This weekend was certainly an education when it came to insects and plants. Who would’ve thought that taking a photo of a moth would’ve doubled or tripled my knowledge of the animal kingdom?

Hot on the back of the HAWK MOTH, I now have some photos of peacocks. Originally, I thought I had some peahens too, but as it turned out: it was just an albino peacock. How about that. Where did I find peacocks? Roaming around the garden of one of our local ‘little cottages that sells cake and tea’ — is there a better name for such places? It really is a little cottage in the middle of no where (2 or 3 miles from any neighbours) that looks down over Ashdown Forest (the ‘Hundred Acre Wood‘, if you’re a Winnie-the-Pooh fan) with fantastic gardens and, seemingly, lots of peacocks.

So without further ado, a series of photos entitled ‘Cocks at Sunset.

I’m going to attempt to tackle the tricky and turbulent subject of racism. I’m not going to cover its entire history. I’m not going to pretend that I’m entirely objective — no one is — though I will try my best to be as neutral as possible. If I say something upsetting, apologies; this a sensitive topic, one that most people tend to stay well away from.

As always, we’ll start at the beginning. Not many people know where racism actually begun. The slave trade? No. Eugenics and ultimately the Holocaust? No. Religion? Getting warmer, but still not quite.

Racism begun way back in tribal times. Racism is effectively synonymous with tribalism, which is itself similar to the concept of nationalism. It’s all about selfishness.  Racism can take many forms: religious, cultural, skin-colour and are all equally ‘bad’ — but at one time, they weren’t. They were a matter of self-preservation. It’s you or them. Insular tribes and their inbreeding reaffirmed genetic and physical traits and thus ‘races’ were created — but even the term ‘race’ is, ironically, racist! Race is an American term coined hundreds of years ago to describe the difference between blacks and whites. It sadly gained credibility and traction, and was then exported around the world. It was borrowed from the French razza which means ‘lineage’.

Racism is all about lineage — all about blood, and the purity thereof. Racism is the act of erroneous differentiation of humans into different species. It’s about the justification of maliciousness and unfair, unfounded prejudice to those of different colour, culture, heritage or lineage.

We have the Cartesian-Newtonian worldview to thank for this little gem. For 500 years now we’ve been living in a world governed by the laws of physics. Action and reaction, cause and effect. Mechanics. Gravity. Cold, cool calculation of calculus. The control, utilisation and abuse of energy. The last five centuries have been all about physicality; it’s been all about what we can see and touch and push and stretch. Racism existed before of course, but it wasn’t the kind we see today — it was religious. For 1500 years racism was religious — though back then it wasn’t called racism of course. It would’ve been ‘persecution’ or ‘religious intolerance’.

Did you know that when Columbus first landed on what would become Mexico, the Portuguese and Spanish sailors did not hesitate to mate and marry the Indians, the native Americans? As long as they converted to Christianity via baptism, colour didn’t matter one iota. Only their religious beliefs mattered.

But that’s a topic unto itself and I’m not going to go into it here. The rise of contemporary racism is more interesting.

Let’s go back to skin colour. Other than the Holocaust, almost all modern examples of racism have stemmed from the concept of White supremacy and superiority. How on earth did those of white skin end up at the top of the food chain?

The Declaration of Independence, that’s how. But don’t stop reading yet, my dear American friends! You probably wouldn’t have drafted the Declaration if it wasn’t for the British.

The Declaration of Independence was the pinnacle of The Enlightenment. The single most important period for philosophical and scientific advancement ever also created racism. All it took one was one theory-treated-as-fact: Dr Charles White (what a name…) scientifically reasoned that Blacks were the stop-gap between monkeys and Whites. Voltaire and Kames — both bigwigs of the Enlightenment — proposed the idea of separate human species.  Hume and Kant, Jefferson and Washington — almost every big name of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries were White supremacists.

Here were the most influential thinkers, scholars and scientists the world has ever seen. It was their thoughts, mental machinations and ideologies that formed the world we live in today. And they were racists. They thought of Blacks as not-quite-human.

