Do You Think You're Clever? Page 9

  3 × 3 + –1 × 5 = 4

  That means filling the 3-gallon jug three times and emptying the 5-gallon jug once. Alternatively, you could go with m as minus 2 and n as plus 2, i.e. emptying the 3-gallon jug twice and filling the 5-gallon jug twice.

  –2 × 3 + 2 × 5 = 4

  Both of these are different solutions from John McCain’s and require a third large jug as a reservoir, but they are equally valid solutions.

  Was it fair that a woman’s planning application for painting her door purple in a conservation area was declined?

  (Land Economy, Cambridge)

  The idea that our past needed protecting by law from the ravages of modernisation first emerged in the mid-nineteenth century. As mass industrialisation and urbanisation swept away age-old ways of life, many believed something valuable was being lost – not just old and often beautiful things but our whole connection to the past, intangible, fragile but immensely precious. It’s no coincidence that the first great strides into the modern urban, industrial world coincided with the revival of the Gothic style of architecture, the medievalism of the pre-Raphaelite art movement and the emphasis on traditional skills of the Arts and Crafts movement.

  The preservation movement began with the scheduling of Ancient Monuments in 1882 to protect important ancient archaeological and historical sites. In 1947, the realisation that unique old buildings needed protection too against demolition or simply being ruined by modernisation led to the idea of ‘listing’ buildings. Then conservation areas came in during the 1960s; battlefields, historic parks and gardens were placed on registers in the 1980s; and, most recently, marine archaeology has been given protection.

  Conservation areas recognise that not just stately homes, ancient castles and quaint medieval cottages are part of our heritage but so too are whole neighbourhoods of ‘ordinary’ historic houses. The idea is to preserve the special historic character of these neighbourhoods. Yet conservation areas cannot be locked into the past like museums where the buildings are simply preserved ‘in aspic’. They are usually places where people live, and people need the freedom to make their lives and homes as they want – not according to the diktat of a government heritage expert. Moreover, these areas have already long been lived in and altered piecemeal. So do you preserve them as they are now? Or do you restore them to what you think they were like when they were built or at a certain time in their history? And when things need replacing, as they often do, how far do you go in replacing them with their ‘historic’ equivalents? When the leaks in a 150-year-old slate roof finally become irreparable, for instance, do you replace it with expensive hand-crafted slate, or cheaper, more leak-proof modern equivalents?

  There is no easy answer to these questions and they lead to constant disputes between owners of homes in conservation areas and the heritage authorities. For most conservation areas, local authorities publish clear guidelines about what they will allow in order to preserve the neighbourhood’s special character. They may, for instance, forbid modern roof extensions, or the replacement of historic wooden sash windows with aluminium casements. It varies from area to area. Quite often, they will specify that the walls of a house in an area where all the houses are of natural stone or mellow brick may not be painted, or at least not in garish colours. This makes sense. Painting the house this way would not only destroy some of that particular house’s special historic character but would affect the unified look of the entire street which is part of its appeal.

  Does the same apply to something as ‘small’ as a purple door? Well, yes it could. If the special historic character of the street or neighbourhood depends on subtle, pastel colours or even natural wood in the doors and window frames, a bright purple door could well stand out like a gap tooth and mar the overall effect. And the ‘overall effect’ is important. The idea is to preserve these areas for the benefit of all, not just those living there. Of course, painting a door is not necessarily a permanent change that destroys any of the historic fabric, and the owner might argue that it’s her choice entirely what colour she paints the door of her own house. But the whole concept of conservation areas means that property owners within those areas give up some of their own individual rights to change their property in order to preserve the areas’ historic nature for the good of the community at large.*

  It could be argued that everyone has an absolute right to do with their own property as they will. However, most would agree that a society in which there are absolutely no mutually agreed rules on planning could not only be ugly and chaotic and unpleasant to live in – but would be in constant battle as neighbours got into dispute when someone built a strip club next to a children’s nursery, or a steel furnace towering over someone’s quiet cottage garden. Building controls are agreed by consent, and in theory, at least, democratic local and national elections give people the chance to challenge controls they don’t agree with.

  * The woman might argue that in the historic past she might have been able to paint the door as purple as she pleased, so the pastel look is not necessarily any more ‘historic’. But the aim in conservation is not usually to recreate an imagined historic past but to preserve the patina of time passing – that’s the crucial difference between the real thing and a faux-historic recreation. Of course, this is a source of constant debate among building conservators. When things need replacing, how far do you go in replacing them with some presumed or even thoroughly researched historic equivalent?

  The same is true of conservation rules. It’s the individual’s choice to live in the conservation area. If the woman really has to have a purple door, yet it’s not allowed in a conservation area, then she must probably live elsewhere.

