Monday 30 March 2020

The prophet is Nicholas but the emperor may have no clothes on at all


I’d like to explore two interrelated themes.

First theme. One of the “1066 and all that” historical factoids from my childhood was that King Canute commanded the tide to about turn. As presented to us in school  the intended message was about hubris, about the folly of the arrogance and stupidity that accompanies absolute power. Later on I learned that the situation was completely otherwise, and it was actually the king making a bit of a song and dance about admitting his powerlessness against God and nature, showing off his humility to his courtiers. Not such a juicy story of regal silliness after all.

Oh, and another thing about him. Back in the day, his name was spelled Canute, which was more obvious to pronounce and less typographically risky than the later preferred spelling.

Which leads us directly to the present day and first of all to Nicholas Nassim Taleb, author of such popular works as “The Black Swan” (2007) and “Antifragile” (2012), both highly pertinent to the present crisis. Our current black swan is not so much the coronavirus itself – we’ve had pandemic viruses before - but the almost unbelievable effects it has had on the entire planet, the deaths, the suffering, the destruction of livelihoods and of economies. I wonder, did anyone foresee the ramifications, the scale?

The most powerful man in the world, Donald J. Trump, some time ago declared that the US will be over the worst by Easter. I really hoped he was right, I really did, and at the most optimistic estimate he might just be, although the situation in parts of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and other states strongly suggests otherwise. Thus entirely voluntarily he invited his own Canute moment. He has since claimed that his comments were “aspirational”, that a false victory would be worse than no victory at all, and that it’s going to take rather longer. Perhaps, at last, he has realised that he is danger of being revealed as an emperor without clothes, no more powerful than the rest of us. Not good in an election year.

Second theme. Trends in recent times have been towards what Taleb calls fragility. A couple of instances. (1) Orthographically, Canute becomes Cnut – not important in itself, but symptomatic of a tendency; errors become less forgiving, more dangerous. (2) The massive (and some would say massively ugly) Forth rail bridge, built in 1890, continues – as it were - to go forth, while the slimline road bridge next door, built in 1964, has had its day. A startling physical representation of the issue; progress of a kind, but the result is that with the newer construction less is needed to go wrong before disaster or decay overtakes. Cleverer engineering; more style, less substance; added vulnerability. Take your choice.

OK, some drastic over-simplification with some random examples, but the common theme boils down to more or less the same thing - unwise parsimony as summarised by the expression “don’t put all your eggs in one basket”. In less colloquial language, in “Antifragile”, Taleb says “We have been fragilizing the economy, our health, political life, education, almost everything … by suppressing randomness and volatility”. So another angle on antifragility is that, while there is often a single most efficient way of doing something, to deny variety is to damage one’s survivability if things turn hostile. We adore efficiency, especially when it equates to profit. We plump for what seems the best option. Natural, but not entirely wise.

The trend is towards unwise slimming down, towards false economies, to corner cutting, to a loss of the robustness that comes with spare capacity, built-in redundancy, and adequate fail-safe mechanisms. 

There’s a trend also towards guaranteed obsolescence and waste. When I was growing up, if something broke, you (or your dad) mended it, after a fashion, and you could continue using it. Some small thingummyjig could be purchased from the local shop and inserted. Today, when something breaks, when – perhaps because it’s sealed in a plastic module and its workings are as incomprehensible as they are invisible - it cannot be repaired, it is completely and irretrievably broken, the whole thing, totally knackered, even if it’s just one tiny component that has failed – as, perhaps, it was designed to. So, it all gets thrown away - ultimately, we have learned, in many cases, providing something for marine creatures to get their teeth into. Then we buy a replacement, and so it goes on, same old mistake. 

Until one day when a replacement can’t be had for love nor money.

As the coronavirus crisis worsens everywhere, here in the UK the demand for ventilators and other life-saving equipment highlights the folly of making ourselves so vulnerable. Not, perhaps, that this particular requirement could realistically have been anticipated on this scale, and it’s probably unfair to pick on this, but more generally. Spreading things too thin. For strategically crucial items – not just in healthcare but in all aspects of our lives – there should never be a single source, a single supply chain, a single technology that permits of no alternatives or easy work-arounds. If any of these sources and systems fail, for whatever reason – disease, economic collapse, political hostility, criminality, warfare – the results can be catastrophic. Crudely, one thing buggers up everything else, the much derided domino effect. We should have learned that by now, the hard way. I hope so.

When we eventually recover from this terrible predicament we must reconfigure our economy and our industries to encourage greater self-sufficiency, to enhance robustness, and - to use Taleb’s word - to increase anti-fragility. Or, to use more familiar words, to be guided by safety and common sense. We must avoid dependency upon a single supplier, whether of raw materials, intermediate components, or finished products. 

The same proviso of robustness goes for all kinds of infrastructures and technologies, including those contributing to our intellectual, social and cultural lives. Never believe that the internet or some of its principal applications couldn’t have their black swan moment, their own version of the coronavirus. 

We must never allow ourselves to be this vulnerable again; we must always retain control, whether as countries or individuals. Or we will find ourselves in a situation where the emperor, naked as the day he was born, commands: “Alexa, Siri, shoot me in both feet”, only to hear the reply “Emperor, with respect sir, you’ve done that already. Now sir, it’s getting very dark. Would you like me to enable your light switch for you?”

