The Year in Review, With J.H. Ramsay

This town is a crucible. And a small one, at that. In St Andrews, everything clashes, then combines. Identities are forged just to melt back together. We’re one substance, complete and inseparable – whether we like it or not.

This rude awakening has been the major motif of the year, and is present in every important issue from September to May. Let’s jostle our memory for a moment, recollect ourselves, and look back at the pivotal stories.

The Kate Kennedy Conundrum

No one cared about it, but then no one could stop talking about it either. How enthusiastic do people have to be about apathy before it’s not apathy anymore? How much do we have to care about not caring before it finally dawns on us that yes, actually, for some reason we do care about the Kate Kennedy Club / Fellowship debacle.

The issue serves as a perfect microcosmic view of St Andrews politics. Students at this University are constantly on the lookout for a new way to split from the norm and start anew. The reason this occurs is simple: it comes down to the standard psychological profile of a typical St Andrews student. We’re resourceful, smart, opportunistic, and think we matter more. We’re so diverse, from too many backgrounds, that incongruence is not only encouraged, but programmed into us. Add to this the limited and tight environment of the town of St Andrews, and it’s inevitable that people will constantly, often needlessly, break themselves from an establishment to see if they could do any better.

In this case, that establishment was the Kate Kennedy Club. And in this case, the Fellowship break was not needless. It was a credible break, for honourable reasons, with progressive intentions. But  what everyone wants to know now – and don’t give me shit about “not wanting to know”; of course you want to know; there’s nothing else to care about in this town – is where the Fellowship is going.

A few weeks ago, the College of Fellows met with Alistair Moffat, the newly elected Rector of the University, and an honorary Fellow himself. Nothing earth-shattering was discussed or decided, but some interesting ideas were floated. Among these was Moffat’s claim that it was his hope, along with Principal Richardson’s, that someday, perhaps years from now, the Club and Fellowship would reconcile and join into one body. In my opinion, Moffat’s point is more than a hope – it is a persuasive prediction.

The Club and Fellowship are on an inescapable collision course, and the conclusive and culminating point in which they meet is a cocoon. Two somethings will go in, and one something will come out. Whether this happens tomorrow or ten years from today is anyone’s guess.

So it’s like I said. We’re all in this together, even when we’re separate. We’re all in the crucible, trying to break out, but always finding ourselves flattened down to equality again.

NUS

This is an issue I have to confess to not understanding very well. It’s also one you probably tried to ignore. But the deferred National Union of Students vote was one of the most decisive events to take place this academic year. And not for the reason you’d expect.

What’s most interesting about the NUS vote , and the Union’s inability to cope with an NUS vote, is that it highlights the general inabilities of the Union itself. The place is a snake pit. Everyone is working behind everyone else’s backs. The Sabbs, the SSC, and the SRC have displayed an absolute inability to work together. I’ve lost track of all the backstabbing.

The Union is meant to be a conglomeration of student representatives working together to improve the University. The petty actions and behaviours of Patrick O’Hare, Daniel Goldblatt, Chloe Hill, and the rest of our “representatives” do not serve this express purpose.

The Union is a crucible, just like the University itself. Everyone’s in it together, trying to stand out. And it’s failing because they won’t lower themselves to work together.

Phony Kony

Here in the bubble, we often try to care about things outside of our tiny world. But we never get it quite right, the sympathy. We can never really do it any justice, the charity. In the end it’s just egos flashing and competing.

The Kony campaign was a terrible embarrassment for the student charities of this University, but also a poignant insight into how closed off we are from global reality. Students identified a problem: Joseph Kony is kind of a douchebag, and then tried to solve it: send money to Invisible Children. But we skipped a crucial step: figure out exactly where the money is going, what it will be paying for, and why. That step turned out to illuminate the fact that students were funding a war.

That so many gullible students got sucked into this logical fallacy without researching what they were doing just goes to show how separated we all are from the rest of the world. As much as we try to join the global community, as much as we try to be aware of the outside, the bubble sucks us back in. We’re stuck here.

So there you have it: the year summarized in three pivotal events. And it all comes down to one terrifying but unavoidable realization: as students of St Andrews, we are confined to a small world from which we must break free, but cannot.

My advice? Embrace the chains that bind you. Accept your dismal reality. Just smile and enjoy it.

Protest is Child’s Play

We all know not to play with fire.  It is a basic lesson drummed into us as children alongside ‘do not to take sweets from a stranger’ or riding the pet dog.  However, King Louis still wanted it, Dappy can’t help himself from playing with it and now it has been used as a form of political protest in Italy.

The director of the Casoria Contemporary Art Museum in Naples, Antonio Manfredi, has reacted to the economic crisis and its subsequent cuts to arts and cultural programme by burning some of his museum’s artworks.

