The last thing you want to do is talk about it

This week everybody is talking about depression. Or so it seems.

Giles Andrae has had major clinical depression, and has written about it for the Times. It resulted in a leader column not only praising his description of the “blank, blinking screen” which is all that remains when the brain shuts down, but a call to be more respectful of the condition. The chairman of HBOS has it too.

I think it’d be excellent if we could treat depression as a serious condition. I’ve met people who say “Oh, I’ve been a bit depressed.” They have no conception of what depression is and think it’s being “a bit sad”. The NHS website and every single leaflet, pamphlet or even book I’ve read on the subject doesn’t help.

It’s this description of “feeling low” or “having persistent feelings of sadness or low self-worth.” Everybody feels a bit low from time to time. But depression is different. Severe clinical depression is like being dead, but you’re still walking around for some reason, as though your body wasn’t informed that it was all over. Andrae’s description is accurate.

It strikes without warning, it can destroy your life, as it has tried to do this year to me, and it is often physically painful. It’s invisible, except when in certain exceptional situations it becomes obvious. “Feeling low”, whatever the persistence, isn’t depression. Depression can mean memory loss or the simple inability to do anything about anything. The reasoning for this, some apparent expert has suggested, is that you’re so preoccupied by negative thinking that you don’t remember things.

That isn’t true. You don’t remember because your brain isn’t working. You can’t make simple straightforward decisions about what to have for breakfast, so the brain just freezes up if anything bigger happens. Your life doesn’t fall apart necessarily because you believe you’re worthless or you deserve it, but simply because you have lost the cognitive capacity to do anything about it. Imagine being in a house that’s burning down, and you’re chained inside. You cannot get out, and no matter how aware you are of the danger, there is no escape.

I don’t want to be around people when I’m depressed. That’s not because I dislike cheerfulness or people living their lives. It’s just easier. I’d rather be quiet than have to put up with the “d’you want to talk about it?”, the sad-looking faces as people desperately hope you see them as sympathetic. When I showed up to see my friend and she said, “So if I tell you to pull your socks up, that won’t help?” as a joke, I was relieved. The last thing I wanted was to look at another tragic face nodding with excessive sympathy.

It doesn’t help, talking about it. A friend on Twitter remarked (and my mother agreed) that CBT works but only to a certain level of intelligence. I don’t want to talk about “it”. I don’t know what the “it” is. I have to live with it, 24 hours a day, so the last thing I want to do is discuss it. Being able to leave it alone, to be normal with somebody else, is all a person really wants. You need them to know that you’re fragile, but you don’t want them to rake out the cotton wool and treat you as infinitely breakable.

It would be great if people could treat depression as they treat a broken leg. Instead of pep talks about “getting it together” (would you say anything like that to somebody who had, say, developed cancer or broken their neck?) or this fawning “professional pity” as Pema Chodron calls it, just normal things like being taken out and not laughed at if you pick exactly the same food at every meal because otherwise the endless choice would be impossible, or respected if you need time alone.

And there lies what we need most. Respect. They give you crutches to help you walk if you break your leg. If your mind breaks you have to keep trying to think on your own. I feel guilty telling somebody that I haven’t done something because apart from my mother’s visit, I’ve been unable to get out of bed. People ask where I’ve been, or what I’m up to, and I can’t just say “I have depression” like I could say “I’ve had flu.” It’s a shame. I don’t want to talk about it, I don’t want excessive displays of dramatic sympathy. I just smile every time I meet somebody who just treats it like a normal thing, and me as a normal person.

A few new ideas about Amnar: The Awakening

Io: by me (2009 - Painter X)

“I’ve decided,” I said to my friend Fran while we were in her car. “I don’t think I have depression. I’m going to call it Boris Johnson.”

A few people have been in touch to remark that I don’t seem to have updated Amnar: The Inheritance on Podiobooks. All I’ve been able to do, for most of the last few months, is update the podcast on my own site, a task that takes ages simply because of the strange complications of my mind. I’ve been in a state, for ages, where big decisions are impossible. It can take hours to choose whether or not I want a cup of tea, or what to have for dinner. Bigger matters, such as going outside for anything, let alone big life choices, are impossible.

I’ve never actually been in such a state before. I move around and seem normal, but anybody who has been with me in an environment where I need to make a decision about anything, and I just freeze up. It means I struggle to be creative in any way whatsoever. Effectively, I have writing block. But because writing is like breathing to me, the solution has been to simply write about what I’m experiencing on my Holosync blog, Zen in Heels.

Very, very occasionally, a thin beam of light in the form of an idea comes to me. They flit about like moths, and disappear before they become clear, and long before I have a moment to make any use of them. Still, they are emerging and I’ve been considering them carefully. Because very gradually, while I’m unable to actually write Amnar, something new and possibly better than ever before is starting to develop.

