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Liability, responsibility and apology

In Australia a parliamentary inquiry has just recommended a formal apology to 'mothers and children who were victims of past forced adoption practices'. The recommendation is for an apology from the Australian government itself and from 'state and territory governments and non-government institutions involved'. Labor senator Claire Moore is quoted as saying: 'The history... will now be known and acknowledged'. Which is, of course, one of the main purposes of such apologies. But those like Jeremy Paxman who think individuals should only apologize for what they themselves have done will have to conclude that the recommendation is wrong-headed, since the members of the governments concerned are not personally responsible for what happened 40 and more years ago.

An interesting light is cast on this mistaken opinion by a case currently before the US Supreme Court, in which the issue of corporate liability arises. I won't go into the detail of it, but merely say that principles of corporate liability and responsibility are well-established. There seems to be no reason why what applies to corporations shouldn't also apply to states and governments. This being so, collective entities can be held responsible for actions some way in the past. Individuals who belong to them, consequently, must be able to apologize for past actions although they bear no personal guilt.

Writer's choice 339: Anne Zouroudi

Anne Zouroudi is the author of The Mysteries of the Greek Detective - a series set in modern Greece, with a twist of ancient mythology. Her work has received national acclaim and she has been shortlisted for ITV3's Crime Thriller Awards, the Desmond Elliott Prize for sparkling new fiction and the East Midlands Book Awards. Her latest novel, The Bull of Mithros, will be published by Bloomsbury in June. In this post Anne discusses David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas.

Anne Zouroudi on Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

I read Cloud Atlas because it was a book everyone was reading, a book that was being hyped, and because I was intrigued by the title, which made no sense to me. I came to the book cold, in the days (less than 10 years ago) when Amazon's reviewing public had little influence on my reading choices. In fact I had read no reviews of the novel at all, but it was on the Booker list, and so I was prepared to believe - more so than I would be now - that it was a work of significant merit.

I began to read, and entered the world of Adam Ewing as he discovered the dangers of the Pacific islands in the 19th century. In the opening paragraphs, Ewing finds Dr Henry Goose searching a beach for human molars - the detritus of cannibal banquets - to be made into dentures for the nobility. This bizarre scene, and those following, were masterfully crafted, evoking Ewing's time and place in glowing technicolour.

'My bruises, cuts, muscles & extremities groaned like a court-room of malcontent litigants,' he complained. 'As in a dream... a pellucid salamander emerged from its carrion dwelling and darted along the stick to my hand.'

I was pleased with Adam Ewing's company, so when his narrative came to an abrupt, mid-sentence end, I was both baffled and disappointed. I checked the page numbers to see if I had pages missing; but all seemed to be in order, so I assumed a printer's error, and read on.

The scene changed, to the 1930s, and a new narrator - the less-than-likeable Robert Frobisher, a talented musician who blagged his way into the household of an ageing composer. His story, told in letters to his old friend Sixsmith, was as intriguing as Adam Ewing's; but lo, before the story reached any kind of resolution, it, too, came to an abrupt end.

This time, I smiled; I was beginning to get the idea, and to glean the subtleties behind it. The two narratives were not as unrelated as they initially appeared; when Frobisher found part of Adam Ewing's Pacific diary in a library, the first connection was made.

And yet I still had no idea what a magnificent idea was at hand. I read on, moving into the 1970s, and a tale involving the disappearance of nuclear scientist Rufus Sixsmith, recipient of Robert Frobisher's letters. Another halt, another fast-forward in time, to 1980s Hull, and the fate of poor Timothy Cavendish, a vanity publisher who received papers relating to Sixsmith, but was then incarcerated in an old peoples' home; thence to an interview with Somni-451, a slave-clone in a believable but soulless future, who recalled watching an old film entitled The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish. Apocalypse next: and on the book went, into the post-cataclysmic future, where Zachry gave an account of 'contemporary' life in the Pacific islands where Adam Ewing had once lived, and where Somni-451 had somehow become the islanders' deity.

Here, a reversal began, a back-tracking through all these timescapes, resolving each narrator's tale in turn - Somni's, Cavendish's, Sixsmith's, Frobisher's, and concluding where all had begun, with Adam Ewing.

When I read Cloud Atlas, I was in a happy place in my literary career, with my first publishing contract recently signed, and The Messenger of Athens soon to make its appearance on the bookshop shelves. I had worked hard, honing my craft for many years to reach that position. But the reading of Mitchell's novel seemed to point up the flaws in my achievement. I found his writing bold, and regretted I had not myself been bolder; his stories were spellbinding, and I read passages aloud to my twelve-year-old, who was spellbound too. I marvelled at Mitchell's ability to create all these diverse worlds, and create every one of them wholly convincingly, where I had sweated to bring life to only one.

