HOW ARE YOU - REALLY?

I’ve often been asked this as though my cheerfulness masks some fatal illness or means I’m in denial. It’s clearly absurd to be anything other than doleful, depressed and despairing in a world ruled by a tiny virus that’s killed over 1 million people so far . How can I be fine? How can I be content? 

The world apart from that, I hear, is in a dreadful state. The list is long: climate change, Trump, Boris, Brexit, Trump, Syria, unemployment, Trump.  There is no hope.

But this makes no difference. I still refuse to be morose.

My good humour was reinforced by reading Humankind – A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman. He has form as an optimist having also written Utopia for Realists - And How We Can Get There. He examines the world from the two opposing perspectives of the  pessimist Hobbes and optimist Rousseau. 

I loved his observation that we’ve become addicted to a very dangerous drug that’s ruining our morale and our health. That drug is news. There’s too much of it. And Trump is right…too much is fake. Bregman says human beings are attuned to two biases. The first is the ‘negativity bias’ whereby we are conditioned to fear the worst. Back in the early days of humanity that fear helped us survive. Better to run like hell than say “nice pussy” when a Sabre Toothed Tiger appears. 

The second is the ‘availability bias’. If something is readily remembered because of its horror, violence or sheer drama we are led to feel it’s more commonplace than it is. Take air disasters. Remembering, as we shall, the relatively recent Boeing 737 Max crashes we may be circumspect in our judgement of flight safety, yet flying has never statistically been safer.

Thus our tendency, like Victor Meldrew, to say “typical” when something bad happens. Yet it probably isn’t typical at all.

But amidst all this  Bregman believes that deep down nearly all human beings are decent and kind people. That when something bad happens like the Blitz or Covid they stick together and are good and helpful neighbours. Only a few have their eye on the main chance. Only a few are selfish and predatory.

The most significant failure in the handling of the Covid situation is the reluctance of Government to believe that most people will self-police and help encourage others to be sensible. The incidence of the virus in Folkestone is the lowest in the country currently and this residents believe is because they look out for and look after their neighbours. “Mask” they cry if someone isn’t wearing one.

But ironically it’s the neighbourliness that in some places has been positively discouraged. The ‘U’ in ‘EU’ has been conspicuously absent. Each country ploughs its own furrow and has its own data, strategy and attitude. Bizarre that the two ‘European’ countries in closest accord on Covid have been England and France. Macron and Johnson apparently (Brexit aside) get on tremendously well especially on their tactics to mitigate the pandemic. 

We need to talk more and foster togetherness. That’s what real human beings do and always have done. Recently I was asked to join a “working party”. I blanched at the prospect. Yes I was cheerful but I was becoming a hermit and that’s no good. We shall not easily change guidelines or laws right now but our future will depend on creating a much greater collegiate spirit. There is no place today for a long term strategy and plan; things are too uncertain. There is just the need to share (good humouredly) the will to keep this rocky old show on the road. Together.

And yes. I really am all right.

DEATH TO DISASTER PANIC ATTACK ON HELPLESS

No, this isn’t a satirical piece about hysterical-fake-news or data-devouring-media – that comes next. It’s an observation that compressed expression whether through tweeting or  newspaper headlines has led to a very short litany of power-words and cogent thoughts.

So if this is the death of anything it’s death to the end of nuance. It’s why we love actors more than politicians. Actors agonise in their silence, anguish and economy of words. I saw a review of “McMafia”  which observed the series lacked sex, drama and violence. Sorry love, that’s life. What made it so good was it alluded to rather than was overt and it understated… like academics conversing with gangsters which is why I loved it.

Saturday’s Times headline was “crackdown on rip-off airline fees” …”rip-off” and “crackdown” are mindless, knockout words. May the airlines quake, protest and rebut – for them it’s game-over as it is in the face-off with Facebook.  Death of, end of,  collapse of, doom and murky worlds (yes, that one;’ about Cambridge Analytica).

Whilst battling through this and the icy winds it’s been hard not to think about those sleeping rough. Ambulances prowl the streets of Brighton in the morning struggling to revive frozen sleepers and today I saw an ultimate misery: a sleeping body breathing shallowly with  poor, bare feet sticking out from under a grubby blanket. There is a word to describe this and our failure to deal with it.

Abject.

Recently I started reading “Utopia for Realists” by Rutger Bregman who’s described as “the Dutch wunderkind of new ideas” . Well actually they’re so new because many of his ideas go back to Plato.

He quotes economist Charles Kenny:

“The big reason poor people are poor is they don’t have enough money, and it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that giving them money is a great way to reduce that problem”

That sounds so simplistic as to be stupid yet when you unravel it, it becomes more subtle.

In various experiments in London with the homeless, in Africa with the starving and in Canada with everyone in the town of Dauphin research shows when cash is given to the poor without condition and enough of it to be meaningful some strange things happen.

(And not this!)

They buy what they need not what someone thinks they need. They buy practical aids like spectacles, hearing aids and education. They even, in Africa, create entrepreneurial little businesses…if you have money you can buy vegetable seeds and food so you are strong enough to plant, water and tend them. The principal beneficiaries of reducing poverty by giving out money are always education and practicality, not alcohol, tobacco or drugs.

In general the left wing dislike the idea of giving out no-strings-attached cash as it’s deemed patronising and reduces their control over poverty as a political argument. And the right wing are fixated on the “don’t work don’t eat” mantra.

Both arguments are as abject as the other.

Have a great week.