The Dawn of a Golden Age

I felt that a new Golden Age arrived today, as I ate a cooked breakfast - egg, bacon, mushrooms, fresh tomato, hash brown and beans, since you ask - in Asda this morning, resuming a twice a week routine - Wednesdays and Saturdays - from a previous era, aka a Dark Age. Accompanied by a real paper version of the Times, rather than that on iPad. A true feeling of liberation from the dark, satanic (should that be capitalised, I wonder? Satan as a quasi deity?) days of lockdowns, tiers and tears. A week from now, all being well, I shall be on my way to London and thence to Kent to visit friends and family; I shall breathe a sigh of relief.

Fellow video game players will be familiar with the concept of a Golden Age, during which you can earn more gold, produce more killing machines and build more wonders. In real life, historians look back on particular times and nominate them as Golden Ages.

The ancient Greek philosopher Hesiod introduced the term in his Works and Days, when referring to the period when the "Golden Race" of man lived.

That is from Wikipedia and it occurred to me that I use a lot of their material, so I decided to make a small monthly donation in recognition of that. As Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, writes: "We're a non-profit that depends on donations to stay online and thriving, but 98% of our readers don't give; they simply look the other way. If everyone who reads Wikipedia gave just a little, we could keep Wikipedia thriving for years to come."

I'm happy to be in the 2%.

I guess the designation of a Golden Age is often nationalistic: the Greeks pre-Prometheus, the Romans of Virgil and Ovid, Japan's Helan Period, the English first Elizabethan age, the French Belle Époque. Even pirates (1650-1726) and Hollywood (1920s?) have their 'Golden Ages': a bit budget, perhaps, but no more so than an Asda breakfast.

For some extremists, Brexit was posited as heralding a new Golden Age for Britain. Although I voted for Brexit, mine was a vote against the increasing, anti-democratic centralisation of the European Union, a realisation that the UK could never have enough influence to counter that in a union trying to grow its membership and behave on the international stage as an economic closed shop with tariff barriers when the rest of the world is trying to achieve a free trade Golden Age. I don't believe there will be a post-Brexit Golden Age for us, just as I don't believe there would have been a new Golden Age as part of the EU. For us, it's a slow, inexorable post-imperial, post-colonial decline and we can make the best of it in whatever guise we choose.

In my research for this post, I discovered a Golden Ages board game which seems to be just completely me. Problem is I have never been able to interest any family or friends in gaming; I'm hoping that, in a few years' time, my grandsons will be compliant. Anyone for a game? 2-4 players, 90 minutes, ages 12+, complexity rating 2.89/5.

We should all beware: in Civilization VI a Golden Age is often succeeded by a Dark Age, as a result of over-producing, increasing debt and just general hubris. From Wiki again:

In Hesiod's Works and Days, the Golden Age ended when the Titan Prometheus conferred on mankind the gift of fire and all the other arts. For this, Zeus punished Prometheus by chaining him to a rock in the Caucasus, where an eagle eternally ate at his liver.

Just not in the next two weeks, please.

News Chronicle

I woke on Saturday morning to the news that "The eldest son of South Africa's late Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini has been chosen as successor to the throne, amid a bitter family feud." [BBC]. It felt as though as though I had been transported to a real life version of my favourite historical strategy game Civilization VI. In that case though it would have been Shaka leading the Zulus. He was their King for 12 years, during which he built a strong and well organised military. This map shows the rise of the Zulu Empire under Shaka (1816–1828) in present-day South Africa:

This took me back to my youth - I have a dim recollection of knowledge of Zulu and Mau Mau in the news, which must have been in the 1950s. I guess I must have been an avid newspaper reader even then [yes television had been invented; don't be cheeky]. Which in turn led me to think which newspaper would have been in my house. I'm pretty sure it was the News Chronicle, which would have fitted my father's Liberal politics. I don't remember my mother ever expressing a political view and am pretty certain I recall her refusing to tell me which party she voted for.

Obviously my reminiscence of the time was about the Mau Mau rebellion rather than anything about the Zulu but I feel that the latter appear somewhere in my memory. Perhaps media reports referenced earlier Zulu uprisings against the British Empire as colour; maybe there was just a sense of ... Africa. I was disappointed to discover that the British Newspaper Archive didn't give me any News Chronicle articles but it could easily be that I'm not familiar enough with it to search appropriately. The paper was subsumed into the Daily Mail empire in 1960 in what was undoubtedly a trend towards fewer, larger titles but unfortunately also a trend towards political polarisation of the print media with middle-ground views unrepresented.

Today the Zulu nation is part of South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province. Amazingly - to me in my ignorance - there remain 11 million who identify as Zulu living there. According to the BBC report "The throne does not have formal political power and the monarch's role within broader South African society is largely ceremonial. But the Zulu monarchy remains hugely influential, and has a yearly taxpayer-funded budget of more than $4.9m (£3.5m)."

I hope Prince Misizulu avoids Shaka's fate - assassinated by his half brothers.

I dedicate this post to my good friend Trevor, who knows far more about the history of Britain's newspaper industry than I ever will. Maybe he'll honour us with a comment!

Did you know? More great people

Gustav Eiffel. We all know what he is famous for - but did you know he built a railway station in Chile, a gasworks in Bolivia and a lighthouse in Estonia?

Hypatia. The oldest known female mathematician. Lived in Egypt in the 4th century. I wonder what mathematicians actually did in those days?

Bhasa. A 3rd/4th century Indian playwright. His plays sometimes showed scenes of physical violence, against the traditions of the Natya Shastra.

