The March of Folly

I often wonder where the place is to be found between being entertained, being made to think, and being constrained by academic rigour.  We want to read books about issues that excite us or that confuse us, about topics we want to explore, and often wish to read stimulating contributions without being subjected to the demands of academic precision.  We also like to spend time looking at ideas, even if they turn out to be rather slight, oversimplified, and possibly somewhat misleading.

Of all the fields where this is a problem, history must be at the forefront.  Histories are always exercises in the imagination, as we can never go back to the past, or not yet anyway!  As we read reconstructed accounts of the way things were, we both know they are based on the writer’s views, and often nothing more than that.  At the same time, we can be captured by a writer who appears to make the past ‘live’.  As we read, we know that another writer will come out with another book that will reveal all the shortfalls in the book we’ve just finished.  Revisions and rethinking will continue, and, we are assured, each new work will be better:  more insightful, more accurate.  Where’s the stopping point – no, where’s the starting point?  At which point is this particular contribution one worth considering?

Barbara Tuchman is a case in point.  A 20th Century historian, journalist and writer, born in 1912 (and died in1989), she was known for compelling popular histories, and won the  Pulitzer Prize twice, the first time for the Guns of August, a history of the prelude to and the first month of World War I, and the second for Stilwell and the American Experience in China, a 1971 biography of General Stillwell.  However, for many people it was her broad-brush review of world history, the March of Folly, that they read and enjoyed.

She attended the Walden School on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, and received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Radcliffe College in 1933, having studied history and literature.  Working first as a researcher and journalist, it was following the Second World War, she began basic research for what would ultimately become the 1956 book Bible and Sword: England and Palestine from the Bronze Age to Balfour.  Its publication was the beginning of her commitment to historical research and writing, at a pace which soon saw her turning out a new book at approximately every four years.

She never claimed to be an academic and said that the norms of academic writing would have “stifled any writing capacity.”  She saw herself as having a literary approach to the writing of history, focussed on explanatory narratives rather than concentrating upon discovery and publication of newly discovered archival sources. Tuchman was “not a historian’s historian; she was a layperson’s historian who made the past interesting to millions of readers”.

The book has been described as concerned with ‘one of the most compelling paradoxes of history: the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests’.  Its four sections cover four major instances of government folly in human history: these are the Trojan’s decision to move a Greek wooden horse into their city; the failure of Popes in the Renaissance to stem the challenges that would lead to the Protestant Reformation; the catastrophic consequences of England’s policies relating to American colonies under King George III; and the United States’ mishandling of the Vietnam War.  This last topic takes up more than half of the book.

As a contribution to history, the book had a mixed reception.  The journal Foreign Affairs described the book as ‘in the Tuchman tradition: readable, entertaining, intelligent. It should lead a wide audience to think usefully about ‘the persistence of error.’  The New York Review of Books saw value in what Tuchman said, noting: “Systems and theories therefore should not be imposed on the past. The facts of the past should be allowed to speak for themselves. Why did history have to teach lessons anyway?  Why can’t history be studied and written and read for its own sake, as the record of human behavior…?”  The Review concluded “History is not a science, it is an art. History needs writers, or artists, who can communicate the past to readers, and that has been Tuchman’s calling.”

However, yet another review, Kirkus Reviews commented, “An exercise in historical interpretation such as this, tracing a single idea through a set of examples, is structured toward [Tuchman’s] weaknesses; and they are only too apparent. Tuchman applies the concept of folly to ‘historical mistakes’ with certain features in common: the policy taken was contrary to self-interest; it was not that of an individual (attributable to the individual’s character), but that of a group; it was not the only policy available; and it was pursued despite forebodings that it was mistaken. The only way to account for such self-destructive policies, in Tuchman’s view, is to label them follies; but that, as she seems unaware, puts them beyond rational explanation.

Similarly, another review criticised the book as having followed “the conventional, not to say threadbare, lines which the liberal media developed in the 1970s: that American involvement in Vietnam was, ab initio, an error which compounded itself  as it increased and was certain to fail all along. [Tuchman] thereby falls into a trap which a historian who seeks to draw lessons from the past should be particularly careful to avoid: to assume that what in the end did happen, had to happen.”  Finally, a review in the New York Times concluded “[A]ny way one approaches The March of Folly, it is unsatisfying, to say the least. Better books have been written about Vietnam, the American Revolution, the Renaissance Popes and the Trojan Horse. … Not only has [Tuchman] confined herself to the shallower wellsprings of history, she has committed the further sin of treating them superficially.”

These contrasting views from 1984 are illuminating, as they reflect the professional preferences and backgrounds of the reviewers.  A more recent commentary, Barbara Tuchman and the Unfinished March of Folly, by Armando Mariante appeared in the Brazilian Centre for International Relations.  The benefit of some distance from the original is revealing.  He comments “Barbara Tuchman died in 1989. Had she lived longer, she would have found no shortage of material for a new edition—a sort of Revisited March of Folly. The themes that haunted her—governments blind to reality, institutions acting against their own interests, and leaders trapped by hubris—have only grown more pronounced in the 21st century. From the invasion of Iraq to the climate crisis, from democratic erosion to reckless confrontations between nuclear powers, the world has continued along the same tragic trajectory she so carefully traced: the deliberate repetition of mistakes in the face of knowledge.”

His theme is clear, as is his perception of Tuchman.  He suggests many of the tragedies of history are not the result of ignorance, but of knowledge ignored or discarded.  Tuchman wasn’t trying to argue about error, but rather something worse, the stubborn persistence in error despite clear and repeated warnings.

We can think of many examples.  There’s the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 which can be described as a near-perfect reflection of her analysis of the Vietnam War 20 years earlier:   This was another conflict launched under false assumptions, driven by ideology, and resistant to correction even in the face of mounting disaster. Mariante suggests she had noted “the familiar manipulation of intelligence to justify policy, the suppression of dissenting voices, and the elevation of national prestige over prudent restraint.”

He has some other telling examples.  He suggests the COVID-19 pandemic, was a global crisis predicted by scientists, yet when it struck it was met with unpreparedness, denial, and politicisation.  He comments that she would have been “struck by how governments in many countries dismissed expert warnings, undermined public health authorities, and allowed ideology or image to outweigh clear medical guidance”.  He suggests she would have concluded the pandemic response wasn’t the lack of information, but a failure to act on what was already known—an archetypal march of folly, with devastating human cost.  More recently, if she had seen the recent U.S. strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, “she would likely see the familiar pattern of choosing force over diplomacy, ignoring historical context, and underestimating the dangers of escalation.”

Tuchman wasn’t trying to provide a detailed account of what happened back at the historical times she considered.  Rather she saw her account as ‘a ledger of warnings’.   From her perspective, history is not just a chronicle of the past—it is a mirror held up to the present. It is hard not to agree with Mariante, as he reflects on a world where people continue to make avoidable mistakes, that appears to almost deliberately forget what it once knew, and that as a result repeats tragedy of her ‘march of folly’.  If she had been a journalist, then her articles would be considered as offering an almost startling consistency.  Mariante suggests her voice still calls out, “not to admonish, but to remind us that knowledge and power without wisdom is peril. If the march of folly continues today, it is not because we do not know better—we do—but because we choose not to act on what we know. And in that choice, Tuchman might warn us, lies the gravest threat of all”.

I think that was the way in which many people saw her work.  However, others, like Keith Crook, saw Barbara Tuchman as a less than meritorious example of the popular history movement that emerged in the second half of the twentieth century. Crook summarises her model of folly as examining situations defined by actions being taken when there were feasible alternatives ignored in favour of the foolish course of action that was adopted.  However, The March of Folly is concerned with folly that should have been obvious at the time by rational observers, and her criteria included that it must be a group decision made “beyond any one political lifetime”.

Are these criteria met in her four examples?  As far as Crook sees it, possibly not in the eyes of an analytical historian. For that matter, he suggests, neither do many of the dozens of examples of historical folly that are included in her introductory chapter.  However, Crook isn’t offering unrelenting criticism, and balances his concerns about historical accuracy with other observations.  He notes how beautifully Tuchman uses the English language, as well as including very interesting anecdotes about the figures in her narratives. “For example, we learn that the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Francis Dashwood, was also a notorious rake who founded the infamous Hellfire Club. Make no mistake, this is a pleasant read for a reader interested in casual history, but is it good history?”

Here is the point:  it is clearly the case that she is wrong in many details, although some errors have only become apparent in the last forty years of continuing scholarship.  He is willing to concede she offers a great deal, but on the American Revolution he concludes “Overall, though this piece is masterfully written, I found it superficial and offering nothing new.”  That observation made me think.  Am I reading Tuchman on the American Revolution because I want a detailed and up-to-date review of the history of this event, or because she is offering a helpful and enlightening overview.  As he concludes: “I contend that Barbara Tuchman is a superb wordsmith but has aged poorly as a historian. By all means, read The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam for a masterclass in how to make history appear to come alive, but if one wishes to learn more about the historical follies covered in this book, there are much better options.”

Can I amend that closing comment: there are much better options available today, and Crook offers an interesting and important critique of The March of Folly.  Forty years after it appeared, we know so much more, and we are aware of many misunderstanding s that existed back in the 1980s.  Does that mean we can’t read and enjoy historical studies written back several years ago?

That takes me back to my initial comments.  We do want to read books about issues that excite us or that confuse us, about topics we want to explore, and often we wish to read stimulating contributions on a topic without being subjected to the demands of academic precision.  We also do like to spend time looking at ideas, even if they they turn out to be rather slight, oversimplified, and possibly somewhat misleading.  What we don’t like is to find ourselves embedded in non-fiction to then discover it isn’t non-fiction, it is a form of fiction closer to fantasy.  With so much being written in so many forms and in so many places, the task of judgement is almost impossible.  We read about some interesting research, and have relatively little confidence that this is accurate information, or sales-worthy exaggeration.

This must be especially critical in relation to works about the past.  History is a critical subject.  We can never experience the past.  Apart from physical objects, nothing else remains.  This includes both objects – clothes, swords, buildings and more – but also written records.  We are inclined to think that the written record from the time has to be a source of certainty.  However, we know enough to be confident that the written record of events in the past is as unreliable as the written record is of events today.  We read something happened:  then or now.  The explanation of anything more than physical matters is the result of interpretation, of what is included, what is left out, what is ‘understood’ and what has been ‘interpreted’.  That set of issues is further complicated by the fact that each successive piece of writing about an event is then also influenced by what has been written before, by the interests and prejudices of each succeeding commentator, and what has been learnt over time.

I sometimes go back to reading one of my older history books – Trevelyan on British History.  The story he tells is engaging, and paints a picture of how the Uk evolved from tribal enclaves through to a single unified (OK, almost unified) state.  It’s a compelling, fascinating account.  Today I am aware that much of it is incorrect in details, sometimes the result of misunderstandings, sometimes the result of relying on evidence that has since been overthrown, re-examined and re-interpreted.  I suppose this doesn’t concern me too much.  First of all, I believe that change is always taking place, and that the past isn’t just different but ‘a foreign country’.  Second, I am interested in the motives of writers, and know that putting pen to paper is a matter of what story you want to tell.

Does this concern me?  Not really, as I am well aware that I should read history books and articles and be clear in my own mind what it is I am considering.  If this is meant to be a ‘true account’ of what took place, I immediately read with caution.  If I am told these are the facts of what took place back then, I am equally cautious.  If the writer declares the account is intended to offer a picture of what took place at some point in time, based on what many agree was likely, I am reassured:  it’s a work in progress, and the author is being duly cautious.  If the writer is making it clear that this is a ‘story’, a faction if you like, offering a perspective on what might have happened, then I am intrigued to see what evidence is offered to support this version of the story of the past, but I am equally concerned to bear in mind that a good story doesn’t mean it is an accurate story.

My own view is that we need a current Barbara Tuchman, another articulate contemporary critic who will help us discern some of the latest examples of those ‘most compelling paradoxes of history: the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests’.  I am interested in how we view past actions, and what those accounts tell us about our views of human nature, of political and social systems and of so much more.  My personal interest is in viewing the past as providing insights into how the world we are living in today might have developed.  What I need from the books I read is to be encouraged to think, and to expand my understanding.  As I consider The March of Folly, I am hoping to be encouraged to think, but not to be persuaded this is some kind of final truth.  Perhaps I should ask, who should I be reading today who meets that need?

Lost Connection

Every so often I read an article or a book that seems to capture the current moment and does so in a way that crystallises how I see the world.  I suppose this reflects my increasing confidence:  I am reading something that reassures me others see the world in the way I do.  It is always encouraging to read something that reaffirms what you felt was obvious but about which you weren’t quite certain.  However, such articles can also be seductive:  a good piece can be very persuasive, and shape how you think, drawing on anecdotes, perspectives and ways of seeing that make sense, leading to the conclusion that’s the way things are – and I knew it!

This is particularly the case when I read an article about how the world is different now.  It is especially tempting to be reminded about how things were when you were a child, moments and situations you recall as you look back fondly at events and people in your childhood, adolescence and even young adulthood.  On reflection, you conclude everything was simpler then, technology less intrusive, interactions more innocent.  Even though you recall there were some challenging moments in the past, overall you are prone to remember what was good, fun, interesting:  I suspect this is a form of defence mechanism, one that tends to push terrible events into the background, or take some of the sting out of them.  I don’t mean to imply that disasters are obliterated, but I believe we have the capacity to reduce their salience, at least some of the time.  Perhaps there were moments when your life was hard and discouraging, but on reflection the world seemed a nicer, happier place when you were young

I was reminded of this recently when I read a very compelling article by Rebecca Solnit.  She is an outstanding novelist, but she is also a stimulating essayist.  In late January she published an article in The Guardian, a deeply felt critique of capitalism today, and its focus on what she describes (based on a comment from a friend) as ‘the tyranny of the quantifiable’.  She described her views as an elegy to “deep immersion in the moment, of engaging with the world in an embodied and sensual way, whether it’s dancing or dog-walking, cake-decorating or dirt-biking.”  Her evident concern was that today “we are beset with the ideology of maximising having while minimising doing.”  She observes that this has long been capitalism’s narrative and is now it is also the tempting promise of technology.  “It is an ideology that steals from us relationships and connections and eventually our selves.”  As she saw it, the issue today is that we are encouraged to describe and value only that which our modern version of capitalism allows, and even encourages, while other aspects of our lives are overlooked or diminished.

