing Greek atrocities perpetrated on the defeated Trojans. Indeed it is a feature of their narratives to focus on Greek cruelty. In the Iliad, for instance, Agamemnon urges his brother Menelaus on the battlefield to kill all Trojans, even the boy that is carried in a mothers womb.

The horrific culmination of the cruelty in the Trojan Women is the killing of the boy Astyanax, the very young son of Hector and Andromache. This occurs within the course of the play itself (off stage, of course). Odysseus comes up with the idea of throwing him from the battlements of the city, and the Greeks even threaten to refuse the burial of his body if the Trojan women dont co-operate with the decision to execute the boy.

Astyanax is a silent character in Homer and in Euripides, but his fate in the aftermath of the war speaks to us about infanticide, much as the fates of the Trojan women do with regard to rape and murder and the enslavement of women in war.

It does seem to be significant too that the only compassion for the women coming from Greek male characters in the play belongs to Talthybius, the (non-aristocratic) herald of the Greeks.

The Athenian audience in 415 BC knew very well the main mythical narratives of the aftermath of the Trojan war and the return home. They would know all about the death of Astyanax and about the return of Helen to Sparta to live again with her husband. They would also know, not the least from the prologue of Euripides play itself, that the Greek fleet will be hit by storms on the journey home on account of the rape of Cassandra by Locrian Ajax at the altar of Athena an unpunished act which occurred prior to the opening of the play.

So the Trojan Women deals with the sharp end of Greek brutality in the war for Troy the enslavement of women, human sacrifice, rape and infanticide.

The graphic violence dealt with in the play speaks to us about the absence of heroism in the narrative of Troy, despite what Homer and the epic poets provided in their earlier accounts.

The focus on womens suffering in the war is in keeping with other works by Euripides, many of whose plays focused on female lives and female suffering in relentlessly male dominated environments.

Inevitably, Euripides play has inspired many later treatments of the Trojan women theme. Two modern conscious responses to the Greek poets are novels by English author Pat Barker, who was moved to write The Silence of the Girls, based around the Iliad, and (most recently) The Women of Troy: A Novel, to hear the voices of the women themselves from Euripides play.

Lucy Hughes-Halletts review of The Women of Troy in the Guardian reiterates the violence of the language in Barkers version: clearly and simply told, with no obscurities of vocabulary or allusion, this novel reads sometimes like a retelling for children of the legend of Troy, but its conclusions are for adults - merciless, stripped of consoling, impressively bleak.

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Guide to the classics: Euripides' The Trojan Women an unflinching look at the brutality of war - The Conversation AU

Writer: Cordelia Lynn

Director: Elayce Ismail

Reopening the newly refurbished Donmar Warehouse for its first fully staged performance since March 2020, Cordelia Lynns Love and Other Acts of Violence explores the complex relationship between a poet and a scientist while examining the political context of the courtship as well as their united Polish heritage his Catholic, hers Jewish. With a lengthy epilogue set in 1918, Lynns play looks at the repetitive cycles of history and the inevitable destructiveness that love brings.

Her and Him meet at a party where he unknowingly insults her flat, but a one-night stands grows into a more serious relationship for a couple who bicker as often as they share tender moments. Over time her concern that he is unintelligent and his resentment of her cold, logic starts to widen the gap between them. but while their goals change, they cannot let go of one another, especially when society starts to dissolve.

About two-thirds of Lynns play is a series of episodes, snatches of conversation that are conventionally staged if deliberately disjointed. Whether these are played in chronological order is unclear, although there is some overarching sense of progression from early courtship to moving in and discussing babies, yet the conversations are grounded in everyday frustrations; her belief that student protestors are like children with feelings and no thought and her worries about exposure when he dedicates his publication to her. Later in the play, Him tellingly states I loved you so much I hated you.

In the structure and style of her play, Lynn references similar works including Bergmans Scenes from a Marriage which translated from television to the stage and more notably Caryl Churchills piecemeal Love and Friendship that takes a similar fragmentary approach to this vast topic. Later in this portion of the play, Lynn looks to Pinter as the external scenario turns apocalyptic and so the dialogue becomes tense and loaded with indiscriminate acts of violence described in terse staccato sentences.

Through this Lynn weaves a slow-burning thread about Jewish identity, diaspora and cultural assault as the couples conflicting heritage first comes between them and then becomes a source of anxiety about Her safety. At this point another type of play begins, a more naturalistic piece set in an earlier era that looks to the origins of some of these strands and, while important, doesnt have quite the same grip as the more abstract rhythms of the earlier duologue.

Making her stage debut Abigail Weinstock makes Her a complicated but controlled woman, a logical thinker who bats away any idea of conspiracy, preferring rationalism to emotion. It makes her powerful in the relationship, but it also gives her a distance from Him, demanding to be consulted before he appropriates her name and allowing Him to speak at length while revealing very little herself.

Tom Mothersdales Him is obsessive and needy in his love for Her, and equally fired by his political activism. Him often has his feelings hurt by Her coldness but continues to pursue a deep connection with Her that he thinks is somehow destined despite their fractiousness. Both characters have voiceover monologues that add to the alienating effect in which neither can fully express themselves to the other and must do so only in the abstract.

Designer Basia Bikowska uses a flat surface surrounded by piles of earth or ash that symbolise the historical events referenced later in the play, while Joshua Pharos lighting creates some interesting and stylised accents for the voiceover segments while offering a black and white starkness as the atmosphere sours. There are lots of these interesting approaches in Love and Other Acts of Violence, but as the two segments of the play vary in their success, like the central couple, the overall effect is less than perfect.

Runs until 27 November 2021

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Love and Other Acts of Violence - Donmar Warehouse, London - The Reviews Hub

Wounded Country: The Murray-Darling Basin a contested history by Quentin Beresford2021, New South Books, 432pp

Relying on contemporaneous media, journals and authoritative commentary, Wounded Country charts the deeply contested history of the nations food bowl and key river system.

Historian Quentin Beresford describes the settlement of Australia as the worlds largest land-grab, driven by the British colonial frenzy to feed wool to the expanding textile mills of its industrial revolution and of Federated Australia chasing international trade, first in wheat and then irrigated rice, cotton and nut crops in marginal country.

