A Day in the Life of Winchester Railway Station

A Day in the Life of Winchester Railway Station

A Documentary Photographic Profile

 by Tasmin Petty

This documentary photographic project focuses on what happens or does not happen at Winchester Railway Station during one day encompassing morning rush hour, the afternoon calm down and the evening scamper. This particular subject was chosen because it demonstrates individual reality within an interesting and diverse location. 

The chosen images demonstrate variety in terms of emotions which are anchored by the captions. It tells the story of the goings on in one railway station within one typical day.

Introducing Winchester.

Patience is a virtue.

Train? What train?

The evening scamper.

Any shelter is better than none.

No sign of of acknowledgement.

 

'Until I Was 21' - Documentary project.

This documentary focuses on my Grandmother - Mary Simpson. Sixty years ago she was in her twenties and was in love with her fiance Adrian and also with repertory stage acting. She was happy. So, how did she deal with the sudden death of Adrian at such a poignant time in her life?

Mary Simpson's life when she was in her twenties was not ordinary, for the 1950's. She did not want to simply follow what was expected of her as a young female, she wanted to explore her passion. Her passion was acting on stage.

Along with her best friend Sheila, she developed a great love for drama in all its forms and after school she gained numerous places in repertory companies. Her passion in life had become a reality. Through this experience she met Adrian, who was in the RAF, and fell madly in love. For a short time, her life was idyllic.

What comes next, changed her outlook forever. Adrian was shot down in his plane and was subsequently killed, leaving Mary alone and distraught. Her life was no longer perfect, the heartbreak of Adrian’s abrupt passing affected every aspect of her life, including her acting career.

However, true love did find its way back to Mary, in the form of Gordon a number of years later which rekindled her true happiness.

The genre is an observational documentary and it is set in the present day with references to the 1950's. The themes explore love and loss through a linear narrative strucuture.

                       
                          Mary - The subject and main character (My Grandmother)
                          and Tasmin (me) - The filmmaker.

USA - 1950s and 1960s - The New Industrial Estate

The New Industrial State was the work of  John Kenneth Galbraith in 1967, it focused on exploring the economics of production and the effect that large corporations had over the state. The Industrial System, according to Galbraith, is controlled by a technostructure (which maintains the organisation and make sure expansion if happening) not shareholders.

The Industrial State has control of its capital supply. But the problems with the New Industrial State are 1. Inflation 2. Increased role of the state 3. destruction of profitability 4. Keynesian military.

 Within the USA the New Industrial State meant that everything was always available all of the time, this could led inevitably to boredom and cultural exhaustion. With everything taken care of our biggests worries are things of little importance as awe take for granted things like water, education and food.
The failure of communism led to capitalism which was believed to be the better and more effective way in order to progress.


Existentialism VS Nihilism

Weber - Bureaucracy - main source of power - legal, routine. The rise of bureaucratic - "finance capital"
Karl Marx - economics

The 1950s was the era of American prosperity - Keynes is the great God. Neo-classical economics is a museum piece, or rhetorical only or a laughing stock - particularly on monetary policy. Keynes discovered Marx was wrong because you can add value through marketing - Marx did not predict that bureaucracy would take over capitalism.

But a critique of the 'managed' society, as a new form of 'soft' totalitarianism. The keynsian consensus is attacked from the left and the right. The far left/far right (including Heidegger, Sartre, Maoism, Franz Fanon etc.) American 'civilisation' is 'bureaucratic technological militaristic nihilism'. It is bound for disintergration, probably violent.

Left --> Maoism, third worldism, ecology, feminism, transvaluation - anti-globalisation as anti-capitalism, green movement.
Right --> racial disintergraation, cultural decadence, economic parasitism, loss of national identity. Globalisation of disintergration, relative and absolute economic decline of the west.

Keynes - print more money - by boosting the economy with more money = government give businesses subsidies to employ. Or create government schemes - pointless jobs like digging a hole and filling it in again.
Keynes 'managed society' was greatly criticized - soft totalitarianism.
Weber - "rise of bureaucracy" - Was interested in power and why people follow rules by certain people.