As I read it, I had no doubt that what Solnit was offering a pointed and devastating critique.  In her essay she notes how Silicon Valley is concentrated on the quantifiable. “For decades, its oligarchs have preached that our criteria for what we do and how we do it should be convenience, efficiency, productivity, profitability. They have told us that to go out into the world, to interact with others, is perilous, unpleasant, inefficient, a waste of time, and that time is something we should hoard rather than spend.  This ends up meaning that we can minimise our presence in the world and maximise time spent working and online, which also means maximising alienation and isolation. This has involved a reordering of society right down to our retail landscapes … To embrace the tyranny of the quantifiable is to dismiss the subtle value of these daily acts out in the world and the ways they generate and maintain networks of relationships.  So we have withdrawn, while being constantly told this is good, and it has turned out to be bad in a thousand small ways, weakening public life and local institutions, isolating us.”

There’s worse.  Having convinced many people to avoid going out and have unmediated contact with other people, Solnit reports “Silicon Valley is now telling us we do not want to do our own thinking, creating or communicating with other humans.”  She quotes the sociologist and psychologist Sherry Turkle, who has followed the evolution of computer technologies since the 1970s.  Solnit reports that Turkle writes about her desire to raise an empathic child. “I knew that without the ability to spend quiet time alone, that would be impossible. But that was where screens began to get us into trouble. Our capacity for solitude is undermined as soon as we introduce a screen.”

Some of her examples seem almost unbelievably bizarre.   “You’ll never think alone again,” said one advertisement for an AI product called Cluely.  The ad seemed confused about what thinking is and oblivious to why we might want to do it ourselves. These companies often suggest that things we have always done are too hard to do.”   Her commentary on Cluely describes the way this startup marketed its AI assistant “with an advert featuring a young man wearing smart glasses, similar to those that first appeared as Google Glass in 2014 … Glasses of this type, which have internet access and tiny screens, operate on the premise that as you move through your day you need constant help, outsourcing basic decisions, checking facts, being reminded of appointments, in essence being babysat by your headgear.”

She continues “In the Cluely advert, the young man (who’s one of the product’s creators) gets a steady stream of prompts for talking to a young woman on their first date. So much of what tech offers is solutions to non-problems, or to problems that need to be solved through other means. Why is the young man incapable or afraid of talking without coaching? Is he really talking to his date or is he relaying instructions? How would she feel if she knew she were talking to an algorithm via her distracted date’s phone? With continued use, he may become even less capable of doing what we’ve all done for ever: converse, which is an act of collaborative improvisation.”

“We must presume that the point of a date is to establish a personal connection, but in this interaction it’s reframed as something like a business opportunity. The young man wants to impress the girl, but it’s hard not to conclude that if she is impressed, it won’t be with him, but with his dialogue coach!  Ned Resnikoff writes in his newsletter, chiming in with Turkle: “Cluely’s explicit promise is to abolish solitude – and, in effect, to abolish thought. All dialogue with one’s self is to be replaced by queries put to a large language model.”

Critiquing much of what we might choose to be the result of ingenious marketing can allow us to miss the deeper issues that Solnit addresses.  As she explains “The tyranny of the quantifiable tramples over the question of what it is we get from doing the work, why we might want to do it, how writing – which is mostly thinking – can be part of developing a self, a worldview, a set of ethics, a greater capacity to understand and use language.”

She also offers some scary examples.  She reports that someone had told her that she was “having a chatbot write her husband a poem for their anniversary, which made me wonder if the husband desired a polished product or an expression from the heart. In Edmond Rostand’s 1897 play Cyrano de Bergerac, the big-nosed title character ghostwrites love letters for his friend to the Roxanne both of them love. She comes to realise it’s the author of the letters she really loves. What happens when you realise the true love who touched your heart isn’t even human? Accepting it as your AI lover seems to be one answer.”

“One argument for AI companions is that they are always there for you: when you want them on, off when you want them off, with no needs of their own.  Yet behind this lies a capitalist argument that we’re here to get as much as possible and give as little as possible, to meet our own needs and dodge those of others.  In the real world, you get something from giving – at the very least, you get a sense of being someone with something to give, which is one measure of your own wealth, generosity and power.  We were designed to give; the gifts were meant to circulate. Love is too often discussed as a sort of good you want to stockpile, harvest, collect, even extract, but to be loved without loving is a sad accomplishment, a miser’s hoarding of someone else’s wealth. The work of loving is also the work of forging a self and a life. … and of confronting the unpredictable, the vulnerable or risky, the intimate, the embodied”.

It is very tempting to keep on quoting Solnit.  She is describing what people of my age see the world becoming.  I can’t help it:  I must quote her once more: “The capitalist agenda of maximising getting and minimising giving has some application in commerce but impoverishes life.  We are social animals who need to be with other humans, whether it’s at a carnival or funeral or the ordinary times in between. There is a sense of belonging that goes deeper than words when we are with people who care about us, and even more so when we are in alignment, whether it’s two people falling into step on a walk or a dozen dancing together or a congregation praying or 10,000 marching together.”

However, it was around this point that I stopped.  As I see it, the capitalist agenda is concerned with investing in products and services that clever people can persuade others they want.  Sometimes those products or services meet legitimate needs and interests; sometimes they create needs or desires that are trivial, inauthentic, or positively misleading.  However, hasn’t that always been the case?  Businessmen, politicians, priests and writers, aren’t they are all trying to sell us their vision?  They were doing that centuries ago, and they will be seeking to do so centuries into the future.  Helping us to see things ‘the right way’.  That’s an old story, and the capitalist system has only managed to organise the process a little more effectively.

Perhaps that isn’t the core of the issue.  Solnit is particularly exercised about AI and AI assistants.  She suggests that in order to assist you, these artificial intelligence systems offer what she describes as ‘agreeable sycophancy’.  There are real horror stories, of course, as users fall for financially crazy schemes, develop paranoia, begin to distrust family and friends, and even plunge them into suicidal despair, “with the helpful chatbot offering advice on how to kill yourself.”  Agreed, but that is nothing new.  The elderly, the young, confused teenagers and thwarted adults, they have all been susceptible to smart strangers or ‘helpful’ family members.  As much as that is true today, so it has been true over the centuries, as both the fiction and non-fiction of the past make clear.  We are gullible, and AI is merely another way to tap into our gullibility.

Solnit points out the danger of flatterers; that we need kind people in our lives who will tell us the truth when we’ve veered off course. She suggests that chatbots cannot do this, apparently because the only information they have about us is what we have supplied.  Really, is that the case?  I suspect it is the opposite, as con men have learnt over the years:  listen to the mark and then play back what they have told you, adding in the twist, the offer, the redemption.  She suggests it is the very rich who already suffer from sycophancy, from living in echo chambers, but this is a problem for all of us.  There are no end of friends and colleagues who will happily concur with our points of view, and then helpfully agree with the actions we propose.

Solnit quotes from Carissa Véliz, an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Oxford’s Institute for Ethics in AI, who told a Rolling Stone reporter “Part of what keeps us sane is other people’s perspectives, which are often in tension with ours …When you say something questionable, others will challenge you, ask questions, defy you. It can be annoying, but it keeps us tied to reality, and it is the basis of a healthy democratic citizenry.”

Solnit sees the solution to these woes in connection.  She encourages us to distinguish between “the things real friends can do and AI cannot: bake you a cake or drive you home, hold your hand or live through a crisis or a celebration with you. And because of that difference people need to have real friends.  More than that, people need real communities and social support systems.  The solution to technology is not more technology. The solution to loneliness is each other, a wealth that should be available to most of us most of the time. We need to rebuild or reinvent the ways and places in which we meet; we need to recognise them as the space of democracy, of joy, of connection, of love, of trust. Technology has stolen us from each other and in many ways from ourselves, and then tried to sell us substitutes. Stealing ourselves back, alas, is not as easy as walking out the door. We need somewhere to go and, more importantly, someone to go to who likewise desires to connect.”

The more I read, the more I was frustrated.   Solnit isn’t describing something that has suddenly arisen because of those chatbots and AI systems she described.  It has always been like this.  We are a confusing mixture of dependency and exploitation.  We depend on others, on our families, friends, workmates and even those we meet in shops, workplaces, playing fields and galleries.  At the same time, we cherish what we have as individuals, what we have acquired, what we have obtained from others for ourselves.  We sometimes are willing to pay the costs for borrowing or appropriation, but we also like to get what we can for as little cost as possible.

Much of human history, or that part of it which we can discover, is about people seeking to exploit others, balanced against those occasional, truly inspirational accounts where the dominating motive was giving rather than taking.  In the bookcase in our apartment, there is a wonderful collection of history books: Bloch on Feudal Society, Tuchman on The March of Folly, books on the rise and fall of the Medici, the decline and fall of Byzantium, and on the exploits of Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan and Tamerlane, on the world of the Pharaohs and the wars of the 20th Century.  They depict the rise and fall of human aspirations, as great leaders tried to do something more than simply rule and exploit, but in every example it is also the case they illustrate how greed, selfishness and opportunity have thwarted noble aspirations.  As I see it, Solnit is describing more of the same:  like any others she seeks a world that never existed, where people lived in harmony, greed was banished, and cooperation and collaboration shaped experience.

We tend to resist the prophet in our time.  Solnit is a prophet, in her fiction and in this essay.  She concludes “We are told that machines will become like us, but in many ways they demand we become more like them.  To let that happen is to lose something immeasurably valuable.  That immeasurability is what makes this struggle difficult, but what cannot be measured can be described or at least evoked and valued. It cannot be boiled down to simple metrics such as efficiency and profitability.  Resisting the annexation of our hearts and minds by Silicon Valley requires us not just to set boundaries on our engagement with what they offer, but to cherish the alternatives.  Joy in ordinary things, in each other, in embodied life, and the language with which to value it, is essential to this resistance, which is resistance to dehumanisation.”

Is this essay call for action, or a voice in the wilderness?  We are inspired by writers who address major issues, and who dissect human nature and the political and economic systems we have devised.  We do need hope, to believe that things can be better, that we are more than animals with strangely larger brains than the rest.  As I read he essay I’m sure you know I wanted to believe that we will respond to her appeal, and humanity will shift its direction.  However, I suspect you also know that I doubted it.

History shows that our bad habits remain, despite emotional and inspirational pleas to change.  As any parent concerned about their aspirations for their child knows, no matter how they work hard to instill the values and behaviours that will make their child a better person and contribute to a better society, it’s not that simple.  Yes, that is what many parents want to achieve, but the outcomes can often seem rather discouraging:  practice falls short of hopeful aspirations, and that this is often the situation we like to believe is the result of the malign influence of others.  However, quite simply it may be because this is the way things are.

Muesli and other grumbles

For years I made my own muesli.  It was easy:  to a base of rolled oats, wheat bran, and wheat germ I added raisins, sultanas, and sometimes cashews.  At the beginning, I used to sprinkle pollen on top of the mix, which had marinated in milk (even from the night before), in the belief it would help reduce hay fever, but the pollen was added all the year round.   Over the years I became more adventurous and would sometimes add chopped-up dates and blueberries on top as well.  Eventually I gave up on the pollen.

All that changed in the 1990s, when I met David Southwick, a Melbourne entrepreneur, and though him Carolyn Cresswell, another innovative business developer.  I should let her tell her own story:

“It’s amazing where life can lead you…One day I was told that I was to lose my job as the business was to be sold. I immediately thought, “You could buy this little business! You love the muesli and you make it already!” My offer of $1,000 was eventually accepted and Carman’s was born. It was a life changing decision. Finishing my degree proved challenging as I made deliveries before morning lectures and balanced the books in the library during lunch breaks.”  I was to change from making my own muesli mix to buying Carman’s.  There are many reasons for this:  but principally it was delicious, and it was easier than making the mix myself. “

At the same time, Carolyn was committed to sustainable principles.  To quote again:

“Good food shouldn’t have a harmful impact on anything.  That’s why to us sustainability is about so much more than just the environment. It’s about caring for our suppliers and employees, nourishing local communities, and serving up delicious, nutritious goodies for you.  Over the past 30 years, we’ve achieved some remarkable things on our sustainability journey. But our next chapter promises to deliver even more goodness as we support the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.”  

So, where’s the grumble?  In relation to Carman’s Muesli, it has to do with buying it in the supermarket.  The process should be simple.  All I have to do is go into the local supermarket, and to the aisle that contains cereals.  There are all of Carman’s varieties, including Untoasted Muesli – Natural Bircher.  Great.  Oops, that is the only variety that doesn’t come in the 1.5 kg pack!  It used to be available, but it hasn’t been the case for some weeks now.  The ‘toasted’ alternative is there, as it always is, but never the untoasted.  Smaller packs are there, but at a higher price per 100 g.  Grumble …

It’s not just Muesli.  For years I have typed blogs, articles and other notes and letters quite happily, using Microsoft Word.  For fifteen years (after a slightly fraught swop over) I have been an enthusiastic Apple user.  I’ve kept my software up to date, and – but only when I had to – I have upgraded the system software.  In the past year I graduated to a better Mac, a MacBook, and a new iPad.  The oldest item right now is my iPhone.  All good, all working seamlessly together.  Happy.

