the Green Party manifesto

Okay, so this isn't technically a book, but it's long enough and interesting enough and important enough that I'm going to do a post about it anyway. The full document, outlining and explaining the Green Party's policies for the UK's general election of earlier this month, is freely available here as an 84-page pdf file. As an avid supporter of the party, I'd accrued a strong familiarity with their policymaking intentions, and I already had a substantial overlap between the visions and values underpinning them and the relevant aspects of my worldview. Of all the prominent parties in the UK the Greens alone are presenting concrete steps toward a complete philosophical overhaul of our broken system, showing the roads we might take to an alternative future for the way we construct our society and economy. I know it's a bit late to persuade anyone to vote for them now, since the predictable bunch of established interests held and even expanded their powerful grip on our unfortunate society. But today I'm having the weekend off uni work (following a horrific exam on Friday) and was feeling glum about the state of current events so I reread the manifesto in its entirety to remind me of some of the things I believe can and should be done, and the reasons why. I'm not going to list them or even overview them here. There's a link to the full manifesto above, go give it a read if you, like me, are disillusioned with the 'main parties'.
   Political engagement is an act of freedom, an act of collective hope and progressive change. Environmental and international global peace is achievable, sustainable economic prosperity for all is achievable, social liberty that empowers and includes everyone is achievable. But we need to start voting for it, and we also need to push for the way we vote to change (check out the Electoral Reform Society, who do some great prominent campaigns to this end), and most importantly we need to realise that democracy is more than just voting. To be an active citizen is to be an activist; organise, educate, mobilise, protest, be involved in problem-solving and reproaching our leaders, we must as a society learn how to create and maintain stable communities, to challenge oppression of all kinds, to run markets and institutions in ways that benefit the most people rather than a few and without ruining the planet, we must be willing to learn new ways of thinking about and doing things and ready to implement them. And yes, this model of being an active citizen sounds like a lot of work, because unfortunately it is. Society is thoroughly messed up and since democracy is (ostensibly) the best form of government it falls to all of us together to try and get it back on track. But this transition is doable. Many are held back by selfishness, laziness, short-sightedness, or most commonly, the pressures of their own place in this broken world, from properly engaging with the struggle for justice. You probably won't agree with everything in the Green Party manifesto (even I don't) but you may agree with enough of their analysis of the wrongs of the world and the need to right them, and to do this, we need the widespread and active support and engagement of people, and giving that to humanity is far more important than giving your vote to any particular party.*


* Although the Green Party's policy aims make it the most consistent with the general struggle for justice, and so as an activist I do still urge you to support them.

What?

Is this book by Mark Kurlansky one of the most genuinely thought-provoking things I've ever read? Does its author, in his desperate emphasis on the primacy of questioning things, literally phrase every sentence in the entire book (including contents, acknowledgements, and all) as a question? While this may seem to be the sort of thing that would become quickly irritating, is his writing style not so eloquent and cheery and the persistence of his running circles around the reader's mind with new and better questions, beckoning them, as they easily can, to follow him onwards, not sufficient to in fact maintain the brilliance of the book? Is the overall effect dramatically horizon-widening, refreshing, exciting?

   What kinds of questions does he ask? Does he ask roughly twenty of them? Am I about to list them?
   How to begin?
   How many?
   How?
   Why?
   What?
   So?
   Nu?
   Where?
   When?
   Isn't it?
   Thralls?
   Huh?
   Is this unlucky?
   Brooklyn?
   Who?
   What did Freud want?
   Should I?
   Do I dare?
   Where are you going?
   What do we hate about children?
   Can it not be argued that he in fact asks many more questions than these, and these are simply the chapter titles restraining the swells and eddies of his thought from spilling out into pure chaotic askiness? (Is that a word? Does it matter? I'm allowed to make them up sometimes, aren't I?) Are these boundaries helpful in steering our way through certain concepts such as the self, existence, and other people's input on our life? Together do they flow, with almost imperceptible seams, as a single winding thread teaching us the value and application of human inquiry?