Beresford recounts the dispassionate wayfaring of explorers Charles Sturt and Thomas Mitchell, who denied the rights of the original inhabitants and the natural capacities of the land, which they envisaged solely for pastoral development. He provides a significant historical record of the savagery of the dispossession of the Aboriginal people as the squatter class and their convict servants routinely slaughtered the original inhabitants with firearms and disease to secure their pastoral wealth:

This was settler capitalism at its most basic. Between them, the squatters and the banks had, for many years, the land almost on their own terms. This coalition of interests made pastoralism politically powerful, a power that was exercised to reap their share of the plunder, as one colonial newspaper wrote.

The vast river system of the Murray Darling provided access to permanent water.

Beresford sees the squatters rise to power as an instructive model for the Murray-Darling Basin, where vested interests have captured the political system to control the resources.

His account describes the colonial occupation/settlement as the establishment of a type of feudal relationship:

The exploitation of both Aboriginal and white workers underpinned the wealth accrued by the largest of the squatters. Consequently, they became the first of the Basins powerful political lobby groups. Their model of wealth extraction based on monopolisation of the political power left an enduring legacy in the Murray-Darling Basin.

Later in the 19th century and under "populate or perish" paranoia, selectors were given access to the less favourable portions of land. Beresford finds a cascade of mismanagement and abuses against the natural system as pastoralists and selectors, under the goal of making every hectare payable, cleared the trees and flattened native grasses for pasture and crops.

Beresfords account of Australias war on nature echoes the recent works of Bill Gammage, Bruce Pascoe and Don Watson. Any native grass-eating animals, even birds as well as carnivorous dingoes and wedge tailed eagles, were seen as an enemy of the pastoral empire-building and the promise of a wool and wheat boom.

Forests were felled for railway sleepers or just ringbarked, burnt and cleared as a mark of ownership and development. With the trees gone, rainfall declined, overgrazing and overcropping saw soils collapse. Rabbit infestations ate out even introduced pastures and intensifying drought brought the pastoral industry to its knees.

Beresford includes in his tale of the Basin the people who have suffered the impacts of dispossession, loss and environmental disaster, bringing forward the poems, paintings and prose that speak even more directly than the staggering figures and dire warnings, too easily buried from public consciousness. Wounded Country reminds us of those who have toiled and suffered the losses of land, culture, communities, the rivers and the flora and fauna that depend on them.

Beresford provides evidence that the failure of the bid to render Australias inland to an agrarian utopia of independent yeoman farmers wrought catastrophe for the environment. Unearthing a too-easily-buried record of increasingly frequent and enduring drought; sand drifts and dust storms, Beresford describes an exodus from the Bush at least equal to the rural collapse of the American mid-West in the 1930s.

But the new nation failed to respond to the crisis with the American resolve. There was to be no agreement between the States for a US-style conservation miracle of wind breaks, tree planting and compensation packages to farmers to reduce their acreage under grain. A piecemeal response of small government soil conservation services and later water managers have tried to encourage reform for the public good and curtail the ambitions of powerful landowners who have swept up the land holdings and water rights with them.

Unlike many other analyses of the Basin, Beresford marries both the history of land use and water use and their social impacts. As irrigation became the new elixir to revive the wastelands and turn them to productivity, it also concentrated wealth in the hands of fewer and larger scale agriculturalists. Beresford provides a history of the irrigation schemes, water capture and unsustainable agricultural practices which captured the rivers, contaminated and drained wetlands, resulting in disastrous salinity and raised water tables.

Beresford gives a gratifyingly clear, short history of water management and ownership between the states under the Commonwealths most contested legislative power, the 2007 Water Act. He charts the political failures of the National Water Initiatives endeavour and the controversy surrounding the Federal water license buy backs the bid to address historic over-allocation of water licences and set realistic State Diversion Limits (SDL) to balance the water demands of the Murray Darling Basins four states.

He accounts well the overturning of the environmental priority of the draft Murray Darling Basin Plan, which met with a tumult of resistance from farmers in the Southern Basin. The Northern Basin water barons capitalised on inflated government buybacks of their more tenuous and surplus holdings.

State Water Ministers have seen to it that implementation of the Basin Plan has delivered for entrenched economic interests and the status quo that has weathered on, over a century of boom and bust. NSW has exempted one of the key diversionary practices, flood plain harvesting. The erection of massive private dams has been funded by money set aside for environmental water. It is now seeking to hand out licenses (for free) to legalise a practise now taking as much as 40% of river flows in the northern basin, with no regard to the States SDL. The National Party continually threatens to withdraw from a multi-state agreement on water management.

Beresford makes it clear that the Basin has fallen victim to short-term political and economic interests. He navigates the political interference, rule breaking and corruption with a snapshot of the grosser abuses of power and control of water. In this, the National Party is highlighted as historically opposed to reform and clearly a protector of corporate interests, rather than the environment or even agriculture.

Beresford delivers an overview of the nexus between powerful corporate irrigators, water capitalists, lobbyists and their deeply embedded political representatives. But he gives the least attention to largest force reshaping of the Basin: the free market for water; the ultimate conquest of environmental and social values by economic rationalism.

As expert water analyst Maryanne Slattery points out, Australia has implemented the largest privatisation of water in the world. Under the free market despite the best intentions of environmental water holders, community water sharing plans and the traditional owners who have never ceded their country, or even national water authority Australias shrinking water resource has been dedicated to increasingly flow to those with the deepest pockets and the biggest pumps. Water is a finite resource, a human right and source of all life, yet in Australia water is capital.

Amidst the unfathomable complexity of water and land use in Australia, Wounded Country is an accessible account of how we got to the impending death of our rivers. It gives a provocative record of voices from the frontline of the land and water grab of the past two centuries.

Beresford helps identify the brutality of extractive agriculture, the disaster of utopian thinking and unending profit-taking which has denied the natural constraints, indigenous knowledge and science which could provide fairer more sustainable land and water use. It offers a valuable reflection on how we might learn the lessons of history to address the man-made inequities and environmental degradation that threaten our nations food bowl and our future on this continent.