Almost happy, but just recently, I carried out my usual software update on my lovely desktop Mac, following the prompt from Apple.  I didn’t notice there were two options, one the next in the usual progression of versions, and the other something different with a much higher identifying number.  I pressed the button to start the upgrade.  That had two consequences.  The first was, as they say, just bad luck, as the computer froze in the upgrade process, and I wasn’t able to ‘unstick’ it.  The helpful people at the Apple Store managed to get it going again, with almost nothing lost.  However, the second problem was a hidden snag!

In the process of getting my desktop computer going again, I discovered programs had been updated.  One of these was Microsoft Word (I also discovered I had some strange new software packages, which I have tried to ignore – and I no longer use PowerPoint or Excel).  I opened Word and was instantly baffled.  Where were all those nice items across the top of the screen – those columns of options usually labelled ‘Home’, ‘Insert’, ‘Draw’ and so on.  Some items were still in place as I clicked from one are to another – like format, text size, bold and italics, numbering – but others seemed to have disappeared.  I couldn’t even find the icon to save my work!!  Later I learnt that some of those options were available to the side of the text I was producing, and after a few very tense days I discovered you could get many other options back by resorting to Classic View (makes me think of old cars in one of those Concours D’Elegance …).

What was this about?  It seems, if I’m not mistaken, that the program has been ‘simplified’ for the sake of the average user.  I realised that I was being encouraged to use one of the set formats.  There was a layout for a job application, a letter to the boss, a recommendation for action by a company member, and even a layout for a recipe and a travel diary.  I couldn’t find one for the 4-page Sheldrake blog.  Why not?  Well, I slowly realised that the latest version of Word is meant to be easier to use, simplified, reducing confusing choice.  I suspect that is another way of saying ‘dumbed down’.  You can restore an alternative version with most of the options I’ve come to love, but it seems unfamiliar users want it all made simple.  Until one of the choices is ‘Peter’s 4-page blog’ format, I am back to grumbling.

People in their 80s do grumble a lot.  I am aware of that weakness.  However, I don’t need to have it pointed out to me that I leave two spaces between a full-stop and the beginning of the next sentence, littering my text with many gaps with warning lines below.  Spelling corrections – fine.  Some basic inelegant forms of expression identified.  Fine again.  Trying to push me into conformity with other users’ over use of spaces.  No way.

Then the penny dropped.  The troubles I’d been facing over Carman’s Muesli, and the challenges of the ‘new Word’ are the same.  This is all about meeting the needs of the supplier, not the shopper.  Leaving the shelves of the supermarket laden with slow selling options, cramming all the Word options onto the row of icons above the page you’re typing, this is wasting the company’s time and energy, when they should be focussing on maximising returns and reducing costs.  All that stuff I used to explore in workshops about ‘the customer is king’ has gone, past history, archaic thinking.  Now the company is king, and the shopper in the store is merely a slightly annoying element at the end of the line.  I’d been aware of how this was changing the lives of suppliers, whose product sizes, shape, and colour usage had to fit what the store wanted (alone with increasingly complex product and cost codes).  Now those at the other end of the retail cycle are expected to meet the company’s needs.

I should have seen what was happening.  A prescient warning sign had the fate of product returns.  There used to be a place in the store where you could return a faulty product and talk to a staff member over what the problem was – giving helpful feedback to pass on to the suppliers.  A few years ago, I notice that these ‘Returns’ spots were occupied by a single person and a large waste bin:  too much trouble to return any items to a supplier or fix whatever was wrong.  Now the Returns counter has just about disappeared.  Why waste money and space on that.  Much easier to simply get the checkout and shelf filling staff to take whatever is at fault and that they can throw it away.  The ‘wastage rates’ at many businesses are extraordinarily high, and only a part of that is the so-called natural wastage of years ago (stealing) as more of it has to do with helping ‘overworked’ staff.

As I was getting rather tetchy about muesli and various computer programs, I decided to eat a banana. Good, but it reminded me of another example of the impact of companies. This is the story of bananas in the Western Hemisphere. While plantains and bananas have much more to be said about them across the world, one part of that complex story begins in the 1870s in Jamaica. There a sea captain, one Lorenzo Dow Baker, bought 170 stems of bananas which he had acquired in the hope he could sell them back in his home town, Philadelphia. It was a gamble that worked, and soon he had a growing business, eventually setting up the Boston Fruit Company (which later became the United Fruit Company, and then Chiquita Brands International, one of the big two fruit companies in North America, along with Fyffes).The success of his venture relied on refrigeration, keeping the fruit from ripening while being transported.

From that small beginning, a mammoth business emerged, with two companies developing a series of monopolies that ensured they controlled the banana business, and the economies of several Central American countries. The two businesses obtained land concessions and growers, took over the subsidiaries of some shipping companies, and built and controlled the rail infrastructure. In the end they dominated the economies of several countries, actions that became the source of the phrase a ‘banana republic.’  As holdings grew, they acquired more and more control of land, and more and more control of the governments and their policies in the places where they operated.

They faced challenges. The dominant banana variety in the first half of the 20^th Century was the Gros Michel Banana, but the variety slowly succumbed to the virulent Panama disease. As a result, the two companies switched to the Cavendish banana, which was a resistant strain, and which now dominates banana growing in the West. They also used their economic strength to ensure advantageous deals in the producer countries, keeping costs, transport, wages, and other expenses low. Market power was unrelenting, and soon most other banana varieties disappeared from grocery and supermarket chains. Today most chains, like Coles and Woolworths in Australia, only sell Cavendish bananas.

In seventy years, the Cavendish reigns supreme in the region. Producers make small profits (and for many producers their economic situation is marginal), but the big two companies continue to make extremely healthy profits, aided by steady improvements in transport, refrigeration, and disease mitigation strategies. At the other end of the supply chain, shoppers find that bananas seldom go down in price, spite of all the innovations and the latest technologies adopted by the two big suppliers.

It seems a common story. Just as with the software industry, where it is Microsoft and Apple, or the very profitable supermarket industry in Australia, with Coles and Woolworths, it is neither the suppliers nor the customers that reap the benefits, but the giants in the middle. Is this the economic world of the future? Those at either end of the economic system are largely excluded from the benefits of latest technologies in such areas as production, logistics, marketing, and finance:  customers continue to pay what the large companies demand, producers sell to those same large companies at close to production costs. The riches are gathered by the intermediaries, controlling both supply and distribution.

Does this mean the staff of these intermediaries are well paid, that they, at least, get the benefits of this distorted supply chain? Well, you know that is a trick question. Companies keep staff costs low in warehouses, manufacturing, and service areas. The people who benefit most from the current system are the managers at the top of the major companies, and the investors. What they want to do is ensure continuing dominance, by excluding as much competition as possible. Just in case you haven’t realised this, it is especially easy in a small distant country like Australia, where two major supermarket chains are to be found, Coles and Woolworths, which are said to have their most successful subsidiaries ‘down under.’

Perhaps I should stop coming up with examples and draw a rather long bow. It appears we are heading towards a very asymmetrical society, in countries like the USA, Australia and several others in Europe. That society comprises a small elite of extraordinarily rich people, running and owning shares in increasingly protected major enterprises. The elite employs a significant number of staff, on far less attractive salaries, who run and support the elites various companies:  those staff are under three types of pressure, as the companies seek to keep their wages under control to replace them by automatic systems and robots, or, if absolutely necessary, outsource the work to people in low income, third world countries.  The rest of society falls into two groups:  those working in low paid service roles of one kind or another, and self-employed workers who carve out areas where they offer support and help, in roles that range from gardening, plumbing and electrical work, through to tutoring, child minding and cleaning; and those that rely on charity.

Is this the new world? We have scrapped the old form of society with its four classes – aristocrats, upper class, middle class and working class (with various grading within each sector) – for a new structure – comprising the ultra-rich, the marginally paid workforce, the self-employed and the rejected poor. At the same time, we have scrapped the sense of community, of common concerns, where integrating activities from church to clubs and societies have been replaced by mass spectacles, with participation carefully structured with each group in its place, and no sense of common interest.

Just to complete this gloomy perspective, it seems we have lost our sense of the relationship between generations. The Boomers are slowly fading from view, now resorting to spending their saved money on booze, holidays, and electronic toys for the home. The next three generations are fighting hard to survive (unless they are members of the ultra-rich). That leaves the youngest generation, where they confront yet another challenge. As they mature more rapidly than generations before, often physically mature by the time they reach their teens, they simultaneously confront social development and learning needs that continued on into their twenties. All this, of course, rests on the presumption of continuing growth.

If you stand back from this situation, you would conclude we are facing collapse or radical change, as the present model appears unsustainable. History suggests that collapse is more likely than radical change. Those at the top will hang on for as long as they can, and those at the bottom seem to have lost revolutionary fervour. If the West collapses, will the East save us? Not Russia, for certain. China perhaps. Maybe India. Born just before the Boomers, my path is clear – drink gin and tonics and red wine while I can, and watch Rome burn. Oops, I mean watch the coming chaos with interest, aware I am completely powerless to do anything to stop the disaster in front of me.

PS:  I am not running for parliament, seeking to establish a new political party, nor am I able to advocate a path out of the mess. Just another person sitting in the Coliseum, watching.

Are you resolved?

Here we are at the beginning of the year, the time when convention suggests we should begin again by wiping the slate clean and setting a new agenda.  This is justification for that strange annual activity: the proposal and implementation of New Year’s resolutions. The idea of using the start of the year as a time to make an explicit commitment to a series of future actions is an old one.  It can be dated back by at least 4,000 years to the time of the ancient Babylonians, who made promises to their gods during the Akitu festival (starting in March) to return borrowed items and pay debts for good favour.

Given the importance of making promises to the gods, we can see this approach was one which almost inevitably was going run into trouble, the kind of trouble that comes from making future promises given humanity’s persistent failing to keep them.  Despite the evidence being against them, this hopeful practice has continued as a aspiration and a target for many groups since then, evolving through a series of similar activities, including the Roman tradition of honouring Janus (the god of beginnings) right through to the time set aside for Wesleyan Christian covenant renewal services and finally continuing right up to today’s largely secular focus on establishing future targets for the coming year largely comprising self-improvement plans on a variety of topics including health, finance, and personal habits.

Well, that’s what we are advised is the case when we read the relevant article in Wikipedia which adds the somewhat salutary observation that people still continue to make New Year’s resolutions despite overwhelming evidence that success rates have and remain rather low.

Apparently, it has always been the case that these personal commitments seldom last longer than the end of January and very few resolutions are sustained to the end of the year.  I couldn’t find much about the success rate for promises made by Babylonians or Romans, but John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist church, recognised more success in sustaining future plans could be achieved by making these resolutions public.  He developed the institution of “Covenant Renewal Services” on New Year’s Eve/Day, involving Bible readings and hymns, influencing later watch night services. That was one way to increase commitment as there is a lot of evidence that embarrassment has a better chance of working than private commitment.   However, the level of achievement for covenant renewals hasn’t been revealed, so the success of that particular approach isn’t known.

Today the commitment to New Year resolutions has become victim to it having been made into yet another ‘business’. In the 21^st Century there are a plethora of schemes and systems to be discovered (and paid for) to ensure commitments made at the beginning of the year are recorded and monitored, even though in recent decades the focus is increasingly secular, having shifted from religious vows to individual targets concerned with personal self-improvement goals like tasks and recurrent practices related to health, career, and relationships.  It is claimed around 40-45% of people today make resolutions, but only about 8% succeed, in examinations on the success of focusing on goals like weight loss, finances, and exercises.  Those figures come from various studies reported in a variety of popular magazines including Psychology Today and Forbes.

Those figures seem rather hopeful, however.  If resolutions are personal, there is little to encourage adherence. Those Babylonians understood the importance of public commitment when they tied their future plans and commitments into the celebrations in honour of the new year, although it should be noted that for them the year began not in January but in mid-March, when the crops were planted.  During a massive 12-day religious festival known as Akitu, the Babylonians crowned a new king or reaffirmed their loyalty to the reigning king. This was the time when they also made promises to the gods to pay their debts and return any objects they had borrowed. If the Babylonians kept to their word, they believed their (pagan) gods would bestow favour on them for the coming year. If not, they would fall out of the gods’ favour—a place no one wanted to be.

There is another perspective on this, one which is less about the importance of offering a goal to be achieved as evidence of commitment – and to impress a leader.  To some degree New Year’s resolutions can be seen as one part of our attempts to lead a good life.  However, a good life is concerned with a great deal more than annual promises. The idea of aspiring to live a good life has as long a history as committing to some resolutions for the coming year, but trying to live a good life is concerned with a process that is far more demanding than developing and failing to sustain annual resolutions.

I have written on the task of leading a good life over the course of many years in articles, books and talks. However, they have only been exegeses and elaborations on the thoughts of great philosophers, and especially the Ancient Greeks. Among these, Plato remains supreme.  Some 2,500 years ago he explained his view was that the good life involved achieving inner harmony by aligning your soul (your reason, spirit, and your desires or ‘appetite’) with the demands of virtuous living, using “reason to understand the importance of the virtues of wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice, and at the same time mastering your desires”  Plato explained that following this path would result in leading you toward true happiness (eudaimonia) rather than focussing on the short term, pursuing fleeting physical pleasures.

Plato was advocating an approach that required self-knowledge, moral reflection, and living virtuously, with reason guiding actions towards truth, not just external rewards or sensory gratification.  As he explained it, living a good life is one in which ‘Reason governs, while allowing your Spirit to support you, and your Appetites to be satisfied appropriately, creating a life of inner balance between these three practices’.

Plato went much further and argued that Virtue is based on Knowledge, and that understanding the ‘form’ of “the Good” comes through reason which leads to wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice, which are essential for well-being.  However, while Plato’s perspective rested on a carefully articulated philosophical framework, he noted that this approach wasn’t just about a complex set of ideas about ideas, but that it also requires Self-Mastery by overcoming and controlling impulses and desires to act in accordance with reason.

