The Strange Victory of the Men’s Dress Reform Party

Men's Golfing Clothes in 1901, from the Sartorial Arts Journal, image via Wikipedia

Men’s dress has sunk into a rut of ugliness and unhealthiness from which… it should be rescued. [One of our] aims is the encouragement of a somewhat greater range of individual style than is possible with men’s present very stereotyped costumes.

That excerpt is from the early literature of the Men’s Dress Reform Party (MDRP), founded in 1929. Although the MDRP faded into obscurity by the outbreak of World War II, I think it is no exaggeration to say that it achieved its means – if not its ultimate aims – in our modern society.

Menswear in 1929 was very different from today: many variations existed to account for different seasonalities & settings, and clothes were generally tailored & structured. Today, most men wear similar-looking clothes under most circumstances, with the merest nods to season and occasion.

I would suggest that – contrary to the MDRP’s hopes – this has not resulted in a general increase in individual expression of style nor in an increase in beauty. The simpler, less tailored clothes of recent decades have instead encouraged most men to expend less effort on their appearance. Instead of adopting an individual style, they simply dress in a different (and less aesthetically-pleasing) stereotyped costume.

It is theoretically possible to achieve a handsome look in both tailored and less structured garments. It requires an active, self-editing and insightful approach to wardrobe selection. The uniformity and similarity of much modern mens clothes makes the pursuit of such individual style more esoteric: it requires a deliberate effort by those men wishing to pursue it.

Such men generally fall into two camps: those following fashion and those trying to rediscover elements of older tailoring traditions. Neither path is immutable: fashion follows the aesthetic vision of a house’s designer, and older traditions grew out of similar aesthetic choices made people in the past. The latter has the benefit of being a visual language familiar to a large mass of the general public whereas fashion constantly tries to create (reinvent?) a new visual language which naturally will have fewer speakers at any moment in time. But both systems can give those who want to craft a distinctive & personal visual identity the tools to do so.

As a monthly style publication of the era said of the MDRP’s goals:

Comfort and hygiene are very desirable, but that doesn’t make such things as style and dignity, and custom and suitability, any less important.

It is easy to obtain clean and comfortable clothing today, in a way that the man of 1929 would find astonishing. But the challenge for the man of today who wants to dress well has not changed: it is to select clothing that is attractive and stylish. And to be able to select wisely requires that the man bothers to learn the visual language of clothes in the first place.

For those wanting to know more about the history of the MDRP, a good summary of the its nature, members and political motivations (which included strands of Public Health Policy, Socialism, Class Conflicts and Eugenics) can be found in the relevant chapter by Barbara Burman in The Men’s Fashion Reader, edited by Peter McNeil and Vicki Karaminas.

Predicting the Future II: What the 2012 Boat Race tells us about the future role of Government

In the Oxford & Cambridge Boat Race, crews must pass through the centre arch of Barnes Bridge. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Anyone who watched the tumultuous 2012 Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race would be forgiven for viewing my last post on Predicting the Future with a degree of skepticism. Who could have predicted the trifecta of unusual events: a lone swimmer disrupting the event, a broken oar within a few strokes of a controversial restart, and the collapse of one of Oxford’s rowers after their battered boat crossed the finishing line in an undeserved second place?

Surely our hypothetical reader would be well-justified in arguing that this sequence of events underlines a chaotic and inherently unpredictable model of reality?

My response is that in fact, it supports the essential thesis of my last entry: that complexity paradoxically reduces unpredictability by reducing the scope for an individual’s directed action to influence larger scale societal events. The Boat Race, like any sporting event, is a very simplified reduction of reality. It imposes strict and arbitrary rules on the flow of events and therefore creates a simplicity that is altogether lacking in real life. It is for this reason that sports are enjoyable to participate in or watch. They offer a glimpse into a simpler time, where one man – or small group of men with common purpose – could change their fate simply through concerted effort. Of course, as in those simpler times, the trajectory of those men’s lives in sport is much more prone to events; a lone swimmer can disrupt a race between two boats on a narrow stretch of the Thames, but cannot so easily simultaneously disrupt all global shipping routes.

