Stalin in relation to Lenin, Trotsky and the Soviet Union

Joseph Stalin officially succeeded from Lenin as leader of the Soviet Union in 1924 (Pipes 2003 p. 55); it was not however until the late 1920’s that Stalin could be considered the absolute authority within Russia. This was due to a long running struggle amongst those in positions of leadership in Soviet Russia, this started when Lenin’s (Stalin’s predecessor) health started to deteriorate after a succession of strokes following an assassination attempt in 1918 (The New York Times, 1922). The divide was caused by two camps, that of Leon Trotsky and that of Joseph Stalin, both of which were members of the Politburo

which was the chief decision making political body within Russia. Stalin for some time had been the ailing Lenin’s intermediary for the outside world but shortly before Lenin’s death in 1924 had fallen out of favour with Russia’s then de facto leader. Lenin in a posthumously revealed document known as Lenin’s Testament actually called for Stalin to be stripped of his title of General Secretary (Lenin. 1922), this was because Lenin had come to view Stalin as an individual guilty of rude manners, a lust for power, over ambition and extreme political views. The result was that Trotsky had since been nominated as Lenin’s preferential successor; Stalin however in next few years outmanoeuvred Trotsky within the Politburo and withheld Lenin’s Testament from reaching public eyes (Busky, 2003 p. 185 ). Trotsky had the desire to further the spread of communism and see a more democratic tinge to the governance of the Soviet Union (ibid. P. 185), whereas Stalin had always had the intention of nationalising the dream of the workers utopia, or rather the supremacy of Russia and the subordination of all other elements in pursuit of a nationalistic take on Marxist thinking (ibid. P.185).

Consolidation of Soviet Ideology in the Great Purges, Moscow Show Trials and Collectivisation of Agriculture.

Trotsky was eventually exiled from Russia to a place in modern day Kazakhstan in 1927. Many of his supporters left in Russia over the next few years apologised to Stalin and left behind their affiliations to the leftist opposition Trotsky had drawn to himself (ibid p. 185 ). Stalin did not forget though and later in 1934 Russia saw the start of a period which would become known as the Great Purges. The Great Purges lasted until 1938 and saw Stalin take steps to eliminate opposition from his party’s left and right wings. Stalin wanted to ensure that the only dispensers of Communist ideology was the Politburo, the Political channels and ultimately himself. 1936 saw the start of ‘The Moscow Trials’ (Persson 2009), where a succession of formerly influential Communist leaders were tried and executed after being found guilty of ‘counter revolutionary’ notions which included attempted assassinations of Stalin, allegations of collaboration with western powers and attempting to try and restore capitalism within Soviet Russia. Many of those brought up initially were Trotskyites or Rightists and even Trotsky himself was tried although he was still in exile, at that time living in Norway. It is now believed that many who were tried and did confess were forced to do so, that the trials as a whole were a sham based on fictious charges. In 1937 a commission was set up by the Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Made against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials, otherwise known as the Dewey Commission. Trotsky at this point had just started to live in Mexico. The commission was set up by the American Committee for the Defence of Leon Trotsky at the start of the Moscow trials. It went on to establish that many of the claims of treason made of Trotsky and the others were fictitious as well as the vast majority of evidence used. The purges as a whole though affected every area of society. Stalin executed every prominent member of Lenin’s Bolshevik party. In addition, any individuals who had held positions of power under the Tsars or a political party outside of the communist party were all rounded up, and either executed or sent to gulag labour camps. Kulaks, members of ‘dangerous’ ethnic minorities and individuals with relations sympathetic to any opposition to the communist party made up the bulk of the victims of the purges. The logic behind this was apparently to eliminate elements within Russia that might slow the progress or voice dissent over what was required in order to advance as an industrial nation. Despite this potentially as many as 2,000,000 (Keller 1989) people were executed, starved or worked to death. Simply because Stalin viewed them as an “enemy of the people”. Trotsky himself was assassinated in Mexico several years later in 1940.