Plato was really demanding. True happiness he suggested comes from within, not pursuing extrinsic rewards like wealth, power or fame.  For me, one of his most telling concerns was with meaning and purpose, with the intention and the feeling you are making real progress, and you are working toward goals aligned with your values.  Nor is this just about nurturing relationships, but it also requires a commitment to personal growth through continuous learning, exploring new ideas, and developing resilience.

There is a problem in all this in the 21^st century which is that in our ‘modern’ world we are easily distracted and eminently distractable. Web sites, television programmes and other broadcasters work hard to grab our attention. The clamour of the news, the allure of the new and the babble of the world around us all conspire to pull us away from a commitment to upsurge a good life. Why not just enjoy what is happening around us?

2025 was a demanding year for many people.  Given that, it might be sensible to recognise the best thing they – and we – can do is to abandon ineffective striving, and settle for some modest goals, but not for anything more than that. If we follow that approach, then perhaps it is a good idea to have a few New Year Resolutions after all.  They are unlikely to prove onerous, especially as they will almost always be forgotten by the middle of the year:  lead a good life by some voluntary work;  make some donations to worthy causes. Sadly, that is the easy and inadequate approach we tend to adopt.

To do more than that is to take our lives and our responsibilities seriously. One determined and persistent guide is Peter Singer.  He makes it clear that doing good is essential and demanding work. In an interview with Graham Reilly in the Sydney Morning Herald back in 2015, he explained his views on living a good life which he explained is “trickier and yet simpler than you might think”. In his book The Most Good You Can Do, he suggests we haven’t really thought properly about how we can do the most good it is possible to do in this life.  He calls his approach “effective altruism”. How do you live your life in the most ethical way to make the world a better place and in a way that benefits the greatest possible number of people, most of whom you don’t know?

As an example of his approach, Singer aims to get more people to change their ideas about world poverty and what we as individuals can do to alleviate it through his proposal for pursuing effective altruism.  He describes his approach as a growing philosophy and social movement which applies evidence and reason, rather than emotion, to working out the most effective ways to improve the world. This is not about donations that give you a “warm glow”. This means living less selfishly, living more modestly and embracing a culture of giving to people less fortunate than you are.

“I think a lot of people do have a sense that they want to make the world a better place. And then you have to think about how I am going to do that. Not only how can I make it better but how can I do as much good as I can with the resources that I have.”. Singer says being a bystander is not an option. “It’s not an ethical option anyway. If we don’t do this, we are doing something wrong. We have an obligation to act.”

In his book, Singer writes of the ways people become effective altruists. He writes of those who deliberately choose to pursue careers that are highly paid, so that they can give more money away and help the most people they can over their lifetime.

In the chapter aptly titled ‘Giving part of yourself’, Singer discusses those effective altruists who donate one of their kidneys to save a stranger.

In his article, Graham Reilly wondered if this might be going a bit far? He responds to Singer by asking if an approach like this wasn’t putting your own life at risk? Singer ‘s response is telling.  He notes that it’s been calculated that there’s just a one in 4000 chance that a person will die as a result of giving away one kidney. But even at those odds he says he is not prepared to do it himself, although he admits it would be the right thing to do. I tell him I also prefer my kidneys to remain as a pair.

“I would do it if my daughter needed it and I think many people would,” Singer says. “But to give it to a stranger, nup. I don’t know if I can really defend that decision except to say I don’t like going into hospital and having operations. But that’s not a good reason.”

It is an important, yet challenging reservation.  Here, Singer makes a further distinction between what he advocates as a reasonable approach to helping people in need and what he is prepared to do himself.  “I see morality as not a black and white thing that either you do what’s right or you’re to be condemned for being a terrible person. I see it more like being on a grey scale and virtually everybody is on that scale.

He firmly believes everybody can and should be on this scale. The rich give more, the less rich, less. You can do a lot of good without earning a lot. You could use public transport instead of owning a car, stop buying stuff you don’t really need, stop measuring your success as a person by how big your house is. “The most solid base of self-esteem is to live an ethical life, that is a life in which one contributes to the greatest possible extent to making the world a better place.”

Crucially, he says, effective altruism needs to use the heart and the head and to be well-directed to be successful.  “Many people who give to help poor people in poor countries sponsor individual children, a practice that indicates the need to focus on a particular individual who they can get to know in some way. But it is not as likely to benefit as many people.”

Singer is a powerful advocate for the importance of living a good life and sets a standard most fail to achieve.  As he explores in his book, The Most Good You Can Do, (published by Text Publishing in 2015), there are many ways in which we can lead a good ethical life and pursue important and demanding resolutions.  It might be a good New Year’s resolution to read his book (and some of the others he has written) as a way to encourage a fuller examination of the life we lead and the value we create for others.

Obviously, not all of us have the determination to match Peter’s standard and adopt his specific approach.  At times, it is hard not to think he sets an impossible standard, but at least his comments are provocative and can help his readers rethink and reconsider, even if in only small ways.  That doesn’t mean we should abandon making a commitment to leading a good life.

At the beginning of this year, I have been thinking about doing good. As it happens, I have an excellent opportunity to explore this further. The theme for Canberra’s Philosopher’s Cafe in 2026 is identity. In the two groups that meet over the year, we take part in a series of interesting discussions but ones without real consequences, sometimes examining issues that could have real implications for the way we live, even suggesting possible resolutions.  However, our focus is on ideas, philosophical topics to consider as the year progresses.  They are rewarding, sometimes even provocative, but we could do more.

Given this, could the two groups in 2026 ask ‘How can we, individually or together, take our examination of the philosophy of identity further, to be more than academic, but instead to help each one of us develop insights and practices that will have a real impact on our lives?’  Should we do more than this?   Perhaps we could shape our discussions to include adopting Plato’s approach where “Reason governs, while allowing your Spirit to support you, and your Appetites to be satisfied appropriately, creating a life of inner balance between these three practices”.

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Cruising

In an age when words take on increasingly diverse meanings, it can be challenging to make the nature of your intended topic clear.  Take the word ‘cruising’ as an interesting example. It can refer to driving slowly or repeatedly along a popular road route for fun, to see and be seen, and to socialize, a practice popular in many towns and cities.  Another meaning is that it refers to walking or driving around looking for a sexual partner, often in specific locales, and in this use, it is a term that became historically associated with gay male culture in the second half of the 20^th Century.  In my use of the term, I am taking up another common use of the term, referring to ‘ocean cruising,’ which describes taking a vacation on a large ship, and calling in at different ports for sightseeing, entertainment, and relaxation.

The ocean cruise market has grown dramatically, and in 2025, an estimated 37 million passengers enjoyed a holiday travelling by ship for a number of days.  Industry projections suggest the global cruises market revenue is expected to grow from $44 billion today to reach r around $54 billion by 2029.  There are around some 323 cruise ships currently in operation globally, managed by 51 ocean cruise lines, and a further 27 river cruise lines.  It isn’t just a growing area of business, but the ships are growing, too!  Today, on average a cruise ship can host around 3,000 passengers.  One final statistic:  it is an activity somewhat focussed on older passengers, with an average age of around 47 years old.

In practice, cruise ships are really rather large passenger ships, and they are run in a way that suggests the best way to think of them is basically as floating hotels, with a large number of hospitality staff in addition to the usual ship’s crew. Given what are often significantly high passenger numbers, ships restaurants often organize two dinner sittings per day, and besides having one or two formal dining rooms, most cruise liners also have one or more casual buffet-style eateries.  Total meal outlets on a ship can number eight to fifteen of more.

Cruising began to be a serious vacation pastime in the middle of the Nineteenth Century, but the industry experienced fluctuations in popularity over the next hundred years, almost ceasing in the 1970s and 1980s.  However, this began to change in the late 1980s with the appearance of  “megaships” built specifically for the mass cruising market.  Cruise ships appeared with such innovations as having multi-story lobby, often  with a glass elevator and one or more decks with cabins each with a private balcony.  In more years, cruise ships have been designed to maximize the range of passenger amenities including several different kinds of cuisine in the various restaurants and other meal venues, meeting spaces, cinemas and cabaret venues.  They have been described as ‘balcony-laden floating condominiums’.  It is not uncommon for the more luxurious ships to have more crew and staff than passengers.

Since the 1980s, the pace of change has been amazing.  One clear indicator is that between 1988 and 2009, the largest class cruise ships have grown a third longer from 268 to 364.7 metres, (879 feet 3inches in 1988, up to 1,196 feet 8 inches), they have doubled their widths (going from 32.2 to 65.7 metres, (105.5 feet up to 215.6 feet 7), nearly tripled the total passenger count (2,744 to 7,600), and more than tripled in volume (going from 73,000 to 248,000 gross tons).  In addition they have changed from offering  a single deck with verandas to all decks having cabins with verandas.  However, to offer a sense of perspective it remains the case that hotels still dominate, with the total number of cabins on all of the world’s cruise ships amounting to less than 2% of the world’s hotel rooms.

Cruise ships are organized much like floating hotels, with the numbers of hospitality staff equal to exceeding those for the ship’s crew.  They’re needed, as most cruise ships offer a wide variety of facilities, including:

• Buffet restaurants
• Card room
• Casino – Only open when the ship is at sea to avoid conflict with local laws
• Childcare facilities
• Cinema, and/or theatre with Broadway-style shows
• Fitness centre
• Hot tubs
• Indoor and/or outdoor swimming pool with water slides
• Library
• Lounges, often including an ‘Observation lounge’
• Indoor activities including karaoke, ping pong and pool tables
• Shops – usually only open when the ship is at sea to avoid merchandising licensing and local taxes
• Spa
• Teen lounges

Some of the huge ships travelling on the oceans today can also include such features as bowling alleys, ice skating rinks, rock climbing walls, sky-diving simulators, miniature golf courses, video arcades, ziplines, surfing simulators, water slides, basketball courts, tennis courts, ropes obstacle courses, and even roller coasters.  They are floating cities!

Most cruise ships sail the Caribbean or the Mediterranean, but some travel to other areas including the Arctic and Antarctic oceans (pack-ice free areas, of course), the South Pacific, the Baltic Sea and New England, among others.  There are also ‘Expedition ‘cruise lines, which usually operate small ships, and visit certain more specialized destinations such as ports in the Arctic and Antarctica, or the Galapagos Islands.

The Caribbean region is one of the largest cruising areas in the world, responsible for over $2 billion in direct revenue to the Caribbean islands in 2012, employing over 45,000 locals.  An estimated 20 m cruise passengers visited the islands annually, with The Bahamas, Virgin Islands, Jamaica and other locales seeing at least 1 m visitors a year.  Alaskan cruises see more than  5 million passenger and crew visits, annually, but Europe is the world’s second-largest cruise market, only a little behind North America. Over 8 million European passengers cruised globally in 2024, with around 18 million passengers going  through EU ports in 2023.  Today, there may be 100 million people going ocean cruising annually.

All this data leaves to one side the nature of life aboard a cruise ship.  If these huge ships are often described as similar to a small – and exclusive – town, that description slips past many of the interesting interpersonal issues.  Perhaps that takes us to another meaning of the word ‘cruising’, in this case referring to spending time with a previously unknown group of people, where there are no continuing ties to be considered (even if people often create friendships).  This gives the people on a cruise ship a novel kind of freedom, both between themselves and other passengers, and between themselves and crew.

There are a number of aspects to this – including the much discussed ‘shipboard liaisons’ in popular literature.  However, a rather different perspective comes from looking at matters to do with class, status and social deference.

Social status issues on ocean liners historically involved stark class divisions (steerage vs. cabins), crew-passenger hierarchy, national/ethnic segregation among crew, and challenges for marginalized groups like female seafarers facing gender bias, all affecting access, amenities, and respect, and creating distinct social classes or segments which mirrored or even exacerbated real-world inequalities.  In many ways it might seem ocean liners offer a microcosms of society, reflecting and sometimes amplifying existing class structures, a function of ticket prices, crew demographics, and operational structures.  Together these can create distinct social worlds within the same vessel.  For many ocean liners, their business model is to identify top-of-the-line customers and, for a minimum of $10,000 a week, to pamper them with special amenities like a full-time butler, house them in an elegant suite with two-story views of sunsets over the waves, with access to a private swimming pool and the guaranteed company of  elite people like themselves.

Is that also true for cruise lines?  Some of the research suggests that there is some softening of these distinctions.  Modern cruise lines target a middle-class audience, creating contained “metaspaces” that can ameliorate existing social hierarchies, although there is always a clear distinction between the passenger experience of luxury and escapism, and the working conditions of the crew.  The workforce is often segmented by nationality and race, with workers from the “global South” (particularly the Philippines and the Caribbean) frequently occupying lower-waged, service-oriented roles like cabin cleaning.  In many ways, it is the divisions between crew from different backgrounds and in lower level positions that most clearly mirror global economic inequalities.

Another criticism of the cruise line industry is that it presents ‘Europeanised’ representations of destinations, which some have compared to ‘plantation tourism’. Some have built private destinations (like Royal Caribbean’s Labadee, Haiti, and CocoCay, Bahamas), and most vertically integrate their services, ensuring passenger spending generally stays within the company’s ecosystem rather than significantly benefiting local economies.  However, cruise operations can bring some revenue to local governments through port fees, which have been increasing in recent years, and through the commercialization of local culture to meet tourist expectations, creating a potential disconnect between the insulated onboard experience and the realities of the destinations visited.  However visits can be so well managed, using carefully chosen transport and tour guides, that the local experience is essentially curated.

