David Bennett

Heart Of Darkness

I originally published this on 10 Oct 2012

Have you seen the film ‘Apocalypse Now’ by Francis Ford Coppola? It’s based on Heart Of Darkness. I didn’t know that when I started reading the book, but something clicked when I read that the central character was going up river in search of someone named Kurtz.

If you have seen the film ‘Apocalypse Now’, then you get an idea of the journey into the deepest, darkest unknown. The film is, of course, set in Vietnam during the Vietnam War.

The book, however, is set in Africa and the central character isn’t an assassin like in ‘Apocalypse Now’.

But like in the film, Kurtz is a mystical character and a central feature of his character is that he knows horror and has an opinion on how to deal with horror.

What makes the book worth reading is the way Conrad writes and the small observations about human character that don’t tolerate fools gladly.

I could go on, but I haven’t the inclination. I was never interested to read this book when I was younger – and more’s the pity. It is a great book. A giant of a book – and quite a slim volume, though not necessarily a fast read.

Conrad first published it as a three-part serial in a magazine in 1899, so the Africa he describes is a darker place than we perhaps think of today. Back then, everything beyond the trees that lined the river bank was in the heart of darkness.

And now in 2016, prompted by someone who is just now reading the book, I am thinking again about the heart of darkness. I am thinking about it in the context of this planet.

There are other contexts and the book weaves those in – darkness of the soul, of the character. But sticking with planet Earth, it seems to me that the image brought up by the phrase is not fixed.

One man’s heart of darkness is another man’s back yard.

So the viewpoint is always that of someone who finds the environment of the heart of darkness too real, to hard to bear. It is the point of view of someone who normally lives in a privileged bubble of comparative ease.

There’s an argument for saying that someone who lives on the poor fringes of ‘civilised’ society is better equipped for the heart of darkness.

The play, The Admirable Crichton by J.M. Barrie, deals with this. Shipwrecked on a desert island, the master and his family are incapable of looking after themselves and the manservant (Chrichton) becomes the leader because he is better equipped for practical things.

After their rescue and return to normality, the master of the house finds it difficult to continue in his role with Chrichton around the place because he is a reminder that the ‘natural’ order of things is not a fixed star in the heavens.

I’ve diverted from where I was going with my thoughts, which are these. That on this the last day of 2016, the vast majority of us in the comfortable West probably believe that there is no heart of darkness any more.

Everywhere has been investigated, drilled into, photographed, written about. The planet is our playground and the mystery has gone down a notch.

Perhaps that is part of why we find it so easy to kill off species without remorse.

European Court of Justice Rules Mass Collection Of Data Unlawful

Following on from my last article, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled that the Investigatory Power Act is unlawful in that the mass collection of data is unlawful. Therefore the Act exceeds the limits of what is strictly necessary and cannot be considered to be justified within a democratic society, as required by the directive.

I am particularly happy that the court highlighted my concern about how much information about its citizens is simply too much.

In that connection, the court stated that:

with respect to retention, the retained data, taken as a whole, is liable to allow very precise conclusions to be drawn concerning the private lives of the persons whose data has been retained.

The court also ruled that:

As regards the access of the competent national authorities to the retained data, the Court confirms that the national legislation concerned cannot be limited to requiring that access should be for one of the objectives referred to in the directive, even if that objective is to fight serious crime, but must also lay down the substantive and procedural conditions governing the access of the competent national authorities to the retained data.

In other words, it is not sufficient to limit after-the-fact access to the data: The data must not be collected at all except in a specific case where a serious crime can be shown to be likely.

The Investigatory Powers Bill

The UK has just passed The Investigatory Powers Bill. It will become law once it receives the Royal assent – a formality.

It enables a wide range of public bodies to access the records of every person in the UK who connects to the internet. Internet service providers are obliged to keep a record of every site that their users access over the past year.

It’s the modern equivalent of the authorities accessing the record of the library books that a person borrowed.

I am not concerned with whether the authorities can access a person’s predilections for pop music or porn, prison breakouts or paedophilia.

I am, however, concerned that a Government or its agencies can access the records of interesting people. By that I mean that GCHQ could construct an algorithm that splits people into two camps.

There are those people who are interested in trivia – in the diversions of life – and little else. A Government can ignore those people – they aren’t going to object to much of anything.

And then there are a smaller number of people who have a broad range of interests. With the Investigatory Powers Bill the Government will know who its ‘thinking’ opposition is.

Of course, it is not this Government I am worried about. This Government is fair and open. But a more fascist government. If that came to pass they would have all the tools they needed to weed out the potential opposition.

Ah, but this is far fetched. Except that it has happened in other countries.

It can always happen here.

Sanguine From A Distance

Protesters are out on the streets in the USA saying that Trump is not their President. They oppose his racism, his misogyny, his isolationism.

I think Trump may be racist, maybe not. It is hard to tell what he is. He has a general disdain for everyone.

But the racism in the country exists and at this time in history in this election it is in part a simple reaction to the difficulty that some people had in accepting that there was an intelligent and caring black man in the White House.

They just had to vote for someone who would extinguish that truth and the President’s legacy.

On NewsNight last night, the historian Simon Schama said the result was a calamity for democracy and would increase racism and anti-semitism.

He was agitated in a way I have never seen before and rarely see in any public figure.

I couldn’t help but think of people smuggling information out of Germany to tell the world about the holocaust, and shouting into the wind.

And I am thinking that there are checks and balances to prevent a slide to a nastier USA. But with the Republicans controlling all three branches of power, how strong are those checks?

Economy First

Trump says he wants to lower taxes and invest in infrastructure to increase wealth across the nation.

Those proposals are not that radical. Lowering taxes and spending on infrastructure can increase the flow of money and stimulate an economy.

And although people might disagree over how to achieve it, there is consensus in that almost everybody wants increased wealth.

So on the economy, you’ve got a united country.

The challenges are over things he has said where the country is not united, and particularly on abortion and Roe v Wade. And the test of that will be decided on the composition of the Supreme Court.

So my guess is that Trump will be slow to appoint a new judge.

He will push to get some consensus about his presidency by increasing or giving the prospect of increasing wealth across the board. Then he can turn to the thornier questions.

Really though, no one believes his position on very much at all except to look after America and let the rest of the world go hang. So I wouldn’t be surprised if his choice of judge is more liberal than people expect.

Sanguine From A Distance

See how sanguine I am from a distance?

See by contrast how opposed I am to Brexit and how much I want the decision to leave Europe overturned?

Or maybe it is that I just don’t see a way back from four years of a Trump presidency, whereas there are routes back to the EU?

Lessons From History

I have always said that when people look back and say of the dark times in Europe that it could never happen again, they are blind.

It was ‘now’ when those things were happening, and people rarely see the speed with which the wildfire of racism can spread.

I have believed for years that the USA is a beacon to the world. Oh sure, it’s an imperfect beacon. But it has saved Europe from itself more than once.

What now? We’ve known for years that there are two Americas that eye each other warily. Whither now, America?