“To Love and Robert Burns!” That was the toast which I gave at our Burns Supper last Saturday. Burns you see had written the line:
“That man to man the world o’er shall brothers be ...”
… in other words, love everybody. And it was around that thought that I built my speech. The speech is given in section 1.
I had in fact prepared a different toast. It included the quotation:
“To see oursels as others see us!”
… in other words, understand everybody. That speech, the one which I did not deliver, is given in section 2.
The two speeches are a kind of culmination and encapsulation of much of what I have been thinking about for a long time. So the later sections here relate the two speeches first to my recent writing and then to my earlier writing. Finally the Appendix gives more details about our Burns Supper!
1 Love and Robert Burns
2 History and Robert Burns
3 The relationship between the self and the other: love and understanding
4 Israel and Palestine: self and other, positive and negative
5 Conceptions of the national self
6 Love … positive value … values
7 Values, World Society and Modelling
8 Mathematical Social Science
Appendix: Further details about our Burns Supper
1 Love and Robert Burns
Toast to the immortal memory of Robert Burns
“Now for the next part of our Burns Supper.
Traditionally it is referred to as:
“the Toast to the Immortal Memory of Robert Burns”.
[song]
“O, my love is like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June,
O, my love is like a melody
That’s sweetly played in tune.”
This song is possibly the most famous of the many love songs which Robert Burns wrote. And it is love that I want to focus on in my toast tonight. After all a toast is about loving whatever it is one is toasting! So a toast to Robert Burns will be about loving Robert Burns!
So, let me ask you, WHY MIGHT WE WANT TO TOAST Robert Burns?
why do you think we might want to love Robert Burns?
…
Yes these are all some of the many ways in which we might love Robert Burns. …
For my purposes tonight I would like to phrase it in the following way:
We love Robert Burns because we love his songs and his poems. We love Robert Burns because we love the same things that Robert Burns loves.
Burns loves the harvest mouse whose nest in the field he has just upturned with his plough:
“Wee cowering timorous beastie oh what a panic’s in thy breastie!”
Burns loves the mountain daisy:
“Wee, modest, crimson-tippèd flow'r”
People? For some time now I have become fascinated with what religions say in general about loving people. “Love thy neighbour!” “Love the stranger!” It almost appears as if we are supposed to love everybody!
Does Burns have anything to say about that? Well actually yes he does.
In his poem “A man’s a man for a’ that” he says:
“For a that and a that, It’s coming yet for a that
That man to man the world o’er shall brothers be for a that.”
https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/mans-man-0/
And in recent years I have been struck by the rather similar notion “All are welcome here!” which I have encountered both here in Milton Keynes and when I visit my sister up in Scotland and I go with her to her local church.
“All are welcome here!”? “Love everybody!”? It is all very well for Burns to suggest that we love one another – but does he actually have any ideas about how to do that?
It’s not so easy is it? Sometimes when we relate to other people we have foolish notions in our heads and we make social blunders. The answer according to Burns is: to see ourselves as others see us. If only we had that power:
“O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us
An’ foolish notion …”
But how well does Burns live up to his “brothers the world over” approach? Actually his “brothers” approach comes at the very end of the poem. For much of the poem there are certain specific others that Burns is not loving:
“Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine …”
There’s a contradiction here, is there not? From a logical point of view, you cannot love everybody one minute, and then a minute later call some people fools and knaves. Or rather, to speak more precisely:
Loving everybody has the logical implication that we love even the people we are calling fools and knaves.
Somewhat similarly we logically arrive at the injunction: “love your enemy”.
And just to be really awkward let’s push the argument one last stage! After all some of my enemies are not too bad really … but others …? Yes even those others:
“Love the person you really hate.”
Hey, don’t blame me! Didn’t we all sort of agree earlier with Burns when he said:
“That man to man the world o’er shall brothers be for a that.”
And so, Ladies and Gentlemen, please be upstanding. I give you a toast:
To Love and Robert Burns!”
2 History and Robert Burns
Section 1 gives the toast I actually gave. Up till a few days before I had a quite different toast in mind. Here it is>
Toast to the not-immortal, not-memory, of Robert Burns
Now for the next part of our Burns Supper. Traditionally it is referred to as:
“the Toast to the Immortal Memory of Robert Burns”.
