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The Day Georgia Retrieved Her Dignity

The second of May, 2015, may well go unnoticed by

historians of the future; but I am convinced that it marks
a watershed not only in Georgias recent evolution but
also, maybe, in the history of our times...
1: Indicators
On the surface of life, this Saturday marked maybe the
Saturday when tourists finally returned to Tbilisi. At about
2 p.m. spotted a group of about thirty Dutch tourists
assembling near the Marriot Courtyard hotel; and there
were two further groups moving slowly down the
sidewalks of Leselidze Street. Maintaining the festive
note, the converted London Routemaster bus which is
used for open-top Tbilisi tours, emerged, wobbling over
the cobbles, in the direction of Freedom Square.

In a splendid aesthetic contrast, a multiplicity of

marshrutkas were next to come up the street; while early
summer sunshine reversed the rather ambiguous
portents of the blue and grey sky near St Georges
monument, which had all the fateful density of meaning
of Edvard Munchs The Scream.

And I was reminded of childhood holidays spent walking

the cobbled steets of Hampstead in North London
streets often slippery with lime leaves or offering the
delights of fallen chestnuts in autumn. Back in the days
when the UK was an emerging economy, and all the
people I see around me these days were hidden away
behind a monstrous political barrier the Iron Curtain
which we never imagined that we would see broached...

Old East-West border in

Germany

The events of 1989 were good were axiomatic of the

march of history, but unleashed huge anguish in Georgia
and the Caucasus as well what was then Yugoslavia.
According to economist Henry Mintzberg, however, they
brought about a fatal disequilibrium between the three
estates of Government, Business and Civil Society which
has proved disastrous in the period since.
While Georgias immediate difficulties have been laid at
the door of over-zealous protectionist legislation which
has stifled business initiative and investment, a far more
basic trend has been globalization, which has raised the
thresholds at which emerging economies can compete in
international markets. In spite of the Lari plunging to a
record low of 2.30 to the dollar in the last few days, the
economic indicators referred to in the latest edition of
Georgias homegrown economic weather-vane, the
Financial , remain good (new projects in manganese
extraction and the first ever recycling scheme in Georgia;

and continued good or improving - definitions in Ease of

Doing Business, Economic Freedom and Global
Competitiveness in the small print; with Moodys index
rating suggesting a vibrant if risky theatre of economic
activity in the next few years ahead.
2 : Method
My remarks above open several cans of methodological
worms, which it well worth opening:
2.1 The core sample
It is necessary to take the temperature of our times and
to do so, what better than this quotation from Johan
Huizinga:
De verliefde droeg het teeken van zijn dame, de
genooten het embleem van hun broederschap, de partij
de kleuren en blazoenen van hun heer.
The lover wore the emblem of his lady, or of his guild
membership; and the colours of his party and the coat of
arms of his Lord....
The great Dutch historian wrote this in his magisterial and
utterly original treatise The Waning of the Middle Ages
which was particularly concerned with the mindset and
symbolisms of life in the late fifteenth-century Low
Countries.
What is the situation today? It was well evoked, a week or
so ago, by a new piece of creative writing by a Utrecht
University Philosophy student, Timothy Merkel no

relation to the German organ composer of this name nor

to the tenacious and eirenic German Chancellor... Timothy
no stranger to Georgia (and in whose tongue he is fully
fluent) wrote:
Enter Lorenzo. He walks somewhat slowly and aimlessly towards the trees, rolling a cigarette.
Upon reaching them, he stops and appears to consider sitting down by the first tree; then,
apparently changing his mind, he sits down by the second. The trees suppress outright laughter.
SECOND TREE: Is that the thing they set on fire to breathe its smoke?
FIRST TREE: Many of these things exist, but this is one of them, I think.
Lorenzo lights his cigarette and leans comfortably against the second tree. He appears
contented.
SECOND TREE: A curious practice, to be sure.
FIRST TREE: These do much amiss of late. But watch...
Lorenzo's look of contentment gradually fades to one of boredom. At length he sits up, extracts
his smartphone from his pocket and begins twiddling with it. After a little bit he puts it down and
leans against the tree again. Shortly thereafter, however, he picks it up again and proceeds to
twiddle further. This cycle is repeated twice. While this happens, the trees speak.
SECOND TREE: What is his aim and purpose with that thing? Is he a student of the dark arts?
FIRST TREE: I know not, friend; but I have witnessed many of these folk who strive and
struggle much with them, and never does it seem that aught of worth is thus accomplished. But it
somehow seems they hold a fearsome power in this age; not one of them can live for long
without recourse to insight from those boxes. [pause] Look! He starts to speak to it.
Lorenzo commences to talk on his phone. He has a very annoying accent.
LORENZO. Heyo! ... What? ... No... Yeah... I'm outside right now... What's that? ... Yeah, I'm
outside right now... Yeah, I'm sitting outside... Yeah, not much... You?... Yeah, it's a bit windy
though... yeah... uh-huh... uh-huh ... yeah, I might ... are you coming to town tonight? ... yeah, I
think so... yeah, I heard there's gonna be a good party on the Rialto... sorry, what's that? ... yo
man, you're breaking up, I can't hear you...
Lorenzo examines and swipes about with his phone for a few seconds and then proceeds to
answer another call.
LORENZO. Yo! ... yeah, sorry about that... yeah, I think it's the wind... yeah, I'm gonna come
inside in a bit... yeah... uh-huh... yeah, I dunno... yeah, maybe I'll see you tonight though... yeah,
you know, the one close to the station...no? OK, I'll send you the name and you can look up how
to get there... OK, chill... OK, good luck.. uh-huh... OK, take care...yeah... goodbye... yup... uhhuh... yeah, take care... yup... bye!

