The W 2024

THE WHITGIFT REVIEW

identity community change

identity / community / change

Welcome to another edition of the ‘W’

When choosing the themes for this year’s ‘W’, I was guided not only by the themes we have explored in our Academic Enrichment programme, but also by the current zeitgeist of the school. As a Form Tutor for the first time this year, I have been more attuned to the social minds of the students. As in any group, questions of identity and belonging to a community are natural, and these are at the forefront of their minds. Indeed, as we creep further and further out of the hinterland of the pandemic years, we are all striving to figure out how we fit into the wider world once again. What makes this even more complex is the ever-changing nature of our society; just in the last couple of years we have experienced globally significant conflicts, higher threats to our environmental stability and the exhilarating yet mildly disconcerting development of Artificial Intelligence. When you add to this the societal dependence on social media, from which you can glean every piece of news (whether significant or not!) at the tap of a screen, our students must face these changes every day.

Exploring AI in the Ignite course (a new topic this year), I was struck by the sheer magnitude of knowledge the students possessed on the subject, and by the mature way in which they debated about it. In this age of AI and information obsession, students of all ages are acutely aware of the world around them; perhaps sometimes so absorbed in affairs happening to others to fully reflect on who they are as people. As one of my students asked the class in an Ignite lesson: “If AI can speak for you, and produce ideas for you, how can you keep hold of your own identity?”, leading to a lengthy and passionate group discussion. These brilliant questions from students reflect not only their willingness to ask the ‘bigger’ questions, but also show how they encourage each other to think in new ways. How they are willing to change their conceptions about identity and indeed how they use their community to ponder what binds them together and what distinguishes them from each other; I hope this curiosity is reflected in the ‘W’.

Working on this year’s edition of the ‘W’ has been an absolute pleasure. From essays on the universality of love to the exploration of worlds beyond our own, the student work this year has, as ever, been immensely impressive. I have chosen work from a myriad of sources; articles from the Academic Enrichment programme, the Junior Library Chronicle and the history magazine Pravda , outstanding thought pieces and essays from Ignite , and excellent pieces from classwork that I hope will inspire reflection and showcase that in their daily endeavours, our students produce brilliant work.

Finally, I would like to thank all who have contributed to this edition, from students to staff, you have all created wonderful pieces of work that were a joy to read. In this issue of the ‘W’ we also say farewell to our Headmaster, Chris Ramsey, and our Senior Deputy, David Cresswell, both leaving for pastures new, and they have brilliantly written tributes to each other in the valediction section of the magazine. As ever, I am also hugely grateful to the brilliant Graham Maudsley for his outstanding graphic design work on the ‘W’; this edition would not be possible without his hard work and aesthetic genius, for which we are lucky indeed.

Words / Julia Morris

Assistant Director of Learning and Innovation

Teacher of French, Spanish and Italian

Who am I?

No cloud nor sun but one equal light, no noise nor silence but one equal music, no foes or friends but one equal communion and identity (Donne) 1

One man in his time plays many parts (Shakespeare) 2

When, seven years ago, we decided to make the annual ‘Whitgiftian’ more of a collection of writings, the then editor, Ben Miller, devised a series of themes. His successors, Chris Jackson and now Julia Morris (all of them excellent by the way) have continued the idea: this year’s ‘Identity’ is the hardest of all to tackle. Serves me right, I suppose. John Donne, a devout Christian, sees perfection (paradise) as all our differing identities disappearing into one: God’s, I suppose. Shakespeare, more practical, points out that we all have plenty of ‘identities’.

I agree. If you ask me ‘who are you?’, I might reply: I am a husband, a father, a friend, a teacher, a Headmaster, a lover of film and theatre, an Arsenal fan (who knew?) and many other things. In other words, I don’t have ‘one’ identity. Some fathers are also Arsenal fans, some theatre lovers are teachers, but the unique combination of my identities makes me, well, unique. There literally is no other Chris Ramsey. As an aside (and since I’ll never write for ‘W’ again, why not have a few sidetracks?) there are in fact several others, which has amused and confused many a bored student: there’s an edgy stand-up comic Chris Ramsey, and there’s an ex-Brighton footballer and QPR manager too. I’d have been delighted to be either, but I’m not.

other words, I don’t represent ‘Headmasters’, though I am one. Perhaps this is partly because I have always been a reluctant joiner or ‘club member’. I never wear ‘membership’ ties, you may have noticed. But identity as part of a group is, ironically, important to me. So, whilst I am not (I think) ‘defined’ by my Headship, when I am in that situation, I believe there are certain ‘Headmaster behaviours’. And whilst every Whitgiftian is of course unique, while they are at Whitgift, it’s reasonable to expect conformity to ‘how Whitgiftians behave’. And I mean both staff and pupils here, by the way.

To me, the uniqueness of each person supersedes their characteristics

identity is more important than the school’s, and if that were true of everyone, the school would have no identity. We think it’s important that it does.

The notion of ‘role playing’ also explains why I have never liked identity politics. To me, the uniqueness of each person supersedes their characteristics. In

In the context of our community, in short, individuality takes a back seat. We have rules and conventions, which may be arbitrary, but have been considered and decided, and which like it or not, we adhere to. To take an unimportant, but often contentious example, we don’t remotely believe that it is somehow morally better to wear your hair short and undyed, or wear black not brown shoes; we are not on an evangelical mission to ban white socks from the world. But while you are at Whitgift, wearing the correct uniform is what you have to do, because to do otherwise would be to say that your own unique

And we stand for some things: hard work, fairness, respect, including respect for authority – schools are not democracies – and also dealing with failure.

And we stand against some things: prejudice (not all Arsenal fans are delusional and not all fervent religious believers are intolerant), victimhood (being of a certain background does not always make you a victim: it might, but it might not); ignorance (why not consider evidence and history before you jump to or believe conclusions?); arrogance (we are seldom if ever ‘better’ than others).

And I would finally argue that we at Whitgift – like all good places of education – stand up in favour of the real, rather than the virtual world. The value and power

of presence, of speaking face to face, experiencing debate, discussion, activity and relationships in person. So the answer to the question ‘what is your identity?’ is a confused one. I wish, a wise colleague said to me recently, ‘that people, especially passionate, angry, intolerant people, could recognise that we are all a work in progress’. I certainly am, and I suggest you readers are too. Which leads us back to Donne: maybe, just maybe, one day we will be perfect. But we aren’t now: live with it.

Words / The Headmaster Illustration / Nick Fewings

2 As You Like It (lines spoken by Jaques)

identity

Windrush

The ship carried 492 Caribbean migrants, many of them veterans of the Second World War

My name is Dylan Carter, I am of Caribbean Descent, second generation British and this article is about the Windrush Generation from which I descend.

This year is a landmark year for Windrush, and it was earmarked as Windrush 75 – a year of national celebrations to mark the historic arrival of HMT Empire Windrush on 22nd June 1948. Throughout the year there has been various celebrations; 45 Community Projects around the UK have been funded by the Government Windrush Day Grant Scheme including cricket matches held at the Sheffield Caribbean Sports Club and a procession celebrating the Windrush generation from Clapham Common to Brixton’s Windrush Square. My own mum organised a Community Family Day to celebrate June 22, where lots of families attended, and heard a speech about Windrush, as well as taste the amazing foods of the Caribbean.

The Windrush era is an important time in the British History timeline, it was from 1948 until 1971. Many people from the Caribbean – Jamaica, Trinidad, St Lucia, and other British Colonies – were invited after World War 2 to help with rebuilding the British economy, as there was a desperate labour and housing shortage.

One of the first ships to arrive in Great Britain was the HMT Empire Windrush which arrived at the Port of Tilbury on 21 June 1948; Its passengers disembarked a day later.

The ship carried 492 Caribbean migrants, many of them veterans of the Second World War. The picture above is an iconic image to this day – it shows the joy of the passengers upon their arrival onto British soil – the ship and its passengers have symbolic status as the start of the Windrush Generation.

I am fortunate, that my GreatGrandmother (Nanny) is still alive, so that I can speak with her about her experience of being part of the Windrush era.

My Nanny told me that her family could not afford the passage (fare) to come to Britain, and that her best friend who had come to England two years before her sent her the money so

that she could come over. My Nanny’s family was extremely poor, and she left behind her two children aged 2 and 4, her 7 brothers and sisters, who all lived together in a two-bedroom home in the countryside. In fact, many people from Jamaica, came from similar backgrounds, and thought that England would allow them greater opportunities to send money back to their loved ones and provide a better life for them.

The journey to England on the boat was a great experience, my Nanny recalled; She met loads of people from different islands, all of them excited to be going to Britain. Unfortunately, the experiences of people who came over in the Windrush eras were not as they had expected. There was a saying in Jamaica that England was the country of ‘milk and honey’, but instead of being welcomed, they were met with many hostilities, discrimination and unfair practices from the people that were indigenous to England. It was difficult to find homes to rent, and to be hired for certain jobs. Many Caribbean people opted to live together in one room, and would rotate the sharing of beds, cooking and washing facilities to save money.

The National Archives holds so much data around the Windrush Era and is a great place to start the journey of understanding this time in Britain.

There is a tainted legacy left behind: the Great Windrush Scandal, in which many Caribbeans were wrongly targeted by immigration officials due to the UK’s ‘hostile environment’ practices. Immigrants were refused access to government services, jobs and had their ‘right to remain’ removed. A compensation fund was set up back in 2018 to help rebalance the wrongs of the government policies.

This year of Windrush 75 is important, the events allow for people to understand the history of Windrush, and the positive contributions the people who came over made to Britain.

Words / Dylan Carter, 2TPW Photography / IWM (FL 9448)

If Artificial Intelligence has ‘intelligence’ does it have an identity?

With the current rise in Artificial Intelligence (AI), more people are worrying about whether AI could develop an identity and take their jobs. They are supposed to be capable, sentient beings that are fully capable of independent thought. The focus of my article is to ascertain whether AI’s characteristics match identity and if it doesn’t, whether it is possible for the future. The point of my research is to figure out if we actually need to worry about AI fighting back. This is important as if it turns out it is possible, then there will be problems with using AI in the future. I believe this is possible, but I also believe that there is nothing to worry about if we make sure we keep it under control.

In order to have an identity, it must be able to say what culture it is from, where it comes from, form its own opinions, and also have thoughts and feelings. However, at the moment, AI is just a machine with higher processing power than most other computers and acts like a search engine that does something with the information, it finds information on what you ask, and then puts it together to form a picture or to write something like an essay or speak like a human. This shows that AI doesn’t have an identity just yet, but I will explore whether it can in the future in my next paragraphs. There are some reasons that AI could possibly become fully sentient, such as the fact that if given enough time and the right network, could form its own brain that mimics that of a human. We know that this is possible due to the fact that the brain is just an organic collection of wires that disconnect and reconnect in different ways and patterns to form thoughts and memories. If we can replicate this with artificial networks, then we might be able to form intelligence. Furthermore, if you took a scan of someone’s brain, you could replace each neuron until all the organic matter has been replaced. This should end up with a being that is an exact copy of the brain

and so should behave exactly the same and should have all the same memories as the brain it was copied from. This shows that it should be possible to create a fully sentient AI that has an identity.

On the other hand, this is only the brain and in order for something to become fully sentient, most people say that it not only has to have a neural network, it also needs a body, as, according to Stuart Russell, three components must be present in order to become sentient:

1. A perfect unity of an external body and internal mind

2. A defining original language for the AI to access

3. A defining culture to wire with other sentient beings.

This shows that even if you have a complete neural network, it is impossible to become a fully sentient being until you have a body that can experience things like humans. This shows that even if you have a completely artificial neural network, you can’t be sentient as you don’t have the same feelings as an organic organism, and it also needs its own language and its own culture as well. This shows that AI can’t have an identity as it needs to be sentient to do this. However, this can be overcome by creating an artificial body covered in sensors that are almost exactly the same as a human body and then inserting the neural network so that you have almost an exact copy of a human body.

In conclusion, I believe that it is possible to create AIs that are fully sentient and that have an identity. However, I don’t believe that AI could ever become a threat as, due to the way they are trained, they won’t do anything that isn’t in our interests as they are programmed that what we give them is true, so as long as we program them on the fact that we are their masters and in charge, then they will do as we say.

Words / William Ewels, 2LAC

Photography / Amanda Darljborn

We are the dead

I am the dead, That you forgot. Sleeping soundly in the lonesome dark. An innocent who fought for desperate glory, Only a child I was.

All lame, All blind, All of us fighting, For that same desperate glory. The misplaced hope that might, bring us home, Home to outstretched arms.

Nobody speaks of us anymore, Forgotten youth we shall remain, In a bed of bright red flowers, Covered by piles of dirt.

My identity

When you look at me

What do you see?

Do you see a boy who has ASD?

That is only one small part of me; I’m about to tell you something that’s key; This doesn’t define my identity.

The real person in me; You just don’t know; And many-a-time, I’ll put on a show; To cover anxiety and try to fit in; Conversations don’t come easy or know where to begin; There are things about me I want you to see; So here it goes, I’ll show you the real me.

I am a Son, a Grandson, a brother, a friend; I am trustworthy and loyal right to the end; Adventure and nature is what I adore; Competitive in sports – determined to beat my best score. But sometimes I can get a little frustrated; But it’s not a bad thing, it’s what God has created.

With an exceptional palate, and love to eat out; I can get a little excited and let out a shout; You see I’m an enthusiastic and passionate guy; And one of my flaws is I’m unable to lie; When I am happy, excited, nervous or scared; I act a bit different to others, I can’t be compared;

Adventurous and brave and a little artistic; ‘A’ student in maths, Chinese and science (because I’m autistic); An adrenalin junkie and love to have fun; Spending time at the beach, outside in the sun; Inquisitive, quirky, funny and genuinely kind; I strive to be the best version of me I can find.

Next time you see me

What boy will you see?

Will you see the boy who has ASD?

Or the young man who lives his life to the max; And now that you know me, can start to relax. My ASD is only one small part of me – it doesn’t define my identity.

Words / Dylan Ball, 4JPH

Photography / Luis Vilasmil

Bolí var

History has been kind to George Washington, the man who liberated the colonies from the imperial yoke of the British empire and set in motion the most dominant superpower the world has ever seen. History has not been so favourable to Simón Bolívar, a name many in the Western world would be unfamiliar with. Bolívar, however, achieved a similar, if not more impressive feat, in the liberation of much of northern South America from the Spanish. In Marie Anna’s book Bolivar: The Epic Life of the Man Who Liberated South America comparisons are drawn between Washington and Bolívar and their liberations of their homelands. These comparisons do not do justice to the monumental task Bolívar achieved through his struggle against the Spanish Crown. Bolívar would go on to liberate the territories of New Granada (now a mixture of Columbia, Venezuela, and Ecuador) and the crown jewel of Spanish holdings in South America, Peru. Simón Bolívar was not merely South America’s George Washington. He was El Libertador, a freer of men and conqueror of empires.

Simón Bolívar had a somewhat turbulent upbringing in the town of Caracas. Born in 1783, both of his parents died at an early age leading to him being shipped off to be educated in Spain. It would be in Spain where Bolívar would find his one true love and only wife María Teresa, however upon bringing her back to Caracas in 1803, she died shortly after due to yellow fever. Bolívar initially adrift without purpose, returned to Europe to go on a Grand Tour of European countries which resulted in him declaring that he would rid the Spaniards from South America atop the Mons Sacer. Returning to South America in 1807, Bolivar had a new sense of purpose and conviction which would lead him to his ultimate destiny of becoming El Libertador.

Bolívar’s struggle against the Spanish crown is one of immense fortitude and persistence, from liberating what is now Venezuela, to controlling an army of divided generals and characters all with their political machinations in mind. He would take this ragtag army across the freezing Andes, losing a third of his men to the frost and all his horses to the extreme conditions. Nevertheless, Bolívar, always the opportunist and gambler, surprised the Spanish at the Battle of Boyacá in 1819, inflicting a crushing defeat whilst only losing 13 men to the Spanish 1,800. This was the turning point in the liberation of South America

as Bolivar then marched into Bogota as a champion of the people and liberator of South America. Yet he was not finished in his conquest as he raced down to Peru to free the remaining subjugated people. This accomplishment, much like Hannibal’s forced march over the Alps, should have earned him worldwide fame and recognition as one of the greatest military generals in modern times, but the tales and exploits of Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar Palacios Ponte y Blanco go unnoticed in the western world. Perhaps Bolívar’s most lasting legacy is that of the nation of Bolivia, formerly known as Upper Peru, which bears the liberator's name in honour and gratitude for his liberation of the territory from the Spaniards. Bolívar, however, was not a hero without serious flaws. Despite his heroics across South America as a liberator and military mind, Bolívar has been criticised as a corrupt and powerhungry tyrant who manipulated the Congresses of the nations he freed to attain absolute power for himself. In fact, his harshest critic in his lifetime was his own Vice President of New Granada, Francisco de Paula Santander. Santander would ultimately betray Bolívar, forcing him from office and into exile to Santa Marta in 1830. Bolívar would die a painful death from tuberculosis, betrayed by his once-great friend Santander and by many people whom he helped liberate from Spanish control. His legacy should not be determined, however, by the jealous whims of Santander, as it is clear now that Simón Bolívar’s true legacy will forever be one of a tireless liberator, who dedicated his adult life to creating the idea of a unified South America, an idea that future revolutionaries such as Che Guevara would try to take forth into the 20th century. Bolívar, forever enshrined as the greatest hero of South America, should be taught and remembered throughout the Western world as a prime example of dedication to the idea of liberty and self-governance. Although compared to historical greats such as Washington, Simón Bolívar’s true impact on the nations that he left behind far outstrips any of Washington’s achievements. Perhaps it is time to consider Washington as North America's Simón Bolívar, rather than the reverse.