For a while, I’ve had a sense that even as I was developing a better Io, there was still something missing. It’s been nagging at the back of my mind as I try to deal with everything else in my life. Very, very slowly, it is starting to emerge, however.

The Awakening plot basically deals with Io’s struggle to decide between the Amnari and the Tiomke. But although we see Io’s side of it, and the side of the Amnari trying to convince her not to side with a totalitarian dictatorship, we don’t see the perspective of the Tiomke, except through the eyes of the other two sides (either when Daar and Io meet Captain Vasha, or when Zoriel spies on Destorva and the senior officials in the Gap Chamber).

So I’ve been debating whether to either re-write or insert the view of the Tiomke, introduce Tiom himself, and guards who are trying to find Io. I think this might add a missing element to the whole story, although it will lengthen it.

Sometimes there are advantages to having writer’s block. Not being able to write at all has at least given me time to get some perspective on the story as a whole. Although I’ll probably annoy fans who have been through several versions of The Awakening, it is a development I’d like to explore, once my current situation improves.

Confessionals of life after anorexia: some of the things we forget

A recent comment has come into this blog asking if I would discuss something about life after anorexia that we often forget to talk about. So I’m going to be talking about the slightly unpleasant topic of what happens to the body after anorexia.

I want to start by saying there is a gross error made in the treatment of anorexia in the assumption that once you’re eating normally, you’re cured. Every time I read a story from a recovered anorexic, I find the same thing. They all say they still struggle with body image, with self-esteem. Eating again, as hard and as painful as that is, that’s the easy bit. It took a month to eat normally, and five years to gain a sense of self where I can look at who I am physically with confidence and be happy with who I am.

But that doesn’t mean I’m completely and entirely recovered, that anorexia is in my past. Because every meal out presents me with problems. Not of the emotional kind, but of a physical nature. This is where it gets confessional, where it gets difficult. For as confident as I am about myself, as little as I care what people think about the fact that I have permanent scars on my wrists, some things I’d rather not discuss in company.

I was anorexic for about fifteen years, and anorexic to the point where I hardly ate anything at all. For a year, I was severely addicted to laxatives and diuretics. For another period of about six months I took diet pills, which were frighteningly effective. The damage to my digestive system means I have real problems eating a lot of foods.

It became easier to say that I was gluten intolerant, because most of the foods I struggle with are wheat based. For some reason, it’s easier to be mocked by people who consider gluten intolerance to be fake than to sit plainly and explain that fifteen years of starvation plus addiction to laxatives has left me with permanent damage to my digestive system. If I had a camera, I’d take photos of their faces and put them up on display.

You end up walking an awkward line. Once you’ve crossed over into that other place, if it does physical damage, you’re never going to make it back. It’s a reminder of it. Even worse, if people know about it, they seem incapable of treating you as a normal person, but with a kind of patronising over-care that I find intensely annoying.

It’s perhaps one of the practical things I’d say to any anorexic. If you survive, you’ll look back and regret not just the time you wasted starving yourself, but the fact that every relationship involves explaining that while they make a joke out of certain things, for you they are the impact of damage you did while you could think of nothing but your own self-harm. And that trying to be treated and being a normal person living a normal life is a minefield.

Amnar Structure 15: At last, the dragons and dragonlords

This is the latest in a series of posts about Amnar, shedding light on the background to the world. This time, we’re looking at the dragons and dragonlords.

Introduction and history

Dragons (Draegunad), and the larger Dragonlords (Draegunim) are not native to Amnar, and were not in fact discovered until the first explorers from the newly founded mountain city of Nas Isca had been established encountered them. Nas Isca itself was originally intended to be an outpost to watch over the Gap that opened in the skies there, but there was no initial evidence of activity on the other side as there was at the Duum Gate and Nas Trinitari Gate.

At this point, there were only a few Capillites, and it was the original Guardian Defender who was part of the contingent who were suddenly presented with the appearance of a massive flying lizard-like creature coming through what became known as the Iscan Gate. For their part, the dragons had no initial interest in the Amnari, but had ventured through the Gate between the two planets because they had heard reports that intelligent species were establishing a civilisation there.

The dragons and dragonlords also wanted little to do with the Amnari, and it was down to progressive negotiations between the Guardian Defender that led to the appointment of a Capillite Guardian of the Dragon Realm from amongst the Guardian Defender’s team of warriors. The post was ratified by the High Ashad Isha.

