The Quest for a Civilised Atmosphere
What is your preferred approach to washing your hands of diseases and other nuisances?
When have you washed your hands of other people's immorality?
When, if ever, has anyone attempted to persuade you to act immorally?
How do you respond to threats to your virtue?
When, if ever, have you discovered that your ethics are regarded worthless to human predators and other bullies?
And what do you know about the work of the committee in that regard?
When, then, is a civilised approach to gaining and maintaining affection, and possibly even admiration?
Who enables abusers?
Who enables mobs?
What prevents a highly developed society and culture from being or becoming sustainable?
If you have been on a quest for a civilised atmosphere, what have you discovered along the way?
And have you found a suitable destination yet, from your own point of view?
Are you a member of a precariat or an aristocracy or something in between?
Are you a victim of primary poverty, secondary poverty or no poverty at all?
If you are a working class person, how do you prevent yourself from becoming part of an underclass or mob?
Regardless of your social class at present, who and/or what do you regard as worthy of your loyalty, and why?
What do you know about the Human Development Index of the United Nations Development Programme?
How do you compare developed countries with developing countries and least developed countries?
How do you assess the suitability, or otherwise, of political borders and other political boundaries in terms of civility and civilisation?
How do you prevent the cruelty of authoritarianism and the craziness of mob rule?
The Revolutionary Climatological Needlepoint Committee has long been on a quest for a civilised atmosphere: socially, culturally, politically, economically and environmentally.
What is your acquaintance with the history of water supplies and sanitation?
And what do you know about the future of water supplies and sanitation?
What is your acquaintance with the history of public health and environmental health?
What do you know about the history of public bathing?
What do you know about the unpaid cleaning, caring and cooking work continuing to burden most women's lives and preventing them from making free choices?
What, if any, have been your personal experiences of economic abuse, emotional exhaustion and physical exhaustion?
What, if any, are the unfair expectations you have been coerced into meeting?
What, if any, have been the punishments you have received in life, and why?
When, if ever, have you been unpaid or underpaid for the work you have performed?
What do you know about justice in relation to human population planning?
Perhaps you are a deliberate practitioner of voluntary human extinction or a deliberate practitioner of its opposite.Have you ever inhabited a slum, a war zone or an equality unhealthy environment?
How has your planning already contributed to a civilised atmosphere, and how do you know?
Who, if anyone, has been destroying that atmosphere and undermining your plans, and how?
Have you ever receive a suitably authentic certificate of competence in relation to civility?
If not, why not?
A highly developed culture upholds civility with suitable consistency.
But what does that actually mean in practice?
Have you ever worked as a model of any sort?
Have you ever worked as an entertainer of any sort?
Have you ever employed a model, an entertainer and/or a domestic worker?
Have you ever worked in the textile industry?
Have you ever worked in a museum?
Have you ever worked in the sex industry, whether on an entirely voluntary basis or otherwise?
Have you ever worked in a military organisation or any other organisation associated with the use of force?
Nor can it be achieved through images.
It may or may not be achieved through the acquisition of suitable knowledge.
Have you ever worked in the provision of hospitality?
Have you ever worked in a hospital?
Have you ever worked in the provision of educational services?
Have you ever had less-than-civilised workplace experiences?
Have you ever reflected upon your socioeconomic status in relation to your life experiences and opportunities?
Perhaps you regard yourself as middle class, or even upper middle class, but what does any social hierarchy actually mean in terms of social privileges and social responsibilities?
What have been your experiences of deference, whether as a supplier or recipient?
Perhaps you regard yourself as lower middle class. If so, your work may be quite easy in physical terms but not necessarily in mental and emotional terms.
The lower classes, including the middle classes, are most accurately defined in terms of income whereas the upper class is most accurately defined in terms of wealth and power.
How do you compare artistic portrayals of people through portraiture and as models for various artistic purposes?
How have you assessed social stratification in historical, geographical, sociological, political, economic and psychological terms?
What do you know about care work in relation to social stratification?
What do you know about housework in relation to social stratification?
How do you usually assess market economics and non-market economics?
How do you assess the purchasing power of a median income in your local vicinity?
How do you assess the ethics of your income, your purchases, your debts, your altruism, and your savings?
How much of your income is associated with your investments and the direct and indirect gifts and inheritances you have received rather than the work you have accomplished?
How do you assess social complexity and social differentiation, and why?
Perhaps you have never had the chance to accumulate financial capital in any way whatsoever.
Perhaps you have never had the chance to own residential property, or any other real property.
Perhaps you are in considerable debt, even if you believe yourself to be wealthy or at least relatively affluent on a global scale.
Perhaps you have been duped into accumulating excessive debts through your perceptions of the wealth effect.
What have you discovered about the distribution of wealth in various countries, and on a world scale?
What do you know about necessity goods and luxury goods?
The Revolutionary Climatological Needlepoint Committee is very interested in behavioural economics and patterns of human behaviour.
What do you know about the extent of abusive power and control in the world, whether that abusiveness is expressed physically, socially, psychologically or economically?
How do you examine the relationships between economic power and social, economic and political powerlessness?
The committee has obviously done so, and continues to do so.
