On Repeat

My understanding of South African history and the clashing introduction of Europeans was very different from the “New World” rushes where adventurers were promised a land of plenty. Almost everyone at that stage was working the land of the VERY old world in some form. None of this modern “what do you want to be when you grow up?”. 

Some people did well out of that, but the vast majority were struggling along. The “teach a man to fish” parable probably still worked because all the fish weren’t *explicitly* owned. On top of struggle, there was war. 

The Xhosa Wars/Cape Frontier Wars were a series of nine conflicts from 1779 to 1889. After the Napoleonic Wars, the English got more involved. Britain was facing serious unemployment problems, and sent a group of poor “1820 Settlers” to set up in the middle of where this conflict had been. 

A bunch of wars followed to set up various people’s dreams of unity. To create identity. 

Fast forward to the question, “why spend so much time thinking about history?”. Why not move forward? Leave the past in the past. I spend a lot of time thinking, and rethinking, through my history. I believe it frames how we think and decide. 

Learning history is like group therapy. Decisions and behaviours all happen in context. Many of our choices are simple repetitions of what we saw done. Repeated, repeated, repeated, till they are a part of us. Even if we can come up with made up justifications if challenged, we don’t understand why we do everything we do. 

Most of our choices are automated. Life is too complicated and intricate for us to constantly reflect on everything. A lot of our wisdom and bias is inherited.

amathole mountains

a setting for war

Intricate Knots

We constantly unpack as we move, rebuilding our spoken and unspoken contracts of how we agree to work with each other. Negotiating complex relationships that we grasp at an understanding of. Meeting and not meeting each other’s expectations. 

Our decisions and approaches have both intended and unintended consequences, and sometimes we explode. We need new agreements. 

There are multiple ways of looking at the two World Wars. The simple one is the defeat of Fascism. Another way is first the controlling Empires punching themselves in the face till they couldn’t sustain/justify Empires, then a couple of decades later Colonial Powers punching themselves in the face till they couldn’t sustain/justify Colonies. Ideas of Nationalism and Self-Determination, that also sowed seeds of xenophobia, protectionism and Apartheid. 

Another part of my story is a Romeo & Juliet marriage across the aisle of angry Boers fighting in one of the Anglo-Somebody wars. Descendants of people fleeing the European wars of religion, famines, or heading on civilising missions because of delusions of grandeur. 

South Africa becoming a single country on a Canadian model that was the response of British diplomatic architects reacting to the American war of independence. 

Layer upon complicated layer of people building up and unpicking the knotted mass of strings of who they are and want to be. Deciding on a path with limited information, and controlling a slice of limited resources to make that happen.

Occupé

Complexity is hard to deal with. So we ask easier questions. We model reality with stories and characters. We come up with simplifying numbers to make choices. Everything we think and say is based on assumptions. Under each assumption is another assumption. Till you get to axioms. Statements we regard as accepted or self-evidently true. If we don’t agree on those, it gets progressively harder to agree on the simplified versions higher up the house of cards. I am attempting to burst my English bubble. It’s hard. I love writing, listening and talking. But it is almost all in English. Other languages offer slight twists of perspective. Take the word “Busy”. To me that’s the root. French is occupé. That feels more insidious. Like an occupied country during war time. It’s more like a thesaurus than another language. There is some common ground. But I am still just at the stage where I hear a string of unintelligible, but very sexy, sound when I hear French. I still need to do the deep work to be able to connect. To train my ear. Train my tongue. Train the way I see the world. That feels like rewiring who I am. Just like unwinding prejudice.

Occupied France

Poker Money

I have never been in a proper physical fight. Some facing up, and posturing, but never in a full flung war. So I am not sure how I would respond. The closest I have come to battle is Rugby. 

As a 12-year-old tiny pipsqueak, I was fairly fearless and would take on the famously big Mario from Northwood. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. As a 13-year-old, I had moved from the scrum to the wing (sans speed) and was fairly easy to scare. The "13-year-old" eight-foot-guy from Glenwood with his kids cheering from his car, was welcome to run through me. My confidence returned a bit when my growth spurt kicked in, and I moved back to the side of the scrum. I was happy to get involved again.

Battles normally involved "looking someone in the eye" and a hard tackle, unless it was in a pile-up. Once, my team won a penalty because someone bit my nipple (through my jersey!) in front of the ref. Another time, this time at University, my nose was broken with a punch from the Police (not the cleanest Rugby players).

