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University of Manchester crowned champions of the OUP and BPP Mooting Competition 2016

Congratulations to the University of Manchester team represented by Sophie Walmsley and Simren Singh, who beat off stiff competition to be crowned champions of the OUP and BPP National Mooting Competition 2015-2016.

His Honour Judge Charles Gratwicke of Chelmsford Crown Court presided over the final once again, which was held at BPP Law School, Holborn on 30 June 2016. He remarked that he was staggered by the tremendously high standard of mooting, and that each and every student taking part was on a par with many of the barristers he hears in court.

The original moot problem, written by barrister Ros Earis for the final, focused on whether or not a landlord was liable for an injury caused to his tenant by a broken paving stone close to the front door of the property, despite not being informed of the defect. The problem provided all participants with the opportunity to showcase their legal knowledge and advocacy skills.

Congratulations also go to the other three teams: University College London represented by Godwin Tan and Suhail Bindra; Manchester Metropolitan University represented by Jess Purchase and Ciara Bartlam; and Birmingham City University represented by Ali Kazi and Jack Rogers, all of whom worked incredibly hard to reach the final of the competition and displayed impressive mooting skills on the night.

As award for their fantastic achievement, winners Sophie and Simren receive a trophy and £750 prize money each.

 

1. Manchester Metropolitan senior counsel delivering her submission







2. Judge Gratwicke







3. Attendees mingle at the drinks reception







4. The Manchester Metropolitan team with their supporters







5. Judge Gratwicke delivering his speech







6. The University of Manchester are announed the winners







7. Judge Gratwicke presenting the trophies to Sophie and Simren







8. Judge Gratwicke with the 2015-16 finalists







9. The 2015-2016 champions

All images courtesy of Oxford University Press.

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Shakespearian opera in the shadow of war

Prince Henry: But tell me, Jack, whose fellows are these that come after?

Falstaff: Mine, Hal, mine.

Prince Henry: I did never see such pitiful rascals.

Falstaff: Tut, tut, good enough to toss; food for powder, food for powder. They’ll fill a pit as well as better. Tush, man, mortal men, mortal men.

Over the past few years, Britain has commemorated Shakespeare’s life, works, and death in parallel with an extensive remembrance of the First World War and those who served in it. The elision of Shakespeare’s work with this particular conflict is not a new trend: 100 years ago, similar celebrations of Shakespeare were occurring in the midst of wartime, and both Britain and Germany were employing his image and plays for propaganda and recruitment purposes. After the war’s conclusion, Shakespeare and the Great War continued to align in the public consciousness. In 1925, for instance, the British composer Gustav Holst wrote his short Henry IV opera, At The Boar’s Head – a piece situated very much in the shadow of devastating recent events. Holst’s name, of course, is indelibly associated with his most celebrated work, The Planets (which, coincidentally, is 100 years old this year). This suite contains his most famous ‘war’ piece: ‘Mars, the Bringer of War’.

Holst himself experienced the Great War at a distance

Whether ‘Mars’ actually relates to the First World War is a matter for debate, but if its sinister bombast is indeed an ominous anticipation of manifold horrors to come, then At The Boar’s Head is a companion piece of sorts, offering a bittersweet exploration of the impact of war on British life and identity. In the words of the Shakespeare and music scholar Julie Sanders, Holst’s opera represents an ‘era of residual patriotism, a period also defined by a deep-seated and traumatic sense of loss following devastating battles such as those at Paschaendale and the Somme’. Undoubtedly, its themes and images would have been deeply poignant for its original audience, many of whom would have borne the physical and emotional scars of wartime.

Holst himself experienced the Great War at a distance, since – much to his frustration – he was barred from military service on the grounds of ill health. It is perhaps significant, then, that his Shakespearian war opera does not feature any battlefield action whatsoever. Rather, it focuses on a domestic environment, exploring the complex reactions of soldiers at the exact moment when they are recruited to fight, and highlighting the experiences of those left behind. At The Boar’s Head is entirely set in the eponymous Eastcheap tavern that offers an alternative to the military seriousness and political hierarchies of the outside world. Holst’s pub, like Shakespeare’s, is a rambunctious, anarchic, and distinctively British environment, characterised by hearty folk songs and heavy drinking. Its patriotic and festive atmosphere is tinged with sadness and foreboding, however, since the outside menace of war – characterised musically by portentous horncalls – perpetually threatens to puncture the tavern bubble forever.

