Sexism

This has been sparked by an article of no consequence, bemoaning the lack of Catholic woman priests. That is just the entry point and otherwise not significant. It is just that it bought my mind around to considering sexism. A few years back, starting with and as a celebration of my Mothers ninetieth birthday, I began charting my family history. Knowing nothing of my father, who left home when I was around 8years, naturally I explored my mothers side. Got engrossed and, with bit now fully between the teeth, explored all provable connections on my mothers line, proud of the links and lineage discovered. In reaching back to the tenuously discernible 1730's I began to consider and explore the social history that led to some key changes in my families histories. Farmers do not become labourers nor end up in a workshop to die of 'insanity', ( as alcoholism was known), without due cause. Cutting a long introduction short I eventually after a couple of serendipity moments, stumbled on an entry point and began to unravel my fathers family. Only to discover I was repeating the steps he too had taken some twenty years earlier. Nothing new under the sun.

I was pulled up short on more than one occasion by relatives who dismissed the maternal line as not having any significance. To them, it was only the male line of inheritance that had any relevance. With my background this puzzled me but slowly other pieces of jigsaw have begun to fall into place. 

We are now, here , this is where it is at, but we are only a continuum of our past. We have to keep our past in view to understand where our future lies. The way forward has to be shaped and based on the path taken to reach this point. All very laboured but let us not forget, male inheritance has been the dominate consideration. Up until this point, the now. Inheritance is simply the passing on of the title to land. Land equates to wealth, privileged, influence and power. Your position utterly depended on what land you inherited and the wheels and deals you could use it for to expand it or prevent others from taking it from you. The by far greatest wheeling deal in town was who you could get to marry you, bringing in privileges, connections or simply more land, not for love or romance but plain pragmatics. Hopefully a woman who could bear strong sons, strong enough to survive childhood. That she was compliant, frugal or even attractive were very secondary considerations. Lets us roll back the years even further. To get land and hold on to it, you had to be a strong fighter able to attract other men to fight by your side and defer to your authority. As top dog, women you could take and have a plenty but you needed one who would bear you a son and nurture it whilst you were away defending you claim to land against all others. Nurture it and stay loyal to you and you alone. A son that you could pass your battle won respect (titles) and land to to survive after your death and making your fights, battles and inevitable death in battle worth while. It does not justify it, but with so much emphasis on the brute force of the macho man, it is understandable that women were regulated. Regulated to a secondary role even to the point that they were legally chattels to be placed, controlled and futures decided at the whim of their lord and master.

Fast forward to today's now. Gender equality rules. The girl, should she choose to marry, may or may not take the male name. Maybe the continental practise of hyphenating the two families lines names into one surname, one from the father and one from the mother, would make good sense. But then which name is to come first, not as on the continent, the fathers name first, that would be sexist. Alphabetical order? And then are both lines to be given equal weight and standing in the family tree? I can avow that the family tree very quickly becomes very diffuse and difficult to read. Starting with four parents, with eight grandparents, sixteen great grandparents and so on. This does probably reflect our genetic inheritance. Very clearly we, as an individual, are a meld of our two parents and through them it is possible to discern genetic characteristics passed from the grandparents. There are some genetic features that are so dominate and survive through several generations even stretching back into the mists of time. We should not be too dismissive of genetic traits. Science has yet to declare whether one sex or other inherits more from one parent or the other, probably not.

My desire to know where I have come from, whose dominate trait do I have that gives me the flair or flaw I struggle to cope with does not justify selecting a male or a female line as my line. To select both is too unwieldy, too diffuse, too many branches that could or could not be significant or worse arbitrary. To make sense you have to follow back along one line of parents but unless we all follow the same rules chaos ensues. Is the need to know and acknowledge our direct line of inheritance more important than this, probably, transitory fashion of gender indeterminacy? It matters to me. I have to know whether I am my fathers son. It matters to those few where the chance of inheriting the stately pile or crown depends on it. To the rest of the world? Just a blip in our ever evolving story of personkinds development and ultimate extinction.

Corporate Greed

Since the inception of Planning Law in 1947, a central aim, encompassed by Abercrombie in his first London Plan, was to banish squalid slums and give everyone the right to sunlight and open space to enjoy. We pay the price in multi-layers of heavy-handed bureaucracy to ensure we all benefit Pretty basic stuff but constantly being whittled away.

A large site, previously used by a utility company, on privatisation became surplus to need. The new foreign owner of this, our essential service developed over decades out of tax-payers money, was now to be maximised for the profit of their shareholders. I have no doubt that teams of experts were assembled and charged, (you will get more if you make more), with getting the most possible return out of this redundant land. Encouraged indirectly no doubt by our government who saw loads of lucre rolling into the exchequer when they sold off London Dock's, freed from planning constraints as the bait.

Our local Planning Officers do have to be mindful of the possibility of an Appeal against any unfavourable decision they might make. One important plank in their defence is that they are adhering to government guidelines. So when the government, as central policy, decrees that housing densities are to be increased to reduce the demand for green field take, our local Planner's have little option. A well muscled team can use that government directive to achieve whatever goal they have in mind leaving our local officer with no room to argue. What we end up with in our town is a new built 'sink estate'. 