Words / Dougie McWilliam, U6LCG

Photography / Jonathan Monck Mason

Simón Bolívar’s true impact on the nations that he left behind far outstrips any of Washington’s achievements

Mixed RACE

Four letters. That is all it takes to form one of the most controversial words in history and one that still holds many controversies up to this day. But why? Why is a word so vague able to tear civilisations, even humanity itself, apart. I have chosen to write about this topic because I myself have two parents of very different ethnicities and have always wondered how other people like me were treated centuries ago. Not only this, but I am also intrigued as to what they would have been seen as. As a result, I have decided to focus on the topic of mixed-race people.

T he s Tar T of mixed - race people

As expected, the origin of mixed-race people of both black and white origin historically stems from the colonial history of Africa. Since slave masters had come over from European countries such as Spain and France and the slaves were African (black as a result), this meant that certain interactions between the slaves and their masters may have resulted in mixed-race kids being born. Nevertheless, the nature of the slave societies at that time gives us reason to believe that more often than not these were not pleasant interactions: mixed-race children during the transatlantic slave-trade era were often a result of black slaves being raped by their white-slave owners.

a m i W hi T e or am i B lack ?

The complexity of mixed-race identity was simply trimmed down into the invention of the ‘one-drop rule’. As the straightforward name implies, this rule (which was used widely across the United States) the ‘one-drop rule’ ensured that mixed-race people would always be on one side of the division between black and white people. The rule stated that anyone with a single drop of black blood resulted in them being legally as well as socially treated as a black person, no matter how light-skinned they may look.

Something I found very interesting about this is why white people chose to class mixed-race people

as black based on them having at least one drop of black rather than the other way around. This can be viewed as another act of power from white people at the time to make sure that black people knew they could never be equal in society. However, I see it as a sign of weakness and that they felt threatened almost by mixed-race people because they were the bridge between black and white people.

Furthermore, if they were classed as white then some would argue that people who are not purely white can achieve that social level as well. I find this interesting because I would interpret that the white community would have classed mixed-race people as white to ensure that the black community understood that the only way that they would be accepted in society was if they were white which was an unachievable task for them. Contrary to this, it can be argued if someone were a black father, and they had a mixed-race son, their legacy has been accepted into society which could philosophically mean that the man has somewhat been accepted into society. This would, as a result, give off signs of weakness from the white community which is evidently the exact opposite of what they would have wanted if they had classed the mixed-race community as white.

h alf B reed ?

During the early 20th century, a relationship (romantic) between a black person and a white person seemed to be so disturbing to the English community that it was able to warrant academic research. Rachel Flemming had carried out a study in the 1920s which

somehow, although unsurprisingly, resulted in mixedrace kids being classed as ‘wretched children’. Of course, this was all based on academic research, so it was “surely reliable”. This brief and false sense of reliability from Rachel Flemming’s study influenced the political spheres of power, as well as the way people spoke. An example of this would be Rachel Flemming’s results sparked the new term ‘half-caste’ to describe mixed-race people which is now seen as an offensive term to describe people whose parents are of different ethnicities.

d on ’ T W orry , i ’ ve go T your B ack

In 1958, on Latimer Road in London, an argument between a black husband and a white wife led to a group of white men interfering in an attempt to protect the white woman and similarly a group of black men came in aid of the black husband. The incident led to three days of rioting and swastikas were being painted on the doors of black families. Another example of this kind of situation is a mixed-race couple being attacked in Liverpool by a mob of white people with the motive being they were a mixed-race couple in England; they were clear

victims of prejudice. This was not unusual in the 1970s and had happened before. The police detectives on the case claimed that the attack was not racially motivated, and no culprits were ever found. In the 20th century, it was made clear that relationships between people from different ethnicities in England had to be abolished, including mixed-race people.

T he end.

Although mixed-race people have generally been seen as black and continue to suffer from prejudicial ideas, we can also be seen as a sign that the end of racism is here. This is because we are the products of white and black people who have come together despite all the hatred they would have received and added another possibility in terms of race.

Words / Ayo Sholebo, 2HIM

Photography / Clay Banks

1.

2.

The evolution of identity politics from colonialism to the culture wars

It’s been said that the turn to identity politics occurs when mainstream politics fails to assimilate minorities, although the obverse is also true: it occurs when minorities reject assimilation. To start with an example less familiar in the UK: the official census figures for First Peoples in the US declined from the end of the 1700s to 1900 when it became more advantageous to identify as “Native American” because of the (slight) privileges apportioned to Reservation-dwellers, rather than trying to Europeanize for the sake of finding work away from ancestral lands. The two-century decline was due to a series of wars of extermination alongside germ warfare and deliberate campaigns to weaken indigenous communities with alcohol and narcotics (as the British did in early-19th century China, or the CIA did to African-Americans in the 1960s). Nonetheless, there was a period of self-erasure or succumbing to “passive genocide” whereby the unique characteristics of a group or society are eradicated, without overt violence. When the indigenous population became small enough, US laws shifted to the erasure of cultural identities rather than the active destruction of bodies, hence the late-19th century saw the advent of laws prohibiting culturally specific dress among minorities

The late-19th century saw the advent of laws prohibiting culturally specific dress among minorities

which remained on the books so long that queer people of the Stonewall generation, whether cis gay men or trans women, might be arrested for wearing make-up on charges that originally referred to warpaint rather than, say, lipstick or rouge, while cis gay women and trans men might be charged with wearing an insufficient number of items appropriate to their gender that originated in laws designed to differentiate the genders of Chinese immigrant labourers, such was the Euro-American anxiety about being able to tell whom to seduce… or whom to under-pay. It’s due to countless examples like these from former European colonies around the globe that 21st century discourse on gender identity describes trans and queer people as having “colonized bodies” since we’re still constrained by colonialist ideology serving to dominate and control. (I say “we,” here, because, as a trans woman, my body did not feel like my own for most of my life prior to hormonal and social transition in my 40s but I also believe the simplistic gender binary that was consolidated in the colonial era harms us all.) In surveying the evolution of identity politics from Colonialism to the Culture Wars in this essay I want to “think through” the historic construction of various oppressed or colonized peoples to the current, increasingly contested construction of trans identity, considering what it says that people are still determined to cross literal and symbolic borders that are patrolled with an increasing amount of violence in the 2020s after what only seemed like two decades of upward progress.

Commoditizing Identities and Pathologizing Identities

I’ve started with socio-economic factors but cultural constructions of identity at any point in history are the products of multiple discourses. Some are unforgivably vile, such as the Greco-Roman notion that slaves are “human-footed animals,” while others that now seem abhorrent can also be seen (with more awareness of historic context) as the least-badavailable framework to reconceptualize those who were formerly vilified, e.g. mentally ill women who were formerly deemed to be possessed began to be diagnosed as “hysterics” by proto-psychiatrists in 19th century France, removing the religious stigma. Arthur Koestler’s The Sleepwalkers (1959) demonstrates that the arc of progress isn’t ever upwards but more of a barbed wire coil going periodically backwards to go forwards, hence falseconsciousness about who or what different peoples are, ontologically, can be revived centuries after we should have learned better, for instance when the US in the 18th century began to model itself on the Greek & Roman empires built on slave labour. When it wasn’t building cities full of obelisks, pyramids, and mock-Parthenons, to project the image of imperial power, the US rationalized its practices by citing Aristotle and Cato (responsible for notions about the non- or sub-human status of slaves), so as to legitimize the source of its wealth; to this day, one

relic of this is the popularity of African-American names borrowed from the Classics, echoing those conferred on “beloved” slaves by plantation owners patting themselves on the back for having built a new empire, albeit without any moral evolution in the intervening millennia.

The artificiality of identities imposed on peoples can be most clearly revealed when we note the inconsistency of how, when, and where this happens. Consider the historic anomaly that Haitians gained the legal status of humans a full 50 years before the “Wild Irish.” The former had achieved one of the most successful slave rebellions in human history, before a response from the French army under Rochambeau that harked back to the treatment of Christians in the Coliseum in its savagery. The Irish, on the other hand, were close enough to England that a large force could be sent to subdue them, quickly, and there was no need for sops like beingregarded-as-human. In the two centuries since the rebellion, Euro-American literature has constructed Haitian Vodou as the epitome of evil, often muddling its religious rites and ethnomedicine with some of the most disturbing European mediaeval folk practices. Two centuries after the Rebellion, one can still feel the ripples of that original shock in popular representations of Black Magic (which didn’t originally refer to Vodou, either), whereas the cultural arm of British imperialism continues to operate by ignoring the history of Anglo-Irish relations, to the extent of largely omitting it from the National Curriculum.

As a species, we started to improve slightly as medical constructions of identity gradually shed their moral subtexts. Foucault’s History of Madness (1961) excavates the socio-economic conditions enabling the construction of prisons and hospitals, which in turn determined categories of criminal and patient. As European societies grew wealthier (largely by plundering the Americas), the mentally ill could be accommodated in asylums (with some semblance of professional care) rather than being left at the mercy of relatives or hanged as witches on flimsy pretexts. This trend continued in parallel with the rise of carceral institutions which became more affordable hence societies could praise themselves for becoming enlightened for focusing more on rehabilitation than punishment (even as they held onto the death penalty, rather arbitrarily applied).

As mentioned above, people once said to be “possessed” were reconceptualized as “hysterics” in the 19th century, but this meant preserving the mediaeval idea that neuroses were caused by the “wandering womb” since more were women and girls, and their doctors were more likely to overlook male manifestations of neurosis. “Hysteria” was split into a range of conditions in the 20th century as the misogynist connotations of the term became more obviously offensive. Nonetheless, the “shellshock” identified during the Great War, now known as PTSD, was for decades known as hysteria with the

distinct implication that the men so-afflicted were “unmanned” by their failure to hold their nerve under fire. Medical diagnoses, in short, are informed by cultural constructions of gender, and vice versa For all their perceived rationality, objectivity, and empiricism, Medicine and Psychiatry have frequently served as Ideological State Apparatuses to validate constructions of race and sex that are only pseudo-rational and serve a political agenda more than some dispassionate ideal of Science purity. Consider the fact that “race” is almost meaningless in biological terms: all “types” of humans that might be distinguished by pigmentation can nonetheless interbreed successfully, producing fertile offspring – that is what it means to be a species – and there is a likely benefit from “hybrid vigour” when people of different ethnicities have children. What does not happen is the “pollution of the blood” that obsessed “scientific racists” in early 20th century America, who were brought over to Nazi Germany to inform their own programmes of sterilization (initially targeting the patients of Hans Asperger’s clinic and the transsexual patients of Magnus Hirschfeld’s) before moving on to larger groups and ultimately exterminating them. Even now, pseudo-science is deployed in the UK & US (among other supposedly Developed Nations) to explain away the deaths of Afro-Caribbean people in police custody (rather than institutional racism), and to justify sentencing that punishes possession of drugs more commonly used by some Black people than White people (thereby keeping more African-Americans out of the electorate, in quasislavery).

Cultural & Medical Constructions of Trans Identities since 1979

In this third section, I examine the changing construction of Trans identity in my own lifetime as a case-study whose trajectory provides some insight into the trajectories of other groups toward general societal acceptance – or demonization when our values move backward. As a trans child, out to herself from the mid-80s, my own process of identity formation involved a bit of Medicine here, a bit of popular culture there, but no coherence to any of it, and certainly no critical framework I was taught in an age-appropriate manner at school because of Section 28: the ban on teaching anything about LGB identities from 1988–2003, which encompassed my entire secondary education, BA, and MA. Even after Section 28, none of the psychiatrists, counsellors, or GPs I spoke to between 2003 and 2021 seemed to know a fraction of what many trans people know, in 2024, thanks to the vast array of peer-reviewed journal articles freely available online. There were plenty of clues that some had a deep suspicion if not distaste for anyone trans, and yet I accepted this because of the culture I’d grown up in (as had they for 10, 20, or 30 years longer), which caused me to internalize so much transmisogyny.

Imagine being mostly culturally invisible but defined by psychiatry as disordered

Turning to constructions of sex and gender, the long history of feminism shows us how pseudoscientific constructions of sex in any given age have been attacked by feminists as facile arguments to deny women their rights. It is feminists who have most often pointed out that sex is not binary, while it is feminists who most enthusiastically embraced the idea of gender as a category only loosely articulated to ones perceived sex, if not unmoored, as discussed in Judith Butler’s Who’s Afraid of Gender? (2024). In the 2020s, almost unthinkably, women’s rights to bodily autonomy have again come under attack, after women’s (especially mothers’) lives have become objectively harder since the last major financial crisis in 2008 with 29% of the average UK salary being spent on childcare (the highest in Europe), the worst adolescent mental health in Western Europe, SureStart centres introduced by New Labour mostly closed, as well as rape crisis centres and shelters. Who is to blame? No need to spell it out. Whom to scapegoat, though, and demonize as a distraction from numerous failure of government? That is a question for the next section...

Imagine being mostly culturally invisible but defined by psychiatry as disordered, as I was for the first ¾ of my life, until 2013, with almost a decade to go before transition. Having your core identity pathologized makes you see yourself as diseased when you’re at a low ebb, and you’re still hoping for a “cure” when you’re optimistic, having been acculturated to believe that Gender Dysphoria is integral to being trans, as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders (or DSM ) implied until 2018. It’s a short step from thinking yourself “disordered” to thinking yourself “degenerate” as we were considered to be by the Nazis within years of “transsexual” being coined in 1923, becoming one of their first targets for harassment and, later, deportation to the camps. Homosexuality may always be regarded as a disorder by bigots and religious fundamentalists but it ceased being regarded as one in 1973 1, and there were several active organisations to fight for gay rights, whereas transsexuality would continue to be regarded as a disorder for a further 40 years, making it one of the factors in our lack of support from Stonewall (the charity) until 2015 2, despite our historic role in… Stonewall (the riot) back in 1968. But theoretical frameworks do change. In 2013, the DSM-5 replaced Gender Identity Disorder with Gender Dysphoria (i.e. to be trans is to experience acute distress at having to live as ones Assigned Gender at Birth but not actually to be disordered) and, at this juncture, the American Psychiatric

Association affirmed their support of transgender rights. A decade later, Gender Dysphoria is widely felt to be a problematic term. “Acute distress” suggests a strong urge to self-harm, to hide away from people, to seek relief through drugs and alcohol, to succumb to depression; speaking to dozens of trans people over the past few years, we all know someone who does or has done much of the above, and we all seem to know someone who’s not here now – even the 20-somethings I’ve met. Nonetheless, a more useful term, which every trans person (and their allies) should keep in mind to describe how we feel a lot of the time is Gender Incongruence (coined in time for the WHO’s International Classification of Diseases guidance in 2018), which entails certainty about ones identity over a long period of time but doesn’t require distress to be at the centre.

True, the misconception that to be transgender is to have a mental illness persists among many people – even those who are trans; it’s our collective task to disabuse people (cis & trans alike) of this notion. One way to be an ally to others – and to yourself – is to dig into the evidence until you know how to convince others – and yourself – that it’s not a disorder. If you’re lucky enough to experience Incongruence with little or no Dysphoria (partly because there are fewer cultural and social and familial pressures to conform to a highly polarized gender binary among Millennials and Generation Z) rest assured that you’re “Trans Enough” We don’t have to suffer anymore – whether for being trans, or so as to be considered “authentically trans” – and we never did.

Words / Kay Naomi Mellor, Teacher of English, Head of EPQ Photography / Lena Balk

1 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4695779/

2 https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/feb/16/stonewall-start-campaigningtrans-equality

3 The Transgender Tipping Point | TIME

4 Free copy available from: The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice Trans Reads

5 New data: Rise in hate crime against LGBTQ+ people continues, Stonewall slams UK Gov ‘inaction’ Stonewall

6 'Not fit for purpose' Stonewall's response to draft trans guidance for schools in England Stonewall

7 Lawyers told ministers schools trans guidance was 'high risk' - BBC News

My hope for everyone pre-hormonal- or even social transition is they’ll discover that you can be afraid of having wasted years of your life by never transitioning… and then the weight of those years drops away and they become an abstraction as soon as you start socially transitioning in the simplest of ways (disclosing to partners, friends, relatives… colleagues) and then that fear and shame becomes almost immaterial when the hormones kick in. Most of us use the term HRT, but I prefer its official name in trans healthcare – Gender Affirming Hormone Therapy –because of the way that subtle personification makes it sound as if the molecules themselves are high-fiving your brain cells and all those body parts that should have had a different morphology to match the brain. Even here, Identity Politics is apparent. One of the things that helped me most in the months leading up to hormonal transition (in June 2022) was the good fortune that my newfound awareness that this was an option – without having to satisfy a panel of medical gatekeepers after two years of “living in role” as was the protocol for most of my lifetime – converged with a second “Transgender Tipping Point” in Popular Culture. This time, the icons were far more personally appealing than Caitlyn Jenner (disowned by most trans people, now, for her Republicanism) and the frustrating stereotype played by Laverne Cox back in 2014, when she appeared on the cover of Time magazine for their “Tipping Point” issue 3 , having been cast as an African-American hairdresser in a women’s prison (although she’s done great work as an activist and documentary-maker, since). 2021 saw Torrey Peters being longlisted for the Woman’s Prize for fiction, Shon Faye’s The Transgender Issue 4 , and the very public transition of Abigail Thorn (of Philosophy Tube). There was cutting-edge electronica by Arca, Elysia Crampton, and SOPHIE; there were two instant-classic albums, from Ezra Furman and Ethel Cain, of dark indie rock with lyrics that stand up as poetry and articulate a spiritual dimension to the experience of transition. True, Summer 2023 was the moment when public opinion in the UK on a range of trans issues swung to net negative after a sustained campaign of transphobia from the Right-wing Press and the government – the Home Office’s own statistics saying transphobic violence had increased by 186% in five years 5 . Nonetheless, the very existence of so many siblings in the public eye made me believe I’d found my tribe and, like the First Peoples circa 1900, that it was time to stop trying to assimilate because, even if I had to be the first out trans teacher in this school’s 400 year history, at least there were other trans people I could relate to, who haven’t been homogenized to a bland, retrograde version of womanhood for ease of consumption on American talk-shows. Having spent years on the margins of work by cis people where we appeared as rather dispiriting caricatures (at best), at last we have a rich, varied culture of our own. This will only continue to grow and outlast individuals, in spite of the restrictions on healthcare (already fatally inadequate for many) and government efforts to deter the transition of minors (via the NonStatutory Guidance released in December 2023) that will only cause unnecessary suffering 6 , after the government’s own lawyers told them they couldn’t ban transition outright 7 , as they’d wanted to do for purely political reasons and no regard for the evidence of the benefits of transition 8 . These are genuinely frightening, dangerous times for trans people, and the efforts to take away our safety, dignity, healthcare and rights should be regarded as a dire warning for democracy, but after decades of having a primarily psychiatric identity we have that most distinctive feature of humanity – a cultural identity, which will be harder to take from us.