   Throughout the exercise how does he guide us? How does he draw heavily in places on the great thinkers such as Plato, Confucius, Jesus, René Descartes, Shakespeare, Ernest Hemingway, Friedrich Nietzsche, Emily Dickinson, and many others, who in their contributions to philosophy or art or religion were not only answer-givers but primarily and perhaps more importantly question-askers? Are the profound expositions of mystery that these thinkers left behind not answers to the fundamental questions but the mere process of asking the right questions? By this do we find the mystery and let it lead us where our thoughts may? In asking these sorts of questions are we prompted to become better with our own mental reality in seeking joy, with our own human sociality in engaging empathetically, with our own ethical propensity in striving for peace? If more people asked these sorts of questions would everyone be better?

   Does the book open and close with, in German and English respectively, a gorgeous portion of prose from the poet Rilke about the value of asking things? Are we not left with a deep sense of this value by the book itself? Does it enlighten us about the need to be philosophical, the essentiality of inquisitiveness in what it means to be human and to communicate or create? Did I mention that every chapter is also prefaced by a thought-provoking-in-itself little illustration? Would you appreciate those?
   Did I, having bought this book a while ago considering it to be a mere fanciful amusement, then when opening and beginning it last night, suddenly flood with respect for Mark Kurlansky and his daringness to ask so many questions and his comfort and being so good at doing so? Is it strange that though I was meant to be going to sleep and planned on only reading a short while, I got so sucked into the book while reading it aloud that I finished it there and then in one delightful sitting? Why would that be strange if it is such a potent little book?

   Is it true that he actually finishes this book with a simple statement to conclude (do I mean conclude? or do I just mean park where they have come to rest and allow the reader to continue asking if they will?) the roving streams of questions? What is the value in his doing so? Is it because, simply pragmatically, if we are to not only be excellent thinkers, but also adequate doers from time to time, we not only need the innate habit of asking but also to take the occasional answer as good enough for now?

   Should you also read this book to see what I'm on about?

   Yes.

Slowly, slowly, slowly, said the sloth

This book by Eric Carle (of Very Hungry Caterpillar fame) is, yes, a children's book. I have no idea why it is on my university bookshelf, but there we go, it was, and I bemusedly gave it a read over breakfast. It's peak essay season and it's been a while since I read anything on paper other than academic philosophy or economics, so this was a very welcome change.

   The book follows a sloth's perpetual struggle to be recognised by his fellow animals as legitimately purposeful given how slowly (naturally) he does things. Slowly, he crawls along a branch, eats a leaf, falls asleep, and wakes up again. He hangs upside-down all day and night, even in the rain. A howler monkey asks him why he's so slow; a caiman why so quiet, an anteater why so boring. Finally a jaguar asks him why he is so lazy and our eponymous hero snaps. The sloth slowly thinks about a response, and then proceeds to explain (using an impressively extensive list of synonyms for 'slow') that his tranquil modes of conduct are not indicative of laziness, but of a calmer approach to life; he enjoys taking his time to think about things and do them thoroughly and carefully at an unhurried pace, so that he can better appreciate them. Quite a positive mellow message, which I found at considerable odds with my mindset as I read it - today I've finished bashing out the last 4000 words of my final economics essay, and so the whole day has been quite an unslothlike rush of effort.

   The illustrations are great; textured patches and splashes of colour making up a wide cast of rainforest animals (there's a double-page spread at the back of every animal that features), which include such exotic highlights as the tapir, armadillo, and hoatzin. Also, there's a short foreword by legendary zoologist Jane Goodall about her love for sloths. While this bit was not quite as child-readable (she goes into some depth explaining certain aspects of sloth behaviour), I as a nature-fan still found it very enjoyable and enlightening. Did you know that sloths only poo and wee once a week? And they can swim!
   Anyway. As a twenty-one year old scatterbrained eccentric I am in no real position to properly recommend children's books, but I rather liked reading this one, and as a child I was always a fan of animals and pictures, and this book has them both in delightful spades, tied together with a message for us all to slow down.