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The artwork “The System Sucks The Life From Me {Graduate Premium Myth}" is made from a found object I rescued from the skips of a Cardiff reprographics company which produced marketing pop ups for university’s recruiting campaigns and Welsh government departments, now defunct or re-branded and is my response to the many cuts and proposed cuts to education, services, budgets and so on brought about by the UK government’s austerity policies and my anxieties over the commodification of education.

On the issue of Student debt - People are easier to control, easier to manipulate when they are in debt.

On the myth of “the Graduate Premium” – which is reducing year on year, as tuition fees are going up and up.

A young graduate couple with joint debts upwards of £60,000 are not going to cause any employer any problems regardless of their diminishing employment rights and vicious tactics such as zero-hours contracts.

Recently (10/4/14) a report by the Huffington Post entitled “Students Will Still Be Paying Back Tuition Fee Loans In Their 50s, Study Warns” – covered the release of a report by the Sutton Trust.

(http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/04/10/students-will-paying-back-tuition-fee-loans-50s_n_5123387.html)

The Sutton Trust, which commissioned the research, said the findings showed that the new fee system could leave professionals such as teachers in a position where they have to find cash to cover loan repayments at a time when their family and living costs, such as mortgage payments, are at a peak.

Under major reforms of university finances, tuition fees were raised to a maximum of £9,000 a year in 2012, almost treble the previous fee which stood at around £3,000.

…higher education was meant to be about broadening ones knowledge, reading lots, meeting new people, and getting excited about ideas. However, it turned out that higher education is actually just about making yourself “more employable“ even, as happened to me, you are a returning mature student with long term health issues that made you unemployable a decade ago.

It’s about fashioning yourself into a walking CV to compete for a stagnant pool of graduate jobs that are paid less in real terms every year, and taking on a rotten amount of debt in the process.

This week news quietly broke that the extra money a degree is supposed to earn you over the course of a lifetime – the “graduate premium” – is going down year on year, even as tuition fees are going up. Today’s students are paying nine times what was paid in 2007 and, according to one government adviser, up to 40% of the class of 2012 may default on their student loans.

Government policies are already having an effect on the way in which we experience and live our lives.

Whilst the implications of: 

the bedroom tax and

the growing necessity of food banks for daily living

has received a great deal of attention, there has been perhaps less focus on the continual chipping away of the cultural landscape that informs us and enriches us.

educational course closures,

huge student debts due to course fees,

overcrowding and reduction in quality of the student experience,

library closures,

gallery closures,

massive cuts and de-prioritising of the Arts in education,

curtailing of community and recreational facilities.

– our country is suffering from a form of ‘cultural vandalism’ which affects us all.

What is being lost today across so many communities will have profound, life changing, social implications now, tomorrow and for future generations.

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More Music Includes

PJ Harvey: In the Dark Places

Stevie Wonder: Love’s in Need of Love Today

Nas & Damian Marley ft. K’naan: Tribes at War

I’d Rather Be Dancing (Rachel Corrie’s Song)

Bruce Springsteen: The Wall

Incredible String Band: Cold Days Of February

Bob Marley and the Wailers: War/No More Trouble

Pete Seeger: Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream

Immortal Technique: The War vs Us All ft Mumia Abu Jamal

Joan Baez: Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ye

Weird Al Yankovic: Christmas at Ground Zero

Gil Scott-Heron: Johannesburg

The Clash: Washington Bullets

Ronnie Drew: The Old Man’s Tale

Chicco: Papa Stop the War

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If you really want to know why the cities and states are so broke, then you must first ask yourself where all the money went.

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In today’s turbo-charged and austerity-ravaged economy, anxiety and insecurity have become the new normal. How did this happen — and how do we fight back?

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Structural violence refers to systematic ways in which social structures harm or otherwise disadvantage individuals.  Structural violence is subtle, often invisible, and often has no one specific person who can (or will) be held responsible (in contrast to behavioural violence).

