A Greek Chorus

I think of us as a kind of Greek chorus, as in an ancient play, lamenting the saga – as witnesses to the acts of our leaders and the histories and beliefs that orchestrate these actions, and our own part as chorus from scene to scene – and all the time I think we miss the gods, who in ancient times would have intervened on one side or another, or on all sides, to further their own causes and self-interest. Are the gods now those mega rich who fund the think tanks and the politicians, with their mega rich fantasies of power over all things temporal. This is the stuff of conspiracy theories, of theories of QAnon and the Deep State. This is world of the fundamentalist Right. But not only the Right. As Christopher Bollas says, when reality gets too complicated, we turn to conspiracy. Perhaps we all pray to our own gods, whether we know it or not. These are the beliefs and values that are our identity, and we defend with a passion. Reed George Monbiot – from a position of not believing him – and you will think that he is fanatical. Read Peter Hitchins and you may think he is speaking falsely and dangerously from a position of prejudice. But we have to make a decision, who we think speaks for us. We murmur and dispute among ourselves. And we each have our own tragedies to face, as those close to us get sick and die. (I have just had a message from a friend (Italian!), whose family (living in Brussels!), is sick with Covid.) We shuffle and shift our positions to get a better view. My Jewish friends with German parentage apply for new passports, still to be European, and to continue the slow recovery from the horrors of the Holocaust, when civilised Europeans whose passports we now covet committed and colluded with atrocities in the pursuit of progress built on identity. We fear a relapse as far right groups become more vocal. We may think that the Left has science on its side. Economic arguments for the Green Hew Deal, for a universal wage, are persuasive. As always through history of the human project, we need to cooperate to survive. But we can only understand ourselves by othering the other, and so we struggle with our racism, sexism, nationalism, our identification with what makes us different. We take offence when we feel excluded from the group. We take strength from our sense of exclusion. As we know, there are two kinds of people in the world. Those that believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those that don’t. We should understand also that moment by moment we change sides in that argument. We are the same/ we are different. On/off: it is as binary as any computer programme. Even the best of causes are full of schisms. We know that but we don’t know what to do about it. I get interested in the thoughts of a scientist on dialogue: David Bohm: whenever any mistake is discovered on the part of anybody, everybody gains. In my dreams, I wish that could be true. I argue for robust debate, but this get quickly corrupted to a shouting match, to reactions of hurt and withdrawal. As our world becomes more conflicted, our culture becomes more intolerant of difference, the so called cancel culture, which emerged like a spoilt child from the well-meaning political correctness movement, and the trolling and death threats on social media, as anonymous egos look for their identity. As a Greek Chorus, we have time to think. Perhaps that is why we are in disarray. One of the most effective defences againt thinking is to keep busy. ‘How are you?’ ‘Busy.’ This had become the near-universal greeting in my world before lockdown earlier this year. We try to keep this defence, or pretence, going. We still keep busy as best we can, but we have found ourselves in a huge social experiment in self-reflection, as the response to Covid, social distancing, working from home, not working, relating exclusively through technology, living in a bubble, has stripped away many of the distractions of the bread and circuses culture of capitalist societies, including shopping malls, bars and restaurants, all the places we go to forget our mortality. We have time to think and we don’t like it. I say ‘we’, because I think no-one is exempt. Bob Dylan said, reality has too many heads. Psychoanalysts have taught us about the hatred of thinking. Scientists ask us to be open to new thoughts. Apart from bringing to mind the squabbling gods of Olympus, I have been enquiring how philosophy, specifically Stoicism offers any practical guidance at this time in maintaining a connection between reflection and action, and also religion, or spiritual practice , specifically Buddhism, itself more a philosophy than a religion of faith. Buddhists describe four virtues: kindness, the kindness of kin, the love of a mother for her child; empathy or compassion, an appreciation of how what we see may look different if you are in another place; joy, an appreciation of the good that is outside ourselves; and equanimity, the capacity to stay calm in the face of what Stoics might call Fortuna, fate, - or as Shakespeare said, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Other religions serve similar purposes, as do other philosophies – and also political beliefs. Some look for a better resolution of our trials and tribulations on earth, other that we have to wait - death, where is thy victory, so bring it on. I don’t want to break the connection between reflection and action. There were always a few brave souls who went for reflection