Jobs are not there during the depression - people are forced to work for less because of surplus in labour.
Everyone needs a job but no one will be able to buy what they are making/selling. People have to settle for unemployment or low wages.

1950's and 1960's was a time of prosperity in America.

Problems with NIS

1. increased role of state
2. inflation
3. keynesian military
4. destruction of profitability 

New Journalism

Journalism has evolved throughout time as society has developed, but it began with old journalism. Within American journalism there were Penny Papers (the first written material for the general public) which were only 1p, were for the less educated and were controlled and funded purely by political parties who put forward a point of view.

Next, in the mid 19th Century, objectivity became a stronger part of writing because of the development of wire services (the Associated Press). Objectivity became particularly important because it was what made journalism profitable and popular.

Furthermore, in the late 19th Century The Yellow Press was the first major change towards new journalism. It was known as journalism without a soul and focused on making newspapers more sensationalised through the use of pictures, interesting and shocking content, emotive headlines, striking imagery and exclusive stories. An example of sensationalised newspapers are tabloids, they are colourful and they often contain heightened stories, as well as this, they are thought of as frozen television. The Yellow Press was named the new journalism without a soul because it constantly contained stories focused on sin, sex and violence.

Journalists record events in a formulaic way and it has been implemented into us also, we have to use the news pyramid and the who, what, when, where, why? The new journalism was an attempt to record events that mirrored the language and style of the events, and then let that real representation bleed into the copy.

During the 1960s and 1970s in America there was political and social upheaval, it was an extremely turbulent time with foreign wars, military threats overseas, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the wars in Vietnam and huge controversy of the draft. 
The reasons for this turbulence during the 1960s was firstly because of demographics and the post World War 2 baby boom which created a powerful youth culture who became teenagers within the 1960s and would march for civil rights, be the voice of radical political change; it was the youths who were changing society. 
Secondly, sexual revolution became a clear factor; it was now legally acceptable for women to control their reproductive system with the use of the contraceptive pill. This sexual freedom allowed women to take control and have the choice whether to have children or not and allow them to practice sex without the risk of falling pregnant. This refers to an Existential point of view, they believe that we are all defined by our own decisions and that freedom of choice is crucially important - Sartre believed that ignoring the fact that you must choose would be living in bad faith. 
Thirdly, the student movement brought with it great protests for various rights - civil, black power, the use of LSD to access altered thinking of counterculture. LSD was a way of escape from the controlling heirarchy in order to have 'real' experiences. Drugs within this period of time created subcultures - hippies, communes and collectives. 
And finally, music was very central to this time and Sartre Jazz was authentic music of the 1960s - drug fueled, protest, political - in order to feed the student movements.

The key to Existentialism is Sartre's bad faith and Heidegger's authenticity. The main ideas were freedom and choice - for example - Fanon's view of a path of freedom through violence, for Fanon, the act of violence is the extreme expression of own choice. Anti-establishment feeling - the idea that 'there is a policeman inside your head'. 
New forms of journalism began to emerge which focused on setting, plot, direct quotes, feelings, sounds and images and stuck to facts. 
The alternative journalism was personal and expressed as a point of view. There were two types of media (Marshall McLuhan) hot and cold media - hot is explicit and it is telling you how it is, whereas cold is more seeing - it is ambiguous and is there for interpretation. 
Tom Wolfe was an example of an explicit journalist who was influenced by Emeile Zola. Zola painted the scene vividly - a master of natural realism. Wolfe wanted to show how to write features in the new journalism style - first hand data, real involvement, shorthand, recording devices. This would required a great deal of detailed construction with realistic dialogue, third person point of view, recording of every gesture and habits. 
This would allow for a more relatable experience, 

Hannah Arendt - Origins of Totalitarianism - Seminar Paper

Totalitarianism refers to a political system where the state holds absolute power and total authority over the society; it seeks to control every aspect of life, public and private, wherever necessary.