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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

READING LIST:

  Daniel Bell, Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1st edition 1976; Basic Books, 1996)

  Reinhard Bendix, Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait (University of California Press, 1992)

  Peter Ghosh, A Historian Reads Max Weber: Essays on the Protestant Ethic(Harrassowitz Verlag, 2008)

  Joachim Radkau, Max Weber: A Biography (Polity Press, 2011)

  Lawrence A. Scaff, Max Weber in America (Princeton University Press, 2011)

  R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1st edition 1926; Hesperides Press, 2006)

  Marianne Weber (trans. Harry Zohn), Max Weber: A Biography (1st edition 1926; Transaction Publishers, 2006)

  Max Weber, (trans. Talcott Parsons), The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1st edition 1930; Routledge, 2001)

  Max Weber, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (Routledge, 2009)

  Sam Whimster, Understanding Weber (Routledge, 2007)

  Sam Whimster (ed.), Essential Weber: A Reader (Routledge, 2003)

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"

Why humankind cannot bear too much reality

In a memorable phrase, the Anglo-American poet T. S. Eliot once suggested that “humankind cannot bear too much reality”. You, dears, being quick to spot the res, will no doubt notice that the poet did not say that we cannot bear reality per se; nor that we can hardly stand to face certain realities – but that as a race (human, I mean) we throw in the towel in less time than it takes for a duck to shake its tail twice when confronted with too much of the bally stuff.

It’s almost as if, in a gruelling tête-à-tête with things as they are, we lower our eyes, mumble incoherently about having another appointment elsewhere, and skedaddle like the proverbial scared rabbit in the jaws of a bloodhound. Cheerio, chums, got to dash…

But enough of this bland blather, eh? The point I was trying to make before I got carried away by the lure of blandings was that, er, what was it now, ah yes, that homo sapiens, as the superior being in the order of creation on this benighted, um blessed, planet, “cannot b. too much r”. What’s that, dear? Yes, of course. Permit me to explain – you are far too kind…

If a more business-minded bloke than our tender-hearted philosopher, the late Eliot Esq., were to essay an explanation, he may have put it something like this. We don’t care to have reality rubbed in our faces. There is no point in facing up squarely to the way things are. So the best bet is to act as if nothing is wrong – and then, hopefully, everything will be all right. Or at least we can pretend that it is until we all kick the bucket. Dear, dear…

Now that we have got that off our chest, thanks to the late great poet Thomas Stearns and the abovementioned b.-minded b. aka t.-h. philosopher, here’s our own humble offering as to the plethora of ways in which we manage to mosey along the merry course of life. (Sans too much reality, it goes without saying.) Note while we cannot claim to have invented any of these methods, we are chuffed to bits that someone had the gumption to. Hear, hear…

LIES. For example, that video which is doing the rounds like nobody’s business. Everyone in authority over here knows that it is a lie, don’t they? Unless, of course, it is the truth (see also category below). In which case, it’s nobody’s business. Pity, then, that the powers that be over there have made it their concern. Haven’t they heard of killing fields in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya? Why isn’t anyone asking what ails those theatres of war – I mean, humanitarian intervention in other countries’ oil fields – I mean, oil wells – I mean, well-being…

HALF-TRUTHS. Known in some circles as “damned lies” (see first category above). In this limbo of genuine duplicity and counterfeit frankness lurk such unanswered questions like: “Who bumped off that pestilential gadfly of a journalist?”; “What in the world happened in the World Cup final?”; and “Why are K, P, and KP treated as if they each belonged to a different old boys’ club when the three of them are a pair, if there ever was one?”

STATE-SPONSORED PROPAGANDA. In the good old days, this used to masquerade under the pseudonym “statistics” (And do you know why they are called the good old days? Because we were not good, we were not old, and we did all the good old things at night! But that is neither here nor there, is it.).

Today, statistics are properly known by their more scientific term: “wishful thinking”. These cover a panoply of realities from military exercises that are humanitarian operations and peacekeeping forces that commit war crimes. In perhaps the last twist of the knife (another memorable phrase for which we are indebted again to the poet T. S. E.), collateral damage – which was the world’s only superpower’s wishful-thinking term for the unfortunate demise of non-combatants – has been reinvented as zero civilian casualties.