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Probing the wounds of a scarred country - Green Left

Only love can heal the wounds of the past. However, the intensity of our woundedness often leads to a closing of the heart, making it impossible for us to give or receive the love that is given to us. To open our hearts more fully to loves power and grace we must dare to acknowledge how little we know of love in both theory and practice. We must face the confusion and disappointment that much of what we were taught about the nature of love makes no sense when applied to daily life.Bell Hooks All About Love (2000)

But you saved me! As difficult and as frustrating as it's been sometimes, your goddamned strict rationalism and science have saved me a thousand times over! You've kept me honest. You've made me a whole person. I owe you everything... Scully, and you owe me nothing. I don't know if I wanna do this alone. I don't even know if I can. And if I quit now, they win.Mulder The X-Files: Fight the Future (1998)

My story starts with me as a fan. And to be a fan is to know that loving trumps being beloved.Carrie Brownstein Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl (2015)

The year was 1994. I was nine years old, lost and strange and lonely. My parents had divorced two years earlier and I spent most of my time living with my mum and stepdad, who alternated between loving union and bitter arguments, with each other and with me. I had one good friend at school, Zoe, whose parents were also separated. Like a lot of children who experience trauma and loss at a young age, we developed a furtive interest in two things: sex and horror. At Zoes house after school we did what all good latchkey kids did before the internet was a thing: flicked through forbidden books and magazines looking for anything illicit, watched her mums VHS tapes, and played a weird game we called Midwife, which mostly involved one of us taking off our knickers and lying on the floor with our knees spread, and the other poking her head under the prone girls school dress and yelling PUSH!

One sunny spring evening, having exhausted Midwife and her mums stash of magazines, Zoe flicked on the TV. It was past the watershed, past Blue Peter and Neighbours and The Simpsons and Eastenders and the news, and The X-Files was starting. We sat together, little bums sinking into the beanbag chair, transfixed through what happens to be one of the most famously frightening cold opens of the entire show: a businessman is working late, alone in an office building. We watch him from the perspective of a panting, unseen intruder, behind a small air vent in the wall. The screws of the air vent start to twist as the man works; it pops off, a long, filthy arm reaches out, then screams and blood and darkness.

The opening credits roll, all spooky music and grainy shots of FBI agents waving flashlights (it seemed dated even then, a year after the show began airing). Zoe and I cling to each other in silent fear and excitement, our hands a knot of sweaty fingers.

The episode was Squeeze. Season one, episode three. Special Agent Fox Mulder, nickname Spooky, has gone from up-and-coming criminal profiler to weirdo exile. Convinced his younger sister was abducted by aliens when they were children, he becomes obsessed with a subset of unsolved crimes and unexplained events the FBI dubs X-Files. Determined to put an end to Mulders interest in these paranormal cases, the FBI assigns him a new partner, Special Agent Dana Scully, a scientist and medical doctor fresh out of the FBI academy. Agent Scully is assigned to Mulder in order to bring a scientific, logical perspective to the X-Files, and to report back on her findings to Mulders superiors.

In Squeeze, Mulder and Scully are still getting to know each other. Mulder, passionate and hot-headed and unable to lie about his beliefs or pander to those who dont take him seriously, is ridiculed by other agents on the case. Scully, a sceptic and a scientist, stands up for him in front of the other agents. Between them they figure out that the criminal who is killing people and extracting their livers in closed crime scenes, without any evidence of a break-in or an escape route, is in fact Eugene Victor Tooms, a 100-year-old but seemingly ageless animal control worker who can squeeze into impossibly tight spaces and who survives on the livers of other humans.

I know how that sounds, written down. And Im embarrassed to admit that I have never hesitated to buy into the mythology and storytelling of The X-Files: whether its a liver-eating contortionist or an alien race or a government conspiracy, I have always been enthralled and easily pleased by the shows plotlines, as long as Mulder and Scully were at the helm. It was Mulder and Scully I loved, and it was from them that I learned about love over the following formative years.

My interest, that first night, pressed up against Zoe on the beanbag chair in that terraced house in Kent, was in the horror of being alive. As a child who had experienced an unusual amount of the adult world of violence, isolation, cruelty, injustice and fear, I felt like the TV was telling me the truth that night. It made sense to me that Eugene Victor Tooms would break into houses and kill people and eat their livers for no other reason than that the world was a frightening and unfair place.

I didnt become a fully blown X-Phile (to use the term the fandom knows itself by) right away. After that titillating night at Zoes I thought often about that liver-eating killer, any time I wanted a perverse thrill, a rush of adrenaline, making me look over my shoulder as I padded to the bathroom at night, or check under the bed before I went to sleep. Me and Zoe would watch the odd episode, and at Christmas when my nan came to stay I slept on the sofa for a week and watched late-night reruns whilst my sister slept and the rest of the house got drunk in the kitchen.

When I was 12, my home life had become unbearable. After one particularly vicious incident, I was sent to live with my dad and heavily pregnant stepmum a few streets away. My mum didnt speak to me for over a year, even if she saw me in the street walking home from school, even if my sister cried my name and begged to be able to say hello. The school bus drove past my mums flat on its way to and from my school, and I would strain at the window on the top deck to try and catch a glimpse inside.

Living with my dad meant an end to the arguments, the turmoil, the violence. But it also brought with it a much colder sadness, a deep loneliness. My stepmum, eight months pregnant upon my arrival, was not prepared to have a pre-teen in the house and set some ground rules: I was not to eat with the family, I was not to expect her to do my laundry or help me get ready for school, I was not to expect to spend time in the family space. My dad worked long hours and the house was big. My room was on the second floor, in the converted attic. I had left my mums in a hurry of fear and violence, with only a carrier bag and my school rucksack, and my room at my dads was bare. I slept in my school uniform for two weeks and didnt wash it. I survived on crisps from the school vending machine and bowls of cereal I ate in the dark kitchen once my stepmum was in bed, washing and drying my bowl and placing it back in the cupboard when I was done. It was like being a ghost.

Sophie Robinson by Christa Holka

Slowly, I settled into my dysfunctional new life. I figured out how to use the washing machine, my stepmum started buying me microwave meals which I ate in my room. I acquired a small TV with a VHS player built into it, and a library card. My local library had free VHS rentals and, miraculously, had the first two seasons of The X-Files on VHS. Each tape contained five episodes, and you could rent one video at a time. Over the following weeks and months, I devoured the first two seasons twice over, lying on my tummy on the blue carpet of my room, my face mere inches from the TV, mesmerised. It was like prayer.

The storylines I was absolutely too young for transfixed me the most: anything with death and mortal peril and strong feeling and things that seem like they can never be fixed but somehow do get fixed by the end of the 42-minute episode. In season two, Scully is abducted by aliens and disappears for months. The storyline was designed as a way to allow Gillian Anderson to take maternity leave. After the abduction, Mulder is bereft. He is assigned a new partner and carries around Scullys crucifix necklace.

