Resilience is a rum thing isn’t it? I grew up in the fifties when World War II was still a recent memory. The adults I knew had all lived through it. Fathers, mothers, uncles, aunts, teachers and many others had fought in the war, done their bit, coped and survived. Afterwards they remembered the dead, picked up the threads and moved on.
It was a resilient generation because it had to be and for other reasons apart from the war. Yet since those days, human resilience has become curiously unfashionable, even on occasion something to be deplored. Or rather, it has become curiously fashionable to pretend that people are not resilient. If they are, then there must be something wrong with them.
As the wartime generation faded away, their obvious resilience was quietly set aside as something to be both acknowledged and forgotten at the same time. Inconsistent of course, but inconsistent is one of those things we do well.
Now, people who display their resilience must be pretending to be resilient - or so the narrative goes. Deep down they must be suffering. As if the deep down suffering is almost compulsory or you are not a real person with real feelings. You are hiding them and hiding things is bad. The bad person is made to emerge from an apparently caring environment.
Yes – it is absurd. Yes – there is a sinister enforcement aspect to all this. A subtle shading into political identities based on feelings which don’t even have be real feelings as long as we shed a whimper or two. A quiet aspect of identity politics - Insider or Outsider. We see it all the time in woke politics and the absurd ease with which offence is claimed over trivia. Mind boggling trivia.
The point of it all? As ever, a primary government aim is to reduce expectations in the general population. On top of that we have political ideologies where this is a prerequisite. Undermining resilience is simply a means towards a culture of abject political compliance. It isn't new.
We haven't disposed of resilience altogether of course. We appear to have reached a state where resilience has become something the mass media dole out to chosen heroes. They hand it out whenever resilience is necessary for the drama of the story. Like a medal perhaps. The Resilience Star Third Class.
Just as we cannot make our own medals, we are not supposed to have our own resilience without higher approval. The Blitz is another planet now.
6 comments:
It's certainly in the interests of the Government to have a population lacking resilience. The push for easy solutions and being nannied comes from lots of directions, though. Freud kicked off the popular notion that people didn't know themselves, and were driven by base motives only experts can understand. Marx convinced a generation of intellectuals that the proper role of government was redistribution and repression. Entrepreneurs created the counselling, psychotherapy, and tranquilliser industries. Maybe we just get the government that we have been asking for.
Liars, that is, who shield us from reality and pretend that they are in control because we aren't.
Is it a lefty characteristic that they are taken in by charlatans like Freud, Marx and Engels?
Having just watched the service in Westminster Abbey at the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior, I felt that this local example of resilience by long-serving, local colleague in the Campaign for an Independent Britain was worth mentioning. Having just had the task of writing an obituary for him, I felt his example certainly showed resilience to the finish.
IVOR JOHNS R.I.P
We are greatly saddened to announce the death of Ivor Johns on 5th November. He was a long-serving member of CIB - from its foundation, we believe. Ivor was active in the Derby, Nottingham and Midlands area, writing frequent, eloquent letters to the press, helping in the organisation of meetings, politely and persistently questioning politicians of all views and canvassing at elections when bona fide pro independence candidates were standing.
A few months ago in discussion about the EU's plans for European defence integration, he was able to produce notes of many years ago which were of considerable assistance to our colleagues in Veterans for Britain. They were surprised at the length of time this sinister project had been in preparation. He sent his collection of other papers to our Hon Treasurer for inclusion in the Brexit Museum.
It is about two years since he was well enough to attend a meeting in Derby. He tried to phone me towards the end of October but was unable to speak or hear clearly. His last letter of 31st October demonstrates his great fortitude and continuing keen interest in the cause.
"Sorry I could not speak (or hear). I am afraid the mouth cancer has turned aggressive....especially on the tongue. I'm on palliative care- GP (very good), District Nurse (Super), Macmillan nurse from hospital ( sometimes with a doctor).
" Guess the rest and Oh, some very good neighbours - lucky.
Coronavirus: Roberta and I wonder if those experts Boris won't listen to are right - concentrate on the vulnerable - others will probably cope. Would help enormously in reviving the economy.
"Yes, I fear a botched Brexit but, like you, hope otherwise. I can't help feeling we should have rejoined EFTA (EEA) and therefore avoided or reduced the Irish problem - thus threat to UK. Can't help thinking that Boris's illness has altered our PM. Next leadership? Fractured parties - realignments? Hope you can read this..."
Ivor's wife Roberta looked after him devotedly at home and we send our most sincere condolences to her and the family.
Sam - it seems to be a fundamental change too, because in earlier times any form of government would need its people to be resilient as external enemies were always a threat. Repressed maybe, but resilient. As if the liar class just lost the plot a century ago.
Jannie - the answer appears to be yes. I'm sure the decline in religious faith has something to do with it.
Edward - yes your late colleague certainly showed resilience to the finish. It seems to be in there and can be brought out by severe illness and maybe that is one of the answers. Perhaps the need to be genuinely resilient is less widely apparent in a wealthy and comfortable society such as ours.
"The blitz is another planet now"
My father (96th birthday in a couple of weeks) says that living through the Covid panic is worse than the blitz ever was. His family were bombed out of their home twice, so he knows a thing or two about the blitz, and about resilience.
If we ever come out the other side of this (and I'm beginning to think the PTB don't actually want us to), it will turn out in the end to have cost us more than the Luftwaffe did, of that I am quite sure.
Peter - I haven't met anyone who looks at it like that although I think I know what your father means. I don't see the threat as comparable, but there is a threat and it is sinister.
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