I was musing this morning having woken at my usual blogging hour even though there was no light at that time to stir me out of sleep. My thinking was on the theme of ‘a world that doesn't care'.
I was sure I knew a lyric with that line in it, but struggled for a while to think what it was. Then I recalled it was this:
I am of course aware that this song is thought to be cliched. It is most certainly not popular to admit liking it. But I do. I see it as a simple and honest reflection by a songwriter on what he observed. I can't knock it for that.
That said, I can add that since the 70s when this was a hit our understanding of loneliness has improved immensely. What we do know is it can afflict anyone. Material circumstances do not, as McTell implied, come into it. Alienation from others is what matters.
In a crowded room, a crowded life, even with caring people, it is possible to feel lonely. What matters is a person's sense of isolation. Much of that has to do with feeling valued. It has also to do with a sense of belonging. It has to do with being accepted for who you are.
These things all matter to me. What worries me is that they very clearly do not matter to our government. The evidence comes from its new Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. George Monbiot wrote about this with passion in the Guardian this week and I thought I might have nothing to add, but I do.
Of course we need to be concerned about the government's intention to use this Act when it is passed to suppress dissent. There can be no doubt that the denial of the freedom to protest is at the heart of their intention.
However, the physical act of protest is only one dimension of the whole process of dissent. Dissent comes from the very core of the person and arises because of their inner belief. And because dissent requires courage it will mean that the person expressing it must have experienced a profound sense of disquiet as a consequence of an affront to their perception of well-being.
That may be a physical threat. At some level climate protest expresses that. However, more often the threat will be metaphysical. A threat to a person's values or to the way in which they wish to live is also implicit in this Bill. It does, in effect take away a person's freedom to choose, and as importantly their right to say why they have chosen and so to find others who think as they do. That to me is the biggest threat in the Bill. It sends out the message that you may deviate from the path that those in the elite of society have chosen for you at your own peril and that they intend to make that deviance perilous.
The response will be what it has been in so many societies with oppressive regimes. Those who dissent will simply shut up. That, they will know, will be the price of their survival. They will disappear from view. They will shrink into their shells. But they will not go away. Nor will their beliefs change. They will simply suffer in silence because that is what this Bill does in effect demand. After all, where would the LGBTQ+ community be without the noisy protest that was and is Pride? What chance is there that such protest would have been permitted under this new Act? I strongly suspect it is none at all. Don't doubt then that this Act will be used to suppress people.
Put the cost in terms of the loneliness that this will create as a consequence and it will be phenomenal. The impact on mental health of this Bill is hard to estimate, but as a crude approximation, I suggest that it will be staggering.
If this happens it will be because we live in a world that doesn't care about the harm that a tiny elite in our society is creating. One day we will realise the price of indifference.
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Lets hope the House of Lords will either turn down this monstrous bill or amend the ani-democratic features such as the bans on protests. It took the Russians 73 years to throw off the Stalinist yoke and the Spanish 36 years the Franco fascist one. We do not want to join the likes of Belarus, Egypt. the Gulf states, Saudi, Thailand, and all the other authoritarian nightmares around the world.
It feels like the Naughties of Bush/Blair. The drums are being beaten.
I believe we won’t have to wait that long to find out.
I guess about 60 – 70 days.
The disappearance of trial by jury and banning of all protests on the back of the M25 nuisance to people’s daily lives when they have zero say and choice in how they go about these lives are linked. They are designed to get the atrocious laws made acceptable to us.
Stop the War are having an online xmas party next Thursday evening. I’ll be looking in.
Will the government let us actually march in protest?
The chaos around Covid across Europe seems to be resembling wartime civilian restrictions come February.
I guess I will be marching and getting dragged away with thousands into summary internment!
Be interesting to see where they intern everyone as the country doesn’t have enough jails now, let alone capable of coping with the numbers we’re likely to soon be seeing. House arrest? Frankly after lockdown that would be a breeze.
Perhaps I am too literally minded, but I was not expecting that song when I saw the headline, rather the slightly more recent one about “A statistic, a reminder, Of a world that doesn’t care”. More relevant than ever I think.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=usYgf8cVfvU
Yes……
Wonderful song and just as relevant now as in the 70’s. Here is a link to the original heartbreaking song video with McTell’s commentary.
https://youtu.be/DiWomXklfv8
Thanks
Nice words
So right Richard.
Had always thought UK democracy was only feebly safegarded by lack of a constitution or checks and balances on elected dictatorships – and never loved the ‘good chaps’ theory like Hennessey – a supposed independent historian whose whole career has depended on special access and favours.
But only recently began to think that we may already be living in a sophisticated version of what you call an ‘oppressive regime’. Both ourselves and our ‘regime’ trumpet our ‘freedoms’ , our ‘democracy’ – while – as you say, already only certain thoughts are allowed free reign. Millions were sold lies on Brexit, and access to the truth on the pandemic – just as in Russia- is severely restricted and distorted – but less overtly – and therefore much more scary.
I liked the Fred Wedlock version
‘Let me take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of Radstock…’
Our son was moved to write a poem reflecting on the lack of care being felt for those fleeing danger
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN0CLyBX9qE
Now going on the blog
Thank you unnamed son
Both songs of their time — but the reggae beat is timeless. Shame the message is still so relevant. The neoliberalism imposed by Thatcher is only 42 years old, yet most of my baby boomer cohort are so brainwashed, they really do think that there is no alternative.
Anyway, re Pride — I’d always thought of it as a festival, rather than a protest…?
It will be a protest under the new rules
[…] commentator on this blog named Ros Wain sent me this poem written by her son. I share it because I think it is worth listening to. Ros did […]
I think plenty of people care. I refuse to believe that people are naturally this uncaring.