Complexity and globalisation create systems so fundamental to society that they have immense redundancy. Competition between providers of these systems ensures this. Where the systems are narrowest – simplest – vulnerability is highest. Returning to the example of global shipping, blowing up the Suez Canal would have significant impact and it is possible to construct a hypothetical scenerio where this could be done by relatively few people. Staying in the Middle East, the global diplomatic attention focused on Iran is in part down to their ability to (transiently) disrupt shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

If complexity is an ally of predictability through creating redundant systems, this creates significant implications for good government. The historical guiding principle behind good government is that it should manage events. By anticipating and managing global events to national advantage, it is supposed to create conditions allowing its citizens to thrive. I would suggest that as the world becomes more complex, it should become increasingly easy for governments to predict the long-term future regardless of short-term fluctuations. For instance, globalisation is making China increasingly corporatist (and thus eventually capitalist) by forcing it to invest the large capital flows that its exporting creates. It is only when a country is isolated from the impact of global events that its behaviour becomes more unpredictable: North Korea being a prime example of this.

The implications of this for the (lack of) efficacy of sanctions are interesting, suggesting that the best way to manage countries like Iran would be to drown them in global capital and make it impossible for them to act independently as they’d be slitting their own throats. This theory is not dissimilar to MAD – the Mutually Assured Destruction of the Cold War – except that the embedding of a nation in the interdependent system is done through chains of gold rather than fear.

A counter-argument would be to highlight the financial crisis of the past few years; surely that proved beyond doubt that complexity creates more risk, not less? Certainly, the complexity of the collateralised debt market created an unexpected outcome. However, the underlying trend is little changed. Individual people (and countries) have been ruined, but the overall trajectory towards an increasingly globalised world has not budged. If anything, it has been strengthened by forcing countries like China to acknowledge their increasing responsibilities in that world of globalised capital, forcing them to act in ways that support the system. The beauty is this increasing enmeshment is done voluntarily, out of national self-interest. Would we have seen China allowing the yuan to appreciate to the extent it has in the past year without the financial crisis causing them to import inflation due to US quantitative easing programmes? I think not.

If it is becoming increasingly impossible for national governments to significantly make long-term differences to a nation’s path because of the effects of increasing complexity, what should a government actually do?

We are already seeing the effects: governments are becoming more like advertisers than managers. The role of government is to sell an image of the nation to its citizens, sufficient to make them content to carry on, almost regardless of what actually happens. Of course, this has always been true to some extent. But it’s not surprising that the nature of politics has accelerated in this direction over the past 20-30 years as it is over this period that the rate of globalisation has accelerated due to increasing technological, logistical and financial sophistication.

For those unhappy with the government-as-advertiser model, there is an alternative. Government can act as national life coach instead. It can work to reframe and reconceive reality in a way that is palatable for most of its citizens and encourages them to adopt a positive attitude to maintaining a role within the system. In some ways, this is little more than a minor difference to the advertiser model, but it does at least encourage a focus on broader measures of contentedness. This is the reason we see increased attention being given by governments to concepts like national happiness indices. They are ways to measure and influence the debate around national contendedness without actually having to make significant long-term differences in outcomes. Remember, under this model the government is life coach to the nation NOT to individual citizens within it, and the best interests of the nation do not always coincide with the best interests of all its citizens.

For the individual, the lesson from the impact of complexity remains similar. If you cannot escape the complexity, it will be easier to manage your attitude to events rather to manage the events themselves. But if you can work to reduce complexity in your life, you can diminish the impact of wider events on you personally, and increase your ability to manage your personal future. It’s becoming increasingly hard for countries to do this, but individuals – for now – still have far more scope to act.

Predicting the Future: Concepts and Problems

Dr Isaac Asimov, head-and-shoulders portrait, facing slightly right, 1965 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Toss a coin into the air. What are the chances it lands heads-up?

The conventional answer is 1 in 2.

The convention is wrong.

The conventional answer simply reflects what we can easily calculate: that if the coin is perfectly balanced, and there are no other environmental factors affecting the toss, then if you toss it a very large number times, the average chance of it landing heads-up will be once in every two tosses. An equivalent way to calculate this is to take a very large number of identical, balanced coins and toss each once: half would land heads-up.