One particular scene between Falstaff (the embodiment of The Boar’s Head’s bawdy excesses) and Prince Hal (the soon-to-be Henry V) perfectly demonstrates the opera’s opposition of carefree merriment with impending combat. Just before he is summoned to battle, a disguised Hal steps forward to sing at Falstaff’s request. Hal’s ensuing aria is not actually drawn from either of the Henry IV plays – instead, Holst combines Sonnets 19 (‘Devouring time, blunt thou the lion’s paws…’) and 12 (‘When I do count the clock that tells the time…’), twisting them into a lamentation on mortality, military duty, and kingly responsibility. Falstaff, however, refuses to tolerate Hal’s glumness, and interrupts his sombre musings with a lively, nonsensical jig about King Arthur. Falstaff’s and Hal’s songs are then overlaid, creating a musical clash that distils the conflicts between the private and public spheres, between Falstaff’s anachronistic, Arcadian spirit and Hal’s recognition of the closeness of death in the present.

Owing to the opera’s single location in a place of female entrepreneurship, women have a far more prominent voice in At The Boar’s Head than in either of Shakespeare’s Henry IV plays, where they are pushed to the sidelines. Like Vaughan Williams’s contemporaneous Falstaff opera, Sir John in Love (1929, based on The Merry Wives of Windsor), At The Boar’s Head seemingly reflects a post-war, Suffragist Britain in which women were beginning to exercise more opinion and agency. The opera’s closing moments pointedly focus on the women of the tavern, and the distress they feel at being left behind when their male friends and lovers leave for war. While Falstaff departs, Mistress Quickly (the tavern’s owner) and Doll Tearsheet (Falstaff’s prostitute mistress) sing him a pair of emotional, touching farewells, before they are left alone on stage to comfort each other, and darkness descends. There is a twist, however, as Falstaff summons Doll to his chamber for one last tryst – a final act of rebellion against onrushing obligation and misery.

At The Boar’s Head was not successful in its day – partly because of the relative unpopularity of home-grown opera in Britain – and was viewed as nothing more than an ‘extremely interesting experiment’ in attempting to combine Shakespeare with folk songs. It has been revived only sparingly since, and has certainly not achieved the renown of other British Shakespeare operas such as Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Thomas Adès’s The Tempest. It is nevertheless a gem of a work, which captures the mood of a post-war Britain traumatised by recent events, longing to regain a lost, pre-war innocence, and looking hesitantly towards the future. By highlighting marginalised spaces and characters in Henry IV, it also invites a reconsideration of Shakespeare’s famous history plays. Moreover, it is a piece that still might hold resonance for modern societies in which families, communities, and countries are still affected by international warfare and personal loss.

Featured image credit: Gustav Holst statue, Imperial Gardens, Cheltenham. By Terry Jacombs. CC-BY-SA-2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

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Does death rob our lives of meaning?

In the previous post, we met the argument with which Epicurus hoped to cure our fear of death and, with that, our fear of everything else. But we found it wanting. Epicurus assumed that only that which can harm you may be feared; and only that which causes pain can harm you. But we saw that both of these assumptions are false. Along the way, we met one specific reason to fear our death, namely, its effect on those we love. But I suggested that, while this might justify certain responses to the fact of our own mortality, it does not seem to support the sort of response that people often report – the halting existential terror felt in the pit of the stomach. This sort of response, it seems, comes from somewhere else. In this post, we consider a conjecture as to its source: I fear death, you might think, because the fact that I will die robs the things I do in my life of their meaning or their value or their worth. This, if it were true, would justify the feeling of vertigo and emptiness that comes when we reflect that we will die. To remind ourselves that all we have done is meaningless is to have the basis for all we do pulled out from under us.

As so often, Bill Watterson’s six-year old philosopher, Calvin, has been here before us. In the first pane of one comic strip, Calvin is at his school-desk: “Miss Wormwood, I have a question about this math class”; “Yes?”; “Given that sooner or later, we’re all just going to die, what’s the point of learning about integers?” Calvin’s thought seems to be based on an assumption that many of us make about what makes it worthwhile to do the things that we do in our lives. We assume that an activity can only get meaning or value by contributing to some larger goal that we pursue. Death, then, robs our lives of meaning or value by interrupting our ultimate over-arching goals before they can be fully achieved.

