Society

I originally published this on 10 Oct 2012

Have you seen the film ‘Apocalypse Now’ by Francis Ford Coppola? It’s based on Heart Of Darkness. I didn’t know that when I started reading the book, but something clicked when I read that the central character was going up river in search of someone named Kurtz.

If you have seen the film ‘Apocalypse Now’, then you get an idea of the journey into the deepest, darkest unknown. The film is, of course, set in Vietnam during the Vietnam War.

The book, however, is set in Africa and the central character isn’t an assassin like in ‘Apocalypse Now’.

But like in the film, Kurtz is a mystical character and a central feature of his character is that he knows horror and has an opinion on how to deal with horror.

What makes the book worth reading is the way Conrad writes and the small observations about human character that don’t tolerate fools gladly.

I could go on, but I haven’t the inclination. I was never interested to read this book when I was younger – and more’s the pity. It is a great book. A giant of a book – and quite a slim volume, though not necessarily a fast read.

Conrad first published it as a three-part serial in a magazine in 1899, so the Africa he describes is a darker place than we perhaps think of today. Back then, everything beyond the trees that lined the river bank was in the heart of darkness.

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And now in 2016, prompted by someone who is just now reading the book, I am thinking again about the heart of darkness. I am thinking about it in the context of this planet.

There are other contexts and the book weaves those in – darkness of the soul, of the character. But sticking with planet Earth, it seems to me that the image brought up by the phrase is not fixed.

One man’s heart of darkness is another man’s back yard.

So the viewpoint is always that of someone who finds the environment of the heart of darkness too real, to hard to bear. It is the point of view of someone who normally lives in a privileged bubble of comparative ease.

There’s an argument for saying that someone who lives on the poor fringes of ‘civilised’ society is better equipped for the heart of darkness.

The play, The Admirable Crichton by J.M. Barrie, deals with this. Shipwrecked on a desert island, the master and his family are incapable of looking after themselves and the manservant (Chrichton) becomes the leader because he is better equipped for practical things.

After their rescue and return to normality, the master of the house finds it difficult to continue in his role with Chrichton around the place because he is a reminder that the ‘natural’ order of things is not a fixed star in the heavens.

I’ve diverted from where I was going with my thoughts, which are these. That on this the last day of 2016, the vast majority of us in the comfortable West probably believe that there is no heart of darkness any more.

Everywhere has been investigated, drilled into, photographed, written about. The planet is our playground and the mystery has gone down a notch.

Perhaps that is part of why we find it so easy to kill off species without remorse.

Protesters are out on the streets in the USA saying that Trump is not their President. They oppose his racism, his misogyny, his isolationism.

I think Trump may be racist, maybe not. It is hard to tell what he is. He has a general disdain for everyone.

But the racism in the country exists and at this time in history in this election it is in part a simple reaction to the difficulty that some people had in accepting that there was an intelligent and caring black man in the White House.

They just had to vote for someone who would extinguish that truth and the President’s legacy.

On NewsNight last night, the historian Simon Schama said the result was a calamity for democracy and would increase racism and anti-semitism.

He was agitated in a way I have never seen before and rarely see in any public figure.

I couldn’t help but think of people smuggling information out of Germany to tell the world about the holocaust, and shouting into the wind.

And I am thinking that there are checks and balances to prevent a slide to a nastier USA. But with the Republicans controlling all three branches of power, how strong are those checks?

Economy First

Trump says he wants to lower taxes and invest in infrastructure to increase wealth across the nation.

Those proposals are not that radical. Lowering taxes and spending on infrastructure can increase the flow of money and stimulate an economy.

And although people might disagree over how to achieve it, there is consensus in that almost everybody wants increased wealth.

So on the economy, you’ve got a united country.

The challenges are over things he has said where the country is not united, and particularly on abortion and Roe v Wade. And the test of that will be decided on the composition of the Supreme Court.

So my guess is that Trump will be slow to appoint a new judge.

He will push to get some consensus about his presidency by increasing or giving the prospect of increasing wealth across the board. Then he can turn to the thornier questions.

Really though, no one believes his position on very much at all except to look after America and let the rest of the world go hang. So I wouldn’t be surprised if his choice of judge is more liberal than people expect.

Sanguine From A Distance

See how sanguine I am from a distance?

See by contrast how opposed I am to Brexit and how much I want the decision to leave Europe overturned?

Or maybe it is that I just don’t see a way back from four years of a Trump presidency, whereas there are routes back to the EU?

Lessons From History

I have always said that when people look back and say of the dark times in Europe that it could never happen again, they are blind.

It was ‘now’ when those things were happening, and people rarely see the speed with which the wildfire of racism can spread.

I have believed for years that the USA is a beacon to the world. Oh sure, it’s an imperfect beacon. But it has saved Europe from itself more than once.

What now? We’ve known for years that there are two Americas that eye each other warily. Whither now, America?

9.17pm here in the UK on US election day. The results should be coming in within a few hours and I am nervous. It feels like a lot of people are holding their breath.

I am taking a step back, reminding myself that being of religious disposition, I believe that the world ultimately is in good hands.

Which is not to say that some things cannot be very painful, for indeed they can as history has shown us. In short, I hope that Hilary Clinton is the next president of the United States. I cannot imagine the insanity of Donald Trump as president.