But – Hey! – I don’t want to do that! I want to do the exact opposite! I want to talk about the not-immortal, not-memory, of Robert Burns. Let me explain.
Robert Burns, in his poem Tam O’Shanter, reminds us that some things in life are not immortal but rather they are transient:
“But pleasures are like poppies spread,
You seize the flow'r, its bloom is shed;
Or like the snow falls in the river,
A moment white—then melts forever;”
So. Not immortal.
In particular, our memory of the life and times of Robert Burns is not immortal: we have lost our memory of the agricultural system which prevailed on the land during Burns’ lifetime, just at the beginning of the Agricultural Revolution.
Burns wrote a poem A Cottar’s Saturday Night, (Saturday night being the end of the working week, Sunday being a day of rest; a cottar is a worker on the land at a level below that of a tenant farmer). Burns gives a stark portrayal of work on the land:
“The toil-worn Cotter [sic]
Frae his labour goes,
This night his weekly
Moil is at an end,
Collects his spades, his
Mattocks, and his hoes,
Hoping the morn in
ease and rest to spend.
And weary o’er the
moor, his course does
homeward bend.”
So: the cottar has six days of work and then the Sunday, the day of “rest”.
However there was another type of day. Right at the beginning of one of his other poem’s, Tam O’Shanter, Burns sets the scene:
“… as market-days are wearing late …”
So: six days of work, the Sunday day of “rest”, and market days. In other words the cottar, indeed most rural workers, had a distinctive way of life.
However it was not a way of life that was destined to last. It was not immortal. Robert Burns was born in 1759 and died in 1796. In the half-century before Burns was born cottars and their families formed around 30% of the rural population in many areas. By the end of the century, by the time of Burns’ death, the removal of the cottars from the land was virtually complete.
[Devine 164, 165] 4 minutes
I wonder if any of you have heard about the Highland Clearances? The Scottish historian Tom Devine has written a book about them – except that he entitles his book the Scottish Clearances. His point is that the Clearances were not just in the Highlands, but in Scotland as a whole. Indeed in Britain as a whole, indeed in Europe as a whole. Very different processes in different places – but still broadly similar.
For example, have you been walking over on Bury Fields this year yet? Did you get permission to go there? Do you perhaps have grazing rights on Bury Fields? You don’t? Well, our good friends just down the road, do!
The point is that Bury Fields is common land, common to all the people of Newport Pagnell. It is not a modern arrangement - it goes back in history to medieval times. Most of the medieval common land of England was lost due to enclosure and in the year when Robert Burns was fourteen years old, in 1773, the Inclosure Act was passed. It was the time of the Agricultural Revolution. Progress – but at a human cost: people were turned off the land.
My conclusion is that the cottar’s way of life was not immortal – and furthermore that our memory of the cottar’s way of life is not immortal.
… But I have something worse to say, what we do have is not a memory! Psychologists tell us that the past is not remembered but rather reconstructed. In particular Scottish history is not remembered – it is reconstructed. In his “groundbreaking book”, Tom Devine “challenges the narrative which Scots have told themselves and others for centuries”.
In other words Devine’s book asks ... how do Scots see themselves? Indeed how do others see the Scots?
But these questions are relevant not just the Scots, are they? In general how do we see ourselves? … and how do others see us? Absolutely fundamental. …
… So naturally, Robert Burns has something to say about it all.
O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us
An’ foolish notion …
Immortal memory? … Or transient, foolish notion?
3 The relationship between the self and the other: love and understanding
“That man to man the world o’er shall brothers be ...”
“To see oursels as others see us!”
The first quotation is about a brotherly (love) relationship and the second quotation is about a seeing (understanding) relationship. The relationships are between ourselves and others – between the self and the other.
There are four kinds of relationship: self-self and other-self; and self-other and other-other. In the second quotation, it is the first pair of perceptions that Burns refers to: seeing ourselves, and others seeing ourself. In other words there may be different perceptions (or conceptions) of the self. This is a topic which I have written about in the last few years and is discussed in the later section entitled “Conceptions of the national self”.
The opposite of love is hate. One is positive and the other is negative. Indeed there is a continuum of affect. The next section is entitled “Israel and Palestine: self and other, positive and negative”.
