Villains & Heroes

Civilisation, Power and the Stories We Tell Ourselves.

Why not use a Beach Boy’s title and image as a jumping off point for a few random observations and opinions? If there are rules here, then I’m happy to bend them. Sometimes the mind needs to empty itself. Thoughts are set down in loose piles, as if they might later be arranged into something meaningful. Like jigsaw pieces or Lego bricks, there is a hope they might connect. Often they do not. The material resists order. The result is not clarity, but exposure. Maybe a release of steam will occur, good for the plumbing and pressure levels of the inner sanctum.

“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.” The final words of Roy Batty in Blade Runner, everybody knows this.

That speech lingers because it captures something uncomfortable. Experience is vast, fleeting and ultimately uncontained. Human beings try to impose order on it anyway. Nowhere is that more apparent than in how we construct and understand power in human systems.

Today’s leaders; King Charles III, Donald Trump, Vladimer Putin, Benjamin Netnyahu, Emmanuel Macron, Xi Jinping, Cyril Ramaphosa, King Felipe VI, Keir Starmer … and so on. Are any of them actually “great” in any positive sense? Capable or even steady? Some seem ineffective and useless. Some are plainly bullish, ignorant, cruel and stupid. Some cautious, clever, playing a long game maybe. These things don’t make them great. Their “thrones” are always shaky. They may suffer from hidden disorders, mental illness, poor personal hygiene, bad habits, blind spots or simply not care about others.

Kings, queens, rulers, leaders and politicians are human beings. They are not abstractions or inevitabilities. They are complex but recognisable, made of the same contradictions as everyone else. They act with mixtures of intention, error, self interest and, occasionally, principle. Some do harm, some do good, most do both. Many do very little at all beyond maintaining position until replaced. We all know that Donald Trump just wants his face and name plastered onto a Dollar bill or any significant building - and the odd “prize”. Putin wants Russia to swallow up much of Europe so he might be remembered as a “Great”. The clay that makes up their feet is clear to see.

Yet we persist in treating them as something more than human. Through birth, opportunity, talent, manipulation or force, they arrive in positions that most people will never hold. From a distance, they become symbols. We project comforting features onto them, imagining control, strategy and purpose where there may be none.

This tendency is not accidental. It is rooted in something deeper. There is a strain of madness in human beings, a drive to construct meaning even where none exists. The collective madness that builds temples, great walls, cathedrals, palaces and systems of belief. It simplifies the incomprehensible into fairy stories that can be repeated and accepted. Actions are carried out “In the name of God” or for the “Benefit of the State”. Flags, crests and banners are the cheap tricks waved on by power brokers. Historical references and dreamed of ideals. Costume and ceremony.

These stories do not need to be true. They need only to be convincing, and people have the need to hold onto them.

Once established, they become tools. They justify authority, shape behaviour and create the illusion of order. Complexity is reduced to slogans. Responsibility is displaced onto others. Blame is showered onto minorities, the weak and the stateless. The larger and more imposing the structure, physical or ideological, the more effectively it can intimidate and control. Ignorance does not disappear. It is organised. It speaks. It swears.

At the same time, human existence remains brief and uncertain. Three score and ten years, if you’re lucky. We measure time as though it belongs to us, yet it does not. We exist within it, not the other way around. Beyond that narrow span, the universe proceeds without reference to human concerns. We fumble in the dark. Building a local railway system that can run tightly, according it’s timetable, is useful but insignificant for the rest of the world and meaningless within the universe.

Against that scale, the idea of enduring political greatness becomes difficult to sustain.

Consider our modern leaders. They differ in style, in rhetoric, in competence. Some appear forceful but crude, others cautious but calculating. Some seem ineffective, others dangerously certain. None escape the patterns of history. They inherit systems they did not design and repeat behaviours that are well established. Mistakes recur. Responsibility is deflected. Loyalty is prioritised over principle. Cruelty is tolerated in the search for justice and stability. States degenerate into rogue forms where arms, brute force and shouting wins arguements.