8 What We Know What does the scholarly research say about the effect of gender transition on transgender well-being? What We Know (cornell.edu)

Identity

Collection of poems/haikus from the L1/1st form

PAST

I look back on my past, It seems to have happened so fast, My history is long, And I did many things wrong, But I have done good at last.

Max Kan, L1JGP

Whoever you are, Your identity can change, Come out of your shell.

Calum Davidson, 1AMS and Arshia Saffarizadeh, 1JRS

Trapped in a body, Ventriloquising power, Searching for true fate.

Arvin Pappala, L1FMO and Aaron Patel, 1JEJ

All of us are one, But all of us are different, We are all equal?

Sami Carroll, L1TJD

Identity is The reflection of ourselves We should value it.

Sheil Nursing, 1JRS and Alfie Roberts, 1AMS

Reading diary: society and its outsiders

My favourite books are about outsider individuals: coming of age, dying of old age, defining an age. Think of Tolstoy’s arch odd-ball Pierre Bezukhov in War and Peace or Leopold Bloom – often labelled an “Everyman” by people who’ve only read the blurb. Through Joyce’s linguistic pyrotechnics, we see Dublin afresh, all through the quirky lens of the outsider. Joyce teaches us that we are all potential outsiders: and a jolly good thing too. However, these literary heroes are against the zeitgeist which is a cocktail of roundedness, extroversion, and affability. I wonder whether the authentic, the curious, the risktaking are qualities we see admire more in the mimetic mirror of literature than real life. What would happen if Pierre ran the post-office? If Bloom were director of the NHS? Howard Jacobson once quipped that no one has ever been robbed by a person with Middlemarch in their back pocket. Worth pondering.

I’ve been trying to better my French this year by slogging through books in the original. The slogging has just started to resemble reading. Every book that I pick up seems prove that France possesses the echt outsider literature. Leaving the obvious (dare I say, overpraised?) book by Camus aside, Michel Tournier takes the outsider topos to a sinister extreme in his Goncourt winning novel Le Roi des Aulnes – “the Erl-King” – by mapping out how weirdoes or “ogres” can flourish in fascistic societies that reward their inverted logic. In a Gogolian turn, the contemporary novelist Emmanuel Carrère has his protagonist shave

off his moustache one day. However, everyone he knows then refuses to admit that he ever had one. This is satire at its finest: the triviality of the bourgeoisie skewered through a mix of neurosis and slapstick. France has always elevated the outsider, ever since the controversial execution of Robert Brasillach, for collaboration in 1945. The fact he’s the go-to example indicates how few received his fate. France has gone further than any country to give amnesty to its thinkers and artists, no matter how mad, bad, or dangerous to know! Few questions were asked about Sartre’s quietude during the occupation, De Gaulle closing the matter with his usual hauteur: “you do not silence Voltaire.” LouisFerdinand Céline, literary genius turned antisemite of the most vitriolic order, was haunted with the fear of being forgotten in his forced exile after the war. He eagerly returned after the 1952 amnesty for collaborators to rekindle his reputation. I have, so far, only been able to glimpse Celine’s greatness as a stylist in his own language– his lyrical powers (weaving formal French with the coarse and the demotic) are hard for a novice to grasp quickly. But to the overwhelming question: how could his inventive imagination have succumbed to the ideology of National Socialism? It’s enough to test Jacobson’s faith in outsider culture as a shield against barbarism. Outsiders, it seems, come in as many shapes and sizes as insiders.

Words / Mr Adam Alcock, Director of Higher Education and Oxbridge, Teacher of English Photography / arvndvisual

community

The emergence of European Liberalism

“We do not desire at all that the great masses become well off and independent… how else will we rule over them?” Friedrich von Gentz

The Storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789 not only represented the revolutionary insurgency in France but also the awakening of a new form of governance across Europe – one which laid the bedrock for modern democratic values and liberal economic beliefs.

Prior to the French Revolution, England was one of the few states where some form of liberalism existed.

The Glorious Revolution established a parliamentary monarchy in England, yet this system of government stayed relatively isolated for the next century. When similar demands for a reduction in monarchical power ensued in France at the end of the 18th century, the entire continent of Europe was influenced. Why was there such a significant difference of scope in the outcomes of these seemingly similar events, and does it offer an explanation for the structure of modern societies?

On 4 August 1789, the National Constituent Assembly passed a new constitution, abolishing feudalism within France. Additionally, special privileges for nobles were revoked, including their titles. Two years later, France officially became a constitutional monarchy: where there was equality of rights for all men, and the role of the monarch was considerably reduced. These reforms highlight two key changes in French society. Firstly, they theoretically reduce, if not entirely remove, absolutism. Secondly, they create a much more centralised state for more effective decision-making. These two concepts are key to creating ‘inclusive’ institutions (both political and economic), a term widely used in institutional economics. The shift from extractive institutions, where society is organized to extract wealth to the hands of a few individuals, to inclusive institutions, where everyone in society benefits, was (and still is) the formula for thriving states.

Despite its short-lived nature, the Constitution was the beginning of political reform across Europe. This

was almost certainly because of Napoleon’s conquest of Europe. During his time as Emperor of France, he conquered much of Europe including Austria and Prussia, and whilst doing this, spread French ideals across the continent. Napoleon also believed in many of the liberal values established following the French Revolution and was one of the reasons behind the creation of the Napoleonic Code which consolidated many of the principles established in 1789, such as civil equality, and the abolition of feudalism. It also strengthened property rights and created a more centralised state through the prefectorial system – a patchwork of administrative authorities which were centrally controlled. Underlying much of the code was the notion of equality of opportunity, which would facilitate social mobility. During and after the Napoleonic wars, the Code became the basis of European law.

This is particularly true in modern-day Germany.

Following the collapse of the Confederation of the Rhine in 1813, the German Confederation was formed, an organization of 39 states. This decision at the Congress of Vienna was a key prelude to the unification of Germany. Napoleon’s legacy continued to influence these German states, in which the sentiments of nationalism and liberalism were growing. This is evidenced by the Hambach Festival of 1832, where over 25,000 nationalists met to discuss a nationalist revolution. The tricolour flag – which at the time represented nationalism and revolution – was hoisted. Many states began to adopt more liberal constitutions, such as Saxony and Hesse-Cassel in the 1830s. Alongside this, a form of economic liberalism was emerging. Friedrich List, a German-American economist published ‘The National System of Political Economy’ – his belief that any economic behaviour should be in the interests of the state and its citizens, a divergence from prior economic thought of individualism in the economy. He strongly advocated for increased trade within the Confederation and eliminated all trade barriers and tariffs inside Germany. He supported the Zollverein – the Prussian Customs

Union – which bolstered trade across states in Prussia and the Confederation. Furthermore, List argued that railway networks should be improved to create a centralised economy. This again highlights the shift towards inclusive institutions, where centralisation is important to achieving growth. Although he pushed for free trade within the German states, he wanted external barriers to remain, particularly with the English, to protect German industry from English competition. These ideas were key to forming a state, not only with political liberty but also economic liberty, where merchants could sell their goods across a centralised German state to improve their living conditions, not just the wealth of a monarch. However, the move towards inclusive political and economic institutions was not without resistance. European aristocracies were adamant about suppressing any national or liberal movements, particularly after witnessing the execution of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. The bloody scenes from the revolution were to be avoided, and the loss of power from the elite was restricted. Francis I, alongside Metternich, led Austria on a reactionary path, in an attempt to suppress liberalist movements –effectively under a police state. Robert Owen, a British social reformer, wrote to Metternich to advocate for liberalism. The response from Metternich’s assistant, Friedrich von Gentz stated, “We do not desire at all that the great masses become well off

and independent…how else will we rule over them”. This epitomises the reactionary belief of withholding inclusive economic and political institutions from the people to retain their personal power and luxury. Despite this resistance, liberal forces across Europe became more organised and allowed for permanent liberal democracies to be established.

Napoleon’s original influence in creating panEuropean liberalism cannot be understated. Whilst the Glorious Revolution had little to no impact on the rest of Europe, the French Revolution was monumental in creating inclusive institutions across the continent. Today, this means we have access to democratic pluralism, freedom of speech and voting rights, alongside other liberties. Moreover, we live with economies in which secure property rights, equitable distribution and social mobility are fundamental aspects. Over the last 230 years, starting from the French Revolution, and being aided by economic thought from those such as List, Europe has progressed into a continent thriving due to its inclusive, liberal values.

Words / Vatsa Dubey, L6KAG Photography / WikiImages

A family affair?

An analysis of rugby legislation and family heritage

My question aims to discover how much of an impact the new rules about family heritage do have on team selection and ability. However, in order to tackle this question, it is important to establish a clear definition of family heritage, especially in rugby. From research, it signifies the history of a family where a family came from and all the traditions, customs and more that have been passed down from generation to generation. I have undergone this by researching 3 different individual articles by separate news producers about the new rules in rugby, and I am not writing about the rules in all sports. This is an interesting topic because the rules have a big say in the ability of teams which can massively affect who wins tournaments and who is the best rugby country in the world, the main goal of rugby. I will answer this question by evaluating the three sources: one by the BBC, another by the Racing Post, and the final source from Guardian, comparing their similarities as well as their differences before finally discussing all three of them together.

The first article, How birthright rule is giving teams the X-factor for Rugby World Cup , (The Guardian, 2023) states many facts as well as quotes from players current and past as well as coaches and reporters. It was written by Gerard Meagher in August 2023. Summarising the article, it mainly describes how the new change can positively affect the new teams, making previously strong teams even stronger if big players decide to make the move. It mainly talks about the Pacific Islands (Tonga, Fiji & Samoa) and how they will be massively affected for the better, as proficient

players that play for New Zealand for example could now move to these smaller islands. The purpose of the article is mainly to inform people about the new rule where players can now switch nations, and it uses many quotes from well-informed people within rugby. It also is quite opiniated because of how it states a lot of quotes from people like Eddie Jones, Charles Piutau and Steve Hansen. This article is quite reliable because it comes from a fairly well-known news producer (The Guardian) and it states a lot of facts so the producer of the article is clearly educated on this topic. But in spite of that, it was written over 5 months ago, back in August 2023, so it will not be very outdated, but the topic might have moved on from now, especially with another major tournament passing (The Six Nations) so they will want the rules to be as up to date as can possibly be.

My second article, World Rugby to vote on easy rules on player Test team switches , (BBC, 2021) mainly just explains the possible new rules as well as the current rules as well. For example, it explains the new rules: “a player is 'captured' once they have won a senior cap”, as well as, “players will be able to represent the country of their ancestors' birth after a 3-year standdown period.” The purpose of this article is also to inform people about the current and potential rules as well as many other facts based on these rules as well as giving a couple of examples of players that have or have not played for their home country such as Nathan Hughes and Malakai Fekitoa. On the one hand this article is very reliable because it comes from a variation of a very well-known news outlet - BBC Sport being a variation of the British Broadcasting Company, a very famous news producer. However, on the other

Players can now switch nations

hand, the article was published all the way back on the 2nd of November in 2021, talking about how the new rules might come into place, whereas we now know that these rules have been put into place, so it is very outdated, especially on some of the facts that are in place. Then again, the author of this article is a rugby union correspondent, proving once again that they will have a lot of knowledge on the topic of rugby as their job is specifically based on it.

My third and final article I explored was New rules open the door for Pacific Island nations to realise their potential (Racing Post, 2023). In general, it explains how teams like Fiji, Tonga and Samoa will be massively impacted because of how better players that choose to represent Australia or New Zealand instead of their actual country for a better chance of victory could now switch back. This is shown when it says, “Tonga and Samoa have both taken advantage by selecting members of New Zealand's 2015 World Cup-winning squad for this year's edition. Malakai Fekitoa is set to play for Tonga alongside fellow former-All Blacks Charles Piutau and George Moala, while 38-cap Wallaby Adam Coleman should start in the second row.” It also states a couple of past fixture scores for these countries such as, “Samoa, who famously beat Wales in both 1991 and 1999,” and, “Fiji lost to Uruguay in Japan in 2019 but they are a far more professional outfit now with quality running throughout their squad and, after impressing in last week's 34-17 defeat to France.” This article is fairly reliable because although it comes from a news source that is not very famous, it is still fairly recent, having been published on the 25th of August 2023. Also, the fact that it states quite a few facts does improve the reliability.

The second and third articles are similar because they both mainly state facts in their articles whereas the second article by The Guardian consists of a lot more quotes rather than facts. Also, the article by the BBC is different to the other articles because they talk a lot about the Pacific Island teams and how they will benefit the most. My second article by the BBC and my third article by Racing Post are similar in the sense that they are fairly unreliable, however, they are unreliable for different reasons. The article by the BBC is unreliable because it was written 3 years ago so it is out of date whereas the article published by the Racing Post is unreliable due to how it comes from a not well-known news producer. The first and final articles are similar because they were both written six days apart, meaning they would both have similar facts. After all, the laws would have been the same during that short time difference between each one being published. Another evident difference is that they are all from different news producers, which can be quite important as they will probably have gleaned their information from different sources.

The sources analysed have shown me that the changing laws stated in each article are helping certain teams for performance as well as becoming a disadvantage for some countries. People didn't know that the new rules were also a disadvantage for teams but due to my research I now know that it negatively affects Uruguay and Georgi; Uruguay have said countries such as theirs are in effect being penalised for focusing their efforts on producing homegrown players. Georgia has asked why Tonga and Samoa have been granted permission to pick All Blacks while Georgia, who continue to make strides based on domestic development, cannot enter the Six Nations. I was also able to find out about a lot of the rules in more depth compared to what I already knew before, where I had a rough idea of what the rules could change to be. In line with what I hypothesised, the research I have undergone supports the initial view I had that the new laws do substantially impact the ability of these teams. My initial hypothesis before I read the article was that the new rules being put into place by the World Rugby would massively impact a few certain countries (such as the Pacific Nation countries such as Tonga, Samoa and Fiji) based on family heritage and even just the home country that the player is from, even though players do switch to play for or not play for the countries they were born in. An example of this is Stephen Lorenzo Varney, who chose to play for Italy even though he was born in Wales, specifically Pembrokeshire and can speak fluent Welsh (British Broadcasting Corporation - BBC, 2020). These results contribute to a clearer view that the changing laws do affect the talent as well as the players in the squads, especially for smaller countries such as Tonga, Samoa and Fiji that have lost a lot of good players to bigger teams such as New Zealand and Australia for a better opportunity. The new rules that I have now understood in better detail have also helped me become conscious of why these players would

switch countries as well, showing me that they would do it for the opportunity of winning competitions, even if that means not playing for their home nation but now switching back because they can, due to the new rules. This is shown by big players such as World Cup-winning centre Malakai Fekitoa; New Zealand fullback Charles Piutau; Steve Luatua; New Zealand fly-half Lima Sopoaga; Christian Leali'ifano who was another newcomer after representing Australia; Charlie Faumuina, who also played in the World Cup final and New Zealand centre George Moala all making the change to the Pacific Nation countries. There are many limitations to my question, with one being that it is quite a specific topic, even in the world of rugby, meaning there are not actually that many articles based on this topic, meaning my data isn't very broad but rather very specific, only based of 3 articles. Another limitation to this question is the fact that the articles are quite out of date, with one being made in November of 2021 and the other two being made in August of 2023, meaning the topic could have moved on from now, damaging the reliability quite a lot, especially with rugby laws changing quite a bit. Further research is needed to establish really how much of a difference the rugby laws about family heritage do affect team selection and ability. I would recommend many people go on and do more research on this topic; with around 500 million people being interested in this sport (World Rugby, 2024) in the world, it is surely an important potential phenomenon.

To conclude, the new laws do hugely impact teams and their squad selection and ability because of better players leaving or joining, or even re-joining back to their team. I was not able to directly discover why players have switched from their home country to play for a bigger, and thus more victorious country, however, I was able to hypothesise why this may be the case. Teams are likely to want the opportunity to win more trophies and play better-quality rugby, which they would prefer rather than playing for the home country, which would surely like more than their new country. Based on how captivated I have become from my question and research with which I have engaged, I would like to follow this up with a different analysis of the bunker system and how much of an impact the new rules about that make, either for better or worse. This is also a big question because it can improve the decisions made by referees, which has been a complaint for all sports.

Words / Thomas Bland, 2ECW

Photography / James Coleman

Jones, C. (2021) World Rugby to vote on easing rules on player Test team switches, BBC Sport. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/59139431

(Accessed: February 28, 2024).

Meagher, G. (2023) How birthright rule is giving teams the X-factor for Rugby World Cup, The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/aug/31/how-birth-right-rule-is-givingteams-the-x-factor-for-world-cup-rugby (Accessed: February 28, 2024).

Ogalbe, J. (2023) New rules open the door for Pacific Island nations to realise their potential, The Racing Post. Available at: https://www.racingpost.com/sport/opinion/ new-rules-open-the-door-for-pacific-island-nations-a9TdM2w4e1Wb/ (Accessed: February 28, 2024).