He has started with a piece by the French artist Severine Bourguignon, with the artist’s permission, and plans to burn three paintings a week in what he calls an ‘Art War’.

This is supposed to be symbolic of the effect of the cuts and Bourguignon said in an interview that ‘I have no other means of protesting against the loss of the institution’.

I personally think this is the most idiotic form of so-called protest since Gordon Thompson not so politely enquired as to who had a lighter. We all know not to play with fire, but most of us are also taught not to cut off our nose to spite our face.

Admittedly as a middle child this one took me slightly longer to grasp and I can still be known not to choose something I want because my younger sister wants it too.

However, Manfredi could really do with my mother sitting him down and explaining that not only is she allowed to have the same beanie baby/hair parting/pair of shoes as you are, but that if you want to prove something’s importance in a time where there is no room for the superfluous, then it’s probably not the best idea to burn it.

In an economic climate where we must be ‘all in this together’ it is the beacon of Market Street, Tesco Metro, which delivers the wisest assessment of the situation; ‘every little helps’.  If Manfredi, or anybody else for that matter, wants to prove that something is indispensable to a tightly-strained budget then surely they must start by fighting to preserve it whole.  Surely each individual part must be considered as valuable as their sum.

I cannot help but question how Manfredi chose Bourguignon’s work and how he will go on to select these three works a week. Will it be in an X Factor style audition, a random ballot in the manner of The Hunger Games, or chosen in the order of which is least ‘important’.

Let’s just say I do not believe that the Mona Lisa or a Monet will become firewood any time soon.  This seems a cry for attention and if somebody does not call his bluff then he will end up with an empty gallery.

This is a universal problem with protest. The message often gets lost in the way it is expressed.  Hunger strikes leave people starving and burning art leaves you with ashes.

Manfredi wishes to implore the government to revise their spending and show the world what will effectively be happening if they don’t.

However, he instead does the work of the government for them by selecting what can be kept, for now, and what can be tossed on the bonfire.

He and the government need to sit down with some school children and remind themselves of some basic lessons.

Religion is the Training Wheels of Society

We can all remember riding a bicycle with training wheels during our youth. It was an exciting ride, one that we loved dearly. Yet, we always looked up to our parents riding next to us, void of those stabilisers, riding in a particularly more free and skilled way.

At some point, either through our own volition or through that of our parents, we decided that riding with training wheels left us unsatisfied with our abilities and our ride. And so, through a trial and error process, we assented to riding a bicycle free of support that would result in a more beautiful and exhilarating ride.

Let us consider human society as a bicycle and religion as its training wheels. I think it is beneficial for the atheist to scrutinise religion and human society through this simplistic metaphor in order to discover which tact is best at deconstructing religion.

For in the same way as the young bicyclist, religion has supported organised human society since its birth. It provided a moral compass for all people, enabled a tool for elites to subdue and connect with their people, and allowed for the basis of education, literacy, and philosophy. Religion has been instrumental in stabilising the infancy of mankind’s bicycle.

However since the Enlightenment, humans have developed the knowledge and subsequent technology necessary to allow a greater proportion of people to rationally think about life and philosophise about issues that were once only the intellectual property of religion. As such, personal security and personal free time went from being a luxury of the few, to the normalcy of the masses.

Now, more than any other time in human history, mankind has the ability to ponder, access, and develop information that would leave God himself speechless. Thus, human society’s can now see and aspire to riding a bicycle without such elementary supports.

Unfortunately, taking off the training wheels which religion has provided to human society is not as simple as individually taking one’s off. For one, having the reassurance of religion means humans never have to concern themselves with the bicycle becoming unbalanced and falling. It offers comfort and composure in difficult and trying situations, and these sought after human dispositions are unlikely to be freely relinquished.

In spite of this, those of us that rid ourselves of training wheels in our youth did so because we understood that we no longer needed these stabilisers. In fact, they felt as though they were holding us back from realising our full potential.

A bicycle ride with only two wheels offered a more advanced, interesting, and rewarding experience. Certainly, this new ride came with the risk of falling, yet this potential instability propelled us to habitually focus on remaining upright while moving forward. And so, this acknowledgment of the fragility of the ride negated the chance of such a calamitous fall.

Playing upon our human reflex to avoid pain, there are those among us that accentuate the disasters which can occur if the training wheels of religion are taken off. Terrible accidents, irreversible damage – why take the risk?

After all, although riding a bicycle may be exhilarating, you can still get a similar experience with training wheels. And so, humans natural tendency to evade suffering and discomfort means that the training wheels are kept on, even when they need not be any longer.

Human society, whenever they so please, has the aptitude to take off its training wheels. Here we see a compromise between New Atheism’s opinion that religion should be abolished from the earth and the apathetic atheism saying let’s keep mum and appreciate the best aspects religion has brought.