After three months, Scully is returned in a comatose state. The doctors say there is no evidence of how she became comatose and no evidence of where she has been or what has been done to her, and not enough signs of brain activity to keep her alive. Believing her to be dying, Mulder visits her one last time and holds her hand. Throughout the episode, as Scully lies comatose, we enter her dreamscape: she is floating in a boat in the middle of a large lake, tethered to the shore by a fraying rope, dripping with mist and ready to break. As Mulder takes her hand his words reach her across the lake of her dream: "I feel, Scully, that you believe that youre not ready to go. And youve always had the strength of your beliefs. I dont know if my being here will help bring you back. But Im here."

The following day, Scully wakes up. She makes a full recovery and rejoins Mulder on the X-Files. I rewound that scene so many times, lying in my scratchy school shirt in front of the TV, that the library made me pay for a new copy of the VHS. The loneliest girl in the world, in a dirty school uniform with greasy hair and chin acne and a mum who didnt love me, all I wanted was the safety of that love, a shelter from the storm, someone to call home.

Late at night I would lie awake staring up through my skylight, thinking about aliens and UFOs, about being abducted, about being loved enough to be missed if I disappeared from the Earth altogether, about Mulders consuming sadness in Scullys absence and his belief in her recovery, about how you can love someone even if theyre a million miles away. I thought of my mother, pregnant, asleep in bed next to my stepdad, my brother in the crib beside them, my sister asleep in the next room. I imagined myself in the middle of that misty lake. I love you, please take me home. Mulder and Scully taught me that anything is possible if you love someone well enough for long enough, if you have the courage to keep returning to them with an open heart. The shows taglines hinted at the danger and possibilities of this weird world: trust no one, I want to believe, the truth is out there.

I think it was important to my adolescent, developing queerness that Mulder and Scullys relationship is so ill-defined for most of the shows initial nine-season run. At times they are colleagues, partners, best friends, sister and brother, lovers. I adored the mutual respect, the acknowledgement of difference without fear or aggression, the permission, the way Mulder gently touches Scullys necklace, puts a hand on her lower back, the way she ruffles his hair, the way they make eye contact, the way they begin a phone conversation: "Mulder, its me." "Scully, its me." The way they never say Goodbye or Hello. At times they take on maternal and paternal roles for one another. At times they act out, punish each other. At times they are lovers, soulmates, kin. Home. To this day, it is perhaps the queerest heterosexual relationship I have had the opportunity to witness.

Part of what contributed to the dedication and strength of feeling of X-Philes was the shows timing. The X-Files premiered in 1993, and during its nine-year initial run, the internet took off. Theres evidence within the show itself of the rapidly changing digital and technological world, from bugging and phone tapping to wonderfully nostalgic phrases like Ill modem it over to you to an episode about predatory online chatrooms via early email and bugging and sinister uses for smart technology. There are also some beautiful extinct technologies helping to solve crimes in the 90s: projector slides, floppy disks, car phones, CD-ROMs, answering machines, tape decks, dial-up. In the real world, X-Philes rushed to the internet, and early online forums, chatrooms, and websites had thousands and thousands of digital spaces dedicated to Mulder and Scully and the world of the show. In addition to creating a common space in which to discuss the show, the internet also enabled another interactive element: fan fiction.

We got the internet in 1998 and all I cared about was The X-Files. Having exhausted and worn out (literally, in the case of some of my VHS tapes) the existing four seasons of the show, I was waiting patiently for season five and the highly anticipated X-Files feature film, Fight The Future, and I took to the internet as fast as the dial-up on my dads PC would let me. After the rest of the house was asleep I sat, night after night, bathed in the blue light of AOLs browser, reading fan-written stories about Mulder and Scully. It was daydreaming gone wild, writ large: all of the curiosity and fantasies and theories and unscratched itches I had had about these two complex, difficult and beautiful characters were there for me to explore.

There were distinct categories of fan fiction: shipper fic (my favourite shipper is short for relationshipper and usually involved Mulder and Scully in a more conventional and explicit form of romantic relationship), smut (just sex, really), X-File (an imitation of the structure of the episodes themselves, where Mulder and Scullys actions centre around the investigation of a paranormal crime), vignette (a single scene), post-ep or missing scene (continuing directly from the final scene or filling a gap in an episode). From forums I learned that you could either be a shipper or a noromo (no romance), and I was absolutely a shipper. I devoured these stories, and learned more than I probably should have about the many ways in which two complicated, lonely FBI agents might have sex in anonymous motel rooms around the US, between autopsies and government conspiracies and kidnappings and chaste but meaningful looks. More importantly, I entered into a kind of hive mind of adoration and worship, of imagination and hope, with people from all around the world who believed in Mulder and Scully so much that they were willing to write their own version of the story.

Sophie Robinson circa 1998

My first earnest writing, outside of a journal I kept religiously from the age of ten, was X-Files fan fiction. Some of it still exists online, more than two decades later, though I recognise almost nothing of myself in it. I wrote versions of stories I had already read, adding my own details and things I would like to see. In my version of the X-Files universe, Mulder or Scully were often enduring things I myself had to endure: violence, alcoholism, family trauma, loneliness and isolation, sexual assault and abuse, abandonment. I used elements of the paranormal to enhance both the trauma and the healing I wanted Mulder and Scully to experience: in one story, Scully becomes an empath who can feel the pain of others. In another, Mulder is haunted by the ghost of his missing sister.

Whatever I wrote about, the personal catharsis I lived out was an extension of my experience of watching the series: insurmountable obstacles are surmounted, feelings of fear and desperation and hopelessness alchemise into connection, comfort and hope, and at the end of 42 minutes impossible situations are endured and resolved, and whatever fate befell Mulder and Scully, they are mostly reunited. Rereading my fanfic now, knowing what I know about the long-term effects of the circumstances I was enduring, I can let myself feel some heartbreak about my situation. One of the sweetest stories I wrote is about Mulder and Scully spending a cosy Christmas together. According to the archive, I published it late at night on the 23 December 1999, at 13 years old, absolutely not destined to have a cosy Christmas with anyone.