The one location that is doomed to ever spiral down until even the lowest of the low ask not to be sent there. Such is the certain future for this recently built development. Where developer profit, maximising the greatest number of households on the plot, is made regardless of all future consequences.They have no tie to the future of the development, only in the immediate, now, profit return to their 'foreign' investors. What we end up with is an overbuilt estate, gloomy, dank and sunless with mean spaces, dominated by car provisions and waste storage and tiny patios, (for a 'lucky' few), overlooked, cast in shadow, too small to plant and undesirable to sit out in. What left over public spaces there are, are 'greened' with robust unfriendly deterrent plants. The obligatory 'children's play area' reduced to a token with no room to run, to sit in the sun or enjoy some fresh air. Does that sound like the pre-war slums our planning laws were meant to prevent? Does to me.

Not just mean in layout and mean in usable public space, but also mean in materials and lacking in any imaginative design, detail or quality. 

We have got to this point. The old presumptions that local pride and interest will ensure the quality of local development have been overturned. Now national corporations with interests far removed from the pleasure and enjoyment of local residents, now determine the quality of developments within our own patch.

Now for a final turn of the screw. The government rules that ultimately determine what shall or shall not be built are all city centric. Drawn up by civil servants that have no living experience other than London and its suburbs. Their mind sets do not encompass rural county towns but their rules, endorsed by a parliament focussed on timetables and vote catching, do set the limits. Take Taunton a rural county market town. Low rise with every expectation of still sitting out in the sun and enjoying the quiet of the countryside. Why should that expectation be set aside for all future generations just to meet a city orientated need to save space? Why should our town be forever despoiled to meet some other place needs. Ruined not just for now but for generations forward and lowering the bench mark by which future schemes are to be judged by. We need decisions by local people, judged in the context of their local concerns and needs. Not a National Policy applied  regardless. A high rise development is not suited to Taunton. Flats are not the norm for Taunton and should never be. These are city solutions for city problems. Low rise and gardens are the norms for Taunton.

High-rise does not suit Taunton

No matter the quality, it is the wrong answer

  

Consensus

Consensus is beset with contradictions. A consensus takes form as a wraith out of the mists, suddenly everyone seems to be concerned about the same topic and leans towards one convergent view. Yes of course there are always the controversial ones either with heads buried deeply in the sand or with backs firmly planted against the general trend. It is remarkable how from one day to another a topic arises and people, apart from these exceptions, all seems to hover around a consensus view. We are born with this innate desire to seek out the middle ground and conform, at a subconscious level, almost without rational monitoring.

That said, the consensus wraith does not just materialise out of the ether, the thought, the idea, the spark, the argument position is seeded. Seeded by a leader, a very lowercase leader. Just one that thinks for them self. Most people follow received ideas, just a few have, from time to time, that original thought. But then it has to be broadcast, to be put it out there, no point just being internalised. That separates the little player from the bigger player, how socially connected and the potential sphere of influence one is against another. We are not talking here about the greatness or otherwise of the 'original idea', just the social connectivity and how potentially fast it can spread out. The capital letter Leaders do not necessarily have to have original ideas, but they do need to be connected with a circle who do generate ideas. They can then use their perceived status to broadcast those worthy ideas more widely, ensuring a faster pickup and a greater chance of entering into the public conscious.


Which idea gets picked up, and which idea, though intellectually far more profound or relevant, is cast aside, is another aspect of this almost sub-conscious sensing for the common ground. Our expectation is that the strength of the argument, or the higher moral ground, or overturning a gross injustice, or a razor sharp insightfulness that cuts through the fog of confusion is what inspires these new ideas. Occasionally it is one or another or combination of these worthy ideals. More often it is just timing.  Some ideas just hit the right note, at the right time, making relevant comment, about something that is on the surface or is bubbling away just under the surface of conscious thought. It is just ripe to be picked up. It is not necessarily an amplification of, or bringing clarity to, something already out there. It often is but it can be an entirely novel idea that just happens to ripen at that time when people are ready for it. There is no better explanation. 

We are beginning to discover that the thoughts that we hold in our minds are not direct products of the conscious and therefore logical thought sequences but are a meld arrived at though sub-conscious processing of sensory imput, past experiences, memories and anticipations of social reaction. We justify the logic after the thought becomes conscious. Until that moment we have no conscious power to control the internalised processing.


There rest is all down to momentum. If broadcast widely the greater the chance it will be picked up, enter into the common domain, to be tested and balanced against all those social interactions, looking for concord, to be adopted or rejected. But from time to time a good idea hits the right or needed note, or offers a solution out of an impasse that is immediately picked up and reverberating in harmony becomes magnified and you get what we now might call a viral idea. It spreads like wild fire, it is just right for the moment.

So our would be leaders and other shapers of public opinion are all trying to plant seeds to form public opinion and swing consensus their way. We, the public, sway this way or that, trying to pick up signals from all our social interactions which way is the wind blowing today. We are the spontaneous consensus, unpredictable, contrary, perverse, whimsical, irrational but always with the majority behind us.