There is nothing abstract about facing up to someone you know can hurt you. For all the bravado, most Gents learn a fair amount about de-escalation because they know how much it hurts the next day.

Actual war, which I have been very lucky to avoid, used to be a similar face-to-face affair. Gradually, as it becomes a tech battle... guns replaced swords, bombs replace bullets, and people end up getting in their car and driving home for dinner after dropping a drone. Abstract.

This is a problem with the world of money as things get bigger. There is a disconnect between reality and financial decision making. We don't see things getting made. We don't see big parts of the world we are connected to.

"Poker Money" is an idea related to the famous song The Gambler - you never count your money, when you're sitting at the table. When playing Poker, you can't think of the chips as real money. It affects your decision. The best players in the world can be beaten by really rich (semi-competent) people who can raise the stakes to a point where the great player cares too much about an individual hand or game.

Even real money becomes Poker Money is a connected world. "The Law of One Price" is that the same thing should cost the same everywhere. This is a "Law" only in principle because it is not true in reality. Transaction costs and barriers mean we have to pay very much dependent on where we are.

This means that the price of a cup of coffee a day in the UK (say £2.50 for 30 days) would currently translate into about R1,300/month in South Africa. The Upper Bound Poverty Line (UBPL) in South Africa was moved from R992 a month (2015) to R1,138 (in 2017). In 2015, it was estimated 55% of South Africans lived below the UBPL. 

As a Soutie, that is crazy to wrap my head around. I am "sitting at the Poker Table", so I can't think of the Pounds I spend in Rands. The Afrikaans saying for doing that would involve "'n klein bietjie kots in my mond".

The challenge is getting the right balance between living life locally, and being in a global world. We are interdependent, but there are many obstacles, costs, barriers and local challenges that mean we aren't looking each other in the eyes. Our realities are detached from each other.

Poker Money is real money. Drones are real fights. The Global World is a Local World.

Just One Fifty

We have limited capacity. Limited time. Limited attention. Limited energy. The power of this is that we will make different mistakes. Mistakes are the foundation of resilience in an unpredictable world. With perfect knowledge of the future, doing what works again is sensible. With a complex, ambiguous, and uncertain world... small, regular, reversible mistakes are strength. 

Financial Empowerment (Ending Poverty) and Mental Health (Relationship Building) are my areas of focus. In 'Factfulness', Hans Rosling identifies five key threats we are wrestling with. Global Pandemic (the rampant spread of a disease in a connected world), World War (with weapons that could wipe us all out), Financial Meltdown (with the systems that keep us cooperating breaking down), Climate Change (where the resources and environment that sustain us breaks down), and Absolute Poverty (where Billions are excluded from the opportunities our ancestors built). These huge challenges facing 7.5 Billion people seem way to big to wrap our heads and hearts around.

It also means there are 7.5 Billion other heads and hearts facing the same challenges. The resilience, endurance, and creativity can come from everywhere. How do we narrow down and choose our own particular area of focus?

I am attempting to do that by joining others to build a Community of 150 People. 'Dunbar's Number' gives a (relatively arbitrary) number to the limit of our ability to develop stable social relationships. A group of people where you can know everyone, and know how everyone knows everyone. Where you can develop an understanding of the group's values, skills, and knowledge. An understanding of the group's story.

This should allow the ability to put names, faces, and stories to massive problems. Instead of 'X million people' don't have access to electricity, clean water, safety etc., it becomes a person. Mike doesn't have a bank account. Kerishnie doesn't know how to put a C.V. together. Thandiwe is old, and lonely. It also allows relationship building with people to be done in a sensitive, peer-to-peer, way.

We have a horrible history of 'Civilising Missions'. Where people with Saviour Complexes have attempted to spread their truth roughshod over established beliefs and strengths. Helping sensitively is hard. It is a minefield. Not to treating people as problems or projects. Regularly reflecting on the real intentions behind our actions. Unwinding our unknown prejudices.

I believe a group of 150 is sufficiently small for us to stretch ourselves. The 'Six Degrees of Separation' theory, is that all 7.5 Billion of us are connected by just 6 relationships. One knows Two, who knows Three, who knows Four, who knows Five, who knows Six, who knows Seven. That viral spread of knowledge lets what we learn benefit everybody. In a group of 150, we can try get the balance right between Local and Global. Stretching ourselves enough that we don't snap the 'Peer-to-Peer' connection. Enough common ground to see each other, enough different perspective to create a discomfort from which we can learn.