But this is based on a mistaken view of how things get their meaning or their value or their worth. Of course, some things get their meaning from how they contribute to some larger project (the philosopher Kieran Setiya calls these ‘telic activities’). I sharpen my pencil in order to draft this blog; and if I don’t finish the blog, the pencil sharpening becomes devoid of worth – doing it will have added no value to my life. I make a birthday card for a friend in order to make her laugh; if I drop it down a drain on my way to her party, there was no value in the making of it. But other things I undertake not because they contribute to a larger project – or not only for that reason – but because I value them as they are; they are, for me, sources of value in themselves (Setiya calls these ‘atelic activities’). For example, this blog might be part of a larger project I have to think through the effect on our lives of knowing of our own mortality. But I don’t value writing it only for its contribution to that goal. The process of thinking through these questions is itself something of value for me; something that gives my life meaning in and of itself. I might listen to my friend’s woes as part of a larger project of supporting her and living my life as connected to some extent to hers; but I value each particular part of that project, each evening talking to her, and not just because of their contribution to the whole; they are ends in themselves. What’s more, as philosopher Frances Kamm points out, much of what gives value to our lives is not any activity, such as thinking through a philosophical issue or connecting my life to that of my friend, but a way of being, such as being wise or being virtuous; and these ways of being are complete in themselves whenever you have them. The value that being wise or being virtuous add to your life does not increase the longer you live, though of course the longer you live, the more chance you have of achieving them.

In another comic strip, Calvin is sitting with his friend Hobbes, the tiger, under a tree. He turns to Hobbes: “I don’t understand this business about death. If we’re all going to die, what’s the point of living?” After a moment, Hobbes replies: “Well, there’s seafood.” And he’s right. Much of what we do in life – spending time with friends or family, taking in the beauty of the natural world, writing, reading, campaigning, or eating seafood – we value for its own sake. We don’t value it because of its contribution to some larger project that is curtailed by our death, thereby robbing our actions and lives that contain them of meaning. So, this aspect of death – that it truncates some of our projects, and frustrates some of our goals – gives us cause for sadness, perhaps, or disappointment or regret; but not fear, and not halting existential terror in the pit of our stomach. After all, there’s seafood.

Featured image: old north burial ground by mararie. CC BY-Sa 3.0 via Flickr.

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Oral history as a political response

The #OHMATakeover of the OHR blog continues as Eylem Delikanli discusses the potential of first-person narratives to counter Islamophobia in the United States. Stay tuned to the OHR blog throughout the month of July for additional pieces from OHMA students and alumni, and come back in August for a return to our regularly scheduled program. For more from Columbia’s oral history program, visit them online at oralhistory.columbia.edu or follow their blog here.

Moustafa Bayoumi presented his book This Muslim American Life as part of the Oral History Workshops at the Columbia University Oral History MA Program. A professor of English Literature, Bayoumi successfully analyses the War On Terror culture and critically examines domestic racism and its link with the authoritarian structures of the society. He elegantly elaborates almost all form of stereotypes that Muslim Americans experience today. His discussion about the hypocrisy around civil liberties and incompetencies of the key figures who are marketed as public intellectuals of Islam in the West, Hirsi Ali, Reza Aslan, Irshad Manji to name a few are quite remarkable.

Two days after Bayoumi’s presentation, a series of horrific terrorist attacks occurred in Paris killing 130 people. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) claimed responsibility for the attacks. Dismissing previous massacres in Ankara and Beirut, the West once more defined which lives are worth mentioning and which are not. Hence, soon after the Paris Massacre, the Western world joined forces in a unified attempt to defeat terrorism. In this climate of “War on Terror”, an Islamophobic choir raised voice in the US led by the presidential candidate Donald Trump. He claimed that Muslims should be banned from traveling to the US. As idiotic as Trump may sound, Islamophobia is real and needs to be addressed.

What is a better response to Trump and his followers than Rasha’s?  

In his earlier book How Does It Feel To Be a Problem? Being Young and Arab in America Bayoumi collected stories of young Arab Americans and their experience after 9/11. Echoing W.E.B. Du Bois’ question “How does it Feel to be a Problem?” in The Souls of Black Folk, Bayoumi asks his narrators about their experiences in the US. The stories that his narrators choose to share evade the clichés and stereotypes that Trump and his cohort delve into in every fashionable way.