Instead, we could base a society on reason and science, where we assent to moral judgments based upon universal human kindness and decency, and a society that values liberty and the pursuit of perfection.

This can only be achieved because of religion and its establishment of civil society, just like we can only now ride a bicycle because we first were taught with training wheels.

For that, humans (and atheists) can be eternally grateful to religion. However through societal evolution, there can come a day when religion is no longer present, yet we are beholden to its formation of human civilisation. In this way, the atheist can be both the redeemer and the admirer – instead of the whiner and condemner.

H.G. Wells once said, ‘Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race’.

The Fourth Estate

I was thinking to myself, while putting together this week’s Viewpoint section, what haven’t I done yet to piss you people off? Who haven’t I offended? What card haven’t I pulled? Where have I played it too safe? Basically, is there a risk I’ve missed?

And then it hit me. I’ve never defended someone everyone unanimously hates. That could be fun! But who? And then it hit me, again. (I took a lot of abuse writing this column, as you can  tell).

The perfect victim for my experiment: the one person everyone can agree to hate, the woman whose name we all like to spit and shit on, the unforgivable and despicable queen of selfishness: Ayn Rand.

Surely, if I defended her, the town would be in an uproar. They’d burn down The Saint’s office and strip me limb from limb and feed the meat to carnivorous hedgehogs, who in turn would be burned  to ash and mixed with cocaine and served to The Stand editorial team.

Well, probably not.

But it’s definitely ground I haven’t covered, and would like to. You see, I like Ayn Rand. Really, I do. I know you don’t hear that too often from anyone, so maybe you think I’m joking. But trust me, I’m not.

The reasons I like Ayn Rand are abundant. First and foremost, though, is this clarification: I do not think of her as a philosopher. I think of her as a writer. And a nearly matchless one, at that.

Rand’s ideas are as good as anything in the science fiction genre today, and her characters are alive and conjure empathy. I do not understand people who accuse Ayn Rand of being a poor writer. She was an excellent writer, one of America’s finest in fact. Her characters are rounded and real, and easy to identify with. The irony, of course, is that while Howard Roark and Dagny Taggart have you sympathising with them, Rand’s core philosophy was to avoid sympathy. She defeated herself there.

This touches upon the one fair criticism that Ayn Rand deserves: her philosophy of Objectivism is stupid, immature, and impractical. Even I have to admit that truth. One cannot simply switch off his or her ability to feel sympathy. It’s a biological necessity that comes standard in most humans.

This is why we cannot view Rand as a philosopher. She must be acknowledged as a science fiction writer, and one of the finest that genre has ever had. Her views of the world – each man and woman for themselves, at the cost of everyone else – are not realistic, nor ideal. They are a curious imagining, fun and fantastic for the simple reason that the idea is fantasy.

What Ayn Rand really champions is humanism: belief in the individual. Anyone can rise to greatness if they can express directed creativity, unbridled ambition, and maintain perseverance. No one has ever believed in you or expected more from you than Ayn Rand. No one has ever thought people were capable of more than Ayn Rand.

When you apply this model of individuality to economics, bad things are going to happen. 1980s American Psycho bad. But if we take this glorification of independence and use it to better understand art and creativity, everything makes sense. Art is the only appropriate model for Objectivism. Not economics, or philosophy.

People make the mistake of viewing Rand the way she viewed herself. Rand thought she was a philosopher, and that her philosophy could be applied to a political and economic system. Rand was wrong. She was an artist, nothing less or more.

There is a gap – well, maybe gap is too underwhelming of a word. Let’s say there’s an abyss – between the artist and reality. The author on the page is not the author in life. Who the author thinks he or she is, is not the same person the reader experiences. Ayn Rand may have seen herself as a political or philosophical figure. But we should not see make the same mistake she did.

Ayn Rand is a writer of elaborate and beautiful fiction. And that’s all it comes down to. She deserves to be vindicated.

Hopefully this has persuaded, or at least interested you.

It has been a sincere pleasure being your Viewpoint editor for this academic year.

The Diamond Year: A second golden Elizabethan Age?

St Andrews has recently forged an intimate connection with the institution of monarchy. We are the university where ‘Kate met Wills’ (as the North Point seeks to remind us). Royalty has put this ancient university town on the global map. Every modern royal documentary now includes scenes of Wills and Kate in St Andrews.

Yet, William will, one day, ascend to the throne as King William III of the UK, head of state in 16 Commonwealth realms, Head of the Anglican Church, the Armed Forces and the Commonwealth of Nations. In the coming years, William will be expected to play a greater role in the royal machine.