Law:

guardian of liberty or restriction on freedom?

to a restaurant; the law is there. If you eat without paying, you violated the law. When you go to school, there are regulations. When you go to work, there’s a code of conduct; even when you go back home, there’s a set of rules as well. Your job, your home, your relationships, your everyday life, and your death all are controlled by law. The society needs to have a form of law to regulate the people’s behaviours. Many people thinks that law is limiting their liberty, but I think law provides a model of how people should behave. In this essay, I would like to discuss about the history of law and discuss if it has conflicts with our liberties. The earliest writings of law were destroyed during the Dark Ages, so the concept of crime and punishment and where it all began starts in the year 500 AD. It was governed mostly by superstition and local

laws and stayed pretty much the same up through the year 1000 AD. And then we have ten commandments, one of the most important rules released in human’s history. After the Norman conquest of England in 1066, common law started to develop and helped standardize law and justice. Until then the legal system among the early English or Anglo-Saxons and everywhere else in Europe during that time, was decentralized. In Qin Dynasty from China, because he wanted to maintain the social discipline, Qin Shi Huang proposed a lot of laws that seemed to be irrational to modern day people, for instance each county was divided to different groups, each formed by 10 families. People inside each group must monitor each other and immediately report any crimes to the government, if one of the families committed a crime and other families didn’t report, other families would receive the punishment as well, the law in Qin dynasty was very strict that if you stole 1 cent, you would be sentenced to death. The evolution of law throughout history reflects the changing needs and values of societies. Granted that laws sometimes limit personal freedom, they play a significant role in establishing order, protecting rights, and promoting justice.

One of the earliest known sets of laws can be traced back to the Babylonian king Hammurabi, who reigned in the 18th century BCE. It aimed at maintaining social order but mirrored the authoritarian nature of early legal systems. It consisted of 282 laws that covered various aspects of life, including commerce, property, and family matters. The aim was to maintain social order and ensure fair treatment of individuals

within the community. In ancient Greece, the concept of law was further developed by philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle. They believed that laws should be based on reason and justice, and that they should serve as a guide for individuals to live harmoniously in society. This idea of laws to uphold justice and promote the common good has remained influential throughout history, it shows that the purpose of law is actually to keep the social system working.

The Roman Empire also made significant contributions to legal systems. The Roman legal system, known as civil law, emphasized the importance of written laws and legal codes. This approach provided a foundation for the development of legal systems in many countries today, including those based on the Napoleonic Code and the modern civil law systems.

The Magna Carta, signed in 1215 in England, is considered a pivotal moment in legal history. It established the principle that even the ruler was subject to the law and provided protection for individual liberties. This document laid the foundation for the development of common law, which is based on legal precedents and the decisions of judges.

But the law doesn’t stand still (you won’t see the policy of Qin dynasty nowadays at least). Globalization, the change of the society, rapid advances in modern technology and the change of the form

Law is an essential component of a functioning society

of the government all resulted in the change of law. For instance, in 2013, the marriage act has been extended to same-sex marriage. This law was enforced on 13th March 2014 and since then many couples have finally been able to get married. This is one of the biggest laws passed this decade as it has led to a wider acceptance of same-sex couples across the UK. This shows that the law changes from time to time, and it is not the same in different countries as Saudi Arabia doesn’t accept LGBTQ. Another example is The Industrial Revolution, which led to the need for new labour laws to protect workers' rights. Similarly, the rise of the internet and digital technology has necessitated the creation of laws to address issues such as cybercrime and data privacy.

Yet, a crucial question persists: Can law encroach upon liberty, or do they synergize to forge a harmonious society? Law serves as a ‘fact of pure reason’; it constitutes what is human about human beings. Law presumes and implies freedom. Together with the law, freedom is the fundamental theme that gives the modern world its ethical and basic anthropological shape.1 Some people might argue that while laws provide essential governance, a perpetual tension exists between regulating behaviour for the common good and ensuring the protection of personal liberties. For me, they are not incompatible. The answer lies in the delicate equilibrium between the need for societal order and the preservation of individual freedoms. Think about it, when everyone dumps their rubbish on the floor without being regulated by the authorities, yes, they claimed it as freedom, but it affects our rights to use the road

because no one would walk on a road full of stinky rubbish. Law maintains social order while protecting our personal rights as well. Without law, everyone does what they want without consequences, the society will not be secure and prospect. The Article 10 of Humans Right Act 1998 has protected our freedoms. According to the United Nations, the backbone of the freedom to live in dignity is the international human rights framework, together with international humanitarian law, international criminal law, and international refugee law. Those foundational parts of the normative framework are complementary bodies of law that share a common goal: the protection of the lives, health, and dignity of persons. The rule of law is the vehicle for the promotion and protection of the common normative framework. It provides a structure through which the exercise of power is subjected to agreed rules, guaranteeing the protection of all human rights.

Law is an essential component of a functioning society. It provides a framework for governing people's behaviour, resolving disputes, and protecting individual rights. Indeed, it sometimes seems restrictive, but it serves as a crucial purpose in maintaining order, promoting justice, and adapting to societal changes. All parts of society have a part to play in upholding the rule of law. Those working in the UK’s democratic and independent institutions have a responsibility to promote public trust in the rule of law, while the public’s commitment to this fundamental principle is essential for it to be maintained in the long term. We should appreciate the presence of law safeguarding the country and acknowledge that it is not 100% against our freedoms.

Words / Ryan Cheng, 3SCR Photography / Rashid Khreiss / Mark Duffel / Kyle Glen

Gemeinschaftsgefühl

One of the things that first appealed to me about the German language was its apparently limitless ability to create new words. Combine this with its indefatigable sense of logic, and you can create words whose meanings leave language learners more often than not frustrated by the lack of a neat, identifiable equivalent in their own language. However, I find myself in awe at the simplicity with which these compound words can express feeling and emotion, or indeed sum up something so contritely that I am left to despair that my native English language cannot offer anything as worthy.

One such compound German noun is the word “Gemeinschaftsgefühl”. One English equivalent is “sense of community”, but it could also be translated as “sense of connectedness” or even “feeling of belonging”. At its core, this word is able to encompass the very essence of togetherness and community in perfect simplicity.

“Gemeinschaftsgefühl” was first coined in the early 20th century by the Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler. He placed enormous emphasis on the importance of feelings of belonging and on what he called “social interest”, which refers to an individual’s sense of worth and belonging and which plays a key role in both metal and physical health. For Adler, human happiness and fulfilment can only be achieved when we have a sense of belonging to a community, be that with family, friends, or colleagues.

Abraham Maslow, an American psychologist working a generation or so after Adler, picked up on this theme with his work on the human hierarchy of needs. Towards the top end of this hierarchy is Maslow’s idea of self-actualisation, a higher order human need that can most effectively be met though social interest, a community feeling or a sense of oneness with all humanity.

We now live in a world that is arguably more connected than at any point in history. But it would perhaps not be unfair to say that our increased connectivity has come at the cost of quality. Adler maintains that human beings can best overcome challenges through the quality of their connections, relationships, and communities, rather than the quantity of them. It is perhaps time, therefore, to consider what a true communitarian spirit means, and to allow ourselves to embrace just a little more “Gemeinschaftsgefühl”.

However, there is a danger here too that we fall into the trap of nostalgia. A term first published in a medical treatise of the late 17th century by the Swiss physician Johannes Hofer, describing a strange new disease that seemed to be affecting Swiss soldiers who were fighting abroad, nostalgia for times gone by is a feeling laced with potency. We only have to think of recent times during the pandemic years, when communities pulled together to help the elderly and vulnerable in the face of a national crisis, exhibiting a fair amount of “Gemeinschaftsgefühl” in the process. Social commentators bemoan the loss of community spirit as people emerged from the lockdown, returning to the hectic, self-centred, consumer-driven world they so craved. As the historian Hannah Rose Woods so aptly puts it, “nostalgia offers us protection from our anxieties: the chance to escape our worries about what the future holds and recall a story that might tell us who we are and where it is that we are going.”

So where does this leave us? It is true that that we tend to view the past through rose-tinted lenses, exaggerating and even reshaping past experiences to give us a frame of reference for the present. This is certainly the case for our sense of community and belonging. But it is also true that the concept of “Gemeinschaftsgefühl” deserves a place in contemporary society: a society that is still capable of looking outwards, a society that provides a sense of belonging, a glue that binds us all together. Whether we wish to accept it or not, that communitarian spirit might just play a vital role in safeguarding our future happiness.

Words / Mr A

Jones,Deputy Director of Learning and Innovation, Head of German, Teacher of French Photography / John Cameron

Is it

“astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power”? (Bertrand Russell)

When answering this question, it is integral to define what is meant by power and what informs it. Power in this essay will be defined in accordance with German sociologist Max Weber’s definition as “the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite resistance, regardless of the basis on which this probability rests. 1” This definition of power has been chosen as it prioritises one’s ability to actualise power over one’s potential to accumulate power, therefore providing a narrower scope of what constitutes power. What constitutes knowledge is also important to this question, and knowledge will be defined as “a familiarity, awareness, or understanding of someone or something, such as facts, information, descriptions, or skills, which is acquired through experience or education by perceiving, discovering, or learning 2” in this essay. Bertrand Russell’s claim that it is “astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power” will be disagreed with in this essay as it will be argued that a little knowledge does not grant one lasting power. Examples in the natural sciences (antibiotic resistance and Ptolemy’s discoveries) therefore, will evidence the need for constant knowledge in the maintenance of power, contrary to Russell’s claim. An example in the arts will be used to try and support Russell’s claim.

On a surface level, little knowledge within the natural sciences has allowed us to have power over the treatment of bacterial infections for example. It is famously known that in 1928, Dr Alexander Fleming, upon returning home from holiday, found a mould growing on a Petri dish of Staphylococcus bacteria which he later observed seemed to be preventing the bacteria around it from growing 3. This mould is now known as penicillin and constitutes what many regard to be the first wonder drug. This discovery led to the discovery of more antibiotics and antibiotics were used across 204 countries between 2000 and 2018 with the global human antibiotic consumption rate increasing by 46% between 2000 and 2021 4, showing their prominent influence today. This influence regarding the

treatment of bacterial infections constitutes power, as it grants humanity the ability to affect the development of whole strains of bacteria as well as the development of wider human health in general. This power, however, is decreasing all the time, as more bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) antibiotic resistance was associated with nearly 5 million deaths worldwide in 2019, with more than 2.8 million resistant strains of bacteria occurring each year 5. This shows that our power over the treatment of bacterial strains

is decreasing because the little knowledge we have is being undermined by mutations in these bacteria. Therefore, Russell’s claim is diminished, as it is evident that to maintain power over resistant bacteria, our knowledge needs to develop and grow at the same rate that the bacteria are developing, and not just stay “little.” While “little knowledge” can be said to provide an initial basis for power, it is not plausible to say that “little knowledge” can give us so much power, as “little knowledge” can be made ineffective if not developed upon, resulting in the loss of power.

However, within the arts, it has been shown in literature that when a readership has “little knowledge” regarding certain communities, greater power in dictating what works are a part of the “Western literary canon” is granted to a select few. Greater knowledge of such marginalised communities has therefore inhibited the maintenance of power over the “Western literary canon” by those within colonial discourses, with the emergence of diasporic and Postcolonial literature evidencing such diminishing of power. “Little knowledge” has granted groups power over the presentation of supposedly lesser groups on a surface level. In Orientalism , Edward Said highlights that it is the job of the Orientalist “to piece together a portrait … of the Orient [“native”] … [through] circumventing the unruly (un-Occidental) non-history of the Orient with orderly chronicle, portraits, and plots. 6” Said unveils how the construction of the identities of these marginalised groups based upon “little knowledge”, has allowed the Orientalist to maintain the dominance of the “Occident”(West) over the “Orient”(marginalised). This rings true in writing that lies within colonial discourse. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is a famous example of how the “native” type was constructed in the literature of the colonial period. In describing the Africans in the novella as an “incomprehensible frenzy” or “prehistoric man,” Conrad compounds the power dynamic between the European and the African, in positing that the African is a less developed version of the European based upon “little knowledge” of African communities. Therefore, the emergence of writers from these marginalised communities through diasporic and Postcolonial literature has resulted in a loss of a maintenance of power for those who subscribe to colonial discourse, as they are no longer able to act on their previously held power over what constitutes the “Western literary canon”, supporting Russell’s claim that “little knowledge” grants us “so much power”. However, this example within the arts can also be said to go against Russell’s claim, in the sense that greater knowledge has granted greater power to those formerly marginalised by colonial literature. For example, Daljit Nagra’s greater knowledge of Indian communities, has allowed the readership to have greater knowledge

Only with the continued accumulation of knowledge can power be maintained

concerning the British Indian experience, which has allowed Indians to have greater power over how they are presented within the “Western literary canon” through his diasporic literature. Therefore, Russell’s statement can still be countered as greater knowledge has also been shown to allow for greater actualisation of power within the arts.

Finally, through the example of Claudius Ptolemy’s geocentric view of the world, I will show how “little knowledge” can form the basis of power, but that it is ultimately the further accumulation and development of knowledge which results in that power’s maintenance, therefore meaning that “little knowledge” does not suffice in giving us “so much power”. Claudius Ptolemy was an astronomer living in Alexandria, Egypt, from about 85 – 165 CE 7 Ptolemy accepted Aristotle’s view that the sun and planets revolve around the Earth, with his work helping fellow astronomers to make predictions of lunar and solar eclipses allowing for his ideas to have been the accepted views for 1400 years 8. This example displays how Ptolemy’s “little knowledge” (in the sense that the knowledge he had was incomplete) can form the basis of power, in this case to predict lunar and solar eclipses, yet advances in the natural sciences have resulted in Ptolemy’s geocentric view of the world being displaced. We now have the technology to establish that the universe does not revolve around the Earth and this increase in knowledge has given scientists the ability to produce more accurate predictions of lunar and solar eclipses, as well as establishing the reasoning behind such events happening. This greater knowledge within the natural sciences has also granted greater power to those within the arts, as they now are able to produce more accurate depictions of the solar system. So, while the example of Ptolemy’s findings allowing some to predict lunar events may show that “little knowledge” can form the basis of some power, it is again an example of a little knowledge resulting in a short-lived period of power before eventually being displaced by greater knowledge granting greater power than the little knowledge could. So, to conclude, while on a surface level, Bertrand Russell’s claim seems to ring true, it is evident that within both the natural sciences and the arts that little

knowledge does not lead to having so much power, but in fact greater knowledge results in having so much power. This is evident in the natural sciences through the development of antibiotics to treat bacterial infections from a limited amount of knowledge eventually becoming redundant due to the ability to accumulate greater knowledge surrounding the mutations of bacterial infections. It is similarly evident in the arts, through prominent works of literature written in the colonial period. As shown by Heart of Darkness, limited knowledge surrounding the cultures of colonised communities meant that they were unable to affect the “Western literary canon” until those with greater knowledge of such communities were able to write accurately about them. The links between the natural sciences and the arts regarding the question of this essay are exemplified by an examination of Ptolemy’s findings. Whilst his geocentric view of the solar system influenced astronomers to produce accurate predictions of lunar events, advances in scientific knowledge have meant that those in the arts as well as the sciences can be more accurate in their work. Therefore, little knowledge does not give us so much power as it is only with the continued accumulation of knowledge that power can be maintained.

Words / Seb Oshisanya (OW – left 2023) Photography / Gabriella Clare Marino

1 Warren, M. E. (1992). Max Weber’s Nietzschean conception of power. History of the Human Sciences, 5(3), 19–37. https://doi.org/10.1177/095269519200500303

2 Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge (accessed December 10, 2022)

3 Science Museum. (February 23, 2021). Available at: https://www.sciencemuseum. org.uk/objects-and-stories/how-was-penicillin-developed#:~:text=In%201928%20 Dr%20Alexander%20Fleming,chemical%20that%20could%20kill%20bacteria.%20 that%20could%20kill%20bacteria. (Accessed: December 10, 2022)

4 University of Oxford. (November 16, 2021). Available at: https://www.ox.ac.uk/ news/2021-11-16-global-antibiotic-consumption-rates-increased-46-percent-2000. (Accessed: December 10, 2022)

5 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (October 5, 2022). Available at: https:// www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/about.html. (Accessed: December 10, 2022)

6 Said, Edward W. Orientalism. Penguin Books, 2019.

7 Khan Academy. Available at: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/bighistory-project/big-bang/how-did-big-bang-change/a/claudius-ptolemy. (Accessed: December 10, 2022)

8 Khan Academy. Available at: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/bighistory-project/big-bang/how-did-big-bang-change/a/claudius-ptolemy. (Accessed: December 10, 2022)

Refuge

What do you know about refuge?

I know what it would mean to me

Some take refuge because of abuse

Some flee from war a place where there is no truce

To a place with no violence no more

But what do you know about refuge?

In one sense

Everyone has something that makes them…’tense’

Some of these problems are worse than others

Some may try to hold it in

Maybe secretly it’s your sister or brother

But what do you know about refuge?

Some problems are so bad

They would make you fear

They would make you shed a tear

There can be so much advice but it’s impossible to know

When to stop and hear

But for some there’s one voice a refuge

That is very bright and shines

To keep you safe and to take shelter

Refuge is for all

For everyone

A person from abuse

A person who flees from war

A person who needs help and knocks on your door

But they should all know

In the whole world

There is always somewhere safe

There is always a refuge

But…

What do you know about refuge?

Words / Ayaan Chaudry, 2RAW

Photography / Katie Moum

The universality of love?

Love is perhaps considered one of the most universal ideas, and dialogues on the nature of love and its negation can be argued as a central dialectic for writers that transcends a particular time or place. Blake, writing in the late 18th century, writes “The Sick Rose” about the corruption of and corruptive nature of love. Larkin wrote “High Windows” in 1967 as a comment on sexual permissiveness amidst the Summer of Love. The two poems share themes of how the nature of love is changing, yet at the same time in discussing this change imply that the issue is of a circular nature that in itself may be universal.