Rasha, a Syrian immigrant born in 1983 and one of Bayoumi’s narrators, depicts a remarkable story of racism, elimination of civil liberties and injustice her family had to endure after 9/11. In February 2002, as a working class family, they all were hurried to a detention center in New Jersey without knowing why they were detained in the first place. She remembers the FBI Agent saying “We are cleaning out the country and you are the dirt.” Rasha’s storytelling is simple yet multilayered in its intellectual capacity. When listening to her story one can understand the stereotypical fabric of the society, the unjust, devastating and costly War on Terror culture that many minorities have to endure as well as the complexity of bringing out these issues. Oral history becomes instrumental for Bayoumi to co-create a space for his narrators and himself to resurface what has been truly experienced by Arab Americans to make a bolder and louder statement about Islamophobia in the US.  He questions what we as oral historians carry on our shoulders continuously: who has the authority over the story? Although he yields to trying different approaches to create the story, the narrator is given the authority to tell the story without Bayoumi’s interference. Bayoumi clearly sees and feels the power of the rawness of narratives which at the end connects him to the stories so tightly that he feels betrayal if done otherwise. Here he describes his and imagined others’ reactions to portrayals of Muslims in the media, starting with Homeland:

Memory is an arena for political struggle, thus, what we as oral historians and narrators produce fall in the category of struggle.

As an oral historian, I believe that our subjectivities as a researcher and narrator start the process of creating strong narratives. Once that creation takes place, there is less work left to the researcher to bring out the final product be it a book, an audio or an art piece. The invisibility of the researcher or the absence of a heavily theoretical analysis should not be considered a lack of knowledge or weakness but evidence that the researcher has taken on a harder task: to seamlessly integrate these elements into the narrative with no or limited interference in it. Memory is an arena for political struggle, thus, what we as oral historians and narrators produce fall in the category of struggle. I take Bayoumi’s work as such and salute him for employing narratives as part of fighting against racism, Islamophobia and bigotry in the US.

Thinking of the boldness of these life stories, who can slap Trump better than these hard-to-absorb narratives?

This post was originally published on the OHMA blog. Add your voice the conversation by chiming into the discussion in the comments below, or on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, or Google+.

Featured image: “Istanbul – rainbow over Blue Mosque” by SaraYeomans, CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.

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Recognizing Robert Whitman

Born in 1935, Robert Whitman was a member of an influential, innovative group of visual artists– Allan Kaprow, Red Grooms, Jim Dine, and Claes Oldenbur– who presented theater pieces on the lower east side in Manhattan in the early 1960s. Whitman has presented more than 40 theater pieces in the United States and abroad, including The American Moon, Flower, Mouth, and most recently Passport (2011) and Swim (2015).

Recently, I sat down with Whitman, and our friend and colleague, Kathy Battista, Editor in Chief of the Benezit Dictionary of Artists, to discuss some of his recent work, including NEWS, Local Report, and Swim in a conversation recorded for the Oxford Comment podcast series.

Like the first work of Whitman’s that I saw – The American Moon in November 1960 at the Reuben Gallery – his non-narrative, poetic works are rich in visual and sound images, and incorporate actors, film, sound, and evocative props in environments of his own creation. Along with these deeply felt theater works, Whitman was one of the co-founders in 1966 of Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), and has been involved in projects incorporating new technology, working with collaborators – engineers, scientists, computer programmers – to find ways to use technology to fulfill his ideas and visions.

In the early 1970s, Whitman produced his first telephone piece, NEWS, in which participants using pay phones around the city called in “reports” – verbal descriptions of the scenes around them – that were broadcast live over a radio station in the city. Whitman has continued to create variations on this communications work, always using contemporary technology to carry out his ideas. I worked with Whitman on Local Report 2005. For this work, he also collaborated with Shawn Van Every, a specialist in online and mobile media, who wrote programs for early video cell phones so that participants could create short video films and sound reports, and send them to a central viewing point via the internet. Again working with Van Every, Whitman produced Local Report 2012, in which specially designed apps for participants’ cell phones allowed approximately ninety people in cities around the world to make video clips and live voice reports and send them to Eyebeam, a nonprofit studio found in Industry City in Brooklyn. With live sound and video broadcast continuously on a five-screen installation, the performance composed, in real time, what Whitman called “a cultural map of the world.”