4 Israel and Palestine: self and other, positive and negative
[an online book – in preparation]
Israelis and Palestinians are killing one another – yet they share a belief in the Commandment “thou shalt not kill”. In general, the Commandments say that the self should not be negative towards the other. Indeed, rather than being negative, the self should be positive towards the other.
Since October I have been writing reports on the war and I am now using these to produce a short online book with the sections listed below.
The core of the book looks at world opinion, national opinion and national voting in relation to Israel and Palestine (Sections 4 to 6). This is prefaced by a brief note on the geography and demographics of the middle east and a discussion of the war (Sections 2 and 3). Section 7 discusses the historical background. The broader underlying aspects are discussed in short sections on values, nation, religion and gender & family (Sections 1 and 8 to 10). The book ends with a discussion of modelling (Section 11).
The first drafts of some of the sections are now available – and are presented here:
… the sections on Values, Nation, Religion and Gender & Family:
W8 Israel and Palestine: values, religion, nation and gender (17 pages in total)
… the section on World Opinion: (16 pages)
W9 Israel and Palestine: 4 World Opinion
Contents
1 Values
2 Geography
3 War
4 World opinion
5 National opinion
5.1 Israeli opinion
5.2 Palestine opinion
6 National voting
6.1 Israeli voting
6.2 Palestine voting
7 History
8 Nation
9 Religion
10 Gender and Family
11 Modelling
W9 Israel and Palestine: 4 World Opinion
https://sites.google.com/view/values-world-society-modelling/w/w9-israel-and-palestine-world-opinion
W10 Positivity … war … Gaza … empire … democracy … elections 2024
5 Conceptions of the national self
To see oursels as others see us!
Nations and world: variation and self.
World opinion …
World opinion: continuous distributions and categorical divides (34 pages) (2022)
… ECFR report (2023) “United West, divided from the rest …” See Section 4 in:
Positive Value 8: Principled negotiation … Ukraine 55: War options and social choice theory
The national self
Self and other; opinions and reality (a couple of paragraphs).
Britannia: Three Prime Ministers and a Queen
Ireland and Britannia (links to my work do not work)
Scotland and Britannia … Independence and Referenda (links to my work do not work for this)
The national self … empires in Europe … the Ottoman empire
6 Love … positive value … values
In 2019 I had a go at writing about love:
‘Love’ is about positive value (2023-):
Positive Value
‘Love’ is about values:
W12 Values: overview of chapters
Values: individuals and relationships
Values in everyday life
Values in relation to key aspects of life and society
Values in particular settings, spheres
Life and values
Society and values
Models of values
Models of individual choice
Models of social choice
7 Values, World Society and Modelling
“Love everybody; understand everybody.” Well, ‘love’ is about values; ‘everybody’ is about world society; and ‘understanding’ is about modelling. How I expressed it in my 2014 Yearbook was:
“When I joined the Conflict Research Society in 1982, there were two key figures. I never met John Burton but everybody talked about him. Values were at the heart of John Burton’s approach to conflict resolution. ‘World Society’[1] was the title of one of his books. Michael Nicholson I did meet – and continued to meet over the next couple of decades. ‘Formal Theories in International Relations’[2] was the title of one of Michael’s books – ‘formal theories’, in other words modelling. So there you have it: values, world society and modelling.”
Three Yearbooks have been published, the 2017 Yearbook being reviewed in JPR Book Notes.
Values, World Society and Modelling Yearbook, 2014.
Values, World Society and Modelling Yearbook, 2015.
Values, World Society and Modelling Yearbook, 2017.
...
JPR Book Notes review of VWSM YB2017
This and my more recent work is available online at my Values, World Society and Modelling website:
VWSM: Values, World Society and Modelling
Since last Autumn, I have started a ‘W’ series of reports:
W pages, September 2023 onwards
8 Mathematical Social Science
At the root of my own thinking is the belief that mathematical social science provides a powerful foundational knowledge underpinning the concepts and theories which are to be found in more informal discursive accounts.
Conflict, Complexity and Mathematical Social Science
Conflict, Complexity and Mathematical Social Science. 2010.