This is not necessarily the result of individual failure. It may instead reflect the limits of the systems themselves. Power does not exist in isolation. It is shaped by incentives, pressures and narratives that constrain what can be done. Even those who intend to act well operate within structures that reward continuity more than change.

From a distance, it is difficult to judge any of this with confidence. Most people experience events indirectly, through mediated accounts, commentary and fragments of information. What is presented is filtered, rearranged or withheld. The full picture is never visible. You can’t trust media. You never could.

Reality, as it is lived on the ground, is constantly erased and replaced.

A gathering or market place becomes student accommodation. A refugee camp becomes a resort. An oasis becomes wasteland. A natural landscape becomes an opencast mine. Agricultural land becomes a waste storage facility. Rivers die a slow death and forests burn. Each transformation is explained, justified and absorbed into a new narrative. What came before is forgotten or rewritten. The earth is scorched, then concreted over.

This is how civilisation presents itself. Not as a stable achievement, but as a continuous process of revision.

The question then is not whether power can be trusted. History suggests that it cannot be trusted for long. Even when used responsibly, corruption and distortion remain close. Systems degrade. Intentions shift. Outcomes diverge from promises.

The more difficult question is why this pattern persists.

Part of the answer lies in the gap between reality and the stories we tell about it. Civilisation is often defined as progress, as the advancement of knowledge, culture and organisation. It is associated with writing, institutions and shared structures. These definitions describe what is built, but not necessarily what is sustained.

A civilisation may be technically advanced and still profoundly unstable. It may produce extraordinary achievements while simultaneously creating conditions that undermine them. It may celebrate knowledge while encouraging simplification and distortion.

In that sense, civilisation is not a fixed state. It is an ongoing negotiation between competing forces. Between understanding and ignorance. Between cooperation and self interest. Between truth and the narratives that replace it.

This is where the unease arises. The world contains remarkable things, and remarkable people. There is no shortage of creativity, intelligence or care. Yet alongside this, there are persistent efforts to construct systems that produce unnecessary harm, confusion and inequality.

We recognise this in the good ideas that are launched with hope but quickly turn sour:

• Much of the connectivity potential of the internet is ruined by almost unrestricted social media, gambling, porn, toxic news reporting and AI fakery.

• Health care, medical and welfare systems that began as “for the people” services now becoming unaffordable and exploitative.

• Retail goods made on an industrial scale to inferior standards but sold at higher prices.

• Utilities owned by faceless corporations who outsource services to the lowest or unsuitable bidders at the expense of reasonable standards.

• Basic foodstuffs, supply chains and products tainted and corrupted by dangerous, often unsustainable methodology, forever chemicals and additives.

And so on. No one ever seems accountable for these cycles of degradation.

The contradictions are difficult to resolve. They resist any simple explanation. Perhaps the most honest conclusion is also the least satisfying. Human beings are capable of building meaning, but not of stabilising it. Power amplifies this instability rather than resolving it. Civilisation, for all its achievements, remains only a thing buffeted within a shifting set of values and standards .

Like the moments described by Roy Batty (ironically a fictional and non-human character), much of what is built and experienced will disappear. Not because it lacked value, but because it was never as solid as it appeared.

What is civilisation? What does it even look like?

1. An advanced state of intellectual, cultural, and material development in human society, marked by progress in the arts and sciences, the extensive use of record-keeping, including writing, and the appearance of complex political and social institutions.

2. The type of culture and society developed by a particular nation or region or in a particular epoch.

   “Mayan civilization; the civilization of ancient Rome.”

3. The act or process of civilizing or reaching a civilized state.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

Then there’s the small matter of art, science, philosophy and invention’s place in the progression of civilisation and our collective history. Kenneth Clark’s 1969 TV series Civilisation is widely seen as high point in documentary content, styling and as a personal historical testimony. A good place to start any knowledge gathering. It’s available here and there online, via DVD or in book form.

Whatever or wherever human civilisation is right now remains arguable, but we are close to the centre of it. It persists whether or not we are willing to face up to it’s bumpy reality and somehow, we must find our own peace within it.