One can begin by exploring how each writer considers the theme of love and how it has been corrupted. Blake writes plainly in the title of his poem “The Sick Rose”, that the rose serves as a symbol of love which is directly contradicted by the epithet “sick”, suggesting that love is no longer as pure as before. Blake describes an “invisible worm” which “flies in the night” and “in the howling storm”, thus lending itself to two main interpretations. Primarily, this suggests more imagery of decay and sickness –the worm symbolizing disease – while descriptions of “night” and “storm” rely on a form of pathetic fallacy to hint at a sense of evil. Yet the “invisible worm” could also be of a phallic nature, through abstraction Blake suggests that sex is of a corruptive nature. This abstract description of the worm evolves as Blake describes how it “has found out thy bed / of crimson joy”, furthering the idea that he is referring to intercourse; the contradictory epithet of “crimson joy” once again suggests that joy has been corrupted, “crimson” serving as either a symbol of blood or the loss of female innocence. Larkin also explores how love has been corrupted, for Larkin this is because of the advent of moral relativism and permissiveness. Larkin begins with a specific situation in which he watches a younger couple engaging in sex in the daytime: “When I see a couple of kids / And guess he’s fucking her”: here the use of dysphemistic language construes the act as crude and distasteful, exacerbated by the description of the pair as “kids” which contrasts their innocence and their corruption. Proceeding, he writes “and she’s / taking pills or wearing a diaphragm” the low modality of “or” alluding to the idea that Larkin’s scope is widening out to other instances in which he has witnessed this kind of corrupted and permissive type of love.

Larkin argues that all types of principles and morality are going down the “long slide”, another perversion of the imagery of childhood which suggests that the loss of these principles is a deeply unsettling

thing. However, one may argue that Larkin is slightly more self-aware than Blake: Larkin then considers that perhaps a person forty years ago might have said the same thing about his own generation and how everything “and the lot” are going down the “long slide”. This older person might have complained: “No God any more, or sweating in the dark”. Yet for Larkin, this does not refute the idea that love is not changing; it rather points to the idea that love has a descending trajectory, so much so that Larkin ends the poem with “Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.”

However, a different type of universality can also be seen. Both writers do not write simply of the universality of love or its negation, but the fact that both writers are writing about what is arguably the same issue despite being from completely different moments in history implies a second-order form of universality, furthered by the circularity of the dialectic. There is a universal sense of the circularity of the idea of love against corruption.

Larkin hints at this circularity with his acceptance that people from older generations compared to him might have the same feelings that he has towards the younger generations of his time. The “long slide” is in itself a universal thing, the fear that principles are being lost to relativism and permissiveness. However, in analysing Larkin’s poem one might have to consider the difference between perpetuity and circularity: as analysis in the preceding paragraph has indicated, the continuation of this “long slide” might lead to a sort of moral void, “is nowhere, and is endless”. Nonetheless, an alternative interpretation of the structure of the poem – beginning with what seems a precise situation, going into abstract thought through the use of italicisation, and returning to regular prose – both provides scepticism as to whether this perpetuation of the loss of morals is true and proposes that it is this very dialogue of whether love is being corrupted that is the thing which is universal and circular. In comparison, Blake’s “The Sick Rose” does not contain as much of a self-awareness of this universality. The difference in how each poem alludes to universality perhaps lies in the use of dialectics beyond love and its negation.

A final look at the two poems considers the fundamental dialectic and dualities that they propose. Derrida, responding to the work of Hegel, indicates that because of the nature of human speech, one is led to develop dualities, for example, life and death, here and there, these being a thesis and an antithesis. It can first be observed that Blake frequently portrays a dialectic, with contradictory epithets such as “Sick Rose”, “crimson joy”, and “dark secret love”, indicating the first-order issue of love

and its corruption. Yet at the same time, Blake uses apostrophe, “O Rose”, as if referring to God at the very beginning of the poem and poses an antithesis of “destroy” at the end of the poem, suggesting a deeper dialectic between creation and destruction, life and death. This is also summarised between the two last words, plainly “life destroy”. For Larkin, beyond love and its perversion, a dialectic can be seen when Larkin alternates between a specific situation, witnessing the “couple of kids” engaging in sex, and more abstract thought about the nature of love and its morals, the contrast heightened by the use of italicised text. This is arguably another fundamental conflict between abstraction and observation, or formally rationalism and empiricism. This may appear to be an odd development in interpretation, yet this dialectic seems extremely specific to the poem, with the very title of “High Windows” here there is the contradiction of being able to see something and yet not be able to access it. By pondering the nature of love and whether morality and principles are disappearing, Larkin questions the conflict between rationality and empiricism in obtaining truth. Larkin's following conclusion, that “rather than words comes the thought of high windows”, becomes a statement of the inability of his or his generation to be able to

understand the younger generation, the lack of Larkin’s own empirical knowledge suggests that empiricism has prevailed. Both poems seem to hint at more fundamental dialectics, yet it now can be observed that Blake emphasises more particularly the divide between love and corruption with the dialectic contained solely in the title, “The Sick Rose”, whereas Larkin’s title of “High Windows” suggests that corruption of love is not the only universal idea, but rather the core dialectic is this struggle to understand love’s evolution from a more distant standpoint.

In conclusion, both writers point to a universal idea that love is changing and is being corrupted. However, paradoxically, the act of observing this idea is in itself universal; both poems go further and indicate further universal ideas through dialectics. Blake in “The Sick Rose” considers this change in the nature of love in the context of the dialectic between life and death, more closely related to love and its negation. With the initially ambiguous title of “High Windows”, Larkin in his poem uses his observations on love to explore the nature of his knowledge, either rational or empirical, exploring more how he has been in effect excommunicated from the self-understanding of the future.

Words / Lucian Ng, U6AEW Photography / designecologist

Depicting gods: the visual representations of deities

Religion is an important part of people’s lives and identities all around the world. Around 85% 1 of the people in the world identify with a religion, which shows that religion is widely spread and accepted. One of the largest arguments in religion is about what God or gods look like, and how they should be depicted. The most accepted depiction is in Christianity, as Christianity has approximately 2.4 billion followers worldwide which makes it the largest religion.

All religions have different ideas of what gods or God look like. In some religions, such as Judaism and Christianity, people believe that God created humans to look like them. The idea that there is one God who looks like humans is called anthropomorphic monotheism. In Genesis 1 in the Bible, ‘God created mankind in his own image’ on the sixth day. In this view, God looks like people and is like people. This shows that people at the time who founded the religion thought that they were like God, and they used this to show that they were the best creation on the planet. In Christianity, for example, people used images and statues in churches to show both God and his son Jesus. Importantly, there are no rules in the religion against this depiction.

However, in Islam, God cannot be depicted in any image. In Islam, God is said to have no physical body or gender, and God is beyond human imagination; Muslims believe that they are not allowed to represent God 2. The idea that you cannot represent God in a physical form is known as aniconism. Another place that this idea was used was in ancient Byzantine art 3 Although the Byzantine Empire was Christian, there was a group of people called Iconoclasts who believed that the Old Testament prohibited the creation of religious images. This group’s ideas were then made law in 762CE by Emperor Leo III 4. Iconoclasts had this belief because of the line in the Bible which says, “You shall not make yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything,” which they interpreted to mean that you could not create any image of God. Judaism also uses this same commandment to say that you cannot depict God in any physical way.

In some religions, such as Buddhism, there is no God. These religions are called nontheistic 5 This does not mean that the religion does not have

significant religious figures, but rather that there is no one God who the religious figures are centred around. In Buddhism, people pray to the Buddha and to bodhisattvas (enlightened beings who have put off entering paradise to help others reach enlightenment) 6 , to help others and to try and reach enlightenment. As there is no God, the Buddha and the bodhisattvas appear in Buddhist art, and their statues are the ones Buddhists look at when they pray – just like Christians look at the Cross, or Muslims face Mecca. Another nontheistic religion is Confucianism. This is the belief in ancestor worship and human centred virtues for living a better life. The main rule of Confucianism is, ‘Do not do unto others what you would not want others to do unto you’ 7.Nontheistic religions are full of moral and ethical teachings. Other than Buddhism, there is debate other whether they are religions or simply moral teachings and ways of life.

Another religion in which gods are depicted as people is Greco-Roman paganism, where there were many gods who all looked like humans. This is one form of polytheism which is also called anthropomorphic polytheism. Greco-Roman pagans also believed that the gods could interfere with the human world at will and that they felt no obligation to leave humans to be 8. In this religion, the gods were displayed a lot in paintings and sculptures, and their power was often depicted with the use of an object which they always carried with them. The religion did not have any restrictions on showing gods in the world. It was quite common to depict the gods, both to show power and wealth, and to show support for the state. This means that the representation of gods became commercialised.

Another anthropomorphic polytheistic religion is Sumerian polytheism 9. This was a religion in ancient Mesopotamia where different city states all had slightly different gods who all looked like people. A lot of these religions where gods looked the same as people are from a very long time ago – in the case of the Greco-Roman religion it was 1200 BCE and with the Sumerians it was 2700 BCE. This could show that it was a popular idea around 3000+ years ago but has become more unpopular towards 2000 years ago with the dawn of modern religions such as Christianity. One final depiction of gods that I will look at is the view that there are multiple gods who look like animals, or a mix between humanoid deities and animal

10. One example of this is in ancient Egyptian religion (Kemetism). In this religion, the gods were often shown as human in appearance, but they had certain features which looked animal. For example, Horus (the god of the sky), had the head of a falcon, and was sometimes shown as looking entirely like a falcon. These animal-like qualities showed what people believed about the various gods. If the animal was strong, then people believed that the god was strong; and if the animal was stereotypically sly, then the god would be sly and cunning.

Another religion which has animal-like deities is Hinduism. As well as having deities which are part animal, Hinduism has deities which look like humans but with an extra characteristic 11. The main example of this is the Trimurti, who all have extra arms. Like the animal characteristics, this stands for something that Hindu’s believe about their gods. In this case, it has

Different religions depict gods and goddesses in different ways

several interpretations, two of which are that it stands for the god’s ability to perform several tasks at the same time, or that the god can reach many places with their power at the same time.

In conclusion, different religions depict gods and goddesses in different ways, but they can be classified in two sets of categories: one being monotheism, polytheism, and non-theism; the other being a deity looking like people, a deity looking like animals and a deity not being representable. Some religions, such as the anthropomorphic polytheism, were common around 4,000 years ago but do not have any major examples today; while others, such as anthropomorphic monotheism, are common today with several of the major religions in the world believing in them. The reason there could be such a range in how gods are depicted is that nobody is sure of what God, or gods look like, and so how people’s view of god is down to speculation. Humans therefore choose the depiction that they believe is most likely; in this case that has ended up being that God looks like us.

1 https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/religion-by-country

2 https://rb.gy/nt7ul7

3 https://www.britannica.com/topic/aniconism

4 https://www.britannica.com/event/Iconoclastic-Controversy

5 https://rb.gy/nsfw2w

6 https://rb.gy/ojyzdn

7 https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/confucianism/

8 https://rb.gy/c8vl5v

9 https://rb.gy/8n1clp

10 https://www.britannica.com/topic/ancient-Egyptian-religion/The-Gods

11 https://rb.gy/5s1hsz

deities

Words / Jonathan Brennan, 3SLM

Photography / Mohnish Landge

“Ancient philosophy is not relevant to modern political or ethical debates”

Do you agree?

The normative ethical theories proposed by ancient philosophers have been largely ignored in favour of modern systems in the last few centuries. There is no doubt that these ancient theories influenced the modern ethical systems, for example, the core Epicurean idea of mental and bodily pleasures present in the “Rule” utilitarianism of John Stewart Mill or the Cyrenaic hedonism of Jeremy Bentham. Many scholars, such as the neo-Aristotelians of the twentieth century, consider that the dominant modern ethical systems of Utilitarianism and Kantianism fail when confronted with modern issues, such as abortion or Artificial Intelligence, AI, and instead turn to ancient philosophy to guide on modern ethical debates. This essay will examine the application of ancient ethical theories to modern ethical debates, comparing them to modern ethical systems, in order to conclude whether ancient philosophy is relevant to modern ethical debates. To answer this question, it is first important to understand why it is posed. The very fact that ethical systems were proposed in the modern era suggests that there was something lacking in regard to guidance on morality. If the issue of morality were answered by any one ethical system or theory, then there would be no need to propose another. Therefore, it is easy to understand that many would disregard ancient philosophy in regard to modern ethical debates as it seems to have been replaced by more modern systems, and also the literal contradiction of modern and ancient raises doubts as to efficacy. It is not ignorant to suggest that a theory proposed two millennia ago would have flaws in the modern era. However, the failure of modern ethical systems to address modern ethical debates raises the question of whether previously advanced theories can. This is the hypothesis of the twentieth-century neo-Aristotelian Virtue Ethicists, such as Anscombe and Macintyre when they claim that ancient humans had already devised an efficient

ethic and that this could be applied to modern ethical debate. Famously Anscombe writes on the issue of abortion, and in line with the Aristotelian actioncentred virtue ethics concludes that it is morally wrong and prohibited. This she states is because a virtuous person would have “a connatural knowledge of the worth of a human being” and therefore would know that this act constituted murder and would be wrong. Not to say that this is the morally right action in reality, but it provides a firm and reasoned answer to a modern ethical debate. Thus, it is apparent that there may be some worth to ancient philosophy in regard to modern ethical debates.

To answer this question, I have devised two scenarios inspired by modern ethical debates.

Scenario 1:

A global pandemic has already in 3 months killed over 500 million people and is forecast to keep spreading.You are part of a team of scientists that believe that they have discovered a vaccine for the disease. However, this vaccine is untested on humans, and when tested on rodents it protected all of them, but left 15% with horrendous sideeffects such as blindness, paralysis, and clotting. In order to stop the disease and save humanity you must move onto human testing; however, this could have terrible consequences.

What do you do?

In order to decide whether ancient philosophy is relevant to this modern medical ethical debate it is first necessary to apply modern ethical systems to it to qualify whether there is a need to turn to ancient philosophy. First, I will apply Jeremy Bentham’s “Act” Utilitarianism to this scenario. Bentham advocates the course of action which maximises pleasure for the greatest number of people. It is clear that the action which maximised pleasure in this way would be to advance to human medical testing immediately

as although a few might suffer, the vaccine can be refined and rolled out as quickly as possible in order to maximise pleasure by saving from disease/death/ illness the rest of humanity. There is no computational error there as usually plagues Act Utilitarianism as it is clear that this action would result in maximum pleasure. If one were to run this through Bentham’s hedonic calculus the same answer would be reached, that the moral action is to advance to human testing as that maximises pleasure. For Mill this would likely be the same, as although a rule may have been devised against causing humans suffering in this way, he allows for situational analysis in specific instances. This I would qualify as a specific instance, and in that case, Mill falls into Act Utilitarianism and reaches the same conclusion. Kant however, proposer of the other dominant modern ethical system would not allow the advancement to medical testing on humans. His second formation of the categorical imperative holds that an action cannot be universalised nor morally condonable if a human is used as a means to an end. For him all humans have an equal intrinsic worth, and even in the case of a few suffering to save the many it would not be morally sanctionable for one to use humans in medical testing, regardless even of potential sideeffects. Therefore, it is clear that although one modern system provides an answer where another does not that there is no absolute need to apply ancient philosophy to a modern ethical debate as it is dealt with by a modern system. However, it is important to establish if ancient philosophy is still relevant to modern ethical debates, and if it can provide some other answer as to morality. Ancient philosophy is relevant in that it provides key parts to modern ethical systems that are the moral guides on modern ethical debates. For example, the hedonic calculus of Jeremy Bentham as well as his principle of hedonism is hugely influenced by Aristippus of Cyrene and his Cyrenaic school as pleasure is to be maximised. However, this ethical theory has little to offer to help in making this decision on a modern ethical debate for a number of reasons. Cyrenaic philosophers considered only the now, not the future or past, and advocated for maximising pleasure for oneself in specific instances. The scientist, if a Cyrenaic, would not be concerned with the future of humanity, or the moral implications for others and wider society, but only for their own self. Therefore, they may advance to this medical testing as it maximises their pleasure as they will not

Any theory or system that can provide a well-reasoned and clear judgement on morality within a modern ethical debate is relevant

die, however future consideration has then been made to a large extent and defeats the theory’s disregard of the future. This therefore suggests a lack of relevance to modern ethical debates for ancient philosophy for two reasons. One is a flaw with this specific theory. The second flaw is with ancient philosophy and its ethics as a whole. Although not yet outlined and applied, ancient philosophical ethical theories, in contrast with modern ethical systems, placed the moral emphasis on the individual, not society or others. Therefore, when they all consider their principle of happiness in some form it is for the individual. This seems irrelevant to modern ethical debates which tend to be on a large societal scale as it is both difficult and potentially impossible to properly apply such theories to such debates. While it is clear therefore that there are some crucial errors with ancient philosophy and its ethics and application to modern ethical debates, this is only one instance and there are other ancient philosophical ethical theories to consider. However, there is that argument to be made for at least slight relevance of ancient philosophy to modern ethical debates as they provide core concepts to modern ethical systems which do succeed in answering modern ethical debates.

Scenario 2:

You are a university student who has just submitted their dissertation.You know a friend has used AI to write theirs and gets a much higher score than you who wrote it honestly. A professor suspects this and asks you if you know anything about it. If the student is revealed to have used AI in their work, they will be asked to leave university without a degree.

What answer do you give? Was it right to use AI?

