I have pages of notes already for what I want to set down, so I’m not sure if these posts will appear in any sorry of logical order. At least three of my jottings or emails to myself from my phone have added the coda -THIS is what the narrative is all about, from the hypocrisy and wild possibility for interpretation in language, from the gradual erosion of personal responsibility in society, the misuse of causation for correlation, or the twisted interpretations of the past. The truth is, I’m not sure, but there are certainly a lot of questions I want to air. These aren’t all things I have the answers to, but they’re often subjects which seem to have been lost in the confusion and fug of the modern world.
Today I want to mention George Orwell though. I’ve re-read a number of his novels recently, and was quite amazed by a small book of essays called ‘Books v Cigarettes’, which could almost have been written today, save for one or two contemporary attitudes it shows. But this leads me to my first digression of the day. There seems to be an almost obsessive compulsion in today’s society (reflected in its worst forms in social media of course), to judge the behaviours and actions of those who came before by our own contemporaneous standards. It seems that so many are unable to understand that we are all affected by the society we live in, and its expected norms. People are so terrified of being judged on many of the ‘hot potato’ topics (race, gender identity, sexuality etc) that they judge our forebears’ actions through a modern lens. In a hundred years, we’ll probably be mocked and despised for some of our current beliefs, but to return to Orwell for a moment, we know that he was incredibly prescient in some of the creations for 1984, but the first time I read that book, Big Brother was a looming warning rather than a ubiquity, and the idea of a ‘thought crime’ was both ludicrous, terrifying, and in the realms of science fiction, yet we now have ‘hate crime’ on the statute books. Which is the application of criminal judgement on thought and motivation, and quite scarily, labels an individual’s actions (and thoughts) based on the demographic of the victim. I find it disturbing, that while we may now refer to the opposite end of the spectrum of class, we seem to be returning the worst attitudes of early Victorian capitalist society. Henry Booth (a fascinating man who history seems to have largely forgotten, despite his integral involvement in the creation and running of the railways – it is often forgotten that he was co-designer of the Rocket, and invented braking systems which allowed passenger railways to exist, and introduced standardised time across the country for the first time) lobbied parliament to re-address laws which punished the accused based on the wealth and standing of the victim, rather than of the crime itself, and helped steer us to a modern legal system where the law wasn’t swayed by who a crime was committed again, the crime being the act for which they should be charged. And laws had the facility and flexibility to take into account incitement and persecution already. One of the strengths is supposed to be that the law is blind, and applies justice equally based on a crime, not as a method of retribution based on the perceived motive or different victim. And part of the reason for additional laws is supposedly to act as a deterrent. Using motivation as a part of the criteria is useless on this front. Adding a further charge that someone is perceived as driven by a sole discriminatory motive is pointless in this respect. A punishment can deter from action, but not from thought, emotion, or motivation.
But I digress. To return to Mr Blair, one eye-opening essay refers to World War One, (or the Great War), through which he lived as a child. It was fascinating to hear from a contemporary that much of the propaganda, visions and high drama barely registered at the time, compared to world-shocking news like the sinking of the Titanic. Looking back now, you could be forgiven for thinking the land was obsessed with the progress of the war, but he relates how little impact it had on his family. And then, in the aftermath, a period where those who lived through the horrors talked constantly about it, only to fade into a bizarre form of nostalgia, for the camaraderie and supposed perfection that preceded the conflict. Fuelled by cinematic and literary representations of the conflict, out perception as a society of what was then the recent past altered. For someone born at the beginning of the seventies, I grew up in a similarly strange world where 633 Squadron and The Dam Busters were favourites, the rural idyllic view of England outside the big cities spoke of happiness and health, and the blitz spirit was a source of pride. At the time, I suspect everyday people were too busy staying alive to revel in the age they lived. While looking back at the battles with National Socialism, the country retained a pride and nationalism, and ignored the years of Empire and invasion where we had been the aggressor and oppressor. Mr Blair then goes on to hope for a British revolution, which doesn’t chime quite so well with his previous reflections.
Propaganda is a bizarre creature those, whether it is motivated by a nation’s need for unity, or in the creation of an idyll that never existed. I try not to be swayed by it, though current propaganda is a very difficult beast to even question at a time of societal cohesion and jingoism. To try and take a step backwards from the horror of actual war and conflict, the propaganda we are subjected to frequently makes no sense, or contradicts itself, with an accepted line or phrasing appended to the description of whichever state or enemy we are meant to be against on any particular day. Very 1984. I have the opening for a satirical novel on this subject, but whether I will complete it, I don’t know. I suspect it would not be well received. Writing about this, I’m reminded of studying the play Accidental Death of an Anarchist, by Dario Fo, which satirically highlights hypocrisy and corruption in foreign states, and learning that the UK publication was, perhaps censored is too direct a conclusion, but the UK version omitted those claims against the UK state. Everyone is evil but us. It chimes with views today.
Stay safe,
Kit