Richard Pipes (2003 p.58) in his book Communism: A History writes that Stalin believed that it was necessary, according to Leninist belief, to build the country on an industrial base. Given the countries rudimentary existing industrial economy. It was required to build this from scratch up to a point which when completed would enable Soviet Russia to stand against its rivals. This was possible via an enforced collectivisation of agriculture, which had started as early as 1928 and contributed to creating incredible hardship, making situations desperate for many people. Stalin used these conditions to ensure the goals he had laid out were achieved.

Crisis alone permitted the authorities to demand— and obtain— total submission and all necessary sacrifices from its citizens. The system needed sacrifices and sacrificial victims for the good of the cause and the happiness of future generations. Crises enabled the system in this way to build a bridge from the fictional world of utopian programs to the world of reality.

-‘Pipes R’ in Communism: A History citing Joseph Stalin p. 57 (2003)

Stalin As the State, The State as Messiah

To many people Stalin became the state. He ruled through the use of terror and few people under him ever had the resolve to question his actions. It is said that the abuse Stalin’s second wife

received after she spoke her mind concerning his dealing with the country was a major contributing factor to her subsequent suicide in 1932. This is according to Isaac Deutscher (New York Times, 1988) a western biographer of Stalin in an article by the New York times back in 1988 commenting on how Russia had only then recently been willing to publish such material from this period in history.  In the 2006 documentary Enemy of the State it is shown how to be against Stalin was to be against the Soviet Union. The documentary details life for people living in Armenia, a member state of the Soviet Union which suffered throughout the Great Purge. The documentary shows scenes of images of Stalin being carried through streets the way religious icons might be. This is contrasted by an Armenian who comments that they could not even take a newspaper with Stalin’s features on it and wrap their sandals with it whilst bathing for fear of being sentenced, if found out. Another interviewee went as far to say that the paranoia inflicted on people meant that whenever anything critical was said of Stalin, or the state, in a family situation that the head of the household would close the windows and express comments like “Do you see these flies? We must kill all these flies, they will report on us to the secret police!” (Anon, 2006)

One article (Barnathan and Strasser 1988) used the following story as an illustration to give an insight as to how Stalin treated the people of the Soviet Union

Stalin called for a live chicken and proceeded to use it to make an unforgettable point before some of his henchmen. Forcefully clutching the chicken in one hand, with the other he began to systematically pluck out its feathers. As the chicken struggled in vain to escape, he continued with the painful denuding until the bird was completely stripped. “Now you watch,” Stalin said as he placed the chicken on the floor and walked away with some bread crumbs in his hand. Incredibly, the fear-crazed chicken hobbled towards him and clung to the legs of his trousers. Stalin threw a handful of grain to the bird, and as it began to follow him around the room, he turned to his dumbfounded colleagues and said quietly, “This is the way to rule the people. Did you see how that chicken followed me for food, even though I had caused it such torture? People are like that chicken. If you inflict inordinate pain on them they will follow you for food the rest of their lives.

-Barnathan J. and Strasser S. in Newsweek: “Exorcising a Soviet Ghost” citing Chingiz Aitmatov (July 1988)

It is possible to say that Stalin cultivated a view amongst the Soviet people which contrasted between that of a fear of the state and the desire to give oneself to the cause, a service of the higher purpose. Any popular resistance to the Stalinist government was treated as “the backwardness, prejudices, and fears of the unenlightened masses.” (Fitzpatrick, 1999 p. 15) As Communists, Stalin and everyone in league with him were resolutely committed to a modernistic worldview which treated dissent as irrationality. Totalitarianism in 20^th century Russia became “a new political religion for the age of anxiety.” (Kreis 2006) Stalinism defined reality; his ideological worldview was forever at war to become the transcendent values of the Soviet people at any cost.

The Highest Authority, Stalin and Morality.

It could have been argued that through Stalin’s guidance that Russia’s people could be brought into the eschatological utopian narrative which defined the workers struggle. However, it is questionable whether this occurred by any definition and if anything brought about a society which was thoroughly dystopian. Facilitating the existence of systematic social and moral injustice. In his youth Stalin had attended seminary in which he became an atheist; he had then exchanged any consideration of the transcendent for that of modernistic rationalism. If what Stalin had done was wrong to any measure, Stalin did not share that consideration. Stalin had by his own measure acted consistently to his convictions and views of the world.