Friday 27 March 2020

A “Havengore” moment


Last night at 8 o’clock I, like millions of others, stood outside the front door and clapped, expressing thanks to the NHS for the wonderful work they are doing, many of them in horrendous and distressing circumstances, many of them risking their own lives, during this crisis.

Though it was absolutely the right thing to do, it felt odd, not the sort of thing that English people of a certain age would do, but once one realised that other neighbours were also clapping, the self-consciousness went and the spirits lifted. We all knew that we are in this together. 

I was reminded, strangely, of that haunting moment 55 years ago when the Thamesside dock cranes dipped in acknowledgement of the passing of the “Havengore”, the barge taking Churchill’s body from the funeral service at St Paul’s to Waterloo, for its onward journey to the great man’s final resting place in Bladon, Oxfordshire. Another gesture that was unfamiliar, slightly abstract, slightly artificial, but right. Weird, spine-tingling, tear-provoking, powerful beyond words.

Many parallels are being drawn between the dark days of WW2 and the dark days of the present. As before, London is getting the worst of it. In support of all those people self-isolated there I offer a song and an image. My wonderful daughter Rosie has performed a version of the greatest song ever written about the world’s greatest city, in response to a request from her cousin, but to be enjoyed by everyone.
 
The image below, a sunny, almost deserted street, as it probably is today, is of a short thoroughfare called Alaska Street. On the right is Waterloo East station, and straight in front is Waterloo main line station, the focus of the song.




© R. Abbott 2017

Tuesday 24 March 2020

The emptiness aesthetic


There can be few positives extractable from this current global tragedy. One of them is the friendship, kindness, generosity and altruism of neighbours and strangers alike, qualities which so often lay dormant until activated by disaster. It’s good to know that they still exist. Still the same old country.

The second benefit, although in a normal sense hardly desirable, is the enormous reduction in activity in almost everything. Suddenly, the world is a quieter place. Environmentally this is good, and it would be even better if some degree of it could be sustained when normality returns. If this terrible episode doesn’t conclusively define and condemn what a disaster so-called globalisation has been, and lead to a fundamental change in how we manage our world, then we’re all stuffed.  Already over the last few days the sky looks bluer - probably just a meteorological coincidence - with the Spring flowers at their best.


 People are naturally gregarious, and enforced separation is distressing for many, as it is for me, grumpy introvert though I am. But when I see on the TV news images of commuters on the Tube, squashed together, noses in armpits, breathing in each other’s diseases, my reactions are a combination of nausea and relief that I’m not involved, although at many times in my life, normal times, I’ve been happy to endure and even to enjoy such conditions myself. There are sensory and psychological pleasures in congestion and busyness; they are among the appeals of a great city, expressions of life at its most intense and, some would say, most civilised.

While urban vitality is important, conversely, there’s something to be said for emptiness and quiet among the bustle. In London, the many parks, squares and commons cater for this need, and contribute their particular loveliness to this greatest of cities, throughout the seasons. Many other British towns and cities are similarly blessed; many aren’t, and finding a pleasant spot, quiet but safe, may not always be so easy. But for now the streets are empty too, and that is unusual and unnatural.

As an older person, rapidly approaching the official threshold of coronavirus vulnerability, I remember years with much lower population densities, little vehicular traffic, and tourist destinations which could be enjoyed in relative peace. When I think back to my suburban childhood the essential quality I recall is that of peace and quiet. You could actually hear how quiet it was; just a kind of distant gentle hum.  Not much traffic, no unwanted intrusions of other people’s electronics (except for “The Archers” theme tune wafting across from the old ladies round the corner - dumpty dumpty dumpty dump etc), just the occasional Vulcan bomber which was tremendously noisy and made your ribs rattle if it flew low. Today, scarcely a couple of miles away from where I grew up, as I draft this blog, the only sound I hear is lawnmowers and, bizarrely, the jingle of a cruising ice cream van. Though the ultimate reasons for this state of acoustic affairs are appalling, purely as background, as ambient sound, it makes me happy, reminding me as it does of more satisfactory times.

Cities are primarily about people, but as architectural and geographical entities they have other roles to play, including visual and spiritual ones. As someone who likes to draw and paint cityscapes I know I’m not the only one who has preferred to exclude people and / or traffic from the painted scene. Artists far better than I have exploited the same instincts for urban visual emptiness, whether they were trying to portray alienation and loneliness, a mood of noir, desolation ecstasy, a sensation of space, an architectural peculiarity, a time of day, or otherwise. In my case this habit has been enforced  partly because of painterly incompetence, but also because I love the paradoxical quiet sometimes to be found in the heart of a major city. It’s a state of mind I like to experience and to express as best I can on paper or canvas. It’s the sound of early Sunday morning. 

                                                        Notting Hill      ©  R. Abbott 2014

 Now, it seems, in the last few days, we have had this quietude thrust back upon us, unasked for - the empty streets and parks, empty squares, empty cities. Not so much a month of Sundays, as an unknown number of them to come.

Sensible advice therefore would be, for someone like me, to enjoy the sight while it lasts, to make the most if it. Much more sensibly, the advice is, not to. So I can’t, even if I wanted to. I have to imagine it instead. All the same, artistically, aesthetically, selfishly, I can’t help thinking that it’s a kind of missed opportunity.
 
Meanwhile I’d happily exchange this nightmare for a chance to inhale some armpits on the Tube. Armpits aren’t great, but in a normal world they’re rarely lethal. Stay safe.