To my mind, the most enduring aspect of the lockdown here in
the UK is how creepy it all is. Curiously old-fashioned and paternalistic - aristocratically so. The surgery is closed for the duration – go
round to the tradesman’s entrance.
We see it everywhere - the current enthusiasm for a police state, mass NHS forelock
tugging while ignoring millions who also keep the show on the road. Supermarket
staff, water supply workers, electricity workers, gas suppliers, delivery
drivers, internet technicians – the list is a long one and these people do not
have medical expertise on hand.
A modern shibboleth driving it all seems to be the half-buried notion of absolute
government responsibility. Absolute in a modern totalitarian sense and a shibboleth
because it is also a relic of the past, an ugly assumption of old aristocratic powers with a compulsory modern twist.
Government has airily assumed direct responsibility for our health, lives,
attitudes, applause and even our daily activities and amusements during the
coronavirus debacle. However, it has assumed these responsibilities with no
great change in tone, as if ancient aristocratic rights were never
abandoned and will not be abandoned when the coronavirus debacle has been
forgotten.
A passage from George Santayana may be worth revisiting here.
A passage from George Santayana may be worth revisiting here.
As an absolute reality would be indescribable and without
a function in the elucidation of phenomena, so a supreme good which was good
for nobody would be without conceivable value. Respect
for such an idol is a dialectical superstition; and if zeal for that
shibboleth should actually begin to inhibit the exercise of intelligent choice
or the development of appreciation for natural pleasures, it would constitute a
reversal of the Life of Reason which, if persistently indulged in, could only
issue in madness or revert to imbecility.
George Santayana - The Life of Reason (1906)
Current circumstances suggest that the absolute
responsibility government will indeed revert to imbecility. To a substantial
degree it already has. The imbecility is here, in the air, more infectious and
more dangerous than the virus ever was.
6 comments:
I think that quite a lot of what we used to invest in the church, chapel, unions, and voluntary associations has been withdrawn and reinvested in government. It has for some time been expected to provide a kind of general insurance policy against life's vicissitudes, with the latest and most ridiculous role being to protect us against other people's bad opinions.
Now it is also a big soap opera. We don't even get to watch the high drama of politics any more. We have been reduced to watching government departments make administrative decisions, and we are encouraged to clap or jeer from a distance.
Agreed. But at least the weather's nice.
Frost tonight...................
Sam - yes that's about it - we watch government departments make administrative decisions. The actors on stage are merely that - actors.
Mark - it certainly is. We've been sitting in the garden enjoying it.
Wiggia - but sunny days make up for it.
Lots of organisations are transferring their own responsibilities and guilt upwards to the Government and in particular the Prime Minister.
As in "We are running out of (insert anything from toilet paper, masks, full haz-mat kit to hospitals) and the government is not helping"
Even private companies like care-homes and charities join the chorus.
Conveniently forgetting/deliberately ignoring the fact that they have adequately financed stores-control, purchasing and logistic departments, and if the government had interfered with their cosy sinecures before they would have been bleating about centralised control.
Doonhamer - yes and it's a major problem because as you say, the real culprits get away with all kinds of things.
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