All this is true, but part of the ‘luxury’ on being on a cruise is that, albeit briefly, passengers can forget about the realities of daily life.  The overall broad homogeneity of the people on the ship in terms of relative social status is reinforced, by some cruises lines, in making certain there are no obvious class-based activities or areas.  In that sense, the cruise is an ‘out of the everyday world’ experience, an escape.  Isn’t this the intention of a holiday, to get away from normal work, tensions and social issues, and indulge in a fantasy by living in a way that is unlike everyday life.  The guest on the cruise ship knows this, just as the same form of artificial living is evident by enjoying hotel and resort experiences, experiences that are costly and special and thereby quite different from and ‘outside’ normal activities.

Perhaps this is like going to the cinema or reading a book.  You are being ‘transported’ to another realm, albeit briefly, where you can enjoy a series of experiences that you know aren’t ‘real life’.  This alternative is far more expensive, of course, but people will save for that ‘once in a lifetime’ chance to escape and enjoy a life that is otherwise inaccessible.  As with reading, there is a distinction between being merely entertained and learning.

It is helpful to distinguish between two aspects of ocean cruising.  These are the experiences on the ship itself, and then the visits and tours of the places that are included on any cruise itinerary.  The ways these two aspects of the cruising experience are managed are very revealing.

Some cruises are almost exclusively focussed on the on-board experiences.  Ships offering this approach are often full of entertainment options, with cinemas, gambling, functions and even libraries to give the passengers alternative activities. Of these, there is one, the swimming pool, that is an attraction for many.  All these experiences are focussed on the same underlying purpose:  you eat, sleep and enjoy yourself on board, an approach that can easily turn into mindless relaxation.  This is the ‘indulgence’ side of ocean cruising.

The alternative focus in cruising is to call at many ports on the itinerary, and arriving at some ports there can be ten or more different onshore visits available for ship guests.  Some support that theme of indulgence, offering  a day at a spectacular beach, or dining at a special  restaurant.  Many provide opportunities to learn and explore, visiting sites in famous cities, museums, stately homes and other attractions.  Here, the explicit aim is educational, inviting those passengers going on land tours to learn, and broaden their understanding of past events and present communities.  This is the ‘learning’ side of ocean cruising.

Another perspective on cruising is to step aside from cruise lines and ships and focus instead on the varieties of passengers.  As noted at the beginning of this essay cruising can refer to “driving slowly or repeatedly along a popular road route for fun, to see and be seen, and socialize, a practice popular in many towns and cities.  Another meaning is that it refers to walking or driving around looking for a sexual partner  …  [but] another common use of the term, referring to ‘Ocean Cruising,’ which is taking a vacation on a  large ships, visiting different ports for sightseeing, entertainment, and relaxation.”  What are those cruise line passengers seeking when they go on a cruise?

The challenge sits in that word ‘cruising’.  It implies entertainment and relaxation.  Certainly, many of the passengers seem to be focussed on those two, perhaps with the addition benefit of eating and drinking without preparation or washing up!  For them, the cruise ship is one big service provider, and all they need to do is to sit back, relax and enjoy, although they may indulge in some sightseeing, taking videos or photographs to show to family and friends back home.  Key in for many people who go on cruises is to avoid housework, cooking, washing clothes and bed linen, and bedmaking.  It is like going on a beach holiday, but in this case the bedroom goes with you, along with facilities and staff to meet your needs.

For others, the cruise is an adventure, not a merely a way to relax.  They want to see new places, to go on trips to visit towns and buildings all the way from hamlets to palaces and cathedrals, and look at novel vegetation, landscapes and mountains.  Not just to see, but to learn, to tour with an expert who will point out the obvious and the hidden, and who will provide a historical overview to sights on each trip.  For them, the ship is more like an elegant caravan, principally a place where they can eat and sleep.  Their moving hotel is taking them to places they really want to explore.  While they enjoy having meals prepared for them, sleeping and resting in a cabin kept clean by staff, while being able to look out of their window and see the passing scenery, they want more than the ship and its facilities .  It is possible this might be a minority of cruise passengers today, these are the people for whom it is the places they visit, rather than merely what is on the ship that is at the core of their enjoyment.  They are in a hotel that takes them to fascinating new places every day!

Inevitability

There is a popular strategy in looking back at past events to wonder ‘if only …’.  It’s tricky.  Any speculation about what could have been done is academic, but past events do shape the future.  Were the resulting outcomes inevitable?  Looking at alternatives may be worthwhile, as we might confront similar situations today, and thereby benefit from what we have learnt.

One example that has been on my mind is the decision to split British India in 1947, thereby creating the current nations of India and Pakistan (and a little later Bangladesh as well).  The process was described as the ‘Partition’ of India, and inthe process of allocating people to  the provinces between the two new countries many people were displaced, and two provinces, Bengal and Punjab, were actually split. As a result of the partition somewhere between 12 and 20 million people had to move, doing so based on religious lines.  The result was a refugee crisis, the inevitable consequence of the mass migration and population transfers that took place between the newly constituted countries.  Equally inevitably, there was trouble.  The process led to large-scale violence, and estimates of loss of life range from at least several hundred thousand up to possibly as many as two million people killed.

The events in 1947 had been preceded by a long history of tensions between Muslims and Hindus.  However, the outbreak of World War II in 1939 enhanced existing tensions when Lord Linlithgow, Viceroy of India, declared war on India’s behalf, and doing so without consulting Indian leaders.  This dramatically increased some of the underlying tensions in the country.  On one side Congress provincial ministries to resigned in protest.   On the other, the Muslim League held “Deliverance Day” (deliverance from Congress dominance) and supported Britain in the war effort.   The League’s action was followed in March 1940, at its annual three-day session in Lahore, when the leader of the All-India Muslim League observed that Muslims and Hindus were ‘irreconcilably opposed monolithic religious communities’ and as such, no settlement could be imposed without outraging one side or the other.

Perhaps seeking to defuse the situation, in August 1940, Linlithgow proposed that India be granted self-governing (dominion) status after the war. To allay Muslim fears of Hindu domination, the ‘August Offer’ was accompanied by the promise that a future constitution would consider the views of minorities.  Unsurprisingly neither Congress nor the Muslim League were satisfied with the offer, and both rejected it.   However, in March 1942, after the fall of Singapore and with the Americans supporting independence for India, Prime Minister Winson Churchill offered dominion status to India at the end of the war in return for the Congress’s support for the war effort.   Not wishing to lose the support of the Muslim League the offer included a clause stating that no part of the British Indian Empire would be forced to join the post-war dominion.  Both the League and the Congress party rejected this offer too.

In August 1942, Congress launched the Quit India Resolution, asking for major constitutional changes.  The British saw this act as the most serious threat to their rule since in nearly 100 years.  Alarmed, they immediately jailed the Congress leaders where they to remain until August 1945.  This left the Muslim League free for the next three years to spread its message.  Their leader admitted, “The war which nobody welcomed proved to be a blessing in disguise.”  The British accepted the League was the key representative of Muslim India

After the Second World War, change was in the air.  Labour won the 1945 General Election, and decided to end British rule in India.  In early 1947 Britain announced its intention of transferring power no later than June 1948, and issued their Cabinet Mission Plan.  This proposed preserving a united India which the British and Congress desired, while concurrently securing the League’s demand for a Pakistan.  The scheme was a federal arrangement consisting of three groups of provinces. Two of these would consist of small predominantly Muslim provinces, while the third would be made up of the large remaining Hindu region. The provinces would be autonomous, but the centre would retain control over defence, foreign affairs, and communications. Though the proposals did not include a truly independent Pakistan, the Muslim League accepted the proposals, but Congress leaders believed it would leave the centre weak, and rejected the suggested provincial groupings .

After the Cabinet Mission broke down, in July 1946 the Muslim League stated it was “preparing to launch a struggle” and that they had a plan.  If the Muslims were not granted a separate Pakistan then they would launch ‘direct action’. When asked to be specific, their leader Jinnah explained: “Go to the Congress and ask them their plans. When they take you into their confidence I will take you into mine. Why do you expect me alone to sit with folded hands? I also am going to make trouble.”.  He announced that 16 August 1946 was to be Direct Action Day, and warned Congress, “We do not want war. If you want war we accept your offer unhesitatingly. We will either have a divided India or a destroyed India.”.

On that morning, armed Muslim gangs gathered in Calcutta to hear the League’s Chief Minister of Bengal, who, in the words of historian Yasmin Khan, “if he did not explicitly incite violence certainly gave the crowd the impression that they could act with impunity, that neither the police nor the military would be called out and that the ministry would turn a blind eye to any action they unleashed in the city.” The same evening in Calcutta, Hindus were attacked by returning Muslim celebrants, an event later called the ‘Great Calcutta Killing of August 1946.’  The next day, Hindus struck back, and the violence continued for three days during which some 4,000 people died.  The violence wasn’t confined to the public sphere, but homes were entered and destroyed, women and children were attacked.  Although the Government of India and the Congress were shaken by the events, a Congress-led interim government was installed, with Jawaharlal Nehru as the ‘united’ India’s prime minister.

The communal violence spread.  UK Prime Minister Attlee appointed Mountbatten as India’s last Viceroy, giving him the task to oversee British India’s independence by 30 June 1948, with instructions to avoid partition and to preserve a united India, but with an adaptable authority to ensure a British withdrawal with minimal setbacks.  Mountbatten hoped to revive the Cabinet Mission scheme for a federal arrangement for India, but the tense situation led him to conclude that partition had become necessary for a quick transfer of power.

When Lord Mountbatten formally proposed an Indian Independence Plan on 3 June 1947, Congress’s leader Patel gave his approval and lobbied Nehru and the other Congress leaders to accept the proposal.  Knowing Gandhi’s deep concerns over partition, Patel advised him on  the perceived practical unworkability of any Congress-League coalition,  which seemed likely to lead to a further rise in violence, and even the threat of civil war. At the All-India Congress Committee meeting called to vote on the proposal, Patel said:

“I fully appreciate the fears of our brothers from [the Muslim-majority areas]. Nobody likes the division of India, and my heart is heavy. But the choice is between one division and many divisions. We must face facts. We cannot give way to emotionalism and sentimentality. The Working Committee has not acted out of fear. But I am afraid of one thing, that all our toil and hard work of these many years might go waste or prove unfruitful. My nine months in office have completely disillusioned me regarding the supposed merits of the Cabinet Mission Plan. … Freedom is coming. We have 75 to 80 percent of India, which we can make strong with our genius. The League can develop the rest of the country.” 

Menon, V. P. Transfer of Power in India. p. 385.

In June 1947, the nationalist leaders agreed to a partition of the country, despite it being in stark opposition to Gandhi’s views. The predominantly Hindu and Sikh areas were assigned to the new India and predominantly Muslim areas to the new nation of Pakistan, including a division of the Muslim-majority provinces of Punjab and Bengal into two parts.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, the communal violence that followed the publication of the line of partition, the Radcliffe Line, was horrific.   At a press conference on 3 June 1947, Lord Mountbatten announced the date of independence – 14 August 1947 – and also outlined the details of the actual division of British India between the two new dominions in what became known as the ‘Mountbatten Plan’ or the ‘3 June Plan’.  This included the provision that Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims in the Punjab and Bengal legislative assemblies would meet and vote for partition. If a simple majority of either group wanted partition, these provinces would be divided.  The separate independence of Bengal was ruled out.

Indian political leaders accepted the Plan on 2 June.  The outcome was politically adroit.  The Muslim League’s demands for a separate country were conceded.  Congress’s position on unity was also acknowledged, while making Pakistan as small as possible.  One leader, Abul Kalam Azad, expressed concern over the likelihood of violent riots, but Mountbatten replied:

At least on this question I shall give you complete assurance. I shall see to it that there is no bloodshed and riot. I am a soldier and not a civilian. Once the partition is accepted in principle, I shall issue orders to see that there are no communal disturbances anywhere in the country. If there should be the slightest agitation, I shall adopt the sternest measures to nip the trouble in the bud.

On 18 July 1947, the British Parliament passed the India Independence Act that finalised the arrangements for partition.  The Government of India Act 1935 was adapted to provide a legal framework for the new dominions.  In the event, dividing both Punjab and Bengal, the two provinces with slim Muslim majorities caused tremendous problems, as the demographic distribution of Hindus and Muslims was complex and ‘messy’.  The new borders ran through the middle of villages, towns, fields, and more.  Further, when Pakistan was created, East and West Pakistan were separated by about 1,000 miles (some 1,600 km).  The commission also effectively sliced the large Sikh population in Punjab in half.  As a result, nearly the entirety of the Sikh community ultimately fled to areas that would become part of India.

Mountbatten administered the independence oath to Jinnah on the 14th, before leaving for India where the oath was scheduled on the midnight of the 15th.   On 14 August 1947, the new Dominion of Pakistan came into being with Muhammad Ali Jinnah sworn in as its first Governor-General in Karachi.  The following day, 15 August 1947, India, now the Dominion of India, became an independent country, with official ceremonies taking place in New Delhi, and with Jawaharlal Nehru appointed Prime Minister. Mountbatten remained in New Delhi for 10 months, serving as the first governor-general of an independent India until June 1948.  Gandhi remained in Bengal to work with the new refugees from the partitioned subcontinent.

The borders of the new countries were not published until August 17, two days after the end of British rule. This set the stage for an immediate escalation of communal violence in areas around the new borders. Many ordinary people did not understand what partition meant until they were in the middle of it, sometimes literally. If a border village was roughly evenly divided between Hindus and Muslims, one community could argue that the village rightly belonged to India or Pakistan by driving out or killing members of the other community.

