The number of countries
that I am prepared to visit is dwindling because, in order to qualify, they must
have liberal governments. The blacklist, which includes Saudi Arabia, Turkey,
The Philippines etc. now includes Poland and Austria, where nasty nationalism
is on the rise. None of these, however, is quite as troubling as China, the
place where sci-fi becomes reality. I heard that the Communist Party is
accelerating the development of artificial intelligence, not to benefit the
populace but to control it more tightly. It is harnessing AI to perfect the
technology not only of facial recognition but also gait recognition. The way
you look and the way you walk will be electronically recognisable. In a free
society, entrepreneurship and a sense of humour would quickly combine to thwart
this threat by boosting production of latex masks and wheelchairs, but I
suspect that the Party has already banned both in anticipation.
The Party argues that it
acts in the best interests of the people by propelling the economy forward and
creating wealth for the masses. It has a point. It has been said that in 1976
Mao Zedong, by one simple act, began the process of lifting billions of Chinese
out of extreme poverty: he died. Since then, industrialisation has made the
population increasingly prosperous. This was achieved regardless of the cost to
the environment and to individual liberty but, to quote Berthold Brecht, “grub
first, then ethics” is a very human response to hunger. However, I am a
well-fed beneficiary of the traditions of the Enlightenment who feels at home
in like-minded societies – which is one reason why my partner and I will be
spending the next few weeks in Crete, where the roots of Graeco-Roman
civilisation are deep.
Crete, at this time of
year, is not the sun-scorched island of popular imagining. In fact, on the
first morning here, piles of drifted, giant hailstones littered the streets,
along with the debris of leaves they had shredded from the trees during the
night. But, as I have implied, I am here for the culture, not the weather, so
we collected a hire-car and headed into Heraklion, mindful that our taxi driver
had warned us that Cretans are dangerously bad drivers. (Perhaps he was just
touting for more business but, having last year mastered the art of driving
around Sicily, we are not so easily scared.) Nevertheless, driving into the
centre of the walled Venetian city, with its narrow streets and unruly traffic,
was a wake-up call. We soon left the car at an attended lot near our
accommodation and, for the last three days, we have walked everywhere. This
island has a deep and complex history which we have begun to explore in the
museums. To summarize: after Neolithic tranquillity, it was grabbed by Greeks,
ruled by Romans, sacked by Saracens, assailed by Arabs, occupied by Ottomans,
liberated by Brits, nabbed by Nazis, liberated by Brits (again) and, finally,
gathered in by Greeks. For once, it seems the British were not the ogres, which
may explain why the natives are friendly – although it may be that they are well-disposed
to all tourists, since 40% of the economy is dependent on us.
In any case, one feels culturally
comfortable here. Yesterday, while sitting by the harbour, I retuned the
greeting of a passer-by, a trampish-looking old man who mistook my politeness
for an invitation to soliloquise. I learned that he was from Essex originally,
had strongly-held libertarian views and had fond childhood memories of building
and sailing Mirror dinghies. He had no front teeth and was dirty and ill-kempt,
but he seemed content. The glass he held in his hand was half full. I took him
to be a stranded survivor of the hippie commune established in the sixties at
Matala on the south coast, another fine example of cultural empathy – albeit of
more recent vintage.
No comments:
Post a Comment