A Sense of Perspective
“On 4 February last year, he says he was leading a demonstration of around 500 people through Harare when the police went for him. They knocked him to the ground with a baton and started kicking him with heavy boots, he says.
Then they piled him into an open police van and drove him around the streets publicly beating him in front of the demonstrators, he claims. When he resumed consciousness, he says, he found he had been dumped in the countryside where he was helped by some young villagers.“ -- BBC News. (Source here)
“Commuter Jamie Norman, who travels from Manningtree in Essex to London each weekday, described the bacon roll offer as offensive. One passengers were having to travel in Third World conditions, he said.” – BBC News. (emphasis added. Source here)
Well, I am sitting here wondering how to attack this one. What is my point here? Insensitivity resulting in a lack of perspective from our commuter? Lazy recourse to hyperbolic cliché that means nothing on analysis? Or the suspicion that the guy did not actually refer to the Third World at all and the quote was knocked together by the writer attempting to cover the gist of what he said in the most quotable manner possible.
The laws of perspective say that things move faster when they are nearer the observer...but I am unwilling to jabber on about how we should think ourselves lucky in this country. That is an artificial and bloated point of view used entirely to knock down any criticism without any chance of a comeback, either to promote one’s own compassion or to shoulder barge the argument onto one’s own agenda, no matter how tenuous the connection.
“I tripped over a bench yesterday.”
“Stop moaning! You should count your blessings that you weren’t mutilated and torn to pieces by fox hunters.”
“What?”
Indeed. But the subject chimes loudly with the sound of previous posts I have written here, and I should not dwell upon the thing.
Let us return to the quotes. ”Third World conditions”? Perhaps he would have the makings of a point if the guy was beaten publicly for making his complaint. Ah, but he is not guilty of being an insensitive bastard. He is simply parroting a phrase used frequently to justify a complaint, trying to puff it up into an epic tale of woe and loss. It is a stupid and selfish phrase, and somewhere here is a psychological point to be made. These are deep waters of ignorance on my part here, but what the hell. We will blunder onwards.
When people make a complaint they are sticking their neck out, something they want to do but feel uncomfortable about doing so. So they resort to the familiar, the comfortable, manifesting itself in a pile of arguments already made by others. These arguments are typified by the language of the tabloid where dumb arguments are shouted, not through the channels of logic but balanced on the continually shifting sands of “common sense”. Nice and easy to pick up and throw like rocks at your nemesis... no need to put together an argument, just don your best pair of thin lips and begin tut-tutting like a fucked machine gun.
And the rage that blinds them makes this thing the most important thing in the world, something that affects everyone; yet the rage comes from the ego, not some shared bond between fellow sufferers.
But the rage needs to be guided. This is done by cultural conditioning...the people complaining are steeped in the lore of the country as dictated by what is seen to be news. And stories about compensation are legion. Claims for compensation in the UK have fallen in the last year but the concepts involved strike deep into our psyches, so we get a perverse thrill in being told that we are spiralling down into hell. But this thrill is not something we like to share. Over the years we became comfortable with the society remodelled by Thatcher away from collectivism...there are many bonds that hold society together but these are overridden all too easily by our senses of self-preservation, nowadays manifesting itself not through fight or flight survival but through the pursuit of riches. We admit that something feels wrong, but for now we want our reward.
Hmm. Sweeping generalisations and bad gibberish there...so let us sum up the situation in a clear manner: England is not a Third World country and nothing in her boundaries can ever be claimed to be anything like Third World conditions. To claim otherwise is disingenuous and insulting. This is no politically correct retort...that term is meaningless anyway. And I would not claim to speak on behalf of the Third World; only men with mad hair and a penchant for swearing can do that. This is simply a case in which self-obsession has destroyed one man’s sense of perspective; whether I am talking about the commuter or myself is another matter.
Then they piled him into an open police van and drove him around the streets publicly beating him in front of the demonstrators, he claims. When he resumed consciousness, he says, he found he had been dumped in the countryside where he was helped by some young villagers.“ -- BBC News. (Source here)
“Commuter Jamie Norman, who travels from Manningtree in Essex to London each weekday, described the bacon roll offer as offensive. One passengers were having to travel in Third World conditions, he said.” – BBC News. (emphasis added. Source here)
Well, I am sitting here wondering how to attack this one. What is my point here? Insensitivity resulting in a lack of perspective from our commuter? Lazy recourse to hyperbolic cliché that means nothing on analysis? Or the suspicion that the guy did not actually refer to the Third World at all and the quote was knocked together by the writer attempting to cover the gist of what he said in the most quotable manner possible.
The laws of perspective say that things move faster when they are nearer the observer...but I am unwilling to jabber on about how we should think ourselves lucky in this country. That is an artificial and bloated point of view used entirely to knock down any criticism without any chance of a comeback, either to promote one’s own compassion or to shoulder barge the argument onto one’s own agenda, no matter how tenuous the connection.
“I tripped over a bench yesterday.”
“Stop moaning! You should count your blessings that you weren’t mutilated and torn to pieces by fox hunters.”
“What?”
Indeed. But the subject chimes loudly with the sound of previous posts I have written here, and I should not dwell upon the thing.
Let us return to the quotes. ”Third World conditions”? Perhaps he would have the makings of a point if the guy was beaten publicly for making his complaint. Ah, but he is not guilty of being an insensitive bastard. He is simply parroting a phrase used frequently to justify a complaint, trying to puff it up into an epic tale of woe and loss. It is a stupid and selfish phrase, and somewhere here is a psychological point to be made. These are deep waters of ignorance on my part here, but what the hell. We will blunder onwards.
When people make a complaint they are sticking their neck out, something they want to do but feel uncomfortable about doing so. So they resort to the familiar, the comfortable, manifesting itself in a pile of arguments already made by others. These arguments are typified by the language of the tabloid where dumb arguments are shouted, not through the channels of logic but balanced on the continually shifting sands of “common sense”. Nice and easy to pick up and throw like rocks at your nemesis... no need to put together an argument, just don your best pair of thin lips and begin tut-tutting like a fucked machine gun.
And the rage that blinds them makes this thing the most important thing in the world, something that affects everyone; yet the rage comes from the ego, not some shared bond between fellow sufferers.
But the rage needs to be guided. This is done by cultural conditioning...the people complaining are steeped in the lore of the country as dictated by what is seen to be news. And stories about compensation are legion. Claims for compensation in the UK have fallen in the last year but the concepts involved strike deep into our psyches, so we get a perverse thrill in being told that we are spiralling down into hell. But this thrill is not something we like to share. Over the years we became comfortable with the society remodelled by Thatcher away from collectivism...there are many bonds that hold society together but these are overridden all too easily by our senses of self-preservation, nowadays manifesting itself not through fight or flight survival but through the pursuit of riches. We admit that something feels wrong, but for now we want our reward.
Hmm. Sweeping generalisations and bad gibberish there...so let us sum up the situation in a clear manner: England is not a Third World country and nothing in her boundaries can ever be claimed to be anything like Third World conditions. To claim otherwise is disingenuous and insulting. This is no politically correct retort...that term is meaningless anyway. And I would not claim to speak on behalf of the Third World; only men with mad hair and a penchant for swearing can do that. This is simply a case in which self-obsession has destroyed one man’s sense of perspective; whether I am talking about the commuter or myself is another matter.
posted by Jamie at 4:56 PM
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