The result was mass migration between the two newly formed states in the months immediately following the partition. There was little realisation that population transfers would be necessary because of the partitioning. Religious minorities were expected to stay put in the states there they were still residing. An exception was made for Punjab, where transfer was organized because of the communal violence affecting the province,  but this did not apply to any other provinces.  The population of undivided India in 1947 was about 390 million. Following the partition, there were perhaps 330 million people in India, 30 million in West Pakistan, and 30 million people in East Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh). Once the boundaries were established, about 14.5 million people crossed the borders into what they hoped was the relative safety of a religious majority. The 1951 Census of Pakistan identified the number of displaced persons in Pakistan at 7,226,600, presumably all Muslims who had entered Pakistan from India; the 1951 Census of India counted 7,295,870 displaced persons, apparently all Hindus and Sikhs who had moved to India from Pakistan after partition.

During partition, the idea of a full population exchange was a contentious issue that led to differing opinions among Indian leaders.  Some supported the idea of a complete population exchange between India and Pakistan. This meant that all the 42 million Muslims in India would move to Pakistan, while all the 19 million Hindus, Sikhs and other minorities West and East Pakistan would migrate to India. Its rationale was based on the idea of ensuring lasting communal peace by eliminating the possibility of future inter-religious conflicts and reducing the risk of large-scale violence.  It suggested that such a population exchange, though harsh, was a practical solution to the communal problems that had led to Partition:  it was believed that the lingering presence of hostile minorities could lead to future instability.

These concerns were rejected, both by Nehru and Ghandi, and a full population exchange did not occur.  When a partial migration took place, the 14.5 million people who crossed borders did so amidst horrific violence, while millions remained where they had lived.  This was to have profound and continuing repercussions.  India retained a Muslim population, which was to grow to become a significant minority, while Pakistan’s Hindu and Sikh populations dwindled drastically over the decades due to migration and persecution.  The absence of a full exchange almost certainly contributed to enduring communal tensions and periodic conflicts over the  years.  We will never know if a full exchange might have prevented these issues.

The scale of population movements was huge.  As soon as the new borders were announced, roughly 15m Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs left (fled?) from their homes on one side of the newly demarcated borders to what they thought would be “shelter” on the other. Some people were able to take trains or buses from one country to another, but most were forced to flee on foot, joining refugee columns that stretched for miles. These columns were the target of frequent ambushes,  as were the trains that carried refugees across the new borders. In the course of that exodus, perhaps as many as 2 million  people were slaughtered in communal massacres (though the lack of any meaningful documentation has left open a wide range of estimates). Sikhs, settled astride Punjab’s new division, suffered the highest proportion of casualties.  While the worst of the violence took place during the first six weeks of partition, the consequences of those weeks have played out over the decades.

Given this the obvious question is:  Was there a better way to create an indepedent India?

Brick by Brick

It must be a strange sight for a young child, to be confronted by a pile of plastic bricks, with no instructions as to what to do.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, many small children find the big and brightly coloured blocks fun to play with, and pile on top of one another.  Then they begin to fit them together and eventually find there are ways to connect wheels to their creations.  Moving toys!  Around 6 or seven years of age, they find there is another, smaller set of blocks, still interlocking and still using primary colours (although some other shades are included).  Soon, they discover they are being given bigger boxes, and each contains an assembly of component blocks with which they are able to build much larger structures, ranging from houses and commercial stores through to racing cars and familiar places, a diverse range including models to build of such places as the Eiffel Tower, Neuschwanstein Castle, and the Antarctic exploration vessel Endurance.  Of course, not all children as they grew up abandon their hobby and continue to use their Lego collection to become AFOLs, Adult Fans of Lego, thereby remaining as lifetime Lego builders (LLBs?).!

Lego first appeared in 1932, and at that time it comprised wooden toys made in the workshop of a carpenter from Billund, in Denmark.  By 1934 the founder, Ole Kirk Christiansen, had named his company ‘Lego’, a name which was based on the Danish phrase leg godt (meaning ‘Play Well’).  Several years later Lego began producing plastic toys, and by 1949 it commenced a new product line, an early version of the now familiar interlocking bricks, and called them “Automatic Binding Bricks”.  They were initially manufactured from cellulose acetate, offering an enhancement of traditional stackable wooden blocks of the time.  The company adopted Christiansen’s motto, “only the best is good enough”, a comment still reinforced by the company today.  The motto was to serve as a way to encourage his employees never to skimp on quality, a value in which he believed very strongly.   By 1951, plastic toys accounted for half of the company’s output, even though many had initially believed  plastic would never be able to replace traditional wooden toys.

Lego was first sold in Denmark in 1957, and the company expanded its sales across Europe towards the end of the 1950s, before expanding outside the European continent from the 1960s.  It was Christiansen’s son, Godtfred, who saw the immense potential in Lego bricks in becoming a system for creative play.  However, the bricks still had problems:  their locking ability was rather limited, nor were they particularly versatile.  In 1958, a new modern brick design was developed; using ABS for manufacturing, which allowed the company to make use of an attractively coloured manufacturing material five years later.   ABS, Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene, is a durable, tough plastic which Lego has used since 1963 for most of its bricks.   Duplo, an alternative for younger children based on larger bricks was introduced in 1969 becoming a range of blocks whose lengths measure twice the width, height, and depth of standard Lego blocks and are aimed towards younger children.

Lego pieces of all varieties constitute a universal system. Despite variations in the design and the purposes of individual pieces over the years, each remains compatible in some way with existing pieces.  Bricks from 1958 still interlock with those made today, and sets for younger children are compatible with those made for teenagers.  As an aside, it turns out that six bricks with 2 × 4 studs can be combined in 915,103,765 ways.  This ‘simple’ system makes massive manufacturing demands:  when two pieces are engaged, they must fit firmly yet be easily disassembled.

Despite various mis-steps and challenges, overall the company grew and grew.  On 7 June 1968, Legoland Park opened in Billund, featuring elaborate miniature towns built entirely from Lego bricks. The three-acre (12,000 m²) theme park attracted 625,000 visitors in its first year alone. Over the next two decades, the theme park grew to more than eight times its original size and eventually attracted close to a million visitors annually. Sales of Lego sets also reached more than eighteen million units in 1968.  This pattern of growth was increased in the following year, 1969, when the Duplo system came into shops.

Designed to be used by younger children, Duplo bricks are much larger than Lego bricks, safer for young children (preventing them from eating them!), and the two systems are compatible: Lego bricks can be fitted neatly onto Duplo bricks.  Indeed, the name Duplo comes from the Latin word duplus, which translates literally as double, meaning that a Duplo brick is exactly twice the dimension of a Lego building brick (2× height by 2× width by 2× depth) so that a Duplo brick is eight times the volume of the Lego brick alternative.

Despite overall growth, like any business Lego has had its ups and downs over the years.  However, The Guardian reported that by August of this year Lego had recorded sales of £4bn and sales rose by 12%.   Their Chief Executive suggested this recent surge in growth could be the result of parents’ desire to keep children – and themselves – away from smartphones, helped by strong sales of its Botanicals and Formula One grand prix-themed sets.

CEO Christiansen said:

“We see ourselves as competing for children’s time. The most important thing is to provide relevant and exciting experiences” and has seen the company signing deals to produce toys linked to the Bluey and Pokémon cartoon series and launching the She Built That campaign to encourage girls to use Lego creatively. The company has seen success with its Botanicals range of plant-inspired building sets for adults, especially for Valentine’s Day and Easter.

Lego is clearly a global business.  Recently, sales have begun to grow in China, after a tough start to 2024, and the company expects worldwide sales to continue to rise by about 9% in the second half of the current year given the existence of “strong consumer demand”.  The company now has six factories in operation, in Denmark, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Mexico, China, Vietnam, with a further addition planned to open soon in Virginia, USA.  It uses an international business model, with several facilities focusing on molding and others on decoration and packaging.  The production process involves injecting molten plastic into molds to create bricks, with rigorous quality control checks to identify defects and ensure colour accuracy. The company has to aim for high precision; with the result their approach ensures bricks made today continue to fit with those made back in 1958.  The manufacturing process starts with plastic granules heated and injected under high pressure into molds to form bricks.  Today, Lego recycles almost all its plastic waste from manufacturing, with non-reusable plastic sold to other industries. 

The group has benefitted from its strategy of having manufacturing facilities as close to markets as possible, and also adopting a lean production approach whereby it seeks to produce only what is needed and simultaneously keeping stocks tight.  Lego has talked about taking steps such as making  some of its toy tyres from a material derived from recycled fishing nets, ropes and engine oil. The company is also introducing e-methanol, a material made from mixing renewable energy and CO₂ from biowaste, to create rigid Lego elements such as wheel axles and minifigure hands.

Actually, it is much more than that.    According to an article in Sustainability, it seems ‘Lego is Building Towards a More Sustainable Future’ (in a report by James Darley, 7 September 2024), as Lego expands its supply chain, smart choices and thinking are helping the Danish toy company meet its sustainability targets and achieve growth.  Surprisingly in a toy industry grappling with market downturns, Lego has not only maintained its position at the top of the tree but has also posted record-breaking results for the first half of 2024.  However, Darley reports the Danish toymaker’s success goes beyond profit margins. It is commitment to sustainability, particularly within its supply chain, which is setting new standards for the industry and providing a blueprint for responsible manufacturing.

James Darley writes that a key to this approach is using sustainable materials as the foundation for operational changes.  Recently Lego has made major increases in the proportion of sustainable materials it uses in its bricks. During the first half of 2024, the company reported that 30% of all the resin it purchased was certified under the mass balance principle, translating to an estimated 22% of material sourced from renewable and recycled sources.  This is a substantial improvement from 2023, when only 18% was certified mass balance, equating to 12% sustainable sources for the full year. Sources suggest that if it  continues to make similar year-on-year progress, it could reach the point where its products could be 100% sustainable within the next two decades.

Carsten Rasmussen, COO at the LEGO Group, says:

“We continue to invest in expanding our global supply chain network, maintain a strong focus on harvesting productivity and have made significant progress on our sustainability ambitions by increasing the amount of sustainable raw material used in our products.”

The company has set ambitious targets for the coming years, aiming to purchase more than half of its raw materials from sustainable sources, seeking to reduce its use of virgin fossil materials.  At the same time, a key initiative in this area is the launch of a Supplier Sustainability Programme, which mandates that suppliers set emission reduction targets by 2026 and further targets by 2028. Lego has even linked annual carbon emissions reductions to employee bonuses, creating strong incentives for its sustainability team.  While Lego seeks to focus on expanding its supply chain, they locate production and distribution facilities close to major markets.  Recent developments include opening factories in Vietnam and Virginia.

It’s sustainability initiatives are not just good for the planet, they’re also good for business. The company reported revenue growth of 13% and consumer sales growth of 14% in the first half of 2024, significantly outperforming the toy industry. Operating profit grew by 26% and net profit by 16% compared to the same period in 2023.  Niels B Christiansen, the current CEO, emphasises sustainability in the company’s strategy, achieving double-digit growth while significantly increasing sustainable materials in our products.”

Perhaps it is almost superfluous to say it, but the other strength of Lego is design, of course.  The company’s product development cycle is focussed on ensuring adherence to the Lego approach and  style.  Proposals go through a rigorous assessment process before they move to testing and production, ensuring the attractiveness of the kits isn’t compromised .  Their CEO notes “We used our solid financial foundation to further increase spending on strategic initiatives, which will support growth now and in the future to enable us to bring learning through play to even more children.”  He might have added ‘through offering compelling and engaging products to delight our customers’.

Oh, and one more comment.  My partner is a long term AFOL, and I’m a recent convert.  It offers a great range of buildings and vehicles to construct, using an astonishing range of building components.  Our local Lego store is a place we visit frequently, trying to decide which model we ‘ll build next.  Surprised  to learn we’re fans?

St Martin’s Cathedral Utrecht

Major cities across Europe become packed in the summer months.  It’s not just Paris, Rome and Berlin:  a day in Vienna, Bucharest or Prague is going to be equally overwhelming, and today the tide of tourists is sweeping through Split, Dubrovnik and Valletta.  Packed cities have to respond to the needs of their visitors, and so the roads in the centre of these cities are lined with shops selling souvenirs, food (tea rooms and cafes offering snacks), and cheap summer clothing alongside the usual range of international fashion stores.  Municipalities are trying to work out how to manage the influx, which often runs for six, eight or even ten months.  Cars may be banned, tourist buses have to go to special areas, and public transport is limited in most inner city areas.  In the centre holidaymakers can be found sitting at a streetside coffee shop while another member of the family braves the flood to go shopping.

So it was in Utrecht in the summer of 2025, as this formerly quiet city in the Netherlands now receives hundreds, no thousands, of enthusiastic visitors.  After a coffee and pastry at the Winkel van Sinkel and continuing to battle through the streets, they can see a church tower behind some of the shops.  It is the 112-metre-high (367 ft) Dom Tower, the hallmark of the city.  Navigating the narrow streets, you eventually arrive at the Domplein, where you realise the church tower is quite separate from the Domkerk, the gothic cathedral!

Well, perhaps we’ll leave that a sight for a moment ‘over there’ and return to the Winkel van Sinkel.  Anton Sinkel was born in 1785, and in 1806 he established a store selling fabrics and textiles.  He was a pioneer in  retail business with his haberdashery store which dealt in clothing fabrics, stockings, hats, and more .  His ambition is described in the popular song “In de Winkel van Sinkel is van alles te koop” (In the Winkel van Sinkel, everything is for sale)”. However, the store became famous because of four caryatids that supported the building’s façade colloquially known as the ‘British harlots’, as “Due to their visible décolleté, these figures were believed to be a potential threat to the moral values of the citizenry.” Today they are seen as less offensive, but according to legend, “only at midnight, the caryatids swiftly and inconspicuously fly across the canal to the opposite side and back again.”