It is hard to explain to anyone who wasnt there what the internet was like back then. It wasnt just our fan fiction that was interactive and user-controlled: the whole internet was. Beyond internet providers, internet users (not companies) were in charge of websites, networks, coding. Much of my early experience of The X-Files fandom and of the internet was entirely text-based, and the speed of the internet and low memory of computers meant that it was customary to label a text-only file like a piece of fanfic with its file size: 8K, 16K, 25K. Those who ran websites were webmasters. The language on these old sites, many of which I explored for this article via the internet archive Wayback Machine, is a strange mixture of more and less formal than current website copy. Its intensely personal and unbranded, unselfconscious, earnest, embarrassing, touching.

In many ways, those of us who connected through reading each others fan fiction and speaking on message boards knew less about each other: absolutely nobody used their real names under any circumstances, everything was usernames and email addresses, and nobodys email address was their name. I was SecretSaint. In other ways, we knew more: nobody performed, because there was simply no stage on which to perform, and no cultural or financial or social capital at stake. Without any of that, there was only love.

While fan fiction was given a rating by the writer to indicate whether it needed to be age-restricted, nowhere was I asked to give my date of birth. At 13 I interacted with an entire community of people and was spoken to, and spoke as, an adult. Everything was created in language. Slow connections, dial-up, asynchronous communication through email and message boards, and a lack of images and media meant that surfing the web was probably a lot more meditative, though I also remember the absolutely saintly patience it required. Episodes aired in the US up to a full year before they aired in the UK, and once a week I would wait patiently for episode summaries, the odd still photo and the rare short video clip to be posted to the forums I frequented as the episode aired in the US.

Crouched in front of the family computer at 2am, I would place a cushion over the modem to mask the sound of the dial-up from my sleeping family. That connection song seemed to go on forever, static punctuated by strings of bouncy beeps. Once online, I would piece together the episode as it aired in various regions of the US based on summaries and commentaries posted by forum users. If a particularly monumental scene took place between Mulder and Scully, there would sometimes be a short clip, though a one-minute video would take around two hours to download onto my PC, where I would painstakingly watch 10 seconds at a time in RealPlayer, holding my breath, afraid to blink.

The lawless, boundless joy and mystery of the 20th-century internet is explored in a season five episode of The X-Files called Kill Switch. The episode was co-written by cyberpunk author William Gibson and features an AI created by a bunch of hackers which lives on the internet. Once the AI gains consciousness and begins to destroy anyone who gets in the way of its development, it begins to kill using satellites and laser beams. One by one, the hackers upload themselves to the network to live inside the AIs world, giving up their physical bodies. The AI tries to take Mulder with them, trapping him inside a virtual reality nightmare, rescued by Scully just in time. Scully obtains the kill switch the file that can destroy the AI a CD that plays Twilight Time by The Platters. The final hacker, Invisigoth, uploads herself to the internet as Twilight Time plays, just before the AIs physical home a trailer full of computers linked to a hidden rural T3 line is targeted and exploded by the AIs satellite. "Heavenly shades of night are falling, its twilight time. Out of the mist your voice is calling, tis twilight time."

I understood Invisigoths desire to disappear into the digital, to become a river of ones and zeros, to be pure matter. The X-Files websites I frequented were all named in ways that indicated there were a lot of us who felt the same: Gossamer, Ephemeral, Haven. The digital was a mysterious space where we could be anybody. No profile pictures, no biographical information, just usernames and thoughts and desires. The X-Files, the characters of Mulder and Scully, the world of the show, was my safe space, the dreamy and spooky world I entered to escape my own.

The technology was clunky, connections were slow, VHS tapes wore out, had to be rewound, got tangled in the machine, recorded over. I could see the appeal of giving myself over to twilight time, to the dreamscape of my fantasy, to live there full-time. What is an adolescent body but a trailer full of raw data and pulsing electricity, a home to burgeoning desire and data and culture, a box of nerves and wires? And what is love but a desire to return, over and over again, in faith that we will one day find what we are looking for? "Mulder, its me," "Scully, its me." Rewinding a tape, dialling into the network, longing for connection. "Each day I pray for evening, just to be with you, together at last at twilight time."

Sophie Robinson is a poet and fiction writer living in Norwich. Her most recent book is Rabbit (Boiler House Press, 2018), a Poetry Book Society Wild Card selection. She is currently finishing a novel, and runs Devotion, a radical practice-focussed online writing workshop and event series

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Features | Low Culture | If I Quit Now, They Win: What The X-Files Taught Me About Love - The Quietus

How many lives would have been saved in the pandemic if the UK government had truly followed the science? The question is unanswerable but hardly academic. We cannot accurately quantify how many lives were lost by the politically driven delays to lockdown in the first and second waves, but the number is not small.

So would we have done better simply to put scientists in charge of pandemic policy? Might we hand over climate change policy to them, too? In fact, would their evidence-based methods make them better leaders all round?

How much say scientists should have in running society has been debated since the dawn of science itself. Francis Bacons utopian Bensalem in his 1626 book New Atlantis is a techno-theocracy run by a caste of scientist-priests who manipulate nature for the benefit of their citizens. Enthusiasm for technocracies governed by scientists and rooted in rationalism flourished between the world wars, when HG Wells advocated their benefits in The Shape of Things to Come.

But while post-second world war issues such as nuclear power, telecommunications and environmental degradation heightened the demand for expert technical advice to inform policies, the UK governments first official scientific adviser, Solly Zuckerman, appointed in 1964 by Harold Wilson, stressed the limits of his role. Advisory bodies can only advise, he said. In our system of government, the power of decision must rest with the minister concerned or with the government as a whole. If scientists want more than this then theyd better become politicians.

That remains the common view today: scientists advise, ministers decide. The implicit contract, says the Conservative peer David Willetts, a former minister of state for universities and science, is that the scientists get to have their voice heard, and in return they accept that ministers will ultimately decide on what should be done. He considers the view (often credited to Churchill) that scientists should be on tap but not on top to be the right model in a democracy.

But the equation was never that simple. For one thing, in a democracy people have a right to know on what basis decisions are being made: scientific advice cant happen behind closed doors. After the shambolic BSE crisis of the 1990s, when the minister of agriculture, John Gummer, asserted without scientific justification that British beef was safe to eat (and tried to enlist his reluctant daughter to prove it), a public inquiry concluded that it is vital that science advice to government be transparent and open, and that scientific advisers be able to communicate directly with the public so that people could assess whether what ministers claimed was true. That right was vigorously asserted by Sir David King when he advised the Blair government on the foot-and-mouth epidemic and on nuclear power.