 
-Key Questions - Can good people do evil things? Are we inherently good/evil?-


-How could this happen?-

Totalitarianism clearly differs from any other form of political oppression, and is an extreme version of authoritarian regime; it developed a new way and new political institutions whilst destroying all legal, social and political traditions of the country. The totalitarian government transformed the classes into the masses in order to practice full control. Plato's republic was against these ideas of totalitarian regime - contract theory; powers of the state should be limited. Hobbes had a very low view of humanity; he believed that humanity needs a leader to keep everyone straight and in order to live our lives without fear of what could happen without an authority figure.

Hitler’s Nazi regime is an example of a Totalitarian rule. The reason Hitler’s regimes worked in Germany were because of the struggles that Germany were suffering at the time - loss of money from other countries because of their failure in WW1 - before Hitler came into power. Hitler provided the 'way out' of this great depression after WW1, he was extreme in his ways, yet the people of Germany were so desperate that they would believe him and he didn't really give them a choice either - executions of people who did not approve of Hitler's regimes.

Hannah Arendt believed that totalitarianism was different to any other regimes mainly because the totalitarian regime focused on destroying the individuality of a person through control and overall power over the person.


“Everything we know of totalitarianism demonstrates a horrible originality – its very actions constitute a break with all our traditions.” - Arendt


The state is everything - you are part of the state or you are nothing, the state should not come within your home - there should be ultimate freedom within the home. However, Mussolini believed the home was just another place where control should be.


"Fascism is for liberty. And the only liberty which can be a real thing, the liberty of the State and the individual within the State. Therefore, for the fascist, everything is in the State, and nothing human or spiritual exists, much less has value, outside the State. Outside the State there can be neither individuals or groups. Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State" - Mussolini


However, Arendt saw the imperialism as a precursor to totalitarianism – because it contained so many traits which the new regimes could use.

Individuality of a person can make them hard to keep track of and control, in order to destroy this individualism two methods are used - state terror and ideology.

Terror - is to destroy, not only through murder of vast numbers, but through destroying individuality and make people scared to think, speak do anything. A concentration camp in WW2 is a good example of this.

Ideology - compliments the policy of terror, it eliminates the capacity for individuals to think which develops into only referring to the state (not thinking for yourself), the state tell you what to do which means you have no responsibility at all.

The ideology system refers to something being the way it is, just because. Orders to guards at concentration camps from higher authority, the guard is not asserting individual though, he is just doing what he has been told, this moves on to the aspect of terror.

Ideology makes you comfortable through the use of a higher authority's responsibility; it frees you from common sense and allows you to be blissful?

This breakdown of the stable human world means loss of the institutional and psychological barriers that normally set limits to what is possible.

Hannah Arendt believed that the first move for the Nazis was the deny Jews citizenship, which was a decision made as part of the "final solution". The Nazis actually saw the Jews as a great rival race that must be overtaken; hence the mass extermination. Arendt highlights that civilisation is fragile and decency of people can very quickly break down (train station example), we need to have structure and laws and rights in order for civilisation to not break down.

Totalitarianism in Germany was, in the end, about megalomania and consistency, not eradicating Jews.


-Control Language-

“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.” (1984)

Orwell was horrified by the capacity of totalitarian regimes in order to control minds through manipulating language.

Here is an example of how language can influence the meaning produced and control what people think about it.

In 1984 these ministries changed their names to the following:

Ministry of Peace – organises war
Ministry of Love – organises the police
Ministry of Plenty – gathers taxes

However, the descriptions show that the ministries focus on more negative aspects of society not what the words used suggest.

 
-What is your personal responsibility in a dictatorship?-

This refers to if you would contribute to such events like the execution of a mass number of Jews?

Eichmann trial - Adolf Eichmann was a German Nazi SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer (lieutenant colonel) and one of the major organizers of the Holocaust. He had the task of facilitating and managing the logistics of mass deportation of Jews to concentration camps. He was taken to Israel to face trial in an Israeli court on 15 criminal charges, including crimes against humanity and war crimes. He was found guilty and executed by hanging in 1962. He is the only person to have been executed in Israel on conviction by a civilian court. However, he did not kill any Jews with his own hands. He is guilty?