Returning to the cathedral, the best way to see it is from the air, a balloon flight out of the reach of most of us.  However, the proportions become clear, a massive spire towering above much of the city, separated by a small park area, and the other side of the open space the remains of the rest of the church, a major building in its own right, but its height diminished by that spire:

So much for what you see.  The story of St Martin’s is fascinating in its own right.  Wikipedia reveals the first chapel was founded around 630 AD by Frankish clergy, but it was destroyed during an attack shortly after, and its site remains unknown.  It was the beginning of a cycle of rebuilding and destruction.  A second chapel devoted to Saint Martin was built close to the site of the current building soon after, but was destroyed by the Normans during a raid on Utrecht in the 9th century .  It was rebuilt by Bishop Bladeric in the 10th century, by which time St Martin’s had become the principal church of Utrecht, the site of the see of a bishop.

The life of the cathedral remained challenging.  The church was repeatedly destroyed by fires and then rebuilt.  Then Bishop Adalbold built a Romanesque style church, which was  consecrated in 1023, only to be  partially destroyed in the fire of 1253 which ravaged much of Utrecht.  Undaunted, another bishop, Henry van Vianen, began building the next cathedral in 1254. but the  construction of the Gothic style cathedral was to continue into the 16th century.  The work was in stages: the Dom Tower was started in 1321 and finished in 1382.  By 1515 financial difficulties prevented completion of the building, and in 1566, the Iconoclast Fury swept across the region, a movement based on the Calvinist doctrine, which asserted statues in a house of God were idolatrous images which must be destroyed. As a result, many of the ornaments on both the exterior and interior of Utrecht’s cathedral were destroyed.

In 1580 the Utrecht city government decided to delegate some of its controls over the Diocese of Utrecht to local Calvinists, and now it became a centre for Protestant services.  However, the building’s saga continued, and in  1672-3, during the upheavals of the Franco-Dutch War, Catholic Masses recommenced – for two years!  After the French retreat, the unfinished nave collapsed on 1 August 1674 during a massive tornado. From that time on, much of the building fell into further neglect.  Despite significant renovations in the early twentieth century, much was left incomplete and the nave was never rebuilt.

Images and history are important, but both can only offer a partial insight to a place.  However, as the saying goes, ‘you have to be there’.  Visually, there are two very different perspectives on St Martin’s today.  For the visitor to Utrecht standing outside the cathedral area , the only visible perspective from a short distance away is of the tower as it rises above the surrounding buildings.  It soars above the shops and other buildings in the town centre, but you are well aware you are only seeing the upper part of the construction.

Moreover, although you can see it from a distance away, it is hard to reach.  As you get closer, passing the Winkel van Sinkel, it seems to be one of those illusions where the tower retreats behind buildings and never appears to become any closer.  There are some streets that take a straighter line, but for the visitor walking alongside the Oudergracht, which takes a couple of 90° around the area, any direct line of sight at ground level is impossible.

The second perspective is from the Domplein itself.  Once you are there, there are buildings close by to the West and North.  The best perspective is from the South, but even then the tower seems to reach up so high you can’t really encompass what it is like.  It’s an impressive sight, as is the cathedral building and other offices and meeting rooms across the way, but close by the tower rises above any normal sight line.  It is a little frustrating.  In many other cities the authorities, or possibly the church itself, would be able to keep quite a large area clear.  In Utrecht, the height of the tower combined with closeness of the retail area, and some offices, means that a real appreciation of the height is impossible. That balloon flight mentioned earlier would be ideal.

A completely different way of seeing the cathedral is from the inside.  On entering you’re shocked as it appears almost empty.  Just two stained glass windows to grab your attention, and the internal decoration is simple to the point of being austere.  There’s an altar in the Choir, with a beautiful screen and carving behind.  Overall the church has a simple beauty, but it is found in its simplicity, the very opposite of so many cathedrals in other places.

However, then you turn around and see the organ.  The case and pipes are set on one of the side walls, with the keyboards and pedal board below.  Built by Jonothan Batz, the instrument dates from 1831, although it incorporates parts of an earlier organ, built by Pieter Janszoon de Swart between 1569-1571.  It is said to precisely conform to the type of instrument that was being built in the Netherlands throughout the 19th century.  Some research revealed that a “church architect, Tieleman Franciscus Suys, from Brussels, designed the case and ornaments, as well as constructing a small building at the back of the church to house the nine wedge-shaped bellows. The case is in a kind of neo-classical style, although in size and proportion  (the length of many of the front pipes are far longer than what is required for the pitch needed ), not strictly functional.”

Wikipedia advises that the organ had  been superbly designed internally “so that every pipe and each division, with all of its parts can be easily accessed for maintenance and tuning, which was very favourably commented on by probably the greatest organ builder of the 19th century, Aristide Cavaille’-Coll (1811-1899), about the spacious internal layout during a visit he made here in November 1844.”  There were many changes over the years.  Eventually the organ finally “underwent an extensive restoration between 1972-73 by the Van Vulpen company, which replaced all the stops that had been removed over the last 107 years, and a new modern wind supply with internal regulators was built within the main case, because there was nowhere outside to house a bellows chamber based on the space as originally constructed.”

The organ today is said to be widely acclaimed for its “mild tone and expressive tremulants which makes the instrument far more suitable for the late romantic or modern periods of composition, rather than for the strict Baroque counterpoint or fugal music of Buxtehude and Bach.“  It was wonderful to see.  Alas, I don’t know if it was wonderful to hear, as there was no-one playing on the organ, or even practicing when we were there.  Despite this it was a gem in a rather surprising building.

Barges

When I was at school, I discovered and loved Cargoes, a poem by John Masefield:

Quinquereme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory,
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,
Dipping through the tropics by the palm-green shores,
With a cargo of diamonds,
Emeralds, amethysts,
Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.

Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,
Butting through the channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of Tyne coal,
Road-rails, pig-lead,
Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.

(Salt-Water Poems, © 1902).

How could you not love the images.  A cargo for distant Ophir with ivory, peacocks, sandalwood, sweet white wine.  A galleon returning with diamonds, gold and other jewels – probably plundered for another ship, out there on main.  And then that lovely British coaster, dirty, carrying dirty industrial materials – and fighting its way up the English Channel.  Nostalgic, vivid, and somehow pulling off the trick of making that British coaster just as noteworthy as a quinquereme or a galleon.

The sailing ships of old were romantic and exciting., especially when they appeared in films packed with swashbuckling sailors.  There’s the Black Pearl,  the pirate ship from the Pirates of the Caribbean film series, captained by Jack Sparrow.   The Black Pearl was originally a merchant vessel named the Wicked Wench, sunk and  resurrected by Davy Jones, renamed, and with its new name became infamous for its black sails and hull.  It was a symbol of freedom for Jack Sparrow, known for being “nigh uncatchable, and a symbol for freedom on the high seas.

The Black Pearl was far more exciting than the captain of that legendary ghost ship The Flying Dutchman, who once found himself struggling to round the Cape of Good Hope during a ferocious storm.  He swore that he would succeed even if he had to sail until Judgment Day. The Devil heard his oath and took him up on it; the Flying Dutchman was condemned to stay at sea forever.  Even the Hispaniola, the ship on which Jim Hawkins sailed to Treasure Island, plays a minor part in that adventure.  In contrast to these, the Black Pearl was rather more exciting as it kept sinking and reappearing!

Against such alternatives, Masefield’s short poem provides us with a brief but vivid commentary on the history of ships, shipping, consumption, and empire.  Much had changed. If Masefield is to be believed, once ships had exotic names and sailed through idyllic climes to and from faraway destinations with strange and marvellous cargoes. However,  by the turn of the 20^th Century, dirty, polluting ships made their way through bad weather in the English Channel, with a cargo not only produced in the same country it was shipped to, but was cheap and plentiful—a cargo for the masses instead of the kings and queens of yesterday. These three snapshots offer us both the lushness of poetry, and an insight into change.

I suspect that even that British coaster is just about lost to change.  Today, if you travel by sea, one of the more familiar sights among the huge cruise liners are container ships.  Massive, slow-moving, they always seem top-heavy.  Cargo ships provide the essential underpinning for trade, and these ships can be separated into two broad categories by the goods they transport:  bulk cargo and break bulk cargo.  Bulk cargo refers to material in either liquid or granular form, and includes such goods are crude oil, grain, coal, and gravel.  Bulk cargo is usually dropped or poured into a ship’s hold.  Break-bulk cargoes, in contrast, are transported in packages, and are generally manufactured goods.

Much has changed since Masefield’s day.  Up until the 1950s, break-bulk items required manual loading, lashing, unlashing and unloading from the ship one piece at a time.  The only interesting variations prior to this time came through the development of standardized load units, which I learnt were first used in the late 18th century for shipping in England. In 1766, James Brindley, an engineer, was asked to assist in the transportation of coal, and designed the box boat “Starvationer” with 10 wooden containers, which operated between Alford and  Manchester via the Bridgewater Canal.

The idea was slow to catch on, but by the 1930s ships were used to carry the baggage of luxury passenger train customers in containers from London to Paris on flat rail cars.  In February 1931, the first container ship in the world was launched; the Autocarrier, owned by the Southern Railway, with 21 slots for containers.  Slowly the idea progressed, and the earliest recognised container ships appeared after the Second World War.  They were  converted oil tankers.  In 1951, the first purpose-built container vessels began operating in Denmark and in the USA between Seattle and Alaska.  Wikipedia records the first commercially successful container ship was the Ideal X, developed by Malcolm McLean, which on its first voyage on April 26, 1956, carried 58 metal containers between Newark, New Jersey and Houston, Texas.

It marked the beginning of a revolution in modern shipping, and from then on, progress accelerated.  By 1964, Adelaide Steamships had launched the world’s first fully cellular, purpose-built container ship.  This was the critical step in eliminating requirements for the individual hatches, holds and other storage dividers. The hull of a typical container ship is similar to an airport hangar, or a huge warehouse, which is divided into individual holding cells, using vertical guide rails. These cells are designed to hold cargo containers, typically constructed of steel, though some are made from aluminium, fiberglass or plywood.

Today, about 90% of non-bulk non-worldwide goods are transported by container, with around 50,000 container ships. Containers vary in size, carrying anything from, 1,000 to 3,000 cubic feet (28 to 85 m³) of cargo, with the result each can move up to about 64,000 pounds, (29,000 kg), at a time.  Global maritime container traffic is now around 160 Million TEUs (estimated to be more than 3 bn tons of goods).  TEU, the Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit, is the standard unit of measurement used for cargo capacity in shipping, particularly for container ships and ports.  It is based on the volume of a standard 20-foot long container.

All very interesting, but my fascination isn’t with ships of old, pirate ships, British working ships or with container ships.  No, it’s with barges.

Just recently, I saw some Rhine barges.  Many of these are flat-bottomed, non-self-propelling vessels that are pulled (and can be pushed) by tugboats.  The ones I saw  were the powered versions, the flat bottomed design allowing them to deal with falling river levels.  Many of these barges are very large, far from easy to manoeuvre, and often rather slow moving.  They don’t share the immediately attractive features of many other varieties of shipping, but they are curiously hypnotic.

However, my enjoyment in looking at barges is really an exercise in nostalgia.  My childhood home was close to the Grand Union Canal.  Barges, known in those days as ‘narrowboats’ were the vehicles for  commerce on the canal from the late 1700s until the 1970s.  Initially horse-drawn, they were one of the most important ways to transport raw materials and finished goods .  It was competition from railways and the growth of  road traffic in logistics that led to the decline of traditional commercial barges in the mid-20th century, but when I was young I was just in time to see the horses disappear, and the transition to motorized and steam-powered vessels take place

That transition had begun in 1934 on the Grand Union Canal, when a company was formed to modernize the waterway, allowing the introduction of new, larger boats and modernizing locks to accommodate these wider barges, an initiative supported by the government in the hope of making the canal more competitive with railways.  There was some respite from the. decline in usage when the canal and its barges played a vital role in transporting war supplies during WWII.  Women even took on the work of operating the barges, as many men were in the armed forces.  Despite this, traffic continued to decline after the war ended.  The last regular long-distance cargo service ended in 1970. While some traffic continued into the 1980s, mainly sustained by the transport of aggregates, the rise of containerization and growth in road transport led to the commercial decline of the Grand Union Canal.

Today Britain’s canals are no longer the functional working canals of former centuries.  Instead, these water highways provide visitors and holidaymakers an opportunity to enjoy the tranquillity of the countryside, taking a barge holiday.   A few professional boatmen still live in communities on canal boats throughout Britain – gliding easily through the locks, keeping their self-decorated boats in good nick and going about their daily lives.  This is documented in Life on Britain’s Canals and Waterways  : a history of the canals of Britain and their people, (denhamhistory.online).

A part of my childhood, I wasn’t aware back then that waterways and canals had been a lifeline for British industry and agriculture for a very long time.  Indeed, canals can be traced as far back as Roman times when the Romans used canals for irrigation purposes and to connect existing waterways with one another.  Indeed, Romans built the Foss Dyke in Lincolnshire for drainage and navigation and the Caer Dyke around AD 50, shortly after the Roman invasion of Britain in 43AD by the armies of Emperor Claudius.

What did I see?  I was watching the so-called “slow” boats on the canals, which often worked twelve to fourteen hours each day, and only in some cases tied up on Sundays. On the narrow canals these boats were operated by one man and a boy, occasionally two men, and later one man and his family. Slow boats were slow in another sense, as they didn’t operate on a strict timetable and would often wait until they had a full load before starting out.  They were distinguished from from the faster, lighter so-called “fly” boats which were first introduced in Scotland in 1830 to provide and “express” service for some commodities. No, I liked the slow boats!

The narrowboat was less than 7 feet in width and could be pulled by a single horse. They were designed for the waterways,  traditionally 21 m (70ft) long, just short enough to fit in the locks, which were usually 22 m (72 ft) long.  Most carried a load of approximately 25 tons.  They were usually horse drawn up until around World War I, and the steam engines which some boats used were considered to take up too much space.  However, diesel engines began to take over boats in the 1920s, and after the Second world war, horses were hardly ever seen.  The fly boat trade tended to be concentrated in the hands of big public carriers such as Pickfords who operated large fleets of boats and employed many men and horses.  After 1840 much of this trade was lost to the railway companies, and the last company, Fellows, Morton & Clayton failed  in 1948 – though its name and livery can still to be found, rather nostalgically, on boats on the canals today.