The Queen’s father, George VI (the stammering guy in the ‘King’s Speech’) gloomily called it ‘the firm’. It is a profession which never ceases – marked by the anachronistic values of dynastic privilege and hereditary destiny. A job engulfed with obligation, formality and majesty.

In that context, monarchy is a difficult constitutional settlement to advocate; indeed, no modern democracy would conceive of re-institutionalising a monarch. Yet, somehow this institution has thrived in Elizabethan Britain and looks likely to do so for the foreseeable future. Historians remind us that monarchies are only toppled by revolution or warfare.

Quite honestly, I cannot see any of these on Britain’s horizon. Whilst flagging European monarchs were swept away in the 20th century, Britain remained curiously isolated from such pandemonium. The summer of 2012 marks a celebration of monarchy – an occasion for a collective spirit of rejoicing in the nation’s consciousness.

For the monarch does not just represent a single individual. It is the duty of the monarch to reflect and embody the nation. My succinct overview will highlight Elizabeth II’s background and reign and will explain how she can be assured of a noble place in the catalogue of Britain’s regal figureheads.

Elizabeth II (born in 1926) was forced to confront her destiny in 1936. Her uncle, Edward VIII, decided to abdicate in order to marry the notorious Mrs Simpson. Elizabeth’s life changed immeasurably. Elizabeth was to ascend to a throne which lay at the apex of a regimented establishment, stratified by the groupings of class, a ceremonial, regal figure at the zenith of the largest empire in the world (covering approximately one quarter of the globe). A daunting prospect, indeed. Nevertheless, Elizabeth’s reign has witnessed the loss of Britain’s imperial greatness; its influence on world affairs has diminished.

On the other hand, since 1952 (the year of the Queen’s accession), Britain has witnessed unparalleled prosperity, greater equality, the advent of a mass consumerist society, the breakdown of deference, the liberation of minority and discriminated social groups and increasing multiculturalism. Indeed, the face and fabric of Britain today is incalculably different to what it was in 1952.

However, Elizabeth II cannot be compared to her more politically interventionist ancestors. Although she may reign as Queen, she does not rule. She is not responsible for any political occurrences in Britain. Sovereign political power lies in Parliament. By contrast, her power is more ceremonial. Elizabeth II has appointed 12 prime ministers, the first of which was Winston Churchill.

He offered her a grand education in the duties of monarchy. Her life has consisted of state visits, provincial visits, banquets, charity galas and a multitude of other ceremonial occasions. She is essentially a regal actor on the public’s theatrical stage. Britain’s collective consciousness thrives on pomp and ceremony. She performs with unswerving majesty and grace and the people love her for it.

Looking to the beginning of her public life, her 21st birthday speech defined her life goals. She proclaimed, “I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family, to which we all belong.” She has unfailingly fulfilled her promise. A titanic sixty years on the throne is no easy undertaking. “Duty first, self second” has been her overriding motto. Those were the principles upon which the Windsor dynasty was built and they have served the royal house well.

Nevertheless, the Windsor dynasty is characterised by its ability to change in order to meet public expectations. The first modernisation scheme began in 1917. The royal name was bad for propaganda during World War One. George V, the Queen’s grandfather, changed the royal dynasty’s name from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to the quintessentially anglicised ‘Windsor’. The Windsors were expected to serve with moral righteousness and respectability. The family monarchy was born.

They were presented as the archetypical British family and these associations served them well. George V also stated that royals could henceforth marry ordinary Britons, rather than being restricted to foreign royals. Royal marriages could now be popularly presented as ‘love affairs’ rather than affairs of state. It initiated a celebratory royal weddings tradition which has continued to this day. The Queen attempted to continue her grandfather’s legacy with the family monarchy.

Nonetheless, the 1980s and 1990s witnessed the dawn of the age of celebrity. A more omnipresent media offered no remorse or reserve. It had no sympathy for royal sensibilities and hunted for hints of royal scandal.

The days when the establishment could prevent the media from publishing anything unfavourable to the monarchy were dead. Princess Diana cultivated this lack of media deference for the monarchy by allowing the institution to be attacked as ‘uncaring’, ‘remote’ and ‘outdated’. Diana was an international superstar and she used media sympathisers to attack the royals with venom. In 1992, the Queen proclaimed that her year had been an ‘Annus Horribilis’.

It witnessed the divorce of Princess Anne, the breakdown of the marriages of Princes Charles and Andrew and Windsor Castle itself was consumed by fire. The symbolic home of the Windsor dynasty crumbled amidst familial degeneration. The family monarchy was in irreversible retreat. Nevertheless, the absolute nadir of the Queen’s reign was in 1997.

That summer, Diana died in Paris. The world was engulfed by grief. Such outpourings had never before been seen in Britain. A nation renowned for its stiff-upper lip and its composure in the face of adversity had suddenly and capriciously broken down in a flood of tears. The Queen, as a national figurehead, was expected to embody the nation. Yet this seemed to be a nation that she did not understand.