  That said, it may be that some of the rules in a conservation area are unreasonable – and restrict individual freedom just too much. After all, a historic area might lose its life and much of its character if it was robbed of all individuality and change. So a careful balance has to be struck, and perhaps with the woman and her purple door the conservers might have been a little too restrictive, presenting a blank bureaucratic face rather than responding with careful consideration.

  There is, of course, no definitive line about what should be preserved and what updated, so the system must not just allow continual debate but actively encourage it. Maybe if purple-door woman felt that she was listened to and that her paint choice was denied to her not by faceless bureaucrats but people who actually cared about the place she lived in, just maybe she might actually want to paint her door in a more subtle colour rather than feeling aggrieved because she was forced to. Or maybe the authorities would change their minds …

  Do you think Chairman Mao would have been proud of the China of today?

  (Oriental Studies, Cambridge)

  When Chairman Mao died in 1976, he left behind a country in turmoil. Instead of the shining future he had promised, he had led China into the most catastrophic, tragic decades in its history. The scale of the disaster Mao had brought and the sheer misery is unimaginable. His master-plan for the economy, the Great Leap Forward (1958–61), in which he collectivised all farms and set up steelworks across the country, brought an agricultural downturn and famine so appalling that it claimed the lives of at the very least 40 million people. As if that weren’t enough, retiring to the back seat in admission of his failure, he then launched the Cultural Revolution in which Mao’s Red Guard of young people ravaged China’s heritage and killed, imprisoned or drove into exile hundreds of thousands of China’s brightest minds in their attack on the ‘corrupting’ and ‘bourgeois’ citadels of culture.

  The China of today would have been almost unrecognisable to Mao. Bourgeois culture has arrived with a vengeance. So too, for some, has the prosperity Mao promised but never delivered. Beijing is one of the most dynamic, fastest growing cities in the world. So too is Shanghai. All across the country, there is a whirlwind of construction as the old towns are cleared away for the multi-lane expressways, glitzy shopping malls and shimmeri
ng skyscrapers that are a symbol of the new China.

  In one way, China seems to be hurtling down the route to being a consumer society like a runaway juggernaut, in a seeming triumph for Western values. On the other, it remains in the iron grip of the Communist Party. More people live without an elected government in China than do in all the rest of the world put together. At the same time as China seemed to reach the pinnacle of its new prosperity and confidence with the Beijing Olympics in 2008, so it showed its darker face in July 2009, with the disappearance of ethnic Uighur protestors that sparked a tragic series of reprisals against the Han Chinese identified with the government.

  Of course, it’s impossible to say whether Mao would have been proud of China today. He was so enigmatic in his lifetime that even his best friends could not guess what he was thinking. It would be absolute folly to think that one could guess now he has been dead for more than three decades.

  Mao was a firm believer in communism and an implacable enemy of the bourgeoisie and imperial culture. His thoughts expressed in the Little Red Book, his determined collectivisation against all odds and his resolute attack on culture all suggest a mind so set on his own unique version of Marxism-Leninism that it seems he could not possibly approve of the opening of the country to the capitalist enterprise which has changed China’s fortune. Moreover, that opening was driven by Deng Xiaoping, the man who though once his comrade in arms had become his chief political opponent and one of the prime political targets of the Cultural Revolution. And Deng had only managed to achieve his ‘Open Door’ policy with Mao safely dead and his erstwhile allies the Gang of Four consigned to prison. Everything points to Mao being such an unyielding enemy of capitalism and the bourgeois culture that seems to be engulfing cities like Shanghai that he would have been appalled. There are certainly hard-line party members today who oppose the changes in China by invoking the ghost of the Chairman.

  And yet maybe that’s all too simple. Just as Deng came to believe that bringing prosperity to people was more important than maintaining strict ideology, it’s just possible that Mao might have done in time, too. After all, his professed desire in joining the Chinese revolution was first and foremost to improve people’s lives. It might be said that many of his moves, against Deng as against intellectuals, were as much political as ideological. Maybe if he could claim responsibility for China’s recent achievements, then he would be proud.

  To talk about China’s achievements is not to deny the problems. Rural poverty is still widespread. Peasants frequently suffer such economic hardship that family lives are ripped asunder as fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, sisters and brothers are forced to live apart much of the year as they travel to the cities to seek work. Political freedoms are still curtailed. Cities are rife with exploitation. And yet, China is already the world’s second largest economy after the USA, and is its fastest-growing. Hundreds of millions of Chinese already live in the kind of comfort and affluence that would have astonished people just a few decades ago. Since the country’s economic reforms began in 1978, 400 million people have been lifted out of poverty, and the number of people living in absolute poverty (less than a dollar a day) has been cut by more than 90 per cent. Moreover, while China’s average income still makes it a poor country, it has achieved a level of literacy and life expectancy equivalent to middle-income countries like those of Eastern Europe. Former head of the World Bank Paul Wolfowitz observed when he visited China in 2005 that ‘East Asia has experienced the greatest increase in wealth for the largest number of people in the shortest time in the history of mankind’.

