Cuttings: August 2016

From Twister’s ‘sex in a box’ to Pokémon Go’s new reality: how games define the times - article by Arwa Mahdawi in The Guardian. "Monopoly... was initially called the Landlord’s Game and was invented at the turn of the 20th century to teach people about social inequality. 'It is a practical demonstration of the present system of land-grabbing, with all its usual outcomes and consequences,' wrote Elizabeth Magie, its inventor, in a political magazine. 'In a short time, I hope … men and women will discover that they are poor because Carnegie and Rockefeller, maybe, have more than they know what to do with,' she added. The Landlord’s Game was popular with leftwing intellectuals. However, over the next few decades less pedagogical versions of the game popped up. It seems that during the economic depression of the 1930s, people were more interested in playing at being a tycoon than interrogating tycoonism. In 1935, Parker Brothers (now a subsidiary of Hasbro) purchased the rights to a version of the game created by Charles Darrow, and this became the one we know today: a training ground for tiny Trumps. Ironically, and perhaps inevitably, the Landlord’s Game was subsumed by the very power structures it was criticising. As the game went on to sell more than 250 million copies worldwide, its female inventor was forgotten, while a man monopolised the glory and the profit. Monopoly is a practical demonstration of the way in which capitalism doesn’t just grab land but minds; appropriating its critics and turning counter-culture into consumer culture."

The Happiness Industry by William Davies: why capitalism has turned us into narcissists - review by Terry Eagleton in The Guardian. "What Davies recognises is that capitalism has now in a sense incorporated its own critique. What the system used to regard with suspicion – feeling, friendship, creativity, moral responsibility – have all now been co-opted for the purpose of maximising profits....  Happiness for the market researchers and corporate psychologists is a matter of feeling good. But it seems that millions of individuals don’t feel good at all, and are unlikely to be persuaded to buck up by technologies of mind control that induce them to work harder or consume more. You can’t really be happy if you are a victim of injustice or exploitation, which is what the technologists of joy tend to overlook. This is why, when Aristotle speaks of a science of well-being, he gives it the name of politics. The point is of little interest to the neuroscientists, advertising gurus or mindfulness mongers, which is why so much of their work is spectacularly beside the point."

Richard Ford, Joyce Carol Oates, David Hare and more ... leading writers on Donald Trump - article with contributions from various writers in The Guardian. Steven Pinker: "Most people idealise democracy as a form of governance in which an informed populace deliberates about the common good and carefully selects leaders who carry out their preferences. By that standard the world has never had a democracy. Political scientists such as Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels, authors of Democracy for Realists, who study how democracies really work are repeatedly astonished by the shallowness and incoherence of people’s political beliefs and the tenuous connection of those beliefs to their votes. Most voters are ignorant not just of current policy alternatives but of the most elementary facts about politics and history, such as the major branches of government or which countries have used nuclear weapons. Their opinions flip depending on how a question is worded: they say that the government spends too much on 'welfare' but too little on 'assistance to the poor', and that it should use 'military force' but not 'go to war'. When they do formulate a preference, they commonly vote for a candidate with the opposite one. Nor does voting provide a feedback signal on a government’s overall performance. Voters punish incumbents for recent events over which they have dubious control, such as macroeconomic swings and terrorist strikes, or no control at all, such as droughts, floods or even shark attacks. Achen and Bartels suggest that most people correctly recognise that their votes are astronomically unlikely to affect the outcome of an election and so they prioritise work and family over educating themselves about politics. They use the franchise as a form of self-expression: they vote for candidates who they think speak up for their kind of people."

From Trump to Brexit rhetoric: how today's politicians have got away with words - article by Mark Thompson in The Guardian. "I believe instead that the crisis in our public language springs from a set of interlocking political, cultural and technological forces – forces that go beyond any one ideology, or interest group, or national political situation. The first factor is the changing character of western politics, with previous affiliations based on class and other forms of traditional group identity giving way, especially after the end of the cold war, to a more complex and uncertain landscape in which political leaders struggle for definition and differentiation....  The second factor is that widening gulf between the worldview and language of the experts who make modern policy and those of the public at large. ...  The next factor is digital technology and its impact both on pre-existing media and on the wider dissemination and discussion of political ideas....  The fourth force at work is related to our understanding of how persuasive language works. Over the course of the 20th century, empirical advances were made in the way words are used to sell to goods and services. They were then systematically applied to political messaging, and the impressionistic rhetoric of promotion increasingly came to replace the rhetoric of traditional step-by-step political argument. The effect has been to give political language some of the brevity, intensity and urgency we associate with the best marketing, but to strip it of explanatory and argumentative power."

Mythomania by Peter Conrad: the real meaning of Apple, cronuts and the Kardashians - review by Steven Poole in The Guardian. "Mythomania is a collection of themed essays about modern culture, some of which began life as BBC Radio 4 programmes, and it follows consciously in the footsteps of the first great deconstructor of cultural symbols, Roland Barthes. In Mythologies, published in 1957, Barthes mused brilliantly on the meaning of subjects ranging from detergents to red wine, plastic and wrestling. 'The topics Barthes dealt with uncovered the hidden mythical content of daily reality,' Conrad notes approvingly, and in similar fashion he inquires in elegant and allusive style about such up-to-date phenomena as laptops, selfies, S&M fiction, vampire movies, the Kardashians, the downfall of Oscar Pistorius, and chicken-based restaurant chains.