Those big risks we face are daunting. We need to break them down into bites. We need to look after ourselves, and each other. I believe that starts with Community Building. 7.5 Billion people is a lot of people to care for. How would the problem change if you focus on just One Fifty? How would you build that One Fifty?

Six Relationships

Shanghai

Four Cities in China have the same rank as Provinces - Tianjin, Beijing, Chongqing, and Shanghai. Shanghai has a population of about 24 million people, roughly the same as Australia. The City was one of five treaty ports forced to open to foreign trade after the British victory over China in the first Opium War. European tastes for silk, porcelain, and tea caused one-sided trade imbalances. Chinese Officials weren't keen to even the scales with Opium. Gunboats forced the issue. The City then flourished as a centre of commerce. It has now become a showpiece for the booming Chinese Economy. Shang means upon, and Hai, means sea. Ports have for a long time being where the best and worst of us clash.

Pudong, Shanghai (2010)

A reclaimed swampland

Evolution v Revolution

The English Civil War tore England apart. Thomas Hobbes was 64 years old when the conflict began. He became one of the leading thinkers arguing for evolution rather than revolution. The War pitted Parliament against the King. Charles I lost his head in 1649, 140 years before the French Revolution. Hobbes argued that chaos and bloodshed were more dangerous than obeying (even unjust) authority. He argued for slow change. He also argued for a Social Contract. He argued the rule of Kings couldn't be justified by Divine Right, but by representative consent. Charles II was restored to the throne after Cromwell's death, but gradually the Crown became a Constitutional position. Constitutions are built up by slow, difficult discussions and agreement. Agreements are messy, emotional, and open to change. A recognition that we don't need to play the same way, but we do need to agree on some basic rules. Us doesn't start with a vote, it starts with an agreement that there is an us. It starts with common ground and something worth building together.

Thomas Hobbes

España y Sudáfrica

Durante mucho tiempo, España fue la potencia mundial dominante. Crecí en Sudáfrica, donde cualquier impacto duradero no es inmediatamente obvio. España dominó las Américas hasta una combinación del movimiento de independencia después de Napoleón y la Guerra Hispanoamericana de 1898. Sudáfrica también fue afectada por la Guerra Napoleónica. Fue entonces cuando Gran Bretaña miró al sur. Llegaron los 1820 Settlers y comenzó una serie de Anglo-Somebody Wars hasta que se formó la Unión de Sudáfrica en 1910. Para entonces, España ya no era un gran negocio. Creo que entender el colonialismo español ayudará a entender los pasos necesarios para ayudar a sanar mi propia patria.

Guerra hispano-estadounidense

Yemen

Yemen is the home of the biblical 'Queen of Sheba' - the leader of a trading state that flourished for over a thousand years, including parts of Ethiopia and Eritrea. The idea of 'Africa' as a separate continent is very recent. The Suez Canal is a man-made separation. Europe, Asia and Africa are one land mass with very closely interwoven histories. In the Hebrew Bible, the Queen of Sheba came to visit Solomon with gifts of spices, gold and precious jewels. The Makonnen dynasty of Ethiopia claim descent from the child born out of that visit. There is no functional state and the area is ravished with war and blockades. A famine is underway affecting 17 million people. More than 50,000 children died from starvation in 2017. A painful reminder that despite our shared history, the importance of our lives is weighted by the random geography of our birth.

Queen of Sheba

United States of America

Continental Colours

Thirteen Star Flag

The Thirteen Colonies which declared independence from Britain in 1776 were on the east coast. A small slice of what is today the USA. The population of roughly 2.4 million people were predominantly from the British Isles. The British and French had just fought a war in the 1750s where the Colonists would have felt like pawns (like the C20th Cold War). It was the North American mirror of the Seven Year War. The French and American Revolutions that are founders of Nationalism followed. The French Revolution overthrew the monarchy (bankrupted by Wars). The American Revolution argued for "no taxation without representation" - rebelling against rule from afar. I struggle with how the enlightenment led away from Empires but towards race-based Nations. To empower 'The People', artificial barriers like flags, anthems, languages, borders, and national institutions need to be created. A lesson in unintended consequences, even of noble ideals.

