Burn a banker
There is a lot of negativity around at the moment. The media, blogs, politicians, people in everyday conversations – we’ve all been beating ourselves up about the economic crisis, global warming, the death of Jade Goody, bad mannered children, fat people, knife crime, housing slumps, binge drinking, the sectarian versus the secular, the end of civilisation as we know it. If you think too much about it, you feel like throwing yourself off a cliff, or at the very least going and watching a few hours of I love Lucy repeats.
I often wonder if things are really that bad. Human life has always been miserable, there has long been a divide between rich and poor, the people in power have always abused it, lazy and selfish people are not a new phenomenon. There was no golden age. Yes, industrialisation and late capitalism have changed our society, but has human nature itself really changed? Probably not.
What has definitely changed us though is communication. We have access to more information than we could ever possibly want and that I for one, could ever possibly process. It might well be this information saturation that is making us so much unhappier than we think we were in the past. The more instant information channels that there are, the more black and white the world grows – there is no room for nuance on quick and easy current affairs programmes, news sites that are designed to maximise comments and eyeballs, and 24 hour rolling news. Sometimes I suspect that it is this that feeds our seemingly innate desire for black and white, for wrong and right, for easy solutions.
We have just been warned about expected protests across the City next week where I work (see here). I’ve spent the morning re-arranging our planned events. And quite frankly, it all scares me.
There is a difference between pathetic shouting at the TV about Germaine Greer working for the man and wanting to ‘burn a banker’. The global economy is in crisis (again – we have been here before) but deliberately targeting someone because they’re wearing a suit jacket isn’t going to ease the situation. It’s just a black and white animal response that in the end is going to make us even more depressed about the state of our society and what we’ve become.
What might have helped would have been us all taking an interest in the economy and its current excesses five years ago. But the times were good then, weren’t they, and we couldn’t be bothered.
Tags: can't just keep her politics to herself, despair, hell in a handcart
March 24th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
You can bet your life it’ll be some poor security guard on six quid an hour who gets a flaming wheelie-bin in the face, not the CEO of Barclays, who will of course be ‘working from home’ that day.
A lot of the supposed ‘anarchists’ are poseurs who fancy themselves as class warriors but actually do bugger all to ever help anyone (“charity’s a bourgeois institution, right”). Anarchism as a doctrine was never about mindless destruction, but that seems to be enough for some of these muppets.
March 25th, 2009 at 5:07 am
Life can be miserable and unfair. That’s how it is. That’s how it has always been and always will be. The world goes through cycles. Things in the West will seem to be going great for some years. Under the surface, however, there are plenty of problems. Then finally it all hits the fan. There is blame enough to go around for everyone, whether it’s the government, business, the media, even us, etc.
Oh yeah. I just did a post about when I plan to return to blogging. I hope you’ll check it out. Thanks.
March 25th, 2009 at 10:06 am
My main problem is that I don’t see what the protestors are offering as a different way forward, I think this is problem in general at the moment and why we haven’t got any good policy from goverments. Nobody wants to go back to excessive debt nor give up their big tellies.
If someone was suggesting the start of coherent way forward it would be start.
Having said that mobs rampaging through the city of London is actually just ancient London custom, this time it’s just been organised by twitter and published on youtube.
we’ll have to see what fun and games happen next week maybe I’ll wear my Durruti column tshirt to work!
March 25th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Sounds like super fun! I see someone’s already started on Fred The Shred………..
March 25th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
I can’t find a link to it right now, but studies have fairly conclusively proven that there is a link between inequality within societies and their murder/ crime rates. Conversely, societies like Scandinavia with greater levels of equality have higher suicide rates as people who ‘fail’ in those countries are more likely to blame themselves than blame others.
Since Thatcherism, the gap between rich and poor has widened in the UK, and it has lead to a more paranoid and depressed society. Therefore, I do think things have got worse, unfortunately – people’s short term greed has created a less happy environment all round.
As for whether setting fire to some dustbins in the city will change anything, no, of course it won’t. I think persuading people en masse that their desires are detrimental to absolutely everyone (including themselves) is the way forward, preferably through reasoned debate and greater publicity about findings that have been uncovered about ‘workable’ societies. Some crusties having a bit of a barney changes nothing, as usual.
March 25th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
I think you’re all right in a way.
Tiresome violence might make some people feel good and get some anger out of their systems, but ultimately we are lost and looking for easy solutions which no-one has.
I personally take the negative point of view (or realistic I’d like to think) that very little will change and that life will continue on as usual. We humans are very lazy and don’t like to change our cushy lifestyles until we absolutely have to. Like when most of the country is swimming under 100 feet of water for example.
And did you have any ‘workable’ societies in mind 23Daves?!
March 25th, 2009 at 9:40 pm
Norway or Sweden would do as examples. They’re the closest to the ‘ideal’ at the moment.