full-time, the desert fathers in early Christianity, the anchorites, monastic traditions of different kinds – in secular academia, All Souls College perhaps. But in secular Buddhism in the West, there is a hot debate about activism, a rejection of a mistaken perception of passive acceptance, a questioning of the pretension that anger is always ‘unwholesome’. They have become active in response to the climate emergency. Anger is problematic but despair is worse, it seems to me. This is our dilemma (one of our dilemmas) as we sit in our post-modern caves or cells, self-isolating – to what purpose? To save our lives for a few more years, to save the NHS, to save our society from its self-destructive capacities, to save the world from ecological disasters that threaten to foreshorten all life…? Anger allows the possibility of hope. If I say I am an angry old man, perhaps not so different from Jimmy Porter in John Osborne’s play, blowing his trumpet and inflicting pain on those he loves, I want to rephrase that – an old man who is capable of anger when it matters. Look Forward in Anger. At this time, I am holding my breath. I hope still that the realpolitik of Brexit will result in a trade deal that will alleviate the stresses on our economy and that of the EU – and not simply make it possible still to go through the fast track green channel at airport terminals. But whatever happens - like all the other worker ant bureaucrats my daughter in law is working on it from her bedroom in south London - as a no-alternative British Citizen I intend still to think of myself as European, along with the citizen of EU and other not-EU countries. As we have been discovering, there is a lost identity, Englishness, that led in part to the original Brexit vote, and for the time being regional identities are emerging as important, London, Manchester, other identities becoming reinforced by the boundaries freshly painted by Tier Three Covid restrictions. We envy the capacity of political leaders in Scotland and Wales to think more clearly and retain some trust from those they are commissioned to represent. Andy Burnham is more convincing at this time as a leader than the national leadership of the Labour Party. Of course, I could be proved wrong on that, as on so many things. I think about age and leadership. Throughout history, there has been a certain respect for elders. I often quote the example of the old man in the movies, The Seven Samurai/the Magnificent Seven, who advises the villagers how to take up arms against their oppressors. From the 1960s on, we seemed to be in an era when youth could have its head, as Gates and Jobs created a brave new world out of the mess of hippy dreams, but as the rock stars, those who survived their initial excesses, grew older and continued to strut their stuff, so did that generation hold on to its positions of privilege. We have done away with the requirement of obligatory retirement in many areas of public life. The old want to keep busy, to escape what we have done. We live with the examples of monarchy, of the papacy (though a pope retired), of the Dalai Lama, (though he gave up his secular authority), of the Supreme Court in the US, the latest appointment with a tenure of potentially forty or more years. And most of all we have the example of world leaders, the openly autocratic leaders in the east, and in the US, once called the New World, the spectacle of two septuagenarians energized by the monkey glands of money, dodging the Covid virus and competing for the position of POTUS, an implied potency as The Most Powerful Man in the World. As Shakespeare said again, now is the winter of our discontent … but how may it be made glorious summer, what son of York is going to rule our lives? Another play: in Britain, there were those who though they had got Prince Hal, a raffish leader who would lead us to victory, Get Brexit Done. Instead, it seems we have Falstaff dressed up as Hal. One aspect of my faith is shattered – my faith in the importance and safety of role. When Henry II appointed his friend Thomas Becket as archbishop, he expected him to stay his friend, but Becket, although very newly ordained, took seriously the role as head of the Church. The Queen, God bless her,also understands the importance of role, although her family has struggled to keep up with her. This is what we will mourn, when she dies. President Trump has comprehensively and dramatically trashed any liberal concept of the importance of role. His creed is that you can get away with anything. The peasants cower in the shadows, or shout enthusiastically in the hope of stale bread. I write this in the week before we learn exactly how followership still has a role in shaping the world, as the American electorate, constrained and impacted by intrigue and subterfuge, takes what opportunity it has to show us its collective conflicted mind. We know the rules, we know the rules include bending the rules. (My four year old granddaughter, downstairs from her mother advising on the Brexit negotiations, knows that instinctively, as she looks to beat me in a game of cards. You can’t do that, I say as she places the card of her choice. Yes, I can, she says. And she does, proving her point.) We are, as I said, like a Greek chorus. We are witnesses to what is happening in our world, to our world, and if there is devastation, we may still be alive a little longer to lament the losses, and continue to think how to pick up the pieces.