The Sabat Draegunim (The Dragon Civilisation)

The dragons, having met with Isha herself, decided that the Amnari were sufficiently intelligent enough to communicate with. It was several generations before they became what I suppose we would consider the jumbo jets of the Amnari world. They considered this a form of service to the Amnari system, although it was entirely voluntary. Their presence in the Amnari world made it possible for the effective running of the educational and healthcare systems, not to mention allowing people from all over the Empire to attend whichever academy they wanted and to travel more freely.

Dragons themselves are not conscious in the same sense as humans, although they can and do happily communicate with Amnari, this is unusual. They live far longer than Amnari, and therefore may well spend time with tens of different dragonmasters and dragonriders in the course of their lives. They also came to serve on the line at Nas Trinitar, since they considered the Amnari civilisation worthy of protection.

Their motivations for flying Amnari about happily, fighting with them and aiding relief efforts during famine periods in places like the Nahabi and the Red Deserts, are not entirely known. Successive Guardians of the Dragon Realm have failed to find clear reasons, but it appears that the dragons simply want to, and find it an entertaining thing to be doing. Very little is known, similarly, about the structure of the Sabat Draegunim, the world of the dragons, since it is almost entirely uninhabitable for Amnari.

Dragonmasters and dragonriders

Both Dragonmasters and Dragonriders train at the Nas Iscan Academy, and are split into two groups. Civilian dragonmasters and riders only work in the main of Amnar, whereas those who have completed undergraduate warrior training at Duum are able to fight on the line at Nas Trinitar. All trainees start with an initial qualification as a dragonrider, able to fly dragons. Those who continue as postgraduates become dragonmasters who work with dragonlords.

The special skills required to build up a relationship with one dragon or dragonlord are developed, along with telepathy (Nas Isca also trains flight telepaths), the unusual forms of communication needed to understand dragon logic and certain aspects of the dragons’ culture. Masters take several years to build up a relationship with their beast, and are considered to be as expert as senior warriors on the line.

Dragonriders and masters both provide services to the civilian Uskele population, including the provision of Desert and Mountain Rescue teams in various states, and will carry individuals to and from the more remote settlements, especially those research stations like Cir Nafairu in the Nas Trinitari mountains, for example. They and their dragons provide the backbone to transport throughout the Empire.

The most senior Dragonmasters are those who serve the Caipashad Capillites, such as Naszha and Sadarin. Otherwise, dragonriders and masters follow a similar path through life as other Ta Dasi, although because of their frequent long-distance flights for those in the civilian corps, it is often difficult for them to maintain strong family ties. The most senior Dragonmasters relate most strongly to the Servants, for the reason that they by law cannot have children.

 

Amnar Structure 14: The Amnari academic education system

This is another in a series I’m writing about the world of Amnar, bearing in mind that many of the topics covered here apply to Amnar but not its former capital, Amin Duum, from 4742 to 4785 SA.

The basic structure of Amnar consists of two levels, the global level of the Empire, and the local, that of the of the individual city states. Education is one of those aspects of Amnar that is for the most part handled at the level of the Empire. Education in Amnar itself has two levels, that of standard education and the Academic System, which provides the Empire with Ta Dasi, Servants and various auxiliary staff.

There are several academies, each based in one of the major city states (the word ‘academy’ is ‘dashkad’ in Amnari):

Dashkad Düma: The Duum Academy, based in the High City of Amin Duum, training warriors of all levels from the age of five. Up to 4742, it also had an attached infirmary, the Dedicated Gap and Academic, which specialised in training line support watchers and specialists in warrior health. This academy was the centre of the academic system up to 4742, and was then abandoned in 4765 at the expulsion of the Amnari from Amin Duum. The academy was then relocated and amalgamated with the NALCA (discussed below).

Dashkad Nazran: The Am Rune Academy, in the state capital of Am Rune in the south, trains Servants and Ta Dasi to become watchers. It also takes adult students wishing to become nurses or infirmary auxiliaries.

Ai Dashkad Urgat: Am Urga’s two academies, unified as one, trains Sifradan, Ta’Sifradan and Zurasim. It also provides a preparatory school for those who will go on to serve at the Nas Ashca.

Ai Dashkad Ulgai: Rad Ulga’s academy, which for the most part trains Seers and auxiliary staff. Some Zurasim are also trained here.

Sudna Dashkad Ruinn: Referred to as a “sub-academy”, because it does not train very young children, the base at Rad Ruinn trains warriors, watchers and auxiliaries who specialise in dealing with the territorial wars across the borders of Amnar in the Red Desert.

Sudna Dashkad Nas Trinitar: Provides graduate training to Ta Dasi and other auxiliary staff in the line at Nas Trinitar. Does not take young children.