A story I heard personally from Malcolm Muggeridge (that stirred me then and still does even yet) was his account of a conversation he had with Svetlana Stalin, the daughter of Josef Stalin. She spent some time with Muggeridge in his home in England while they were working together on their BBC production on the life of her father. According to Svetlana, as Stalin lay dying, plagued with terrifying hallucinations, he suddenly sat halfway up in bed, clenched his fist toward the heavens once more, fell back upon his pillow and was dead.

-Zacharias R. in Can Man Live Without God? (1994 p. 26-27)

• Introduction

• Chapter 1 – Stalinist Russia
• Stalin in relation to Lenin, Trotsky and the Soviet Union
• Consolidation of Soviet Ideology in the Great Purges, Moscow Show Trials and Collectivisation of Agriculture
• Stalin As the State, The State as Messiah
• The Highest Authority, Stalin and Morality

• Chapter 2 – Utopia, Dystopia and Tragedy
• The Enlightenment and the Origins of Utopia
• The Reality of Injustice in Utopian and Dystopian Material
• Totalitarianism, Crisis, Conflict and Loss of Connection
• Exploring Tragedy and the Notions of Both Human and Divine Justice

• Chapter 3 – Modern Day Totalitarianism in Burma
• Myanmar and History of the Military Junta
• Burma under Than Shwe
• The Government as Enemy of the People
• The Role of Ideology amongst Burma’s Elite

• Conclusion
• Secular Tragedy
• Phenomenological Ontology and Consistency
• Purpose, Suffering and the Physicians Realm
• The Grand Inquisitor and Christ Contrasted

Watching the video reminded me of the desert fathers, the early Christian Monks who left the populated capitals of the Greco-Roman world to live simpler lives in the desert. The ironic thing is that people were attracted to this life and those individuals that meant people would gravitate towards these monks giving rise to small settlements around monasteries.

The book Letters From The Desert by Carlo Carretto talks about a similar subject where Carlo decides he wants to leave his life in Italy behind to join The Little Brothers of Jesus. The Little Brothers of Jesus are a religious order that takes after Charles de Foucauld, a playboy-turned-priest from France a century ago who lived as a hermit amongst the Tuareg nomads of the Sahara.

The ideal of course is a little different to the reality of a harsh life in the desert, but it doesn’t change the fact that people still find these beautiful places as somewhere they actively choose to live out their lives.

It’s difficult to escape the paradox/metaphor that goes with escaping the emptiness of the busy city in favour for a fuller life in a geographically empty place.

Over the coming weeks I’ll be putting online edited chapters of it and where I have the energy making it more accessible for reading online.

I learnt a lot writing it as it looks at oppression in the world and ultimately, is it wrong? To who is it wrong? And what does it force us to confront when it comes to truth?

Let me know if you do read it.

Keith

In 2007 a series of protests in Burma erupted into riots which drew a significant amount of attention from the international community. I’m hoping to ask questions concerning the situation in Burma and the potential future of such a country. However my position is that of someone from a radically different cultural and political climate from that of Burma. This meant that both I and the heads of the military junta in Burma were cultural world-views apart. This realisation resulted in a progressively developed thesis which has now reached it’s final conclusion.

At a very basic level what has and continues to occur in places like Burma and elsewhere could be defined as social darwinism. Yet it was observed that when a regime yields genocide, imprisonment, torture and oppression on such vast scales a voice will emerge, despite the rationalisations, which protests what occurs in such times and places. It is in this that a consideration on what is just, what is right and what is wrong takes place.

Today the west exists in a state in which the post-modern sensibility, which is deeply cynical of all forms of truth, prevails. To then try and define concepts, like that of justice, the relativist would state is one of personal and private conviction. Yet the cry of the oppressed is not content with this and frequently appeals on grounds wider than any private, cultural narrative. One adopting a radical view of post-modernity might instead doubt the occurrence of injustice because the idea of justice is merely a construction and in reality meaningless. Yet this cynicism is perhaps justified given the claim to transcendent, objective rationality can be linked with the worldviews of oppressive forms of government in history. Yet to say something is truly wrong, to critique what is occurring in what can be called these totalitarian states, is a claim to something wider and deeper than anything referred to via the Phenomenological Ontology of Sartre and others like him have written with reference to the relativistic worldview.