And I wondered at the brilliance of the book's structure. I have often seen it described - now I have read the reviews - as a Russian doll, plots nesting one inside another. My analysis is slightly different: to me, the book's structure is a pyramid of time, its apex out there in Zachry's futuristic primitivism, its base the same islands but in Adam Ewing's time, centuries before.

I have never, before or since, been so 'blown away' by a book as I was by Cloud Atlas. I read Mitchell's earlier novels, and found Cloud Atlas's roots, a (for me) less successful shot at the moon, in Ghostwritten. More than anything, I wished I could write anything half as good, and it has remained ever after in the back of my mind as a gold standard – a guidepost to what I might achieve if I let my imagination really fly.

I evangelize about Cloud Atlas, every chance I get. Yet to my constant surprise, my evangelizing brings mixed reactions, and I concluded several years ago that Cloud Atlas is very much a 'Marmite' book. Some people share my views, and marvel at the novel's magnificence; more commonly, though, the reaction is, 'I don't get it.'

I don't get how other readers don't get it, but their antipathy is clear. It's just too confusing, they say. And it is confusing, at the outset; but as one reads, one must seek out the silver threads of order and connection.

For certain, Cloud Atlas is no run-of-the-mill novel. It's challenging, but it more than repays the effort of careful reading. If you've never read it, I urge you to do so. Especially if Marmite is to your taste.

[All the pieces that have appeared in this series, with the links to them, are listed in the index here.]

Anti-fascism from above

Writing on Comment is Free about matters touching on war and opposition to war, Richard Seymour says:

Ironically, one of the best retorts to such posturing was supplied by the founder of "liberal internationalism", Woodrow Wilson, on the occasion of US intervention into the Mexican revolution: "I challenge you," he said, "to cite me an instance in all the history of the world where liberty was handed down from above. Liberty is always attained by the forces working from below, underneath."

Woodrow Wilson, of course, cannot be expected to have known about post-1945 West Germany or Japan. Seymour, on the other hand, you would expect to be aware of both.

An astonishing resource

That's the Wiener Library, lately reopened in new premises in Russell Square. There's an article by D.D. Guttenplan here about origins and history, and on what the library provides.

'Adolescent' revulsion and moral shame (over Syria)

(1) There was a thoughtful column by Philip Collins in Friday's Times, proposing in effect the need for some form of Western intervention in Syria even though the consequences of this could not be counted on to make a difference for the better. These are Collins's opening paragraphs (£):

The most misunderstood book of recent times was lost in a play on words. When Francis Fukuyama called his book The End of History he was not making the foolish claim that history, as 1066 And All That nearly said, had come to a full stop. He was saying that no society better than liberal democracy would ever emerge.

With history unfolding all around us, it is a good moment to point out that Fukuyama was right. The people of Syria, like the people of Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, do not wish to buy security at the cost of freedom. The Middle East will, in time, join the league of democratic nations, as Latin America has done since 1970. The fragile Government of Algeria cannot last. The limited reforms sponsored by the kings of Morocco and Jordan will buy a little time. But eventually the people there and the people in Iran will want some of what we have, they being people just like us.

For a long time this argument was buried in Iraq. The idea of liberal intervention, which flowed in Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Libya and ebbed in Afghanistan, fell apart in Iraq. There is always a case, as there was in Iraq, for parting a tyrant from his power. There was a case for leaving well alone too. But Syria is showing us what, sooner or later, would have happened. The Syrian slaughter of the innocents is the counter-factual for Iraq.

Collins then says that 'the case for standing by and doing nothing' about Syria is very powerful and he spells out the reasons why. He continues all the same:

Intervention... will mean chaos. But there is chaos already. We have to trade these risks against the following certainty. Six thousand are dead and the upshot of standing by is the gang rape of a young boy. The upshot of inaction is murder. The rhetorical naivety in this appeal is deliberate. When you see children slaughtered by state-backed monsters, there is nothing wrong with being reduced to cliché. This cannot be allowed to happen...

The revulsion is too profound to be written off as adolescent or unrealistic. For those of us who are not religious, the suffering of other human beings is the deepest mark of common human heritage. So it is important to add weight to our moral impulse rather than to dismiss it as naive and foolish. Where does revulsion meet practical reality? That is the central question.

And Collins mentions various possible measures – among them the creation of a safe zone, and the supply of arms, cash and communications to the opposition - before reiterating that the arguments against military intervention are overwhelming, but that the choice is between chaos and chaos: 'It's the nature of the beast and sometimes we forget that it's the fascist that's the beast, not us. We're better than that and in our actions we will show it.'