This is a good example of how you don't have to 'evil' to do evil things; Eichmann was just an ordinary man who was responsible for the transportation of Jews to a place in which they were murdered.

For Arendt, Eichmann is guilty because he did not think; he simply followed the system and did not choose his own fate. Choice is crucial to the existentialist, but Eichmann must have followed Kant because he did not choose he followed his duty, just like everyone else.

"The only thing I cannot escape is the need to choice" - Sartre

Arendt believed that even though millions of other Germans were doing the same sort of thing, Eichmann was still guilty; he could have followed his own choice (personal judgement) and chosen not to be a part of it at all.

 
-Ideology and Terror - A Novel Form of Government-

Totalitarianism differs from any other form of political oppression, and is an extreme version of authoritarian regime; it developed a new way and new political institutions whilst destroying all legal, social and political traditions of the country. Totalitarian government always transformed classes into masses and supplanted the party system entirely, it shifted the centre of power from the army and police and established a foreign policy openly directed toward world domination. It is a modern form of tyranny and is based on a lawless government where power and control is wielded by one man.

Totalitarian lawfulness pretends to have found a way to establish the rule of justice on earth, something which the legality of positive law admittedly could never attain.

'Natural laws' - governing whole universe

'Divine laws' - revealed in human history

Totalitarian lawfulness:

-defying legality and pretending to establish the direct reign of justice on earth.

-Executes the law of history or of nature - it applies the law directly to mankind without bothering with the behaviour of men.

Totalitarian policy claims to transform the human species into an active and unfailing carrier of the law, to which humans otherwise would only passively and reluctantly be subjected to. The policy does not replace one set of laws with another set of laws, it also doesn't establish its own consensus iuris, or create a new form of legality (by one revolution). However, it does believe that it can do without any consensus iuris and still not resign itself to tyrannical state of lawlessness, fear. It also promises to release the fulfilment of law from all action and will of man; it promises justice on earth because it claims to make mankind itself the embodiment of the law.

Terror in the totalitarian government has ceased to be a mere means for the suppression of opposition.

Law - was only there to tell people what not to do and no what people could do.

Existentialism - Heidegger and Sartre and chapter 9 - Ethics.

The idea that there is absolutely no point in anything at all, including god is called Nihilism.
Existentialists then asked - what do you do is there is no point? - you make choices because you are free.

Nietzsche
"God is dead" - This marks the start of freedom and the end of certainty, which then means we are faced with crisis (it isn't a problem because it = freedom) - we need something to keep us going.
Nietzsche believed humans have their own morals and  human nature is not universal.
This disagrees with the position of natural rights - Locke - and approves Fanon's violence.
Ubermensch - overcomes what defines us as humans.
The superman (overman) ignores this and finds his place in the world - according to his own will - the will to power.

Heidegger
'Being and Time' - highly influential work - it highlighted Heidegger's interest in what it means to exist and the problems within human life. Dasein - is in everyone and it refers to the investigation of the nature of being and the question of nature.
Heidegger is against the work of Descartes - because Cartesian dualism is something that makes philosophy impossible. Hume, who was a Skeptic, believed that humans could never know the world truly because how do we get out of our minds to know the world?
Heidegger talks about Dasein instead of consciousness and subjectivity - so existence is the engagement we have in the world. For Dasein, dualism is absurd, and for Dasein to exist it must exist in the world - so we couldn't exist without the world.
Das man self - the inauthentic self - is a social contrast to the self.
Existence is made up of choices and possibilities.
The inauthentic self is turning existence into an object - because it is not making a choice.

Sartre
Sartre believed that "existence precedes essence" and we create our own purpose.
Things happen without any reason - it is unpredictable - no guiding spirit - no driving force.
The life or someone is not determined by moral laws or God - we choose.
The alternative to recreating oneself is to take responsibility for your own actions and be defined by your choices.
Sartre believed that humanity is -
ABANDONMENT - God is dead - there are no divine set of rules - there is no one to guide us - we make our own path and choices.
ANGUISH - humans are free - 'condemned to be free.' We are responsible for everything - there are no excuses.
DISPAIR - the realisation that the world may prevent us from getting what we want. We are the totality of what we do - we still have the choice of how to react to the setback.