However, it is exceptionally difficult to calculate the actual outcome of a single coin toss with any degree of accuracy. Certainly, it is a virtual impossibility before the coin is in the air and only slightly more feasible (at least theoretically) once the coin is in motion. That theoretical feasibility would likely involve cameras/sensors able to track the movement of the coin in the air, and a sufficiently fast computer simulation of the physics involved to be able to project an outcome an instant before the coin lands.

What does this little thought experiment tell us about probability, and about making predictions?

1. Tossing a single coin thousands of times yields equivalent predictive power to tossing thousands of coins simultaneously, assuming the coins in the second experiment are sufficiently similar (homogenous) to not bias the results.
2. Even once a suitably mathematically rigorous model is developed to predict the average behaviour of an entity (or of a sufficiently homogenous population), predicting what actually happens becomes harder and more complicated the narrower the timeframe and the smaller the unit being observed.

While it may seem that I am belabouring very simple mathematical & scientific principles, these two points are highly counter-intuitive to most attempts we make to predict human behaviour. The internal model of people that we tend to adopt is that individual members of society (including ourselves) are unique, and that extensive study of their singular natures is required to predict how they might act. Even then, we assume that our predictions will only hold in the short-term where fewer variables have time to interfere. An expression of what happens in the mind when these incorrect beliefs coalesce is the vanity of the fundamental attribution error, wherein our own motives seem rational & pure and those of others irrational & base.

In fact, people are both simpler and more similar than we like to believe. The reason for this is that we apply conscious thought to our actions in a much more limited fashion than is generally accepted. This should not be controversial: just try remembering the exact details of your last commute to work, and then tell me you are were acting in a fully conscious manner at the time! And yet, most people rail against such an interpretation of their lives.

It does however have advantages. Unconscious actions tend to be more automatic, and therefore more predictable, than conscious ones. Give people time and opportunity to actively choose a course of action, and they can react in surprising ways. But keep them moving on a path that requires relatively less choice, and their potential range of action diminishes. This theory of behaviour becomes extremely useful when thinking about how large groups of people may act. The complexity of societal structure itself is an exceptionally good narcotic agent on the conscious mind: it funnels and moulds our actions in a deep manner, subtly constraining our choices at every step while still providing the illusion of choice.

The beauty of this effect is that it leads to a surprising conclusion: societies – and the people within them – are MORE predictable the larger and more complex they are. Simple small societies bring us closer to the level of a free individual, and so create more opportunity for a single rationally-thinking person to make changes. Large, intertwined societies tend to blur the effect of a single person, reducing the noise affecting the signal indicating the direction of travel of the society.

Irrationality thus becomes an asset to predictability, and rationality a liability. Situations are harder – not easier – to predict when too many people in a group actively attempt to cognitively reason out their next course of action. By constrast, irrationality tends to be the product of the unconscious and automatic mind, and that is much more straightforward to anticipate. The irrational action may or may not actually be helpful in achieving the group’s aim, but it is almost certainly more predictable. Any student of the human mind will confirm this pattern, whether they work as psychiatrist, psychologist, politician, salesperson, negotiator or diplomat.

Of course, I do accept that if absolutely everyone acted rationally all the time, society would be perfectly predictable. This is why the behaviour of an algorithmic computer is theoretically predictable. The difficulty is where both rationality and irrationality co-exist i.e. the human context. Here, it is the presence of rationality that creates a more disruptive effect on predictive power than irrationality. The larger and more complex the society, the less impact a small amount of rationality can have. Trends, conventions and accepted boundaries, however arbitrary, are more effective constraints of behaviour than rational argument ever can be.

Psychohistory is the fictional science created by Isaac Asimov for his Foundation series, which postulates a mathematical predictive model of society. Today, the concept is being explored (albeit in rudimentary fashion compared to Asimov’s fantastical version) through the work of a range of behavioural modellers in many disciplines, though few would apply the term psychohistory to what they do or indeed even realise that their work may in future apply to such a field. The few who consciously strive towards such a distant grand ambition have renamed themselves students of Cliodynamics. Psychohistory as a term survives instead as the study of historical and sociological trends through the lens of psychodynamic principles.

The fictional science of psychohistory, or modern cliodynamics, faces massive practical challenges. Fortunately, two of them are being gradually solved simply by the passage of time: firstly, our ability to computer simulate complex models grows exponentially with increases in processing power; and secondly, our societies become ever more complex and intertwined, limiting the impact of disruptive, rational, behaviour.