And I dare say… it’s not a very big surprise that they arrived at such a conclusion.

The Enlightenment was about culture; a big damn celebration of art and science and thinking — in essence, it was a riotous exaltation of everything that makes us human and not monkeys.

And Blacks didn’t have that culture. American Indians didn’t have that culture. Or, rather, they didn’t have any that we could see. So we subjugated them. We made them our bitches. We justified our brutal abuse of fellow man by declaring them sub-human — after all, would a fellow white man allow himself to be forced into slavery? God no, his intelligence and tenacity would prevent it.

We’re talking about a group of intellectuals that ranted and raved about the benefits of liberty and equality; freedom from tyranny and the virtues of democracy and representative government. Later, they even drafted a declaration formed from the tenets and axioms of these great thinkers. They formed a new, mighty nation that, at its very core, ratified slavery.

As Thomas Jefferson scrawled out the fundament, lynch-pin and rock-solid bastion of the New World, as he illustrated his idyllic imaginings on the loose paper that would later become the Declaration of Independence… he was writing it for the whites. There was just no way their way of life could continue if non-whites were afforded the same rights and privileges as the whites. Think about it.

But it wasn’t really Jefferson’s fault. Science had told him that blacks were little more than apes devoid of culture and intellect. Or perhaps science merely suggested it and human nature enforced it. I suppose we’ll never know.

But how do we fix it?

Racism is a pathological contagion. It passes from parent to child. That can never be changed.

What we need is a new worldview. We need to shift our perspective through 90 degrees and move towards a new frontier. I hesitate to say that we need to ‘re-find our spirituality’, because there are issues associated with organised religion: intolerance, persecution, zealotry. Oour infatuation with the physical nature of the world needs to change. Never again must we single-out and tunnel-vision a sole strand of science.

What we need is another Enlightenment…

For the first time in recorded history everyone has an equal chance of success.

Or that’s what we like to tell ourselves.

We gape at the powerful, unwaxed women that are directors and CEOs. We smile fondly at the emasculated house-husband that stays home to tend to the children.

Sure, Spics and Polacks still man the mops and paint our walls, but everyone knows of at least one rich and successful Mexican or American Indian! They might not all be doing well but at least now they have the chance to be successful.

And the Blacks… well… we like to claim that they’re on an equal footing with the rest of ‘us’ (listen to me, I’m perpetuating racism right here…), but who are we kidding? I look at how tribalistic and wild England was before the Romans arrived… and wonder if Africans merely missed the Imperialistic Gravy Train. What would’ve happened if Caesar went South instead of North? (I don’t know enough history here — is there a reason there were no large communities south of Alexandria and Carthage?) Today there is a little Arabian/North African racism, but nothing compared to the scale of black-attack and White supremacy that rules contemporary society (the Arabians have only been attacked in recent years, and we all know why that is — again, like modern-day ‘black racism’, Middle East racism is Americentric too…)

So how do we fix it?  A lot of people point to these ‘ethnicities’ that hold high-powered positions or win awards. A lot of people say that we’re already on the path to eliminating racism. But… are we?

Do we not reinforce racism every time we congratulate an ethnic minority on achieving a high-status position? Our entire mindset has to change. We still look at those of differing cultures and colours as fundamentally different. Every time someone writes an article celebrating the chutzpah and tenacity of a female CEO, we are reaffirming these differences between us — differences that don’t exist.

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Try this little thought experiment for a moment. If you’re white, get a really detailed image in your mind of a black person. Dark, thicker skin. Flatter nose. Fuller lips. Curly hair perhaps. If you’re black, picture a white person and all that ‘white’ entails. If you’re yellow… picture something else, I don’t know. Now… imagine yourself in their skin. Imagine being identical to how you are now, only a different colour, a different shape. The same fluid personality but filling a different vassal. It’s really damn hard, eh? It’s also a little revolting, isn’t it…? Did you shudder? Did you simply shrug and give up? It’s pretty hard to do, actually. Sadly.