(2) In a post a few days ago I noted how Peter Beaumont seemed to be proposing a higher threshold for military intervention than that embodied in the doctrine of a 'Responsibility to Protect'. The latter specifies 'a reasonable chance of success' and not making things worse than they already are as conditions for external intervention. Peter was suggesting more demanding conditions than that: an ability to guarantee the introduction of genuine freedoms and real democracy. Set against the backdrop of that discussion, Collins's argument may be seen as moving in the opposite direction: the direction of lowering the threshold. Since it is urgent that we respond somehow, out of solidarity, of our 'common human heritage' with the victims, action must be taken even if it means meeting chaos with chaos and (by implication) that the chaos we cause turns out to be worse than the chaos we're trying to bring to an end.

(3) In Saturday's Times Matthew Parris responds in his turn (£) to the idea that intervention in Syria might now be called for, and he responds to Collins's column in particular. Parris's response is blunt and indeed bordering on the contemptuous. Those who want intervention in Syria he calls neocons (as if no one else than a neocon could be moved to want to put a stop to the murderous actions of a tyranny). For Parris, if there's no 'workable plan', if the odds are stacked against success, one must stay out. To Collins's plea of profound revulsion, he rejoins: 'Forgive me, but no revulsion is too profound to be written off as adolescent or unrealistic. We doubters feel the same horror at atrocity as the neocons do. They do not strengthen their case by repeating their horror. Revulsion comes easy.'

(4) I will not comment here on the argument each way about likely consequences. I don't know whether or not there's a form of military intervention that could make a difference for the better in Syria. However, beyond the assessment of likely consequences, there is something else worth registering here, something which aligns me with Collins's solidaristic plea invoking a common human heritage, and against Parris's contemptuous riposte: that revulsion can always be written off as 'adolescent' if it isn't backed by a workable plan; that revulsion 'comes easy'. For revulsion isn't the only thing that comes easy. So does moral indifference. There was another voice from another time that reflected on the feeling appropriate to being powerless in the face of atrocity, and 'adolescent' wasn't the way he characterized it. Here is what he - Primo Levi - wrote:

It was the same shame which we knew so well, which submerged us after the selections, and every time we had to witness or undergo an outrage: the shame that the Germans never knew, the shame which the just man experiences when confronted by a crime committed by another, and he feels remorse because of its existence, because of its having been irrevocably introduced into the world of existing things, and because his will has proven nonexistent or feeble and was incapable of putting up a good defence.
.....
[T]he just among us, neither more nor less numerous than in any other human group, felt remorse, shame and pain for the misdeeds that others and not they had committed, and in which they felt involved, because they sensed that what had happened around them in their presence, and in them, was irrevocable. It would never again be able to be cleansed...

Of course, the whole world is not a death camp, and what is happening in Syria falls far short of the Nazi genocide. Yet the brutal murder of innocent people by a state bears some kinship with all crimes against humanity, of which it is itself one. A sense of revulsion, and of shame that the civilized world stands by to these events, so far from being 'adolescent', is an elementary human impulse which competes with tendencies to both indifference and cynical realism. It was expressed just the other day by Marie Colvin, now dead, when she wrote, 'Sickening, cannot understand how the world can stand by and I should be hardened by now. Watched a baby die today.'

Apart from anything else, the very question of whether anything effective can be done by outsiders to bring a criminal assault by some regime to an end partly depends on how many people - and how many governments - are touched by this sense of shame and outrage, and prompted to think that something, if possible, ought to be done. The cynical realist chorus is not as neutral and uninvolved as those who populate it may think.

Songs of love and heartbreak 59

It's been a while since I featured one of these, but I am prompted to return to the series by happening upon 'Misty' and, on checking to see whether I'd already included it, finding that I haven't. 'Misty' has to have a place in any 'songs of love' series, if only for the lines:

Walk my way
And a thousand violins begin to play

Only a thousand? How deliciously, preposterously over the top. Ahhh, but also how true when it is. So, here's the song, as sung by Ella, and Sinatra, and Julie London, and Johnny Mathis; and as played by Erroll Garner and Stan Getz. Sorry, no Nat King Cole; I couldn't find a link.

[The series is introduced and indexed here.]

Religion as pervasive as you care to make it

Religion is all-encompassing and it is everywhere. Or, at any rate, you can show that it is if you loosen up on what you regard as religion. You could do it like this. Cricket: haven't you heard of the hallowed turf of Lord's; or, for that matter, of the Mecca of cricket? Football: haven't you noticed the common rituals and chants among the supporters? And so on.

'What if the secularist dream - a true separation of church and state - is actually impossible?' Simon Critchley has a new book in which he apparently considers the question. I haven't read the book but if this is anything to go by, Critchley may be relying on 'Mecca of cricket'-type procedures.