People can be so nice. When they are in pain over someone else’s troubles, or when they display kindness to someone, people can be so lovely.

At the same time, they can be like a wounded animal with its leg caught in a trap, dragging themselves around unaware of the damage. It is so poignant.

And one of the killers of kindness and appreciation is cynicism and ridicule. And so many people have been aggressive and intolerant over the past few weeks and months. The hungry mob mentality in people has been awakened. There is a tipping point and history has shown that it can tip very quickly.

So against that background, here are few words about something I have thought for many years

It will be a Tuesday, around 11am. He (or she) will get up from his desk in the office and walk out because he isn’t going to do this any more.

He is going to stop the merry-go-round of the office and this way of doing things. He sees the whole structure and he isn’t going to be part of it any longer. There has to be a better way.

He will walk out onto the street and his heart will pound when he sees that many, many people are there on the street, standing like he is standing. They will look at one another, wondering – Where do we go now?

Is This It

People are scrabbling to make sure Hilary gets in. Or they are trying to get Trump in. A few will vote for third parties because they don’t like either of the main choices. Many will regret that Bernie Sanders didn’t make it, because they like the promise that he described. But for most of us, we don’t have time to discuss niceties or alternative visions of society. The prospect of our imperfect candidate losing is too horrifying. The times don’t allow us that luxury.

But if we take the time to think it through once the crisis is averted (as hopefully it will be) then plainly there is something wrong. And equally plainly, Trump is not going to put it right.

I made up a saying that I use for my own reference. It is a shorthand way of describing a reality that strikes me repeatedly:

It is that it is difficult to see that the world is not made of marmalade when you’ve got your head stuck inside the marmalade jar.

What I am referring to here is that neither candidate seems to be offering a vision of an alternative society that gets to the root of the problem. But in the face of the need to make a choice, we must make the best of it and try to move things as far as possible in the right direction.

So what is the problem?

The problem that is not being discussed is that we are living in mass societies geared to consume, divorced from community, living anonymously in urban landscapes knowing that for the most part we are inconsequential to the way the world moves along.

And there is something more.

In the sixties the counter-culture movement sensed there could be a better way. Of course it could simply be that what modern society is doing is exactly that – working towards a better way.

Perhaps we are working towards a society where people feel they are leading meaningful lives. It could be that it doesn’t look like that to some of us because it’s hard work and a messy business.

We know that progress is two steps forward and one step back. But huge corporations, with what seems like an unholy amount of cash and power, makes it feel like its two steps forwards and three steps back. And then we will never move forward.

People will put up with a lot and withstand a lot of privation if they know that we are all in the same boat. But when some are rich beyond the dreams of Croesus and we see them laughing at our institutions and the value of our very selves – then there is no society. There is just a fractured mass of people crying at the injustice.

But there’s something deeper than this that needs to be addressed.

Everyone who claims to be a moral person and who has more than his or her neighbour has to make a daily ritual of justifying to themselves why they are right to deny the claim of their neighbour. It can be as simple as the homeless person begging on the street. It can be as simple as the car I drive and the car you drive.

But we are nothing if not adaptable. We rationalise and create an equilibrium in our minds. And then something comes along to really upset our communal equilibrium. And it is the hundreds of millions people beyond the perimeter of fortress Europe and fortress North America. Those refugees and economic migrants have upset our balance. We feel guilty and oppressed at one and the same time.

How are we going to make a fair society when we know that by accident of birthplace, people beyond the fence are starving?

But equally while we have to start pulling in the net – bringing more people out of poverty and into comfort – we have to do so without insisting that the price they pay is to die slowly in an office.

There was a time when if you ordered something by post in the UK it was delivered by Royal Mail. And postmen didn’t look overworked. Perhaps the people in the sorting office had it tougher, but we didn’t see them.

Royal Mail was a nationalised industry until it was sold off some years ago. Still, it has tens of thousands of employees, a strong union (the CWU) and from the way postmen talk about it – reasonable working conditions.

The Communication Workers Union is the biggest union for the communications industry in the UK with 199,443 members. Formed in January 1995 when the Union of Communication Workers joined forces with the National Communications Union, we represent members in postal, telecom, mobile, administrative and financial companies including Royal Mail Group, UK Mail and BT, Telefonica O2, Virgin Media, EE and Santander, as well as outsourcing company Capita. Our members’ expertise includes engineering, computing, clerical, mechanical, driving, retail, financial, call centre and manual skills.

Now online shopping has rocketed, and I see people delivering packages for private delivery companies like Hermes and Amazon. I see them running up stairs, hurriedly gathering signatures or pushing packets through doors.

They usually have no time for more than a glance at the people they deliver to.

Tamara and I know the Hermes delivery man and when he has time, we chat. He’s been helpful in the past, when Tamara would phone him and he’d coordinate deliveries for when we are in.

Yesterday he told us it was his last day because he was moving to work for Amazon. He was sweating from rushing about so much.

It occurs to me that when workers were effectively hidden from view in factories, we as members of the public would not see the way they were overworked.

Now we see them on the street, rushing about delivering parcels. I wonder what effect this has on the collective psyche? Does it speed us up to keep time with their speed? Do we become more anxious as we see their anxiety?

It certainly feels like it sometimes.