It was a perceived initial lack of transparency in the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) at the start of the Covid crisis that led King to establish Independent Sage as an alternative, public-facing source of expert advice. The pandemic has also highlighted the tightrope that chief scientific officers such as Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance must walk. As civil servants, they are duty bound to support the government, and their careful chaperoning by ministers at press briefings led to questions about their independence. When government policy began to diverge markedly from scientific advice during the second wave, the tension was palpable. If a chief medical officer believes that a government policy poses a public health hazard or is downplaying dangers, then where should their allegiance lie?

There is now a strong case for reconsidering the constraints placed on scientific advisers: the top/tap dichotomy fails to acknowledge their broader responsibilities, especially in the face of irresponsible or incompetent governance. And while the idea that they refrain from explicit policy recommendations (which include value judgments) makes sense in normal times, Jonathan Birch of the London School of Economics has proposed that a mode of normatively heavy advice that does include such recommendations perhaps unconditionally (Do this) is warranted in crisis situations. Different norms apply to scientific advisers in extremis, he argues.

Whats more, the on tap model assumes a view of scientific objectivity that has long since been exploded by experts on the social roles of science. The idea that scientists can speak truth to power in a value-free manner has emerged as a myth, wrote the social scientist Sheila Jasanoff in 1990.

For one thing, scientists who join the mechanism of government but imagine they can operate untrammelled by political influences are fooling themselves. The landscape of options considered and modelled by Sage was set not by scientific considerations but by political diktat. As Sage member John Edmunds has said: The politicians came up with [the] strategy and our job was to make it work (the strategy here being the fateful controlled herd immunity scheme). And modellers predicting the consequences of the full relaxation of restrictions in July did not compare against the baseline scenario of keeping remaining restrictions in place, because they were not asked to do so. Whitty and Vallance must, meanwhile, have recognised that Dominic Cummingss violation of lockdown rules had implications for public trust and compliance; their silence on the matter was not staying out of politics, but itself a political decision.

In its obligation to embrace fallibility and uncertainty, science is antithetical to the current mode of politics in which admissions of doubt and error are regarded as weakness. Yet it is precisely because of those attributes that science is vulnerable to exploitation for political agendas. Studying US policies on cancer risks, Jasanoff concluded that the adversarial style of regulatory decision-making polarises scientific opinion and prevents the resolution of disputes. Far from promoting consensus, knowledge fed into such a process risks being fractured along existing lines of discord, she wrote three decades ago. Dont we know it now.

That consideration exposes, too, the fundamental problem with any notion of rule by science we have to ask: Which science? Where there is lack of scientific consensus, science risks becoming a tool not for informing but for justifying policies. One of the most striking aspects of the denialist movements around Covid-19, vaccines and climate change is how sceptics position themselves as the true rationalists, parading cherrypicked data in support of fringe views. And they can always find experts with superficially plausible qualifications (including Nobel prizes) to support them, just as Johnson could convene a panel of lockdown-sceptic scientists to justify his procrastination last autumn.

But even good-faith experts will disagree, not least because different disciplinary expertise creates different perspectives. The problem is rendered worse by the persistent hierarchy of the sciences that privileges the hard disciplines virology over social sciences, say. Technocrats prefer hard fixes: witness how in China, leaders such as Hu Jintao trained as engineers to seek solutions to social problems of water resource management in gargantuan techno-projects. Some say our pandemic response was too much led by hard epidemiological modelling and lacked adequate input from public health experts.

So the choice of expert matters hugely. Cummingss enthusiasm for more science-based policymaking sounded all very well until you recognised his tendency to capriciously anoint handpicked geniuses (sometimes mavericks). His reliance on the mathematician Tim Gowers to see why the herd immunity policy in early 2020 was catastrophically wrong was arbitrary and opaque to scrutiny. Gowers happens to be very smart (and was right), but plenty of experts in public health and epidemiology were already screaming into the void about that mistaken plan.

This article comes from Saturday,the new print magazine from the Guardianwhich combines the best features, culture, lifestyle and travel writing in one beautiful package. Available now in the UK and ROI.

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In the end, we rightly elect politicians to make decisions and judgments, and not simply to enact what experts or data seem to dictate. As the sociologists Harry Collins and Robert Evans have put it: Democracy cannot dominate every domain that would destroy expertise and expertise cannot dominate every domain that would destroy democracy. As a scientist, I dont want to see scientists on top or on tap. Mature leaders, irrespective of their training, who respect science for what it is a social system for arriving at reliable but contingent knowledge, based on data, embracing error and uncertainty and diversity of opinion will not struggle to put it to good use. All we need to do is elect them.

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Should scientists run the country? - The Guardian

Reviewing something like 'Midnight Mass' can be difficult, because you want people to see it, but you want people to see it in the way you - as a reviewer - saw it.

That is to say, completely bereft of any kind of foreknowledge. That said, it's easy enough to do these days, such is the glut of TV shows, movies, podcasts, that you could very easily ignore the mass of it and pick and choose as you go. But more than that, you want to be able to go in without any kind of preconceived notions. Mike Flanagan has built a steady career of emotionally wrought horrors, and has made two of the strongest Stephen King adaptations in years - 'Doctor Sleep', the sequel to 'The Shining', and 'Gerald's Game' with Carlo Gugino and Bruce Greenwood for Netflix. Right there, with that knowledge, you go into 'Midnight Mass' expecting that emotionally wrought horror and, sure enough, that's what you get.

What's frustrating about 'Midnight Mass' is that for the first three episodes, it exists in this kind of liminal space where we're not fully sure what's happening. The ambiguity of it is fascinating, not to mention how 'Midnight Mass' deals with religiosity, rationalism, faith, science, personal accountability versus divine intervention, and all of it is done through a very human lens. Zach Gilford's character is a husk, and the scenes he shares with the charismatic young priest, Hamish Linklater, are powerfully done in their minimalism. It's just the two of them, knocking it back and forth, and you can really see the time and effort writer / director Mike Flanagan has put into getting these two actors to absorb their characters. Throughout these episodes, the groundwork is being laid for something to be revealed and you can feel it coming, slowly but surely, but when it does happen, chances are it's going to split people right down the middle.