"Conflict, Complexity and Mathematical Social Science" provides a foundational mathematical approach to the modelling of social conflict. The book illustrates how theory and evidence can be mathematically deepened and how investigations grounded in social choice theory can provide the evidence needed to inform social practice. Countering criticism from constructivist viewpoints it shows how discourse is grounded in mathematical logic and mathematical structure. The modelling of social conflict is viewed as an application of mathematical social science and relevant models are drawn from each field of mathematical psychology, mathematical sociology, mathematical political science and mathematical economics. Unique in its multidisciplinary focus the book brings together powerful mathematical conceptualisations of the social world from a wide range of separate areas of inquiry, thereby providing a strong conceptual framework and an integrated account of social situations. It is a vital resource for all researchers in peace science, peace and conflict studies, politics, international relations, mathematical modelling in the social sciences and complexity theory.”
Appendix: Further details about our Burns Supper
Welcome … The programme
The quotations
Tam O’Shanter: a lightning re-enactment of Burns’ epic poem!
Welcome …
… to our town: “which none surpasses, for honest men and bonnie lasses!”
Burns’ Supper
“Come in, come in, it’s nice tae see you!” (1958)
The White Heather Club (1958-1968) … medley on phone/laptop
In 1958, Catherine was asked to join The BBC White Heather Club.
The Tavern at Ayr:
“We’ll tak a cup of kindness yet!”: Warm Tasty Tassie? A Wee Dram? Whitever!
Homemade oatie bites with savoury toppings!
Find your Scottish soul-mate who has the other half of the following Robert Burns quotation:
“To see ourselves as ithers see us.”
The Supper, self-service
The Selkirk Grace … “some wad eat that want it” (1794; 17C?)
Scotch Broth and selection of homemade bread
Cullen Skink
The Address to the Haggis … “great chieftain o’ the puddin’ race!” (1787)
Main: Haggis, Neeps, Tatties
Pudding: Raspberry Cranachan with shortbread
Get yourself a drink for the TOASTS!
Toast to the immortal memory of Robert Burns, 1759-1796
Catherine makes a special toast.
Tam O’Shanter
“As market-days are wearing late …”
The Tavern Revellers. The Tavern at Ayr. Landlord: Gordon.
The Alloway Dancers. The Kirkyard at Alloway. Cutty Sark: Catherine.
YOUR VERY OWN CONTRIBUTIONS
The Tale of Tam O’Shanter [in brief] (1791)
Tam and Kate
“Haste ye back, we loue you dearly, call again you're welcome here.” (1958)
Auld Lang Syne (1788, 1711, …)
The quotations
1, 2 To a Louse
Oh would some power the giftie gie us
To see ourselves as ithers see us.
3, 4 Ae Fond Kiss
Had we never lov'd sae kindly,
Had we never lov'd sae blindly,
Never met -- or never parted --
we had ne'er been broken-hearted
5, 6 To a Mouse
Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi’ bickerin brattle!
7, 8 Scots wha hae
By Oppression's woes and pains
By your sons in servile chains!
We will drain our deepest veins,
But they shall be free!
9, 10 To a Mouse
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley
11, 12 My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose
How fair art thou, my bonnie lass
So deep in love am I
And I will love thee still, my dear,
Till all the seas gang dry
13, 14 Auld Lang Syne
And here’s a hand, my trusty fiere
And gie’s a hand o thine
And we’ll tak a right gude-willie-waught,
For auld lang syne.
15, 16 Tam O’Shanter
While we sit boozing at the nappy,
Getting fou and unco’ happy,
17, 18 Tam O’Shanter
Gathering her brows like gathering storm
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm
19, 20 To a Mouse
I’m truly sorry Man’s dominion
Has broken Nature’s social union
21, 22 My heart’s in the Highlands
My heart’s in the Highlands
My heart is not here
My heart’s in the Highlands
A-chasing the deer
23, 24 Loch Lomond
O ye’ll tak the high road an I’ll tak the low road
And I’ll be in Scotland afore ye
25, 26 The Miles to Dundee
But if you’ll permit me to gang a wee bittie
I’ll show you the road an the miles to Dundee
Tam O’Shanter: a lightning re-enactment of Burns’ epic poem!
There was only one Burns poem that I actually studied in any depth at school - and that was Tam O’Shanter
Yes, I know, a Tam O’Shanter is a type of hat but it is named after the man Tam O’Shanter, the hero of Burns’ epic poem!
I invite you all – all of you - to take part in a lightning! dramatic! impromptu! re-enactment of Burns’s epic poem.