Thus, for example, the US has 'a sacred text, the Constitution'. This would then mean that any founding document or set of rules that people took to be important would infuse whatever was founded by it or governed by them with the spirit of religion. Chess, anyone? Or consider the following:

The concept of original sin... "is not some outdated relic from the religious past," Critchley writes, but is alive in any system of authoritarian rule - even the supposedly godless ones - in that they operate from the premise that "there is something essentially defective in human nature which requires a corrective."

You might as well dump 'authoritarian' from 'system of authoritarian rule', since presupposed by every system of political rule, and by the rule of law itself, is that people will sometimes behave badly, aggress against one another etc if they are not constrained by norms of some kind. Via its kinship with the concept of original sin this simple empirical assumption about human beings, for which we have rather a lot of evidence, is turned here into something religiously inspired.

Again:

Even secularism itself, Critchley maintains, is a religious myth, based as it is on a belief in progress. "The very idea of progress, that the future will be better than the past - which is the basic premise of American life - is a translation of the Christian idea of providence," Critchley told me.

And yet there is another way of thinking about progress as a possibility, in which progress is not like Christian providence, just something to be striven for, like improvements where you can manage them.

For the time being I'll be sticking with the idea that there is a difference between secular democracy and theocratic rule.

They threaten you, therefore it's your fault

In Wednesday's Times, Anatole Kaletsky assembles the reasons, as he sees them, for the folly that would be involved if any country tried to destroy Iran's nuclear programme. Fair enough - there are some cogent reasons of this kind. But look here (£) at the last reason he gives, in talking specifically about the inadvisability of an attack by Israel on Iran:

Israel, with a population of only seven million, would proclaim by its actions that it considers the hundreds of millions of Muslims living around it as permanent and implacable military enemies. It is this attitude, far more than any nuclear programme, that poses the real "existential threat" to Israel's long-term survival.

Rich or what? It is not an Israeli leader who has spoken of wiping Iran from the map, but rather an Iranian leader of doing precisely that to Israel. And while Israel has never, ever, pronounced hundreds of millions of Muslims to be 'permanent and implacable military enemies', there are organizations on Israel's very borders that have pronounced their undying enmity for Israel. Yet, by a suave reversal Kaletsky decides a hostile attitude of Israel's poses the existential threat to its survival.

Perhaps Kaletsky might like to consider writing for the Guardian, where sentiments of that stripe are meat and drink.

That Australian

'Just one of those guys you know it would be impossible to stay mad with. Five minutes with him and it feels like you're old buddies...'

'On perhaps no Australian do so many people hold views as... [can you guess?]'

'[H]ow many cricketers have had a musical done about them?'

By now you probably know. All from a two-parter, 'Shane Warne's Never-Ending Glory', by Gideon Haigh - here and here. (Thanks: JN.)

Why apologizing can be right when you've done nothing wrong

I, my neighbour Zelda, and Wayne Dobbs Jr form a society for listening together to the music of Townes Van Zandt. We call it the Cambridge Townes Van Zandt Appreciation Society. In an open vote of all three CTVZAS members Wayne Dobbs Jr is elected president of the society for one year. As president Wayne takes a call in his first week in office from someone in Gonville and Caius College who wants to join, and he (Wayne) responds in a needlessly rude and insulting manner. A few days later he resigns the CTVZAS presidency and leaves the society, this for reasons unconnected with his rudeness, but on account of he's decided suddenly to return to New Zealand, where he was born.

After Wayne's departure, Zelda and I apologize to the person in Gonville and Caius who was treated so disobligingly by Wayne. We apologize on behalf of the CTVZAS, not wanting its reputation to be sullied by such misconduct, and feeling anyway that an apology was owed although neither Zelda nor I did anything wrong, personally, to the unfortunate member of Gonville and Caius.

This brief tale is by way of explaining why Jeremy Paxman ought to think again if he really believes what he says in saying:

You should apologise for things that you have done, that you recognise that perhaps you shouldn't have done or regret. But apologising for things that your great, great, great, great-grandfather or grandmother did, seems to me a complete exercise in moral vacuousness.

I have argued for this before, but it bears repeating since the denial of it is so common: there are human collectivities as well as human individuals - families, clubs, societies, firms, trade unions, countries, nations, libraries, universities, parliaments, banks, reading groups, media organizations and churches. A single member of one of these collectivities can apologize for an act of the collective, as carried out by someone else, one of its officers or representatives or just plain members. There's no reason for presuming he or she should never do so; though it is, of course, a valid question whether an apology is due and would be sincere. But it can be unproblematically both.