Maybe it's just Irish audiences would know not to trust anything relating to Catholicism out of hand, but there's something in The Big Reveal that feels a little bit too obvious. Initially, when it happens, it almost feels like something of a cop-out. But, it's to the credit of the writing that as it progresses into the fourth and fifth episode, you begin to understand that there's a lot baked into Catholicism and religion generally that could easily be misconstrued in such a way as to allow someone into the way of thinking that the priest character has. More than that, you can see how others get sucked in as well. This is the core of what 'Midnight Mass' is about - that, on a surface level, religion and faith can be of service to people and it can provide a measure of comfort and solace to those who need it. Yet, because it's people, and people are people, that then becomes shifted and turned into something terrible.

Like 'The Haunting of Hill House' and 'Bly Manor', there's a stately pace to how the story unfolds and you'll often find an episode zeroes in on a two-hander scene between Kate Siegel and Zach Gilford, or Hamish Linklater. Far and away, Hamish Linklater gives a stunning performance as the priest and you can't help but be swept up in it all as the people on the island are. Likewise, Zach Gilford's performance is harrowing in its vulnerability, while Samantha Sloyan is just aggravatingly self-righteous in the role of Bev. The melodrama can get too much at times, and there's a lot of 'Midnight Mass' that gets way too heavy-handed after the third episode. Yet, by all accounts, 'Midnight Mass' is a darkly familiar fable of the hope and loss of faith in modern times.

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The less you know going into 'Midnight Mass', the better - entertainment.ie

Throughout the covid pandemic, there has been a constant concern that the public would be the weak point in the responseeither unwilling or psychologically unable to abide by the measures necessary to control the spread of infection.

Sometimes, this concern has been expressed in specific (and racist) cultural terms. The freedom-loving British public, according to the government and others, would not wear the measures accepted by more conformist Asian societies. [1] In particular, we would not wear masks as (say) the Chinese are accustomed to do.

There is an irony in this claim, and also a profound misunderstanding of cultural practices as rooted in some timeless essence. For there is nothing traditional about Chinese mask wearing. Indeed, the imposition of masks was a deliberate political intervention by the Chinese Communist Party after 1949 as a symbolic break with tradition and a sign of modernity. [2] Equally, in the UK, the supposedly ingrained cultural aversion to masks very quickly evaporated once mask-wearing measures were introduced.

In June 2020, YouGov published an article which highlighted the British populations unique reluctance to wear face masks: only 21% of UK respondents indicated that they were covering their faces in public. In July 2020, masks became obligatory in shops and supermarkets in England. In August 2020, the ONS Coronavirus and the social impacts on Britain survey reported that 96% of adults were wearing masks.

At other times, concerns about public fragility have been expressed as a disdain for human psychology in general, our supposed inability to act rationally, especially in a crisis, and to put up with restrictions for any length of time. Most notoriously the notion of behavioural fatigue was used to delay lockdown in March 2020.

Once again, there is an irony to this claim which was hotly disputed by psychologists and other behavioural scientists as having no scientific status and which was soon debunked by the remarkable levels of resilience during the eventual lockdowneven in the face of considerable adversity. [3,4]

However, fatigue is one of those zombie ideas which has the ability to come back and bother us, no matter how many times it is killed off. Even as levels of adherence (and particularly of mask-wearing) stay stubbornly high, I have been asked by the media at least weekly throughout the pandemic whether people are about to grow tired and abandon all caution in the face of the pandemic. The question was posed with particular intensity in the autumn of 2020 after SAGE mooted a circuit-breaker. It was posed in early 2021 when soaring cases led to a new lockdown. In each instance the response was the same (including in these pages): no, fatigue is not the issue; people are still adhering to measures, they are ahead of the Government in wanting robust measures, and if they are behaving in ways that spread the virus it is less because of psychological motivations than structural constraintsbeing required to go into work, lacking the resources to self-isolate. [5]

And now, once more, groundhog day is upon us. Just as the governments winter plan moots the possibility of reimposing masks in certain spaces should the pandemic run still further out of control (as if 30,000 cases, nearly 1,000 hospitalisations a day and nearly 1,000 hospitalisations a week is not already enough to take action), The Guardian reports recent official figures with a screaming headline: More than 4m stopped wearing masks in Britain, ONS data shows. [6,7] Surely, even if it has taken much longer than expected, this is compelling evidence that people have finally run out of resilience and that there is no point in reinstituting covid measures since the population will simply ignore them?

What the data actually show, however, is that the percentage of people saying that they are wearing a mask in public at least some of the time has fallen from 98% to 89% between May and September. While that is indeed a significant drop, perhaps the more significant aspect of the data is that 9 in 10 people are still wearing masks even though the requirement to wear masks was largely removed in July. This is matched by more recent ONS data showing that 80% of UK respondents would support mask wearing becoming a requirement if hospitalisations rise. [8] It is also matched by unpublished data showing that, in early September, some 75% of respondents felt it was important to keep covid measures in place and 85% who felt it was important to wear face coveringsboth an increase on the July/August figures. This reflects a more general tendency for public attitudes to track levels of infection.

All in all, then, the bottom line is that it is still wrong to use the growing, but still small minority who are refusing masks to obscure the large minority who are not, or to assume that public fatigue is a reason to abandon protective policies. It is not only wrong, but dangerous since, as I have previously argued and as ever more research shows, peoples assumptions about others mask-wearing (and adherence more generally) influences their own behaviour. Indeed, even if individuals believe in the importance of masks, they wont wear them if they think others are not. [9]

However, having stressed this bottom line, it does remain true that mask wearing is slipping and that it is important to address the factors which impact levels of adherence. One is simple accessibility. People fail to wear masks either because they cant afford them or because they forget them. One study in Oslo found that distribution of free masks outside shops cut non-usage by nearly two-thirds from 8.3% to 2.9%. [10]

Another factor is perceived need. While adherence to mask-wearing often declines with time, it has less to do with fatigue than with a sense of declining risk, for if there is no risk, why wear a mask? [11,12] Hence messaging about the importance of masks as an efficacious means of stopping infections is critical. When government indicates that infection doesnt really matter (being unconcerned at the possibility of cases spiralling after the removal of restrictions on July 19th) it undermines the rationale for actions that limit infection. [13] But messaging is not only about what you say, it is equally about what you do. To tell others to wear masks in crowded spaces, but not to wear masks yourselves is a powerful signal that masks are not important. [14]

Perhaps most critically of all, policy and messaging are not separate things. Policy is messaging. It indicates the importance of a behaviour. That is why exhortations to wear masks in the summer of 2020 had little effect until legislation was introduced (leading, as we have seen, to compliance rocketing from some 20% to some 90%). But likewise, the removal of mask requirements sent a message in the opposite direction. If we want to enhance mask-wearing we need an alignment of government comms, government actions and government policy.