Left: Control center for Local Report, 2005, in an empty store in in Holmdel, NY. From left: Robert Whitman, Shawn Van Every, Kieran Sobel, Walter Smith. Photo courtesy Robert Whitman, used with permission.  Right: Performance of Local Report, 2012 at Eyebeam in New York City; Images from participants all over the world appear are projected and move sequentially from screen to screen. Photo by Julie Martin, used with permission.

Swim, Whitman’s most recent work, was a proscenium theater piece for Peak Performances at Montclair State University designed for both blind and sighted audiences. While crafting this assembly of sound and visual images, Whitman had extended conversations with Emilie Gossiaux, a young artist who is blind, in which she shared insights and, as he remembers, “told me the things I didn’t have to do.” His collaboration with her also inspired his Soundies: a series of large scale photographs accompanied by sounds and descriptive labels, which allow blind visitors using cell phone apps to experience his art in a unique and multi-sensory fashion.

Emilie Gossiaux and her guide dog, London, visit the stage of Swim during rehearsals. Photo by Anne Williams, used with permission.

Robert Whitman continues to use new technologies in his work, and the flow of sound and visual images that result as relevant and meaningful to today’s audiences as his landmark performances and collaborations were in the 1960s. I am delighted to write about Whitman’s work for Benezit, and to share this conversation about his ongoing work.

Featured image credit: Performance still from Swim, presented March 26-29, 2015. Performer Irene waters a white sheet on which the image changes from a view of a swimmer underwater to a glass of ice. Photo by Anne Williams, used with permission.

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How to stay both active and safe this summer

It’s no secret that summer is one of the most universally enjoyed parts of childhood. Waiting out the seemingly eternal last days of school – some have even been known to have a countdown starting in April – is a true act of patience.

Then school finally ends. And it is time to ride bikes, play on sports teams and in tournaments, swim, hike, and possibly attend sports camps. Summer’s freedom and weeks of time off are often channeled into a myriad of athletic activities, both organized and spontaneous.

Keeping youth athletes safe from brain injury can be overlooked during the summer, as many may not be as keenly aware of the risk. Focus seems to be centered on leagues and activities during the school year, but the reality is that concussion can happen to anybody, at any time, in any athletic activity.

We want parents, coaches, and youth athletes to be empowered participants in sports. Being active is healthy and can help foster positive development in children. We both grew up being athletic, and have carried that love into our adult careers and hobbies. Learning sportsmanship, how to handle winning and losing, along with the benefits of regular physical exercise, helps children learn and grow.

So that parents, coaches, and youth athletes can enjoy a safe and happy summer, here are some tips for summer sports participation.

Stay hydrated.

Exposure to summer heat and sun can lead to more than sunburns, dehydration or heat stroke. The risk of concussion may also go up when an athlete is dehydrated, as athletes who are dehydrated often report concussion-like symptoms. Staying properly hydrated, by regularly drinking water or an appropriate sports drink while practicing, playing, or competing, helps overall brain function and athletic performance. The antiquated practice of withholding fluids as punishment in practices or drills is thankfully finished. Fluids should be readily available to all athletes, and they should also be proactive in bringing their own.

Use and wear proper equipment.

It’s tempting to take a spin around the neighborhood without a bike helmet. Or maybe just a few more pitches in batting practice, in the fading daylight, just wearing a baseball cap. However, that’s just when trouble can strike. A fall or blow to the head can happen in a split-second. Having the correct equipment for athletic activities – and faithfully wearing the gear – protects the head. Helmets (bike, skateboard, sport-specific for football/baseball, etc.), and gear such as facial cages for softball players, can make all the difference in protecting the youth athlete from concussion or other forms of neurological injury. It should be routine. You don’t play baseball without a glove, so you won’t be riding your bike without a helmet. Additional note: always make sure helmets and athletic gear remain in good condition. It’s tempting to use hand-me-down helmets for kids. However, if the helmets are cracked or have other wear issues, they will not provide the correct protection. Regularly check for damage, wear, and cracks.

Image Credit: Youth football by bdc629. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay.

Learn – and teach – proper techniques.

Protecting youth athletes from concussion should start with their first practice. Coaches, who are often parents volunteering to help their child’s team, need to stress proper techniques for tackling, sliding, and other sport-specific moves. Leading with the head or not stopping over-aggressive play can manifest in injury. Teaching youth athletes to be aware of their bodies is a huge asset in helping lower concussion risk.