To protect and deliver the cargo safely and as quickly as possible, the boatman captain needed to steer a barge and keep a horse moving on the towpath.   The faster he got the cargo to its destination, the quicker he got paid.  The boat captain could earn extra money if he (and/or his family) could unload the cargo as well.  A woman who lived on board the barge would be expected to steer the boat occasionally and sometimes lead the horse on the towpath.  Reformers sought to remove female and child labour from the boats,  concerned with sanitation, morality and education rather than working conditions.  The number of women working on canal boats increased during the First World War to make up the gaps in the labour force which were created by men leaving to join the armed forces.  The number of men working independently on their own account appeared to double after the first World War.  At the same time the female labour force increased by 50 percent, and the proportion of women remained high until after WWII.

For a boy, the barge and life travelling along the English canals seemed attractive (and perhaps I thought it would have meant I could avoid going to school.  Did I think about the downside – no Meccano, no Eagle comic, little free time, and cramped living quarters?  I think what attracted me was the idea of freedom, always travelling.  I never whent on a barge, not even when barge holidays began to become available, but I suspect that sense of wandering that appealed to me was part of the source of the desire to move often in my adult life.

Six Great Ideas

I wonder if anyone reads Mortimer Adler today.  For a while he was an influential and also popular philosopher, often referred to as the Fat Man.  That name referred to The Fat Men’s Great Books Group, an informal discussion circle in Chicago in the 1940s, co-founded by Mortimer Adler and Robert Hutchins, the President of the  University of Chicago. The name came from its participants, who were wealthy and influential Chicago businessmen and executives and who were led by Adler and Hutchins to experience the ‘Great Books’ method of discussing classic texts, believing it would bring intellectual rigour and insight to the business elite and potentially bridge societal divides.  The group was formed in 1943 after a prominent businessman, Wilbur Munnecke, had developed concern about the communication difficulties he observed among bright executives.  The approach was seen as a way to unite academic thinkers and businessmen using the wisdom of classic literature, in part to temper the excesses of capitalism and at the same time to guide societal decisions.

Who was Mortimer Jerome Adler?  Born in New York City in 1902, the child of Jewish immigrants from Germany, he dropped out of school at age 14 to become copy boy for the New York Sun.  He soon returned to school, and went on to study at Columbia University, eventually completing a  doctorate in psychology.  However, a key moment in his life was in 1930 when Robert Hutchins, the newly appointed president of the University of Chicago, ensured he was hired as a professor in the philosophy of law, despite resistance from staff from within the university’s Department of Philosophy. Learning about the Great Books seminar inspired Chicago businessman Walter Paepcke to establish The Aspen Institute, and it was there Adler began to teach philosophy to business executives .  With Hutchins he went on to set up the Great Books of the Western World program, in 54 volumes in 1952  A second edition was published in 1990, in 60 volumes.

The decision to include a book in the series required meeting three criteria:  the book had to be relevant to contemporary matters; it had to be rewarding to re-read repeatedly; and it had to contribute to ‘the great conversation about  great ideas’.  The books weren’t chosen on the basis of ethnic and cultural inclusiveness.  Historical influence was seen as sufficient to be added.  Nor was it a requirement that the editors agreed with the authors’ views.  The books were published under the auspices of the Great Books Foundation.  In 1952, Adler founded and served as director of the Institute for Philosophical Research.  He also served on the Board of Editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and succeeded Hutchins as its chairman from 1974.

If what was done back then was seen as a key stage in the awareness of key literature from the past, enthusiasm for an  approach where ‘Great Books’ were identified and promoted has declined ever since the first edition appeared.  Today it is easy to make fun of the idea of ‘great books’:  many of those selected are now seen as the embodiment of various evils, from sexism to cultural hegemony, from conservatism to oppression.  However, rather than indulge in criticism of the great books endeavour, there is still value in going back to read books published in earlier decades or centuries.  How were the various titles chosen?  Rather than trying to assess the complete range of publications, a good introduction to Adler’s approach can be undertaken by looking at his 1981 book, Six Great Ideas, (published by Collier Books, a Macmillan imprint).

In Six Great Ideas, Adler examines what he proposes as six foundational concepts, ones he saw as having shaped the pursuit of truth and meaning: these topics are Truth, Goodness, Beauty, Liberty, Equality, and Justice.   Adler invites his readers to join him on ‘a reflective journey’, one where he intends to challenge their understanding of  the principles that govern lives and society.  He  argues  that these ideas form ‘the bedrock of human civilization, guiding our moral compass, our understanding of the world, our appreciation of art and culture, and our endeavours in creating fair and equitable societies’.  He claims these ideas are deeply embedded in everyday life, and he argues they have continuing and enduring relevance.  They are essential tools for navigating the complexities of contemporary life.

He explains his approach is to reveal, in straightforward language, the philosophical basis for these key terms, attempting to take these complex and important ideas and make them accessible to an intelligent (rather than an academic) reader.  The book begins by putting the six foundational concepts he wanted to examine into two groups.  Perhaps surprisingly, the first group comprises Truth, Goodness, Beauty, and the other three, Liberty, Equality, and Justice are left until later in his book.  Today all six might be regarded as controversial, but it might have been easier to begin with truth, liberty and equality.

Adler begins by exploring the concept of truth, explaining how he sees this as the concept that is the cornerstone in the quest for knowledge, shaping the ways in which humans engage with the world. He suggests the pursuit of truth is not merely an intellectual exercise but is a fundamental element of human existence, critical to enquiry, discovery, and the advancement of knowledge.  He also explains that the meaning of truth has changed over time, contrasting the views of the ancient Greeks who, he explains, viewed truth as an alignment with an eternal, unchanging reality, to modern thinkers who consider it in the context of scientific inquiry and empirical evidence.

For Adler, the relationship between truth and knowledge is central. Knowledge is seen as a pursuit of truth, seeking to understand and explain the nature of our world, and as the engine of progress.  Indeed, he explains that truth is a pivotal concept, one that serves as the foundation upon which all knowledge is built.  This is achieved through ‘correspondence’, which he defines as the alignment between thought and reality.  In other words when a statement or belief accurately reflects the state of affairs in the external world, it is deemed true. This  takes us back to knowledge, which is, by definition, justified true belief.  For Adler this is critical:  it is not enough for beliefs to be justified or logical; they must also be true. The pursuit of knowledge, therefore, invariably entails the pursuit of truth not as a philosophical exercise but as a practical necessity.  A society that values Truth is one where individuals can rely on shared understandings and accurate information.

Are there challenges in attaining the truth?  Adler observes that human perception, cognitive biases, and limited knowledge all serve as obstacles.  To overcome them, he argues there has to be a rigorous and continuous process of inquiry, critical thinking, and verification.  He asserts that the persistent search for truth is central to our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.  That view might have seemed clear and simple in 1981, but it rested on an assumption that we all see the world in the same way.  More than forty years later, it is clear that we don’t,  and what is true for one group is not necessarily true to another.  His view that  there are unarguable truths is an assumption hard to sustain in our fractured times.

The difficulties of claiming certainty in relation to truth become all the more evident when Adler turned to his second key idea, goodness.  For Adler goodness is a fundamental principle guiding ethical behaviour, the link to morality.   This leads him to address some  key questions: What constitutes a morally good action? What differentiates good from bad, or moral from immoral actions?   Without meaning to do so, he has started to make us confront some tricky – even controversial – issues.  Some of what he proposes is not particularly controversial:  moral actions are those that align with ethical principles and the concepts of right and wrong, often considering the well-being and rights of others. Immoral actions, conversely, are those that violate ethical standards and typically result in harm or injustice.

However, from there he goes on to argue that goodness extends beyond personal issues to being a criterion for evaluating institutions and communities.  If a society is to flourish, it must nurture and uphold goodness, and with this in mind he takes us into a much broader territory where goodness is linked to the need to promote justice, compassion, altruism, fairness and into creating systems that allow individuals to lead morally fulfilling lives.  Adler is no fool, and he emphasises the challenges in consistently pursuing goodness.  We are often faced with ethical dilemmas that require balancing competing interests and values.  He suggests the pursuit of goodness demands critical reflection, empathy, and a commitment to ethical principles, even when it is inconvenient or challenging.

Now we have reached a key point:  he observes that principles can’t be absolute, as each includes demands that can be contradictory.  As a result there is a need to find ways to balance or accommodate conflicting requirements.  If his intention had been to offer some ‘tools to navigate the complexities of modern life’, it seems he isn’t providing a map as much as outlining possible paths and likely alternatives.  Adler acknowledges this and offers some (conflicting) ideas for the reader to consider.   For example, he refers to Mill’s utilitarian approach which advocates pursuing the greatest good for the greatest number.  In contrast he points out that Kantian ethics require adherence to duty and universal moral laws.  It’s hard to follow a map when the guidance is inconsistent!

Perhaps a better way to read this book is to recognise that Adler’s intention was to make us think, and for us to recognise that there are ‘no easy answers’.  Rather than seeking clear guidance from philosophers, our expectation should be that philosophical enquiry reveals territory to be examined, pointing out pitfalls, possibilities and uncertainties.  What Adler does is to present us with ideas.  Our challenge is to grapple with those ideas, to see what we can identify and confirm, and to make clear what isn’t going to be answered by logic alone.

If Adler’s intention was to encourage us to become amateur philosophers, and to think about the ideas and issues we confront, it was a strange choice to offer ‘beauty’ as the third great idea.  Many would agree here the difficulties are evident:  there is a lot of good sense to suggest ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’,  a phrase with a long history in its various forms, certainly from John Lyly and Shakespeare in the 16^th Century through to David Hume commenting “Beauty in things exists merely in the mind which contemplates them ((in 1742).  Incidentally, the wording about the eye of the beholder comes from Margaret Wolfe Hungerford in her novel Molly Bawn in 1878.  This long history is persuasive.

In fact, Adler quickly slips away from attempting to ‘explain’ the concept of beauty but rather identifies it as an attribute that pleases the senses while also elevating the human spirit.  Is he right?  Does aesthetic experience not only provide pleasure but also “enriches our lives, allowing us to transcend ordinary experiences, and transform mundane reality”. Adler argues that in moments of shared aesthetic experience, people can find common ground, regardless of their cultural background.  He suggests beauty plays a key role in elevating human thought, fostering connection, and driving creative expression.  Really?

What this book from more than 40 years ago does is offer a stark reminder on how much has changed.  In many ways, what Adler has to say is far from controversial.  This becomes very clear later in the book when he turns to the second group of principles.  In the Bookey summary we read Adler argues: “The principles of Liberty and Equality stand as cornerstones in the foundation of human rights.  Liberty, as Adler asserts, is an essential element of human existence, signifying the freedom of individuals to think,  speak, and act according to their own values and decisions without undue interference.  This principle is deeply rooted in the philosophical traditions of Western thought, resonating through the works of thinkers like John Locke, who emphasized natural rights, and John Stuart Mill, who championed individual freedom as crucial for personal development and societal progress.  Adler proposes that liberty fosters creativity, innovation, and personal growth, enabling individuals to pursue their paths and contribute uniquely to society.  However, he admits it can’t exist in a vacuum; it must be tempered given the encroachment on other freedoms.

For him, this is where the principle of Equality comes in.  Equality, he suggests, demands that all individuals be treated with the same respect, dignity, and moral consideration.”  Fair enough, but we are about to reach compromise territory.  Adler warns us that despite their intention to elevate human dignity and social fairness, Liberty and Equality can sometimes be at odds. For instance, he notes, the unfettered exercise of liberty by one individual or group may infringe upon the rights or freedoms of another, as seen in scenarios where economic liberties contribute to systemic inequalities. Likewise, efforts to enforce equality, such as through redistributive policies or affirmative action, can be perceived as limitations on individual freedom and meritocracy.  Well, yes., and so?

We learn that it is possible to navigate these conflicts by encouraging a balance whereby both principles can coexist harmoniously. He advocates for a societal framework that maximizes individual freedoms while simultaneously safeguarding and promoting equal opportunities for all its members.  He notes this balance is not easily achieved, “requiring continual dialogue, ethical consideration, and legal frameworks that adapt to evolving social needs and challenges.  In real-world applications, the balance between Liberty and Equality is manifest in democratic governance, where laws and policies aim to protect individual rights while promoting social welfare. The U.S. Constitution, with its amendments and provisions, exemplifies this delicate equilibrium, striving to uphold freedoms of speech, religion, and assembly, while guaranteeing equal protection under the law”.  Do you remember that simplistic, hopeful and long-lost view of the world?

When it comes to Justice, Adler highlights the contributions of John Rawls.  Rawls’ theory of “justice as fairness” proposes two key. principles: the principle of equal basic liberties for all individuals and the difference principle, which maintains that social and economic inequalities should be arranged to benefit the least advantaged members of society. Rawls’ ideas, like Adlers, now seem so unrealistic.  Were we more innocent back then?

Adler wanted his readers to recognise the profound impact that living in accordance with Truth, Goodness, Beauty, Liberty, Equality, and Justice can have — on ourselves, our relationships, and on the broader society.  Rather than accepting his framework for the future, in contemporary society we are more likely to see those six ideas as forming a complicated straitjacket.  Each constrains and is constrained by the others, and whatever direction we pursue, we soon bump up against major contradictions and confusions.  Despite this, Adler deserves the last word:  even if his six ideas can no longer be considered “essential tools for navigating the complexities of contemporary life” they remind us of ideas we mustn’t forget.