Lest you think that little island nations or emerging banana republics are more culpable than military industrial complexes that police the world, think again. If the day comes when Henry Kissinger is hauled up before an international court of justice for war crimes committed in a “just war” (another statistically spun half-truth or damned lie), I will eat my hat. Of course, that’s a lie! Or, more accurately, a half-truth?

For as everyone knows, the fact that writers like me eat our hats on a regular basis is merely state-sponsored propaganda."

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Visit the post for more.

Artist Research

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Collaborations in modern art, a short film by The Kills

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Hello, I've grown quite addicted to your blog and reading selections, your writing is also devastatingly beautiful. I wanted to ask if you had any recommendations for an introduction to postmodern philosophy, thank you.

Since, as Lyotard famously coined it, “postmodernism is incredulity toward the metanarratives,”  I would recommend starting with two essays which are not by definition “postmodern,” but, I think, lay the bedrock for what it becomes. Nietzsche’s very short essay “On Truth and Lies" (which is linked) and Roland Barthes’ "From Work to Text" (also linked) give a good introduction to this kind of incredulity, and Barthes’ essay is an introduction to what he calls the writerly text (writing which rebels against metanarratives). After these, I recommend reading either Catherine Belsey’s Poststructuralism: A Very Short Introduction or Terry Eagleton’s Introduction to Literary Theory. Both works function as a sort of tableau, and will help you conceptualize the different theories, while pointing you toward many primary texts which enact them. Hope this helps.

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Philosophy and the subject of love, including Slavoj Zizek's description of love as evil.

Could you please recommend me some philosophers(link them maybe if possible)who extensively deal with the philosophy of love?

This question is difficult to answer succinctly because, in a way, love is written into all of philosophy, or as Plato puts it “anyone who doesn’t take love as a starting point will never understand the nature of philosophy.”

The first thing that comes to mind, though, is Derrida’s short response on love from the Derrida documentary (which is linked), and then John D. Caputo’s short essay on Derrida, love, and hyper-realism, called “For the Love of the Things Themselves.”

Then, of course, is Roland Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse, Alain de Botton’s On Love, and Alain Badiou’s In Praise of Love; and, if you’re feeling patient, pick up a copy of Écrits, because Lacan — more than most — is talking about this all the time.

But my personal favourite is Žižek’s description of love as evil (video linked). If I recall, he also discusses this in detail in The Parallax View.

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Marcel Duchamp readymades, vandalism of a postcard of Mona Lisa. He called L H.O.O.Q Sounds like the french sentence for "she has a hot arse" and also a play on words for "hooker" or prostitute.

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Robert Longo

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Mixed media artist Zachari Logan regularly explores ceramic, illustration and installation processes. This ongoing series is entitled "Wild-Man.&...

Love these images.

Artist zachary logan's - wild-man

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Does anyone want to collaborate on a creative writing and art project? I’ve had an idea to update the legendary poem “the Bells Of Rhymni” by Idris Davies of Rhymney. Covered in song by Pete Seeger…

What will they pay, Mumsy?

said the Royal who went to Rhymney.

Endless slices of NHS pie,

said the Suit from the PFI.

Oh why won’t you fix me?

Sighed the sad road through Ponty.

Just give us a sign,

cried empty shops on the A469.

Why so long to fill a hole in?

say the shopkeepers of Pontlottyn.

They don’t seem to be eager,

said the  school kids of New Tredegar.

NEVERMORE another mine,

mourned the ghosts of Pantywaun.

Miller Argent will mock you,

Warned the village of Fochriw.

They will close our schools for good,

remove the heart from Abertysswg.

Greedy bastards with fat stomachs,

are those councillors at Ystrad Mynach.

They rape the land and cause distress,

mourn the wildlife of Nant Llesg.

We will cut short their laughter,

When we march on Penallta.