Empower youth athletes, coaches, and parents to be open about concussion.

Our approach in discussing concussion is realistic – we want children to compete and have fun, but also be safe. We’re not here to scare youth athletes away from sports because of concussions, which is increasingly happening in youth football. We want to empower parents and coaches, helping them understand the implications of concussion and recovery. The two extremes, living in fear or being cavalier about concussion, are equally incorrect approaches. We can help youth athletes by encouraging them to be open about their health. If they understand—through active positive messaging from parents, coaches, and their peers— that a concussion is not something to be hidden, we will make tremendous progress. The message that a concussion is scary or something bad to tell your coaches and parents, needs to stop. Being informed and proactive about concussion can be the best way to help all of our youth athletes enjoy the summer.

Enough reading.

Get out there and play! And be smart and safe.

Happy summer.

Featured Image Credit: Photo by John Sullivan. CC0 Public Domain via pexels.

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What will happen to global economics in the next 34 years

Before looking forward to 2050, we must first look back at the key economic and social developments during the past half a century, and perhaps look even further back than that. The rapid rise of emerging economies during the last 50 years is truly astounding in the long-term historical context. Developing economies now account for over half of the global output (55%, in PPP terms). This is a total reversal from the G7 economies’ share of global output of 57% in 1960.

The world as a whole is in the midst of a dramatic transformation of its economies, societies, as well as peoples’ aspirations. Since the 1960s, hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of absolute poverty, with the global absolute (income) poverty rate having fallen from 52% in 1981 to less than 10% in 2015; just over half of the world’s 7.3 billion people can now be classified as upper or middle class.

However, this has, in turn, created or exposed a new set of major challenges. Growth has been uneven between (and within) countries, and explained mostly by the rapid growth of Asia, led by countries like China and India. Many countries, indeed regions, remain heavily dependent on the vagaries of the commodity markets. Disparities in income and access to basic services are unacceptable. Countries are struggling to create meaningful jobs for the younger generation. At the same time—with the information and communications revolution—peoples’ aspirations are rising rapidly. Climate change threatens the very survival of our planet. Global governance and international institutions appear ill-suited for the tasks ahead.

Below are ten global megatrends that we believe will affect the long-term economic and social prospects of all countries—rich and poor, big and small in the next 34 years:

Chinese food stall, by edwardpye. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay.


Demographics: By 2050, the world will have some 9.7 billion people compared to 7.3 billion in 2015; over half of the net increase will be in Africa. All regions of the world will have aging societies, except for Africa and the Middle East. This sharp divergence in the demographic trends combined with difficulties in creating jobs for Africa’s bulging youth population will pose unprecedented challenges to the global community. The world will either have to learn to live with an aging and eventually shrinking population, or accept large-scale immigration.
Urbanization: The pace of urbanization will accelerate, with two thirds of the world living in urban areas as North America, Latin America, and Europe already do. Asia and Africa face an avalanche of urban migration between now and 2050, with China, India, and Nigeria alone likely to add a billion people. If well harnessed, these trends could be a powerful force for the overall economic growth, but they will also require huge investments to create modern, smarter, safer, and more livable cities.
Globalization and international trade: Continued globalization of trade and investment will lead to an even more intertwined world. As East Asia has amply demonstrated, a prudent embrace globalization can accelerate productivity growth and facilitate convergence with the global best practice. But, it causes painful disruptions too, requires careful national policies as well as a truly open and fair global trading system.
Globalization of finance: Continuation of the past trend towards larger, more global, and integrated financial markets will create more opportunities and could act as a positive force for economies with well-functioning financial systems. But even for them, it will create new risks and volatility that will need careful management. Further fundamental reforms of the global monetary, financial and taxation systems, and institutions are necessary to prevent re-occurrences of costly global financial crises as in 2007.
Emergence of a massive middle class: This trend will be a natural outcome of the continued (inclusive) economic growth. By 2050, 84% of all people in the world may belong to the upper or middle class. Emergence of large middle classes can potentially be a powerful positive force for economic and social development. But the existence of large middle classes will also add pressures on the political leaders to keep their promises, deliver concrete results and be held accountable.
Competition for finite natural resources: Under the central scenario of this volume, by 2050, people in as many as 84 countries could enjoy income levels equal to or higher than those of Southern Europe today. The fundamental question is whether the earth can sustain the demands of the resulting 4 billion or more new upper and middle class consumers, if they choose to replicate the current lifestyles of Western consumers, or would they move to more frugal lifestyles that would demand less from the earth?
Climate change: This is possibly the greatest global common threat of our generation. Its resolution is in the enlightened self-interest of all countries—including developing countries—and requires cooperative global efforts. Global warming, while harmful to all, will cause the most economic damage to the poorest countries in Africa and Asia.
Technological progress and breakthroughs: offer tantalizing prospects of solutions to many current and emerging societal problems, including: climate change; energy and food security; medical care for all (including the elderly); and provision of services to the bottom billion.
Historic rise of emerging market economies: A major shift in global economic power is underway, from the west to the east and from the north to the south. By 2050, in some scenarios, up to 70% of the global output could be in today’s developing countries. Global governance needs to be transformed to reflect this new landscape.
Emergence of fundamentalism and non-state actors: Violent non-state actors pose potential serious threats to global security and rule of law. Concerted cooperative global actions are urgently needed, together with an all-out effort to promote higher and more inclusive growth.

