No monopoly on modernity

This is an old point if you've read Baudrillard or Stockhausen on what we're forced to call 9/11 instead of 11/9, but it's worth repeating in the light of these explosives parcels found on cargo planes originating in Yemen.

The globalisation model asserts that bringing western capitalism to the rest of the world should somehow 'civilise' them, dissolve old ideologies such as race or religion. One world under consumerism. Once everybody has a McDonald's, the argument suggests, we'll live in a shiny world of modernity in which technology and efficient markets will serve our needs, cutting out the fighting and barbarism of the past.

The counter-argument is that modernity has made us more savage: the Holocaust wouldn't have been possible without an efficient, modern railway network, high-tech chemical factories to produce Zyklon-B and IBM's accounting machines. We wouldn't have considered dividing the world between capitalism and communism, leading to the horrors of Vietnam, Cambodia, Matabeleland and many others were it not for the shiny clean tech of nuclear weapons.

The latest bombing attempt underlines this. Modernity has given everyone the chance to participate in globalisation, but only the West is shocked when globalisation is used as a weapon against us. '9/11' used the air network: this weekend's attempt utilised the fact that even a failed state like Yemen has access to DHL. Where governments fear to tread, a capitalist parcel delivery operation still has offices. No global parcel network, no bombs sent to very specific addresses in Chicago.

Baudrillard talks about this in terms of 'potlatch', the sophisticated system of gifting and obligation employed by 'tribes' (as if only Others live in them). We're outraged that we've 'given' Others the privilege of joining us and DHL and McDonald's and the UN etc. etc. etc. and they've turned those networks against us because the 'gift' is too unbalanced, too great for comprehension.

Fukuyama and his fans who claimed the 'End of History' were utterly wrong. Modernity didn't settle the old arguments, it swept them under the carpet until the Others realised that they too could turn the structures, systems and mechanics of Modernity against us. All this is encapsulated in a bomb-maker going down to queue at a postal office in some flyblown Yemeni village.

Steve Bell sums it all up rather well:

Nets full of books

Some excellent publications reach me today.

The new issue of the London Review of Books (it's not just book reviews, but it is from London).

Geoffrey Trease's Bows Against The Barons: a reprint (can't afford the original) of a 1934 Communist-ish version of the Robin Hood story. I intend to put it up with various aristocratic versions in one of my modules to trace the class tension in this legend.

Alfred Fairbank's A Book of Scripts - a stunning 1955 hardcover illustrated reprint of a book about handwriting and the evolution of scripts. Yes, I know nobody writes anything by hand anymore, but it's still interesting and beautiful. There are all sorts of interesting things about our ascent to literacy: did you know that we still have no firm idea about whether people ever read silently until the 18th century?

Sharon O'Dair's Class, Critics and Shakespeare: Bottom Lines on the Culture Wars. Why did Shakespeare become the property of the toffs?

John Le Carré's new one, Our Kind of Traitor. His Cold War spy novels worked on the basis that you couldn't trust your side or their's, and that morality, loyalty, patriotism and ideology were all mutable and untrustworthy - the end of the Cold War didn't kill this stuff off - he's become more relevant (and even more passionate).

Finally, and mostly to drive my office colleagues out of the room, Stockhausen's Mantra. Does anyone else think he looks like Andrew Marr?

Another day, another present

This morning, Ben (with stunning generosity), has sent Jane's Addiction's Ritual de lo Habitual. I think I see what he's up to with this, the Pantera and the Faith No More. He thinks I listen solely to fey, twee indiepop and need TOUGHENING UP!

Actually though, I loved this album when I was a young man and in my prime, so I'm very happy to have it again. This morning I started with the Sufjan Stevens cover of 'O Holy Night' from the sometimes overblown Songs for Christmas, then the Salvation Army Choir's rendition, then straight into Fucking Hostile (Pantera) and now I'm listening to Stockhausen, so it's an eclectic day already. I've dealt with a lost and confused student and done another 60 lengths in the pool, so I've sort of achieved things.

How are you getting on with The Culture, Cheese and Pineapple? My choice is coming up soon, and it's a humdinger.

Andrew Marr and Karlheinz Stockhausen - separated at birth? Marr does sort of conduct while interviewing, with his crazy long arms.

Wig Out to the In Sound from the 18th Century

Today's an all-Mozart, all-CD affair. The latter because S-Z in rock and all my classical vinyl are inaccessible due to the 1m x 1m x 1m cube of unread books currently testing the floor joists at the end of the bed. The former because I decided that I should acquaint myself a little better with old Wolfgang and invested in a 170-CD complete works. I'm heavily into medieval and Renaissance music, utterly devoted to Bach (the cello suites will be this planet's greatest contribution to galactic civilisation long after our extinction), and hugely into 20th-century classical music, but there's a yawning void where my knowledge of Mozart, the Classical composers and the Romantics should be.

I'm no snob - I'll happily make comparisons between the Field Mice, the Boo Radleys and Johann S. and distrust those devoted solely to classical music (the last one I met recommended Bruckner because 'the Fuhrer listened to his music after dinner every evening'), and there's an awful lot of conservative dross (on heavy rotation over at Classic FM), but at the same time, classical music doesn't have to pander to playlists, short-term profit or people half-listening. Dylan eviscerated mainstream America in the 60s and 70s - many of the major classical composers did the same. You can't listen to Penderecki's Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima, or certain Stockausen without understanding that music, even wordless music, can pose just as great a challenge to the status quo as any other protest song. It's only when rich people, subsidies and 'the great and the good' hijack this stuff that all the life's sucked out of it.

So I guess that all I can do is encourage you to storm the concert halls and take them back. Start by going to the Music Maze for Adults run at the CBSO Centre by the Birmingham Contemporary Music group. Turn up with any old instrument from your loft (they'll give you one if you don't have anything), and spend the evening making thrilling, visceral music - skill levels unimportant. 15th May, CBSO centre, 6.o0-9.30, £10. Listen to Late Junction on Radio 3, the show that plays anything from anywhere in the world (including rock, dance and probably even donk) as long as it's interesting.

First video up is an extract from the Penderecki - it's horrible because, well, nuclear war is horrible. Could pop music do this? Possibly, but the industry and our expectations aren't really set for 'searing' as a positive term. The second on is Yo-Yo Ma playing Bach rather beautifully.

I've given up - the people across the road are playing dancehall so loud that my windows are shaking. I'm unmoved.