Christine de Pizan. An early feminist, she was in a way a "court writer" to France's Charles VI. She especially espoused the virtues of Charles' Queen Isabeau and Louis VIII's Queen Blanche in her writings.

Niccolo Machiavelli. Wrote a five act comedy La Mandragola. Not what he is more usually remembered for. Maybe he thought politicians were all comical.

Liliʻuokalani. A Hawaiian songwriter. She was also the last sovereign monarch of the Hawaiian Kingdom, before its overthrow in 1893.

Stephanie Kwolek. The inventor of Kevlar.

Civilization VI. "Just a game"

It's just a game

 No it's not. My favourite computer game Civilization VI is far far more than that. It is an archive of historical accuracy and detail. History, ancient and modern, that I learn from almost every day. Great people, great works of engineering, science, commerce, literature, music, the visual arts and yes, warfare. Sun Tzu alongside Isaac Newton alongside Gustav Klimt.

The developers of the game pride themselves on historical accuracy and relevance, with great respect for all cultures and values. 19th century Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai, Genghis Khan, Machiavelli and Zoroaster are all around, as great people who have made their contributions to the development of the world's civilisations, without value judgements on their effects. There is no Adolf Hitler, though, and no Pol Pot, although genocide is "represented" by Genghis and Ethiopia's Menilek II. But Menilek is there alongside Simon Bolivar, Gandhi and Montezuma as protectors of their countries/regions against the ravages of colonialism.

You don't learn this in school history.

It's a cornucopia of cultural bountifulness, a profusion of world knowledge, a schooling in history from ancient Mesopotamia to Second World War Australia, with their respective leaders Gilgamesh and John Curtin.

Consider what I learned yesterday; two [excerpts from] poems by Emily Dickinson:

Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.

A Bird, came down the Walk - 
He did not know I saw -
He bit an Angle Worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw, 

I love them.

And by the 8th century Chinese poet Li Bai:

Among the blossoms waits a jug of wine.
I pour myself a drink, no loved one near.
Raising my cup, I invite the bright moon
and turn to my shadow. We are now three.
But the moon doesn’t understand drinking,
and my shadow follows my body like a slave.
For a time moon and shadow will be my companions,
a passing joy that should last through the spring.
I sing and the moon just wavers in the sky;
I dance and my shadow whips around like mad.
But stumbling drunk, each staggers off alone.
Bound forever, relentless we roam:
reunited at last on the distant river of stars.

So, when I am playing the game as Simon Bolivar's Gran Colombia against Spain's Philip II and and I meet the roaming Kupe of the Maori and Poundmaker of the Cree, we are at one and I am re-living the history of the world. My world.

Kids, get playing and learning!

Quotations

Civiization VI is a 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) turn-based strategy game, my favourite computer game.

The aim is to take a civilization from the ancient era through the years into space and beyond, accumulating science, culture, faith and gold and using them to pursue a victory such as being the first player to reach the distant stars.

Here is a screenshot from one of my current games:

I am playing as the Mapuche, a South American people, led by Lautaro. I am at war with the Netherlands, led by Wilhelmina. I have just captured her city of Mbwila. That doesn't sound very Dutch, I hear you say? It was originally a city belonging the Kongo but the Dutch captured it; now they are getting their comeuppance. (She also captured Hong Kong, as you can possibly see; very rude)

Each turn I use each of my units - builders build improvements such as farms and mines, apostles spread religion, planes attack units, artillery bombards cities, etc. When I have finished my turn, the AI civilizations take theirs.

This particular game is moving into the end game: I am building a spaceport, although I'm still using my (now ancient) tank armies. But do not worry - I have just discovered uranium and am on my way to researching Robotics, after which I will be able to build Giant Death Robots - Wilhelmina, beware!

Here's another game I'm playing:

Here I am the Maori, on a true world map. The Maori, led by Kupe, started in the ocean in the game, discovered and settled New Zealand (obv) and have now settled Australia. Australia is led by WWII PM John Curtin but are absent without leave in this game!

Enough of this nonsense, I hear you say. What about the quotations? The Civilization series has always prided itself on historical authenticity and, every time you research a technology or a civic, the mellifluous tones of Sean Bean utter the words of some worthy. The words are always authentic (i.e. were spoken or written by the author) but not necessarily true (i.e. may have been fake news).

Here are some of them.

My favourite is:

• “NASA spent millions of dollars inventing the ball-point pen so they could write in space. The Russians took a pencil.” (Will Chabot) [Space Race civic]

These are for bloggers:

• “Writing means sharing. It’s part of the human condition to want to share things – thoughts, ideas, opinions.” (Paulo Coelho)
• "Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words." (Mark Twain) [both Writing civic]
• "Which of all my important nothings shall I tell you first?" (Jane Austen) [Social Media civic]

There are so many good ones that I had a hard time whittling them down to a few more, to complete this post:

• “I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.” (Winston Churchill) [Animal Husbandry tech]
• “I cannot imagine any condition which would cause a ship to founder … Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that.” (Capt. E.J. Smith, RMS Titanic) [Shipbuilding tech]
• “The good thing about computers is that they do what you tell them to do. The bad news is that they do what you tell them to do.” (Ted Nelson) [Computers tech]

Finally, the iconic:

• “I’ll be back.” (Arnie as The Terminator) [Robotics tech]

You can read them all at https://lowrey.me/civilization-vi-quotes/

Play the game and enjoy Sean Bean's droll delivery!