  It’s almost certain that Mao would have no problems with the level of political control and lack of democracy that people in the West criticise China for. After all, it was he who put many of the controls in place. It’s almost certain he would turn a blind eye to the environmental damage now so widespread in China. But maybe he would have been immensely proud of China’s extraordinary economic achievements – no matter how they arrived and despite the problems among the peasants who were always the focus of his attentions. Maybe, standing atop one of the world’s tallest buildings in Shanghai, travelling the world’s fastest train from Shanghai airport, or watching China’s own space probes soar into the stratosphere, he would puff out his chest and boast in an uncharacteristically loud voice about just how far his very own revolution had brought China.

  Why isn’t there a global government?

  (Philosophy, Politics and Economics, Oxford)

  Countless times through the ages thinkers have wondered if all the world’s problems might be solved if there was just one government for the entire world. The logic is simple. Wars seem to be fought at the behest of governments and rulers. So if there was just a single government or ruler, there would be no wars.

  For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,

  Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonders that would be;

  … Till the war-drum throbb’d no longer, and the battle-flags were furl’d

  In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.

  There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,

  And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.

  Alfred, Lord Tennyson, ‘Locksley Hall’ (1837)

  It’s such a beguiling vision that it crops up again and again in both fiction and philosophical and political thinking through the centuries. Back in the thirteenth century in The Banquet (Convivio), Dante argued that war would end if ‘the whole earth and all that humans can possess be a monarchy, that is, one government under one ruler. Because he possesses everything, the ruler would not desire to possess anything further, and thus, he would hold kings contentedly within the borders of their kingdoms, and keep peace among them.’ In his Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes talked of cooperation between governments around the world, an idea developed by Charles-Irénée Castel, Abbé de Saint-Pierre into a European federation in which sovereigns gave up their power to achieve ‘perpetual peace’. Rousseau, though, believed that such a union would never occur without violent revolution, and any institution that came into being that way would do more harm than good – a speculation that was borne out, in some ways, by Napoleon’s attempt to unite Europe under the French Revolution, which ultimately served only to unite nations in opposition.

  Immanuel Kant talked a great deal about world government, and believed the culmination of human history to be ‘an international state (civitas gentium), which would necessarily continue to grow until it embraced all the peoples of the earth’. However, he also argued that, as things stand, ‘the positive idea of a world republic cannot be realised’, because of the messy mix of monarchies and despots in the present world in which individual freedoms are far from guaranteed.

  The appalling conflict of the two world wars of the twentieth century revived an interest in global government – or at least world forums. After the First World War, the victors convened the League of Nations, while after the Second World War they created the United Nations. Both of these might have governed the world by consent between individual nations, but in reality had almost no control because some nation states, such as the USA and the USSR, have proved far too powerful and self-assertive to pay much heed to the UN – an example followed even by smaller nations such as North Korea, Iran and Burma which have effectively ignored UN rulings.

  In the aftermath of the Second World War and, in particular, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there was perhaps the most serious political attempt in history to form a real world government. Albert Einstein was just one of many high-minded campaigners who were so disturbed by the problems of nuclear weapons that they believed a world government was the only way forward. ‘A world government must be created which is able to solve conflicts between nations by judicial decision,’ Einstein wrote. ‘This government must be based on a clear-cut constitution which is approved by the governments and nations and which gives it the sole disposition of offe
nsive weapons.’

  Ironically, one reason why Einstein’s vision never had a chance of reaching fruition was because of the stand-off between two opposing power nexuses and ideologies, both of which in their own way sought to bring the world under a single banner. On the one side was the Soviet Union, fuelled by Lenin’s vision of exporting communism to the entire world and dreaming of creating a world socialist economy governed by a ‘Bolshevik World State’. On the other was the Western world led by the USA, which sought a transcendence of nation states and capitalism around the world. The communist vision seems to have all but vanished now in face of the seeming triumph of the West, and Francis Fukuyama talked confidently in 1992 of ‘the end of history’ as the entire world moved towards liberal free-market democracy – the prelude in Kant’s view to world government. Yet, of course, the recent financial crisis and continued political turbulence around the world has shown that such optimism was ill-founded.

  In some ways, the world has moved towards more coordinated government, if not world government. All of Europe is now under the federation of the European Union, for instance, and countries all round the world join in economic and political pacts with their neighbours. More and more, nations are attempting, superficially at least, to cooperate on key issues such as trade and the environment. While the UN may seem to be only a little more than a talking shop, Gordon Brown’s 2009 coordination of measures to deal with the banking crisis and global recession was a tangible example of joint action by consent that is persuading experts to talk not of global government, but global governance – in which the world is not controlled by a single world government, but by coordinated transnational action under the direction of organisations such as the World Trade Organization, the G20, the IMF and so on.