While the idea of a fully developed psychohistory of society may induce feelings of anomie or nihilism, it should be emphasised that it does not negate the individual. Individuals will still exist, exercising both rational and irrational thought just as they always have. And they’ll still have all the same illusions around choice and freedom that they always have. It would be exceptionally hard to eradicate such a useful evolutionary trait. Just like today, each of us will still prefer to believe we can control the world, while minimising the degree to which it influences us. And just like today, it will be those with a strong sense of their own identity who will be most able to adopt quiet & discreet lives where such influence is indeed minimised.

Changing Opinions

Sitting on the Fence (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

How often do you change your mind about something?

I don’t mean having difficulty deciding something and bouncing between a couple of options while doing so. I mean, once you’ve made you mind up, how often do you really change it?

If you’re like most people, the answer is, “not often”. Most people try to make big decisions in a moderately rational way. The bigger the decision, the more they try to apply logic to solve it. Small decisions like whether to order a latte or americano today, tend to be left to the more primitive parts of our brain. For the big issues, though, we like to go through a vaguely scientific process of asking a question, acquiring relevant information, balancing the information against preferred outcomes, and deciding what to do. Trouble is, most big issues are big because they’re difficult to solve logically, which means we end up having to make a final “gut instinct” judgement call in order to finally decide our opinion about the problem facing us. We end up using a heuristic rather than purely algorithmic approach; I’ve discussed such Wicked Problems before.

Heuristic problem-solving is inherently fraught with uncertainty; it’s based on a pattern-recognition approach, the validity of which varies according to the mind of the person applying the heuristic filter. Put simply, the wiser the person, the more likely they are to reach a correct result. But if the problem is truly wicked, then one can never test the result, and so we can never definitively prove who is wisest.

There are many proxy markers for wisdom, including reported or perceived happiness, wealth, position and/or influence in the eyes of others, and how well words stand the test of time. None of these is entirely satisfactory, for self-evident reasons, which means that definining wisdom itself ultimately becomes a matter of consensus and opinion. This is clearly troubling if one is concerned about creating an objective yardstick by which to measure human progress.

However, it is empowering if you are more concerned about making changes that chime in with your own personal opinion. Firstly, it allows you to define the frame of reference for success and failure. Secondly, it promotes uncertainty in other people’s decision-making, creating a space for you to influence their judgement. And lastly – if you are interested in making large-scale rather than personal changes – it provides you with a long-term tool by which to modify the broader cultural perception of what is ethically correct. As a culture, we have even given a name to this last process: Politics.

Politics is the art of persuading a sufficiently large number of people that your opinions are culturally correct. This actually applies as much to a tyranny as it does to the kinds of limited/representative democracies most readers will live in. It’s just that the violence and speed of the mechanisms of changing government that varies: revolution in the former; elections in the latter. But more than this, far-sighted politicians also understand that the optimal way of persuading people of their rightness is to modify the cultural mindset within which the choice is made. Alter the frame of reference, and you can ensure a specific answer will always emerge. This is also something tyrannies and democracies share, with only superficial differences between the two: tyrannies tend to use coercive force and single-party elections; democracies use advertising and other softer propaganda like manipulating the flow of information.

All the above is no more than I would expect an average teenager to grasp, and I actually think many do (at least on an unconscious level), even if the usual response is anomic cynicism rather than recognising the empowering potential. The more thoughtful will recognise another implication, however: even quite severe unpopularity in the short-term is irrelevant, provided you can sufficiently alter the mindset of a large enough group of people to influence their long-term cultural mindset in your favour to protect your long-term survival. This applies to individual lives as much as it does to organisations and to political parties.

