When institutions that we love and admire, or even those that we merely take for granted while they shape our lives, suddenly crack and reveal themselves as dysfunctional or plain inane - be they families, political parties or whatever - when such events occur, there is naturally a profound sense of shock and dismay. Moreover, there is inclined to be a nasty 'domino effect', a collective nervous breakdown, though of course it is a crisis of individuals too. Such an effect seems to have broken out with particular virulence in England just now.
Perhaps the best way of describing it is as a crisis of meaning; and it really does seem to have taken this long for the collapse of the British Empire to sink into the collective psyche there. This is by no means all there is to it - plenty of other places in the world are suffering an even more extreme version of it. The collapse of marriage and the family, and of the sexual mores that (more or less) prevailed when I was a child in the 1950s, seems to have some kind of mysterious relationship with it, something to do with the absence of a shared context of meaning undermining the foundation of a marriage, household and family, and also, paradoxically, one's very relationship with physical reality.
The net effect anyway is for paralysis and disintegration to set in. Many of our contemporaries will try to account for it in economic terms. I would argue that, for all their importance, the economic effects are secondary. Human beings are rational animals, and human life simply does not work when deprived of a more or less viable spiritual and ontological context. If anyone cares to delve into earlier posts of this blog, they will find my account of a kind of collective nervous breakdown, though particularly in an individual monk, that affected Downside where I went to school, back in the 1960s. This launched me into the world with the sense of an approaching apocalypse.
The world has lurched on since - our European part of it in relatively good health on the whole - but it has to be said that is not saying much. With the Lord, a thousand years is like a day, said St Peter, so on that basis we may think in terms of an hour since the 1960s. In conventional terms, it might be said that my life was spoiled, in that it became psychologically impossible to undertake the kind of career for which I was educated, and besides, if you kick the System in the teeth, you are rarely forgiven. Perhaps indeed my life had been a wilderness, unblessed by Fortune's smile, had Fiona not left her highland home and ventured forth with me! The fact is, difficult as our lives have at times been, we've had a great time and been looked after by a kind Providence whenever the chips were down.
I suppose this is the reason why, while many people are getting upset, angry, depressed etc, and while indeed I too am not immune to such feelings, they do not really get to me. On the contrary, I am much more inclined to look for the potential human development that I hope to see come of it all, in spite of all the negativity. Alright, I have to admit it, in a sense I find it exhilarating and am thriving on it all; after all, isn't this process of drawing life through death what our Christian faith is all about? I'm very glad that I bailed out of Blighty when I did though, back in 1973. I can now, from a semi-detached position, afford to admit that I find the present situation intellectually stimulating!
Meanwhile, I recognise that it does take its destructive toll, even on our own little Nazaré Project. At least this prevents me from getting smug. Alec's initial application to Portugal 2020 for funding has been refused, and it is proving very hard to maintain momentum on the renovation of the Anna M. Perhaps what we need is a spot of Islamic Finance!* It really is sobering to realise how absurdly difficult it is to get a little enterprise going in contemporary Western society, even if it fits all the fine talk about financing the transition to a sustainable economy.
We are suffering at first hand the disconnect between what is promised and what is delivered. Why is the sort of thing that seems obvious, that there is a crying need to mobilise small businesses and enterprises in undertaking that Transition - why is it so very difficult? Really people all have the same basic needs - a living wage with a bit of dignity at work and joy at home - and when you think about it, even the political right and left hardly disagree about such things. Why then is it so difficult to deliver them?
Sometimes it seems to me that the whole Left/Right business is but a case of distracting and dividing the mass of people, keeping them down. Certainly they look very similar, and nasty, at the political extremes. Closer to the Centre, is there much difference in fact, other than perhaps greater emphasis either on social effort to the left or on individual responsibilty to the right, both of which are manifestly necessary? But if it is a case of the people being deliberately kept down, one cannot but ask what are these dark forces? Perhaps it's enough to say that money may be a good and useful servant, but is a very bad master - which will rule us if we let it.
