Royalty, Administration, and Antimemetics

I was all of 15 when defenestration was forever implanted in my mind. It means to throw someone out the window. It happened in Prague, 1618. Some important people were defenestrated, fell 70 feet, landed in dung. This led to the thirty years war and the coining of the word ‘defenestration’. Defenestrating happened to important, visible, people held responsible for mismanagement leading to widespread discontent. While the defenestrated may represent the idea, surely we can’t imagine that it was that specific person who was going around causing the suffering. No, they had minions. Here we explore a bit of their story. 

Royalty is meant to be seen. They were either chosen by or were the local gods to lead the people. They were the head of everything and if something were to go wrong it was their responsibility. Royalty also means creating good memes. Whether the Alhambra, Taj Mahal, or Beijing projecting power through architectural memes was the standard.

Administration and bureaucratic structures is the silent clockwork that powers the projection. These guys, are antimemetic. The antimeme is a recent invention and denotes ideas that have high impact but are hard to spread. This is important because when the tax burden gets too high you want the peasants to go for the king not the local tax collector. 

The Mughal emperors were the head of the administrative machinery with final say over all important matters. The administration itself was antimemetic in nature. The provincial officials such as the bakhshi, sadr as-sudr, and finance minister reported directly to the central government rather than the subahdar (provincial governor). Matrix organization, I hear you thinking. This complex, multi-layered reporting structure, while designed for central control, also diffused responsibility and made the precise locus of decision-making less transparent to external observers and even to other officials.

In the Ming dynasty, the Hongwu Emperor abolished the Central Secretariat to assume personal control. However, the volume of letters got so high that he soon appointed a few grand secretaries. They never held a high rank and always merely “recorded imperial decisions”. If merely were a boxer he would be a heavyweight. Can’t blame that guy with the pen if he’s just doing what the king asks him to.

From the al-Andalus through the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals the the ulama shaped legal systems and molded public morality. Of course the monarchs decrees but the ulama interpreted them and applied them as law into daily life. This interpretive authority, operating subtly within the legal and religious bureaucracy, allowed for continuous adaptation and influence without the visible, attributable acts of formal legislation, making it profoundly antimemetic. 

Let me end with the quote from the wonderful, and joyfully mimetic, Yes, Minister:

“Hacker: Humphrey, did you know that 20% of all honours go to civil servants?

Sir Humphrey: A fitting tribute to their devotion to duty, Minister.

Hacker: No, their duty is what they get paid for. The rest of the population has to do something extra to get an honour. Something special. They work for 27 years with mentally handicapped children six nights a week to get an MBE. Your knighthoods simply come up with the rations.

Sir Humphrey: Minister, her Majesty’s civil servants spend their lives working for a modest wage and at the end, they retire into obscurity. Honours are a small reward for a lifetime of loyal, self-effacing discretion and devoted service to Her Majesty, and to the nation.

Hacker: “A modest wage”, did you say?

Sir Humphrey: Alas, yes.

Hacker: Humphrey, you get over £30,000 a year! That’s £7,000 more than I get.

Sir Humphrey: Yes, but still relatively the modest wage.

Hacker: Relative to whom?

Sir Humphrey: Well, Elizabeth Taylor, for example.

Hacker: Humphrey, you are not relative to Elizabeth Taylor. There are important differences.

Sir Humphrey: Indeed, yes. She didn’t get a first at Oxford.

Hacker: And you do not retire into obscurity?! You take a massive index-linked pension and go off to become directors of oil companies and banks.

Sir Humphrey: Oh, yes, but very obscure directors, Minister.

Hacker: You’re in no danger of the sack. In industry if you screw things up, you get the boot. In the civil service, if you screw things up, I get the boot.

Sir Humphrey: Very droll, Minister, now if you’ve approved the list…”

[Series Two (1981) Episode Two: Doing the Honours]

Sources

Much of the reading and sourcing of material for this was done across books from the Contraptions Book Club and some deep research help.