However, the Windsors did what they did best; the Queen, in the spirit of her forebears, demonstrated her capacity to transform the monarchy to meet the expectations of her people. The monarchy made extra efforts to acclimatise itself to a modern age.

The Queen began to visit hospitals, see the sick, drop in on schools and conduct other charitable activities – for which Diana was famous. Such changes were popular; the monarch was able to ‘meet’ her subjects.

In visits to Britain’s provinces, the Queen no longer remained in the company of aristocrats and local dignitaries; she was now available to meet all classes of society.

To conclude, in 1953, the media presented Elizabeth’s coronation as ushering in a ‘New Elizabethan Age’. It witnessed a surge of joyous optimism unseen in Britain for a long time. The nation was abandoning the austerity of the war years and was entering an age of optimism. Sixty years on, national celebrations are on the horizon once more. Britain will witness a surge of national euphoria. The culmination of the jubilee celebrations will appear on the Thames in the form of a royal barrage surrounded by an endless flotilla of boats. Such celebrations will be enthusiastically participated in by all classes of people.

The Queen’s triumph is her ability to transcend class. Unlike her ancestors, she is not associated with the aristocracy. The multitudinous waves of people who marched to Buckingham Palace after the wedding of William and Kate exemplify the popularity of the Royal family. Its unpopularity in the aftermath of the Diana years has been surmounted.

However, unlike Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, people do not see this as a final period of rejoicing to celebrate a Monarch’s life; people are already looking towards the unprecedented Platinum jubilee.

A Time to Reflect: the year in review

As yet another academic year draws to a close and The Saint prepares to shut up shop for the summer, I believe now would be an appropriate time to perhaps look back on some of the more notable events of the past eight months and put it all into perspective.  There certainly hasn’t been any shortage of newsworthy goings on in our little town.

The arsenal of pub ammo has seen a significant increase in size for the average student of St Andrews thanks to various tales of feuding fraternities, pigeon persecutions and Facebook fads.  So let us look back on such events so that they might be committed to the annals of our mind where they truly belong.

Where to start?  KONY 2012 seems as good a place as any I suppose.  Yes back in March one man’s ego (Jason Russell) had grown to such dizzying heights that he considered himself perfect for the task of single-handedly plotting the downfall of a warlord who had terrorised significant portions of three countries in central Africa.

In Russell’s defence, his cute little video certainly got people talking about the issue.  A serious problem that had afflicted one of the darker corners of the globe for years was finally being shoved down the throats of the apathetic.

The problem was that a lot more people were simply talking about how much of a prat this Jason Russell chap actually is.  So much so, that rumours of a RUSSELL 2013 movement were abounding so as to rid the world of the biggest douchebag still at large.  This is a guy who spent a few weeks “finding himself” in Uganda one summer, only to end his trip making absurd promises simply to maintain the erection he got whenever he did something he saw as charitable.

Did anyone else pick up on that part in the video where he filmed his child saying how he wanted to grow up just to be like him?

The rest of the video, while at times slightly sickening and egoistic, was at least in keeping with the actual aim of the whole thing.

How his son’s sycophantism was relevant to stopping Kony is entirely beyond me but then again, I can’t pretend to be anywhere near as media savvy as Russell.  I’m sure someone in Taste knows.

In the end, KONY 2012 had been and gone in the blink of an eye, but what can we take from the whole thing?  Not much really except that anyone who invited you to join a KONY 2012 related facebook group is an idiot; as is anyone who posted one of the three or four posters around town last Friday.  If you are one of those people, please take them down and clean up the mess.  No one gives a damn about Kony anymore.  I don’t even think Uganda gives a damn anymore.

In other news, The Stand finally gave boring people something to read.  Tired of The Saint’s monopoly over mediocre student journalism a number of shiny new websites cropped up to offer the same three stories each fortnight that our town has to offer.  While some fell to the wayside (although a quick google will tell you The White Lady is in fact still up and running) The Stand’s slick website proved irresistible for the hoards of young St Andreans happy to entertain themselves with yet another delightful account of two strangers’ blind date.

I jest of course.  All petty feuds aside the University’s ever improving coverage of the various news-worthy stories can only ever be a good thing and long may it continue.  Plus all the C.V. fodder that has been provided thanks to this burgeoning market will only do wonders for the employment rate of the average St Andrews graduate..

Lastly, just in case it didn’t get enough coverage at the time, the Kate Kennedy Club announced it would be accepting women into their ranks.  Inequality and discrimination would reign no longer for those who see themselves as custodians of our town’s ancient (they’re not ancient, they’re old) traditions.