Lorenzo stands up and puts out his cigarette on the second trees bark; then throws it on the
ground next to the first tree... Again with his mobile phone, he takes a picture of the clouds. Exit,
checking his smartphone...

We have been here before. Stuart Millsom, Editor of the

Quarterly Review ancient, celebrated and recently relaunched English periodical writes:
The period of the English Civil War was a time of profound anxiety for the country. The
breakdown of authority and civil order was accompanied by an emotional, even
psychological anguish: premonitions of mortal disaster, visions of giant fish in the
Thames, rumours of witches and familiars, and the rise of the self-appointed
witchfinders and other puritan fanatics. Cannon fire and muskets in city streets, English
fields running red with blood, and churches wrecked by those who saw music, or a
statue, as evidence of Satan: these were truly distracted times....
Thomas Tomkins was born in Pembrokeshire in 1572, in the tiny cathedral city of St.
Davids. He followed his fathers calling into the world of church music, Mr. Tomkins
senior holding the position of Master of the Choristers, and vicar-choral. But the family
migrated to Gloucester, and by the mid-1590s, the young Thomas had gravitated to the
role of instructor of the choristers at Worcester Cathedral. He was to become an
important member of the Chapel Royal (appointed organist in 1621 Orlando Gibbons
was the senior organist); and was responsible for the musical planning for the
coronation of King Charles I. In his declining years, Tomkins lived with his son,
Nathaniel, who was to continue the familys musical name. The tide of war may have
temporarily suppressed the English voice in music, but it can be said with certainty that
it was Tomkinss example and dedication (and indeed, that of his son) which ensured
the survival and revival of the radiant spirit of our anthems and choral services....
Just as Elgar commemorated the passing of a king, and an age, in his great Second

Symphony of 1911 (the slow movement, a magnificent lamentation for the passing of
Edward Vll, but also, perhaps, a clairvoyant mourning for the England that would sink
into the mud of Flanders and the Somme), so, too, was Tomkins a musician who
reflected wider national feelings. His three-minute A Sad Pavan for these distracted
times tells of Englands misery, as Charles l awaited execution in the bitter winter of the
New Year, 1649. The manuscript of this work (and one can only imagine the pain with
which the composer inscribed his feelings onto paper) dates from the February of that
year.
music (only when the Bach and Boulez are over...!)

2.2 The Mythological Tenor of Our Age

The key sources for viewing history as a series of epochs
in which different aspects of the human psyche may be
dominant at different times is broadly astrological in its
intellectual inheritance.
Michael Tippett, writing in 1969, saw the Age of Pisces
going over gradually into the month of Aquarius shall
we say, of compassion and the attempted union of
opposites...
Dr Alan McGlashan was a Scottish Jungian analyst and
close friend of both Princess Diana and Prince Charles. He
had a Sloane Street practice at which he worked as a
psychotherapist until shortly before his death in May,
1997 at the age of 99. His work is well summed up in
this review from Sarah on the Goodreads website:
Picked this up off the street the other day, what a lucky surprise. There is the outer world, we know
about that. Then there's the inner world. Dream, fantasy, paranoia, point of view, general malaise
caused by fatty food, deep, passionate love that makes us do crazy things! The Tibetans said the
Western world has been focusing on the outer world for thousands of years, while during that same
time they've been focusing on the inner. Who's the better off?
There's something so exciting and secret and full of possibility about considering the things in this
book. He talks a lot about duality, the Janus face and seems to find hope in "fraught times" by
wondering if the clamor we experience, the feeling that something is "about to burst" in the outer
world may actually be reflecting a phenomena occurring in our own psyches. A psychic evolution, a
transcendence. He writes, "Out of the royal union of thinking and feeling will be born the inner force
that alone can pull man back to safety from the high and narrow window ledge on which he now

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stands, screaming silently."

