Fresh Off The Drawing Board #1

From cigarettes to censors, a roundup of ideas for the weekend.

As I gaze at the alarming mountain of half-finished articles in my drafts folder, the need to be more efficient strikes me with all the subtle delicacy of a ten-ton truck. It’s no good for readers if I spend half my time writing long-form articles that never see the light of day.

So I’m trialling a new type of post: a roundup of recent ideas, providing some food for thought over the weekend. Frankly, the germ of an idea is often more useful than the fully-researched article that emerges from it; a germ is enough to be thought-provoking. Particularly if it’s virulent, deadly, and resistant to antibiotics.

So when the scrapheap grows large enough, I’ll post a few of those ideas. It’s generally a mix of culture and politics, with the occasional literary criticism. You can vote or comment below on which ideas you’d like to hear more about.

Does War Really Spur Technological Development?

The idea that war encourages technology is a common theme of school history. After all, the First World War saw the development of aircraft, chlorine gas, and tanks, while the Second placed jet engines, nuclear technology, and penicillin into circulation.

If one looks beyond the World Wars, however, most wars seem to show very little technological development. The end result is that one or both sides are utterly devastated, losing much of their manpower and infrastructure. Technological development happens (if at all) in the construction boom after the bombs stop falling.

Possible drivers of technological acceleration by war, when it happens:

• Lots of people uniting behind a single mission.

• Resource investments are concentrated into key areas, which see disproportionate development.

• Reduction in parasitisation of society by the usual interests: governments, finance, and corporations, who often strangle innovation in peacetime but loosen their grip in wartime.

• New ways of doing things emerging from disruption to traditional social structures.

Is This Why They’re Banning Cigarettes?

It’s always struck me as rather strange that Western governments are steadily legalising drugs, while criminalising tobacco.

You might agree that tobacco is more harmful than several illegal drugs – but shouldn’t governments be consistent in their treatment of the two? Why is the entire developed world moving towards tobacco bans?

Putting aside the usual arguments about health risks, I’d like to propose another idea. I think governments might be concerned about the use of cigarettes as a black market currency. (Outlandish suggestion, but bear with me.)

Cigarette packets are light, portable, valuable, stashable, usable, and splittable: perfect for trade. In fact, cigarettes were used as currency inside Allied POW camps during World War Two.

What else might you use, if cash disappeared tomorrow? Gold and silver are valuable enough that you can convert a lot of wealth into a small, light package of precious metals. But they draw attention when used, and can be hard to appraise in terms of weight and purity.

Coffee and tea are light, but they can spoil, and take up a lot of volume. Cigarettes seem to be king of the post-apocalyptic currencies – the most viable alternative to old-school cash in the era of CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies).

What do you think? Where would you put your money if cash were trashed?

How Censorship Degrades Literature

I’ve noticed that many authors now pepper their books with political signals and shibboleths, appealing to such ideological staples as racial oppression and the patriarchy.

These genuflections will be written in a predictable way. They simply repeat the establishment narratives about history, culture, and society (aka “The Message”), rather than presenting any original thoughts or insights from the author.

The prevalence of this practice makes me wonder whether submitted manuscripts are read by a censor before anyone of a remotely literary persuasion is allowed near them.

While I don’t believe that’s necessarily the case, I think the presence of genuflections is symptomatic of a biased publishing industry, and furthermore, that all forms of strong censorship will create a similar degeneration of literature into political signalling.

For example, German censorship in the 1930s was initially intended to purge ‘Jews and Jewish ideas’ from the publishing houses. But this created a dynamic where quality could be substituted for politics (i.e. alignment with the aesthetics of Nazi ideology) in the quest for publication.

It’s far easier to throw a few bones to the censors than to produce a genuinely original, interesting, and brilliant manuscript, after all.

So does the presence of politics-based baiting in literature signal the presence of censorship? Or has elite culture simply become so obsessed with a certain brand of politics that authors don’t even realise when they’re doing it?

The Finnish Shuffle Kerfuffle: Gravitas in the Cynical Century

The conservative response to Sanna Marin’s leaked party videos last month was rather liberal.

Several mainstream Tories were outspoken in their support for the Finnish PM, and eager to blast social conservatives with the sort of slurs that the political right are more accustomed to receiving. “Girls just want to have fun,” was the message, neatly sidestepping the fact that the girl in question is the senior stateswoman of a major country.

While many people disapproved of Marin’s conduct, few were able to articulate why. They were thus persuaded into silence by the overwhelming weight of scorn heaped upon their ‘prudishness’ – a perception helped along, no doubt, by the rather selective algorithms of social media feeds.

I’d like to use this opportunity to explore the Roman virtue of gravitas. This stuffy bit of Latin heritage not only explains the dissonance experienced when seeing a stateswoman gyrating on the dance floor, but lays the character blueprint for statesmen and women of serious countries.

Is it a lack of gravitas that makes modern politicians into contemptible figures, or is something more at play?

Many thanks for reading.