Let us again first turn to modern ethical systems. Applying Bentham’s utilitarianism to this, it is clear that the maximum happiness for the maximum number would likely be to not inform the professor of the use of AI. It would bring great sadness to the student who has used AI and also their families, while it would likely bring less to you. However, there are multiple other outcomes. One of the criticisms of utilitarianism is that in circumstances where something feels immoral it can be declared as right as long as it maximises pleasure, for example a group torture that maximises pleasure for the torturers. While in cases where it is unclear it is necessary to apply hedonic calculus, such as considering the duration of an impact – will reporting on the AI harm the other student for life? – but also

the intensity of the pain or pleasure. The same issues can arise when analysing whether it is moral to use AI in the first place as it does maximise pleasure and seemingly has little painful effect on others. There also remains the criticism made that computationally utilitarianism is unhelpful and unclear when used to make decisions in the moment as there is simply too much to do to conclude or use utilitarianism in an actually helpful and confident way. However, Kant does provide clear action as when acting in line with his first formation of the categorical imperative, the maxim does not lie, as it contains no logical contradictions, would be universalised and therefore it is right to tell the professor about the use of AI. However, the maxim it is fine to cheat by using AI to write essays would not be good for society, as it would lead to unqualified people appointed to positions which they could not do and lead to bad in society. Therefore, it would not be allowed to use AI in this way, as the maxim is selfdefeating. Hence it is very clear that on an individual action – the use of AI, but also the reporting of that there is much disagreement within modern ethical systems on what the moral action is. Thus, there is something left wanted that could perhaps be answered by ancient philosophy which would suggest a certain relevance if successful. Turning to the dominant ancient philosophical ethical theory, Aristotelian virtue ethics, one can reason morally. Aristotle holds that the telos of humans is eudaimonia , happiness/flourishing, and that the right/good action is the one that a virtuous person, having all the virtues, would do when fully aware of the situation. Therefore, if a virtuous person were to use AI, then this action would be good, but also if they were to report on the use of it then it would be right/good to do so. However, would a virtuous person do this? We are living well when we use reason, and in this case, it could have been reasoned to perform these actions. Aristotle’s ethics are useful as they are not a set system, like all of the ethics of ancient philosophy and can therefore be applied situationally without falling foul of rules within them – although this can be the case sometimes as seen with Cyrenaic ethics. If we consider that we can apply Aristotle’s ethics to this situation and it can answer a modern ethical debate, then it would be so that ancient philosophy has relevance. However, one must work out whether a virtuous person would act. The cardinal virtues are Prudence, Justice, Courage, and Temperance. There is an idea of the unity of virtues, that if one has one, they have all. The virtue most crucial to this modern ethical debate on AI is justice. This concept of justice is concerned with fairness, equity, and crucially honesty. If a virtuous person acted in line with this virtue, then they would, when asked, inform on the use of AI as it would be the honest thing to do and promote fairness in society. Furthermore, the very use of AI could be seen as wrong, and therefore immoral, as a person who acts like this would not use AI to do their work but do it themselves. In line with courage, patience, and perseverance, it would also be wrong to use AI in

this situation to avoid having to put the work in. This is clear and well-justified ethical reasoning, and where there is uncertainty or error with modern systems, an ancient theory steps up. Therefore, the argument that there is no need for ancient philosophy as modern ethical systems do the job is incorrect, but also this idea that ancient philosophy has no relevance to modern ethical debates.

In conclusion, although this essay considers only two topical modern ethical debates and the application of a few of the many ancient philosophical ethical theories alongside modern ethical systems, there is clear evidence that ancient philosophy is still relevant to modern ethical debates. Ancient philosophical theories, like the modern systems, have flaws that mean they are not helpful or applicable in certain situations – this seen throughout. However, this does not discount the relevance of modern systems and should not therefore do the same for ancient philosophy. Any theory or system that can provide a well-reasoned and clear judgement on morality within a modern ethical debate is relevant, and it is clear that ancient philosophy can do this. It is not my suggestion that ancient philosophy is any more relevant than modern systems, nor do I endorse the neo-Aristotelian conclusion that modern systems are totally flawed, and the only answer is in ancient philosophy. It is evident in the case of Virtue Ethics that there is relevance, and also partly for other schools such as the Cyrenaic. Therefore, there is probable application for Cynicism or Stoicism to modern ethical debates as being ethical theories, they will always be able to render a judgement regardless of how successful or helpful that is. Therefore, I disagree with the statement that ancient philosophy has no relevance to modern ethical debates as it is clear that it can.

Words / Thomas Lofthouse, L6JMA Photography / Jaseel T

Gordon, J-S. Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Modern-Morality and Ancient Ethics. Available at: https://iep.utm.edu/modern-morality-ancient-ethics/ (Accessed:28/02/2024).

Nathanson, S. Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Act and Rule Utilitarianism. Available at: https://iep.utm.edu/util-a-r/ (Accessed: 29/02/2024).

Richter, D. Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, G.E.M. Anscombe. Available at: https://iep.utm.edu/anscombe/ (Accessed 29/02/2024).

Jankowiak, T. Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Immanuel Kant. Available at: https://iep.utm.edu/kantview/ (Accessed 28/02/2024).

Anscombe, G.E.M. 2005. Human Life, Action, and Ethics: Essays by G.E.M. Anscombe. Mary Geach & Luke Gormally (eds.). Imprint Academic. BBC. Virtue Ethics. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/introduction/virtue. shtml (Accessed 28/02/2024).

To what extent, and in what ways, can the past be a good guide to the future?

“Esse est percepi” 1 – to be is to be perceived

George Berkeley’s underlying principle of subjective realism, illustrated through this Cartesian-twist, provides us with convincing reason to doubt any claim of knowledge, past or present. By applying Berkeley’s argument, as well as disputing the theory of causation, it becomes evident that there is limited certainty in past experiences, and thus accrediting the past with value for the future appears inconsistent.

By evaluating the strength of the empiricist 2 argument, alongside the causal determinist perspective, this essay will explore whether or not the past can be a good guide to the future. For the purposes of this essay, the term ‘past experiences’ refers to any event in the past that is perceived by an individual, or any other past individual. Through this method, by denying the credibility of past experiences in guiding the future, one can, by contradiction, disprove the notion that the past is, with certainty, useful for the future.

Many would argue that a convincing response to this question is the empirical perspective, whereby all past experience derives knowledge, and therefore is a crucial guide to the future. As prominent empiricist John Locke posited, humans are born as a ‘tabula rasa’, and thus the only condition for knowledge to be acquired was through sensation and reflection – the two components of experience. 3 Locke distinguished between the ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ qualities of an object, where the primary qualities exist within the object itself, and the secondary ones exist in the mind of the perceiver. By definition, these primary qualities must be unchanging, and therefore a universal reality. Through the empirical method, one can measure the primary features of an object with certainty – a cornerstone of the scientific project.

The reliability of such inductive reasoning, which necessitates examination against the real world, allows us to foresee future phenomena – making it instrumental in guiding the future. An example is our accuracy in predicting projectile motion, which has only been advanced through observation of the material world. One could contest this point through the numerous examples of incorrect scientific assumptions in the past. For example, the notion of a Geocentric model of the solar system, where the Earth is in the centre, was the widespread belief for

There is no reason to assume past patterns will inevitably repeat under future circumstances

centuries. However, this supposed knowledge claim, despite its inaccuracy, is useful to us in the present day as it explains how religion and authority play a key role in influencing the masses. Similarly, Greek physician Hippocrates is often accredited with developing the theory of the four humours, a significant belief in medicine until its disproval in the 17th century. Although the theory is discredited, it allows us to see how physiological thought has developed and provides an insight into human psychology. Furthermore, the idea of causation is central to determining the significance of the past. Surely if all events are caused by preceding events, we could predict the future by examining effects of prior cause-andeffect relationships? This is the claim made by causal

determinists, who believe that we could predict the future with absolute certainty through observing past experiences. This blend of the empiricist view of epistemology with determinism suggests that repeated inspection of the material world can enable one to accurately determine future events, reaffirming the importance of the past as a guide to the future. However, this argument fails to consider many critical objections. Firstly, the causal determinist argument negates the possibility of free will, as all causes are supposedly bound to create specific effects, which we therefore have no control over. If we cannot control these events, there is no utility in the past as a method of influencing future actions we take. Secondly, the very concept of causation is contested.

David Hume argued that the idea of cause and effect was simply a habit of associating events which occur in temporal succession, rather than a necessary connection between the two events. The reoccurrence of past cause and effect relationships relies on the future conforming to principles governing the past, and thus there is no reason to assume past patterns will inevitably repeat under future circumstances. Hume’s scepticism highlights the inductive fallacy: although we may reasonably deduct from many experiences that a similar experience will occur in the future, we cannot – with absolute certainty – state it will occur again. An example is the famous black swan theory. If we have only ever witnessed white swans, is it correct to assume that only white swans exist? It is irrefutable

to claim so, as no level of experience can guarantee a specific outcome, there will always be other possible, unwitnessed possibilities. This exhibits the flaws in the empiricist argument, particularly of the use of inductive reasoning. By discrediting the theory of causation through both Hume’s argument and the empiricist viewpoint, it is no longer conceivable to argue in favour of the past as an appropriate guide to the future.

To further this, by challenging the certainty of any experience, the empiricist viewpoint can no longer hold validity. Similar to Locke, Hume made a distinction between ‘matters of fact’ and ‘relations of ideas’ 4, known as Hume’s Fork. Through impressions (sensation and reflection), he argued, one could create meaning in an idea. Any idea without an impression is meaningless. Developed in Kantian 5 philosophy, these propositions effectively rendered all ‘relations of ideas’ meaningless, in a stark contrast to rationalism 6. An example is the question of the existence of God: Hume argued that as we cannot observe God’s presence, and any argument to prove their existence relies on deductive reasoning (“if X is true…, then Y is true”), we cannot justifiably prove God’s existence. Even if we could through relations of ideas, this would be meaningless until evidenced in the real world. This is because relations of ideas have no application to real world experience. Therefore, relations of ideas cannot be proved, and so cannot be used to prove ‘matters of fact’. Consequentially, neither matters of fact nor relations of ideas can be proved with absolute certainty, and thus our past experiences have no value, as ultimately these are all derived from impressions, or experience. Moreover, if matters of fact (or synthetic propositions) rely on observation, the issue of fallibility of our senses arises. As sensory observation is inherently personal, it is not credible to justify ‘universal truths’ in relation to synthetic propositions. The idea of subjective realism, significantly influenced by George Berkeley, highlights that not only can truths be different for each perceiver, but without a perceiver, an object no longer exists. Berkeley thus argued that physical matter was nonexistent, and that both primary and secondary qualities of an object relied on an individual’s experience of the object. 7 Hence, one can argue that if reality is dependent on an individual, using past truths from other individuals contains no value to us today. René Descartes also describes senses as deceiving 8, positing that reality only exists within unchanging and certain circumstances. This rationalist perspective would argue that relations of ideas can be proven, solely because they do not relate to the unreliable world, in which senses are deceptive. Rationalists’ epistemological stance entails the reliance on ‘faculty of reason’ for certainty. This involves using reasoning, particularly by deduction, to acquire knowledge. By creating a set of

conditions where a conclusion must be true, subjective reality does not impede on the conclusion. The importance of deductive reasoning in rationalism in the development of knowledge validates the argument that experience holds little, if any, value for the future. Through both the radical-empiricist perspective of Berkeley, and the rationalist lens of Descartes, we have proven the absence of importance of past experience in aiding the future.

It is difficult to have certainty in our own past experiences

In conclusion, the empirical and determinist argument – which defends the past as a useful guide to the future – produces a convincing argument. This perspective demonstrates that the past has a profound importance in scientific understanding, through the investigation of past results, and thus cannot be regarded as entirely meaningless. However, the argument contains many flaws. Firstly, it fails to consider the absence of free will under a causal determinist system, leading to the argument collapsing. Furthermore, the uncertainty around the idea of causation, and all matters of fact, mean that it is difficult to have certainty in our own past experiences. Moreover, the subjective realism perspective creates doubt in all matters of fact, which reaffirms the rationalist argument that the only reality that exists is within relations of ideas. These relations of ideas bear no meaning as they do not apply to the material world (if that even exists, under Berkeley’s immaterialism). Therefore, whilst the past may hold some value in scientific purposes for the future, its certainty cannot be guaranteed, and thus holds limited utility as a guide to the future.

Words / Vatsa Dubey, L6KAG Photography / Mohnish Landge

1 George Berkeley, ‘A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge’ (1710)

2 Empiricism, as a response to scepticism, refers to the idea that knowledge is solely derived from experience. Philosophers John Locke, George Berkely and David Hume are commonly accredited with developing the empiricist perspective.

3 John Locke, ‘An Essay Concerning Human Understanding’ (1689)

4 David Hume, ‘An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding’ (1748)

5 Immanuel Kant, ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ (1781)

6 Rationalism, as a response to scepticism, refers to the idea that knowledge is derived through reason rather than emotional response.

7 George Berkeley, ‘A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge’ (1710)

8 René Descartes, ‘Meditations on First Philosophy’ (1641)

Frankfurt, H. G. (1957). Realism and the Objectivity of Knowledge. The Philosophical Quarterly (1950-), 7(29), 353–358. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2307/2217298

[Accessed: 18 December 2023].

Fumerton, R., Anthony M. (2023) Empiricism. Encylopaedia Britannica. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/topic/empiricism [Accessed: 23 December 2023].

Markie, P. (2004) Rationalism vs. Empiricism. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Available at: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism

[Accessed: 22 December 2023].

Radder, H. (2021) Empiricism Must, but Cannot, Presuppose Real Causation. J Gen Philos Sci 52, 597–608 (2021). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-02109551-9. [Accessed: 22 December 2023)

The Living Philosophy (2021). What is Empiricism? The Philosophy of Locke, Berkeley and Hume. 27 June. YouTube. [Online Video]. Available at: https://youtu.be/ XhxNxMH0rGA?si=o_yQKyD2_uQ9ia4o. [Accessed: 18 December 2023)

The wind howled, unexpectantly wading towards the shore in the horizon, submerging the majority of it. I knew the storm would spin the world like a weathercock, jabbing and lunging at the seabed below me. The raging waves lashed at my boat as I evaluated the situation, whilst trying to sail through the abrupt gusts of wind; timing was key.

The cataracts of icy water confronted the screaming whistle of wind. I could feel the unease inside of me, bubbling up into a sensation of anger and rage as I tried desperately to fling myself in the opposite direction; the storm had other plans. I clutched the paddles of the boat, like tiny, wizened babies in the crook of each arm.

The flock of birds above me squabbled urgently, trying to find an escape route, I looked up but the brunt wind dented the balls of my eyes. A moment of peace silenced the booming sound of waves, crying out over the horizons. In the middle of the ocean, a school of ripples, which have been far at sea all night, re-emerge into charging waves; my boat lopsided.

Flashes of the luminous black sky cloud my vision. Flinging myself from each unscathed beam of wood, the once unstoppable wind, has taken a break. Just as the relief kicks in, I can feel stampeding rain drop drumming on my back. The floundering bird have disappeared, but my anxiety still remains.

Till day rose, the wind flung me through the water. Rain rang out like a soprano in an opera, always seeking attention. I grip ever so tightly the edges of the wood; tremble but sit on. As midday approaches, the grimacing skyline starts to vanish.

Hope flushed through my veins as I looked up at the beacon of light.

Eventually, I am able to swim ashore. My only thought is the relieving sensation of sild ground. I stop to survey my surroundings. After a few ecstatic moments, I realise I am marooned on an unusually quiet island, with no food or water to last a week...

Words / Ethan Goveia, 1NPP

The Storm

Photography / Torsten Dederichs

Space Exploration

It has been more than 50 years since the last Moon landing, but this year many countries hope to visit this place of wonder. In 2024 there will be, and have been, many missions to explore our Solar System and beyond.

NASA is working on their Artemis Missions, which are the equivalent of the Apollo missions 50 years ago. In November they hope to send four astronauts to orbit the moon in the Orion spacecraft. They will brush by the surface and the atmosphere but will not land. It aims to pave the way for Artemis 3 and build on the uncrewed mission of Artemis 1. In this craft will be Reid Wiseman – Commander; Victor Glover – Pilot; Christina Koch; and Jeremy Hansen. The Artemis wish to achieve many things in these missions including the first person of colour as well as the first woman to land on the moon as well as creating a settlement that will sustain the crew for weeks or months.

NASA also has the Europa Clipper launch scheduled for October. Europa is one of Jupiter’s moons and is covered in a thick layer of ice. Because of its abundant supply of water, it is considered to be one of the best places to look for life. The Europa Clipper is the largest spacecraft to be used for a planetary mission, being five 5 metres tall and thirty metres wide. It is large because it needs a lot of space to fit its many cameras. NASA hopes to have many highresolution photos of the surface and atmosphere of Europa and a glance at the sub-surface using a penetrating Radar.

China is scheduled to launch Chang’e on 6th in May 2024. The unmanned space mission is named after the Chinese Goddess of the Moon. It is a lunar exploration mission and aims to collect samples from the dark side of the Moon. The CNSA (Chinese National Space Administration) robot will spend roughly 53 days on and around our Moon. It will be the first ever time someone or something has collected samples from the hidden side of the Moon. There are also a lot of other space missions going on and groundbreaking research being done. For example, the first private, not government backed, moon landing was launched on the 15th of February. But it begs the question, should we be spending the amount of money, time, and resources into space missions that we do today? Although a lot of great science and research comes from space missions, there are a lot of problems in the world that need to be solved and many governments are using taxpayers’ money to send people into space. It costs on average 58 million dollars for a space mission. That money could be spent on trying to find renewable energy or for better education. Words / Alfie Roberts, 1AMS Illustration / NASA

The Europa Clipper is the largest spacecraft to be used for a planetary mission

Unlocking the cosmic frontier:

Exploring the boundless potential of interplanetary travel to sustainable worlds

With more stars in the Universe than there are grains of sand on Earth – around 200 billion trillion – and billions estimated to have one to three planets inside the “Goldilocks Zone” it is natural to wonder what life is like outside of Earth, what it would feel like to travel there, but if we did where to and how? Is interplanetary travel to other sustainable planets possible?

This question is particularly relevant and important now because of the high pollution levels and an estimated 7 years to resolve our climate crisis before Earth is beyond the point of return, this, unfortunately, would make many people rather leave than face the issues at hand. Even if we were to avert the climate crisis in about a billion years, we would still have to leave to stop all organisms on Earth from burning up in the natural life cycle of a star such as Earth. Moreover, the leisure industry has latched onto the idea of space travel; from Virgin Galactic to SpaceX, recreational space travel is becoming a reality – a reality that is perhaps as worrying as the climate crisis itself.