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Once upon a time, we were all brothers. It was a very damn long time ago now. But we fought each other’s battles and hunted for the tribe — the extended family — instead of ourselves. I suppose, back then, our entire world was much smaller. Populations were smaller. There was less contention for resources.

Did racism purely arise from a burgeoning ‘need’ to gather resources? Did we subjugate our fellow man merely so that we could compete with others? Migrant Indians keep Black slaves too, in their African colonies. It’s not just a ‘white thing’. We treat men and women — our friends, our family? — as commodities with values, rather than sentient beings.

Do we have this all to blame on capitalism…? I wonder if there’s less racism in ‘less developed’ parts of the world where more important things than money are sought for.

Balloon comedian & It’s all about the cake, or how Sebastian found Abi

Seb: I should probably preface this by saying he is a member of my family. I don’t actually go around taking photos of little boys, asking them to tie balloons to their ears — that was all his idea. I just pointed the camera in the right direction (which just so happens to be the most important thing with photography, by the way).

I got a new lens this week — a Sigma 50mm — so expect to see a lot more photos like this. I’m building up to doing some journalistic work/people photography. The idea is to hit up somewhere like India or South Africa and head to the slums or the wild undergrowth. I’ll also be doing some portraiture and live music work.

I’ve always been good at catching just the right moment, but the key to photography (other than pointing in the right direction!) is understanding your tools. The only way to do that is to take lots of photos!

If you like this kid, I have a few more photos of him to share…

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Abi: Ah Cake!. It can unite or divide nations, it can be used to celebrate or commiserate and it is power is not to be underestimated. Make no mistake, cake is VERY important to some people. Who knew that somewhere, deep in the bowels of some forum, there are a whole bunch of self employed artists who, quite simply love cake. And this photo is partly dedicated to them.

I won’t go into the details of who did (or didn’t) speak first. I won’t elaborate on the fact that when Seb did eventually address me, it was to tell me off about something. I think you will agree that it was not the best start. I would even go so far as to say it is a wonder we are friends at all.

So this week’s image is a comment on the bonding powers of cake and one persistent, hairy photographer. Enjoy.

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To visit either Flickr stream, click a photo!

The Thing & Footsteps will guide you home

Seb: If you didn’t know already: it snowed in England this week! Not just a couple of centimetres either — PROPER snow. Like as much as TEN centimetres in some parts!

We only got about 5cm here, but in other parts of the country (Abi’s?) I think they had a lot more. Either way, more than 1cm of snow in England always immediately triggers two things a) the shutting down of all offices, schools and amenities — the entire country shuts down, basically — and b) it’s time to PLAY!

We Brits don’t play as much as other people. I don’t know why. I guess we’re a bit boring… But snow is one of the few universal times when almost everyone (other than the oldies) goes out to play.

Of course, me being me, I grabbed my camera and avoided the kiddies that might damage my lens.

What you see here is part of our garden, at around 1am. It’s pretty damn creepy. I’ll talk more about it tomorrow on my blog — it’s straight out of the camera, believe it or not.

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Abi: We never used to get snow at this time of year at all. I remember wishing for it year after year as a child but growing up by the sea, hard frost was as wintry as it got. I took this a day or two before I left my friend’s house, on the same day I took most of the other snow shots in my stream and found that this rather quiet image was by far my favourite. Snowfall exposes the paths we tread and I love seeing vast carpets of virgin snow over the fields. Even though it reminds me of that tragic scene at the end of The Snowman.

Incidentally Seb’s view on this one involved something poetic about my new start. He feels ‘the hopefulness of the footprints in week 17, representative of Neil Armstrong’s footsteps… represent the turning point…’ — he actually said that, I lifted it right out of the MSN chat window. I suppose when you look at it like that it’s kind of fitting.

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You can click either image to see what the lovely folks over on Flickr think of our photos.