Obviously, the impact of these megatrends on individual economies or regions will vary, and may change over time.

Featured image credit: Bangkok skyline, by Prachanart Viriyaraks. CC-BY-2.0 via Flickr.

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10 things you need to know about taxation

Stephen Smith, author of Taxation: A Very Short Introduction, tells us 10 things we need to know about taxation, and gives us an insight into why we need taxes, how economic processes determine taxes, and how they can make political change. Do you agree with all of Stephen’s points? Let us know in the comments section below.

We need taxes to pay for public services.
Taxes are often at the heart of political controversy. Tax policies can win or lose elections, and can spark major political change.
In most industrialized countries, the level of taxation has grown dramatically over the last century. In European countries taxes now take on average two fifths of national income, and one third of national income in the United States.
Nearly all countries raise the bulk of their revenues from a small number of very large taxes. These include income tax, value added tax (VAT), and a payroll tax.
The person who bears the burden of a tax can be very different to the person paying it and these are determined by economic processes. For example, the tax on housing rents is determined by the landlord or the tenant.
Taxes have the potential to affect economic behaviour. They can influence how much we work, spend, and save.
Very few taxes raise revenue without distortionary effects.
Effective tax enforcement is in everyone’s interest. Widespread tax evasion can distribute the tax burden unevenly. Likewise, tackling tax evasion can have heavy costs on honest and dishonest tax payers.
Taking away the temptation of tax evasion through deduction systems is the most effective route to tax enforcement. Tax systems that rely on taxpayers to declare their income tend to be exposed to greater evasion.
Tax policy is very political issue, so it is not easy to make the tax system fairer and simpler as there are different opinions on what constitutes as fair. There is no single right answer.

Featured image credit: calculation insurance by stevepb. Public domain via Pixabay.

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Philip K. Dick’s spiritual epiphany

In February of 1974, Philip K. Dick’s life changed. While he was recovering from dental surgery, he claims, he had a spiritual epiphany. It started with a delivery from the local pharmacy. Three days after Dick’s surgery, an order of medications arrived in the hands of a stunning delivery woman. She wore a gold fish pendant that she said was a symbol of early Christianity. After taking the package, Dick saw a mysterious flash of pink light and collapsed onto his bed. A mystical contemplative, Dick supposed the pink light was a spiritual force activated by the fish pendant. As he lay in bed, visions of abstract paintings appeared, followed by philosophical ideas and engineering blueprints.

Over the next few months, the visions continued to develop. Dick saw streams of “shiny fire” moving through his environment and entering his body. He caught glimpses of a strange, humanoid being that appeared to blend in with his surroundings. He named it Zebra, and decided it was a benign deity that could “enter anything, animate or inanimate” and “take volitional control of causal processes- mimesis, mimicry, camouflage.” He saw a portal of pink light open, and out of it stepped a team of tiny three-eyed extraterrestrials who warned there was a cosmic conspiracy behind the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King Jr. The aliens said the ancient Roman Empire, stealthily hidden over the centuries but still active, was responsible. Rome “had come forward, by insidious and sly degrees, under new names, hidden by the flak talk and phony obscurations, at last into our world again.” Nixon was a modern Caesar. Frightening scenes of ancient Rome showed up, superimposed over Dick’s suburban California neighborhood. Dick felt guided by helpful spirits, especially one known as “Thomas,” who he believed to be an ancient Christian revolutionary.