Dashkad Iscava: Formerly an extension of Dashkad Düma, the Nas Iscan Academy became independent to train Dragonriders and Dragonmasters in the middle of the First Age, when Caipashad Capillites required a dedicated Dragonmaster on their staff. It now takes children from the age of five, but also specialises in the training of Mountain Rescue, medical triage, and flight telepathy.

Sudna Dashkad Nas Ashca: The Nas Ashca Lower Complex Academy (NALCA) is a graduate training facility at the Nas Ashca, taking graduates of Dashkad Düma, Dashkad Iscava and Dashkad Nazran, for postgraduate specialisation.

Ai Dashkad Nas Ashca: The Nas Ashca Higher Complex Academy (NAHCA) trains those who have graduated as either Ta’Sifradan or Ta Zurasim either become Ai Ta’Sifradan or Ai Ta Zurasim, the most senior academic posts in Amnar.

All of the big academies also provide training for teachers who work in the cities, settlements and establishments of Amnar and train those who do not attend an academy.

Selection for the main academies at Am Rune, Amin Duum, Am Urga and Rad Ulga is based on sponsorship by former graduates. They can be Servants, Ta Dasi or any other occupation, as long as they have graduated from the academy to which they wish to sponsor. There are no entrance examinations, but sponsors take on the onus of recommending children. Sponsorships can also be given by any Capillite.

Sponsors tend to have a strong connection to their charges throughout their academic life and beyond. This is especially true for Servants and Capillites, who can often see them as surrogate children, given that they can have families of their own. It should be noted here that Gadasim cannot sponsor their own children, but have responsibility for locating and communicating with a suitable sponsor.

Sponsorship fosters communication between generations, and also between social groups like the Uskele and the Ta Dasi, who often make an effort to find Uskele children to become future Ta Dasi. Children often correspond regularly with their sponsor, who in turn helps the Gadasim to find them an appropriate starting point for their career, or handle issues such as injury or sickness. Even Servants tend to take a great interest in anybody they have sponsored. The only Servant who does not publicly sponsor students is Arandes Nashima, because of the burden he felt that this would put on the child’s shoulders.

Why Remembrance matters

I have a heavy weight of guilt on me in recent months. It is the 70th anniversary, this year, of the outbreak of World War Two.

When I was a teenager, I was ideologically committed against the idea of war, against the concept of fighting for my country, against actions of violence. During those years, I often saw my grandfather, who had fought as a Lieutenant-Colonel in the North Irish Horse Regiment, and firmly believed in fighting for king and country.

As an artist, I was then fascinated by creating works of desert horizons. I showed him one once, and he started to talk about his contribution to the rout of Rommel in the North African desert as a tank commander. But I turned away, because I didn’t want to know.

He died when I was fifteen, and I never took the time to listen to what he had to say. He wasn’t an easy man to get on with; he was deeply religious, but had dropped a religious degree at Oxford to serve on the day war was declared on Germany in 1939. His house was regimented to military perfection, always clean and meals (which included tea and high tea back then) had to be served at the hour, on the dot.

But in recent years, I find myself wishing that I took the time to hear what he had to say. Because he believed in what he was doing. He fought because he felt he had a duty to protect a country – even though as an Irishman from Dublin, it hardly treated him brilliantly in return. He watched his soldiers die during the war, and was proud of his regiment’s achievements in such actions as the breaking of the Hitler Line.

Now, I see nothing glamorous in war. As Plato says, only the dead are free from war. They are complex, difficult things that like every other human endeavour are carried out with complex motivations that are often not demonstrations of the best features of humanity. Oil, power, and vengeance are not glamorous reasons, and modern warfare hardly compares to the heroic glory portrayed of old war, the charge of the Pelennor Fields, and people who fight for the joy of violence alone.

Yet whether or not you support wars, whether it is the First, the Second Wars, Vietnam, or now Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s important not to forget that regardless of the motivations of leaders, it is the soldiery who do the fighting. For wars like the Second, which regardless of the hideous violence involved wiped out a civilisation that could offer nothing positive to humanity, they fight so that we have the right not to, they fight so that conscientious objectors have the right to be such.

For all the violence and killing that has gone on in recent years, we pay more attention to the shooting of one baboon in sport than the fact that today, the 200th soldier was killed in Afghanistan, fighting a war to which many of us object. The costs of war are mammoth, and it is humans out there on the front line that feel it most keenly.

So for them, rather than for any glamorous idealising of war and violence, I wear a poppy, and I wear one in recognition that both my grandfathers fought, and were prepared to die for their country. It doesn’t compare to sitting at a desk clicking a mouse all day, because no other job actually involves the cost of life itself.