We are going to have a first rehearsal, a second rehearsal and then the final performance!
In the first rehearsal all we do is briefly run through the plot and the cast:
The Tavern Revellers. The Tavern at Ayr. Landlord: Gordon. … All of you.
The Alloway Dancers. The Kirkyard at Alloway. Cutty Sark: Catherine. Some of you.
In Act I Tam O’Shanter and all his pals are singing wildly - in the village pub at the end of market day.
In Act 2 the ladies are laughing and dancing wildly – witches in the Alloway churchyard – just as Tam O’Shanter and his cronies are on their way back home.
In Act 3 the men creep home back from the pub - where their “sultry, sullen” wives have been waiting for them – the wives “nursing their wrath to keep it warm”.
Right, let’s have a little warm-up!
Tavern revellers, everybody: talk and laugh and sing
Alloway dancers: anyone who wants to stand up and do a little jig on the spot
OK Great. That was our first rehearsal.
Just before we take a break, can I please have some volunteers to do a little party piece for the Tavern Revellers?
…
second rehearsal
The Tavern Revellers. The Tavern at Ayr. Landlord: Gordon.
The Alloway Dancers. The Kirkyard at Alloway. Cutty Sark: Catherine.
OK Second rehearsal. What we shall do is alternate between the The Tavern Revellers and The Alloway Dancers.
Green grow the rashes, O!
Green grow the rashes, O;
Green grow the rashes, O;
The sweetest hours that e'er I spend,
Are spent amang the lasses, O.
Three craws sat upon a wa
Roamin' in the gloamin'
I've seen lots of bonnie lassies on my travels wide,
But my heart is centred noo on bonnie Kate McBride,
Roaming in the gloaming with your Scottish soul-mate!
Roamin' in the gloamin' on the bonnie banks o' Clyde,
Roamin' in the gloamin' wi' ma lassie by ma side,
When the sun has gone to rest,
That's the time that we love best,
Oh, it's lovely roamin' in the gloamin'.
…
Tam: Weel done cutty sark
The chase
Return to Scottish soulmate … BREAK
…
the final performance!
Act 1 all at the tavern
“As market days are wearing late
While we sit bousing at the nappy
An getting fou and unco happy”
Men go to the back there, drink and talk and sing
[End of song] OK men you’re leaving the pub and getting on your horse. Each of you now is Tam O’Shanter. Your road home takes you past the churchyard at Alloway.
…
Act 2 “… Kirk Alloway seem’d in a bleeze
Thro ilka bore the beams were glancing
And loud resounded mirth and dancing.”
Ladies go over there to the corner here. You are the witches, laughing and dancing wildly in the Alloway churchyard. Ian, please, a wild dance for the witches. Laugh, witches, laugh! Dance, witches, dance!
“There was ae winsome wench and wawlie …
Tam tint his reason a thegither
And roars out: ‘weel done, Cutty-sark!’”
Tam: Weel done cutty sark
In an instant all was dark, the music stopped and all the witches chased after Tam. Tam’s nag takes him across the bridge over the river and so the witches can’t catch him.
Meanwhile Tam knows that all this time his wife has been waiting for him back home …
Act 3 “… our hame
Where sits our sulky sullen dame
Gathering her brows like a gathering storm
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm”
Ladies back to your places, but then stand arms folded, looking sulky, sullen …
Gathering your brows like a gathering storm
Nursing your wrath to keep it warm.
Men, you are scared out of your wits, your horse Meg is taking you racing back home. Back to your seats. Look suitably shamefaced, slink in the door and slump into your seat.
Wives still standing in the same pose, look down on drunken Tam in disgust.
[Matthew Arnold, Tam O Shanter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tam_O%27Shanter_Overture]
Tam and Kate
Truth: “O Tam! had'st thou but been sae wise
. As taen thy ain wife Kate's advice!”:
Regret: Tam
Reconciliation: John Anderson my Jo
"Haste ye Back":
Haste ye back, we loue you dearly, call again you're welcome here.
May your days be free from sorrow, and your friends be ever near.
May the paths o'er which you wander, be to you a joy each day.
Haste ye back we loue you dearly, haste ye back on friendship's way.
[1] Burton, John. World Society. London: Macmillan, 1972.
[2] Nicholson, Michael. Formal theories in international relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.