One woman was said to be overheard screaming down Market Street, overcome by the news, as it dawned on her she had at last been given the right to organise what is essentially a walk down South Street in fancy dress.

What was mistaken as an accoutrement to 4/20 celebrations was in fact the result of bra burners everywhere lighting up in triumph.  Where that leaves the future of the KK is anybody’s guess.  I imagine any female that dares to apply will be made about as welcome as a paedophile in a playground, but who’s to say?

Spurned on by these events, an extremist wing within FemSoc has begun to build pressure on The Other Guys to soon become The Other People.

So that’s about it really.  One bloke pulled the head off an unsuspecting pigeon, a bearded man was led around the quad a few times on a sad looking horse and the town played host to its usual collection of noncey events.  All in all a wonderful year here in The Bubble.  If you missed any of it I wouldn’t worry.  Despite all the drama that this year has offered, I doubt there’ll be much in the future different to that in the past.

So enjoy your summers.  Read something good instead of the dross you see before you.

And, most importantly, when your meeting with the CEO of that company you intern for is over, remember

Trash Fiction

If my life were a Young Adult novel, and a pretty bad one at that, that passage would be the fictionalized version of my experience in reading an opinion piece a few weeks ago. The article that elicits this visceral reaction is titled “Adults Should Read Adult Books” written for The New York Times by esteemed author Joel Stein.

This guy is a real adult, and a real writer. He knows his literature; he reads Proust for fun and would not be caught dead sullying his mind with trash written for kids. Or so it would seem. As he puts it: “The only thing more embarrassing than catching a guy on the plane looking at pornography on his computer is seeing a guy on the plane reading “The Hunger Games.” Or a Twilight book. Or Harry Potter. The only time I’m O.K. with an adult holding a children’s book is if he’s moving his mouth as he reads.”

The article continues in a similar way, slandering not only YA books but also Pixar movies and video games. It is as though he woke up one morning with an intense urge to piss off the entire Facebook generation.

Young Adult fiction has gotten a pretty bad reputation among the highbrow literary types of this world. With their blinders on they see only the Twilight-series and its imitators, damning the whole genre to the depths of vampire teen angst. And it is true; there are a whole lot of these types of books. Popularity and multi-million dollar movie franchises tend to have that effect.

I have nothing against vampires, or teen angst, but some of these novels are incredibly trashy. That is not the point of this argument. There are trashy novels written for adults – anything by Nicholas Sparks comes to mind. The point is, good YA fiction is not written for young adults exclusively. It might be about young adults, marketed towards young adults, and read by young adults, but none of that means it is not readable to people outside of the demographic.

The whole problem with Mr Stein’s argument, and similar ones, is that it makes two disgusting assumptions. First, it posits that YA books are poorly written drivel that has no value to someone over the age of 22. Second, that adults read only Literature. Neither are true.

The most offensive part of these arguments is how bad they are. If that argument was cheese it would be Swiss. Most adults do not read Dostoevsky before bed, and most YA novels are not disgustingly bad.

Young Adult has become, in some ways, a boo phrase. It is slapped on anything that is not considered well-written enough to be fiction, and in return anything that is labelled YA fiction is assumed to be bad quality.

Arguments like this one seem to conveniently forget the many books, classics and modern, that are adored by young adults yet considered good literature. This is when the distinction between YA fiction and proper, Adult, fiction becomes harder to define. What about Romeo and Juliet, two star-crossed teenage lovers with suicidal tendencies? Sounds like YA fiction to me. From Alcott’s Little Women to Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird to Salinger’s unbearable Catcher In The Rye, these all fall under the remit of YA fiction, yet they are considered part of the literary canon.

More modern classics would include Pullman’s His Dark Materials, Zuzack’s The Book Thief, and Chobsky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower. These respectively offer an existential debate about atheism, an exploration of the horror of the holocaust narrated by Death, and a portrait of the trauma of growing up.

And they manage to do it while capturing the imagination of readers from all ages and backgrounds. That is a hell of a lot more impressive than some of the “adult” fiction available.

It is incredibly problematic to label YA fiction as a discrete category. There is everything from paranormal love stories and fantasy adventures, to sorority style dramas and high school apocalypses. It includes great novels, mediocre ones, and outright awful books. There are books that appeal to teenagers and grandparents alike, and there are books that even I, as a young twenty-something, feel way too old for. Categorising fiction like this assumes that, somehow, those reading it are more infantile than someone who picks up anything from Ernest Hemmingway to Jodie Picoult.

Young Adult may be a useful way to organise books in a library or to target marketing, but it is not a law by which we should choose our books. Be secure enough in your age and intellectual maturity to read The Hunger Games, or any other book, in public.

Don’t let your age stand in the way of enjoying great, or trashy, literature.