An article published by the BBC, “The myths and reality about interstellar travel” (BBC, 2016) shines a light on a topic that we as humans have thought about since the initial observation by Assyro-Babylonians around 1000 BCE. It gives insight into the state of travel through space and what is and is not possible when we talk about reaching other planets. This article displays how misleading media may pretend that space travel is uncomplicated and the author Nogrady takes into consideration how space travel will improve in the

future to allow for more complex missions. It refers to data collected previously to create good hypotheses on what is possible going forward in space travel.

Another article (The Astronomy, 2023), published by Dejan Stojkovic, an astrophysicist, explains black holes and how these shortcuts through space-time function. Though a short article it takes into account and considers the perspectives of all scientists on the matter and the research for and against the idea that wormholes are real. This will be important for the main discussion where long trips to get to other sustainable planets require a shorter way to get there. The article is a very clear indicator of our current knowledge of the potential existence of wormholes and how, if they are proven to be real, how they would work. It refers to ideas formulated by great and well-known scientists like Einstein. This is profound because these hypotheses give a good defence as to the science behind how they could work hypothetically. This article even accentuates a few misconceptions about wormholes like where they differentiate from black holes as well as the fact that they haven’t been proven to be real in technicality. This article underlines how these ideas have not been accepted yet in mainstream science.

With the data gathered from the articles even with our current technology, it seems unlikely that we as humans now could be able to get to other sustainable planets similar to Earth due to limitations such as the substantial time it would take to get to another planet like Earth.

Contradictory to what I had thought before researching, many more factors limit space travel other than just money and funding. Factors such as current

technology, medical restrictions, and the space-time paradox (The theoretical idea that if we found a way to travel at or close to light speed someone on their return to Earth could experience days while decades could have passed on Earth) which would ward off many people from even attempting something to this scale. However, in line with my beliefs, it still would be an incredibly pricy endeavour to establish a spaceship able to complete this extraordinary mission.

These results also build on several other ways of how we as humans might be able to get to other sustainable planets with the use of current technology and hypothetical technology which we could harness under the right conditions and circumstances expanding our knowledge of space and how we harness it, but first, it is important to understand where we are attempting to go. After checking all the possible exoplanets we can assume that the easiest to get to would be “Proxima Centauri b” a rocky exoplanet orbiting the habitable zone of the red dwarf star

“Proxima Centauri” about 4.24 Light Years away (85,000 normal years in an average spaceship). Though this seems quite far away it's closer than any others making this trip much easier for all parties involved. But how, then, to make the journey?

Much of what I say will be theoretical science however backed up with proof from scientific experiments and mathematical equations. Though it might not be possible now my hope is that in the near future, some of this might be possible.

One way and the simplest of the two ways in which humans could get to Proxima Centauri b is by putting

Even with our current technology, it seems unlikely that we as humans now could be able to get to other sustainable planets

our astronauts into cryogenic sleep. Cryogenic sleep, also known as suspended animation, is the process of your body being cooled down to the point where it triggers a deep sleep lowering your metabolism to the lowest possible levels. This is not much different from how a bear or squirrel might hibernate except for us it must happen at temperatures so low they can only be made in a laboratory, with NASA being the first to do it putting people into this deep sleep for up to two weeks! Though this seems like an amazing achievement this wouldn’t be nearly close enough for the 85,000-year-long period we would need to freeze them for. To get over this after every two weeks we could let them eat a bit and put them into cryogenic sleep again. Of course, you would need a substantial amount of energy to power the cryogenic sleep chamber and indeed also the spaceship; a series of solar panels could be installed.

The second method, by far the hardest, would be able to get us there much more quickly. However, the scientific prowess needed to this would be great. We would have to harness the energy of a black and white hole to create a wormhole to our destination. A wormhole is essentially a theoretical shortcut through space and time by “poking a hole through the universe” (The Astronomy, 2023). Though not strictly thought of as real, many notable scientists such as Einstein have formulated that they are real. Though none have been discovered it is likely that somewhere out there, there might be wormholes. If we could hypothetically find one and manage to survive the spaghettification process when travelling through one it could reduce the time to travel to Proxima Centauri b to just a few hours. Yet, due to the lack of current technology to support these kinds of missions to space it's likely we won't be able to get there until advancements in our knowledge of space are made.

With the correct technology, travel to other sustainable planets is technically possible, though much harder than I had originally hypothesized. Given the gruellingly long travel distance from Earth to our desired destination it would be very difficult at best to be able to harness the right equipment and people willing to take this long and even possibly dehumanizing trip. Due to certain limitations within my sources, I haven’t been able to cover some of the more technical problems that would occur within some of the bigger ones like how we would ensure a reliable and constant ground team for the centuries it would take to complete this mission. It would be very hard if not impossible to secure, and another dilemma would be gathering the resources to make a spaceship that could haul all this heavy machinery for the brave volunteers inside. Because of this, further study is needed to be conducted to be able to fully grasp the possibilities and limitations when talking about space travel. But I believe that there may yet be hope for the future of interplanetary travel.

Words / Kingston Brunson 2KBG Photography / Jeremy Thomas

Will Politics survive the threats of Artificial Intelligence?

In 2024, it is anticipated that more than 64 countries will hold national elections. The outcomes of these elections may result in a steady shift in power, or conversely, the integrity of our democratic systems being tested. Among the usual threats to the legitimacy of voting, a new danger looms – artificial intelligence (AI).

AI presents a complex array of issues concerning politicians, voters, and current governing bodies. Firstly, one of the more salient threats is deepfakes. Swift advances in software can create fake images and videos of almost anyone, many of which are full of nonsense. This may prove detrimental to a politician’s electoral campaign. In the run-up to this year’s US Presidential Election, deepfakes of Donald Trump’s mugshots have been circulated, as well as others depicting him resisting arrest. To a politically informed voter, it may seem ridiculous to believe the content of these deepfakes, however, there is still many those who will base their political stance on what they see online. Although it may not outrage viewers, it can very easily change their opinions and of course, their vote. This brings us to the topic of news sources and their credibility.

Last year, Ofcom found that the top news source for 16–24-year-olds was Instagram (44%), followed by Facebook and BBC One (both 33%); not far behind were Twitter and TikTok. From these statistics alone, it is clear that deepfakes can very much find their way to the screens of young adults. It becomes misinformation when the viewer does not verify the credibility of the sources. Currently, the threat may not be imminent to the forthcoming elections; however, in a decade’s time, a larger percentage of the voting population may be misinformed. Akin to other risks we face (e.g. climate change), it is essential to prevent the risk as early as possible.

cybercriminals with their own agenda; and though it is difficult to gather evidence for, opposition candidates potentially attempting to break down another politician’s campaign. Most interesting, I believe, is other governments uploading deepfakes. Could this be a new form of cyberactivity? It is unlikely but it could significantly influence the approaching elections. Moving on from deepfakes, the issue of AI being used inside governments must be discussed. Inevitably, due to the power and strength of AI, there will be questions asked about whether it should be used for policymaking, data gathering and other decisionmaking processes. For tasks like gathering information, assuming the data is accurate, there is little to be worried about as it is largely correct or incorrect. However, I see the problem lying around decisionmaking where AI could make mistakes and humans must take control.

Swift advances in software can create fake images and videos of almost anyone

With the complicated algorithms of AI built by hundreds of people, if the software makes a mistake, accountability is lost. Humans increasingly rely on AI to carry out jobs, and it would no longer be clear who made major decisions which the public has the right to criticise. Using AI to complete policies and allocate government spending would breach the government’s legitimacy.

This makes it clear that decision-making must be left to humans and the politicians citizens voted for.

So, the question about the creators and their aims with deepfakes is evident. Who is producing them? There is not one answer. What are their aims? There is not one answer. It can be found that other governments are stirring chaos through the news; other times it is

The current proliferation in the use of deepfakes and the possible adoption of AI in government procedures pose a momentous threat to the transparency of democracy and the integrity of our political systems. The circulation of false information is dangerous due to the rising use of social media platforms as news sources. Furthermore, relying on AI’s decision-making within governments removes transparency for the public, and renders accountability unclear. We can protect the principles of democratic politics, but it will take a responsible and cumulative effort which must begin now.

Words / Oliver McGuinness, 4JPH Photography / Brian Wertheim

No trust in Truss:

What caused the end of her 49-day tenure as PM?

The role of Prime Minister is hardly seen as easy; a neverceasing bombardment of probing by journalists has to be juggled with managing and executing the decisions of a government, with every single move being made under the scrutiny of the entire world. Since the days of Sir Robert Walpole in 1721, seen by many as the ‘first’ prime minister, there have been 57 different PMs. None of them, however, have lasted as brief a time as number 56, Liz Truss.

Truss was not an unusual candidate for PM; she, like many other PMs before her, had gone to Oxford, studying PPE, and had not raised any major red flags while she was an MP. After defeating Rishi Sunak in the September conservative party election, she took the helm of Prime Minister on September 5. Granted, her situation was far from ideal; she was taking on this role at a time when Queen Elizabeth II had just passed away. Immediately after this, however, the first of Truss’s bold moves took shape; the infamous ‘mini-budget’, which included scrapping high taxes and providing energy support packages for those in need. This was a huge U-turn from what the previous 3 PMs had emphasised; spending within your budget, and being prudent with your money. Her first act was looking like her first major mistake; the value of the pound was sent into a downward spiral, and organisations from all over the world were quick to critique it. To compound matters, it emerged that the Office of Budget Responsibility, which must evaluate any major financial plans, had not been able to review the ‘mini-budget’ due to it not being classed as a full budget. To many in the UK, it appeared that Truss and Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng had been able to rush their plan through on a mere technicality. Whether this was a deliberate undermining of power or an innocent mistake, was unknown, but Kwasi Kwarteng’s statement that there had been no time for a full review sowed doubt and mistrust into the minds of many. This cannot be mistaken as anyone other than Truss’s and Kwarteng’s fault. The plan may have had good intentions, but what was shown was a severe lack of awareness and a disregard for procedure, neither of which is seen as attributes of a good Prime Minister.

Her first act was looking like her first major mistake

The repercussions of the mini-budget had still not been fully felt. Truss was embarrassed again on October 14, when she sacked Kwasi Kwarteng. This alone again put out a show of distrust, as Kwarteng had been openly backed by Truss in the decisions he had made up to this point. Jeremy Hunt, who had supported Rishi Sunak when Truss was elected, was now Chancellor. The fact that Truss thought a strong ally of her opponent was the best candidate speaks volumes about the support she had, and also the strength of that support. There was more to come. Hunt then proceeded to undermine Truss by reversing all of her economic plans, and Truss was forced to agree. Truss’s promises of bold financial plans, which were a pivotal part of her success

at the election, had been quashed. The resignation of Suella Braverman, which contained strong criticisms of Truss’s rule, indicated Truss’s cabinet and support, like dominoes, were starting to collapse, one by one. It was this, along with a few poor media interviews, which presented Truss as a woman clutching at straws with no idea of what to do, that caused her to resign after just 49 days in charge, only 24 hours after her fighting speech, the headline of which was ‘I am a fighter’. One can only hope that future PMs will not make the same mistakes Truss did.

Words / KK Sunil, 3OMR

/ Lauren Hurley/Open Government Licence

Imagination

Tick, tock, tick, tock, The sound of the resounding clock, I don’t know what to do,

That is why I’m asking you, Could I ride a rollercoaster?

Draw another coloured poster?

Pet a dangerous snake?

Try and cook a steak?

Play a random game?

Possibly land the wall of fame?

Go bungee-jumping?

Try to fry a dumpling? Travel to another country?

And find somewhere with a half-decent Sunday?

I could say this is in reach, But they a problem each, Because for now I’m in the classroom, And no matter how hard vroom and zoom, It is still my imagination.

Words / Arshia Saffarizadeh, 1JRS

Illustration / Vocablitz

Ruminations on ‘Wanderer above the Sea of Fog’

My mind was as fogged as the nebulous churning sea that unveiled itself below me, just as I began to reach the craggy summit of this treacherous peak. With the welcome aid of my warn and battered cane, I arduously heaved my weary body up the last agonising step. An intense dizziness overcame me as I gazed out into the vast expanse below, my thoughts flickering between those of paralysing fear and absolute joy. I proudly examined the surrounding landscape, rolling banks of cloud pierced by jagged, boulderous rock formations sprawling out in every direction confined me to my pedestal of achievement.

For the first time since I had begun this arduous enterprise my mind was cleared of all thoughts, and I was able to appreciate the beauty around me. Everywhere I looked, in every detail, from towering peak to miniscule fissure, to the enormous swathe of sky below and above, there was colour, vibrance and life.

Words / Oscar Sandham, 2JMY

Painting / Caspar David Friedrich

UnravellingAnarchy

Anarchism’s foundations are widely debated amongst historians, with earlier renditions of what is now often referred to as ‘anarchism’ dating back to ancient Greece and China through discussions between philosophers. Anarchism in tradition, discussed the idea of removal or lack thereof of authority. This idea displays authority as an adverse movement in the attainment of true power and accomplishment. Traditional anarchism was based on the idea of more focused action to abolish power from the state, based upon the traditional values of freedom and liberty. The first modern figure to discuss the idea of modern anarchism was William Godwin who argued so through his novel ‘Enquiry Concerning Political Justice’ in which he debated the idea that the government is the corrupting force within society and how it should be abolished. Whilst Godwin merely spoke about this idea, French philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon is widely considered a pioneer in the notion of modern anarchism. Proudhon worked alongside Karl Marx, Mikhail Bakunin, and Alexandr Herzen before the French Revolution during the 1840s.

Initially, Proudhon and Marx shared ideas on the running and order of the socialist party, however, Proudhon eventually opposed Marx’s more authoritarian views, leaving the socialist party in France to preach more libertarian viewpoints. Proudhon’s subscription to anarchism arose during his work in factories in France which stated points of the benefits of a lack of governmental control over the country. He eventually wrote many memoirs and doctrines, such as ‘The System of Economic Contradictions’ in 1846 which directly opposed the government and capitalist-led France. This outlines the belief of Proudhon’s anarchism being one of power towards more socialist and libertarian belief systems. Whilst the theories and doctrines of both Proudhon and Godwin have validity in political theory, this idea has changed over time forming a newer belief of anarchism being post-anarchism and poststructuralism. Post-anarchism is the premise of questioning the traditional anarchist views, enveloping both these ideas along with feminism, scepticism,

and subjectivism, forming a new idea of anarchism. Along with this, post-structuralism formulation also challenged the ideas of traditional anarchism and its roots in morality. Both ideas were devised in May 1968 during anti-authoritarian strikes by a breadth of people around France through the occupation of universities, factories and more. Through these strikes the ideas of anarchism developed to a rejection of the rigid anarchist doctrines, instead exploring the idea of social movements and public discourse, forming current post-anarchism.

The true testament to anarchism and its general importance and implications is with the world itself and anarchist uprisings and societies. One such example is the aforementioned events in France in May 1968, with the causation of these events as a result of student discontent with the university system. Consequently, anarchist and radicalistic actions took place within the country, including many violent protests against the police force along with the idea of the formation and growth of revolutionary committees, including ‘La Fédération Anarchiste’ (The Anarchist Federation) which helped organise many of the protests at the time. Along with this, anarchism played a prevalent role during the Spanish Civil War and its inspiration in the creation of the Libertarian Social Revolution. This mainly anarchist-led revolutionary group fought directly against fascist leader Francisco Franco, specifically taking key victories in Catalonia and Valencia. However, despite large-scale victories, as a specific movement, it was relatively unsuccessful in stopping Franco and his backing from Hitler and Mussolini. Yet it outlines the importance of the

Traditional anarchism was based on the idea of more focused action to abolish power from the state

movement, along with the potential for success due to its small size in the face of a dictator such as Franco. This depicts the overall importance of anarchism as a movement throughout history. Due to the increase in environmental anarchism, ‘Green Anarchism’, along with the events of the Rojava revolution in Syria, with fighting for the rights of greater decentralisation and gender equality, displays anarchism being ever present in the current world political space.

To conclude, due to the ever-changing nature of anarchism, there is evident difficulty in finding a precise definition due to its subjectivity. As a

result of the multitude of anarchist factions within different nations, the opinion of anarchism and its understanding differs, with some following traditional anarchism and others the idea of post-anarchism through morality and beyond. So, what truly is anarchism? In my opinion, the central notion of anarchism is the wish for the removal of oppression through differing means, with the idea of freedom being pivotal to the identity of anarchism.

Words / Archie J H Bradbury, 5SEH

Photography / Mia Swerbs

2024 An eventful year

Apart from being a Leap Year, 2024 is looking to be memorable and very important. It is the world’s busiest election year. There are more elections this year, most likely more than most people would realise. There are several major sporting events taking place and lots of special and historic events too.

This year there are elections in fifty countries. In America, the elections seem to be going ahead with the same candidates as in 2020. Americans will be choosing the 60th US president, who will serve in the White House for four years, starting from January 2025.This election is expected to be the costliest election in American history. 10 billion dollars are going to be spent on political adverts. The adverts are a concern; the worry is that A.I. will be used for campaign adverts creating false information. The Federal Election commission still has not released any rules on the usage of Artificial Intelligence.

Vladmir V. Putin recently announced, at an awards ceremony for the war he launched against Ukraine, that he is standing for a fifth term in service as President of Russia and elections are due to be held in March this year. Putin has been leading Russia since 1999. India is currently the most populated democracy. Soon they will hold a general election sometime between April and May 2024 and it is expected to be the world’s largest. There are more than 900 million people registered to vote in India. The race is between the current Prime Minister, Narendra Modi and 20 opposing parties. Modi hopes to be re-elected for a third term.

In June this year, two women, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, and Xochitl Galvez, are running for presidency of Mexico. It is the first time ever that the two main candidates are women. Claudia Sheinbaum, a scientist, and former mayor of Mexico City is the ruling party candidate. Xóchitl Gálvez, is a former senator and computer engineer who grew up in poverty.