Coming full circle to the start of this post, changing someone’s mind is very difficult in the short-term. Instead, you have to alter the way they make decisions. The more time you have to do this, the easier it becomes. This is partly what accounts for incumbency effect in politics: it’s harder to dislodge a known politician from a post than if two unknowns are fighting for the same position. It’s not usually that incumbents have really proven anything about whether they’re right or not; it’s just that they’ve become part of the mental furniture of voters. Even if they’re unpopular in some respects, the incumbent still usually retains a higher chance of retaining power than if they didn’t have that mindshare of reality. In a US Election year, it’s worth noting that this is a big part of the reason that most US Presidents tend to get re-elected for a second term, even if at mid-term it seems like they’re unpopular. UK politics frequently operates similarly: being in government allows you to craft the narrative in a much deeper way than being in opposition, and you can see it in many of the Budget 2012 changes being announced today (esp. personal tax statements, reducing reliefs & benefits and increasing personal allowances), despite the potential for some other changes to be unpopular in the short term. And even when the longer-term cycle of change occurs, political parties never reverse even a majority of changes imposed by their predecessors, no matter how vehemently they may have opposed them at time of their introduction.

Reality is like chewing gum: sticky but malleable.

The ultimate expression of this thesis of persuasion is that tactics should always be secondary to strategy, and that strategy should be guided by clear long-term insightful aims. Only that will allow you to gradually work on altering the perception of enough people for them to reach what you would consider correct decisions. Logic and argument is a poor convincer of anyone except a computer. Persuasion through modifying the frame of reference of the argument works much better on human beings. Next time you disagree with someone, or need to negotiate with them, remember these principles rather than attempting to argue with them. You won’t convince them today, but you might just change their mind tomorrow.

The Last Generation

Countdown to Singularity, Image via Wikipedia

Are we the last generation of humanity?

One of the unique aspects of human consciousness is a desire to understand the nature of our reality. This has manifested itself across all domains of life: spiritual, scientific, psychological, and philosophical. As a species, we are blessed with a deep dissatisfaction with whatever our current circumstances may be, leading to a drive to improve our quality of life. This has lead to the rise and fall of civilisations and religions across the ages. Distinct from this waxing and waning of interpersonal systems has been a much more steady rise in our technological sophistication. Of course there have been hiatus, often caused by an influx of newcomers into a rigid society e.g. the arrival of the Sea Peoples leading to Bronze Age collapse, or the fall of the Roman Empire due to political infighting during a period of external pressure from the Goths. Similar patterns can be detected in civilisations across the globe. But while the collapse of societal structures have delayed technological progress, they have never been able to fully press the reset button, and so sophistication accumulates.

It has been suggested that such progress is logarithmic, leading inevitably to the development of a technological singularity at which time mankind would be able to design an artificial intelligence greater than its own. Beyond this point, such superintelligences become able to improve themselves faster than man can understand, leading to an unpredictable and rapidly-evolving future. The idea is old, stretching back to the 19th century, but has received much greater attention and publicity over the past quarter-century. Theories abound as to whether singularity is possible, and whether the implications will be transformative or apocalyptic for humanity.

What is certain is that recent technological progress has done nothing to suggest that the theory is fundamentally flawed. Almost every day brings stories of startling new discoveries. For instance, it is now possible to read what another person is thinking, at least in a very rudimentary fashion. Is it really so far-fetched to assume that at some point, the technology to do so will be refined, miniaturised and made portable?

Consider your mobile phone, and how it would have seemed the height of science fiction even 30 years ago to suggest everyone would be routinely carrying around such incredibly powerful and versatile devices. It does not seem unlikely to me that such technology would continue to advance and become so integrated into our lives that it becomes integrated into our bodies, with displays directly interfacing with our retinas. Science fiction? Only just. There are already more than a dozen electronic prosthetic retinas in various stages of development and clinical trials, with an aim of restoring sight to the blind. While still primitive, money and time have a way of solving most difficulties, and both have been made available to these devices. The next obvious step would be using such technology to augment vision, instead of merely to restore it.

Even if we do not go down the road of cybernetic implants, it seems irrefutable that our degree of technological immersion will advance in other ways. Our entertainment systems, our cars, our phones, our very ability to acquire and process new information: all are already heavily influenced by electronic networks. It seems almost irrelevant whether they become physically part of us; they are already mentally – and emotionally – part of us.

The great hope of many transhumanists is that technological singularity and our increased integration with electronic networks will lead to a form of immortality, at least of consciousness. This has the vague air of eschatological myth, albeit built upon scientific hopes rather than religious ones. One might even describe this unconscious desire for ego dominance over death as a power phantasy.

I am not so convinced; everything I see suggests we are on a path to a very different kind of existence, with potential for a signifiant degree of self-actualisation within its broader scope.