Who deserves your attention and who does not?
How have you been attempting to improve experiences of, contributions to, and access to, the arts, including therapeutic arts, and for what purpose(s)?
How have you been attempting to improve the interpersonal, political and technical aspects of communications, and for what reasons?
How have you been assessing economic systems?
How have you been assessing economic inequality, social inequality and political inequality?
How do you attempt to address cycles of poverty and gender inequality?
How do you attempt to address inequality in educational opportunities?
How do you attempt to address inequality in access to health care?
Why do you compare yourself with particular people and not with others?
What have been your experiences in relation to parasocial interaction?
What do you know about social capital and its relationship to power?
You may know about the impertinent suitors.
But what use are old stories in the present?
What use are old pictures?
What use is anything of earlier centuries?
But will you possibly regard it as both, or as something else entirely?
Perhaps you regard all stories from long ago as cautionary tales, whether the stories are obviously fictional or possibly factual.
What do you regard as refined tastes and manners, and why?
What do you regard as cultural capital?
How do you assess, and value, a person's quality of work?
How do you assess human capital, whether in relation to capitalism or any other concept?
What do you know about the power of symbolic capital?
What have you discovered about symbolic power?
How do you know when a claim of achievement is merely contrived bragging by an emotionally insecure person?
What have you discovered from history, through one type of artifact or another?
How do you tell the difference between genuine feelings and superficial acts?
If you are already investing in reasonableness quite well, please convey that ability to the committee at your earliest opportunity.
How do you interpret the power and influence of physical attractiveness?
How do you interpret the politics of sexual attraction and the economics of sexual capital?
What do you know about political capital?
How, if at all, are you actually investing in appropriately high standards?
What do you know about dehumanisation and objectification and the exploitation of women in and through mass media experiences, and in and through other experiences?
You may wish to convey your experiences of investing in good policy.
You may wish to describe how you are investing in peacefully authentic living.
You may wish to explain your approach to investing in social research.
What is your informational capital, and how did you acquire it?
How do you distribute well-informed kindness?
How do you distribute intelligent frugality?
When have you taken the opportunity to improve your own conduct?
Have you ever been a conductor of some description?
Are you responsible for managing the conduct of anyone or anything?
You may or may not have much experience at investing in thorough assessments.
What do you know about oligarchies, meritocracies and plutocracies?
How have you assessed the political aspects of influential documents and royal careers?
There are many important questions to be answered in the quest for a civilised atmosphere.
The first Age of Enlightenment began as an age of aristocratic and royal rule, reshaped by the educated middle class into an intellectual and emotional desire for societal improvement. It ended in the chaos of mob rule, civil unrest and seemingly endless wars.
Yet extravagant heirs, in any century, whether to thrones or landed estates or other positions of power, have often caused considerable distress. They have usually had no regard whatsoever for the responsibilities associated with power, or for the consequences of extravagance.
The Romantic era was an extravagant age more generally. The reasoning associated with enlightened societal improvements gave way to emotional self-indulgence.
What is your acquaintance with the Revolutions of 1848?
What do you know about revolutionary waves more generally?
What do you know about Romantic literature in English and the yearnings associated with it?
What do you know about German Romanticism and the associated Nazarene group?
What were your ancestors doing in 1848 and in the decades before and after it, and where?
Which values, whether spiritual or otherwise, are reflected in the quest for a civilised atmosphere?
How do you define that atmosphere?
How, in your view, does it relate to spirituality, moral development, ethical values, and aesthetic appreciation?
How does in relate to the local and global, physical environment?
While it is impossible for ordinary mortals, including purportedly royal and/or religious ones, to have unlimited knowledge, unlimited power and/or unlimited wealth, there have been many ordinary mortals, even from ordinary backgrounds, with a desire for limitless freedom.
What do you regard as Western values, and why?
What do you regard as non-Western values, and why?
What is Western culture and Westernisation?
What is the Western world?
What is modernisation?
What do you know about economic rationalisation?
What do you know about social rationalisation?
What do you know about psychological rationalisation?
What do you know about illusory affection, non-consensual sex, unwanted pregnancies and forced marriages?
What do you know about Medievalism?
What do you know about Rationalism?
What do you know about superstitions, magical thinking and pseudosciences?
What is your knowledge of chastity and other forms of temperance?
What do you know about the dangers of excessive sensual curiosity and insufficient intellectual curiosity?
What do you know about the dangers of excessive expressions of emotion?
What do you know about the dangers of inadequate expressions of emotion?
What do you know about inadequate moderation and inadequate supervision and inadequate guidance?
What do you know about changing patterns of behaviour, including your own?
What do you know about Faustian bargains and their consequences?
What do you know about the causes of Anthropogenic climate change?
Perhaps you regard those causes as a Faustian bargain to increase short-term economic growth for the benefit of the relatively rich and powerful at the expense of the poor and powerless, and other species.
How do you usually assess the Victorian era and its ongoing consequences in various parts of the world?
How do you usually assess poetry and its influence on thoughts and actions?
How do you usually assess the way you think, and what influences your approach, and how do you know?
How do you usually assess the way you feel, and what influences your assessments of emotions, and why?