Eventually, the visions disappeared. But Dick’s fascination with what he called his “divine madness” remained. He was so obsessed that, over the next eight years of his life (Dick died in 1982), he produced an 8,000 page interpretation of the visions he titled his Exegesis. The bulk of it remains unpublished. Each page of the Exegesis proposes fresh ideas about the meaning of Dick’s divine madness. He suggests it may have been the work of KGB telepaths, an extraterrestrial satellite, a first century Christian named Thomas with whom he was in telepathic communication, a version of himself from an alternate dimension, or the spirit of his deceased twin sister contacting him from the spirit world. Another hypothesis Dick considered was that it was all a product of mental illness. While Dick was paranoid—likely because he used amphetamines to enhance his productivity—he knew his divine madness had a lot in common with mystical experiences that were considered bona fide, especially those of of the early Christian mystics known as Gnostics.

After 1974, most of Dick’s writing centered on these matters. While spirituality shows up in his earlier works, after 1974 his focus on it is laser-like. Dick’s 1978 novel VALIS combines science fiction with an autobiographical account of his divine madness. So does Radio Free Albemuth, an early draft of VALIS later reworked into a separate novel and published posthumously. The Divine Invasion, also written in the 1970s, is based on the notion of a God who, like Zebra, redeems the world by entering and mimicking it. The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, published posthumously, explores related aspects of Dick’s spiritual views in narrative form. Every novel Dick wrote after his visions was either about them or related themes.

It’s hard to say whether the impact of Dick’s divine madness on his writing career was beneficial or stultifying. In some respects it was limiting, insofar as he lost interest in writing about much else. On the other hand, VALIS is one of his best books. Furthermore, eight thousand pages of Exegesis in eight years is an impressive amount of work, despite the fact that it consists mostly of esoteric philosophical contemplation not intended for public consumption.

One change in Dick’s writing is that his post-1974 pieces are arguably more optimistic. Prior to Dick’s religious experience, his tales usually ended on a paranoid or ambiguous note—often punctuated by what I’ve called equivocal rescue. In some stories, Dick’s protagonist is saved by a deity or other powerful figure, only to discover it was an illusion. In others, an apparent rescue turns out to be a cruel trap. The world is not only cruel and untrustworthy, these stories seem to say, but also may be essentially meaningless. After 1974, Dick’s stories suggest the possibility of finding meaning. Dick wrote that one aspect of his divine madness was “paranoia turned inside out.” Where he had formerly perceived malign conspiracies, Dick now often saw divine conspiracies. As the end of his life approached, Philip K. Dick increasingly considered that the universe might be on our side.

Featured image credit: Pink light by tangi bertin. CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr.

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Robert Whitman – Episode 36 – The Oxford Comment

Robert Whitman is a pioneering American artist who, in the company of other groundbreaking figures including Claes Oldenberg, Jim Dine, and Allan Kaprow, performed experimental performance art pieces in New York in the 1960s. In 1966, Whitman would become a founding member of the collective Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), along with Bell Labs engineers Billy Klüver and Fred Waldhaur and artist Robert Rauschenberg. Whitman continues to forge partnerships with scientists and engineers to incorporate new technology — from lasers to sound and video recording software to cell phone applications — for his performances and installation artworks. With his drive to innovate and adapt technologies and to create new work for contemporary audiences, Whitman remains a deeply influential and relevant artist.

In this episode of the Oxford Comment, the first of a two-part series in conjunction with the Benezit Dictionary of Artists, Robert Whitman sits down in our New York office with Benezit Editor in Chief, Dr. Kathy Battista, and Julie Martin, the director of Experiments in Art and Technology. Inspired by this roundtable conversation, our Multimedia Producer, Sara Levine, reaches out to Shawn Van Every, of NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, and Emilie Gossiaux, an artist and Museum Educator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to learn more about their collaborations with Whitman on two of his recent projects, Local Report and Swim.

Featured image credit: A magnified image of a performer’s echocardiogram is projected onto a screen during a performance of Swim. Swim was presented March 26-29, 2015 at the Alexander Kasser Theater at Montclair State University. Photo by Anne Williams, used with permission. 

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