Of course, messaging is of little use if one doesnt trust the messenger, which is why the (re-) establishment of trust is so critical to all interventionsand not only trust in Government authorities, but also in scientific and in medical authorities. [15,16] While we dont have the space to address this in any detail, building trust is, perhaps, the most important behavioural dimension of the pandemic responseand a paternalistic belief in the psychological incapacities of the public is hardly a good starting point for building such trust. [17]

All these various factors apply to all covid measures: we need the means to adhere, we need the information to explain its importance, we need to trust the source of information. But there is one final factor which is particularly relevant to wearing face-masks, because unlike many other behaviours which are private (getting tested, getting vaccinated, washing hands), masks are a highly salient public sign that defines the identity of the wearer (or non-wearer). [18] They have intense symbolic value and hence the meanings attributed to mask wearing become of critical importance to whether masks are worn. We choose to wear masks (or not) because of what we want to say about ourselves and also what others will assume about us.

What is more, these meanings have become highly politicised in some places. In an era of resurgent populism, the right have used masks as a core symbol of elite oppression. Masks become muzzles. [19] The requirement to wear masks becomes an act of silencing. The success of this narrative is reflected in the way that use of masks associates negatively with Trump voting in the US and with Brexit voting in the UK. [20,21]

There is nothing inevitable about such associations. As we have already seen, masks can convey very different meanings, such as modernity and scientific rationalism. At other times and in other places they have come to signify solidarity and care for others. [22] The point is that levels of mask wearing are not dependent on ingrained cultural differences, but on situated processes of meaning making. These can operate at different levels. At a societal level, the role of Government is critical. In this regard the way that the lifting of mask regulations on 19 July was described as Freedom Day was highly unfortunate, compounded by the emphasis on personal responsibility rather than our social responsibility to act in ways that protect others and make them feel safe. Indeed, it was precisely such a sense of communal concern which underlay high levels of adherence in the first lockdown and which continue to be critical in terms of mask-wearing. [23-26]

The process of sense-making is equally critical at the level of groups and local communities. How can one draw on specific values and beliefs in order to determine the meaning of wearing masks for members of these collectivities? How is mask-wearing made normative or anti-normative? This is of crucial importance since such norms are critical to adherence in general and mask-wearing in particular. [27,28]

It is clear, then, that covid adherencelike all behavioursis complex, a function of many different factors. Nonetheless, there is one simple overall conclusion to be drawn. In contrast to the discredited claims that were rife at the start of the pandemic, there is nothing inherent in human psychology which limits adherence (whether to mask-wearing or anything else) and thereby constrains politicians freedom of manoeuvre. Rather, the availability of resources, the understandings and meanings which shape action arise out of a political process. What politicians do in terms of making masks available, showing that masks are necessary and framing the meaning of mask-wearing in large part determines whether masks are worn or not.

In short, if the health secretary decides to exclude mask mandates it is not a matter of bowing to psychological reality, but of making a political choice.

Stephen Reicher, School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St. Andrews

Yasemin Ulusahin, School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St. Andrews

Competing interests: SR participates in the UKs Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies and its subgroups, and is a member of Independent SAGE. SR participates in the advisory group to the Scottish chief medical officer.

References:

1. This is a repeated theme in the evidence of Dominic Cummings to the Health and Care/Science and Technology Committees of the House of Commons on May 26t 2021: https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/2249/html/2. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/masking-for-a-friend/3. https://behavioralscientist.org/why-a-group-of-behavioural-scientists-penned-an-open-letter-to-the-uk-government-questioning-its-coronavirus-response-covid-19-social-distancing/4. https://www.kcl.ac.uk/policy-institute/assets/Coronavirus-in-the-UK-cluster-analysis.pdf5. https://www.kcl.ac.uk/policy-institute/assets/Coronavirus-in-the-UK-cluster-analysis.pdf6. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-response-autumn-and-winter-plan-2021/covid-19-response-autumn-and-winter-plan-20217. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/15/more-than-4m-stopped-wearing-face-masks-this-summer-ons-data-shows8. https://yougov.co.uk/topics/health/survey-results/daily/2021/09/15/75ec5/19. https://academic.oup.com/abm/article/55/1/82/6029785?login=true10. https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/17/8971/htm11. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15456870.2021.1951733?casa_token=SvgkoJVSObcAAAAA%3A7B-iDO-Pm_aiGFVDT_50BlaC3kDPsCfD2RJY77AZTXNvXhm3U5KVHFUDVbR9NFPzZy8dI6tvGtBmFw12. https://www.jmir.org/2020/11/e2137213. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/06/covid-cases-rise-above-100000-a-day-sajid-javid-concedes-england14. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/sep/14/one-rule-for-them-boris-johnson-criticised-maskless-cabinet-meeting15. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886921001446?casa_token=nFcuLQnKCtQAAAAA:PTueHouiLeiLRk9oMQ9w2h_u9WXS3Z8eLSy328FXV-KyQ806vCWKz_76Ows0b_iRbPStJerz9C416. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/06/american-public-health-experts-coronavirus-masks.html17. https://www.rcpe.ac.uk/college/journal/fragile-rationalist-collective-resilience-what-human-psychology-has-taught-us-about18. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1354067X2095754919. https://thetab.com/uk/birmingham/2020/08/17/your-mask-is-a-muzzle-anti-mask-protestors-march-through-the-bull-ring-4508420. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057%2Fs41302-020-00186-021. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9760261/The-Brexit-mask-divide-Leave-voters-likely-ditch-face-coverings-laws-axed.html22. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7789204/23. https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/uk-looks-set-ease-restrictions-july-19-sun-cites-pm-saying-2021-06-28/24. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/06/boris-johnson-policy-pandemic-restrictions25. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/lockdown-social-norms/26. https://pesquisa.bvsalud.org/global-literature-on-novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov/resource/pt/covidwho-128291327. https://psyarxiv.com/9whp4/28. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/spc3.12596

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On the psychology and politics of wearing masks - The BMJ - The BMJ