Hundreds come back dead or missing limbs, shell shock has been replaced by chronic PTSD which destroys the lives of soldiers who have survived with all limbs intact but their minds blown apart by what they’ve experienced. So I don’t care, when I wear my poppy, for the values of politicians, but wear my poppy for the sake of those soldiers, who for whatever reasons, are prepared to put their lives on the line, and for those who already have. We rarely pay them any mind in a world where violence is the subject of entertainment. But we should not forget them, or their lives, and giving a day each year to their remembrance is an important act. For in the remembrance, perhaps we could also remember that real war is not entertainment, but violence, and we will be a better race when we have learned to do without it.

Oh woe, it’s the end of the world again

It’s that time again. The end of civilisation as we know it, the death of intellectual pursuits…

A recent article remarks upon the shortening of our concentration span and ability to read. An essay in Atlantic Monthly tells the tale of the writer who can no longer immerse himself in long books or stories. He says the internet has reduced his ability for deep, long reading and understanding.

Really?

This is, apparently, a Sign of the Times, or rather of the perpetual Decline of Society, which has probably been fortold by curmudgeons since we started walking upright on the savannah and our tree-residing ancestors saw it as a symbol of the declining standards of education. Everybody knows if you can walk upright you stand no chance against a hungry lion, out there on the savannah.

But is it really true? Are Wikipedia, Google and Twitter making us stupid, incapable of digesting large pieces of information, constructing long-form narrative or sitting back and reading a book?

I think not. And I think not in the month of November, which is Nanowrimo. Everybody is currently constructing stories. They will be 50,000 words long, which is about the length of a short doctoral thesis. That doesn’t sound like the death of story-telling to me.

And neither does the rise of Twitter. I spend a lot of time on Twitter, but that hasn’t stopped me being more than capable of digesting in the last two weeks alone, a book by Joachim C. Fest, the memoirs of Traudl Junge and a nine hundred page tome on the history of the Third Reich.

Besides which, there is a potential for a great deal of beauty, wit and talent to be conveyed in very short stories. Twitter requires a degree of skill, because the majority of users still stick to full English rather than text-speak, so you need to be able to say what you want to say in a space of 140 characters, make it appealing, inventive and expressive of yourself all at once.

Let us also not forget the bet Hemingway once made to tell what is a poignant and lucid story in only six words: “For sale: baby shoes. Never worn.”

No longer piece could convey with such clarity an entire story, read between the lines, but only requiring six words. Anything more might be mawkishly melodramatic. Do we need to know any more? Isn’t there enough sadness and loss presented in the sale of a pair of baby shoes, bought but never required?

It points, I think, not to the death of reading, of long stories, or people’s ability to read books (I’m sure all my readers will be happy to comment that they can still read a book quite happily), but to the general tendency of people to hook themselves on the Terrible Decline of Society. Go back far enough and priests and elites struggled with the idea that the general populace should be capable of reading and writing at all, because it might start them off on the dangerous business of thinking for themselves.

In past times, people decried the advent of printed books over the handwritten variety, lamented the right of people of all types in society to vote, and a whole host of other events which marked changes or turning points in society. We always tend to see change as the end of the world. I can happily tweet away whilst writing 1000 word articles, 180,000 word books and read as much as I want. There is nothing more delicious than the pleasure of reading, of an entire Sunday spent doing nothing but that, fueled by a constant supply of hot tea.

If people struggle to read it’s probably less about having a limited attention span but attempting to fit everything into a 24 hour day. Since we live now in a 24 hour world, it’s not uncommon for me to find agents demanding to know why I wasn’t answering my phone at 9pm to their “urgent” call. We try to do too much, perhaps, and certain activities, like reading, tend to be cast as laziness. If we’re not doing six billion things at once whilst running on the treadmill and arranging meetings with accountants and tweeting the whole thing ad infinitum, we’re just not productive enough!

I’ve taken to withdrawing each weekend with a book. Not to ensure that I can still read, but to cement the idea that there are times when I’m not online, when I’m not available, when I won’t answer the phone even. When it comes down to it, maintaining what we want to be able to do in society depends on withstanding the flow and the pressure from outside. If you find yourself bleating that you have to have your phone with you all night because somebody important might call about something crucial, remember that you’re not a sheep, and if you aren’t actually the president of a large country, nothing with the exception of a death in the family could possibly be so urgent.

Reports of the death of civilisation thanks to the digital squirrel* that is Google, or Twitter, are probably very much exaggerated. And if you’re still capable of writing very long articles about your inability to read very long articles, you’re missing something vital, and obvious.

Amnar Structure 13: The life and times of the Uskele

This is partly in response to a reader’s question from yesterday. Who – or what – are the Uskele?