The 2024 elections in South Africa are the country’s most important in thirty years. The African National Congress Party have been in power since 1994 when Nelson Mandela became South Africa’s first black president, but it looks like they may not win the elections this year.

The European Parliament elections will also take place this year in June. More than 400 million voters in countries in the EU will elect 720 new members for the European Parliament Disney’s copywrite protection for the original version of Mickey Mouse expired on January 1st this year. In November 1928, Walt Disney released a cartoon short film called ‘Steamboat Willie’. It was revolutionary, it used synchronized sound and would go on to be one of the most popular and famous cartoons in the world. More famously though this film introduced the characters Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse to the world. Disney have been fighting for extended copywrite protection for years but now this original version of Mickey Mouse is in the public domain and anybody in the USA can use it without fear of copyright.

This week the Supreme Court in America agreed to decide whether Trump can go on trial for election interference in 2020. It is not sure if the trial can be scheduled and can go ahead and finish before the November elections. Moreover, his bid for immunity may hold things up.

On Indonesia’s Independence Day on 17 August, a new capital of Indonesia will be inaugurated. They are currently constructing a new city which is called Nusantara, in the island

of Borneo, which has a low population. This project cost the president, Joko Widodo, 30 billion dollars. The reason for building a new capital city, is because the current one, Jakarta, faced many environmental challenges, frequent heavy flooding, bad air pollution, and shortages of drinking water.

Furthermore, this year, at least 28 countries in Africa plan to introduce a anti malaria vaccine, starting in early 2024. This vaccine, R21/Matrix-m, was developed by Oxford University and is more efficient then the first vaccine RTS, S. This vaccine could save tens of thousands of lives each year.

King Charles III bank notes will enter circulation on 5th June 2024. The King’s portrait will go on the 5-, 10-, 20- and 50-pound notes. This will be the only change to the current designs. These new notes will be in co-circulation with Queen Elizabeth II notes.

2024 is a big year for two major sporting events, the Olympics, and the European Football Championships.

The 2024 Olympics are being held in France and are hosted by Paris exactly one century after they last held it, but this time it is with a modern torch. The Olympics is an event that only happens every four years and the first Olympics in history were held in 700 B.C. in Olympia in Greece. Only

Greeks took part in the games then but now the modern-day Olympics have every country taking part except for a few countries this year; Russia and Belarus due to the war In Ukraine, and Guatemala because of government interference. The opening ceremony for the games this year will be very special and different because it will be on a flotilla of boats.

This year EURO 2024, the seventeenth edition of the EUFA European Football Championship is taking place in Germany. Every European country tries to qualify for the main tournament but only 24 make it in. This year it is being hosted by Germany. Only two countries, Germany, and Turkey, bid to host the Euros 2024 and following a vote in 2018, Germany was selected over Turkey. Germany won the vote, 12 to 4.

The German team instantly qualifies as hosts. Ten stadiums across Germany are set to host several games throughout the tournament.

In conclusion there are many important events taking place this year and apart from 2024 being a record year for elections there are many other things happening too. This year is truly packed full of action and surprises.

Words / Ed Barnes, 1JEJ

Photography / Luca Dugaro

There are several major sporting events taking place

Can the past guide the future?

For several centuries, the core tenets of democracy have overwhelmed Western Civilisation, with the Western World currently enthralled by the liberal democratic ideology. The roots of democracy however are anything but modern, stretching back to 500 B.C. when Cleisthenes 1 and others founded Athenian democracy – the first instance of a system that would substantially evolve into the democratic system we see today. From this, one is inclined to observe that the philosophy of today often derives from the past, and in many cases, our politics, culture, and philosophy are evolutions of historical events and ideas. Therefore, if the current social climate of the world is a construct of past ideas, then the natural inductive conclusion to make is that the future will be a continued evolution of the past. This essay will aim to establish the extent to which the past can act as a guide for the future. I will therefore analyse two alternative schools of thought: the first arguing that the past cannot provide insight into the future because of its intrinsically unpredictable nature; the second arguing that it can be a guide to the future because there are observable patterns in human history which we can inductively reason will occur in the future, Personally, I believe that the past is a good guide in assessing the future because of the inductive argument one can make on how certain patterns in history repeat themselves.

One argument is that the past is an ineffective guide for the future because the future is inherently unpredictable as outlined by the Butterfly Effect. Consider this: had the Entente Powers been aware that the untenable terms outlined in the Treaty of Versailles 2 would eventually spark a strong rise in nationalist sentiment among Germans and open the path for National Socialism and war in Europe, would they have amended their strategy? Certainly so. This example demonstrates the unpredictability of history, for time has proven that the political and social climate of the world is strongly influenced by unpredictable factors. Very few had the insight to see that the harsh economic

Single, unforeseeable events can radically alter the path of history

sanctions of Versailles would eventually culminate in the Nazi State when combined with the despair of the Great Depression 3. An unforeseeable event – it saw the Nazi Party poll from a measly 3% in 1928 to 44% in 1933. The Butterfly Effect holds the explanation for this, arguing that any non-linear system could drastically change through significant or unexpected events. This idea stems from the greater Chaos Theory 4 and demonstrates the fundamental challenge to the question at hand: we cannot reliably predict the future by assessing the past because society, philosophy and history can all be shifted by unpredictable events. This is best expressed through the “Ripple Effect” analogy, which states that events in history are like pebbles dropping into a pond – they cause ripples along the surface that disrupt the predictable flow of the water and create a wide impact from the point at which the pebble dropped. Scott Adams, an American Author, explains that the fundamental point is that “every act creates a ripple with no logical end”. The Butterfly Effect is particularly significant as it undermines the use of the past as an effective guide for the future because of the inherent unpredictability of the future. Single, unforeseeable events can radically alter the path of history. However, if we accept that the past is not an absolute indicator of the future, it can nevertheless be argued to provide guidance for the future, which is where this argument falters: it cannot remove the evolutionary factor of history, but rather challenges it by implying there is an unpredictable factor. This does not discredit the past as a factor of guidance though, for even in the presented example of the rise of German nationalism, we see how the past can provide insight into future events. Consider the parallels between the rise of National Socialism to the enlightenment revolution that subdued France in the 18th century. The French Revolution taught us that when a Nation is confronted by economic depression, an unfavourable government, and a revolutionary populist philosophy, it can become enthralled by revolutionary spirit and undergo extreme changes, particularly regarding social and foreign policy. Then, consider the Nazi rise to power where economic depression (Great Depression), revolutionary populist ideas (Fascism) and a distrusted government (Weimar Republic 5) created the climate for total internal social change and a Jingoistic foreign policy. Here, one can see how the past can be a persuasive guide for the future, where despite the unpredictability of certain elements such as the Great Depression, one can still make accurate inferences from the past. As a result of this, I would argue that the Butterfly Effect does not discredit the value of the past as a guide for the future, because although one must acknowledge that there is an unpredictable factor, we can still observe how the past gives insight into the philosophical, social, and historical changes to come.

Another argument is that the past demonstrates certain unchanging patterns in Human society which can therefore act as a beneficial guide to the future through inductive reasoning. This argument draws

from the larger Cyclical Historical model, proposing the idea that human behaviour, societies, and philosophies act in a recurrent means and therefore we can make inferences about the future based on these repeating patterns. One Scholar, Arnold Toynbee, demonstrated this phenomenon through his study of previous civilisations. He remarked that there is an observable pattern in the rise and fall of civilisations, in which for a certain period, most nation-states are dominated by few, large, prominent civilisations which represent the “known world” of that time. However, left unchallenged, the civilisation can no longer grow through "challenge and response” (responding successfully to challenges, allowing for gradual growth), entering a period of decline until their inevitable downfall: what ensues next is a period of low-level organisation until another nation-state eventually becomes the next dominant civilisation. For example, he argued that the fruition of the Industrial Revolution, Imperialism and the two World Wars were two new dominant civilisations – The Soviet Union and the USA. However, following his cyclic model, these two powers are already far along the path to disintegration, with the Soviet Union a collapsed state and the USA on the slow decline from its position of total domination - observable through the competitive growth of China. This, he argues, has occurred many times before, with parallels being drawn to the Roman Empire and Medieval Europe, demonstrating how Society undergoes a cyclical pattern of competitive growth into several dominant civilisations and cultures, until an inevitable decline when the competition disappears. Whilst this is only one observed pattern of Human history and society, it still displays the greater use of the past as a guide to the future, as from an inductive lens, we can take these patterns and make inferences about the future. For example, following this model, one might predict that the World is currently on a trajectory to fall into a period of low-level organisation once the United States finally loses its dominant and influential position. On the contrary, one might instead argue that using the past patterns in human history to make inductive conclusions about the future oversimplifies the complex nature of humans and society. For example, Toynbee’s model does not consider factors such as technological innovation and increased interest in global participation, which may disrupt and change the pattern of civilisation.

Consider global organisations such as the United Nations, European Union, and NATO, which encourage strong partnerships among nation-states in contrast to Toynbee’s model of conflict. However, one should consider that similar social and technological advances have not altered the course of Toynbee’s cyclical model before, as the Roman State and Hellenic6 culture introduced a plethora of new technological innovations and new philosophical ideas: so much so that Plato’s founding ideas of the ‘Republic’ and the subsequent Senatorial system of Rome are still apparent in the modern world, with the United States being clearly influenced by these ancient ideas (for example the use of capitol buildings and individual state governance).

Despite this success, Rome followed the same fate as the others under Toynbee's model and was followed by a period of low-level organisation and depression referred to as the ‘Dark Ages’. It is therefore clear that even when there is a period of technological and philosophical marvel, it does not necessarily mean that Toynbee’s Cyclical model fails. Even if one accepts that we are currently under exceptionally unique circumstances in history, it is nevertheless apparent that the past has provided insight into patterns that we can expect from the future, and therefore whilst it may not be entirely accurate, it is irrefutably a beneficial guide to the future as certain patterns continue to emerge. As with the first argument, there is always going to be the issue of exact certainty, which under no case can be assured, however, that does not refute the value of the past as a guide to the future because it provides a reasonable inductive argument in favour of certain trends to occur. In conclusion, the underlying challenge of assessing the future under the guidance of the past is that there is an unpredictable element which cannot be ignored. The Butterfly Effect illustrates this issue best by demonstrating how unpredictable events can shift the course of history. The question remains: is this enough to discredit the use of the past as a guide to the future?

I would conclude that it is not. Toynbee’s Cyclical Historical model demonstrates that we can follow certain patterns in history to make inductive predictions about the future. These patterns seemingly overcome any unpredictable event, as the conditions by which civilisations rise and fall remain unchanged. Though perhaps not entirely accurate, Toynbee certainly conveys the value of the past as a guide to the future.

Words / Charlie Kennedy, L6LCS Photography / Gerd Altmann

1 Chief archon of Athens (525-524 B.C); regarded as the founder of Athenian democracy

2 The treaty signed between the Entente Powers and Germany on the 28th of June 1919

3 Global economic depression following the Wall-Street Crash in 1929

4 The study of random or unpredictable behaviour in non-linear or complex linear systems

5 The Democratic government of Germany established under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles

6 Relating to Greek history or culture

Thedecisionlab.com (2023) The Butterfly Effect. Available at: https://thedecisionlab. com/reference-guide/economics/the-butterfly-effect

Encyclopaedia Britannica (2023) Chaos Theory Available at: https://www.britannica. com/science/chaos-theory

Baldwin, Scott (2020) The Ripple Effect Available at: https://savvy.directorprep.com/ blog/the-ripple-effect fs.blog (2019) The Butterfly effect: Everything you need to know about this powerful mental model Available at: https://fs.blog/2017/08/the-butterfly-effect/ Loevy. R (2012) ‘Arnold J. Toynbee and the Cycle of Civilisation’ Colorado College. Available at: https://faculty1.coloradocollege.edu/~bloevy/ArnoldJToynbee/ToynbeeCycleOfCivilizations.pdf

Encyclopaedia Brittanica (2023) Cyclic view of time in the philosophy of history Available at: https://www.britannica.com/science/time/Cyclic-view-of-time-in-thephilosophy-of-history

Geyl, P. (1948) Toynbee’s System of Civilizations’ [Review of A Study of History by A. Toynbee]. Journal of the History of Ideas https://doi.org/10.2307/2707397

Celebrating seven years of leadership: a farewell to Headmaster Chris Ramsey A

s we bid farewell to our Headmaster, Mr Chris Ramsey, it is fitting to reflect on his remarkable tenure at Whitgift. Over the past seven years, Mr Ramsey has not only navigated the complexities of leading a boys' school in South London but has also steered us through unprecedented times with resilience and new vision for Whitgift in 2025. Leading Whitgift comes with its unique challenges, compounded by the tumultuous period since early 2020. Despite these headwinds, Mr Ramsey has not merely maintained the status quo; he has driven substantial progress. His significant achievements include a stronger focus on the importance of academic performance (Whitgift has been named as a top IB world school multiple times in recent years) and inspirational teaching, a strategy for the development of international schools, and moving the school to a culture of philanthropy, all whilst upholding Whitgift’s strong co-curricular standards. Under his leadership our students have excelled and secured places at top universities around the world, represented the school at the highest level in international sport and made an impact globally with their performances in music and drama. Although Mr Ramsey is not one to look for awards, the school’s excellence was recognised nationally when Whitgift won the “Independent Boys’ School of Year” in 2020. One of the enduring principles Mr Ramsey brought to Whitgift is a heightened awareness among staff that the money the school spends is "parents' money". This phrase has resonated deeply, influencing a careful and principled approach to financial decisions. As part of this approach, he set about upgrading the operations around the school,

creating an estates masterplan to optimise the site for future development and make it safer and healthier for our students. Traffic in the centre of the school has been removed and is now pedestrianised. There has been an increase in social play space and significant upgrades to Big Side and Puntabout which have more than doubled the hours that students can play on these fields. Furthermore, he has laid the foundation for two key developments: a new sixth form and wellbeing space and eventually a new performing arts centre.

Mr Ramsey is passionate about the power of education to transform lives. In the seven years that he has been at Whitgift he has championed all students, ensuring that Whitgift is truly open and accessible to all students no matter their background or their wide-ranging interests. Under his leadership, Whitgift has taken significant steps towards a cultural transformation. He has worked tirelessly to improve the school's environment, fostering positive attitudes towards gender and race and instilling a robust culture of "giving back". This ethos of philanthropy has taken root and promises to benefit both our students and the wider Whitgift community in the years to come as “Whitgift for All” goes from strength to strength. The first full Bursary award which will be available from September 2024 is a testament to his fortitude and vision.

Mr Ramsey's presence in the corridors and genuine enjoyment of spending time with students has been a hallmark of his tenure. He meets weekly with the school captain team on Fridays and makes regular visits to Tutor groups, recently completing visits to every Lower Sixth Tutor group this term. His commitment to being actively involved in student life has been greatly appreciated; particularly by the school captain team who have been known to enjoy a game of “garden golf” in the Headmaster’s garden at the end of the academic year!

As Mr Ramsey prepares to embark on new adventures in Spain, we extend our heartfelt gratitude. He has left an indelible mark on Whitgift, and we are profoundly grateful for his service as the School’s 27th Headmaster.

Words / David Cresswell, Senior Deputy Photography / Whitgift

A fond farewell to David Cresswell

The relationship between Head and Deputy is inevitably a close one. No-one knows you better, nobody else can speak the gloves-off truth to you, to no-one else (at work at least) does the Head not have to put on any kind of show. It’s not quite Holmes and Watson, or Morse and Lewis, more Spock and Kirk. It’s well-known that David Cresswell was a pupil at the school where I was myself a Deputy Head, and that he was in one of my classes. He says I taught some French impressionist poetry, though I don’t remember. It certainly wasn’t on the syllabus though, so it does sound like me. Now I can say that as my Deputy of these last four years, David has taught me at least as much as I have taught him. He became Senior Deputy at Whitgift just as Covid struck. Literally: his first proper visit in March 2020 was curtailed because of what we then thought was a slightly irritating but minor illness. His first year was dominated by the need to organise, or rather re-organise the school. I am sure he found that frustrating, but he set about it with clarity, thoroughness and a sureness of touch which immediately held the respect of staff and pupils alike. He knew we wanted to get as much normality as quickly as possible, and found ways to organise the first school fixtures of any school, the summer festival (in the quad), at the same time taking seriously the needs and concerns of staff, parents and pupils.

He is of course highly organised. Deputies must juggle, prioritise, direct and still be calm, and still be seen around. Pupils respect teachers who have their best interests at heart, whose kindness is not ‘niceness’, often tough, but inevitably smiling, believing in the best but prepared to deal crisply with any falling short. Many of us have seen those management books (‘Radical Candour’!) on David’s shelves, but it’s not just theory. He has tried and tested what works, and when he reads about a way of operating which he likes, he tries it and if it works, makes it his own. When I say I have learned from him, it is in this adaptability, this sense for what works now, how we keep the best of tradition but make it work in the modern world, that I mean. Highest of praises for a deputy too: he gets stuff done. Left out of this summary are some of the things which define David much better as a human being: his distinguished hockey career, as both player and coach; ditto tennis. His skilful and dedicated German teaching. His love of the theatre and his ability both as a director and an actor. David the modern man, who has all the latest gear and tech (I have never played golf with him, thank heavens, but my sister has, and her only comment to me was ‘well he has plenty of kit’). A Deputy also has to be good company. And he is: funny, well-read, thoughtful.

Apart from the poetry – if that’s true – I did direct him in Much Ado about Nothing . One scene in particular sticks in my mind: it was supposed to be a sunrise, which the technical crew couldn’t get right. We re-ran it time and time again, and he was spot on every single time. Steady, reliable, classy without being flashy: he will be a superb Head of Barnard Castle School, and we all wish him, Aynsley, Olivia and Alexander the very best of good fortune.

Words / The Headmaster

Photography / Whitgift

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Whitgift School

Haling Park

South Croydon

London CR2 6YT

United Kingdom