Inside Outside

In nature there is no outside. When we are cast from a group or a condition we have still the companionship of all that is.

Theodore Dreiser – Jennie Gerhardt (1911)

It is pleasant being an insider. It must be because so many people devote their lives to getting there. Some are born on the inside and some have to work at it and for the latter a vast amount of effort and ingenuity is devoted to that goal. Where it counts, where the money, prestige and power are, most ordinary folk are on the outside looking in. This is the human condition.

We know where we are with insiders, so why do so many of them pretend to be outsiders? Maybe because it works. A bike, a pint in the pub, no tie, a few plebeian touches and insiders step daintily outside. It's a disguise. Why bother though? I don't know - nobody is fooled.

Yet it seems to have become a key feature of our times, insiders disguising themselves as outsiders. Jeremy Corbyn is so good at it that his followers seem to think he really is an outsider. He isn't. He merely keeps up the disguise while inside, presumably so he doesn't forget.