Instead of taking off into speculation, I'll try my hand at a bit of play-acting, recounting a meeting where a few contemporary pols meet in a London pub. Major Wheeze-Flogge's daughter, apparently, has just received her new British passport with the offending words European Union removed from the cover.** Larrie Larookar was visiting his native London, though nowadays he has a teashop over in Dublin.
Major Wheeze-Flogge :- 'Citizens of Europe' indeed! The young people these days seem to think they are entitled to go on the gad all over the Continent, instead of knuckling down to stacking supermarket shelves or picking cauliflowers. Damn lucky to have the work! Too much education is the problem. All the third level education they need is a couple of years in the army. Too bad for the army, mind you. I’ll give them ‘citizens of Europe’! Downright treason, I call it. Whatever happened to those Subjects of Her Majesty the Queen, anyway?
Larrie Larookar:- 'Struth, I saw a crowd of them on a trip-boat in Ibiza once, all drunk and roaring Rule Britannia. You're quite right, they really shouldn't be let out at all! But do you think we could all survive together shut up in our little islands, only let out on the odd coach tour as a golden oldie? And anyway, what about those shares of yours? Don’t you care about business at all? Maybe you still havn’t got over losing the Raj and all that, but Europe really is a pretty good club to be in, with the world getting so upset!
Jez Cobblin:- You'll be alright Wheeze-Flogge, got most of your money off our island anyway; but you and Mrs Maybe between you are doing a fine job of carving up the Tories, and with a bit of luck we lefties will get some of that 'cake all round', after all. As for all their nonsense about delivering stability and prosperity, well I might finally get my reputation for sweet reason and light back, just in time for an election. I've had enough of those bastards in the press trying to make me out as a raving unpatriotic commie, aided and abetted by the likes of you.
Wheeze-Flogge:- Yees, I thought that was your game. Well we have a few shots in our locker yet, let me tell you. I’ve a few friends you know, bit on the rough side, but they are well able to make plenty of trouble for you! We’ll soon sort out the men from the boys; don't you forget Agincourt, don't forget Crécy!
Larookar:- Now, now Major, you should try living next door to that lot in the North. But let me tell you, by the way, that we have some really big friends these days!
Wheeze-Flogge:- No prob, old boy; and that lovely border of yours is just the ticket for sharpening up squaddies. Twice as long as it need be, wild old country, handy but not here, and still the best training ground in the United Kingdom! And you know, our lot need a little fighting now and again, and God knows when we’ll be needing them again for real, to put manners on red Jez here and his mates, and you never know who else. Anyway, the only way we’ll ever get any work out of the proletariat again is when they feel the sharp pangs of hunger, and that will mean trouble too. Meanwhile a few low level fights would be just the ticket, to keep up morale and in practice. It's very good for the economy too!
Cobblin:- You’re an old villain, Wheeze-Flogge, and Mrs Maybe just might work with me to dish your lot yet. If only we could concentrate on helping our own people for a change! There was plenty of money for bailing out your banker friends when they hit a spot of bother, and an awful lot of it seems to have ended up in the off-shore bank accounts of shady foreign globalists. Now that Canice Couldufakit character has some good ideas***. We must empower the people to make jobs for themselves, and save the planet while they are at it. The Great Transition has to happen at all levels.
Wheeze-Flogge:- Alright, go on, hand out more money all round, and watch the riff-raff destroy themselves with drink and drugs.
Larookar:- You're not exactly subtle, are you Major! We Irish know how to give just enough to stop the people from revolting, and to keep our banker friends happy too. Oh it's a great thing to lob the odd bit of jolly stuff like homosexual marriage in - it puts the Left and the Right at each other's throats, makes the Righteous Middle think things are Progressing, and they all forget whom they really need to sort out. If they ever happened to get together, they could do it, so Shhh, we don't want to make trouble for our monied friends, do we now, killing the goose and all that!
Cobblin:- Cripes, Larrie, never knew you had such perspicacity in you! Something to mull over on the allotment, surely!
On a wall in Vestiaria.
See *https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/islamic-banking-ethiopia-offers-muslims-financial-inclusion-190404192204542.html
**https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-47833702
***https://www.thenation.com/article/yanis-varoufakis-diem25/
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