Unfortunately, I do rather suspect the transhumanists are over-optimistic on the timeline. They suggest singularity sometime around the middle of this century or a little later i.e. within my lifetime, with luck and good health. I have a sneaking suspicion that it will arrive somewhat later. I will have to make do with other ways of seeking Jungian individuation.

Strange to think that my generation may be the last to need to do so.

Crowning Glories

From Masks to Helmets; specifically the Corinthian, Illyrian and Arcadian/Laconian types pictured from left to right in this photograph taken in the Benaki Museum, Athens. Helmets are of course primarily defensive pieces of armour, but their decoration reveals their auxiliary function identifying friend from foe on the battlefield. Massed ranks of soldiers uniformly attired also have a psychological effect, inspiring what modern tacticians might call “shock and awe” in the opposition, and boosting courage in the wearer.

A uniform also lends an identity to the wearer, sometimes the most important identity a person possesses if they are young and as yet unformed. This graveyard stele (right), photographed in the National Archaeology Museum in Athens, depicts the tomb’s inhabitant, an Athenian soldier.

The accompanying inscription tells the reader that the man died young, in service, and without a family of his own. Wearing his uniform in perpetuam on the stele gives his death some deeper meaning, a tradition we continue to this day with flags, poppies and other symbols of military Remembrance.

Society is generally good at creating roles for its constituent members. Regardless of what sociopolitical system is in place, their continued operation depends on the consent of the population being governed. The Greeks recognised four main systems: tyranny, oligarchy, timocracy and democracy, but were more open-minded than we tend to be today about which system is “best” for the population, and about what metric is optimally suited to define “best”. Regardless, even the most tyrannical regime depends of the consent of a critical mass of its population to survive. Without this, revolution ensues, as the populations of several Arab countries would attest to this year.

People generally like being assigned a role by society, even if the role is to be an angry outsider. It gives them the luxury of a pre-fabricated identity, and saves them the effort to trying to create an identity of their own. Society also benefits, because most people given a social identity tend to be quite predictable in their actions and will reinforce the status quo of the polity governing them. Deciding on one’s own identity/meaning – the process of psychological integration Jung called individuation – is a never-ending process with uncertain outcome.

Nonetheless, it does offer the prospect of defining a more profound and personal meaning. This votive relief (below) depicts an athlete crowning himself with a wreath; the holes show where a metal wreath was attached. It is an appropriate image to end this post with; the ultimate symbolic seizing of one’s own destiny.

Sex Symbols in Jewellery

Ancient fertility images routinely depict the pregnant female. This Greek Neolithic gold pendant can be interpreted as a schematic symbolic representation of this form, with the two protuberances at the top of the circular “belly” forming breasts. Adjacent to it in the National Archaeology Museum in Athens are these more obviously symbolic pendants:

It is not surprising to discover phallic and ktenic symbolism in ancient jewellery, when the creation of new life was viewed as a miraculous divine event. What is more amusing to note is that these Neolithic trinkets set the pattern for human jewellery down the ages. The simplified female form of the pendant in the first image became the necklace and the ring, and the phallic central pendant of the second image remains with us in earrings.

Of course, we have attached new symbolic meanings to these items. When a new culture subsumes an older one, it assimilates it, grafting sanitised new meanings to any older habits/traditions that are too deeply ingrained to expunge. Thus, the ring becomes a symbol of eternal union, rather than the fertility symbol of old. More controversially, phallic pendants become religious keepsakes, such as crucifixes.

Since Freud, psychiatrists are often said to see sexual symbols where there are none. These Neolithic items suggest that it is the wider population that has stopped seeing phallic-ktenic imagery where it previously existed. Thousands of years of cultural development have overlaid new meanings and more complex symbolism onto older, simpler forms. But the forms remain and therefore at some deeper level, so do the original meanings.

Think of that next time you pop on a ring, or a pair of earrings. And don’t get me started on the symbolism of piercings…

The Meanings of Masks

What do you see in the above image?

If you’re anything like me, your first thought is “ritual cultic mask”.