As this mode of thinking was developed it was noted that the existence of totalitarian forms of society in the world has yielded a variety of responses, yet perhaps some of the best articulated ‘critiques’ of totalitarianism come from the realm of the poet, the writer and the tragedian. Considering the implications and meaning of totalitarianism cannot be effectively done without due consideration to the states themselves or the works of these individuals. Individuals whom in Plato’s  society depicted in The Republic would have been exiled for their “nourishing of the tragic emotions of pity and fear”. The most contemporary form of commentary on totalitarianism from this realm emerges in what is commonly known as dystopian fiction. Dystopian fiction is fiction and yet it shall be argued provides a platform from which the author stands as a witness to the ‘systematic injustice’ and doublethink of the oppressor. It is genre defined by satire and secular tragedy. The theme of tragedy as whole will be explored, notably pre-Enlightenment forms of tragedy and the writing of figures like Dostoevsky, notably his short story The Grand Inquisitor.

One of the central themes of the play Oedipus Rex, written by the ancient Greek playwright Sophocles, is that of justice, and will be used to provide an insight as to how classically tragic literature and dystopian fiction inform our understanding of the concept of justice. Using the play we will investigate two distinct understandings of justice, both of which are displayed in Oedipus Rex. The first is that of a social and moral justice administered using human reasoning. The second is that of a sense of a postponed divine, transcendental justice. With these two contrasting concepts brought forward, consideration will be given to the relationship between the two. In addition how they impact an understanding of the the rationalistic pursuit for justice, and the argument that this inadvertently results in the systematic injustice found within totalitarian societies. Societies such as that of Burma and that of Russia under Stalin will be examined during the course of this work, to connect the ideas developed to the world in which they were written.

With the contrast between the two notions of justice, it is apparent that in todays climate and the prevalence of relativistic thinking that many might be quick to dismiss the search for justice altogether, trusting neither secular empiricism to discern reason, nor to trust in some system of transcendental authority. Yet will it ever be the position of the oppressed to be ambivalent to the question of justice? This is an important question and requires an exploration into the consistency with which one might live with the implications of radical relativism. This will be explored via the writings and life of philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, and Viktor Frankl, a noted psychologist who, during his life, wrote extensively on the question of meaning, transcendence and suffering. This will ultimately flow into a progressively developed argument in favour of the centrality and importance of a classical understanding of justice, tragedy and transcendence in the world that is, but shouldn’t be.

Loving the lettering here. I also found a great video over on GRAPHIC FURY showing these guys putting together a complex piece for a bar in Paris.

Update: Turns out Dana’s got her own time lapses of her work going up you can check them out here.

The cover was just something I put together using Faith’s photography from a shoot she did in the New Forest with my friend Chris and his band. I’m trying to experiment more with type and print more these days when I’m not 9 to 5-ing. As part of this I’m starting an endeavour in printmaking that should take me through to the summer, 2012 is looking pretty exciting so far. Results to follow!

El Lissitzky was someone I heard about early on back at University who was a Russian Artist and Designer. He worked on a range of materials but the thing that stands out for me is his work in print, namely due to the unique style which draws on design schools like constructivism quite heavily. The work El Lissitzky did was also at a period when designers, in their presentation of work were crossing boundaries as artists, craftsfolk and even philosophers in their interpretation of texts and the ways they chose to present them. Throughout his life El Lissitzky held the belief that design could and should be used to motivate change and this was reflected in his work with the Communist party in Russia.

El Lissitzky himself started as a designer for Jewish childrens books and moved in to teaching within and working for the Soviet Government throughout his life. Even if his work today seems abstract and foreign to many his influence is remarkable in the field of contemporary graphic design. His work if anything is intellient, compelling and something that even today teaches us a massive amount the potentials and scope for design and the role of the designer.