Bad faith - we are radically free - we have no obligation.

"You are free therefore choose"

Logic and Mathematics and Chapter 6 - Epistemology

Based on Frege, Russell and Whitehead.

Natural numbers are simply words used to count things - to count is to create an abstract category or group.

Syntax - logical system using rules of inference to alter the meaning of symbols --> house = noun, blue house = syntactic adjective. Is syntax learnt or innate? (Chomsky)

There are 3 fundamental attitudes towards language - especially numbers.

1. They are natural and can be empirically observed.
2. They are intuitions of a harmonic perfect Platonic other world.
3. They are abstract logical objects that are constructed purely from syntax. 

Numerical Naturalism/Evolutionary Psychology.
0 = absence of a thing
1 = one banana/enough bananas
2 = a lot of bananas (more than one)

This came from apes and stoneage tribes who seemed to be able to judge and decipher simple empirical plurality --> 'one thing', 'more than one thing' and 'many things' are all they need.
Even for people from advanced cultures, small number words are functionally different to large number words.

If you go into a room and there is 1 or even 3 people there you don't count them you just know it is occupied, you categorise them as plurality. So, the number 7,434 is a predicate symbol of more basic symbols organised according to known syntax. (a predicate can be analysed).

Prime numbers are pre-existing supernatural forms necessary pre-conditions for consciousness.
All other numbers are just rational combinations of prime numbers - this contradicts Kant - "existence in not a predicate".
The prime number 3 has significance - its a 'magic number', 'third time lucky', 'rule of thirds', 'three chord triad'. The beginning, middle and the end. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Special problem of nothing and zero:
It is naturally impossible to have nothing (0).
1 and not 1 are categories.
0 is nothing but nothing is something (contradicts Aristotle's law of contradiction - the fundamental axiom of all logic).
Aristotle's logic - the sun is the sun, the moon is the moon therefore they are not the same thing.

What does +1 mean?...
0+1=1 (infinitely large increment)
1+1=2 (double in size)
N+1 (infinitely small increment)

Numbers as logical objects:
The problem of zero and nothing remained unsolved for 1000 years until Frege (1848-1925).

Frege's method:
Axiom - all things which are identical are equal to themselves (asserted a priori, deductive, definitional truth).
All things which are pairs are identical to all other pairs.
The class of all pairs, contains all pairs and this can be given a purely nominal symbol (eg two) a word or a numeral, it doesn't matter.

Zero is a class of all possible objects which are not equal to themselves. There are no such objects (NULL). Computers never had to key in a zero, they used Frege's 'null class'.

Epistemology.
The study of knowledge and justified belief.
It is concerned with the following questions:

1. What are the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge?
2. What are its sources?
3. What is its structure?
4. What are its limits?

Frege was concerned to set out the relationship between epistemology and other related disciplines. He too over but adapted Kant's distinction between a priori and a prosteriori knowledge.

Psychology is interested in the cause of our thinking whereas mathematics is interested in the proof of our thoughts.

Frege was similar to Descartes. However, not in the ego - Descartes' ego was a non-ideal subject of thinking but Frege's ego is a non-ideal object of thought.

System of logic - John Mill described as a textbook of the doctrine that derives all knowledge from experience. He set a system of formal logic.
Mill wanted to disassociate his work with the work of Hobbes.
Mill was unlike Frege in that Frege believed that arithmetic and logic were both a priori.

Frege was the second founder of logic - after Aristotle. He looked at logic and systemised it which led to the conclusion that logic was a priori and analytic.  For Frege the most important part of logic was validity and invalidity of a particular form of inference, shown through syllogism.
For example...

All cats have fur
some cats are black
some cats have black fur
this is an example of a valid inference

BUT

All cats have fur
some cats are black
all cats have black fur
is an example of an invalid inference.