In fact we must not think that. Who man’s the food banks? Who gives to charity?
The issue is that we are being divided and conquered by wealth that is working through the political systems that we have.
I have recently watched the documentary about the political shenanigans in Brazil that led up to the Bolsonaro government called ‘The Edge of Democracy’ – about the fall of the progressive politicians like Luiz Inácio da Silva and Dilma Rousseff in and around 2016. It makes uncomfortable viewing and seems straight from the Neo-liberal playbook.
The film is admittedly from a sympathetic point of view but even the human rights barrister Geoffrey Wheatcroft is quoted as saying that Brazil’s legal code was still based on the Spanish one of occupation and was wide open to be manipulated by anyone wanting to accuse ‘Lula’ of anything without any real proof. Then what followed was a well known social media campaign to destroy the reputation of Lula and his party which leads to Bolsonaro in power today. It’s been very successful.
The question the film asks is how strong does a democracy need to be to work properly and fairly? The answer to me it seems is ‘a very strong one’. Weak democracies – and the film suggests that Brazil’s is weak (and Lula himself accepts that reform should have gone into Brazil’s constitutional issues as well as its social issues).
And then we come to ‘dear old blighty’ (the UK) and its supposed democratic strengths and then my answer is that ‘a democracy can maybe NEVER ever be strong enough’ if people want to manipulate it for their own ends.
You really ought to watch ‘The Edge of Democracy’ if you can.
I watched another film the other day about Adolf Eichmann and his debriefing at the hands of the Israeli’s when he was captured and shipped over from South America for trial.
Eichmann’s debriefing officer was a policeman called Avner Less. He did his level best to get a confession out of Eichmann who played the Nazi ‘cog’ right to the end (it of course did him no good, he was executed and quite rightly so).
Less was profoundly changed by his experience. Acknowledging that Eichmann and his like killed more than just 6 million Jews, Less felt that the only thing preventing the Holocaust from happening again was ‘true democracy’ – indeed the only thing that will save mankind from itself.
Less believed that societies everywhere had latent ‘Eichmann’s’ and that these latent types can only ever grow and rise in a dictatorship – whether a Left or Right wing one – they were both the same in Less’ view.
But people like Eichmann (argued Less) would never be able to rise to the top in a true democracy and that is why people had to fight for democracy to prevent the Eichmann’s of this world from prevailing.
At the moment, we are not doing a good job are we? We learnt so much from the Nazis but have forgotten much of it it seems.
For me, I think that 2008 was the crux of the issue.
2008 was the when all the Neo-liberal bullshit hit a brick wall at 100mph.
It was and still is the epiphany of epiphanies – not just the unwinding of Neo-liberal dogma but also the revelation of just how corrupted our politics, economics etc., had become. And – more importantly – the requirement by those who feel entitled to keep things that way. Because I’m convinced that that is what we are seeing – a fight back to the death – a stubbornness to keep things as they are, to not cede any ground – indeed to make things even worse so that we can be controlled even more – all under a very Right wing authoritarian bent. Because in 2008, Wealth could have lost its grip on our consciousness. I’m sure that they were scared.
But the key to preserving our faith in democracy is that it has to include not writing off the world as ‘uncaring’. When we do that, people like Bolsonaro and Johnson and too may others at the moment are winning.
If we progressives are confident in our beliefs, then no one should be beyond them. We have to continue to reach out. As frustrating as it is, we must continue to deploy and engage just as the Neo-libs have done the same over the years.
Many thanks PSR – I appreciate this type of commentary. None of us can watch all we want.
You work very hard at this. You and others have a right to question progress based on your efforts. So I’m glad you thought it appropriate.
Browsing the web I came across a tweet: https://twitter.com/LassLesley/status/1467216280675565575 – quoting:
“The problem isn’t a lack of money, food, water or land. The problem is that you’ve given control of these things to a group of greedy psychopaths who care more about maintaining their own power than helping mankind” – Bill Hicks
Seems to sum up a lot…
I echo PSR’s thoughts . i read your Blog every day and i believe there are many people that care but care alone is not enough . However , it is very easy to become Socially Alienated . If i may i am going to copy and paste some Text which i think is very apt to this discussion …
Sociologist Melvin Seeman provided a robust definition of social alienation in a paper published in 1959, titled “On the Meaning of Alienation.” The four features he attributed to social alienation hold true today in how sociologists study this phenomenon. They are:
Powerlessness: When individuals are socially alienated they believe that what happens in their lives is outside of their control and that what they do ultimately does not matter. They believe they are powerless to shape their life course.
Meaninglessness: When an individual does not derive meaning from the things in which he or she is engaged, or at least not the same common or normative meaning that others derive from it.
Social Isolation: When a person feels that they are not meaningfully connected to their community through shared values, beliefs, and practices, and/or when they do not have meaningful social relationships with other people.
Self-Estrangement: When a person experiences social alienation they may deny their own personal interests and desires in order to satisfy demands placed by others and/or by social norms.
The People that Care are finding it very hard to form a ” Band of Brothers ” if you like , to dismantle this form of Alienation which our Guardian’s of Capitalism are so keen to keep in place for obvious reasons .
i for one feel very depressed most days for the state we are in now , our children’s future and that of the Planet itself ……. and i mean Depressed.
Simon
Take care
Your concern is our hope
Richard
Thankyou Richard.
Thank you Simon for posting the text from sociologist Melvin Seeman.
I copied the text to a folder, so that I can read it again more easily, look up Melvin Seeman and add to the folder.
Fine regards,
Alan
You are welcome Alan , glad you found it interesting like i did . Simon B.