Across the Channel

My true adversary . . . has no name, no face; he belongs to no party; he will never declare his candidacy. He will not be elected, yet he governs. My enemy is the world of finance’.

After a narrow defeat to the author of that quote, Nicholas Sarkozy faces a bruising uphill fight to regain the initiative and retain the Élysée.  After 17 consecutive years of centrist presidents, the polls place François Hollande 7-10% ahead of his opponent in the race to the presidency, in a clear disruption of the pan-European centre-right ascendancy in the wake of the economic downturn. Mr Sarkozy must manage a delicate balancing act: he must use his remaining campaign time to garner the 6.4 million votes secured in the first round by National Front candidate Marie Le Pen, without alienating the vital centre ground, on which he relies for much of his support.

The French electorate need to consider their vote carefully. The rhetoric from Mr Hollande’s camp is irresponsible and misleading: the election is being presented as a referendum on Mr Sarkozy, when both France and Europe are desperately in need of a stable government with a sensible, realistic long term strategy for recovery and growth. This election cannot be a ‘reaction against austerity’, as Mr Hollande’s campaign has branded it, but rather an affirmation of crucial decisions necessary for securing long term fiscal stability. Both candidates must present a coherent vision for economic growth and securing market confidence. Mr Hollande’s proposals for renegotiating the EU austerity pact to include mechanisms for fiscal rejuvenation have been met with accusations of financial irresponsibility. Meanwhile, his relations with business and wealth creators remain sour, with proposals for a 75% tax on top income earners driving many French citizens to consider visa applications to the UK.

Mr Hollande must understand that challenging the French financial sector will have a particularly disastrous effect on the availability of credit for small businesses across the country, which constitute the engine of economic growth. The private sector relies on banks for loans; a mass exodus of bankers and executives overseas will mean French businesses will have a tough time standing on their own. Following Mr Hollande’s win on 1 May, France’s CAC 40 equity index plummeted, indicative of the apprehension that the financial world has to a Hollande presidency. Additionally, the rating agencies Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s have given France a ‘negative outlook’ in recent days, the first step towards a downgrade and substantially higher borrowing costs. Investor confidence is paramount to a strong economy and Mr Hollande has yet to gain the vital trust of business leaders. With comments like, ‘My enemy is the world of finance’ Mr Hollande will find it very difficult to get the private sector onboard. As the world follows the French election with a keen eye, Mr Hollande has yet to persuade the international community that he understands the responsibilities he would hold in solving the Eurozone crisis as leader of Europe’s third largest economy.

Kony

I didn’t know then that the answer to that question would radically change my life, and absolutely for the better.

Since seeing the film for the first time, I’ve done everything I can to aid the movement started by Invisible Children.  I’ve put on screenings, I’ve made videos, I’ve tweeted countless moguls and government officials, I’ve hosted Roadies and Ugandans in my flat, I’ve given my hard earned money, I’ve slept outside the capital in Raleigh, and I’ve lobbied my Congressional representatives.

I was part of my undergraduate’s Invisible Children club leadership, I helped to organise Invisible Children’s “The Rescue” in North Carolina, I’ve gone to IC conferences, and I’ve worked with a middle school to advance their IC campaign efforts.  I say this not to paint myself as a Joan of Arc figure out to save the world.  I say this to give context to my knowledge of Uganda, the organisation, and to simply illustrate that my whole heart is in this organization.

The debut of KONY 2012 for me was, well, epic.  This was the film that for years I had been waiting for.  A call to arms, a call to action: make Joseph Kony famous.  Not because he starred in a sex tape (Kim Kardashian, cough cough), not because he has mastered the art of the fist pump (Jersey Shore, cough cough), not because he has done anything to positively contribute to the global community.  It is a call to make him famous for his crimes.

Over the last 20 years, he has abducted thousands of children.  He has raped and condoned rape.  He has killed on a massive scale and ordered killing.  Thousands of people have been displaced, and many still live in fear.  And the reason he does this?  Because he’s power hungry.  Further studies of Kony would lead you to his original and ultimate objective: to overthrow the Ugandan government and replace it with a government based upon the 10 Commandments.  I identify myself as a Christian, and I think that’s a ludicrous idea.  The purpose of KONY 2012 is to flip the idea of celebrity on its head, and use it for the purpose of bringing about justice, rather than for the purpose of terrible television.

So to see the stream of vitriolic attacks coming through my Facebook and Twitter feeds has completely astounded me.  It feels like my peers have completely de-valued everything that I, and many others like me have done to further the cause.

It feels personal, it feels vindictive, and it feels like my Invisible Children family, the one I treasure so much, is being kicked for the sake of sport. Are there issues the organisation needs to address?  Absolutely.