The first person I’m writing about is a poet called James K. Baxter who died in 1972. During his life, James was one of the first people who really experimented with Hippy Communes in New Zealand, being a founding member of the Ngāti Hau or Jerusalem commune. He was one of the first people in New Zealand who authentically took his identity and language increasingly from the Maori people who had before then lived alongside white settlers but seen little to no exchange since settling. Throughout James’s work he adopted Maori’s language into his poetry believing that the culture of New Zealand’s settler community’s cultural dominance resulted in an arrogant ethnocentrism that left that culture spiritually impoverished.

‘Ko te Maori te tuakna. Ko te Pakeha te teina …’ The Maori [sic] is indeed the elder brother and the Pakeha [sic] the younger brother. But the teina has refused to learn from the tuakana. He has sat sullenly among his machines and account books, and wondered why his soul was full of bitter dust – James K. Baxter via John Newton from his book ‘The Double Rainbow‘

This contrasts quite sharply with the recent speech given by David Cameron’s perception of Christianity, England and the Bible given his recent speech marking the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible.

The other driving influence on James’s life was his Catholic faith, which developed through his life and drew him deeper in to a form of ascetism in the face of what he saw as the culture of individualism, selfishness, ‘spirtlessness and meanness’ in the wider non-Maori zeitgeist. Baxter’s experimentation with communes came out of drawing on Maori culture and the communes Baxter was involved in were places where individuals of Maori and Non-Maori heritage lived together. This is what makes Baxter somewhat unique amongst poets in that he was not comfortable in simply commenting on the social norms of his time but actively tried to change them, a prophet and a poet. He saw himself as a Catholic, a Christian humanist and someone aspiring to fully embrace the dual heritage of his homeland. He was a Catholic who through his work in the Jerusalem Commune (and its various offshoots) was also trying to repair the damage that colonial minded mission had wracked on first people communities where it encountered them.

Baxter through Jerusalem sought a form of utopian experiment, seeing that ‘white’ culture had failed the youth in the communities and created an environment that not only provided material shelter but acted as a political theater that signposted what he believed to be a move in positive change. The tension Baxter found with this however was the more popular Jerusalem was the more burden it placed on the community which could only tolerate so much. The Jerusalem commune continued after Baxter’s death in 1972 but did eventually disperse, instead creating a network of houses and places to crash that took the Jerusalem spirit back in to urban contexts with mission in mind.

The thing that makes Baxter stand out for me is the fact that his poetry, when you read it and what he achieved in life very much seemed to go actively hand in hand. There was a consistency in James K Baxter the poet, James K Baxter the activist and James K Baxter the Christian. When I first heard about James K Baxter it hit me at a time when I was busy reading, I was also busy talking, but I wasn’t doing much. He was someone who said and acted on what he believed in who united his faith in both tradition and a contemporary setting and fully embraced multiculturalism at the same time. Not even just embracing it but making it his own and communicating through it from a authentically grassroots perspective.

I think even today someone like Baxter would look at the spirit of our age, our zeitgeist and comment on its emptiness and overt individualism present in this our media saturated enviroment. The challenge, if he gave one, I think would be to rediscover the authentic, to not be scared of something that is different but at the same time to be willing to call aspects of our society and ourselves in to account and to then go and do something about it.

More Signal, less noise

Many folks I’ve talked to, and the thing I’ve found myself, is that when your working the trick is, at a basic level, simply learn to absorb more. If I’ve found myself working non-stop I try, when I’ve got a spare moment to surround myself with inspiration. The other side of this is cutting out the noise around you. Social media is a big killer and whilst your twitter feed might be awesome, it can really help just by saying ‘I’m killing it for the morning’. This allows you to focus yourself, work quicker and instead surround yourself with purposeful directed content. More meaning per mark and all that.

Have a library

I find sometimes when I’ve found something really interesting but don’t have time to read rather than dismissing it or instead reading it when you really don’t have time it really helps to have some place to store such things. That way when I do have the time, in the evening or even on the way home, I can focus on it. I tend to find Zootool being my weapon of choice when it comes to something like this.

Commit to learning

I’ve recently been making the most of my Treehouse account but even if you don’t have something like this theres no shortage of tutorials on subjects like the web, graphic design or illustration. Committing to doing a Treehouse badge or a tutorial once a week, even twice a month goes a long way to keeping your skills sharp and up to date.

