Bukowski on Belonging and the Cost of Freedom

Louis Pasteur, oil painting by Albert Edelfelt (1885) at the Musée d'Orsay,  (Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons).

Factotum by Charles Bukowski
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It's hard not to enjoy Bukowski's writing. Like with Hemingway and others, why we find it fascinating to read about the shenanigans of people who struggle to write is beyond me. Is it because secretly anyone who reads wishes they could write? Is this part of Robert M. Hutchins' Great Conversation? I don't know.

Yet while some would suggest that Bukowski is the world's greatest misogynist, he doesn't depict anyone else in this novel any worse than he does himself. His mention of ending it all early in the novel hints at the level of self-deprecation that just didn't seem to come through in my reading of Post Office.

In this novel, I feel Bukowski's sense of dereliction of duty but from a sensitive soul who is otherwise intelligent. The constant references to Debussy and Mahler indicate someone who is far more than the alcoholic bum Bukowski portrays in this novel.

Yet it is believable (I am cutting out my adverbs as I write - Bukowski reminds me of a combination of Hemingway and Fitzgerald, hence my hesitation to add "entirely" - he's either believable or he isn't). The protagonist moves from job to job, surrounded by others who share his sense of despair at the world - a world they are part of yet cannot belong to without giving up their sense of identity.

I identify with Bukowski for this reason. Not so much the "beer-sodden" bum who wanders about aimlessly. But the soul who cannot ever belong but is stuck in present company that somehow can turn off their own bullshit meter sufficiently (damn those adverbs!) to carve out an existence of what is essentially living for somebody else.

I find Bukowski's characters admirable because they give up hope without giving up their freedom. Although Henry Chinaski is made to feel as if he doesn't belong because he is excluded from the World War II draft, he still lives as the intelligent loner who doesn't fit in but is stuck anyway.

But the struggle is admirable. Struggle is what we were put on this earth to do. We either struggle against what we do not want, or we struggle for a better life. Henry Chinaski is a drunken, no-hoper bum but he gives me hope - hope that I can live as I choose and not how others choose for me, even if the consequences are high.

And that is why I enjoy Bukowski's work!

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PPN 2020: From Globalization to Globalism

Dr Michael de Percy presenting at the Public Policy Network 2020 Conference.

This paper was the precursor to my chapter 'Populism and a New World Order' in Jakupec, V., Kelly, M., & Makuwira, J. (2020). Rethinking Multilateralism in Foreign Aid: Beyond the Neoliberal Hegemony. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367853808.

The abstract and slides from my presentation at the Public Policy Network 2020 Conference at the University of Queensland on 30 January 2020 are below:

Abstract

Institutions tend to be stable for extended periods of time, punctuated by exogenous events that can lead to institutional change. If institutions tend to reinforce their own rules and routines, it can be said that institutions cannot then change themselves. While wars and other major exogenous events can lead to institutional change, ideas are also powerful, and relatively peaceful, drivers of change. Since the establishment of an international trade regime at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944, new ideas about the best way to organise the economy have influenced global trade, resulting in the establishment of the World Trade Organisation in 1995. The idea of free market economics led to a new global trading system, coinciding with the end of the Soviet Union, and this system has remained relatively stable since the end of Keynesianism on a global scale. Recently, however, the rise in populism and the re-emergence of nationalism have challenged the existing world order. This chapter examines the impact of the rise in populism and the re-emergence of nationalism on the international institutions of global trade. Using theories of institutional change, the chapter examines the extent that populist ideas about free trade versus protectionism are leading to a new world economic order.

From Globalization to Globalism: The Impact of Populism on Multilateral Institutions from University of Canberra

Modern Anchorites; or, How we displace reality because of the Fuckeaucracy

Contemporary Anchorites: When the insane becomes the popular stupid fuckeaucracy

What struck me about anchorites was their popularity. They were like the rock stars of the annoying Middle Ages where people were supposedly so stupid that they were complete idiots and believed anything.

And we tend to think of the Dark Ages as stupid - where stupid people continued to breed despite the odds of their perpetuating their stupidity. Not like now, when we are so advanced. Surely, we are so much more advanced than then?

It seems that we are now in the midst of a new period of stupidity. Everyone knows it, but we can't say a thing because the morons are in control again. If we state the obvious, we are obviously insane.

What am I talking about? The Age of Stupidity. It's like the Age of Enlightenment only dumber. It's like the Dark Ages except this time, we know that we are complete fucking morons.

And what's to blame? Bureaucracy. Although Weber and Durkheim may have pointed out the obvious in their time, it is now time that somebody who is not a bureaucrat came up with an alternative solution to what is obviously a crock.

So convince me that climate change is not real. That popular opinion is the predominant way of assessing policy. That people who spend their entire lives focused on crafting perfection in their field have nothing better to do than parade around being some elitist fuck because they are complete morons. That through their research they somehow arrived at something that suited their particular political agenda. Please. 

Tell me that every academic who is jumping through the hoops created by non-PhD or, more appropriately, non research active public servants who pretend to be academics but have career agendas beyond academia - that these non-academic people stood up to bullshit because it advanced their careers - and tell me what the fuck do these same clowns know?

And then tell me that the majority of people who barely did well at science in high school have a legitimate voice in policy-making. Please. Prove me wrong. No, please do so because I am sitting here thinking: WTF?

Most contemporary political problems are a consequence of a lack of knowledge. Whether the lack of knowledge is a consequence of the progressive dumbing down of university education is by the by (it is only a mater of time before it is true) but it is clear that everyone now has the democratised answer to everything. Who needs experts when we can now simply have the answer because we are so entitled to be brilliant?

Which is my point. Once, we may have clung to the words of some random fuckwit who locked themselves away in an anchor-hold to tell us about the future. Now we cling ourselves to some random fuckwit who tells us what we want to hear. 

The difference is training. If you think that academics are trained so peculiarly in scientific method that you, somehow with your non-research active idea about scientific method, are somehow better than every other natural and social scientist who have to defend themselves against popular opinion generated by uneducated morons who somehow know better; then fill our boots. 

You obviously know. Please. Be in charge of the future. I want you to be responsible.