Thirteen Colonies

Thailand

Ethiopia was the only African country never colonised by the Europeans. It is the reason so many flags in the world bear the Ethiopian colours once they gained independence. Thailand is the only Southeast Asian nation which did the same. Modern Nations only became a real thing after French Revolution and when Napoleon decided to dissolve the Holy Roman Empire (in 1806) and crown himself, shifting power from the Church to 'The People'. Like the Muslim Ummah (a supra-national community), the Catholic (universal) Church aimed to include everyone. France and England aimed to rule, and 'civilize'. They continued their European rivalry in the attached colonial arms race of Nation building. Able Thai rulers were able to exploit those tensions, and Thailand became a buffer state between British and French interests. From the mid-C19th century Thailand began its own industrialization process, which included nation-building along western lines. As war industrialised, it was difficult/impossible not to. By the time of World War I, nations needed soldiers prepared to die in production line like trenches. In 1917, then known as Siam, Thailand joined its colonial neighbours as part of the Allies.

Territorial Losses

Tajikistan

Civil war has often followed independence from foreign conquerors. Tajikistan became an independent nation following the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union. Its Civil War lasted from 1992 to 1997. This was not because of ethnic diversity. The vast majority are Tajiks, an Iranian group of people speaking a variety of Persian. Like the Germanic Migration Period (375-568) and the Bantu Expansion (from 1,000 BCE reaching South Africa by maybe 300 AD), distinct 'Nations' of people are often connected by hints at the past in their word choices. Their primary language has Persian roots. The second language is mainly Russian. The religion is mainly Islam. Lingering reminders of the various powers that have come and gone. The majority of ethnic Russians left when the Soviet era ended. The Civil War was fought between regional groups with opposition parties seeing reduced Russian influence as an opportunity for their brand of ideology.

Tajik Girls celebrating Persian New Year

Samoa

Unlike other islands which were colonised and the populations replaced, the Samoan people's ancestors reached their country about 3,500 years ago. Only a small minority are not indigenous. In most countries, that is the other way around. People tend to wander. Including Samoans! The island group, including American Samoa (still part of the US) were known as the "Navigator Islands" because of their seafaring skills. Although Europeans visited from 1722, contact was limited until 1830s when English missionaries and traders began arriving. Germany, the United States and Britain started backing military efforts to support their respective business interests. Backing different local groups, there was an eight-year Civil War (1886-1894). A proxy for war between colonial powers. In 1899, all three sent warships resulting in the Somoas being divided between Germany and the US. Britain backed off in exchange for Tonga. New Zealand took over after World War I, and independence came (for what was known as Western Samoa until 1997) in 1962.

Samoa v South Africa

(2007)

Saint Lucia

Saint Lucia was known as "Helen of the West Indies" because it swapped hands between French and British control so many times. The French first signed a treaty with the native people in 1660, and the British took decisive control in 1814 during the Napoleonic Wars. In between that control switched so each country ruled seven times. The majority of the population are the descendants of slaves. Saint Lucia also has a small minority with ancestry from India. Although misnamed the West Indies because of Columbus' ignorance, connection with actual India did occur when Britain started to bring indentured labourers in 1859. With slavery abolished, an indenture was the alternative way of getting the work done (by someone else). Indenture had also been used during 'The War of the Three Kingdoms' (1639-1651) as something to do with captured prisoners from Ireland and Scotland. The Thirteen Colonies in British America also used indenture for about half the almost 500,000 Europeans arriving there before 1775. Indenture was 'slavery with an end date'.

Gros Islet and Rodney Bay

England and France

North Sea Empire

Cnut the Great was King of England, Denmark and Norway with his North Sea Empire from 1016-1035. Henry IV was the first King of England (1399-1413) to have English as his mother tongue since the Norman Invasion in 1066. His mother was born in Lincolnshire while most of the previous Monarch's had married on the continent. By 1172, the Angevin Empire was at its greatest extent. A big chunk of what we now know as France and England were under the control of the same family. While the elite was Anglo-Norman with conquerors mixing with the ruling class, the common people were mostly Anglo-Saxon. Englisherie was the legal status given to a person that was slain that could be proved to be English rather than Norman. If the dead person couldn't be proved to be English, the administrative district was fined. If they were English, the fine was excused. King John lost Normandy to the King of France, and a resulting Civil War led to the Magna Carta with reduced powers for the Monarchy. The Hundred Years' War was fought  1337-1453 between the House of Plantagenet and the House of Valois over who had claim to the Throne of France. This war was part of the building of the national identity as two separate rival nations (read ruling families). If you want a war, you need an enemy.