No organisation is perfect, and I want to make it clear that IC is not perfect.  But they are, in my experience, open to criticism, willing to admit when an idea just didn’t work, or when an initiative of theirs had flaws, and are willing to answer criticisms in a non-combative, informative way.

But to witness the categorical dismissal of the work of millions (yeah, I said it, MILLIONS) of young people who have done the same things I have since they first encountered the organisation, is painful to witness.

They may not be informed, they may not be able to articulate the complexities of the conflict in Uganda and the wider region of central Africa, but they see what they perceive is an injustice, they feel compelled to act, and they do.  In a big way.

That is something that should be applauded.

It provides a gateway for budding activists to learn more about the problems that plague central Africa.

If seeing #KONY2012 on their Twitter or Facebook means that even one individual who previously could have cared less about what’s going on in the world outside their newsfeed decides to learn more, then that’s a victory.

I think, however, Invisible Children’s greatest achievement has been its ability to take the outdated communications model of non-profits, and make it work for a generation that grew up in front of a computer.

We live in dramatic times; in the age of going viral.  Co-opting technology to their advantage has been the most brilliant thing Invisible Children has managed to accomplish. And it’s obviously working because not only has the video had over 10 million hits on Vimeo in the last 3 days, but there’s been a stream of criticism of the organisation.

You know what I say to that?

“Thank you for the free publicity. You have made Kony famous.”

The Great Cover Up

Mammary glands, we all have them. However, I take issue with our social norms and the ingrained ‘Sex-specific veiling’ regarding them. In many women’s lives, certain legal or societal rules of dress are necessary to avoid derogatory names, harassment, violence and/or punishment from the law.

I disagree entirely with these rules, for the simple reason that it points to an underlying belief that women must adapt their appearance to circumvent male lust, rather than expecting men to exercise self control, and view women as people instead of a collection of body parts.

Often, the message portrayed is that women can expect to be ogled and harassed by virtue of simply having a woman’s body. I started thinking about this when I was uncomfortably hot in Italy once and noticed seemingly more comfortable men, some with significantly bigger breasts, wandering carefree. In our society a topless woman is considered sexual and indecent, and possibly punishable by law in public, while a topless man is not.

We have all seen the hairy moobs of summer, yet we know that even a flat-chested woman wouldn’t be able to go topless in public in the same places that men can. There is no significant anatomical difference and it’s very obvious that it is not the appearance of the chest, but the sex of the owner.

The only difference is the association with sex. Except breasts aren’t sex organs; they are secondary sexual characteristics, just like beards and deep male voices. However, they have become completely hyper-sexualised by the very fact that they are covered and only seen by men in sexual contexts.

The truth is you could take any body part, sexualise it and make it taboo in the same way. In some places a woman’s entire body qualifies, sometimes there are specified rules for hair covering, and famously in the Victorian era it was scandalous to show an ankle.

Apart from being downright insulting, this objectification has wide-reaching and damaging effects, from issues of body image and confidence to the increased threat of harassment.

I have heard several reasons for maintaining the status quo, including ‘men would never get anything done’. While this is often meant to be humorous, it still echoes the same ‘adapt to how men view you’ idea. The attitude that expects women to adapt their appearance to over-sexualised images of themselves in order to be ‘decent’ also underlies societal attitudes which hold female victims partly accountable for assault, harassment and rape depending on what they were wearing. This shifts blame from the perpetrator and portrays these attacks as a ‘natural hazard’ that women can expect and must work to avoid rather than violent attacks by criminals. There have been too many ad campaigns telling women how not to get raped, rather than targeting those who would commit the crime.

It is so pervasive that even breastfeeding in public is seen as inappropriate, with nursing mothers asked to leave transport, restaurants and other public areas. Facebook recently came under fire for removing the pictures from breastfeeding support pages because they constituted ‘indecent images’. This is not a lewd, provocative or sexual act. There appear to be significant numbers of people who cannot cope with the actual purpose of breasts because they have been conditioned to see them as nothing more than sexual cues and for the purposes of sexual gratification alone.  I’ve known several breastfeeding women who’ve come across this attitude, one while in a ladies changing room. They have even been told it’s inappropriate because ‘there are children around’. Perhaps these people wish their kids to wait until they can see breasts in a seedy magazine portrayed in their rightful context.

I suspect that if women were free to go topless in normal everyday contexts without being harassed or arrested, it would no longer be ‘inappropriate’. Women’s bodies would not be seen as more ‘indecent’ than men’s and wouldn’t be objectified to the same extent, nursing mothers would feel more confident and supported in public, we would be better at targeting harassment against women because we might stop blaming them for it. Lad’s mags would lose much of their allure – which would curb the objectification as well. Many societal ills arise from this particular neurosis and I am convinced the world would be a better place with the freedom of public toplessness for all.