Have a vision

The easiest thing is to get caught up on getting by. Knowing what you want is key to progression, getting asked ‘where do I see myself in 5 years?’ in a job interview is also a good indicator of employers trying to figure out whether or not you fit in to a company. An equally good question is where do you see where your current employer in five years, is there a vision? Where do you fit in? Having a grasp of the big picture will make the everyday seem more purposeful and more of a step on the way than just another day in the studio. It will also help you figure out the kind of work you want to do and the kind of people you want to do that with. This is the key to avoiding a rut I think.

I hope this helps!

The image we have of pirates are those of romanticised brigands. People who didn’t listen to anyone and were needlessly violent to further their own ends. That was the image Captain Charles Johnson painted pirates in and even today we imagine pirates whether they be digital or off the coast of Somalia to be these reckless characters who have little to no pity for their victims and the structure against which they rebel. The reality for these 18th century pirates however, according to Kester, was a little different. Sailors aboard Royal Naval ships and merchant vessels during this period had little in the way of hope. Here were poor men who found themselves, in the words of a Ship’s surgeon serving at the time ‘caught in a machine from which there was no escape, bar desertion, incapacitation, or death.’

This was at a time during the peak of the slave trade and merchant vessels and naval ships collaborated as agents of an emerging international capitalism. The Sailors on board these ships were instrumental in the transportation of slaves to places like America and in return that of goods to places like England. The Sailors themselves however were unable to experience any of that wealth, all of which went to a tiny minority. If they were injured, they were thrown overboard or cast away on some island. Life was short, brutal and messy.

Given these circumstances it isn’t a massive stretch to see why Sailors did turn pirate. This way they could choose how they lived and more realistically how they died.  The pirate motto was, when boiled down, ‘A merry life, but a short one’. When the decision was made life changed very quickly for Sailors. Captains were elected and removed by democratic vote. A Captain could only claim twice of any booty compared to the share of the average crewman. Some Captains like Bartholomew Roberts made the crew sign up to a code that meant no fights on board, no gambling, and lights out by 8pm (he was also teetotal). Also, anyone injured whilst serving would get generous compensation. Loss of a limb would be fetch a payment of around £20,000 in today’s money. Not bad!

Today we find the image of pirate with a peg-leg or hooks for hands something of a comical one, but it also tells us something very telling about pirates. They didn’t mock those with disabilities the way we might do today in society. Pirate ships were also made up a wide mix of races.. and religions too. It was also reported during this period that pirates frequently would set free Slaves being transported to America and allow any who wanted to join the crew.

Obviously pirates committed robbery and theft from Naval and Merchant ships but sympathy is lessened when you realise that those ships were simply plundering lands elsewhere in the world and in some cases robbing ships simply because they belonged to other nations (see Privateering, Francis Drake and William Dampier)! The course of piracy was really a reaction to excess in capital belonging to a minority which they did not have access to. So in some ways.. pirates were simply taking back ‘means of production’ when it came to capital.

Piracy is and I think still is a reaction to ring – fencing of resources, the decision taken by a minority to take away from the majority that which was previously held in common. Anyone who adopted this attitude of ‘openess’, including people like William Tyndale (English Bible Translator and Smuggler) have been thus labelled pirates by the powerful. Even in music if a musician wants copyrights for their interpretation of blues, folk, rock etc. they are still building on a common culture which they are then ring – fencing and saying ‘this is mine alone’. The resulting digital acts of piracy are clear testament otherwise, you can’t copyright culture that stretches back since before recording was even possible. I even think the situation in Somalia is also perhaps closer to instances of 18th Century piracy than we’d like to think.

