A Portrait in the Impression of ‘Cum-factual’

  What are impressions but the painting of the texture of light, and not objects? One paints then the medium, as it is tumbling into one’s eyes. Exactly what that medium is embodying, what the picture is of, is then put firmly into second place. It is merely the form that light, with all its shifts and changes, pulses and shadows, colour and richness, currently is. What one paints is then never one form so much as a history of forms given in light. The same patterns of light might exist in many forms, many different rivers, all caught up in the same quality; or again the same form, the same castle or lily, might look utterly different, as the light changes. To paint light is not then to paint things how they ‘are’ so much as to paint a medium which captures in its very quality, many things, many different possibilities and conditions; the same light which might be shining on many worlds, or perhaps already is, and to paint is to paint this fact. One faces then not one world but many. One paints then not facts or counter-factuals so much as cum-factuals - facts or events or possibilities that all lie alongside one another.

  To enter such a universe is in a sense to enter the very world in which we think, the very world we inhabit, in two quite different senses. Firstly in a sense to be a human is to use passions, and intuitions to create meanings (or paranoia) for ourselves. We read  a voice and assume we know the back-story behind the tone of that voice. It sounds, in our ears, weary or happy or odd. We assume there is always more than appears, always more than meets the eye, in the actions both public and private of others. A fact which we willingly use and misuse to say many things. One of the back-stories to this week’s Legg inquiry is his belief that politicians implicitly bullied the staff who had to monitor their expenses. The officials were made to ‘know their place’. A construct which is nothing if not a cum-factual. For this consequence was almost certainly never formalized, never stated, - it did not need to be. The officials were merely obliged to think it (or perhaps the MPs were innocent and the officials merely assumed it). In a sense that does not matter, the point is that it then affected how the officials acted, creating in a sense a double world. On the one hand there were the politicians who were merely following the rules (and becoming as wealthy as those rules allowed) and on the other, there were the officials who felt they had to oblige the MP’s greed. To enter a cum-factual universe is then to have as it were a set of motifs in one’s own mind - motifs that serve to understand the value of the world (one is optimistic or pessimistic, paranoid or open, etc. and assumes everyone else is as well).

  The second main aspect of the cum-factual is that it embodies all the agonies of a choice in the act of being made. To be caught in the world of cum-factuals is to be caught in the agony of Gordon Brown trying to make a choice. He is in the job that he wanted for so many years, schemed for, thought was his, and was not his and then was his again….a process that no doubt made the job itself in his mind. For all those years appear cum-factual (he was always thinking what he would do in this situation, how it would all be better when he was in charge). The problem of course is that when he is in charge, all this baggage gets in the way. He so desperately wants to make the right choice, that he finds actually choosing, actually making a choice, rather difficult. He prefers almost to remain in the land of the cum-factual (and its dream like quality) than really revel in actually choosing. The result is that choices are not made or if they are made, they are made for the wrong reasons and rather hurriedly. Or (as with the case of the election) they are only made when they have to be. And at every point, Brown the longterm plotter really has not told the cum-factual and actual world apart. He is very likely then to start stories of his own, stories about what he might do or could be thinking, stories that he then has to retract or clarify, all of which make him look incompetent.

  Cum-factuals are then tricky objects. On the one level they are how we reckon up the world. We think not merely in this single plot, in one event leading to another, but in the ‘what if’ of the subjunctive, where one fact can open on many different worlds or possibilities. This individual ownership of the cum-factual is very deep. In a very real sense the cum-factual world is the one which we inhabit as our individual world, the one where we are king or god. A world that is so often beautifully easy and deceptively simple. A world of course into which others then fall, with their own ideas, and so ruin everything. In our own individual heads we solve the world’s problems, and feel good about the fact. The trouble then is that other’s solutions are different from our (or their short term greeds or needs), and so it all breaks down.

More than this, it is clear that our current society operates on many different levels, political and cultural to create a web of shared cum-factuals, a web that then dictates our policies and actions. This is perhaps most clearly seen in politics, as in a way the very game of politics is to breed cum-factuals. These (cum-factual) ‘facts’ are how one encapsulates a problem, derides an opposition, and plans a course of action. The world of the speech and of rhetoric, is therefore the world where you invite others to step beyond themselves, and view the world that might be, or that already is. Politics or at least all democracy could not function if it only gave one account of the world. It could not function without its cum-factuals, a fact that then itself is seen in numerous levels.

  First and foremost the very idea of democracy itself draws upon the idea of choices, and options. It makes no sense to have a democracy if actually there is only one choice. To live in a democracy, to have choice, is then to create a world where one could potentially do different things. The trouble of course here is that this tradition of options has come under strain over the last two decades. If there are no such choices, no cum-factuals, then democracy merely becomes about one or two key signature’ policies, and a new leader. It loses sense. One needs options, needs faces that could split in different ways, for it to have any rhyme or reason. A fact that we lose sight of at our peril. Part of the problem here, is that this loss is based on the fact that the rationale of parties has inhabited two rather distinct cum-factual worlds traditionally. On the left there was a belief in the power of co-operation, and the liberating power of other’s beliefs to be a vibrant force. That is, as I know you are working in my interests, I aid you and visa versa. A society becomes (in the left wing dream) a world or tapestry of individuals all caught up with one another, all helping each other. From this perspective, of course the right looks like merely a number of glorified vices and aberrant moves. A doctrine of selfishness that will not allow this texture to emerge. In contrast, from the right’s point of view, the left has always merely wanted to enforce co-operation of individuals. Co-operation, the right might claim could happen, probably will happen, but cannot be dictated. Rather it has to be created within acts of individual selfishness, and so be built up slowly across a system. Anything else is an affront to liberty, the right would add, and a fruitless anyway, as one cannot, even in the cum-factual world, legislate for happiness.