Perhaps it is music, or lyrics, or both, or neither.
Perhaps you regard yourself as a civilising influence in the world.
Perhaps you have a "civilising" mission of the ignorantly intrusive variety.
Perhaps you have a colonial mentality.
Perhaps you misunderstand the history of Western civilisation and/or Christian culture.
You may have a romantic view of such topics or you may have a hostile view of anything you regard as "Western" or you may have a hostile view of anything you regard as non-Western and/or non-Christian or you may have another point of view entirely.
What do you know about the influence of Christianity in experiences of civilisation today, and in experiences of uncivilised behaviours?
How do you assess past and present controversies?
You may be aware that controversies are associated with the acquisition of free publicity.
Perhaps you are critical of newer ways of thinking and acting.
Perhaps you are critical of older ways of thinking and acting.
Perhaps you are more interested in expressing your own opinion rather than gaining mutual understanding through the free flow of quality information and the prevention of oppression.
Perhaps you enjoy expressing a point of view likely to stir up trouble for other people. You may even enjoy denigrating quite reasonable and/or creative people for your own gratification.
What do you know about political expressions of identity?
Across the world, particularly as a consequence of pandemic-related problems and unjust economic policies, the middle class is fragile yet the upper class is not.
What is your acquaintance with the plutocratic law of the excluded middle class and the oppressed lower classes?
How do you compare images deliberately intended to be displayed together.
How do you compare the ways in which people highlight their opinions regarding importance or interest at a particular time in history?
What is your acquaintance with the populist law of the demonised middle class, particularly against intellectuals?
Being middle class is the most important factor in the prevention of conflicts of interest.
A middle class person without any conflicts of interest is neither a plutocrat nor a populist. But is it possible for an upper class person to be without conflicts of interest?
How often has a political event related to a subsequent artistic event, only for the original contexts to be forgotten by later generations?
How has one artistic product influenced another.
Perhaps you are familiar with the writings of Eugène Scribe.
What is your acquaintance with the marketing law of the consumerist middle class, the consumerist working class and the consumerist upper class?
Perhaps you regard a clean atmosphere as civilised, and possibly even as a luxury good.
How do you respond to new information when an obsolete theory is replaced by an evidence-based one?
What do you know about ecological economics and the theories associated with it, particularly regarding the atmosphere of the Earth?
What do you know about air pollution, over consumption, conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure?
Why is political power so often treated like a status symbol rather than as a serious responsibility?
Why do "successful" political candidates so often behave like grandiose monarchs or an aristocratic elite?
Who comprises the 21st century ruling class, and why?
The growth imperative is the reason why climate change mitigation is such an urgent matter to address.
The growth imperative encourages material wastefulness. It encourages disrespect for everything unconnected with making money.
Promoters of the growth imperative regard everything unrelated to making money as equivalent to idleness and laziness. They regard studying as useful only when it leads to paid employment. They regard government as useful only when it actively promotes the growth imperative.
What have you discovered about citizenship in relation to civility and civilisation?
Perhaps you are regarded, by aggressive persons, as being part of a metropolitan elite.
Perhaps Queen Caroline would have been regarded likewise by people hostile to well-informed, compassionate points of view.
What have you discovered about gross domestic product and perpetual war?
What do you know about the history of military budgets?
What do you know about regulatory capture?
How, then, can the problem be addressed wisely?
How are you investing in magnificent maturity for every generation of people, and every ecosystem?
Is a magnificently mature environment a self-sustaining one?
If so, is it actually a possible one in the current political and economic climate?Middle class scientists with mortgages do nothing to improve the world. They want glorious careers not good societies.
What is civilised defence in the 21st century?
What have you learned from Classicism about civilised defence?
What have you been learning from the Swan Knight?
Do you usually assess the qualities of people based on their names and background?
Do you usually assess socioeconomic status based on income, wealth, debts, productivity and/or consistently available interpersonal and/or societal supports?
But why is relatively healthy housing so expensive?
And why is education a personal expense instead of a human right?
The main beneficiaries of education are the employers of the educated.
Perhaps you believe there are too many narrowly educated people in the world, regardless of how much they have paid for those educations.
Perhaps you believe there are too many uneducated people in the world, too.
Perhaps you regard yourself as a person in distress.
Perhaps you regard the future as a chivalric romance in which you will be rescued.
Perhaps you do not regard it as your duty to ensure only the rightful people are in positions of considerable power.
By what power do you know who is rightfully in a position of power and who is not?
National and subnational constitutions are meant to protect the reasonable middle class from the greedy, the cruel and the unthinking.
Only then can the reasonable middle class appropriately support the desperately poor and the otherwise despairing.
Yet overly indebted persons cannot even support themselves appropriately. Their debts are conflicts of interest.
How do you attempt to be a champion of virtue?
How do you interpret the meaning of images and identify the truth of politics?
How do you interpret the popularity of traditional stories?
Perhaps you do so with a Bridal Chorus.
There are many patterns of controversies to consider.
There are also many patterns of influences to consider.
There are various coincidences to consider, too.
How, for example, do you assess social mobility, and for what purpose?
How clearly do you assess evidence?
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