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Thinking about humankind recently, I have come to the conclusion that we are all complete arseholes. Human society exists only because we will it to: rather than any real interest in the welfare of others, we stick together because we need things from them. With a few notable exceptions, nobody will ever fight the tide of overwhelming public opinion; even anarchists operate in groups. The 'lone nutters' the tabloids all fear always claim to have been swayed by some outside influence, whether it was violent movies or Marilyn Manson lyrics, that reassures them they're not alone. Is it because the sheep fear the individual? Is it because, however obtusely, the individual shows the group what they could have all had? I think that the aforementioned 'lone nutters' are a menace to society, but not in the traditional sense of the word. Say our madman - let's call him Jim, I feel bad discussing him without giving him a name - opens fire in a busy shopping centre. Jim kills 20 people because Tarantino made him do it. Individual lives might be destroyed, but society as a whole will hold together: if anything, it will become stronger than the sum of its parts. The whole country will be united in grief; the PM will issue a statement of sympathy to the victims' families; there will be a two-minute silence on the anniversary of the day; people will call their parents and tell them how much they love them. But say Jim works in more subtle ways than that. Imagine, for a second, Jim is in fact no psychopath, but a cheery office worker with plenty of friends, a girlfriend and a nice flat. On the morning of his 29th birthday, all his rage at having been given a stupid name boils over: he walks out of his life totally and is never heard from again - it doesn't matter, he's made his point. The next day, his tea-lady, perhaps, is inspired by what he's done, and refuses to serve tea to people who are rude to her. His boss gets home in a bad mood because he's had no caffeine since 8am and snaps at his wife. She decides that's the last straw and runs off to Cornwall to farm sheep, just because she's always wanted to. Her kids feel abadoned. Daughter decides not to bother going to school and gets so many facial piercings her neck is compacted by half an inch. Son takes a chainsaw to next-door neigbour's fence in revenge for the fact he never got back the ball he threw over aged eight. Neighbour deciedes to unleash his own brand of vigilante justice..... and so on and so forth. These tiny little acts of subversion spread -freedom is contagious by its nature- and society as we know it really could collapse. If everyone went to feed the ducks when it was too sunny to work, the whole infrastucture of the country would crumble away to a shell. This is why we all act the way we are expected to: when we are all facing the same way, we are all working towards the same ends. However practical this might be, nobody enjoys it: nobody in known history has ever leapt out of bed in the morning and gone "WOOOHOO! I'm a tiny cog in a well-oiled machine!". Everyone wants to go feed the ducks when it's sunny, but nobody ever does, and we resent this. We know it's ridiculous to expect to get our own way all the time, but inside the most reasonable person is a toddler who won't let anyone else play with its toys.
We are all entirely co-dependent on each other. Humanity has essentially evolved itself out of existance: to put it bluntly, without our home comforts we're fucked. To paraphrase Animal Farm, we are essentially useless - slow, blunt-toothed, and weak; kept at the top of the pile only by our ability to outwit our opponents; parasites living off the earth. We gather together in cities like fortresses, shielded from nature by two metres of concrete, because divided we really will fall. The truth is, the machine in which we are all small cogs is not as efficient as we like to think: we are linked by the needs we have that are fulfilled by total strangers. Everybody likes to think they are self-sufficient, but nobody is, and short of moving to the Chilean rainforest we are not likely to become it ( - and that kind of isolation has been known to cause insanity). A couple of years ago, for example, the fuel strikes at the Channel Tunnel brought the country to its knees: if it had gone on for a few days longer than it did, it is no exaggeration to say the whole place would have ground to a halt. So much of what we do is reliant on the kindness of strangers. When you drop a cheque in the post, you are relying on the postman to deliver it and the bank clerk to cash it. People don't always realise the extent to which they are dependent, but most have a vague idea, and they hate it. It's enough to fill anyone with rage at their own total impotency, really. And people show their annoyance with tiny little acts of rebellion. It's the stiff drink before a boring party; it's the refusal to buy copies of the Big Issue; it's red lacy underwear under office clothes - just little tiny things, to reassure ourselves that we're apart from all this. We may all live lives interchangeable with any of our age group, but that doesn't mean we're like them. This self-absorbtion comes into play when matters of morality are relevant - people are all, really, just out for themselves. If people see a parent, say, hitting a child in the street, they will never intervene, however strong their own views. Nobody wants to be the first. They may tut to each other and think about calling the police, and probably lie awake at night thinking up polite-but-stern things they should have said, but they will not have done anything at the time, and that is what matters. |
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