In fact, it is thought more likely to be protective headgear worn during metal-working in Bronze Age Greece. The mask is one of many I saw displayed on a recent visit to the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. It is interesting that my preconceptions/mental associations of Ancient Greece as a powerful mystical cultural source led to my assuming the mask had an equally mystical role. It’s amusing to see one’s own assumptions turned on their head; it encourages further thought.

Masks are commonly thought of as means of disguise; a way to conceal identity from detection. But in fact, they can also be used to create identity. Think of the masks used in Greek theatre or Japanese Kabuki, both designed to evoke the spirit of a character and so allow the observer to know how to react to their stage antics. Think also of Venetian carnival masks, used in a more permissory manner to give the wearer freedom from their normal responsibilities; a license to be licentious.

Masks are also commonly used in funerary rites, especially in earlier eras (though the art of the modern mortician could be thought of as continuing this ritual remaking of the dead). The Mycenean golden death mask below is also from the Athenian National Archaeological Museum, and has the rare feature of depicting the dead person with eyes open:

The death mask illustrates another role of masks: to transform the person wearing the mask into something else. The image below from the Benaki Museum in Athens is not a mask (it’s a garment buckle) but my reflection in the cabinet’s glass while taking the photo neatly replaces my own face by the Gorgon’s face (you can just about see my shirt collar below). Another masked transformation of sorts…

Masks can therefore be co-opted as disguises, as emotional guides, and as transforming agents. And of course, they are deployed in a metaphorical way during our daily lives, as we mould our words and actions to suit different circumstances, sometimes suppressing our inner thoughts to do so.

On that note, I will end by quoting American author Clifton Fadiman on the risks of our using self-created masks too often:

For most men life is a search for the proper manila envelope in which to get themselves filed.

Rebuilding Greece

As global markets rise on the hope that the Eurozone may finally be mustering the courage to grasp the political nettle of the problems generated by a single monetary policy but multiple fiscal polices, it seems appropriate to post this photograph of the Parthenon being rebuilt. Taken during a recent break I enjoyed in Athens & the Ionian island of Kefalonia, the imagery of the Parthenon gradually being reconstructed, reversing the damage caused by years of neglect, resonates neatly with the wider challenge faced by the Greeks.

This was my first visit to Greece in many decades, and much has changed. Despite its current woes, it is undoubtedly a richer and more sophisticated country than I remembered. It has benefited from the influx of funds brought about by EU membership and the cheap borrowing costs it initially experienced as a Eurozone member. The debt has caught up with it and my personal opinion is that all the current austerity measures & bailouts are simply buying time to manage a more definitive restructing of the debt in due course. Call it a default if you prefer, for that is what it will be in effect, but it will be done in a contained way once the rest of the Eurozone has finally erected sufficient economic defences to calm any subsequent financial concern.

Greece itself faces a long period of reconstruction. It is a proud country, with a glorious past (some aspects of which I intend to blog about soon) but it must realise that many of its current problems are of its own making. Poor tax collection, profligate spending and overgenerous public sector conditions are an unsustainable and toxic mix.

I witnessed first-hand the anger and sorrow that the population are feeling. From large protest marches watched over by riot police, to individual stories of woe such as the young museum worker who hadn’t been paid in four months, Greece is struggling to transition. The risk is of an increasingly angry population causing severe unrest requiring military intervention, and a subsequent coup. This may seem outlandish speculation but it is only a few decades since Greece was under military rule. With the current political class widely reviled, it may not take much more pressure for the public to permit a coup.

The following images of the Parthenon show more of the restoration work taking place. I hope the Greeks can manage to rebuild their country with equal care.

“Can I borrow a match?”

Bond aficionados will already be quoting back the next lines in From Russia with Love,

“I use a lighter”

“That’s better still”

“Until they go wrong.”

However, in this case of Cold War spy shenanigans, the match may be better used to torch the outfits rather than as part of a coded exchange. The photo is of an East German Stasi agent demonstrating disguises for his superiors. It’s strange to think that the once-terrifying Stasi secret police are now kitsch internet humour fodder.

The full slideshow can be found at this link, and are from a Berlin exhibition of previously highly classified photographs, but here are a couple more, just for giggles:

I’ve previously talked a lot about how clothes can help define your identity, but let’s just say I didn’t have this sort of thing in mind…!

Mind you, I’m sure I’ve seen the guy on the right typing up a novel on an Mac in a coffee shop recently…