• Ibn Khaldun: An Intellectual Biography by Robert Irwin
• Monkey King: Journey to the West, the abridged Lovell edition
• Islamic Gunpowder Empires by Dougles E. Streusend
• Kingdoms of Faith by Brian A. Catlos
• Zheng He: China And the Oceans in the Early Ming Dynasty, 1405-1433 by Edward L. Dreyer
• https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Yes,_Minister

How criminalisation is being used to silence #ClimateActivists across the world

Guardian investigation finds growing number of countries passing #AntiProtest laws as part of playbook of tactics to intimidate people peacefully raising the alarm

“Criminalisation is the most common tactic used against #HumanRights defenders, because it’s so easy and has such a big impact.”

Nina Lakhani, Damien Gayle and Matthew Taylor
Thu 12 Oct 2023 07.00 EDT

"As #wildfires and #ExtremeTmperatures rage across the planet, sea temperature records tumble and polar glaciers disappear, the scale and speed of the climate crisis is impossible to ignore. Scientific experts are unanimous that there needs to be an urgent clampdown on fossil fuel production, a major boost in renewable energy and support for communities to rapidly move towards a fairer, healthier and sustainable low-carbon future.

"Many governments, however, seem to have different priorities. According to climate experts, senior figures at the UN and grassroots advocates contacted by the Guardian, some political leaders and law enforcement agencies around the world are instead launching a fierce crackdown on people trying to peacefully raise the alarm.

"'These defenders are basically trying to #SaveThePlanet, and in doing so save #humanity,' said Mary Lawlor, the UN special rapporteur on #HumanRights defenders. 'These are people we should be protecting, but are seen by #governments and #corporations as a threat to be neutralised. In the end it’s about power and #economics.'

"#Climate and #EnvironmentalJustice groups report a significant increase in draconian, and often arbitrary, charges for peaceful protesters as part of what they claim is a playbook of tactics to vilify, discredit, intimidate and silence activists.

"The Guardian has also found striking similarities in the way governments from #Canada and the #US to #Guatemala and #Chile, from #India and #Tanzania to the #UK, #Europe and #Australia, are cracking down on activists trying to protect the planet.

"The legal contexts vary, but the charges – such as #subversion, illicit association, terrorism and tax evasion – are often vague and time-consuming to disprove, while a growing number of countries, including the US and UK, have passed controversial anti-protest laws ostensibly intended to protect national security or so-called critical infrastructure such as #FossilFuel #pipelines.

"The systematic criminalisation of environmental defenders is not new. Natural resources on #Indigenous land have long been exploited, driving big profits for some but also fuelling violence and inequality.

"Experts say the Marlin mine in Guatemala was one of the earliest documented cases of a transnational #corporation – and its state allies – weaponising the legal system against environmental defenders. Since then, the Inter American Commission on Human Rights has repeatedly condemned what it describes as the alarming rise in the misuse of criminal justice systems against environmental, land and other human rights defenders across #LatinAmerica.

"'Criminalising defenders encourages collective stigma and sends off an intimidating message,' the IACHR said last year.

"According to Lawlor, this criminalisation of environmental #protestors has since become a #global phenomenon, and is now the most common tactic used to silence and discredit defenders.

"'At its core it’s about maintaining the #PowerStructures in place. This is true regardless of whether it’s a #dictatorship, #democracy or a corrupt #NarcoState, and regardless of the state’s professed commitment to human rights, protecting the environment and combating #ClimateChange.' she said.

"'Smearing defenders as lawbreakers or anti-development distracts from the cause and changes the narrative … What’s clear is that states learn from each other.'

"#ClimateActivism is well and truly back. Paolo Gerbaudo, an academic at King’s College London who studies social movements, said that before the 2008 financial crash, the climate emergency felt like 'the challenge of our time'. But it 'largely slipped off the social and political agenda” as activists such as #Occupy turned their attention to opposing #austerity policies and pushing for global economic reforms.

"As scientific warnings grew ever more dire during the 2010s, there was a deepening feeling that traditional environmental campaigning was failing, and that politicians were not delivering – with potentially catastrophic consequences.

"It was into this context that more #DirectAction, and more #radical environmental protest groups emerged. Over the past five years, the UK has been not only at the forefront of these new forms of non-violent activism, but also novel means of silencing it."

Full article:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/12/how-criminalisation-is-being-used-to-silence-climate-activists-across-the-world