All gregarious functions

But then railway travelling – all gregarious functions – are rather dehumanising. They evoke enterprise and selfishness, even at the ‘festive season’.

Walter de la Mare - A Froward Child (1934)


I’ve used this quote before. A chilling one, because it is so easy to think of modern examples where de la Mare’s “enterprise” has expanded enormously to official, political and cultural functions.

An obvious example de la Mare would certainly have recognised is air travel which is certainly dehumanising. Regimented and prescriptive to the last degree, there is no freedom, no humanity in air travel. Except when flying first class perhaps, but this too is characteristic. First class is always less dehumanised than the rest, it’s what people pay for.

Shopping centres, supermarkets, the Olympics, the World Cup, Christmas, Halloween, Red Nose Day, music festivals, political rallies, a great variety of modern gregarious functions are rather dehumanising. Television too, that can be a weirdly gregarious activity even in the home when merely using up a long evening.

How about electorates as major elections loom large? A fixed political allegiance is not dissimilar to a gregarious function. Not always an enthusiastic one perhaps, but it’s a herding function. Guided to tick the right box with logos, slogans and emotive rhetoric. Political rallies, conferences, parades and stunts. All rather dehumanising.

Modern life, for all its wealth and variety is rather dehumanising in its intensity, its forced gregariousness, its endless pressure to be involved, to listen, pay attention, react and respond to the crowd, the consensus, the right side of history, the woke.

Maybe this is why we seem to end up with dehumanised institutions which do not appear to know what they are doing or why, including political parties and government departments. As for elites, they make their escape via first class as they always did.