  Political parties have at their heart these two different cum-factual worlds, and rationales, and people joined or left the parties on the strength of them. The modern problem is not that this vision has been lost so much as the path towards that vision has become hopelessly muddled. That is it is not clear how to translate the vision into practical action in the here and now – it is the endeavour of trying itself that is being lost faith in. More than that it is very easy to be portrayed in the modern world as an ideologue attempting to create a utopia or a single simplistic- vision cloud compeller. To paint then in the cum-factuals of ideals has become a dangerous thing, and interestingly enough something which only the right feel comfortable practicing: George Bush, and before him Thatcher, were clear politicians of the cum-factual right, in a way that the left would never now dare risk.

  In the absence of big manifesto cum-factual politics, what matters are individual issues and statistics, and yet both of these of course have their own problems, their own costs. If one takes the first of these issues, there are naturally a number of great issues of the day, old conflicts and current problems. The problem always with the cum-factuals is that it will appear in the minds of the onlookers as easy enough to solve these problems. After all the cum-factual mind will say, we all know where we want to get to, so why do we not just get there? The big picture, the cum-factual, ought, we shout, to lead the way. The problem of course comes when that simple solution, and the desire for a solution that animates it, attempts to actually enter the world, a world where there are always other cum-factuals, and other solutions, Once it does then everything devolves into actual bargaining choices. It is lost then in rather squalid compromises. Or to put it differently, if I inhabit a different cum-factual world to you, we cannot directly meet. - If our Dreams are different then the only way that we tend to co-operate is by naked bribery of one another. We do what you want only if you make it worth our while… The trouble of course is that if one follows the other course, and builds Zion in the here and now, one will always need and use the bullet and the missile.

  The bright cum-factual world then has a real problem with resolution. It leads to shadows and dark patches where all kinds of shit lies. To paint light is to always be open to the dark. Or perhaps one ought to say, it is to necessarily be open to the dark. This opening is useful, for to attempt to enforce one’s own cum-factual of the world is to attempt to do the impossible - to build God’s kingdom upon the world. It is to attempt to force the world to dance to a rhythm very different than its own. The darkness of squalid bribe and the difficulty of actually translating the cum-factuals into the world are our defence against its very inflexibility and potential violence. The cum-factual world then poses a real problem to politics – as if one is upstream of a problem it all seems so very easy to solve. Every conflict really ought to be solvable, we tell ourselves, as we advocate a thousand different solutions, and urge others to just try ours, and we can only hope that the very act of trying does not actually make the thing worse.

  Events or big issues are then rather a tricky place to govern from. What about the statistics? The trouble of course with statistics is that they are in a sense the native inhabitants of the cum-factual world. A stream of numbers means nothing in itself or for itself. It is merely a fact. It serves then as an incitement to journalists or politicians who are desperate to clothe in naked fact status an endless world it could be a part of. Statistics then are a false friend, as they could always be about many other ‘world-othering’ options. It is actually all too easy for a political party to pick the set of statistics they want to use, and run with them and there is of course nothing new about this fact. The problem is not this blatant misuse (as it is often enough) so much as that statistics themselves always open themselves up to this abuse. A number in this context is nothing without an hypothesis or an argument to support that hypothesis. In the world of science this hypothesis always come first, and the statistics merely serves to prove or disprove it (according to certain rules). If as it is in the world of politics, that statistic is set free from this task, and allowed to stand on its own two feet, then it loses all meaning; or perhaps one ought to say it looks for meaning. It becomes a pure cum-factual - a little elemental pun on which many arguments might hang. A statistic loses then the power that it has in quantitive science, and becomes merely yet another gateway into the fantasy world which we all inhabit.

  Democracy is then caught in a very tricky place by its own impressionism. An impressionism which needs the cum-factuals, as without them all choice becomes meaningless. They are the very atoms of choice, and yet their very existence makes the act of choosing between different worlds rather difficult. The cum-factual is always too personal, and too easy. They are always the embodiment of the perspective the artist sees, the point of river bank or the point on the globe the light tumbles into the eye from. They are then, never complex enough to actually reflect reality itself. One moves then all too quickly from bright impressionism, through madness to modernism. That is, one moves from a choice between ideal worlds and the light they shine in minds, to a mere choice between squalid bargain-makers, who dress up what they do in the cum-factuals. And of course the real paradox here is not that this move happens, so much as we are never really grown up enough to admit it: We remain imprisoned in the beauty of the shifting light of the river bank, and never want to see the slime beneath, a problem that haunts both impressionism and democracy…