The word Uskele

The word “Uskele” is used to refer to anybody who isn’t a Capillite, Servant, Ta Dasi or any of the other named hierarchies like the Sifradan or Zurasim. Its literal translation is “higher mortal”, which is meant to distinguish creatures with self-awareness (i.e. they have an “I” sense of self) from those that don’t. However, it doesn’t refer to primates. Uskele is used to refer to those who do not become something else in the course of their lives.

The prefix Us means “higher”, “above” or “aware”, and Kele is derived from the verb kel, which means being, or in some cases the state of being alive. It is also a noun which means “being”.

The term uskele generally means anybody, and for most people who use it (the Ta Dasi etc) it can also include the various tribes who aren’t Amnari (Taija, Tingalu, Nimoleh etc). However, some of these tribes regard themselves as distinct from the Amnari uskele, such as the Taija who sometimes refer to themselves in formal language as the Taijil Uskele.

The lives of the Uskele

Everybody in Amnar is born Uskele, even if their parents are members of the Ta Dasi or other social groups. Joining other groups depends on education or selection. In the case of the Ishcai-Nashim (the Servants), the Sifradan and Zurasim, this largely depends on selection or as in the case of young Capillai-nisi, being identified as such by the Samedim-Ishcavei.

Warriors are identified at the age of five or in some cases six, but the Amnari education system prohibits anybody training as a warrior who starts after that age. Watchers, Sifradan and Zurasim can be selected up to the ages of nine or ten. Late entry nurses and auxiliary staff can be selected at any time in their lives when they choose to change career.

It is important to note that entry into the Ishcai-Nashim or Ta Dasi orders is not contingent on belonging to the main Amnari (Adnashi) tribe. Selection representatives from all the main Academies make special journeys out to visit the smaller tribes, including the nomadic Nimoleh and Tingalu in order to give their children an opportunity to train.

For those who do not gain a formal training at one of the Academies, education is managed until the age of twenty, usually organised by the Academy itself, despite not allowing formal admission. Young Uskele will learn a huge variety of skills, from advanced literacy to the survival skills necessary to inhabit a world that is, essentially, wild.

The objective of education for young Uskele is to identify their own skills and strengths to contribute to wider society. Rather than shunting people into whatever career is required, Amnari focus on what the individual strengths of its people can provide. There are a huge range open to Uskele, and this continues into adulthood.

Many Uskele take advantage of the opportunity to provide service in a city’s Holy Complex. As maids, stewards, messengers and junior cooks, young Uskele have the advantage of daily interaction with members of the Ishcai-Nashim and Ta Dasi. This can open up opportunities to retrain as infirmary auxiliary staff at any of the big training infirmaries or even Am Rune Academy itself.

Others become highly skilled artisans, or take the long, winding path into civilian authority – becoming a politician. There is no such thing as ‘political science’ in Amnar, so youngsters with an eye to leadership tend to make their way early into situations close to the Holy Complexes. As all the big city states require vast numbers of staff to support them, not to mention the additional numbers needed to run the Nas Ashca itself, there is no shortage of opportunity.

Many others ignore these routes and become what we might call farmers. Given the unusual state of agriculture in Amnar, which does not favour mono-cropping, hunting and gathering are considered vital to the civilisation’s survival. Indeed, even those who rise to the senior Ta Dasi ranks and Servants themselves consider hunting a central part of their lives. Some polycropping is common in Amnar, and it is considered a highly skilled occupation.

Uskele, like all other Amnari (with the exception of Ishcai-Nashim and Capillites) are considered eligible to become Gadasim. In small settlements and villages, the traditional approach organised between families is preferred, but in bigger cities, this is organised at a higher level. Positioning Ta Dasi who become Gadasim with Uskele families and children is meant to encourage social mobility, to give those who do not usually mix with Ta Dasi the opportunity for their children to attend one of the academies. Of course, having a Ta Dasi Gadasim is no guarantee that the child will eventually attend an Academy.

You need a lot of outrage to get through these days

It started, I think, with the Jan Moir article.

I use Twitter a great deal (hell, my business, which has just gone and won itself an award, is based on Twitter), and I saw all of that take off pretty sharp. I went and read the article and was stunned – as I wrote here – that somebody was actually paid to write such an awful piece. I also read many of the reactions to it, which were mostly deeply personal in their attack.

Then there was Nick Griffin on Question Time. More outrage. How could we allow a man who has denied the facts of the Holocaust and hangs out with the KKK onto mainstream television? At the time I felt that if we believe in freedom of speech we can’t then dictate to whom the right is given. That would be fascist. But then, of course, whenever people like Nick Griffin get a chance to appear in mainstream media they always end up losing their core support. I believe a BNP supporter remarked that he made them look stupid, which I have to say is quite an achievement given what their protest marchers make them appear.