As per the title of this post Christians in the popular view have very much been identified as ‘moralists’ and against the concept of piracy. Nonetheless there is something that is still appealing about the idea of pirates to people like me, a Christian. Kester in his talk went on to talk about how some pirates in places like Morocco went on to set up pirate ‘enclaves‘ or ports where they lived by there own value systems outside of the world they’d been born in to or forced in to. Even if for a short time, as life was.. well short. Ironically combined for some in a rejection of Christianity as indicative of the society they’d come out of. Nonetheless this idea has got strong parallels to the idea of the pilgrim / founding fathers of America making the decision to leave, go elsewhere and come in to a space they can make their own and live out their beliefs. Piracy in this sense is about a rejection of an established worldview and supplanting it with something else, tainting the ‘world’ as perceived by the powers that be to serve as a signpost to a different idea, a different system. Because money, ‘ownership’ (whether or land, music or resources) are ultimately ideas not metaphysical truths. A good example is what is happening with the protests at St Pauls right now (ironically where Captain Johnson’s book was first published, you can see a pamphlet Kester Brewin published on the subject here). These things are only temporary, like the pirates life, but they are liberating in that they for a time provide escape. Jesus said that wherever two or three believers are gathered, he’d be there and when people come together and create that space your supplanting the established view of that space. You own that space its between you and those with you. It reminds me of growing up in London where some places were ‘no go’ areas because of gangs but the beauty is as a person when you engage in an act of ‘piracy’ you are, for a time, creating a new space where life feels more intense. If you’ve ever gone to a festival, camping or even a circus, you know what I mean, life feels more intense, but if you lived at that festival it’d wear off because the beauty is in the temporary nature. More so, if you lived at the festival it’d be oppressive over time, you’d hate it and you know it. It makes me think of things like the year of Jubilee in the bible as a divine act of piracy amidst the established order of Old Testament Israel. If you really did no work forever, you’d starve but a year of Jubilee  is at the same time a liberating and reorientating by its temporary nature. It’s reminding you that life is not meant to boxed in and closed off.

Miracles are acts of divine piracy. Think about it.

If we did take over spaces permenantly it’d take violence to enforce or isolation to contain. Like the gangs in London they use force to ensure the permanence of their territory. Like corporations they ring – fence resources and cultural commodities. It’s oppressive but piracy doesn’t need to be. Jesus’s overthrowing of principalities and authorities was not violent, people thought it might be, but it wasn’t. In his defeat he achieved victory and it was an act of divine piracy. To be a Christian, to be like Christ, is arguably to be like a pirate.

I first really started to grasp this whole concept when I stumbled on the discussion over dowebsitesneedtolookexactlythesameineverybrowser.com/. From there I discovered a whole wealth of resources and examples of individuals who instead of building ‘desktop’ websites were now building their sites to work with any and every means of accessing a website (just try changing your browser-size, if on a desktop ,when you visit colly.com/. You could also resize the browser on this site for an example).

Why bother?

The simple fact is by 2015 its predicted the web will be accessed by more tablet and smartphone devices than desktops. My colleague Pawel even believes that by that point it’ll only really those who build the web who’ll even be accessing the web through desktops by that point. We’ll see! But regardless of what you think if you work in the web its something your going to have to take seriously and get to grips with in the near future.

Get Educated

To be honest when I first heard about responsive design I’d be lying if I wasn’t the smallest bit intimidated by the idea of coding unique layouts for multiple browsers. Especially through a process that is predominantly CSS. But it is actually really easy once understand how you do it.

The best tools to learn, in my experience  are..

• Treehouse an online resource providing video tutorials and online tests.
• The book Adaptive Web Design by Aaron Gustafson also gives a comprehensive rundown on the ideas behind responsive design and the practical applications when it comes to responsive design.

Responsive Design vs Native Apps

As a footnote I’ve personally been discussing back and forth the whole issue of whats better, a responsive website? or a Native app? For a while now with a number of people. The honest answer is that it depends on your end goals, apps and browser based websites are better at doing different things. Each at better at one thing, but not the other.

An app can give you a more targeted experience. You can also get web apps, native apps or browser based apps. The real advantage with apps is you can exploit the mobile dimension of the devices that use apps. Location based or on the go on services are typical of this. An example of how Google are utilising the app based approach are through projects like Google Wallet.

Responsive websites are accessed via a browser. They exist to provide an optimised website experience dedicated to a screen of varying dimensions. As a result they utilise the same techniques that goes into building traditional websites, with the addition of media queries.This means on a practical note it’s much more efficient to produce this than an app equivalent. A great example of this is the website  designers.mx. Check it out!

The ideas behind responsive design are exciting and I think something that people will see it implemented as a philosophy in design much more in the coming future. What do you think?