But there are deeper sources for such thinking. The late
sixth century BC Greek poet Hesiod wrote:
Men lived like gods without sorrow of heart, remote and free from toil and grief. Miserable age rested
not on them; but with legs and arms never failing they made merry with feasting beyond the reach of
all devils. When they died, it was as though they were overcome with sleep, and they had all good
things; for the fruitful earth unforced bore them fruit abundantly and without stint. They dwelt in ease
and peace.

The Roman poet Virgil, writing between 44 and 38 BC

evoked this vision of a Golden Age rather more
wonderfully; and sensed its imminent return:
Now the last age by Cumae's Sibyl sung
Has come and gone, and the majestic roll
Of circling centuries begins anew:
Astraea returns,
Returns old Saturn's reign,
With a new breed of men sent down from heaven.

Lying behind such ideas is that of the Five Ages of Man:

first Gold, then Silver, then Bronze, then the Heroic, then
Iron...and finally the Age of Lead, following them all.
(Wikipedia).
These ages are not unlike the political cycles seen as
underlying the historical process by the Scottish early 19th
century historian Alexander Tytler, who probably wrote:
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority
discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for
the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the
loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy...

although rather like the famous religious tract Go

Placidly the text has been doctored in more recent
times to read:
The average age of the worlds greatest civilizations has been 200 years. Great nations rise and fall.
The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty

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to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency
to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage...

(cf. Mintzberg: Rebalancing Society [2014])

2.3 Braudels Three Speeds of Historical Change
A final methodological index to bring to bear on the
discussion my aim is to buttress the credibility of my
current insight into the Georgian Condition comes from
the French historian Fernand Braudel (1902-1985). He
casts a lingering look at the Mediterranean, which for him
is not just one sea; but many seas, and the sum total of
the many invasions and incursions it has seen. He traces
this through several immense volumes and principally in
connection with the sixteenth century : this is that great
and eternal seas true portrait:
The first part is devoted to a history whose passage is almost imperceptible, that of man in his
relationship to the environment, a history in which all change is slow, a history of constant repetition,
ever-recurring cycles. I could not neglect this almost timeless history, the story of man's contact with
the inanimate, neither could I be satisfied with the traditional geographical introduction to history that
often figures to little purpose at the beginning of so many books, with its descriptions of the mineral
deposits, types of agriculture, and typical flora, briefly listed and never mentioned again, as if the
flowers did not come back every spring, the flocks of sheep migrate every year, or the ships sail on a
real sea that changes with the seasons.

On a different level from the first there can be distinguished another history, this time with slow but
perceptible rhythms. If the expression had had not been diverted from its full meaning, one could call
it social history, the history of groups and groupings. How did these swelling-currents affect
Mediterranean life in general - this was the question I asked myself in the second part of the book,
studying in turn economic systems, states, societies, civilizations and finally, in order to convey more
clearly my conception of history, attempting to show how all these deep-seated forces were at work
in the complex arena of warfare. For war, as we know, is not an arena governed purely by individual
responsibilities.

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Lastly, the third part gives a hearing to traditional history - history, one might say, on the scale not of
man, but of individual men, what Paul Lacombe and Francois Simiand called l'histoire
venmentielle, that is, the history of events: surface disturbances, crests of foam that the tides of
history carry on their strong backs. A history of brief, rapid, nervous fluctuations, by definition ultrasensitive; the least tremor sets all its antennae quivering. But as such it is the most exciting of all, the
richest in human interest, and also the most dangerous. We must learn to distrust this history with its
still burning passions, as it was felt, described, and lived by contemporaries whose lives were as
short and as short-sighted as ours. It has the dimensions of their anger, dreams, or illusions...The
historian finds himself transported into a strange one-dimensional world, a world of strong passions
certainly, blind like any other living world, our own included, and unconscious of the deeper realities
of history, of the running waters on which our frail barks are tossed like cockleshells.

A dangerous world, but one whose spells and enchantments we shall have exorcised by making
sure first to chart those underlying currents, often noiseless, whose direction can only be discerned
by watching them over long periods of time. Resounding events are often only momentary outbursts,
surface manifestations of these larger movements and explicable only in terms of them...

The final effect then is to dissect history into various planes, or, to put it another way, to divide
historical time into geographical time, social time, and individual time. Or, alternatively, to divide man
into a multitude of selves.

Braudel sees not cycles so much as simultaneous

fundamental tempi at which different types of change
occur. This would be not dissimilar to a magnificent piece
of modern music by Pierre Boulez, where there are
several conductors, and several independent groups of
instrument...
****
On all these things I reflected or most of them as I
made my way down Leselidze Street on 2 May 2015 at
around two oclock in the afternoon. Taking note of that
time and place. (And when I returned, the Lari had

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strengthened by 30 tetris, to back under the 230 mark, at

229.70...) so that a new Golden Age, when the tyranny
begun in 1917 is finally vanquished by that resplendent
Saint George, may be only just a hairsbreadth of
historical time away...

Coat of Arms of King Philip II of

Spain (1527-1598)