And then, the Baboon Debacle. AA Gill, the Times television and restaurant critic, shot one in Africa. Astoundingly, the row didn’t seem to kick off until two days after the offending column where he mentioned this fact. And I found I had really run out of moral outrage. I felt a little guilty, as though I should be reaching for my pitchfork and torch and ranting along with everybody else, but to be honest, I struggled to find the energy. There’s only so much moral outrage a person can take in the space of a week.

Besides which, I’ve been reading AA Gill in the Times for ages. Not because I go to the restaurants, and not because I watch the TV he reviews. I don’t have a TV and I never live near to the restaurant involved. I just read AA Gill because I happen to like his writing. I am sure saying that is the equivalent, post-baboon, of saying that Hitler might have been a genocidal bastard but Mein Kampf was pretty compelling (which, actually, it wasn’t, it’s more like a raving lunatic in print). Or, perhaps, arguing that since Roman Polanski has done so many amazing films and made such a contribution, what’s a little rape of a 13-year-old here and there?

And perhaps also because if you’ve read a lot of AA Gill you know that he tends to go around shooting things a lot. Not in a Columbine kind of way but in a kind of 19th century sportsman sort of a way. Nobody has complained at his mentions of stalking, or even entire columns devoted to hunting expeditions in the UK with fellow hunters like Marcus Pierre-White.

This makes me wonder: Are baboons higher up the moral ladder than, say, a Scottish stag or a pheasant? Nobody appears to have noticed AA Gill’s shooting habits until the baboon.

Of course, there has been another mob incident, which unfortunately I was too hungover from a Halloween party to notice. Somebody called Stephen Fry boring, and said it on Twitter. Stephen Fry is sometimes a delicate soul who has depression. I know what that’s like and I know that unless you have a metaphorical skin of re-enforced steel girders, you have a down day and somebody says, “Gosh, you’re dull” and it hurts. This happened on Twitter, in public. It’s even more public than getting a megaphone and saying it in the street.

I missed it completely, but I felt sadness for both Stephen Fry and the person who made the comment, and was then deluged with outrage and hatred from Stephen Fry’s loyal supporters.

The poor guy apologised. It was one of those comments that if you made it down the pub, or at an evening soiree or in all the other places where we used to go and say things to other people, Stephen Fry would have been none the wiser. But the thing is, instead of going out and saying things to people In Real Life, we say them on Twitter. Where Google stores them up like a kind of OCD manic digital squirrel, just in case we should need them later.

We don’t really notice the difference, but in the last couple of days I have been more aware that what we say on Twitter is often just the same kind of thing we’d say in private to friends, but now it’s on record for the whole world. It makes one slightly more circumspect about the whole thing.

And if somebody says something online that causes moral outrage, it’s so much easier to create a mob, mass complain or attack en masse. After all, the old method of getting out the pitchfork and torch, gathering in some agreed location and running about required so much organisation, effort and time. Nowadays you can participate in a mob on your lunch break.

When the Jan Moir story broke I thought it was a new means by which the social milieu defined the boundaries of acceptability. After all, we get rid of irrational hatred of other people (for whatever reason) by making that hatred socially unacceptable. Eventually, it is pushed to the fringes before being wiped out altogether.

Yet the constant provision of sources of moral outrage is, to be honest, exhausting. And what good does it do? I find myself uncomfortable at the idea of personal attacks on people for expressing their views; I preferred the Times Finkelstein rebuttal of Jan Moir than the many people who levelled personal insults in her direction. One of the great things about not being eight is that there’s so much less name-calling involved in day-to-day activities. I know I’m boring and academic but if you are going to critique somebody, I’d rather it wasn’t the kind of insult that I last heard slung across a playground when I was eight years old.

So I suspect I may be hanging up my pitchfork and torch. I don’t like myself angry, I don’t like being swept up by a mob. And to be honest, I don’t think I have that much moral outrage in me. After all, if I picked up on everything that runs through my Twitter stream of a day, I’d have no time for anything else.

Amnar Structure 12: The State of the Amnari Empire

It’s been several months since I’ve done this, but it seems appropriate to head back into writing about Amnar background, for those who are interested. And to start with we have a look at the Amnari Empire’s long history, having already covered aspects of its structure.

Foundation

The start of what is called The First Age was marked by the establishment of a union between the seven states that had grown up over the vast stretch of what became known as Amnar. Starting at Duum, the Adnashi-Amnari had spread outwards, augmenting their numbers by peaceful agreements with local tribes and other groups. By the time of the Foundation and Establishment, the landscape of Amnar was characterised by vast swathes of unpopulated territory in between the seven big states of Duum (central north), Nas Isca (north), Nas Trinitar (far west), Am Rune (far southwest), Am Urga (mid north), Rad Ulga (central south), and Rad Ruinn (far southeast).