The Angevin Empire - 1172

Norman Possessions - 12th Century

Philippines

About 10 million Filipinos live outside the country, making one of the world's largest diasporas. It sneaks into the 13 countries strong 100-million club, by population. Consisting of 7,641 islands, various competing maritime states have been set up there over time. With over 300 years of Spanish colonization, Catholicism became the dominant religion. After Spain lost the American-Spanish war, The First Philippine Republic was declared. In the peace treaty, Spain sold the country to America. The locals had successfully fought off the Spanish, but America asserted its colonial status in the Philippine-American war, which it won. The Catholic Church was disestablished as the state religion and English was introduced as the language of government, education, and business. World War I was an Empire slayer. 1916 brought the Philippine Autonomy Act which was the first formal declaration of the United States' intention to grant independence. World War II delivered the knockout punch. In 1946, The USA relinquished sovereignty and recognised the independence of The Philippines. The wave of independence and decolonization also started in Africa.

Philip II of Spain

Inequality on Display

Two big drivers of some of the bloodiest wars the world has seen were Conspicuous Consumption and Work Ethic. War was partly a commercial venture. Having lost the Crusades (1095-1291), a series of 'internal' Christian wars raged between 1522 and 1700. Leaders craving power used powerful stories to create angry bases to further their interests. Conspicuous Consumption is spending money on luxury goods and services, to publicly display wealth and power. Work Ethic is the belief that hard work and diligence have an innate moral benefit. When lots of people are poor and struggling, it can't be hard to get people angry by pointing at people who aren't working as hard, and yet are displaying their wealth. Indulgences (a payment to reduce the punishment for sins) were used to finance buildings such as St. Peter's Basilica. The German Monk, Martin Luther asked, "Why does the pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the basilica of St. Peter with the money of poor believers rather than his own money?".

Bishops selling indulgences

Palestine

As nations are a story, they need people willing to listen for them to be 'true'. The Middle East is one of the most controversial areas, given different versions of the tale. Palestine is a de jure state recognised by 136 UN member states. Mandatory Palestine was a post World War I area carved out of the Ottoman Empire and put under the control of the British. An Arab uprising had helped the British drive the Turkish Empire out of the area. The British had supported the uprising under the promise of Arab independence (McMahon-Hussein), but had also separately and contradictorily agreed with France to divide the area up amongst the European powers (Sykes-Picot). A further complication came when under the Balfour Agreement, the British promised support for the creation of "a national home for the Jewish people" (who had made up 3-5% of the population of the area). Lots of promises made to lots of people. The promised land.

Areas under Palestinian Administration

Nicaragua

European Colonialism was in part a trade war between the rising European empires. It started largely about ports and trade routes before the Berlin Conference that regulated trade and colonisation in 1885. Less than 30 years before World War I rang the first death knells for Imperialism. The Mosquito Coast was an area on the coast of present-day Nicaragua and Honduras. A somewhat less appealing nickname than the Ivory Coast. When the first Spanish Conquistadors arrived in Nicaragua, they fought each other in what was known as 'The War of the Captains'. Two of the first two competing settlement were set up at Grenada on Lake Nicaragua, and Leon near Lake Managua. The winner became the colonies first governor. Without women in their parties, the colonists took local indigenous wives which led to a multi-ethnic population mix over time. 

Mosquito Coast in Orange

Nauru

Nauru is a Sovereign Nation with a population of just over 10,000. It is the third smallest state in the world after Monaco and the Vatican City. Early Micronesian and Polynesian explorers settled the island in around 1000 BCE. Nauru is a Phosphate Rock island which allows easy strip mining. In the late 1960s and early 1970s it boasted the highest per capita GDP in the world. Not dissimilar to Equatorial Guinea which currently has the highest GDP per capita of any African country. Then the Phosphate ran out. Now the per capita GDP is $8,570 per person. The 12 traditional clans are represented in the 12 pointed star on the flag. Between 1888 and 1898 there was a civil war that killed around 500 people, which was a third of the population. Germany annexed the island and banned alcohol and firearms. The Islanders wanted peace but didn't trust other local tribes enough to lay down their own arms. In 1914, power was transferred to Australia. Independence came in 1968, but the country remains heavily dependent on aid. It gets this in part for acting as accommodation for refugees applying for asylum.