Lottsathoughts

In my undergraduate viva, many years ago, I was asked how useful are the labels that we apply to [classical] music; Baroque, Classical, Romantic etc. I recall giving an excruciatingly poor response, and perhaps because of that, it is a question that has haunted me ever since. It is a question that should be applied to all areas of life, and one that invariably throws up more questions than answers. In his book “Closure, A story of Everything”, Hilary Lawson explains how all our communication is unavoidably built on artificial closures of language – our verbal communication necessitates everyone agreeing on approximate meanings for words and concepts, but these definitions can only ever, in truth, be provisional or transitory. A label tricks us into thinking we have captured the true essence of a person, object, place, idea. And yet it rarely, if ever, has. Every person is more than the colour of their skin, their gender, their sexual-orientation. They are more than their ...

With the announcement that the new Dr Who is to be a woman, something about our public discourse in the UK has been brought into sharp focus. The extraordinary reactions of outrage, fury and joy that flooded social media seemed, to non-aficionados, a bit weird. But perhaps only appropriate to the times in which we live – because, let's face it, the UK has gone a bit weird recently. And maybe that weirdness has come about because we've become accustomed to discussing fiction as if it's more important than reality. Maybe we should pause to consider what purpose language serves. Language is an extraordinarily powerful tool, possibly defining the gap between humankind and other animals. Nevertheless, it is not unlimited in its capacity and yet in our public dialogue we have allowed ourselves to overlook its shortcomings. The daily discussion is carried out from an assumption that if something can be expressed linguistically, then it must exist. And clearly this is no...

There's talk of riots if Brexit doesn't go ahead. It's hard to know whether this is a serious possibility – a proposed protest at the Supreme Court in December was hastily cancelled at the last minute when barely a few dozen showed any interest. But let's just for a moment assume it is a real and credible possibility. The prevailing narrative over-simplifies the choice – implement the result of the referendum or don't. Implement it and cause certain impoverishment to our nation. Ignore it, and risk riots and undermining the cause of democracy. But why is our vision so narrow? What if there is a secret option number three? There are five Ws that help us get to the bottom of a story – What? When? Who? Where? And Why? The first four are essentially fact-based and are in themselves often rather dull. They are answered easily enough with regard to the referendum result. The interesting question is the last one – “why”. And over a year later, we are still no clearer...