Each state had developed its own system of governance, but at the Foundation of the Empire all states agreed to be managed by a representative Capillite, acting as a kind of spiritual leader and adviser who then took the issues specific to that area to an overarching council at the Nas Ashca in the newly acquired territory of the Tis Nafir mountains, once the seat of the Empire of Cir Nacayjil.

Over the course of the 5000 years or so of the First Age, there was a gradual democratisation of each of the seven states. As science, political science and artistic development continued, the role of the Capillite in each state diminished to the point of being less a ruler and more of an adviser. The growth of a standard Academic education system that supplied each state with a compliment of warriors and watchers, not to mention all the auxiliary roles that came to be embodied under the title Ta Dasi initially gave the Empire a strong feeling of unity.

The Second Age

As political and economic shifts changed the nature of political heirarchy in each state, it was felt by Isha and her legal mastermind Alix that the states no longer needed such guidance from the Capillites. The New Establishment, which marked the beginning of the Second Age, brought about sweeping changes in law which recognised the respective autonomy of the Empire’s Ta Dasi and Servants (Ishcai-Nashim) and the right of the states to self-determination.

This created a two-tier effect in Amnari politics. Each state now had a civilian authority and leadership that was independent of the larger Empire’s control. The Ta Dasi and Servants still operated in the same way, but now provided representatives to the civilian leadership for the interest of their own people living within the city state. The states used the Capillites as negotiators for support and supplies from the larger Empire, which focused its authority between Duum – then being led by Ashad Amin – and the Nas Ashca, where Isha had her seat as Empress.

The only state that did not develop a form of democratic leadership without the direct leadership of a Capillite was Duum. The biggest state, managing sprawling territories that reached as far west as the Trinitari Sea and to the eastern boundary with Am Urga, then stretching right down into central southern Amnar, had developed very differently, with an executive committee whose members repeatedly insisted on the maintenance of Ashad Amin as their head.

Duum had cultural reasons for refusing to demote their resident Capillite to the role of a mere adviser. During the latter years of the First Age and the early Second Age, Amin had developed a reputation for fair but compelling leadership, taking a strong interest in the affairs of the Uskele he represented. As the city that contained within its boundaries one of the deadliest Gaps, the Duum Gate, and the Academy that not only trained the Empire’s warrior elite but also controlled the entire education system with sub-academies providing expertise in Line Support that the Watchers’ Academy at Am Rune simply couldn’t offer (given that the Am Rune Gate was a dormant Gap by the Second Age), its pride in being the centre of the Empire superceded any democratisation to a fully Uskele leadership.

Amin’s leadership was one based solidly on his charismatic personality and intimate understanding of the complex nature of life in Duum. The city had had its share of suffering from the Duum Gate during its most active periods, and the people who lived there were understandably reluctant to see anybody but a fully qualified warrior hold its most senior post.

Consequently, Ashad Amin’s death left a vast hole in Duum politics. The simmering tensions between Taija and Amnari extremist groups made it difficult to establish a coherent leadership. Although both Lilatysia and Arandes stepped into the breach in some respects, because Arandes was not a political figure with the same power as Amin, his reach was largely limited to the Ta Dasi with whom he worked and any Uskele who happened to cross his path. Without any political responsibility in the same sense as his former master, Arandes had initially little reason for interacting on a daily basis with Uskele outside his remit until the rioting of the 4700s in the South City made his powerful presence more obvious.

Lilatysia, meanwhile, was too divisive a figure to keep the battling tensions of the Taija and extremist Amnari Scorian groups under control. She did not have the authority that Ashad Amin had held, was a member of the committee as ‘the eyes of Isha’ but not its leader. The inheritors of Scorian hated her as much as he had for her refusal to back their fundamentalist views about the nature of Adnashi-Amnari blood and its superiority to the zealous Taija.

Meanwhile, the other states had happily adjusted to self-management, and the Capillites pulled back to take up roles that revolved around providing nodding support. Although they met officially to discuss matters that affected all Amnar, or assisted in trade between the big states, the Ai Ta’Sifradan were the formal eyes and ears of the woman whose role at the heart of the Empire had almost religious significance.

By the time of Duum’s collapse into totalitarian dictatorship under Tiom, the concept of the Amnari Empire had become less about practical politics that could be managed between the various Uskele state executives, but about an almost religious devotion. The concept of Amnar was framed around the provision of Ta Dasi warriors, watchers and auxiliaries, whose devotion was service to an overarching idea of unity, and to the idolising of the woman who had once prevented breakdown into war and ignominy: Isha herself.